#this class seems pretty good relatively but the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth ughhh

[francisforever2014]

getting exposed to two of my least favorite things at work . crash course and the study of abnormal psych

[caffeineghostie]

𝐋𝐞𝐭'𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐎𝐧 𝐈𝐭 - 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Summary: You were more than satisfied with your academic career, but there was one aspect of it you absolutely couldn't stand: Chris Beck.

W/C: 1.3k-ish

Warnings: talk of exams, some language, Beck is a bit of a jerk, one Brooklyn Nine-Nine reference.

A/N: hi! Thank you @natlovesu for requesting this piece, I hope you like it! I am not really used to writing for Chris Beck so this was a first! It turned into some sort of college au, but if this is not what you had in mind I'm happy to redo it :)

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You loved studying; you loved learning new things every day. You absolutely adored being able to pursue your interests in an academic setting, and luckily, you were also good at it. Not without sacrifices, all-nighters full of coffee, sweat and tears, of course.

But there was only one thing that you couldn’t stand: Chris Beck.

More precisely, his smirk. Right now you wanted to rip it off his annoyingly cute face.

Because of course, as much as you couldn’t stand him when he was all presumptuous about his academic career, you had to have a crush on him, and you had it since the first year of your degree course, two years ago.

You two had been introduced by a mutual friend, Mark Watney, the first week of classes, and you had been in pretty much the same friend group ever since. You’d usually study all together at a diner next to your university, revising between a hamburger and a smoothie.

Chris was reading his notes out loud, editing them and lecturing your group, and you weren’t really listening. You instead were playing with some fries on your plate, while looking at him and fantasizing about ripping that smirk you hated so much off of his annoyingly cute face.

Yes, because, ever since you met him, you had developed a crush on him, and you desperately wanted to forget about it. But he had such charisma to him, it was almost impossible.

“Earth to Y/N, Earth to Y/N!” Watney interrupted your fantasies, dangling a hand in front of you.

“What Mark?” you glared at him.

“Were you listening to me or do i need to explain it again?”

Chris always did this. There was this rivalry between the two of you, about who was better, and you both were brilliant students. But he always got that one mark more than you, and you couldn’t bear it anymore. You had to do something.

“Oh shut up, like you wouldn’t like it. And then bitch about it forever,” you joked. But seriously, you wouldn’t hear the end of it. It had always been like this. There was this rivalry between the two of you, on who was better, and you both were brilliant students, but he always somehow scored that one mark more than you, and you couldn’t bear it anymore. You had to do something.

“Hey, Beck! I have a proposal for you,” you called him, tossing your fry on the plate. “Next week’s exam. Let’s make a bet.”

“I’m listening”, he put his notebook down, curious about what you were saying.

“If I beat you, and I will beat you, you’ll stop making fun of me. No comments, no remarks. Nothing.”

“And what if I win?” he paused a bit, thinking, and then you saw a lightbulb go off in his head. “You and me. One day, together. You can’t complain about anything.” he smirked at you, extending his hand.

And this certainly would not help you forget your crush about him. But if this is what it took to finally get him to stop boasting about him being smarter than you, then you gladly took the risk.

“Let’s shake on it” you said, nodding. You hoped this deal wouldn’t make things worse, but you didn’t have to worry, because you were so going to win it.

****

One week later, you found yourself scouring between the results of your exam. You had studied day and night all week, and you were absolutely sure you were going to pass it with the highest mark. Beck next to you, having your same thoughts.

Your heart was thumping in your ears while looking for your ID number, and then you saw your mark: 99/100. That wasn't bad. You were certain Beck couldn’t have done better. You smiled, proud of yourself. You were so going to win this bet.

“Not too fast, Y/L/N,” Beck caught your attention, and you turned to him. He smirked, pointing to his mark., and you followed his gaze on the paper sheet in front of you.

No.

No. No. No.

He got 100.

“See, I told you. I’m the best human-slash-genius” he pointed at himself, all mighty and proud. Ugh, you hated him.

“Brace yourself, Y/L/N. Twenty-four hours starting from” he paused, looking at his watch, “ now. And I'm gonna make sure to be extra-pretentious.” he winked at you.

Oh, you were so fucked.

********

“So how are we gonna do this?” he asked you. .

“I don’t know. This was your idea. To kidnap me,” you let your bag fall to the ground, while letting yourself plop on the bed.

He brought you back to his dorm room, which he shared with Watney. Unfortunately, Mark had to visit a relative back home, and he would not be back for a couple of days at least.

Leaving you all alone with Mr-Know-It-All over there.

“And what a great idea it was. I’m brilliant!” he put particular emphasis on the last word, observing you to get your reaction.

“Yeah right,” you rolled your eyes “Well, if you excuse me, your highness” you hinted a bow at him, “I need to study” you started taking your notes out of your bag.

“Relax a bit. We still have a month before the next exam.” he sit at his desk in front of you.

“Nope” you popped the p, “I need to get ahead of you because next time, I’m going to make you pay for it. ”

“Oh, come on Y/N/N, let’s go do something fun.”

*******

Turns out, Beck wasn’t that much of an asshole that you thought he was. Yes, he still was a pretentious idiot, but you know he did it on purpose, just to get on your nerves.

In the entire day, you spent together, you actually had fun.

You spent the day at the park, basking in the sun, which was much needed. You didn’t think you’d enjoy this.

Now the both of you were hanging out on a bench. He had even got you an ice cream as a thank you for agreeing to this whole thing with him.

"You could have made these 24 hours a hell for me, but you didn’t. And I really had fun. So thank you”

“Come on, you think that I'm that bad of a person? Man, you really must hate me,” he joked

“I don’t, actually. You just get on my nerves sometimes. Most of the time. But, you know, I don’t hate you.” which was actually true.

“Good, because I don’t hate you, either.” he smiled. You were glad, you were happy to be friends with him, even if sometimes he was a pretentious asshole.

"Actually, that's kinda the whole point," Chris chuckled nervously, playing with his hands. What was going on?

"Uh?"

"Yeah, uhm," He mumbled, turning all red.

"What, the cat got your tongue?" you teased him. You had never seen him this flustered, and you were going to take your sweet time with it.

"Oh please,” he composed himself. “The thing is, Y/N, I- I like you,” he confessed, looking at you.

“What?” you couldn’t believe this was happening, he’d always been picking on you.

“Yeah, I have for a while actually, and I just wanted a chance to show you I’m not that mean, a-and I’m sorry if I seemed-”

“Shut up,” you mumbled, and then you kissed him. It was a soft kiss, you could taste the strawberry ice cream he had on his lips.

“So, I get it you like me too?” he asked, smiling at you.

“Mh, what do you say, genius, it's you that knows everything!” you chuckled.

He laughed, but then kissed you again. His kisses were so sweet and intoxicating, and you mentally bashed yourself for not having confessed before.

Chris pulled away, looking at you in the eyes, the smirk you hated so much appearing again on his face.

"So… you want to bet on the next exam, Y/L/N?" he whispered.

Asshole.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Your idea of madam nie!jgy is really good could u wrt that ?

for those who don’t remember, the Madame Nie!JGY idea is here and here

- on ao3 -

Untamed verse

Paperwork.

The bane of Nie Huaisang’s life.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know he was moderately clever, sometimes scaling up to very clever if he was irritated, but somehow he’d never had the ability to keep facts and figures and exact sentences straight in his head. Any teaching done through rote memorization (in other words, most of it) was wasted on him, and the few things he could keep track of, usually in over-abundant and hyper-specific detail, weren’t the sorts of things that were especially helpful. 

Or, well, they were helpful in figuring out what clothing to wear or whether art was good or bad, and occasionally in being able to figure out where people should sit in a hall in order to either minimize or maximize the opportunity for incidents that would create gossip, but they really weren’t helpful if what you were trying to do was run a very large and very industrious sect.

His brother handled the majority of it, of course, as sect leader, and naturally he hadn’t stinted on hiring talented deputies – admittedly, the Nie sect threw around the word deputy the way an especially enthusiastic firefighter tossed around water and sand, but most sects had a more settled bureaucracy in place than the Nie sect did and it was an important position, even if it was usually just a gateway to being put somewhere you actually fit rather than a permanent spot for most people – but in the end there were some things that required the signature of a member of the Nie clan and Nie Mingjue, Nie Huaisang very reluctantly supposed (if he had to), couldn’t do everything.

He groaned and put his head down on the table.

This never happened when Meng Yao was here, he thought bitterly.

Meng Yao had been one of his brother’s finds, someone he’d promoted in a fit of temper as usual, but to just about everyone’s surprise he had turned out to be amazing at logistics and organization, able to quickly gain expertise in really everything and anything a sect needed to run. After a few months he knew most things, and the things he didn’t know he could either figure out or speculate on with relative accuracy. He’d been amazingly efficient, and it had made Nie Mingjue happy – happy not just to have such good help and to have his taste in subordinates confirmed, but also to see Meng Yao flourishing as his deputy, his real deputy, to see him pleased and respected the way his talents so obviously deserved…

Nie Huaisang sighed. If only his stupid brother had gone ahead and just sworn brotherhood with Meng Yao when the idea had been proposed!

If only he’d done that, Nie Huaisang could have been acting cute and calling Meng Yao – no, wait, it was Jin Guangyao now, he kept forgetting – he could have been calling him ‘san-ge’ right now and hanging off his arm and soon enough Jin Guangyao would yield and do all the work for him, leaving only the actual signing for Nie Huaisang to do. And the work would’ve gotten done better than he would have ever done it, in less time, and he could’ve been spending his precious time doing literally anything else.

Ugh.

Well, he supposed it wasn’t entirely his brother’s fault that the whole plan hadn’t gone through. He hadn’t been the one to back out of the brotherhood idea – that’d been Lan Xichen, for some reason, even though he’d been the one to originally propose the idea, and obviously Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao weren’t going to swear brotherhood without him. It was Venerated Triad, not Venerated Duo.

It was just so unfortunate that the absence of a sworn brother relationship meant that Nie Huaisang had no basis to ask Jin Guangyao to help him out. Or, while he was imagining things, why not just go all the way and imagine that Jin Guangyao could just come back to Qinghe already.

He could run things in a way that made sense and was efficient, which would reduce Nie Mingjue’s stress levels, and Nie Mingjue’s stress levels going down meant that Nie Huaisang’s stress would go down. Way down. And Jin Guangyao’s stress levels would also be way down as well by virtue of, well, being back at Qinghe, where things made sense and he didn’t have to deal with his awful family of his which he seemed to value for some reason that Nie Huaisang didn’t understand and honestly didn’t want to understand. It’d be a win all around!

Ugh.

Life was just better when Jin Guangyao was around.

But what could be done about it? He couldn’t exactly suggest being sworn brothers with Jin Guangyao himself – you needed to do something impressive together to justify that, usually – and for all that he had his brother wrapped around his little finger, he knew perfectly well that Nie Mingjue might hire an unknown man as a deputy in a fit of temper but he’d never hire someone he fired, even if Jin Guangyao were willing to take the role of deputy again. Which he probably wasn’t now that he was all legitimate and recognized and stuff; it was probably beneath him.

If only there were another position available, something not a deputy, not a sworn brother, something where he could just run the Nie sect for the good of everyone –

Wait.

There was.

And, thanks to his brother’s misanthropic ways, the position was available.

Perfect!

-

“Congratulations, da-ge!” Nie Huaisang announced grandly, sweeping into his brother’s study.

“Just tell the treasury to cover the cost of whatever it is you broke or bought,” Nie Mingjue said without looking up, which, first, rude, and second, really? Awesome. Nie Huaisang was going to get so much mileage out of that one.

“Oh, da-ge, really. I wasn’t talking about me –”

“A miracle.”

“– shut up. I was congratulating you! It’s what little brothers like me should do for big brothers like you on the event of their engagement!”

There was a silence of about five deep breaths.

(Or at least, that’s how long Nie Huaisang assumed it was, provided that his brother was listening to his doctor’s orders about managing his anger, which he had damn well better be.)

Nie Mingjue put down the piece of paper he was working on, and gently laid down his brush to avoid breaking it like so many of the others, and looked up at Nie Huaisang, fixing all of his attention on him.

“Huaisang,” he said, his voice only slightly above a growl. “My what now?”

“Your engagement!” Nie Huaisang beamed at him. “The Sunshot Campaign is over, our father is avenged, and you’re already in your mid-twenties – that means it’s time to get moving on finding the perfect Madame Nie, and I’ve got a great candidate in mind for you.”

His brother looked uncomfortable. “Huaisang,” he said, and his voice was almost delicate. “You are aware…”

“I’ve taken your preferences into account,” Nie Huaisang assured him, and he was only mostly lying. His brother had liked Meng Yao a great deal, once upon a time, and even if they’d never actually slept together – his stupid anti-social brother probably hadn’t even hinted that he might be interested, what with the power differential and Meng Yao’s unfortunate familial history – there was no reason he couldn’t like Jin Guangyao, too, if only he’d give him a chance. Just because he didn’t like him right now didn’t mean anything about his preferences generally. “It’s not like I missed the vast increase in the amount of cutsleeve pornography in our library, okay?”

“That was not me.”

“I know it wasn’t you, but you got the benefit of it, didn’t you? Like I said: don’t worry. It’s a man. You can stop worrying, relax, and let me handle it.”

His brother’s face was doing the skeptical look again, the one where he looked like he was seriously doubting Nie Huaisang’s ability to put on clothing in the morning. He wasn’t five anymore, da-ge! Okay, eight, but only because he kept putting stuff on backwards while he was rushing. Maybe ten for formal clothing... “No, Huaisang.”

“No, really, I can –”

“The answer is no, Huaisang.”

That sounded depressingly final.

“What if I do the puppy eyes at you?”

“The answer is still no,” his brother said, going back to his paperwork, although he was smiling a little. “No, you may not set up an engagement for me; no, I will not agree; no.”

Damnit.

Okay, maybe Nie Huaisang should be tackling this from a different angle.

-

“It’s so good to see you!” Nie Huaisang gushed. He wasn’t entirely sure what to call Jin Guangyao now – after all, the other man was a few years his senior, and now that he was recognized by his father there wasn’t a class difference that would make it permissible for Nie Huaisang to call him by name the way he’d used to call Meng Yao. But they’d known each other for years, so Jin-qianbei might come off as pretentious and too formal, Jin-gongzi was definitely too formal, and were they really at the stage where he could call him Jin-xiong?

(Plus he already called Jin Zixuan Jin-xiong, so he’d have to figure out where Meng Yao fell in the hierarchy – except no one had ever clarified one way or the other. He was pretty sure Meng Yao was older, but even if he was it probably wasn’t appropriate to go around calling him Jin-da-ge.)

Now, Nie Huaisang had more or less made it his life policy to adopt virtual strangers as brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, the more the better, but he also didn’t want to offend Jin Guangyao by making it seem like he didn’t respect his new position.

Especially when he wanted Jin Guangyao to do something for him.

“It’s good to see you too, Nie-gongzi,” Jin Guangyao said, and no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Nie Huaisang poked at him with his fan. “How many times do I have to tell you? Just call me Huaisang, the way da-ge does. You were almost my san-ge, remember?”

“Nie-gongzi…”

“Huaisang!”

Jin Guangyao had an indulgent look on his face. “Very well, Huaisang.”

“Anyway, I know you’re busy with dealing with sect things – that hunt last month was great, sorry about da-ge being overenthusiastic but at least he had a really good time – and stuff like that, but I just wanted to swing by Lanling to congratulate you!” Nie Huaisang said, deciding to take the moment to barrel onwards. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you last time, and so much has happened since you left Qinghe! You got accepted into the Jin sect! Recognized by your father! Given a name! A fancy title! A position! An engagement! A nice hat!”

“I’m sorry,” Jin Guangyao said. “I got a what?”

“A nice hat!”

“Nice try, Huaisang.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t even know who I’m setting you up with yet!” Nie Huaisang whined. “And it’s not like you don’t want to get married! Weren’t you  thinking of marrying the Qin sect’s girl? I mean, before they backed out on account of swearing vengeance against your father and the Jin sect and all…”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, gentle and polite as always, but in his own way just as firm as Nie Mingjue. They really would be a good match, and not just because it’d make Nie Huaisang’s life so much easier. “But I’m really much too busy to think about anything like that. Matters in the Jin sect, you understand…”

“But –”

“Huaisang, please.”

Damnit.

-

Nie Huaisang was going to need to think about this.

He hated thinking.

-

“It’s just so unfair,” Nie Huaisang moaned. “Why do people insist on making things hard? When it could be so easy if only they’d listen…”

“It sounds like a real tragedy,” Lan Xichen said, pouring him a cup of tea.

He was just barely managing to resist smiling, which was good – he didn’t smile that much anymore, not since whatever it was that happened to him a month or two back around the time the sworn brother ceremony was supposed to happen. No one knew what it was that happened, not even Lan Wangji (Nie Huaisang had asked), but it was making everyone worried; Nie Mingjue had wanted to go over to demand answers practically ever since but things just kept happening.

Mostly due to Lan Xichen, actually, now that Nie Huaisang thought about it.

First there was that failed sworn brotherhood thing – he’d been the one pushing the idea in the first place, but only a week before they actually did the ceremony Lan Xichen had suddenly showed up at the Unclean Realm, bursting into Nie Mingjue’s bedroom while he was resting during his recovery from the events at the Nightless City, and insisted they call the whole thing off. He’d been pale, his eyes wide and scared, but he’d refused to explain anything no matter how many times Nie Mingjue asked; he’d only been sad and oddly clingy for the entire week, refusing to leave until the planned date of the sworn brotherhood ceremony had passed with it unfulfilled.

Then he’d gone home, and things had seemed to be fine, only after the hunt at Phoenix Mountain and Wei Wuxian’s impromptu theft of a bunch of Wen prisoners of war – neither of which appeared to be due to Lan Xichen, admittedly – and right when everyone had been gearing up to go make a big fuss over it, Lan Xichen had abruptly revealed that he’d been investigating the Jin sect and they were up to their necks in all sorts of unfortunate things.

Secret demonic cultivation experiments, which one might understand, and buying corpses, a subject on which the Nie sect had always been remarkably open-minded, but also stealing beloved corpses and tomb robbing, more-than-likely murder, possibly even massacres of entire small clans, all as part of their experiments, and to top it all off there were a whole big number of rapes attributed to Jin Guangshan personally.

Madame Qin among them, which was why Jin Guangyao’s original marriage plans had fallen through. It wasn’t even worth considering it, not when there was a risk that poor Qin Su, who’d had such a crush on the gallant Jin Guangyao, might be his sister…

Anyway, while the Jin were still too powerful, as a Great Sect, to fully suffer the consequences of their actions, the Jin sect had been disgraced at the very moment that they thought they were on the rise. Jin Guangshan had even been talking about taking up the post of Chief Cultivator following Wen Ruohan’s demise, which he might have been able to swing since Nie Mingjue thought the idea of having a Chief Cultivator at all was bullshit, but now obviously that was completely out of the question.

Plus the whole thing had retroactively cleared Wei Wuxian’s name, leaving him free and clear to return to the Jiang sect as a hero who stood up against Jin sect presumptuousness and overreach when no one else would, which was a pretty big change from his previous political position, which was being widely known as an arrogant and dangerous hothead on the verge of being cast out of the sect for the good of the cultivation world at large despite them very, very obviously not wanting to do it.

Wei Wuxian had even been able to bring the Wen sect members he’d rescued back to the Lotus Pier with him, and now there was even talk that Jiang Cheng might marry Wen Qing (as someone who went to the Cloud Recesses lectures with them both, Nie Huaisang wasn’t surprised by the suggestion at all) once his sister concluded her marriage with Jin Zixuan, which was going to be a far less sumptuous affair than originally planned. After all, the politics of the situation had reversed almost entirely, with the disgraced Jin sect needing the marriage to the reputable (and, thanks in large part to Wei Wuxian, powerful) Jiang sect to help keep what was left of their reputation and influence intact.

Perhaps the Jin sect’s crimes were the reason that Lan Xichen had been acting strangely distant from Jin Guangyao, even though no one had ever proven anything about his involvement – Jin Guangshan’s attempt to throw the blame entirely on his newly adopted son were dismissed as the fabrications they so obviously were – but Nie Huaisang wasn’t so sure.

Lan Xichen wasn’t the sort of person to worry about politics, after all. But then why…?

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” Lan Xichen asked, settling in his own seat with his own cup of tea. He looked very serious, as if Nie Huaisang’s opinion on things mattered to him.

It was nice. Most people just looked really long-suffering when they talked with Nie Huaisang, and those were the people that actually liked him.

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said. “So. Theoretically, if a person were trying to set up a marriage between, hypothetically, two people who would be perfect for each other, and I do mean disgustingly everything-would-be-wonderful-for-everyone sort of perfect, and they were just, you know, refusing for absolutely no valid reason other than their own stupid issues –”

“How in the world did you figure out that I was trying to get Wangji to confess his affections to Wei Wuxian?” Lan Xichen said, sounding stunned. “I didn’t tell anyone…You really are a genius, Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang blinked, then lifted his head off the table, settling his chin on his hands.

“That actually wasn’t what I was talking about,” he admitted. “But now you have my full attention and I don’t care about my issue anymore. Tell me everything.”

-

“So, fun fact!” Nie Huaisang said, bouncing into his brother’s bedroom just in time to help him undo his braids before sleep. It was his favorite chore, no matter how much his brother protested that it wasn’t a chore and also that he’d been doing it for himself for years and seriously he could do it himself if Nie Huaisang wasn’t so stupidly possessive about being the only one allowed to do it any time they were both at home with violations punished of having Nie Mingjue’s fingers smacked with Nie Huaisang’s fan, all of which Nie Huaisang treated as the irrelevant and pointless statements they were. “I was just over at the Cloud Recesses visiting Xichen-xiong and he’s clearly super into me.”

“What,” his brother said.

Nie Huaisang cackled and dug his fingers into his brother’s thick hair – he was so jealous, his own was thin and stringy and brushing it definitely did not feel like petting a tiger the way it did when he did Nie Mingjue’s hair. He watched in the mirror with satisfaction as his brother’s shoulders immediately relaxed, all the anger and tension flowing out of them at once as a result of Nie Huaisang’s careful training over the years, although Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows still stayed sky high.

“I’m serious!” Nie Huaisang said, starting to release the braids. “He said that he respects me, and that he thinks I’m a genius. He has to have a thing for me. The only possible reason anyone would respect me is if all the blood had left their brain and they were blinded by my overwhelming prettiness!”

His brother seemed torn between denying Nie Huaisang’s statement that no one could respect him and telling him to stop being so full of himself about the overwhelming prettiness comment.

“Maybe Xichen just went insane,” he ended up saying instead. “That seems marginally more likely.”

“An excellent point,” Nie Huaisang acknowledged because, well, it was. “Now, totally unrelatedly, did you know that the Jin sect is treating poor Jin Guangyao just awful? Madame Jin throws things and Sect Leader Jin yells and blames him for stuff and it’s just so sad, we should do something about it.”

“Something like invite him here to live as my brand new bride, I’m guessing,” Nie Mingjue said, voice extremely dry. “You’re incredibly not subtle.”

Nie Huaisang freed a hand and held up a finger pointedly. “Ah, ah! Xichen-xiong says I’m a genius.”

His brother fell silent for a few moments. “You’re right,” he finally said. “He must have a crush on you. Not even insanity would explain this.”

Nie Huaisang sniggered.

“Also, really, Meng Yao?” Nie Mingjue asked. “That was who you were planning on setting me up with? You have to know that wouldn’t work.” He shifted in his chair. “…are they really beating him there?”

Huh, maybe Lan Xichen was right and Nie Huaisang really was a genius.

He wisely decided not to answer – it would work better if his brother investigated and found out the (admittedly fairly awful, according to the servants’ gossip) details for himself – and instead said, “Why’d you kick him out, anyway? I thought he got stabbed saving you. Whatever he did, how big of a deal could it have been, really?”

“He committed premeditated murder. In the middle of an attack on the sect, no less.”

Damnit, Meng Yao! Can’t you make things easy on me for once?!

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said, tugging on one of the braids until Nie Mingjue, who’d tensed up, relaxed again. It was a nice that his brother was so easily trainable, or at least he was on everything other than saber practice. Surely that was a selling point that Jin Guangyao could appreciate in a man? “Uh. Have you considered that, uh – well, maybe it could have been justified?”

“I asked him for an explanation,” Nie Mingjue growled. “His reason boiled down to ‘that guy was a dick to me’.”

“Wow,” Nie Huaisang said. “I have such strong empathy for Meng Yao’s position, you have no idea.”

“Huaisang.”

“I’m just saying, if we could stab everyone who acted like a dick…”

“Huaisang. No.”

“You know you want to.”

“But I don’t,” Nie Mingjue insisted. “He used the cover of battle, a Wen sword…he even tried to blame Xue Yang for it when I literally saw him holding the sword in his hand! I should have executed him right then and there, and I would have, if he hadn’t saved my life.”

A tricky one, Nie Huaisang thought. But not a match for me, Nie Huaisang: Lan Xichen-certified genius.

“Okay,” he said. “But…you already punished him for that, right? You exiled him. He was exiled. It was all very sad, tears were shed, mostly by me but also a bit by you – we’re an emotional family – and just possibly by Meng Yao, though who even knows, maybe Jin Guangshan’s spawn are all born without tear ducts as a congenital deficiency. But any way you look at it, it’s done now, and that means he can come back!”

“Huaisang. That’s not how exile works.”

“Uh, I think you’ll find that it does,” Nie Huaisang said haughtily. “There are at least five incidents in the Nie sect’s history where something comparable has happened.”

“Really.” His brother’s voice was very, very dry.

“Really,” Nie Huaisang insisted.

“And you, with your amazing ability to retain facts, know this…how?”

“Okay fine, I made that up,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But I will find some and prove to you that it’s a thing! And then you’ll have no choice but to agree with my plan!”

“That’s not how that works, either,” Nie Mingjue said. “But if you’re willing to knuckle down and do the historical research to justify your bullshit, I’ll – consider it.”

“I will! You’ll see!”

-

“Xichen-xiong!” Nie Huaisang wept, clinging onto Lan Xichen’s arm. “You have to help me! There are so many books! And they’re all so long! They’re doing it just to spite me personally!”

Lan Xichen managed, with a truly remarkable amount of skill, to detach Nie Huaisang from his arm and settle him down in a chair in record time. If Nie Huaisang didn’t know better, he would have guessed that he’d done it before dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times, but of course they didn’t know each other that well.

Pity, that. Nie Huaisang might not need him as urgently as he needed Jin Guangyao, but losing out on having Lan Xichen as his er-ge was also a big downside of the whole not-swearing-brotherhood thing.

“What’s the problem this time, Huaisang?” Lan Xichen asked. He did not seem all that concerned, which...yeah, fair.

“I need you to do some research for me,” Nie Huaisang said, batting his eyelashes at him to see if that would work. “Nie sect history. Please?”

Lan Xichen tensed a little. It was a minute gesture, barely even noticeable. “On…what subject? Does your brother know?”

“Free passage laws and border restrictions,” Nie Huaisang said, and Lan Xichen visibly relaxed. “And of course he knows, he assigned it! Do you think I would do boring old historical research for fun?”

Lan Xichen smiled again, and Nie Huaisang counted it as a victory.

“All right, I’ll help,” he said indulgently, then paused. “Just…this isn’t part of some scheme, right?”

“Of course not,” Nie Huaisang said, injured. “Why would you even ask that? I am the most scheme-less person you could ever meet in your life. There are newborn baby rabbits that are more scheming than me!”

This was because newborn baby rabbits were dicks. Lan Wangji made him hold one once and Nie Huaisang was pretty sure it deliberately pissed on his fingers.

Lan Xichen coughed into his sleeve, just barely managing not to laugh in face. “I’m sure you are. No reason for asking. Did you bring the records you wanted me to look through?”

“By total coincidence, in fact, I did! Not that I would assume that you’d agree, of course.”

“…of course, Huaisang.”

-

“Jin-xiong!” Yes, Nie Huaisang was going for it; Jin Zixuan was just going to have to deal. “Jin-xiong, I have been informed by reliable sources that you’re a big fan of power, am I right?”

Jin Guangyao actually reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose – he must be very tired, to react that way while Nie Huaisang was still present.

In fairness, he really had been having a hard time of it recently. Even putting aside how awful it must be to live with Sect Leader Jin and his wife – it was no surprise (to Nie Huaisang, anyway) that their own son and heir spent a disturbingly large portion of his time visiting the Lotus Pier with his wife, even accounting for having to deal with the world’s most over-protective brothers-in-law – there were all the problems the Jin sect was having, the way Sect Leader Jin’s nasty and arrogant reactions to being challenged only seemed to be making it all worse, and then of course there was also the fact that Nie Mingjue had literally punched Sect Leader Jin in the face after he’d come in unexpectedly and caught him throwing a cup of tea on Jin Guangyao.

(That particular disaster was still ongoing, actually, and at very high volume – Jin Guangyao had been waiting anxiously outside the door, which wasn’t going to do him a single bit of good, but luckily for him Nie Huaisang was here to distract him from all of his troubles. Wasn’t Nie Huaisang a wonderfully nice person?)

“Jin-xiong,” Nie Huaisang whined, tugging on Jin Guangyao’s sleeve until the other man had no choice but to follow him further down the hallway and further away from the receiving room where the current Nie-Jin shouting session was happening behind them. “Tell me. Am I right?”

“You’re really excitable today, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said instead of answering. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Actually, I really, really, really hate flying on my saber and I’ve had to do it so often recently, it’s been terrible, you have no idea how much I’ve suffered, but I’m at least marginally hopeful that it’ll all be worth it in the end. But enough about me. You, power…how would you really like to tell your father and his wife where to shove it?”

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said helplessly. “We’re in the middle of Koi Tower. Can you at least keep your voice down?”

Pssh, like Nie Huaisang cared what some Jin sect retainers thought. His brother just punched their sect leader in the face, what in the world was he going to do that would top that?

“Really,” he insisted, deciding to ignore Jin Guangyao’s clearly misplaced objections. “Consider it for a moment. How would you like to obtain fame, power, wealth, legitimacy – of the public-recognition variety, not the familial sort, you got that already – the ability to rub your success into your father’s face and also possibly jump up and down on it a few times, and, just as a bonus, also maybe become Chief Cultivator?”

Technically, wife of the Chief Cultivator, but in reality there was no way he wouldn’t be the one doing all the work. People were being really insistent about there being one, and with Jin Guangshan out of the picture, Lan Xichen acting weirdly shifty, and Jiang Cheng being Jiang Cheng, the entire cultivation world were all currently forming a consensus that it was going to be Nie Mingjue regardless of whether he actually agreed to take the job. So if Nie Huaisang’s poor beleaguered big brother was going to get stuck with the title, why not give the work to someone who’d actually enjoy it?

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, and his voice was so overtly sorrowful and pathetic that Nie Huaisang actually stopped to goggle at him. “I have never once sought personal power nor pursued ambition on my own behalf, and I regret that you think of me in that way.”

He paused for a moment.

“You can keep talking, though.”

“Excellent,” Nie Huaisang said. “So the plan is –”

-

“Forgive my language,” Lan Xichen said, his voice a little strangled. “But what the fuck?”

Nie Huaisang giggled. “I didn’t know the Lan sect permitted swearing.”

“It doesn’t. I’ll punish myself later,” Lan Xichen said, still staring blankly into space. “I just…they’re getting married? All those changes, and they end up getting married?”

“Technically, they’re eloping,” Nie Huaisang said. “Since they’re not actually getting Jin-xiong’s father’s permission and all…oh, Madame Jin looks angry enough to eat glass. I love weddings!”

Lan Xichen turned to look at him with narrowed eyes.

“Huaisang,” he said warningly. “This was a scheme on your part, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, I mean, okay, maybe a little,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But only a little. A mini-scheme. A micro-plot. A stratagem. Oooh, did I intrigue? I like that. I’m intriguing.”

“You certainly are that,” Lan Xichen said dryly. “But…why?”

“Because now Jin-xiong – we can still call him that, right? I don’t think his father has the right to take back the name once it’s given, even if he does go ahead and disown him the way he’s threatening to – now Jin-xiong can do all the paperwork and make things run efficiently back home, and also it’s now totally in his best interest to make sure my brother stays sect leader and Chief Cultivator forever because otherwise he loses the basis of his own power,” Nie Huaisang explained. “And thus far I haven’t seen anything that Jin-xiong – oh, I can call him sao-zi now, that’s much more straightforward! – anything that he can’t do if he puts his mind to it. Which means I am now guaranteed to have a nice long life full of sweet, blissful nothing! No responsibilities! Freedom!”

He paused.

“Oh, and obviously they’ll be great together, really happy and all that,” he added. “That’s important too.”

Lan Xichen put his hand up to his forehead, but he was smiling broadly now – not the tiny little smiles Nie Huaisang had managed to steal up out of him up until now, but a big old grin.

“Anyway, now that that’s over and done with, I promise, no more schemes,” Nie Huaisang added, putting his hand on his heart. “This is the last one, okay? If you don’t believe me, you can write it into our marriage vows.”

Lan Xichen huffed a little, clearly not believing him, but he sounded fond about it. “Whatever you say, Huaisang – wait. Hold on. Our what?”

“Our marriage vows,” Nie Huaisang explained. “At our marriage. On account of your total inexplicable crush on me, which upon reflection I have generously decided to accept and return your affections.”

Lan Xichen’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish.

“Of course, we’re not going to be so lucky as to just elope,” Nie Huaisang continued thoughtfully. “Da-ge can’t have a proper wedding ceremony because people will be too afraid of irritating Sect Leader Jin to attend, but if we have a nice big party to announce my engagement to you, well, that’s different, right? They can all come to that. It’ll be like a secret-not-secret wedding that everyone knows is a wedding but with the plausible deniability that it’s totally just an engagement party. But if we have the big announcement, there’s no getting out of doing all the steps and rituals and whatnot, and, oh, we’ll have to deal with your uncle and our elders…it’ll be a disaster, really. So much work!”

He sighed. “Oh, the things I do for you, Xichen-gege! You’re very lucky I like you so much!”

Lan Wangji cleared his throat behind them both, and they turned to look at him – he was standing there with his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist, which was more or less the same posture he was always in these days. Now that was one marriage – arranged as it might have been originally, with Lan Xichen pressuring Jiang Cheng until he agreed – that had gone very well, even if Lan Wangji was still a little cold with his brother over the extremely aggressive tactics he had employed in getting them together.

“Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, brother,” Lan Wangji said, somewhat stone faced. “It couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving.”

Wei Wuxian, by his side, smiled and nodded. “If you’d like any help planning the wedding –” he started to say.

“Oh, would you?” Nie Huaisang exclaimed, clapping his hands in excitement. “Wei-xiong, you’re the best. We’re going to need at least a thousand of those spirit summon flags of yours.”

“A – a thousand? Do you know how long it’ll take me to draw a thousand talismans?!”

“Well, how else will we guarantee that we have a hunt so impressive that no one will ever stop talking about it?” Nie Huaisang asked, because obviously that’s what his da-ge would have wanted for his own wedding and since Nie Huaisang messed that up for his own purposes, having it at his was the least he could do to make it up to him. 

Best of all, as the bride, he’d be all decked out in jewelry and fancy clothing and exactly nobody would expect him to participate. Win-win! 

“Chop-chop, Wei-xiong! The wedding’s happening sooner rather than later, so if you think you’re going to have problems keeping up with demand, I’ll send some Nie sect disciples with decent handwriting over to you to learn. I think some of the people sao-zi is bringing with him from the Jin sect have some background in demonic cultivation too, I don’t know, but I’ll find out and let you know as soon as possible. You need to train up some people anyway so that you can ramp up production – once you start selling your talismans, more people will use them, and people will be much less afraid of you. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were both gaping at him. Possibly he had used too many words at once for them – or maybe it was just the speed in which he’d said it?

Lan Xichen started laughing.

“This is fine,” he said, wiping his eyes. “It’s just so much better than – yes, this is fine.”

Nie Huaisang was glad he agreed.

It meant the epic getting-together scheme that he’d had half-planned in the back of his mind in the event Lan Xichen said no could be safely shelved for another day.

Victory!

[its-nebula]

Snowstorm

Pregame Shuichi x Fem!Reader

Warning: NSFW, Stalking

You rested your chin on your hand as you looked out of the window. It was the last class of the day, and you couldn’t wait to leave. A thick layer of snow covered the sidewalks, and you could guess that you wouldn’t have school the next day based on how heavy it seemed to be coming down. It would be a chance to catch up on homework, that was for sure. Tiredly, you looked back to where the teacher was standing, and you were surprised to see how she was reading out names.

“Well, Mr. Saihara, it looks like you’ll be paired with S/O for this project.” Wait, what?! The teacher was talking about the Health project that she was going to assign. That much you knew about, but you didn’t know that it was going to be a partnered project. You looked over to Shuichi, who just nodded without emotion. Sighing, you sat back in your seat. She could’ve paired you with someone much worse, so you weren’t going to complain, but you’d never really talked to Shuichi before. “Please remember we’ll be sharing out next time we have class, so be prepared to share out on Monday!” Great. So much for spending the day relaxing.

The teacher sat down at her desk, and everyone got up to talk to their partners about their plans. You saw Shuichi get up and walk your way, and you sighed. He gave you a small smile.

“Is it okay with you if we do this project today? I’m a little worried about getting snowed in tomorrow, and I kind of have to use the weekend to catch up on homework.” You nodded, and smiled at him. “Can we go to your house? My house is kind of far, and yours is closer...I’m sure.”

“Sure.” You shrugged. It didn’t really matter to you, as long as you got it done at this point. The bell for school to let out rang, and everyone quickly filed out the classroom. He offered you his hand, and you took it, using his support to stand up. As you got near him, you noticed his scent. It was a scent that you loved! It made you smile as you gently sniffed near him. “Wow, you smell really good!” 

“Heh, thanks. We should get going, though. It’s starting to look pretty bad out there.”

The two of you started walking to your house. The blizzard was only getting worse, so much so that you could barely see Shuichi’s face while he was walking right next to you. Thankfully, it wasn’t a very long way to your house, and you were there in no time. Unfortunately, something was missing. 

“I forgot my keys! Oh my gosh, how are we going to get inside?!” You started to panic. Trapped outside in a snowstorm, nobody else in sight? It looked like you two were stranded.

“Um, may I try something?” Shuichi asked. 

“Anything helps.”

You followed Shuichi as he travelled to the back of your house, and watched as he walked up to the window. He reached up, blocking your view, but soon enough he got the window open. Smiling triumphantly, he motioned to the window. “After you.”

He helped you climb into the window, and you fell on the floor with a thud. You recognized it as your room, and you sat up, dusting yourself off. Shuichi quickly followed, landing on the ground almost perfectly. 

“Where’d you learn to do that?” You asked, amazed at both his skills and the fact he seemed to get in so effortlessly. 

“Ah, just some things I’ve picked up here and there.” He chuckled, closing the window. He sighed. “This is a really nice room you have here. Is anyone else home?”

“No, I’m usually the first one back. I hope everyone else doesn’t get stuck in the storm...” You turned on the TV to fill some of the silence, and sat on your bed. “Anyways, let’s get started so we can get you home, yeah?”

Working on the project together was relatively alright. You did most of the talking as Shuichi asked questions about you. He barely talked about himself, and you felt like all you knew about him was his first and last name. Once the project was nearly done, you said you would finish it off so that he could get home on time. However, as he tried to open the door, he was met with a wall of snow. He quickly closed it, as to not let any in.

“W-Well! I guess... we’re stuck here for the night!” He turned back to you, and you could see a wide grin on his face. “I’m sorry for intruding, but at least you won’t be alone in this blizzard, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right...” He followed you back to your room, where you sat on your bed. He sat down next to you. “I’m sorry, I wish I had some clothes or something for you.”

“That’s alright! I have some clothes in my backpack.” He pulled his backpack over, showing you his clothes.

“Shuichi, you sure do seem to be prepared for today, don’t you?” You wondered, and he nodded. As he was shoving the clothes back into his bag, a photo fluttered out by your feet. His eyes widened, but it was too late for him to try and grab it, as you already bent down and picked it up. “This...is a picture of me! And...I’m sleeping? What the hell?” You squinted your eyes. He sighed, taking off his hat. He ruffled his hair, taking a deep breath.

“You sure do look beautiful in that picture, don’t you? It’s one of my favorites.” He took another picture out of his backpack, giving it to you. “And this one I took just a couple days ago.. isn’t it lovely?” It’s a picture of you walking home in the snow, humming happily as you listened to music. “I always did admire you... I guess you know that now, huh? Well, I can’t say that I haven’t been waiting for an opportunity like this...”

He leaned forward, and before you knew what was happening, his lips were resting on yours. You wanted to pull away, but that enticing scent of his...

He pulled you closer, and you melted into the kiss, closing your eyes. He pulled away, smiling. 

“I’ve always wanted to do that, you know.” He whispered, your faces barely an inch apart.

“Is...there anything else you’ve always wanted to do?”

He responded by pulling you in for another kiss, silently willing you to lay on your back. His hand crawled underneath your shirt, causing you to giggle at how delicately he used his fingers to feel on your body, practically tickling you. He knew that this was a moment he needed to savor. He’d been waiting for this, and he finally had it, but he couldn’t get too greedy. Every moment of this is something he would cherish.

He stuck his tongue into your mouth, moaning lightly as he reached his hands up higher to place his hands on top of your bra. He undid the clasps, allowing him full exposure to touch as he pleased. He broke away to take off your shirt and allow your bra to fall off, and he excitedly started to massage your breasts. He took great pleasure in hearing you moan, trying to lower your volume by biting your lip. Fuck, you just looked so pretty like that.

He took his own shirt off, then placed his hand back on your breast, his thumb lightly brushing against your nipples, causing you to shiver, barely able to contain your moans. 

“Shuichi...” You moaned quietly, closing your eyes and enjoying the feeling of his touch. Licking his lips, he felt himself hardening. 

Not yet, Shuichi.

He lowered his head down and began to suck on your sensitive nubs. Everything was even more perfect than he imagined as he watched you throw your head back, filling the room with your sounds of ecstasy. And to think, he wasn’t even at the main event. 

As he was doing that, his free hand snuck into your lower region, rubbing you through your underwear. Already, you were so wet, and all from his touch. Again, he felt his pants getting tighter, but he showed restraint.

He took your bottoms off, then slowly started to make his way down to your thighs, dragging his tongue all the way down. He traced circles in your inner thigh with his finger, causing you to again shiver. He kissed the inside of your thighs, leaving a trail of wet, sloppy kisses to the middle of your undies. He kissed the area over and over again, and you practically yelled out.

“Shuichi, I-I want it...I want it. Please...”

Oh, now you were begging for him? This day just kept getting better for the raven-haired boy. In an instant, he slid your undies off and shoved his tongue into you, causing you to arch your back, waling out a very lewd noise.

Your taste was even better than he anticipated previously. He was beginning to get drunk on your scent, completely entranced with your wet little pussy. The fact that you were enjoying it was everything to him. He shoved his tongue in and out of you, essentially fucking the hell out of you with his hot, wet tongue. He salivated as he felt you throb, encouraging him to go faster.

“A-A-Ah~ D-Don’t stop!” Your words were slurred as your hands found a way into Shuichi’s hair. You tugged on his hair as your legs started shaking.

He mouth found a way onto your clit, harshly sucking on it as he enjoyed the sounds of your squirming and struggling to keep your composure. 

“I’m gonna- I’m gonna-!”

You squirted all over his face, drenching him in your juices. Shuichi didn’t stop sucking, though, and simply looked up at you with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. You could feel your whole body getting hot and bothered, sensitive from your recent orgasm.

He finally stopped, then started taking his pants off, as they’d gotten too uncomfortable for him to bare. He couldn’t resist his thoughts anymore, he just had to do it.

You saw what he was getting ready to do, and you couldn’t only mutter an incoherent string of words as he lined himself up with your entrance. He intertwined his hand with yours, and whispered into your ear. 

“You look so goddamn sexy when you’re a mess for me.”

He slid himself into you, seeing you wince as it went in. Once you were comfortable, he went deeper, but very slowly and meticulously. This was what he’d been waiting for all this time. He surpassed Cloud 9, and was on Cloud 12 by now. It was like the two of you fit together perfectly. When he started with his strokes, he could feel you tightening around him, clearly enjoying yourself. 

“Shu-Shuichi, go harder, go faster!”

As you wish, my love.

He got himself into a rhythm, and started to lose himself in the pleasure of it all. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, trying to keep himself from cumming too quickly. You didn’t make it any easier, that was for sure. Every thrust, your volume fluctuated, but you were calling out his name. His name. Nobody else’s, the way it was always meant to be.

No picture he ever took could compare to the moment his breathing started to get uneven. He knew that the safest thing to do would be to probably pull himself out, but how else could he mark his territory that you were his now? Besides, he just so happened to know you were on birth control, so..

“S/O!” He yelled out your name as he came inside you, causing you to yelp. He breathed heavily, collapsing on top of you. Your hair was absolutely a mess, and you looked completely exhausted, but you were still the prettiest girl in the world to him. After regaining his composure, he sat up on the bed, yawning. 

“Now then, after we clean ourselves up, would... you care for some hot chocolate? I think I know just how you like it.”

You grinned lazily at him. “I would love that.”

[themetaphorgirl]

imagine in the boarding school au reid gets hurt or sick and takes pain medicine that makes him all loopy and the whole time looks after him

hopefully this is a good balance of silly and cuddly!!

(who are we kidding it’s mostly cuddly because cuddles are my favorite thing)

----------

“Okay, guys, I know you’re really excited to see Spencer, but you have to be gentle with him,” Hotch warned, blocking the door.

“We will, we will!” Penelope said.

“No, I mean it,” he said. “He’s got stitches and he’s drugged up to his eyeballs. No yelling, no jostling him, no getting him riled up. Understand?”

“Of course we understand,” JJ said. “Can we see him?”

Hotch hesitated, drumming his fingers on his crossed arms. “It’s my room too, you have to let me in anyway,” Derek pointed out.

He sighed. “Yes, but I reserve the right to kick you guys out,” he said. He opened the door and let the three of them inside. “Hey, Spencer. You’ve got some visitors.”

Spencer was tucked into bed and propped up with his pillow and one of Hotch’s. “Hi,” he said, rubbing his eyes. 

“Hi, sweetheart!” Penelope said. “How are you feeling?”

He shrugged. “I have stitches,” he said. “Wanna see?”

“No, no, no, don’t mess with your stitches,” Hotch said. 

Spencer tried to sit up, tugging on the hem of his tee shirt. “They’re on my tummy…”

“Nope, nope, they don’t want to see,” Hotch said, catching Spencer’s wrist gently. “Lie down.”

“Oh, man, you really are on the good stuff,” Derek laughed. He sat down on the edge of his bed. Hotch took a step back, watching them like a hawk. “Are you feeling better, kid?”

Spencer scrunched up his face. “I don’t know,” he said. 

“You gave us a pretty bad scare,” JJ said.

She wasn’t wrong about that. Somehow none of them had realized that Spencer was sick until it was too late, and he was being rushed to the hospital with acute appendicitis. They’d been reassured over and over again that he was going to be just fine, but now that he’d been moved out of the hospital and back to the dorms, Hotch couldn’t help but feel like he needed to keep a close eye on him.

“How long do you get out of classes?” Derek asked.

Spencer opened his mouth to answer, scrunched his face in confusion, and looked up at Hotch. “At least a week, maybe two,” Hotch answered for him. “After he gets his stitches out.”

Spencer brightened. “Yeah, I got stitches!” he said, pulling on his shirt again. “Wanna see?”

“No, no, that’s okay,” JJ said.

Derek squeezed Spencer’s ankle. “What do you want to do, kid?” he said. “I bet you’re bored already. Want to play video games?”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” JJ said. “Spencer doesn’t play video games when he’s feeling well.” She shot him a side-eye glance. “I think you just want to play Madden.” Derek shrugged.

“How about a movie?” Penelope suggested. “Oh! Derek, can you grab my laptop from my desk? I have so many options.”

“What? You live on the second floor and we’re on seventh!” Derek complained.

“Please?” Penelope said. “Oh, and can you can get some of the pillows off my bed too? I think Spencer could use some of them.”

“Not the ones with the sequins, though, he won’t like them,” JJ said.

“Fine,” Derek huffed. “But this is the only trip I’m taking, okay?”

JJ sat down next to Spencer. “Are you hurting at all?” she asked, stroking his hair off his forehead.

“I don’t know, really,” he said. He leaned into her gentle touch, a dopey smile on his face. “My tummy feels weird.”

“I remember getting my tonsils out, I was loopy for days,” Penelope said. 

“Yeah, he’s on the highest level of painkillers they can give a ten-year-old,” Hotch said dryly as he sat down at Spencer’s desk.

“My legs feel funny,” Spencer announced. 

Penelope patted his knee. “You’ll feel better soon,” she reassured him. 

Derek stomped in, laden down with pillows and Penelope’s laptop under his arm. “All right, I hope I got everything, because I’m not making that hike again,” he huffed.

Penelope caught the laptop. “Thank you, chocolate thunder,” she said sweetly.

JJ gathered up the pillows- all three of them garishly colored and incredibly fluffy- and tucked them around Spencer until he was propped up in a little nest. “There,” she said. “Are you comfortable?”

He tentatively patted the pillow closest to him. “I’m sinking,” he said. 

JJ laughed. “You’re not, you’re fine,” she said. She climbed up on the bed and settled down behind him. “Here, I’ll keep you from sinking. Better?”

“Better,” he echoed, nestling in the pillows and resting his head on her lap.

Penelope took a step back from the TV. “All right, I got it hooked up,” she said, clearly pleased with herself. “Spencer, my angel, I have just about every movie and TV show you can think of. What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He sank farther back into the pillows and giggled a little bit. 

Derek laughed and sat down at the foot of the bed. “Just pick something, I don’t think he can pick anything on his own,” he said.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Penelope said. She pulled up a movie on her laptop and scrambled to join the other kids. “I think you’ll like this one.”

“Don’t smother him,” Hotch warned.

“We’re not, we’re not!”

Hotch hauled his backpack up and dug his math textbook out. “Looks like you’re smothering him,” he mumbled under his breath.

But Spencer seemed calm, watching the movie with his eyes half-lidded as JJ stroked his hair, and he reluctantly turned his attention to his trig homework. As long as the kid was okay, and the others were watching him, he could probably get some work done.

“Spencer, are you hungry?” Penelope asked. He shook his head sleepily. “Are you sure? Derek can go get you something.”

“Why does it have to be me?” Derek complained.

“Oh, stop whining, Mister Big Strong Football Player.”

“Guys,” Hotch warned.

“All right, all right, fine,” Penelope said, settling back down.

Things were relatively quiet and peaceful after that; Spencer fell asleep despite the other three talking and jostling him. Hotch managed to get most of his trig homework done before the movie was over. And good thing, too, because the peace didn’t last.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Emily said cheerfully. 

Hotch put his pencil down. “Why do they always do this?” he mumbled.

Spencer sat up and yawned, then immediately winced. “Did I sleep?” he said, pressing his hand against his stomach.

“You were asleep,” JJ said, shooting a pointed look at Emily.

Emily stuck out her lower lip in a fake pout. “Sorry,” she said. She joined the other kids on the bed. “I heard they gave you the good stuff, squirt. What’s he been doing? Have I missed anything hilarious?”

“No, he’s been sleeping,” Hotch said flatly. 

“And trying to show everyone his stitches,” Derek added.

Spencer scrunched up his face. “I have stitches?”

“Oh, well, maybe he does something interesting soon,” Emily said. She ruffled his short hair, leaving it a hopeless mess. Spencer shivered. “Hey, what was that for? What’s wrong?”

“‘m cold,” he said. 

“I can fix that,” JJ said. She carefully climbed off the bed and took Spencer’s blanket. He whined, trying to grab it back.

“What are you doing?” Penelope asked.

“Just trust me,” she said. She turned to Emily and held out her hand. “I need a quarter.”

“Why do you think I have money on me?” Emily said. JJ raised an eyebrow and she sighed. “All right, fine.” JJ took the quarter, gathered up the blanket, and left the room.

“Okay, everybody off the bed, there’s too many of you,” Hotch said. “No, Spencer, stay where you are, you get to stay in the bed.” Spencer blinked in confusion; Hotch picked him up carefully and placed him back in the bed, moving around Penelope’s pillow collection to make room for him. “Stay there.”

JJ walked back in with the blanket. “Here you go,” she said, draping it over Spencer. “I ran it through the dryer for a little bit. Is that better?”

“Yeah!” he said. JJ smoothed out the blanket and he cuddled up in the warmth. “Yeah, that’s better, I think. I’m warm now.” He frowned. “But my stomach feels funny.”

“That’s why you need to stop moving, pretty boy,” Derek said. “You need anything?”

Spencer leaned back against the pillows, drawing the blanket up to his chin. “Huh-uh,” he said. “I’m okay.”

Hotch leaned over him and checked his forehead. “You’re sure you okay?” he said. “If you’re running a fever we have to take you back to the hospital.”

“Noooo,” Spencer protested, trying to shake off his hand. “I’m okay, I promise, I promise. I don’t wanna go back.”

Hotch tucked him in. “Then stay still,” he said.

“You’re no fun, Hotch,” Emily said. 

“I’m trying to be responsible,” he said. His phone beeped and he checked the screen. “And it’s time for your medicine, Spencer.”

Emily clapped her hands. “Ooh, I’m hoping for some quality ‘David After Dentist’ content,” she said.

Hotch rolled his eyes; he picked up Spencer’s hand and placed a pill in his palm. “There you go,” he said, handing him a water bottle. “Drink slow.”

Penelope took the water bottle when he was done. “Do you want to watch something different?” she asked. 

Emily pulled a deck of cards out of her jacket pocket. “Let’s play a game,” she said. 

“I don’t know-”

Emily was already dealing them out. “Aces are high, no wilds,” she said. She pulled a massive bag of M&Ms out of her other pocket. “We’ll all start with twenty.”

“Guys-”

JJ peeked at her cards. “I raise,” she said. Hotch rolled his eyes and went back to his homework. If they wanted to play, they could play. 

“Spencer, no, you have to hold your cards up, we’re not supposed to see them,” Penelope whispered.

“They’re too heavy,” he whined. He spread them out over the blanket. “They’re so heavy, I don’t wanna hold ‘em.”

Emily laughed. “Ah, yes, this is what I was hoping for,” she said, pulling out her phone.

“Hey! Spencer, you can’t eat my M&Ms,” Derek protested, trying to block the M&M pile away from him.

Spencer tried to reach for them anyway. “Where are the blue ones?” he asked. “The blue ones taste better.”

“They taste the same,” JJ said.

Penelope elbowed her. “No, he’s got a point,” she said.

Spencer popped a handful in his mouth. “I like the blue ones, but the red ones are...are too red,” he said. “They’re just too red.”

“Hey, Spencer,” Emily said, holding her phone closer to film him and biting back a giggle. “How do you feel about the yellow ones?”

“They suck,” he said solemnly, and the other kids burst out laughing. “What? The yellow ones suck. They do.”

Hotch put down his pencil and turned around in his chair, laughing. “The meds are hitting pretty hard, aren’t they, buddy?” he said.

Spencer frowned. “Hotch,” he said. “I can’t...I can’t find my hands.”

Derek howled. “They’re still attached, don’t worry,” Emily said. “They’re there.”

“Hotch?” Spencer said, a little louder.

Hotch rolled the desk chair closer and squeezed his hand. “Right there, buddy, I promise,” he said. “Both hands, all ten fingers.”

He looked up, startled. “Ten?” he repeated. “Is that right?” He looked down at his hands. “That can’t...can’t be right...”

Penelope was almost crying. “I hope it wears off before he has to go to class,” JJ laughed.

“Class?” Spencer repeated. He scrambled off the bed. “I forgot!”

“Hey, hey, slow down,” Hotch said. “Stop that, you’re going to pop your stitches.”

Spencer was clumsily digging through his messenger bag. “I didn’t do my homework!” he said. “I forgot!”

Emily set down her phone. “Babe, it’s okay, you’re not supposed to be in class,” she said. 

“I’m gonna be late!” he said desperately, and he tried to bolt for the door.

Luckily, the three oldest kids were in the hallway, just about to knock. Spencer collided with James and nearly fell back on the floor; James caught him by the arms. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be up.”

Spencer burst into tears. The younger kids all immediately looked to Hotch; he swallowed hard. He wasn’t good with crying, no matter who it was. Not even himself. (Especially himself.)

“Hey, caro, none of that,” David said. “Don’t cry.”

Spencer fell against him, pressing his face into his ribs. “I’m...gonna...be...late...and...I...didn’t...do...my...homework,” he sobbed. 

David smoothed Spencer’s hair and looked up at Hotch. “Ah, the pain meds are getting to him, aren’t they?” he said.

“Hit him like a semitruck,” Hotch said.

Alex knelt down next to him. “Spencer, you’re not late, and you’re not in trouble,” she reassured him as he sobbed into David’s stomach. “All you need to worry about is getting better.”

He lifted his head. “I’m not late?” he said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Do you want to go back to bed now?” He nodded.

Emily shooed the younger kids off the bed. “All right, all right, scatter,” she said. “Make room.”

James picked Spencer up and set him down on his bed. “You’ve got to be careful with your stitches,” he said gently. 

Spencer sniffled hard and JJ handed him a tissue. “I forgot,” he said in a small voice.

“Hotch, how about you stay with him, and James and I will herd the rest of these youths out of here,” Alex said.

“We want to stay with him!” Penelope protested.

“He needs to rest, and I think you guys are getting him worked up,” Hotch said.

David scooped up the scattered playing cards and popped a handful of M&Ms in his mouth. “Yeah, let’s give him a little space,” he said. “Let’s go get dinner.” He brightened. “Or...let’s go to town and get ingredients, and we can make dinner ourselves. I’m sure Hotch won’t mind if we take over the Lincoln House kitchen.”

“Just clean up after yourselves,” Hotch said. “But yeah, go have fun.”

Alex tucked Spencer snugly into bed and kissed his cheek; he was already beginning to doze off. “Text us if you need anything, Hotch,” she said. 

“Will do,” he said. Thank you, he mouthed silently.

Alex grinned. “All right, who’s riding with James, and who’s riding with Rossi?” she asked.

“Shotgun!” Emily and Derek shouted at once. They paused, then glared at each other. “Shotgun with Rossi!”

“Hey!”

“I said it first!”

James and Alex herded the kids out of the room and closed the door. Hotch sighed deeply. “Peace and quiet,” he said. “Nice, huh?”

“You promise I’m not late for class?” Spencer said sleepily, hugging the blanket to his chest. 

“Absolutely,” Hotch said. “And your hands are still attached too.” 

Spencer nodded and rubbed his eyes. “You’re going to stay with me though, right?” he said. “Right here?”

“Uh-huh,” Hotch said. He closed his math homework, turned down the volume on the TV, and moved the desk chair next to Spencer. “How’s that?”

Spencer smiled at him, hazy and sleepy, and before long he dozed off, his breathing slow and steady. Hotch stayed beside him, arms folded over his chest, watching TV but checking every so often to make sure he was still safe.

[grandmother-goblin]

Hangman’s Mercy

Chapter 1

Summary: After the war, Levi remembers how he fell in love with the executioner.

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: Canon-typical Violence, Decapitation, Suggestive Themes, Language, Period-typical Sexism.

On a summer morning, outside an oceanfront cafe, Levi longed for the executioner's embrace. Seagulls cawed on the distant beach and the gentle ocean breeze blew salty air over his steaming cup of tea. Chamomile; the executioner's favorite. Especially with a little honey after a stressful day. They spent countless nights together, sitting across a candlelit table when neither of them could sleep or in each other’s arms, with a hot pot of chamomile tea between them. God, he missed those days. 

The chamomile tea at the Marelean cafe did not taste as sweet, even with honey. Maybe that was just because of the company. Not that Levi minded the overzealous journalist scribbling in his journal across from him. After all, he paid well, and it wasn’t like Levi had much to do after the war. Despite the massive loss of life, humanity trudged towards a new sense of normalcy only weeks later. Businesses had to continue, people needed a new sense of purpose or just a moment of peace, and society was never one to stay still. Levi still had to make a living in a world without titans, so when a fast-talking kid with a fire in his eyes offered to pay him for interviews he took the opportunity.

The young man, Marty Chase, tapped his pen against a pile of notes with a nervous energy. Levi took a few days to get to know Marty’s work before he agreed to a biography, and the kid checked out. Marty co-authored three bestsellers before the age of thirty, all biographies of Marelean warriors. Levi did not know any of the subjects, but he felt like he did after a few chapters into his works. How he wove together someone’s life with just interviews and notes, Levi did not know. Some sort of creative witchcraft he would never understand. 

Marty flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and clicked his pen. “When I was listening back to our last session, you mentioned an executioner a couple of times. Tell me about that.”

“What about her?”

“Her?” Marty made a note and underlined the fact the executioner was a woman several times. He flipped back through his notes, finding some highlighted passages in the ink. “How did you know her?”

Steam rose from his teacup, and Levi watched as it disappeared into the wind. He hadn’t realized he mentioned the executioner enough during his interviews for Marty to take notice. In fact, he tried to leave the executioner out of it as much as he could. Those who read his biography wouldn’t give a damn about that. Why would they? They wanted to know about his military experience, his title of Humanity’s Strongest, about Eren Jaeger, the military coup, what he saw, and what he experienced. They wanted to know what his comrades could no longer share. Without bringing her into it, they could know all of that. Would she even want them to know? 

Levi tasted the chamomile on his tongue and closed his eyes, wishing it was as sweet as he remembered on her lips. He could not ask her permission to share her part of the story. It was impossible. Levi turned the warm teacup in his hands and sighed.

“I almost asked her to marry me.”

The incessant pen clicking stopped. Marty stared at him, eyes wide and mouth agape like a fish out of water. Marty dove into the fat briefcase he lugged around and retrieved that stupid little recording device. It was slightly bigger than a deck of cards with black casing and a roll of tape inside. “And you thought you could just leave out that teensy-weensy, tiny, detail?”

Levi shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d care about that.”

Marty rolled his eyes, as if Levi said something ridiculous, like cats could be herded or the moon didn’t exist. “This stuff is the heart of a good story, no pun intended,” he said. “You’re pretty extraordinary, Mr. Ackerman, no two ways about that. But, people like you seem so far out of reach to an average guy like me. What we need is something to reel you back in. Something to tell our audience, ‘hey, this guy is as human as he is amazing’, and what’s more human than romantic love?”

“Taking a shit?” 

Marty set his pen on the table and eyed him like a disappointed teacher looking at the class clown. “If you really don’t think she’s important, you don’t have to tell me about her.”

“Don’t give me the guilt trip shit, Marty.” Levi finished his tea and set the empty cup at the edge of the iron bistro table. “You have plans today?”

“Not if you have a story to tell me.”

“Then get me another cup of tea. Lavender and bergamot, no sweetener.”

Marty beamed like Levi had offered a pot of gold instead of a day's worth of work. Though to Marty, those two were likely one and the same. His book about Reiner’s time in Paradis sold out in some of the biggest shops Marley offered. Well, Levi hoped the paycheck would be worth both of their time. 

After Marty returned with the tea and a heart-attack inducing amount of coffee, he pressed the little red button on the side of his recording device. He leaned in close to the speaker and rattled off his typical prelude to the recording. “Levi Ackerman. Tape thirty-two. Who is the executioner?”

Levi sipped his fresh cup of tea, thankful for the bit of caffeine because he knew he’d be needing it. “Don’t turn my biography into a romance novel.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mr. Ackerman,” Marty answered without missing a beat. He clicked his pen and tapped it against the first line in his notebook. “Now, tell me how you first met the executioner.”

Levi held his cup of tea just above the table, not sure if he was going to set it down or take another sip. He guessed he had nothing to lose by sharing their story. “Twenty-five years ago, I saw my first beheading. I was still just a kid scraping by in the Underground…”

Levi, a tiny, twelve-year-old piece of garbage, had only been on his own for a few weeks. Kenny taught him just enough to take care of himself and drop-kicked him from the relative safety of the nest to the dogs. With Kenny, awful as he was, Levi at least felt a sense of safety with an adult around. Once that was ripped from under him, it took him a while to regain his bearings. 

The Sunday market was the perfect place to pick pockets and swipe valuables, whether they were from a vendor or a customer. The place was so crowded, a small kid like him could disappear in an instant. He just needed to find the right target. Ideally, someone who looked like they didn’t belong Underground. Someone who would be unused to the dim lighting, the stale air thick with the smell of smoke, and the echoing chatter of thousands of people crammed into one place. Few people from above ground went to the Sunday market, but there were enough to make them easy pickings. 

On the outskirts of the market, right outside a general store where Kenny used to buy his liquor, sat a young girl atop some supply crates. One look at her, and Levi knew she was the perfect target. Clean clothes? Check. Shiny hair? Check. Dirt-free face? Check? Alone? Also check. The pretty, sun-kissed face was also a dead giveaway. The brown leather satchel on her lap, scratch-free with shiny copper buckles, would be a great steal. He just had to get a hold of it.

Levi smoothed his ratty, moth-bitten coat and checked his hair in a dusty shop window. Well, he did not look so bad that the girl would run away from him screaming. At least he hoped he didn’t. Not that he cared. Normally, he would go for a more covert approach, one where his target would never know he was there, but there was no way he could take the bag right off of her lap. He’d have to get her to put it down. 

With his heart beating faster than a bat's wings, he approached the girl. When she smiled at him, his breath caught in his throat. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea. He focused on the bag. Even if there was nothing good in there, the bag itself would be worth something, whether it be money or for his own use. 

Unable to keep eye contact, he swallowed and looked at his shoes, restless fingers pulling at a loose thread in his pocket. “Hey,” he said, his voice breaking in a way that it hadn’t before. He cleared his throat and willed the heat from his face. What was wrong with him?

The girl leaned on her bag. “Hi,” she said with a pretty, white smile. “I like your haircut.”

His eyes widened at the unexpected compliment and the blush he swallowed before heat rushed right back to his face. Thank the walls the Underground was dark, because he was certain she would have laughed if she saw the color on his face. “Thanks, uhh—” he toyed with the thread in his pocket. “I, uh, like your face.” Stupid. Idiot. Maybe if he ran away right now, she would forget about the whole thing.

She covered her mouth when she giggled. It was the cutest thing he had ever heard. What the hell? Was this what Kenny meant when told Levi that girls would stop being gross one day? What a joke. A terrible, awful joke.

He needed to act fast. Plan A: get the girl to stand. Maybe she would put the bag down for a second, long enough for him to grab it and run. He scratched the back of his neck and eyed the crate she was sitting on. “I need to get to that box.” 

“Oh.” The girl straightened, one hand still on her bag. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get in the way,” she said and pushed herself off the crates, her long green skirt billowing behind her. Unfortunately, she looped the handle around her forearm, keeping it close.

Well, that did not work. Time for Plan B. Levi looked over the crate and found a serial number. He pretended to examine it for a second before he turned back to the girl. “Can you help me move this?” he asked. “I think I need the one below it.”

Still smiling, the girl set her bag down and dusted her hands off on her skirt. “Sure. What should I do?”

Perfect. “Grab that side.” He pointed to the side of the crate furthest away from her bag. Without question, she tucked her fingers under one side of the crate while Levi lifted the other. Sure, he could have just snatched the bag while she had her back turned, but that was too risky. He wanted a little more of a head start before she followed him. 

Levi lifted the top crate well off of the bottom one, and the little girl followed, shuffling her feet against the cobblestone. Her skinny arms strained and her cheeks colored with exertion. There was his chance. 

His fingers released, and Levi’s end of the crate crashed into the ground. The girl faltered and Levi acted before the girl could even let go of her half of the crate. His deft hands swiped the bag as he darted past. Too easy. Way too easy. Levi couldn’t help but smile to himself as he swung the bag over his shoulder and the girl shouted after him. Levi circled around the edge of the market to put some distance between him and the girl before he ducked into the thick of the crowd. 

In the bustling marketplace, Levi swung the bag onto his shoulder and blended in among the other patrons. No one gave him a second look, like he was just there for a bit of shopping, like everyone else. Easy, he thought to himself. Even if the bag had little in it, the bag itself was nice. Sturdy, with lots of pockets and a comfortable strap. Maybe he’d even keep it for himself instead of pawning it off. 

When Levi ducked through a small crowd near a pastry stand, he felt a sudden tug at the back of his jacket. His collar caught his throat as he was yanked back, and a hand the size of his head gripped his shoulder like a vice. 

“Say, my daughter has a bag just like that,” said a deep, gravelly voice as the grip on his shoulder tightened. 

Levi felt like his heart had stopped. No. What were the fucking chances. The surrounding people started to take notice of the altercation and backed away. People in the Underground knew Levi through reputation alone, and he had taken on men twice his size more times than he could count. Too late not to cause a scene. 

Levi grasped his knife and struck behind him, the blade making contact with the man’s flesh. The man groaned and Levi felt another hand on him as he was spun around. Levi’s heart jumped to his throat. This man wasn’t twice his size, he was even bigger. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought a titan had made it Underground. 

Under a bushy red beard that surrounded his face like a lion’s mane, he smiled, a gold tooth front and center of his grin. Levi briefly wondered how much the tooth was worth before he felt his knife plucked from his hand. 

“Get him, Ivor!” yelled someone in the crowd. 

Another man shouted. “Teach that shit a lesson, hangman!”

The hangman. The fucking hangman. Levi felt his blood run cold as he stared up at the monstrous man. So he was the man Kenny would talk about when he got drunk. The one man that Kenny actually seemed to fear. Not because he thought Ivor would hunt him down, but because Ivor would be the one to carry out his sentence if he was ever tried for his crimes. Remembering the way Kenny described how the hangman would torture his victims before the execution made Levi’s stomach turn.

“I’m not going to fight a child,” Ivor called back to the crowd. “Piss off. You’re not getting a damn show, you buzzards.”

The crowd did not disperse as more insults and jeers were thrown the hangman’s way. 

Ivor ignored the taunts. Instead, the hangman focused his pale blue eyes into Levi’s gray ones. “I made that bag for my daughter,” he said. “All it has in it is tea and bad handwritten poetry. I’d tell you to see for yourself, but she’d kill me if I let a stranger read her poems,” he added with a light chuckle. 

“Let go of me.”

One hand tightened its grip while the other let go, giving Levi what was supposed to be a friendly pat. “Aye, can’t do that until I get that bag back, son.” 

Levi tossed the bag on the ground. Whatever. He knew when to cut his losses. “Take it.” 

Still not letting go of him, Ivor placed a boot on the bag strap, keeping it secure. “Thank you, my boy,” he boomed and ruffled Levi’s hair. Ivor knelt as close to Levi’s level as he could, his trench coat made of thick hide bunching up at his feet. He smelled of bergamot and lemon, like he had doused himself in perfumes. Something about Ivor contradicted all of Levi’s expectations: respected and ridiculed, fearsome and jovial, a killer with kind eyes. Despite the iron grip on his shoulder, the hangman seemed… almost nice? Much more tolerant than most of the folks Levi came across, and definitely more so than the ones who felt they were wronged. Blood soaked through Ivor’s pant leg where Levi had slashed his knife, but Ivor did not acknowledge it.

“Take this, boy,” he said in a rough voice barely above a whisper. Ivor reached into his pocket and pressed a small, yet heavy, bag of coins into Levi’s hands, doing his best to shield the transaction from the crowd. “Stay out of trouble. If you don’t, you’ll be seeing me again, boy. And next time, I won’t be so nice.” 

Ivor picked up his daughter’s bag and finally released his hold on Levi, patting him on his certainly bruised shoulder. Levi stumbled back, reaching for the knife that was no longer there. Right. The hangman had tossed it aside. Levi pocketed the coins and stood his ground, waiting for an opening to grab his knife again. 

Around them, the crowd booed. They hurled words not even Kenny would have used the hangman’s way, and he stood tall and proud, stoic as a statue. When a piece of rotten vegetable pelted Ivor’s coat, he brushed off with a laugh as people in the crowd continued to taunt and jeer. The hangman turned to look at Levi once more, before giving a subtle nod towards a break in the crowd. Levi swore he saw the man mouth the word ‘go’ from behind his massive beard.

“Thought you were going to give us a show, hangman!” a shrill woman shouted.

Ivor tossed the bag over his shoulder. “You’ll be getting a show tomorrow.” He spread his arms with all the showmanship of a magician. “Now stop gawking and do something with your miserable lives, you scabs!”

With a slight limp, Ivor turned into the crowd. Not really thinking, Levi picked his knife off the ground and ran the opposite direction. He did not know where he was going, just that he needed to get out of the marketplace and away from anyone who saw Ivor give him money. Maybe that was the man’s true intention: to put a target on Levi’s back with the cash rather than true altruism. Why else would he give a kid who just stabbed him a satchel full of coins?

The woman’s voice rang in his head. Give us a show, hangman! He was the fucking hangman, and Levi had robbed the hangman’s kid. Levi never felt so stupid in his life. The human embodiment of Death had Levi in his grip, at his mercy, and let him live. 

With that gift, Levi ran and did not stop until he reached his lodgings. Levi locked the door behind him and slid to the floor to catch his breath. 

When his breathing settled, he pulled the bag of coins out and counted them. More than he expected. A lot more. Enough to get him food for an entire month, or even longer if he planned right. Levi closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wooden door behind him. What the hell kind of person gave a piece of shit like him such a gift? Maybe Ivor had something wrong with him.

Despite how Levi never wanted to see the executioner again, Levi found himself drawn to the town square the following afternoon. He never watched an execution before, but he knew where they took place. The crowd made for good pickings, as those who came to watch were distracted by the morbid spectacle and alcohol. Levi always took his pickings and left before the cart with the condemned even made it to the podium.

There were no gallows for hanging, just a raised platform with a block of wood at the center. People gathered a healthy distance away from the platform. Out of the splash zone, as one man said. Levi did not want to think about how that distance was determined, and stood behind two larger men as a human shield. He could see the podium well enough between them, so long as they stood relatively still. It would have been so easy to swipe something right out of their pockets, but he resisted. It was a day for observation, and observation only. He didn’t know why, but he needed to see the executioner in action. He needed to know it was, in fact, the same man he met the day before. 

Nothing he knew of the man, the little he did know, made any sense. Obviously respected, yet despised. A brute who didn’t flinch at a knife slicing his thigh and laughed off a jeering crowd. A man who made bags for his daughter, gave coins to a kid who stabbed him, and went off to kill a person the next day.

One man in front of him, with a stocky build and a mustache that looked like a push broom, puffed at his cigarette. “Any idea what this one did?”

His friend, a taller man with a ponytail, replied, “I heard she killed a few of her customers from the whore house. Poor bastards. Thought they were paying for a good time, then they’d get home and drop dead. Took them ages to find out why.”

“How many did she get?” 

“At least twelve, from what I’ve heard.”

“Shit.” The mustached man tossed his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his boots. “Executioner will let us know.” 

The man with a ponytail cocked his chin towards the main road. “Speak of the devil and he will come,” he said. 

Far down the end of the main road, a draft horse pulled a rickety wagon fixed with a rusty iron cage. The giant, red-haired hangman sat at the front of the cart, his boxy gloved hands gripping the reins as he shouted at people to get out of the way. Beside him was the little girl from yesterday, hugging her precious bag.

“Can’t believe he’s training her,” Mustache Man muttered.

Ponytail shrugged. “Not like she has many other prospects,” he said. “Being the hangman’s kid, it’s not like men will be lining up for her. Hell, I don’t know if a whore house would take her.”

Mustache Man hummed thoughtfully and lit up another cigarette. “Poor kid.” 

The wagon reached the podium and Ivor hauled himself down from the rider seat, the wagon creaking with the sudden loss of weight. Levi would not have been surprised if the ground shook when those massive boots hit the pavement like a fallen powder keg. Ivor turned back to the cart and gingerly lifted his daughter and set her down beside him. Without a word, the girl dug into her bag and passed a vial to her father before she went to the edge of the podium.

A man in a Military Police uniform lingered nearby. Probably acting as some sort of bailiff, Levi figured, judging by the official-looking documents clutched between his fingers. He ascended to the podium and shouted something to Ivor, who went to the back of the wagon. 

A desperate wail echoed over the crowd when Ivor swung open the metal bars. A frail woman with her hands tied behind her back scrambled to the back of the wagon, sobbing and pleading. Her hair had been cut short, but Levi recognized her from the brothel as a woman his mother would sometimes talk to. Her name was Ada, if he remembered correctly, and she was almost unrecognizable between the haphazardly chopped hair and tear-stained face. Kicking at his meaty hands, squirming away from his vice-like grip, Ivor pulled her from the cart despite her best efforts. 

Turning her away from the crowd, Ivor pinched her jaw and dumped the vial down her throat. He held her mouth shut until she swallowed as he whispered something in her ear. Sobbing, tears leaving salty streaks on her face and snot dripping from her nose, she stopped fighting him. Her shoulders slumped and her head hung like a rag doll, as if she had finally accepted what was coming to her. Guiding her by the back of the neck, Ivor led Ada up four wooden steps to the chopping block, his blocky hand grasping her arm when she tripped. 

The crowd booed and jeered as Ivor pushed Ada to her knees in front of the block. She stared ahead, her eyes already dead and her body slumping to the side. Ivor righted her long enough to tie a blindfold over her eyes before she slumped over again. The man from the Military Police rang a bell to quiet the crowd. When the chatter and yelling subsided, he read the charges brought before Ada. Like the gentlemen in front of him had said, she had confessed to poisoning at least a dozen men, all of whom were prior customers of the brothel. 

Once the charges had been read, Ivor pushed the woman down. With one massive hand on the back of her skull, he guided her neck, so it rested across the chopping block. The moment he let go, her head lolled to the side.

Releasing Ada to pick up the ax, Ivor watched as she slipped off the block completely. Her body curled up into itself like a frightened child, wetness seeping through her blindfold. He set the ax down on its head, holding it upright with one hand and motioning for his daughter with the other. The crowd grew quiet as the little girl joined him on the podium.

“Shit,” Ponytail drawled with more pity than Levi ever thought could fit into a curse word. 

“Yeah,” Mustache Man agreed, forgetting the cigarette that burned between his finger tips.

Levi could not hear what Ivor said, but the girl nodded and knelt in front of Ada. Her small hands lifted Ada from beneath her jaw and pulled her back onto the chopping block. With Ada’s neck in place, the girl walked back on her knees as far away from the block as she could manage without letting go of Ada’s hair.

Ivor wrapped his bulking hands around the long handle of the ax and poised himself beside the block, waiting.

When the man from the Military Police gave the signal, Ivor hoisted the ax into the air and brought it down. Once, then once again, each strike accompanied by the thud of metal against flesh, wet plops of blood, and gasps of horror and cheers from the crowd. At least two people vomited at the sight and one man in the front row fainted. 

Pale in the face and speckled with blood, the little girl detangled her fingers from Ada’s hair. Ada’s head rolled a few inches from where the girl had dropped it, blood staining the wooden podium in its path. The girl did not move until Ivor yanked her to her feet. Deaf to the audience, the little girl walked back to the cart as though she were drawn by a string and not of her own accord. 

The man from the Military Police pronounced Ada dead as Ivor held up the still dripping head to the crowd. Levi’s stomach turned. For a moment, he thought he might join the people who lost their lunch at the sight, but he swallowed thickly and turned away. If he never saw either of them again, it would be too soon. 

Twenty-five years later, and he still remembered that afternoon more clearly than he would have liked. It was not the most brutal death Levi had witnessed. Titans were plenty worse. Something else stood out about that one in particular, but Levi did not really know what. Even as he recounted the story to Marty, he could not say why the memory stuck with him so strongly. 

Marty poured creamer into his coffee and paused the recording device. Quietly, he wrote a few notes while Levi finished his cup of tea. Even though Marty had listened to the very worst of Levi’s stories, it seemed the story about a little girl holding a severed head and struck him differently. The change in disposition only lasted long enough for Marty to finish writing his notes, the gears in his brain seemed to turn as he did so. Marty checked his recording device and looked up at Levi, intrigue written across his face.

Levi picked up one of the cranberry scones Marty ordered almost twenty minutes ago. “You’ve got questions.”

Marty tapped his pen. “I do,” he said. “But first, I want to hear what happened next.”

[saoirsetm]

hey y’all ! i’m kat and we’re FINALLY opening ?!? i’m so hyped, you don’t even know. i’m a double leo Trying to survive video lectures in a noisy house who loves dark chocolate and 80% of the kpop releases so far this year ( stream feel good by fromis_9, it’s such a cute bop ! ) i’m also a cat mom to my almost fourteen year old babies who are still like energetic kittens, so ask for pics and you shall receive DSLKGJ but without further ado, here’s my girl who’s gonna prove that hindsight is INDEED 20/20, so this is gonna be fun:

✧ ˖ * ° ><> ╱  abigail cowen,  cis female,  she/her  —  look  who’s  fresh  from  the  ferry,  aren’t  you  SAOIRSE LEARY  ?  your  eroda  brochure  says  you’re  TWENTY-THREE  and  that  you’re  currently  residing  in  MARMOTON  .  your  favourite  tourist  attraction  to  hang  around  is  ERODIAN BEACH  ,  and  the  locals  around  these  ports  would  describe  you  as  INQUISITIVE  &  INTREPID,  STUBBORN  &  IMPULSIVE  .  your  resting  fish  face  really  gives  off  LONG HAIR BLOWN BACK BY THE OCEAN BREEZE, LATE NIGHTS SPENT PLOTTING THE NEXT GREAT VOYAGE, RED LIPSTICK IMPRINTED ON A MUG OF TEA  ,  and  i’m  a  big  fan  of  the  VINTAGE CELTIC KNOT NECKLACE  you  seem  to  always  be  attached  to.  well,  if  you  see  the  minister  this  morning;  make  sure  you  head  on  home  as  quick  as  possible,  you  never  know  what  bad  luck  he  could  bring.  ╱  ooc;  kat,  23,  she/her,  ast.

tw: needles ( tattoo mention ), cancer mention, death mention

miss saoirse...... oof

GDFLSJL where do i begin with her honestly ??

full name is saoirse eve leary, affectionately called cece by her family since she was young and runs with it as her nickname !

born and raised in cork, ireland with two siblings, a working class father and Slightly upper middle class mother

her childhood wasn’t like, Majorly eventful; she was considered a bit of a tomboy which isn’t a surprise bc she’s always been a bit of a spirited, adventurous girl, has the odd nomadic moment strike her and loves to travel

had a SUPER close relationship with her maternal grandmother before she passed a few years back, still has a close one with her grandfather and paternal grandmother as they’re still living

is a big family girl overall, so much so that she’s eagerly awaiting the day she gets to be the cool aunt

had a decent cluster of pals over the years that’s likely dwindled due to everyone going their separate ways after high school

saoirse Did go to uni between her travels — and graduated — and has aspirations of becoming an anthropologist to explore other cultures and meet new people/understand them

which.. obviously ain’t happening now LFSGJGF rip

came to eroda partially bc it seems like such a pretty and quaint place, partially to explore its “ myth ” that you can never leave; her naturally curious ass questions the whole thing, at least in the sense that there’s no way to challenge your supposed fate on the island and won’t deny entertaining some conspiracy theories around the mystery

she still doesn’t understand that.. yeah, she Literally is stuck here for the rest of her life now, probably because she hasn’t made a Real attempt to put that to the test, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it FDSLKJDS

anyways she came here solo ( more than likely ) and has enjoyed her time getting to know the locals and other visitors, taking in the scenery, etc

probably took up a part-time job at sally’s tavern to cover her expenses since she lives in marmoton and it ought to be close enough for her to get to gfjlsdg

personality and everything else

a sociable, ( relatively ) fearless ginger with an eclectic taste in music and a profound appreciation for pastries.. 

despite being all about cleaner eating habits and lowering her sugar intake, she takes a cheat day or week wherever she can LSDGFJK

parties, game nights, etc, you name it ?? she’s there !

kinda competitive while we’re bringing up games and such, but she’s not about the whole sore winner/loser thing — rather she’ll groan and sulk a little before moving on

like i said before, loves to travel, loves pretty places in general so prepare yourself for an abundance of pictures on her insta feed of where she’s been or where she wants to go

loyal as hell, but she has her limit if you misuse the trust that comes with it

she’s just v wholesome and has a mix of small town city/endlessly curious energy with a sprinkle of being the life of the party……. kinda

however, she’s the most ?? hard to place person all the same

that feeling of freedom that comes with her exploring and all makes her a little hard to tie down; she doesn’t plan on staying in eroda ( which is unfortunate for her considering.... fglsdk ) as she has more to accomplish and see

very much does her own thing and doesn’t wanna hear any criticism for it

as if she’s that out of line DLJGDSLK but still

always wants to try new things, no matter how dumb they might be; except for anything that’s a Legitimate death sentence or is.. a GENUINELY dumb idea, she has enough common sense to know what Not to do KSGFDJDS

has little tattoos on her wrist and behind her left ear for her Favourite trips/symbols/whatever and her family, will let y’all know what they’d be whenever i figure them out since i’m so damn picky with these things

a Big supporter for buying/investing locally, has little trinkets and such to prove it

in fact, she has a collection of thrifted or vintage clothes from her travels and back home, and a chest full of cute jewelry she switches between daily

one piece she wears all the time — only parts with it when she sleeps — is the celtic knot pendant mentioned in her app that’s become something of an heirloom on her mom’s side of the family !

she has the cutest irish lilt in my mind, kinda the same as miss ronan’s and aisling bea’s

really loves her freckles, partially bc i love her freckles and my own :(

tea > coffee, but she loves coffee-flavoured things; bring her a peppermint or camomile tea as her shift winds down or.. idk, just because, and she’ll be forever indebted to you fldjgs

loves to hang out by the water in her free time — she loves the scent and sounds that comes with it, it’s one of the few places where she can put her mind to rest for a bit

the sound of rain hitting a rooftop is her perfect sleep soundtrack

kinda wants to adopt a pet, but doesn’t wanna leave them if she goes on an excursion where they can’t come with her :(

baths with epsom salts, candles that smell like lavender or something just as pleasant and calming, etc during a night in soothes the hell out of her soul

top three products she has in her bag at all times, besides personal info and her phone ? lip balm, a powder spf and mints FGLGKSD

btw.. miss ginger hair and freckles will probably gasp at anyone going out with no spf on them and scold tf out of them bc ‘ hello, melanoma ?? sunburn ?!? ’

wanted connections

childhood pal(s) she’s bumped into: reunited by chance, cece’s glad she has a couple of people she knows to keep her grounded when her mind runs wild at what Might happen when she decides to try her hand at leaving

cousin(s), other relatives: idk, figured it’d be fun for her to have a family member or two running around and not realizing the other relative is the Only one they’ll see in person from here on out

best pal(s) in eroda: someone she’s taken to since arriving, likely spending their free-time eating pastries on the beach, talking shit over tea, little market dates, going to the rainzone half-drunk and trying to rope each other into new things

opposites attract.. of sorts sfdlgkj: basically just a traveler meeting a local who’s never been off eroda, telling all about their ( quite limited ) excursions and bonding in other areas over time !

hook-ups, fwbs.... ENEMIES with benefits?? idk, point is the girl’s probably gotten laid since arriving, it’s all a matter of the situation that fits your muse(s) best FHGSDKJ

roommate: she lives in marmoton, likely in a rental of sorts, and i can’t see her living alone given the situation on the island ( though i’ve viewed her as the type to live alone in a space for one and a half people any other time tbh ). so she has just One and they make the arrangement work ! depending on their personalities and such, we’ll figure out how well they get along Exactly, if at all

ex ??: the girl’s bi so y’all can toss anyone at her for this one as well ! question marks bc i was thinking it’d be an on-and-off thing but maybe not come the time i post this intro LSGKD. basically they were seeing each other for a few months, she fell hard Quick/they moved kinda fast bc they were vibing and they would distance themselves upon realizing this — though i see cece giving them distance bc she knows they need it rather than needing it herself. if it IS on-and-off, they’re definitely off rn and treading lightly ( though she finds it hard to stray and hates things not being fully resolved no matter what happens ?? ), so all it’s a bit angsty regardless of how it goes dfgkljsdg

fellow mystery fiend: someone please fuel her curiosity to the max and try to crack the impossible case of eroda’s captive capabilities with her.. and proceed to watch true crime shows with her when that clearly goes to shit SDFKLJ

older sibling or mentor dynamic: someone to look out for her/teach her some things to help fully support herself/give her advice when she probably needs it most.. idk, i just like the idea of someone becoming a stand-in relative type of friend to her 

just give her someone to confide in, to swim at night with, stargaze and all that cute shit, be it platonically or otherwise !

she’s not gonna click with everyone and that’s fine, BUT maybe they run in the same social circles and cece thinks they seem nice enough, but they never really talk amongst themselves ?? just a case of awkwardly starting from scratch and seeing where it takes us !

[gascon-en-exil]

I'm genuinely curious about your "Black Eagles most to least favourite" list.

Here you are.

#1: Hubert

Could there be any other? I remember back when there was a promo introducing the house retainers (well, Lorenz for the Deer) and everyone was saying that Hubert looked so obviously evil that there had to be some deeper explanation, that someone who took design cues from a two-dimensional villain like Fates’s Iago couldn’t possibly be Edelgard’s retainer. Then the game came out, and we all realized that Hubert was exactly as advertised and then some: a cold and calculating murderer and war criminal with his fingerprints all over almost every terrible thing that happens over the course of the story, as comfortable with chloroform and a razor as dark magic and down to perform unspeakable experiments on innocent civilians to turn them into war machines and then backstab his co-conspirators because he will suffer no rivals for his title of the Most Evil Man in Fòdlan. And yep, he looks like Dracula and Severus Snape had a one-night stand and their mpreg love child went to an anime convention...but when Ferdinand looks at Hubert he sees Mr. Darcy and the Phantom of the Opera and Edward Cullen/Christian Grey, and soon enough that snake in Hubert’s breeches will be singing quite the aria indeed. You do you, Ferdinand.

Ok, I’ve already rambled at length on Hubert’s bisexuality and the interesting things it reveals about both him and his two primary love interests, but I do also have to admire the sheer audacity both of Hubert as an incel/Nice Guy-flavored romantic false lead for Edelgard who never had a serious chance because of the self-insert fantasy and of the decision to follow that up with a trope-laden queer romance that perfectly counterbalances Hubert’s attraction to Edelgard and puts Ferdinand firmly in the place he was destined to occupy by choosing to side with the Empire. It’s nearly as outrageous as just how casually evil Hubert gets to be, as well as the immense potential for dark humor that lies with that. You have to bend over backwards to say that Hubert isn’t unapologetically, irredeemably evil, and if you try there will be significantly more fans just waiting to tell you that you’re wrong - myself included. He’s the Manfroy to Edelgard’s Arvis but so much than that, and I look forward to the point in the CF postgame where he effectively takes over the Empire in true evil chancellor fashion and unleashes the full extent of his horrors upon Fòdlan. He somehow got even better in the DLC too despite being absent from CS and getting no new supports, because the Abyssians in CF just can’t stop talking about his nefarious antics down there. I just can’t get enough of how good this guy is at being bad, and I love that FE gave us exactly what was advertised here.

#2: Ferdinand

Now here’s a case of the opposite, where what’s on the packaging didn’t prepare me for what was to come. If I remarked on Ferdinand at all during pre-release it was only to think that he might be part of a Christmas knight duo with Sylvain since the game looked like it wouldn’t have one of those. Early on there wasn’t much else to be said about Ferdinand; he was like Claude in that his popularity ran off a meme (except just the one rather than several), and in appearance and personality he was basically Lorenz with less ridiculous hair. But then came his supports, and his post-timeskip look, and suddenly Ferdinand blossomed into the subtext-laden fem with very bizarre taste in men - see above - that he could have only dreamed of being if he’d stuck to such well-trod ground as the Christmas knight archetype. We learn of his love for opera, his complicated relationship with his father, his worship of the hot mess diva Manuela and how he learned swordplay specifically to imitate her roles on the stage, and - yes - how some backhanded compliments and expensive gifts of tea turn him into a blushing Regency heroine. It all casts his unusually rote romances with women in a performative light (as opposed to Lorenz who is similarly performative but seems genuinely interested in the marriage market), to say nothing of his one-sided rivalry with Edelgard that brushes against jealousy over Hubert’s devotion to her more often than against romantic attraction to her, and that toys around with gendered behavior in a manner complementary to Edelgard’s own bucking of the gender status quo.

And while not to the same extent as Felix, I do appreciate that Ferdinand has two distinct arcs depending on the route - and unlike some who feel that one or the other detracts from his character as a whole I personally find that they complement each other well. In SS and if recruited to AM and VW he makes the hard choice to oppose his homeland, spending the timeskip waging a solitary battle against the Empire with his private militia and then joining back up with Byleth’s army at Garreg Mach because he knows Edelgard is in the wrong even as it pains him to depose the Adrestian emperor and leave his own status uncertain...not to mention fight Hubert, which merits a curious boss conversation as well as some extra lines in SS (plus the infamous Huge Hole™ remark that I will never stop referencing because it is hilarious) that, while not elevating Ferdibert anywhere near the level of Dimidue in terms of cross-route canon endorsement, nonetheless are suggestive of something deeper between them that exists even if they find themselves on opposite sides of a war. In CF by contrast Ferdinand gives into his craving for the title and holdings that Edelgard has just stripped from his father and embraces nationalism and his long-held ideal of what the office of the prime minister should to do as a means of justifying the Empire’s conquests. Of course in the process he also succumbs to Hubert’s, er, charms(?) and becomes the charismatic bureaucrat who is presumably saddled with the task of putting a positive spin on the Empire’s dystopian atrocities while Edelgard and Hubert do all the actual work...and Hubert does all the actual actual work, which includes a lot of murder and kidnapping and all manner of other things that he doesn’t share with his pretty lover and about which Ferdinand quickly learns not to ask. Two Jewels of the Empire, indeed.

#3-4: Edelgard and Dorothea

I go back and forth on these so I’m not going to bother putting them in a definitive order, particularly because I like them for very different reasons that are difficult to compare. For Edelgard, it would be most accurate to say that I enjoy her potential much more than her execution; she gets some meaty material to work with as a lord and as the driving antagonist of the whole game outside of CF, and while I still prefer Micaiah for female lords there’s something darkly satisfying about her need for control and domination and her utter refusal to compromise or remain stagnant...except where Byleth is concerned, and Edeleth drags her down so badly that it would be painful if I cared more about that type of strong female character. Had the game axed the self-insert obsession (even if that meant axing her bisexuality along with it) and focused on her experiences during the Insurrection as the source of her worldview and motivations I’d be inclined to like the final product far more, because that’s a hell of a lot more in line with what she actually does and conveniently also maps to the life of a real world ruler with whom I’m relatively familiar and whom history regards in appropriately ambivalent terms.

Dorothea on the other hand is someone I can relate to on a more personal level, mostly as a sex worker. She’s similar to Primrose from Octopath Traveler, both of them prostitutes and playing coy with the implications of the RPG dancer class archetype, although Primrose hits a few more of my buttons for being former nobility and being motivated by revenge. Then again, I fully understand Dorothea’s anxieties about growing old without a man to take care of her, even if she loses me (and Yuri picks up from where she leaves off) when she dips into lesbianism as an alternative option. She’s got her ups and downs for me - I love that she brings up incest kink with Caspar as opposed to this series’s usual outright incest, while I love less her strange Ferdinand supports that are suspended oddly between friendship and romance and...something else undefinable - and I don’t have much to say on her life as an opera diva except that it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that she’s been turning tricks on the side and even got a sugar daddy to pay her way into the academy. Theatre and sex work have always gone hand-in-hand like that.

#5-7: Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra

This is why I couldn’t make up a list like this for the Lions or Deer, because most of their students would be in big clumps like this. I have no strong opinions on any of these characters; they each have their moments, but not enough to elevate them to where I actively like them or drop them down into real dislike. I suppose you could say I’m disappointed by how Caspar and Linhardt are visual allusions to Ike/Soren who do absolutely nothing else with that similarity except eloping in their paired ending...which is preceded by virtually nothing in the way of real chemistry. If I enjoy them for anything in particular it’s Linhardt’s wit and Caspar’s occasional bouts of emotional vulnerability, like his mini-arc in AM where he has to deal with his feelings surrounding Randolph’s death and then later gets an apology from Dimitri for it.

Petra is awkward all around as the game dances around her delicate political situation, and I also happen to agree with the VA who (if I recall) thought the character should have some sort of accent but wasn’t allowed to do one. (If anyone is wondering, based on her last name and Brigid being an island nation I headcanon it as a Celtic-derived culture, but as with my personal reading of Dedue and Duscur I know that doesn’t play well to the fandom at large).  All in all Petra feels like a more self-aware rendition of the exotic swordswoman archetype begun by Ayra in Jugdral, but there’s clearly still some work to be done on that front.

#8: Bernadetta

Ugh. With apologies to @capriciouscorvid for explaining how even unintentional disability representation can be taken as a positive, I just don’t see how Bernadetta’s character could possibly be considered a good thing when she’s so grating in almost all of her supports and most of her story and exploration presence outside of CF. All the screaming and high-pitched pronouncements of impending death get very old very quickly, and the part where she’s meant to be romantically appealing in her neediness and isolation is as lost on me as it would have been had it stemmed instead from a massive rack. Her supposedly sympathetic backstory doesn’t help much either, as it leaves me mostly with the thought that her father is an idiot because his methods obviously did not make her suitable to be a good wife. I also don’t care for how she’s one of several characters used to soften Jeritza (and that the way she does so is I think rather insulting to people with social anxiety, to liken it to a compulsion to commit murder), or even worse that people point to her Hubert support to try and say that he’s not such a bad guy and they’d be total besties just like Ferdinand and Dorothea (another pairing that doesn’t exactly scream BFFs). I mean, really....

[hailene]

Perfect Imperfection (3)

Perfect Imperfection| part three (final)

Characters: Jaemin x female lead, Chenle x female lead (the girl will go by the name of Aeri)

Genre: fluff, angst, writer!au, highschool!au

Word count: 5.9 K

Summary: Aeri is a the teenager who writes. Finding inspiration in anything surrounds her, her ideas go wild once she meets the perfect character, Na Jaemin. As a writer becomes obsessive with their favourite character, Aeri grows a weird passion for the bright boy. However, she's so focused on painting Jaemin as perfectly as possible, that she ignores the furry of fiery hair that takes her to night walks and shows her secret places around the town. Despite knowing everything, she forgets that playing with fire means getting burnt. And that sometimes, when we remember to stop, it's too late.

part one 》part two 》part three

There is one thing I might never understand about Zhong Chenle: how even though I am used to analyzing people in silence and figuring out by myself which type of character they are in this big story called life, I haven't figured out who he really is, despite the fact that I've known him for a while now.

And this confusion sticks with me even as he leads me back in the coffee shop we left a few minutes ago.

"Why are we here again?" I ask as he gestures me to sit at the same table, near the window.

I do so, moving quite slowly and trying to figure out why he's doing this.

"I'm sorry." He says but his face didn't look as sorrowful as his words.

"Maybe." I wave him off, slightly annoyed at the memory of his words.

"But," he continues "as the lucky soul who got to peek through your notebook, I must let you know stuff."

I look at him, my eyebrows furrowed in both annoyance and confusion.

"Such as?"

"Such as the fact that you're being obvious and the only reason why the others haven't figured out you have something for Jaemin is because they're close to both of you. It's easy for me though." He shrugs.

"No, the only reason why you know that is because you read it." I snap but he looks unfazed.

He blinks a few times as if I was shooting bullets at him but he was melting them all.

"Why Jaemin?" He asks and I look at him for quite a few seconds before saying:

"You're unbelievable... thought you've figured out I never let anybody ever get in my business when it comes to writing."

He shrugs again.

"I have," he says "but I think I might help you."

"I don't need your help, Chenle." I say but my voice comes out softer than I wanted it to.

"Maybe." He smiles. "But if you're only ever going to write Jaemin's portrayal, you won't ever get a story done... stories need action, right?"

I don't say anything, too annoyed at his control over the situation to come up with any kind of witty remark.

"He needs to make you feel in some certain way for you to be able to write about him... those shivers that you feel whenever he smiles at you are far from enough, honey."

I frown at the last word but as I let my brain process the information, I realize that deep down, he's right. All I have been doing has been writing about Jaemin and creating fake scenarios in my head that never seemed to actually be good enough to be written.

"So what do you suggest?" I ask trying to sound uninterested.

He smiles and I realize I didn't sound enough uninterested.

"Well, we can start with his dark-like-night coffee," he says "so you can get in the mood, you know?"

***

Weeks and months pass like this, my encounters with Chenle being more and more frequent, to the point Hyuck asked me if there was something going on between us. There wasn't. Little did everybody know how big of a help Chenle was to me in writing about the story of Jaemin's character. He was telling me stuff that the older boy was saying at the basketball trainments and little gestures of his, but he was also discretely pinching me whenever my starring was too obvious while we hung out together. The other day, we exchanged notes during class and I was trying so hard to contain my laughter as I was really close to getting detention. He's also made a habit out of sending me memes at ungodly hours, ruining my sleeping schedule, but they were so funny that I couldn't regret it.

Walking out of school, I bump into somebody taller than me, making me slightly stumble backwards.

"I'm so sor-... Jaemin?" I say as I look at the hazelnut-haired boy who looked just as surprised as I was.

We haven't had the chance to see each other in a while and I was genuinely happy to see him now, my heart jumping in my chest, like a bird in a cage. We end up going for coffee as it was almost weekend and none of us had too many assignments to do. We order the usual, hot chocolate for me and iced americano with 2.5 extra shots of espresso for Jaemin- drink which, by the way, tasted even more bitter than it looked like.

We chat for a while, more like making conversation than actually talking about important things, maybe that was also because I was too aware of his presence and of the way the warm lights in the coffee shop made his eyes sparkle.

"Aeri, there's something I wanted to ask you." He says at some point. "I've been thinking about this and I think you're the perfect person to ask for help from... that, of course, if you want to."

"Go ahead." I say, gesturing him to say whatever he has to say.

He shifts a bit in his seat, something a bit unusual for Jaemin, but I let it slide.

"My mom is having this fancy relatives and close friends reunion at our house next weekend and she asked me to bring a friend... she meant to bring my girlfriend, but since I don't have one..."

"So you want me to be your fake girlfriend for a day?" I ask, a bit taken aback by his idea.

He gives me one of his charming smiles and I mentally curse at him for being so annoyingly attractive and for making my heart flutter this much.

"Uh... yeah." He says. "But it's completely fine if you don't want to, it's a stupid idea anyway, I should've-..."

"I'll do it." I say, avoiding my gaze. His mouth goes slightly agape but he slightly shakes his head, in order to get back to his senses.

"Have you just said you...?"

I chuckle my anxiety away.

"Yeah, it's not big deal anyway." I smile.

It is, actually. A huge deal.

"That's... that's great!" He smiles, his face lighting up once again. "I can't thank you enough, Aeri."

"Nah, that's alright." I smile. "So, how fancy should I dress?"

***

A fun fair was the last place I expected we'd go to when Chenle texted me he'd pick me up in 10 minutes. Yet here we were, my notebook stuffed in my bag alongside some pens and a bottle of water. I didn't really like this kind of places but I didn't want to let Chenle know it, he seemed too excited and for once, I didn't want to ruin that.

After a few rides on Chenle's favourite machines, he gets us a double sized cotton candy, both of us deciding it was time to simply sit on a bench and catch our breath. I open my notebook and write down a few words about how fascinated the roller coaster rides made me feel but how I regret screaming the whole time because now my throat was sore. It wasn't that bad. However, I was far from enjoying this whole thing as much as Chenle. The sparks in his eyes seemed to shine even brighter than the colourful neon lights in the amusement park and that was such a pretty sight to see.

"So," he begins, stuffing a piece of pink cotton candy in his mouth "how do you feel?"

I shrug as I write some words in my notebook.

"I don't really know, I think the last ride has brainwashed me." I say and he laughs, some people walking by turning their heads towards the fiery-haired boy.

Because even his laugh was brighter than the whole park.

"Such a shame." He shakes his head. "Did you like it though?"

"Enough much to make me write some pretty cool stuff in here." I say pointing towards my notebook.

He smiles fondly and I feel sparkles of happiness fluttering in my chest at the sight of his bright smile. I should've grown used to it by now, I get to see it every time he takes me places, it's like he's my personal guide (even though the furthest we've been was some opening in the close proximity of our town) and he enjoys his job so much. But I can't seem to get used to how happy these trips make me feel. I note down some words, slowly drifting away from the reality surrounding me. However, Chenle's words make their way to me, making me flinch slightly.

"Have you decided on his name?" He asks and I smile.

"Yeah," I answer "Jem... it's pretty much short from Jaemin but you can also take it as 'gem' which makes me think of bright lights and sparkles and... basically Jaemin..."

A small smile makes its way up to my lifs as I lower my head, as if trying to hide from Chenle, but there was nothing to hide anymore.

"That's a nice idea." I hear him saying. "I guess it can work."

I nod.

"Thanks... you know, you're really helping me a lot in all of this."

It's his turn to nod, with a sweet smile plastered on his lips.

"Yeah," he whispers after I no longer pay attention to him "I guess I am."

***

"You did what?"

"I know you've heard it from the first time and I would sincerely appreciate if you guys stopped acting like deaf grandpas." I say folding my arms over my chest. "Plus it's not such a big deal."

"Yeah, it's only for a day." Yeji adds from the other corner of the room.

"Wait, you knew?" Jeno asks turning to her but she simply shrugs.

"You're still coming to the study night, right?" Chenle asks and I cam literally feel myself mentally face palming in that moment.

"N-no, Chenle, I'm so so sorry! It's at the same night with Jaemin's..."

"That's okay." He says simply and for a while, the thought that he's not mad soothes me.

Chenle is never mad.

"You guys are acting all shocked when the poor girl is meeting Nana's family and she has nothing to wear." Yeji rolls her eyes and I chuckle, despair clearly written across Jeno's face.

"Please don't tell me-"

"Hell yeah, we're going shopping." Yeji smiles devilishly and I can basically see Jeno's soul leaving his body like in the cartoons.

"And you guys are coming." I add, looking at Jeno, Chenle and Renjun, all of them looking devastated by the flash news that we're going to the mall.

"Actually... I can't, I have something else to do for the rest of the day... " Chenle says.

"Oh no, Zhong, you're not running away." Yeji says standing up but he smiles and for a second, I see a dash of exhaustion on his face.

But Chenle is never exhausted.

"It's not like that, Yeji. I'm sorry, I'll see you guys, later."

And with that, he leaves the gym, silence floating in the air for a few seconds, maybe because none of us has ever seen Chenle being so serious. So unlike his usual self.

And then it clicks to me. Chenle is never mad. He is silent. And when Zhong Chenle is silent, the end of the world might as well be close.

***

The fancy party was far from being what I had expected, the atmosphere was far from being as dense as I'd thought it would be. Jaemin's mom was a sweetheart and her eyes sparkled with happiness when she saw me, almost the same way as Jaemin's eyes light up when he's excited about something. The other guests were actually really nice and so unlike the gossip-lover kind of old people that I had imagined.

One of mrs. Na's friends excused herself in order to answer a call while we were talking about the career as a novelist (fun fact: she was miss Kang's aunt and she seemed to share the passion for writing with her niece) and Jaemin suddenly showed up near me, making me slightly flinch.

"Everything alright?" He asks and I nod with a genuine smile on my face.

"To be honest I didn't really expect to enjoy this evening so much." I say.

He smiles and looks at me with his warm glimmering eyes and for a second time seems to stop and the background music, the chatter and the laughter seem to fade away.

"Aw look at them, they're so cute together!" I hear the lady I was talking to earlier saying.

Another woman which I recognize as being Jaemin's grandmother stares at us in awe and I feel my cheeks heating up. I smile awkwardly as I feel Jaemin's hand sneaking up over my shoulders and pulling me closer to him, breath hitching in my throat.

"Yeah, she's the cutest." He says smiling and I slowly lift my head to look at him, searching for any kind of humour on his face.

Did he really say that? Or was I dreaming?

He looks down at my face and the closeness of our faces makes my eyes slightly widen. Maybe he figures it out, because a sweet grin makes its way up to his lips and I feel my cheeks getting hot once again.

"Excuse us for a second..." Jaemin says without taking his eyes off me and pulls me by my left wrist towards the backyard of his house.

We leave the ladies chuckling and giving each other suggestive looks and honestly, I wasn't so sure how I was feeling about that. Once we arrive in the backyard, he lets go of my wrist and looks at me with the same sweet smile that made my knees turn to jelly a few minutes ago. However, I decide to gather up my courage and stand tall because my walls couldn't be broken down so easy, so fast. I needed my cover to be able to write about him. I needed to keep myself in the position of the observer. I couldn't step in the action or things could've gone bad.

"What was that about?" I ask crossing my arms over my chest.

His smile widens as he steps closer to me.

"What did you want it to be?" He asks in a lower tone and my eyes slightly widen again.

This is not Jem. Jem would never act like this.

He chuckles at the sight of my face.

"Nothing, don't worry, Aeri." He says smiling. "There's somebody I don't wanna hurt."

"Whom?" I ask confused.

His smile fades slightly, a glint of surprise crossing his face.

"Somebody who cares deeply about you." He smiles.

I shake my head after my brain proceeds his words.

"No way, Jem, Jeno is my best friend-..."

"I wasn't talking about him." He still smiles, despite the seriousness of the conversation and I can't help but mentally curse at him for making me feel so torn.

Who could possibly care about me so deeply that me and Jaemin being a thing could hurt them?

"Why did you bring me here?" His smile widens once again and he looks at the ground for a second, before looking into my eyes once again.

"To thank you. Like really thank you, if you weren't here, I would probably be sitting in the living room and listening to my uncle's stories about his first car."

I laugh.

"That's alright, I'll always be here if you need anything." I smile.

He shakes his head.

"You shouldn't." He says with a tint of bitterness in his voice.

"Why is that?" I ask.

He looks at me for a few seconds, giving me enough time to admire his perfect features.

"Children, we're serving the cake now!" Jaemin's mom says from behind us and I flinch in surprise.

"We're coming!" Jaemin gestures her and I look at him, disappointed that I might never get my answer.

Sensing that, he simply smiles again.

"Take care of yourself, Aeri."

He says before we get in the house once again.

***

"It was insane. Honestly. I didn't know he would be so similar to the way I created Jem. It was ethereal, the way he looked screamed prince, I swear..." I say as I lay tiredly in my bed, a long sigh leaving my mouth. "And his mom was a total sweetheart, her cooking skills were incredible, for real. I wonder if Jaemin is as good at cooking as his mother. That would certainly be a huge plus to his character to be honest."

The boy sitting on my desk chair doesn't say anything and I roll in my bed to look at him.

"Don't you think so?" I ask as I hug one of my pillows.

The fiery-haired boy looks at me, his eyes lacking the usual glint of happiness that they always seemed to hold. Maybe he was tired after a day of school, as I was too.

"I guess." He sighs. "If it was good enough to make you write, that's nice."

"Yeah, it was... but like, it was more than enough," I say. "I didn't feel like I was playing a role, I felt like I belonged there."

"Don't lose yourself in the story, Aeri." He says on a concerned tone and I sit in my bed, legs crossed, still holding my pillow.

"I won't, but this..." I begin "this is no longer a story, Chenle, this is my reality, Jaemin might-..."

"No, Jem might, Aeri... not Jaemin." He says while standing up. "You have been so obsessed with writing about Jaemin that you forgot which version is real."

"I... didn't forget, what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you should probably stop thinking about Jaemin as your superhero, because he's not Jem." He sighs.

"But-..."

"There is nothing dramatic about Jaemin for you to romanticize, okay?" He says, with a glint of exhaustion in his eyes.

"I'm not romanticizing anything, just because I like Jaemin, it doesn't mean I-..." I stop in midsentence when I realize what I've just said.

Despite the fact that I should be comfortable around Chenle, somehow this topic seems sensitive and definitely not a good choice to talk about now.

"You're not in love with Jaemin, Aeri." He says with bitterness. "You're in love with a lie."

I frown and stand up, crossing arms over my chest.

"And you're saying this because you know so much about how love works." I snap back and he simply shrugs, picking up his back-pack.

"Not your problem." He mutters.

"Hey... hey, I thought you'd at least understand if I told you I had feelings for Jaemin!" I say, feeling rage taking over me at the sudden change in his behavior.

Chenle never rises his voice. Chenle is never grumpy. Chenle is never exhausted. When he is mad, he is silent. Or ignorant. He stops in his tracks and for a second I feel like I might've said the wrong thing, which has never happened to me before around him.

"You thought wrong." He says. "I don't understand you at all."

"Do you really think-..." But before I can finish my question, Chenle leaves my room with big steps, without paying attention to my words.

"Chenle, wait-..." I run after him but before I can catch up, I hear the entrance door slamming and I know he's already gone.

I scream in frustration, as if it could bring him back. He won't come back, I know that for some reason. However, I can't help but be bothered by what has just happened between us because it felt unfair to me. He was unfair to me. He was supposed to support me in this, not tell me what I feel and what I don't.

And maybe there was something more than frustration, something that I didn't want to admit to myself, because I simply didn't want to feel like a bitch, something that made me fall on my knees and cry after my throat went dry from so much screaming. It felt like I'd lost Chenle. But it felt like I had lost a part of myself as well.

***

A few weeks have passed and to be honest, the one I've spent my time the most with has been Donghyuck. Jeno was busy with Yeji since they were (finally) officially dating, Renjun was traveling somewhere in Europe for a school exchange and there was no way I could talk to Chenle. I simply couldn't. Jaemin's mom invited me over for dinner tonight and I felt terrible that I had to decline. It wasn't that I didn't want to go, it was just that I couldn't bring myself to do it, I was feeling guilty for some reason.

That's why I asked Jaemin to meet me after classes today.

"I'm so sorry." I say, looking at the steaming hot chocolate in front of me.

"Don't worry about it." Jaemin smiles. "Mom will understand, that's literally the last thing you should be thinking about now."

I sigh and take a sip from my hot chocolate, hissing when it burns my tongue.

"Are you okay?" I hear Jaemin asking and I wave it off.

"It's just a burn, not even that bad." I mutter.

He chuckles with a spark of bitterness, only making my feeling of guilt grow.

"I wasn't talking about that." He smiles. "I was talking about how you feel."

I look at him, trying to ignore the pang in my chest and the constant feeling that I'm suffocating. I should be alright, I should be happy that I get to hang out with Jaemin. So why am I not?

"Jaemin, why... why did you say that I shouldn't be there for you?" I ask and his smile doesn't even fade.

"Because -..." He pauses and sighs, thinking.

"I... like you." I say out of the blue and I avoid my gaze, without necessarily waiting for a response. "Or at least, that's what... I think..."

I hear him sighing and I look at him once again.

"My mom used to tell me" he begins "that she fell in love with dad because he made her feel alive." He smiles and averts his gaze, looking out of the window of the café for a few seconds.

Then, he looks at me again.

"That's the definition that I've had about love my whole life... and I've started to believe in it more and more lately. But Aeri..."

He gives me one of his sweet smiles, but this time, it is filled with concern.

"...I don't think I'm the one who makes you feel alive."

And that was when I realized that truly, he was not. Because I wasn't sad that I'd been turned down.

I was thankful.

***

Today was the first day of judging for the writing contest and I was disappointed to see that none of the works that I've been given to judge was even close to my expectations. Renjun had warned me that none of the contestants would come close to my talent, but I laughed it off, asking him to stop with the sweet talk. My expectations weren't high, they were decent, but nothing seemed to get me interested. Nothing seemed to make me want to read further and so the whole time felt dull to me.

"I'm seriously going to hit you with a basketball if you keep zoning out any longer." I hear Hyuck saying and I sigh.

"Sorry, I was just... thinking." I say.

"Yeah, I know, the same way you have been doing for the past 16 days, 12 hours and... almost 37 minutes." He says checking his smartwatch.

I roll my eyes and sigh once again.

"I have to finish marking the essays for the writing contest by Thursday and I'm so not in the mood for that." I mutter closing my eyes in exhaustion.

I have been unable to write anything worth reading ever since I fought with Chenle and somehow, everything I've been doing ever since then feels wrong and incomplete. All I can do is focus on judging for the writing contest, even though I couldn't find a real motivation for that anymore either.

"Aeri?" I turn my head to my right and see miss Kang looking at me with her warm smile.

She was wearing a blue silk dress, her dark hair falling nicely in waves on her shoulders. Miss Kang was one of the nicest people I'd ever met and one of the only people ever who could understand my passion for writing. That was one of the reasons why I loved her.

"Oh, hello, miss!" I say standing up from my desk, slightly stumbling on my feet.

"Careful there." She chuckles. "Okay so I believe you're close to finishing your marking these days, but I wanted to show you this essay that came in my set. I'm not pressuring you or anything, I just you to mark this one too. I guess you'll figure out why I'm asking you to do this too. Is that alright with you?" She asks handing me a paper, probably a copy of the essay she has mentioned.

"Of course." I nod, taking the paper.

"That's great." She says smiling widely. "I'll see you later!"

She leaves the class as smoothly as she has entered and as soon as she does that, Donghyuck tries to snatch the paper from my hands.

"No way, nobody is reading these outside the judges, sweetie." I tell him and he rolls his eyes in annoyance.

"Fine, dumbass, as you say..."

The curiosity makes me unable to wait until I get home so after my English class, I take the paper from my backpack and unfold it, taking in the amount of words scribbled on the paper, with a handwriting that felt awfully familiar to me.

"If we run fast enough, maybe time won't be able to catch up with us..."

I lose myself in the words of the essay, being weirdly intrigued by every single line, unlike anything that I had read before while judging.

"...there are so many ways we can see the world and we don't even need to choose one, everyday is a new chance to rewrite it all from a new point of view. We can be whatever we want to be..."

It was speaking to me, weirdly, it felt like it was written for me, I could feel it on a different level and that was scaring me more than anything. Every word, every line, every feeling put on this paper, it all felt familiar. As if I've experienced it too.

"...but after all, we're just going on roller coaster rides, where lights blend and everything shines, where problems fade and we almost lose ourselves. That's alright- because even though the thrill will wash away her memory of me, her eyes will still sparkle. And that's enough, because like that, even time would stop to admire her beauty."

I stare at the piece of paper in my shaking hands, trying to run away from the realization that was becoming clearer and clearer in my head. The handwriting, the lines, the way all the words seemed to be made to be put together like that. It was perfect. But the essay was talking about so much imperfections that lives, our lives had in common. It was a twisted combination of feelings and memories and wild nights spent in funfairs and aquariums, in cafes and libraries, nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

I stand up, taking my back-pack and heading home. I had to finish marking essays and I had to do that now.

***

"Miss, I am sorry, but I can't grade this essay." I say showing miss Kang the paper she gave me a few days ago.

She smiles and not even the cold lights from the empty classroom we were in could take her warmth away.

"I won't ask why. I was actually more curious about your opinion on it, compared to the rest of the essays."

I look at her in exasperation, then at the damned piece of paper.

"It's good.... Actually, no, it's..." I sigh "It's more than good, it's amazing, it speaks so fluently and it shows so many feelings that the reader might even feel like part of it all, it takes you in, casting a spell on your mind and when you finish it, it spits you back to the reality and it just... breaks your heart..." I say, my voice cracking at the end, but miss Kang chooses to ignore it, nodding in agreement instead.

"I asked you to read this because the other judges and I have been thinking to give this essay the first place." She explains. "So what do you think?"

I feel tears stinging my eyes. Experiences that I have felt, things I have been through, put on paper, are getting the first place.

"I-I guess that's the best choice..."

"Aeri?"

I look at her and she smiles sadly.

"Do you know the other reason why I asked you to read this?" She asks softly and I shake my head. "It's because... I saw a small part of you in it, a tint of your writing style in it, a spark of your aura. Something... something that made me believe you'd connect with this better than anybody."

I turn my head away in order to wipe my tears away. The pain in my chest was almost suffocating and all I wanted to do was run home and cry my eyes dry under a blanket.

"I think I was right." She says and I sniff slightly, trying to ignore the effect that the essay has had over me.

And it wasn't just the essay. It was its owner as well.

I find myself walking towards the basketball pitch, hoping that I could find whoever I was looking for. If I was in love with Jaemin, my heart wouldn't hurt this much right now. If I had feelings for anybody else, I wouldn't feel like somebody ripped my chest open. How could I be wrong, how could I possibly be wrong, when I am so used to analyzing everybody around me and foresee all the possible cases? How could I lie to myself like this?

A basket ball rolls down to my feet and I pick it up, looking in front of me, only to be met with the sight of a mess of a fiery hair, staring back at me. I feel tears stinging my eyes and I step towards him, leaving only two steps between him and I. After inhaling deeply, I throw him the ball and he catches it perfectly, with his incontestable basketball skills. He dribbles it a few times and I could've sworn my heart was beating almost as loud as the thumps of the ball.

"Why did you write that?" I ask silently, trying to look into his eyes.

He wasn't confused. He knew all too well what I was talking about and that only made more tears gather behind my eyes. I knew I couldn't be wrong. Not this time. Not regarding this.

"I felt like it." He answers, shrugging and I feel like screaming, frustrated at the fact that he can control his emotions so well, unlike me.

"You felt like it? You f-felt like it, Chenle?" I let out a small whimper. "You wrote about all of that just because you felt like it?"

He shrugs and I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I was the wrong one and still I was the one asking for explanation from him when it should be the other way.

"I... Miss Kang asked me to read your essay because she thought it's the best one out of the whole competition. She asked me to grade it. I... I couldn't." I sigh. "Maybe I'm selfish to find myself in it so much but... I do? All the late night walks and evenings spent in fun fairs or reading comics on the floor of the library... we d-did that, didn't we? We did all of those, hell we did much more... w-why couldn't I understand earlier..."

"You confessed to Jaemin." He speaks and my eyes widen.

Of course Jaemin told him.

"There was... nothing to confess." I say softly. "I thought I had feelings for him, but... I guess you were right. It has never been him."

He looks at me and sighs, before diverting his gaze.

"Look, Aeri, it's really not my business, I shouldn't have said those things,but..." He sighs, shaking his head. "Thank you for reading my essay-..."

"Chenle!"

He looks at me, a little bit startled by my loud voice.

"A-All this time..." I start "it has been you." I sniff. "Not Jaemin, not Jem, not any other imaginary prince charming, not anybody else. It has always been just you. You... make me feel so happy and... and alive... I have always taken you for granted and realized how important you were to me just after you left... B-Because I'm freaking stupid a-and... all I know is to create scenarios in my head and drown in them until I can no longer tell what's fantasy and what's real."

He looks at me but I can't figure out his expression because of the amount of tears in my eyes.

"I am s-so sorry, Chenle." I try to say but my voice comes out as a whisper. “You have all t-the rights to hate m-me...”

"I wrote that because you inspire me to always do better and never give up on my dreams, you... you work so hard for yours and you..." he lets out a heavy breath. "You make me feel. Everything. I think... that's how I could write that essay, I was thinking about you the whole time. All the feelings that I put in it... you made me feel them. Aeri..."

I look at him, quickly wiping the tears that were rolling on my cheeks already.

"I'm in love with you."

I feel myself taking a deep breath and letting out the sobs that I have swallowed for so long. I feel two arms engulfing me into a warm hug and the familiar scent of soap and mint taking over my senses. I bury my head in Chenle's chest as he caresses my back gently as if I was a frightened cat. I wasn't far from being one though.

"Is it that bad?" He asks gently and I chuckle but it comes out more as a chocked sob and Chenle laughs.

Loud, bright, genuinely. Exactly how I love him.

"Okay gross, you're ruining his T-shirt, crybaby." I hear Hyuck saying behind me and my friends' laughter following after.

"You're next, fucker!" I say in a dry voice and Chenle laughs once again.

He was not perfect. He was far from being perfect. But somehow all the imperfections that were part of him made him be perfect in my eyes. He was more than what I deserved to get and I was more than thankful to the heavens for dragging him into my life. I had always tried to be perfect, to write, to act, to speak perfectly. But he has showed me that there's beauty in imperfection. There is perfection in imperfection.

And he is the living proof for that.

~The End~

A/N: It’s been SO long, I am so sorry! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this lil story. Thank you so much for reading it, it really means a lot to me!♥ I would like to write short stories like this one in the future as well, what would you guys want to read about?

hailene x

[supernovaescape]

Messy

word count: 1.915

pairing: 90s!damon ♥ reader 

warnings: a bit angsty, swearing 

●●●

Damon was a mess.

Eventually you’ve got used to it. It’s just Damon – a little weird, even cold. That big thing about him was making you sad, so you tried your best to, at least, not to think about it so much.

Graham introduced you to Damon when Blur left for a big tour the first time. You remembered Damon as charmingly exited and ready for people to finally hear him, with a terrible hairstyle that was fashionable, but looked awful on every person. Even on him. Even on Damon, who always looked so beautiful, like a ray of sunshine fallen from the sky. 

At first you and him became a really good friends – it’s even pissed Graham a bit. Damon was a couple years older, but he liked the same music as you, the same books, you shared similar opinions and sometimes, in a big argument with Graham, Alex and Dave, you and Damon just stared at each other not saying a word, but talking about the same thing. You fell for him in a first week.

But now – a year and a half later – you became tired of loving him. It was hard, you can name a fuck ton of reasons why. And the most noticeable from them all – the fact that after you just became a really good friends Damon started to be messier and messier, so you couldn’t figure him out anymore. You, him, Graham, Alex and Dave were still friends, and you get together every now and then, but it’s not that special anymore.

“Are you okay?”, Graham asked and you slightly frowned. You already forgot what you’ve been talking about.

“No…”, you answered honestly. Alex and Graham looked at each other knowingly.

You reached for your glass but it was empty long ago, even ice already almost melted. You stood up.

“I’m gonna go get myself a drink!”, you said loudly, trying to speak through music.

The bar was not in the noisiest part of the club, so you could finally hear your thoughts. Although, maybe it was not a good thing. You sat down on a high stool, a little awkwardly, and it almost fell. Your cheeks instantly turned red, so you hurried to get a drink to hide your awkwardness.

On another side of the bar you saw Damon. He was staring at you and seemed surprised. He fucking saw it! Now he’s gonna hate you even more, if it’s possible. You took a deep breath, holding an eye contact. You wanted to turn away, run into bathroom and cry about how miserable you were. Damon’s eyes were almost black in the poor club lighting. Bartender put a glass in front of you, you smiled and said thank you, finally losing an intense eye contact. Heart was beating like a mouse’s, suddenly music became annoying and you felt bad, thinking about how Damon is just sitting here with strangers, instead of spending time with boys and you.

“Hey.”, suddenly you heard Damon’s voice and it scared you to death.

“Oh! Fuck…”, you certainly looked surprised and just a thought about how it all looking from the side made you chuckle.

“Did I scare you? Shit, I’m sorry.”, Damon smiled. You finally looked at him and instantly felt like you both travelled in time two years back. But Damon’s haircut was better. He was smiling at you, not knowing what to say. He scratched the back of his head, smiled again and opened his mouth to say something, but immediately closed it. You looked at each other for just a couple of moments, but it lasted forever, cornering you. Half of Damon’s face, illuminated by the light from a dancefloor, was turquoise, the shadow of an eyelashes fell on his cheek.

“Are you okay?”, he asked, meaning something else.

“Why everyone keeps asking me that?”

“You look kind of sad.”, Damon said and you were sure that you can punch him in the face right now.

“I called you, you know?”

“Are you?”, he asked calmly, not surprised at all.

“Uh-huh. Multiple times. From the last September I called you thousand times. We met almost every week, but you just stopped talking to me or was cold. Thank God I’m drinking tonight and I found you, because in the other way, it all could last forever!”, you finally stopped talking, finding, that you’ve been pretty loud.

“It wouldn’t last forever.”, Damon said confidently. He seemed serious.

“Our friendship? Of course.”, you said sarcastically and Damon frowned, annoyed. He placed his hand on top of yours and moved closer to your face.

“Let’s go get fresh air.”, he said and held your wrist tight as you walked through the club. Closer to the exit it became less and less crowded, now there was only a few people and they no longer danced. At the door, Damon took out a pack of cigarettes and kept one in his lips, not lighting. He handed the pack to you, but you shook your head.

Outside the club still was a queue and a little crowd. Now any place was too crowded for you two. You were not in tune for a big argument, especially not with Damon. He took you by the hand and you both ran across the road. But now he has intertwined your fingers. Something fell in your stomach and you looked at your palms almost frightened. Only feeling of his hand in yours made your knees weak. 

He held the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and took his jacket off.

“Don’t.”, you said and he stopped for a moment, looking at you.

“No, take it.”, he placed his white Harrington jacket on your shoulders and stayed only in his blue shirt. He lighted his cigarette and, once again, handed it to you. You shook your head, feeling that you might fall right now.

“It’s cold, you better take it back.”, you said.

“And what? Leave you freezing?”, he asked as if the obvious answer was “no”. His voice sounded tiredly. London wasn’t feeling like home – cold wind whistled, hooking you with claws and rattling Damon's hair. You can still hear music from the club.

You skipped your classes one day because it was one of those days when everything goes wrong. Graham allowed you to come to the studio and Damon, as soon as he saw you, said:

“Come here, love.”, and hurried to hug you.

Damon’s jacket smelled like Damon, you didn’t know you missed that smell so much - cigarettes, his sweet perfume and home. Damon smelled like home and in his big jacket even an cold London seemed warmer.

“I know that you called.”, Damon said, “I’ve listened to your messages.”

“Obviously, yes. I’ve left a bunch.”, you said, starting to get angry.

“Y/N… Listen, I’m sorry.”, he said. A cigarette in his mouth almost went out.

“For what exactly are you sorry? What is this conversation?”, you asked loudly. Or is he think that he can act like a dick with a person, and when he gets tired of that, he can just become nice?

“I tried to play it cool, but I’m a mess. "Cool" it's a very relative thing anyway.”

He lighted another cigarette, looking like a little shy boy in front of you. Then suddenly he looked up, at the club and at you, placing his hand on the small of your back and leading you further away from the club.

“You know…”,  he started, but you interrupted him, feeling that you’re the only person here who can talk in proper sentences:

“All I know is that hearing you speaking to me is unusual. I have no idea what you’re trying to do here…”, you showed him a dark, silent street you were where, “Are you trying to kill me or justify yourself for being a cunt? And I remember that you’re still a star, blah-blah-blah, but I feel like I’m even worse than nothing for you.”

“I don’t know what you remember. I remember not sleeping the whole night watching old VHSs and how you fell asleep on my shoulder. And your birthday when I went to buy you flowers, but I didn’t know which one do you like so I bought a big stupid bouquet of every one. And how I wrote a song about you…”

“What you want to get? A «thank you»?”

“Also I remember when you cried after a fan being rude to you and it was enough to break my heart, and how…”

“I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“I thought that you can leave so easily and it’s better for me to pretend that I’m absolutely coldhearted. Because I remember how you were mad on Graham after a fight and how you didn’t come to hang out with us… with me.”

“You were dating someone!”

“Oi! And so are you!”

“Oh, please Damon…”

“Mine wasn’t that serious.”

“I’m not nearly as beautiful as all the girls you’ve been with. Yes, and what if it...”, you pointed at him and then at yourself, “...wasn’t that serious too?”

“No, Y/N…”, he said quietly, shaking his head.

He took a step towards you, so that you could feel his breath on your face. He smirked and pressed his lips to yours. You sighed into his open mouth. He held your face in his hands, just where he needed, pulling you closer. Damon tasted like cigarettes and something sweet like a cherry gum. His smell has now become even stronger and you could not stop kissing him, becoming rougher, holding tight by his shirt collar. It was better than you imagined, much better than when you thought about his lips over yours when you touched yourself. You wanted to feel him against you, and you moaned loudly in his mouth when he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you closer, biting your lower lip harshly. You hissed.

“Sorry.”, Damon smiled cheekily. He put both hands under his jacket and on your bum. But after a moment, they were on your back again, and then he ran them in your hair, not really sure which part of you he adores more. He moaned your name and you felt how hot his skin was. You wanted to feel more.

You pulled away for a second, looking at his swollen lips. His eyes darkened again, as they were at the bar. To your delight, he pressed his lips to your neck and you ran your fingers through his hair, pulling them, feeling how Damon left a hickey on your neck and a biting mark on your collarbone.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.”, he said into your lips.

“I’ve almost fell from that chair.”, you said and quickly kissed him on the cheek, because you always wanted. He held you tight.

“Well...”, he laughed, “At least it made me sort of less scared.”

“How’s that?”, you asked, trying to kiss him again, but he pulled back and carefully looked into your eyes, then lowering his head to your neck and biting just below the ear, so you moaned and laughed.

“I don’t know.”, he said low, “It’s just made you more human. I started to forget that you’re a human too.” 

Damon smiled into your lips and kissed you slowly, tenderly, just moving his lips on yours. 

“You’re heavenly.”, he said, pressing his forehead against yours and just staying there for a moment. 

[i-larb-you]

Behind the Glass Wall

I got inspired when I went to the Marvel exhibit at the Franklin Institute and this is what happened.

You can also read this on AO3 here.

***

I’m fine, Peter says.

“I’m fine,” he tells May.

“I’m fine,” he assures Pepper.

“I’m fine,” he says to Happy.

“I’m… getting better,” he answers when Morgan asks. He can never lie to her.

But his tongue has become so accustomed to the words they fall right off before he can think about it. They are stale, tasteless in his mouth. They make him want to claw his heart out from behind his ribcage and place it behind a wall of glass instead.

There are times he’s not lying. He’ll read Morgan a bedtime story with stupid voices that make her giggle during his visits to the lake house. He teases May when her cooking comes out less than stellar and offers to run to Mr. Delmar���s new bodega. He laughs so hard he spits out his chocolate milk at lunch with Ned and MJ. There are times he thinks that maybe things will be okay, that maybe he really is getting better.

And then he’ll see the street art, the graffiti, the many thousands of drawings and paintings still proudly displayed in homage to the man who saved the universe, and the façade he’s built will come crashing down yet again.

Everyone at Midtown thinks he’s doing it for attention. They don’t say anything, but he knows they do. Or they would if half of them hadn’t also spontaneously stopped existing. That’s what most people his age lie about now. They pretend it doesn’t bother them that they lost five years of their lives or that they’re suddenly older than their siblings. Peter always thought Class of 2019 sounded ridiculous, but Class of 2025? It makes his brain hurt in more ways than one.

School itself has just become so monotonous for Peter. Sit in an uncomfortable chair, listen to an underpaid and overworked teacher drone on about a concept they know the students won’t care about but they’re required to teach, eat bland cafeteria food and endure a whole hour of kids yelling back and forth across the tables. Not to mention the constant threat of a sensory overload every goddamn day. If his senses were dialed to an eleven before, they’re at a twenty, minimum. And that’s on a good day.

Add in the worst nightmares he’s ever had in his life, and yeah, Peter’s doing just fine.

You have to be fine, his brain says. Other people have it so much worse than you. Just be like everyone else for once and suck it up.

“Peter?”

Pepper’s voice jolts him out of his thoughts and his head shoots up, eyes wide. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, and only when he sees the faded old couch, the wooden staircase leading upstairs, the faint outline of Gerald behind the shades in the window, does he let himself relax. He’s not anywhere he shouldn’t be. He’s safe. He’s home.

After a second, he realizes that Pepper’s looking at him.

“Y-Yeah, sorry, I kind of zoned out a little,” he says, trying for casual and ending up with a notch below slightly suspicious. “What’s up?”

Pepper raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment on it. “Morgan’s waiting for you outside.”

Shit.

Peter shoots to his feet and he’s out the door before Pepper can even finish, calling over his shoulder, “Thanks for reminding me!”

It’s a warm day, rare for this time of the year. The trees surrounding the house are all green, but across the way, the leaves look like a rippling fire every time the wind blows. Pretty soon the birds will be giving one final symphony before heading south and according to Morgan, the whole lake will freeze solid, just as it has every year she’s been alive.

As he steps off the porch and walks down to the lake, he can’t stop replaying the conversation in his head, second-guessing everything from his words to his tone of voice. Could she tell? Did she hear how his voice trembled, how it was just a little too high?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, his brain screams. You call that being fine?

He finds Morgan at the edge of the dock, waiting patiently just like her mother instructed. Where most kids probably would have jumped into the water already, Morgan just isn’t capable of not following directions. Of course, she has her moments like every young kid does, but when it comes to safety, like staying on the dock until an adult (or Peter) is there to watch her swim, she does exactly what she’s told.

She definitely did not inherit that from her father.

“Hi, Petey!” she calls with a wave. He’s been at the lake house for almost two days and Morgan still greets him with the same enthusiasm that she did when he first arrived.

“Sorry it took me so long, Mo,” Peter says, brushing some hair out of his face. “You can head in now.”

Squealing with delight, Morgan skips across the length of the dock, grabs Peter’s hand, and drags him to the little beach off to the side. Peter leans against the edge of the boat and watches as she splashes and dives and makes waves that travel all the way out to the middle of the lake. The water has to be cold, but Morgan doesn’t seem to mind.

She’s going to grow up without a father.

The thought comes unbidden to his mind and Peter almost visibly recoils.

She’ll find out someday, his brain whispers, and if a brain could sneer, his would be. One day Morgan will know that Mr. Stark chose you over her and then she’ll hate you, just like everyone else.

Peter’s stomach does flips. He covers his face with his hands and counts to ten, twenty, thirty, to calm himself down, to make the voice go away. When he lifts his head, Morgan is looking back at him, her big brown Bambi eyes full of concern.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I’m fine, he starts to say, but the flat taste of the words makes him stop. He can’t lie to Morgan. Instead, he says, “I’m… getting better.”

Morgan apparently deems that an acceptable answer and returns to her imaginary battle against the monster she insists lives at the bottom of the lake.

Maybe Morgan won’t grow up with her dad around, but she has Pepper. She has Pepper and Colonel Rhodes and the blue chick from space and Hawkeye’s kids and Peter. God, if there’s one thing Peter will absolutely make sure of, it’s that he’ll be there for Morgan Stark. Not just because he knows it’s what Mr. Stark would have wanted, not just because of the guilt that eats away at him every time he looks at her, but because he’s the best big brother in the world to the best little sister in the world and that’s his job.

Still, for the rest of the weekend, Peter can’t quite meet Morgan’s eyes.

***

After the relative peace and tranquility of the lake house, going back to school on Monday is a shock to Peter’s system. Voices bounce off the walls, carrying down the halls from teachers in classrooms on the second floor and students yelling in the cafeteria and two kids getting high in the bathroom down in the Math wing. Bodies he does not know touch him, invading more of his space with each step he takes. Peter winces as locker doors slam shut and books scrape against the metal shelves inside.

Quit complaining, you big baby, his brain says. You’ve literally been to space. You can handle a little noise for one day.

His skin burns under the collar of his shirt and the tops of his sneakers dig into his Achilles tendons like a knife waiting to carve him open, but he agrees with the voice for once. He went to outer space. He can deal.

The day crawls by. One class after another, lectures upon lectures upon lectures. Peter’s all but dragging his feet by the time eighth block rolls around. He settles into his seat at the back of his last class and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, holding back a yawn. He’s so tired he can hardly remember which subject he has right now—a particularly bad nightmare had him up and awake well before dawn—but he’s in the right room so he doesn’t care.

Peter puts his head on the desk as other students trickle in. MJ sits down next to him and gives him a nod of acknowledgment before burying her nose in her book again. Peter doesn’t pay attention to anything other than keeping his eyes open and not giving his teacher a reason to write him up.

When the bell rings, Mr. Ryan lifts his hand up to get everyone’s attention.

“I’m gonna be honest with you guys,” he says, “I feel like crap but we’re short on subs, so I have to be in today. I really don’t feel like teaching so we’re just going to watch a movie that only kind of has something to do with history and pretend we learned something new today. Sound good?”

Everyone agrees wholeheartedly.

Mr. Ryan has Jen in the front row help him set up the computer and projector while the class whispers amongst themselves. Peter hears all about what Owen and Kirby did over the weekend and how stressed Tabatha is for Dr. J’s Chemistry test on Thursday and where Althea got her Homecoming dress, which is apparently a gorgeous sea green. Their words roll in one ear, out the other.

Someone turns off the lights. Despite his best efforts, Peter’s eyelids droop dangerously low. He struggles to lift them, but it’s a losing battle.

He falls asleep.

For a while, it’s all just black. No dreams, no nightmares. Only that weird in-between stage where he knows he’s asleep and he’s just waiting to fall deeper into the pull of unconsciousness.

Then he finds himself in the ruins of the Avengers compound upstate, surrounded by fires and debris, but everything is quiet. There are no gunshots or screams. The whole place seems deserted apart from him, no one fighting for their lives or for control of the gauntlet.

Peter glances around in confusion. He knows he’s dreaming. He’s had nightmares that have started out eerily similar before. There has to be a reason his subconscious is making him come back here.

He finds his reason in the form of a small gathering of people, just past where the swimming pool used to be. Peter doesn’t want to go toward them, but he feels himself being tugged forward, like an invisible hand with a string wrapped around his torso. It pulls and pulls until he’s right next to them and he sees the scene that’s been burned into his memory—Mr. Stark, right side blackened and scarred beyond recognition, slumped against a pile of rubble; Colonel Rhodes standing a few feet away, tears painting his dusty cheeks; Pepper kneeling in front of her husband, her hand on the arc reactor, assuring him that it’s okay, they’ll be okay.

Peter wants to curl into a ball and never come back out.

But this time there’s someone new. A tiny someone, whose small body had initially been hidden behind her mother’s.

“Morgan,” Peter breathes.

But when she turns to look at him, it’s not with concern or compassion. She no longer looks young and innocent, carefree, with just a hint of baby fat still on her angelic face. She’s much older, older than Peter, even. Her eyes are full of broken promises and disappointments and so much more that Peter had hoped she would never have to experience. In her features is an anger, a loathing that makes Peter flinch.

“You stole him,” she hisses, accusatory and hostile. “You took him from me. It’s all your fault.”

Peter opens his mouth, though he’s not sure what he could even say to that, but the words won’t form on his tongue.

“You’re the reason Dad’s dead,” says Morgan, and she’s right. She’s right, she’s right, she’s right. It’s all his fault, all his fault. “That’s his legacy, Peter. Not me, not Mom. You killing him.” Then she drives the final nail into the coffin: “I hate you.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

His heart shatters into a million tiny pieces and Peter just wants to sweep them up and put them behind that wall of glass. He moves toward her, raises a hand to cup her face like he does now when she’s scared of the monster under her bed, but a different hand latches onto his wrist. Peter looks down to see Mr. Stark clutching onto him, gripping him so tightly it hurts. His expression is dead, which is even worse than any emotion it could hold.

“Why?” is all he asks before he goes limp again, his fingers still curled around Peter’s wrist.

“I’m sorry!” Peter screams. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark! Morgan, I-I’m so sorry!”

“Peter?” someone calls from a thousand miles away.

Peter just shakes his head, trying and failing not to collapse in on himself with a sob. Tears drip off his eyelashes as he screws his eyes shut. He can’t look at them, can’t face them again knowing what he’s done.

That someone’s voice is a lot closer this time as they shout, “Peter!”

His head shoots up from the desk, eyes wide open and brimming with tears. Heart racing, the words fall from his lips like a stone in the open air with no end in sight. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Arms circle around him and just hold him, rocking back and forth. There’s a voice in his ear shushing him. Not trying to quiet him, trying to calm him. His chest heaves as another sob rips from his throat.

Peter glances up for a moment and he freezes all of a sudden. Just like that, his apologies die in his throat that’s already closing up and the crying stops and he just stares in horror at the SMART board.

“Tell him about the dance-off to save the universe.”

“Like in Footloose, the movie?”

“Exactly like Footloose! Is it still the greatest movie in history?”

“It never was.”

Kevin Bacon grins at whatshername and Peter’s chest constricts and he can’t breathe. He’s falling apart again, being torn away piece by piece, inch by inch, until all that’s left is dust, dust, dust. Quill’s voice rings in his ears, his quiet “Oh, man,” bouncing through his head until it’s the only thing occupying any space up there.

Peter pushes at the arms and they retract. He needs air, he needs space. Not that kind of space. The space where he can actually breathe and his heart isn’t a jackhammer in his chest. His eyes dart around the room, brain working on overdrive to find the fastest exit.

Front door—too far away, too many bodies to pass through.

Back door—blocked by desks and a panic-stricken Mr. Ryan.

One option left.

Peter doesn’t even think as he jams his backpack onto his shoulders, shoves open the window, and kicks. Shouts ring out behind him. His foot connects with the screen in a solid hit and it pops right off. He stands up on his chair and scrambles over the counter and out the window, dropping the ten or so feet to the ground below. As soon as his feet hit the grass, he takes off running, sprinting across the lawn and the football field and down the street, as if he can escape from his memories and the mountain of guilt inside him that way.

***

Hardly a month after the battle at the compound, after the snaps that brought everyone back and saved the universe, an anonymous group of New Yorkers erected an Iron Man statue outside of Central Park, the first of many throughout the city. It stood tall and proud, a reminder of the man himself, of the confident and suave hero the whole world loved and mourned.

Peter always tries to avoid it if he can. For one thing, looking at it only deepens the wound in his heart and widens the hole in his life. For another, it just bothers him. He knows the real Iron Man, the real Tony Stark, and he knows that the whole ‘confident billionaire’ act is just that—an act. He learned firsthand that Mr. Stark wasn’t this unshakable wall of a man with no fear that the public and the tabloids made him out to be. Mr. Stark had lots of fears. Some he shared. Some he didn’t. But he taught Peter, in words and actions, that there was nothing wrong with that. That even superheroes could be afraid.

As he stands in front of the statue now, hood up to block the light rain that’s begun to fall, Peter doesn’t feel much like a superhero. He feels small, weak. Like the sixteen-year-old kid he is.

Everyone has a lot of questions about the future. Who’s going to take over the job the Avengers left behind and defend the Earth from new threats? Who’s going to step up and lead the new generation of heroes now that the old is gone?

Who will be the next Iron Man?

They ask him this, as Spider-Man. Ask if he will be able to fill Tony Stark’s impossibly large shoes. If he is going to be the next Iron Man.

He stares up into the stone face standing guard over Central Park. As much as Peter loves Iron Man and the man behind the mask, he doesn’t want to be Iron Man. Doesn’t want that responsibility. He wants to be Spider-Man, the one and only.

You can’t always get what you want, his brain hisses.

Peter’s shoulders are hunched over, weighed down by the burden the rest of the world has placed on them. Even if he hadn’t been the one to kill Tony Stark, he knows he is, to some extent, part of Mr. Stark’s legacy. Not as much as Morgan, obviously. But enough to be significant. Enough to be a possible footnote in the biography of Mr. Stark’s life.

Enough that it’s too much.

Too much expectation and too much pressure and too much for an anxiety-ridden, nightmare-prone sixteen-year-old kid to handle.

What’s so special about you anyway? asks his brain. You’re nothing. You’re just a stupid kid with the shittiest luck in the entire world.

Peter turns away from the memorial and walks down Fifth Avenue, ignoring the weight of his phone in the pocket of his hoodie. He turned it off after he finally calmed down from his nightmare-slash-panic-attack, when the incessant vibrating got on his last nerve. May’s smiling face and Ned’s ridiculous picture just embarrassed him even more than his little episode.

Rain falls harder on his hood. He should head home, he knows that. At the very least he should call May and tell her where he is, how long he’ll be out, but he can’t bring himself to talk to anyone right now. He doesn’t think he has the capacity for words, let alone the energy.

You’re pathetic, his brain screams, and Peter can’t really argue with that.

***

All told, there is no punishment. He explains to May, in as little words and details as possible, what happened at school, and she just nods, giving him that sympathetic smile he’s come to hate. There’s nothing wrong with him. At least nothing he can’t handle on his own. He’s not some stupid, helpless little kid anymore.

Except you are, his brain reminds him.

The rest of the week passes without incident, though not without its annoyances. Ned walks on eggshells around him. MJ keeps an eye on him from a distance, like she always does. No one in his History class can pay attention on Tuesday because they’re all too busy watching him, waiting to see if he’ll have another freak-out. Mr. Ryan comes up to him after class that day and asks, albeit a bit awkwardly, how he’s doing, if there’s anything he can do to help Peter.

Peter looks at Mr. Ryan with dead eyes and a dead expression to hide his very not dead heart and gives him his classic line: “I’m fine.”

When the weekend arrives, Peter feels the tension ease from his shoulders the closer he gets to the lake house. He’s come to relish these trips, to appreciate every minute of quiet he has with Pepper and Morgan. In the back of his mind, he wonders how much longer he can hide the bright red label of blame he’s put on himself, how much longer he has until they agree with his brain and cast him out of their lives for good. But when Morgan runs up to him and smashes into him with the biggest hug she can muster, and when Pepper sits with him late at night after another nightmare and regales him with stories about some of the dumb stuff Mr. Stark did when he was younger, Peter manages to push his worries aside for a little bit longer and just enjoy the moment.

Peter lets out a sudden oof as Morgan lands on top of him on the couch.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asks, all smiles and curiosity.

“Nothin’ much, little munch,” Peter replies, matching her casual tone.

Morgan giggles at the nickname and lays down on Peter’s stomach, face pointed toward the ceiling. One of Peter’s arms comes to rest across her tiny body. Morgan takes his hand in her own and plays with his fingers, making them dance to a beat in her head. They’re quiet for a while. Listening to each other’s breathing.

Then, in her small, innocent voice, she breaks the silence. “Mommy said you made Miss May scared the other day.”

“She did?” Peter’s brows furrow.

Morgan nods and Peter can feel her head move against his chest, feel her hair scratch at his neck.

“What else did she say?” he asks.

“That I should give you lots and lots and lots of hugs when you come to visit,” she says, and as she does she flips herself over so that their stomachs are flush and their noses are inches apart. Morgan tries her best to put her arms around his body. They don’t quite make it past the point where his skin meets the leather of the couch, but it’s the thought that counts. She rests her head on his chest. “Daddy always says I give the bestest hugs.”

Peter can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him, and he wraps his own arms around her in return. “Well, he’s right, Mo. You definitely give the bestest hugs.”

After another small stretch of silence, Morgan tells him, very matter-of-factly, “You’re my favorite big brother.”

“I’m your only big brother,” Peter reminds her.

“That’s why you’re my favorite, though,” she says. She lifts her head to look at him and her voice drops to a fake whisper. “But don’t tell anyone else.”

Peter laughs again. “I won’t, I promise.”

“Guess what?” she says, still in that theater whisper. “I love you 3000.”

Morgan settles her head back on his chest and Peter watches as it rises and falls with his breaths. Something in his heart bursts open, breaking down the glass wall he’d tried to hide it behind, filling him with so much love and awe for this tiny person on top of him, who trusts him and loves him in return, even despite the flaws his brain constantly reminds him of.

“I love you, too, Morgan,” he responds, and he means it with every fiber of his being.

“Are you all better now?” she asks quietly.

Peter pauses for a moment, weighing the question in his head.

“No,” he answers truthfully. “But I think I will be. Eventually.”

And for the first time in a long time, he really believes it.

[purplepersnicketywrites]

Kiribaku + Coffee Shop AU!!!

there are So Many things you can do with a Coffee Shop AU. the universe is vast, infinite, brimming with potentialahem

so, i’ve technically sort of done a coffeeshop au before (Everybody Knows That Cats Are Independent), though the coffee shop isn’t totally totally focused on all that much, haha. and there’s the daemons thing.

SO FOR THIS

a less oft seen version is Coffee Shop Coworke- NO NO WAIT

COFFEE SHOP RIVALS

they work…. for different Coffee Shops. on the same road in a busy shopping district, just on opposite sides (i’ve seen this in real life with a couple of ice-cream parlours. can’t help but think what kind of WAR that is)

*cracks knuckles* y’all want coffee puns???

Kirishima works at Fourth Grind

and i’m bringing it back because it made me ugly-laugh when i came up with it:

Bakugou works at Best Beanist

so i figure there’s probably like, some of the class working at one, some at the other. for maximum chaos it’s not all bakusquad at one and dekusquad at another. probably some of the class as customers from other local shops who’re there for the Drama to be Regulars at different places. class B? ehhhhhhhhhhh maybe. okay let’s see:

Fourth Grind crew:

Kirishima

Mina

Kaminari

Deku

Iida

Regulars:

Jirou

Aoyama

Satou

Ojirou

Hagakure

Best Beanist crew:

Bakugou

Asui

Uraraka

Sero

Todoroki

Regulars:

Shouji

Tokoyami

Yaoyorozu

Kouda

Anyway yeah, they’re RIVAL SHOPS

So what happens is, Kiri and Baku are really into the rivalry, and no one else is that invested but they let them do their thing. They yell at each other across the street as they’re opening up.

Baku: EAT SHIT, FOURTH GRIND EXTRASKiri: SORRY, WE DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR BEAN STORAGE

and so it goes.

They start seeing each other in The Wild. Bakugou nearly walks into Kirishima in their local supermarket and they stare at each other with the kill bill sirens going off in their heads, but they don’t want to make a Big Scene in the supermarket by like, brawling or something.

Bakugou accuses Kirishima of having poor taste in coffee. Kirishima says that the taste doesn’t matter as long as it’s quick to make and can buy him extra time. They seethe.

And they keep running into each other, getting into petty squabbles, and going back to their coworkers to Complain. Everyone else is like ‘good, keep your arguments out of work hours’.

The thing is, the further they stray from Coffee Opinions, the more they seem to actually agree on? It’s like they have similar interests or something. How deplorable.

They’re sniping at each other at the supermarket again when some other guy comes up and starts a different argument with Bakugou - probably a rude customer from the coffee shop - and the thing is that Kiri and Baku have the same opinion on that, and they argue from the same side for once and crush the guy.

He leaves, defeated. Kiri and Baku nod at each other and continue doing their own things, minus the sniping.

Now, meanwhile, all the other Fourth Grind and Best Beanist employees? They’re friends. They hang out together. They all earn minimum wae doing basically the same job and they’re gonna have a party to try and get everyone to de-stress a little.

Baku: ew socialising? with the ENEMY?Uraraka: the company is our enemy, BakugouSero: yeah! rail against the corporate scumbags! not the other beleagured workers like usBaku: i can do bothTodo: are you afraid of a party?Baku: wtF NO i just hate partiesTsu: there will be free foodBaku: …I’m in

Kiri: hey i need to find the Worst Possible Outfit, MinaMina, over the phone: this is to annoy Bakugou, isn’t it?Kiri: i’ve never PLANNED to be in the same place as him before. i gotta go all in. it’s gotta be memorable. which pair of crocs should i use?Mina: just ask him out alreadyKiri, spluttering: WHAT NO I DON’t- WHAT- I- NO MINAMina, sighing: i’ll be there in five

So the party is happening. everyone’s chilling. there are some other people some of the workers have invited, it’s a relaxed atmosphere.Bakugou and Kirishima are staring daggers at each other from across the room

Baku, internally: WHAT IS HE WEARING WHAT THE FUCKKiri, internally: Mina is a LIAR I do NOT have a crush on him,,, that’s ridiculous we are EnemiesBaku, marching up to Kiri: ARE THOSE FUCKING CROCS?Kiri, noticing suddenly that Baku is wearing Relatively Nice Party Clothes instead of work uniform or random casual clothes: forgets words for five whole secondsBaku: OI ARE YOU DEAFKiri: NO I’M GAY

Kiri’s panicking internally. Why is Mina always right? But Bakugou just loses it laughing. Kiri is… extremely mega triple gay.

Baku, still amused: well i guess that explains your whole outfitKiri: thanks, i put it together for youKiri, internally: i did not authorise that sentenceBaku: fuckin hell, you want me to tear my eyes out?Kiri: that was the aim, yep.

They actually manage to hold a pretty civil conversation after that. Kiri might have been flirting a little (by accident) but he kept it subtle.

After the party, he goes into Full Gay Crisis Mode and complains to Mina at work. She consoles him. And rolls her eyes.

Kiri: what do I do? ? ? we’re COMPETITORSMina: i can ask Tsu for his numberKiri: why does your girlfriend know Bakugou’s numberMina: Mina: Asui TsuyuKiri: …FROM BEANIST?Mina: WHY DON’T YOU KNOW THIS? Kami: why doesn’t he know what?Mina: that i’m dating a Beanist, apparentlyKami: oh lmaoKiri: IT NEVER CAME UPKami: why forKiri: none of your-Mina: he likes BakugouKami: huhDeku: who likes him?Kami: Kirishima, apparentlyMina: it’s trueKiri: unfortunately…..Deku: you like….. Kacchan. Blond Kacchan. Angry Kacchan. Kiri: yes and it sucksIida: WH Y ARE YOU ALL IN THE BACK IT’S NOT BREAK TIME???

Kiri goes through like, three crises after learning that Mina's girlfriend is from the Other Coffee Shop. he declines asking her for Baku's number, and says he'd prefer to get it himself

things continue on mostly like before except now when Kiri and Baku see each other and find something to argue about, it's no longer as hostile. they're just bickering because they enjoy bickering, and Kiri keeps flirting with Baku (mostly by accident at first)

the problem is - he can't get a read on the other guy. is he reciprocating? is he oblivious? is he ignoring it?

meanwhile Bakugou goes home every time they meet and frantically googles stuff like'i hate this guy but i don't want to punch him any more''what does it mean when you want to see someone so you can fight with them when you don't actually want to fight with them''is seeing a colour and being reminded of someone psychic warfare''what stage of anger affects the heart and stomach''why am i happy to see my arch enemy'

Google: i diagnose you with Crush

Bakugou is Furious that google could come to such a conclusion. So furious, in fact, that he rants about it to his coworkers, who all sort of look at each other with resigned expressions.

Uraraka, Todoroki, Tsu and Sero: ...you have a crush on Kirishima?Baku: NO I JUST SAID THAT I DON'T AND GOOGLE IS WRONG(Tsu, texting Mina: Bakugou has a crush on KirishimaMina: oh sweet)Ura: it's okay to have feelings, BakugouBaku: SHUT UP I DON'T HAVE ANYTodo: i find that hard to believe.Baku: YOU DON'T HAVE FEELINGS YOU REPRESSED BASTARDSero: oh so you're not repressed, Bakugou?Baku: OF FUCKING COURSE NOTSero: so you DO have feelingsBaku: FUCKTsu: alright Bakugou, you don't have a crush on Kirishima.Baku: ExactlyTsu: but you do look forwards to seeing him and spending time with himBaku: ...Tsu: you think about him in a variety of unrelated situationsBaku: ..I...Tsu: and your stomach goes fluttery when you doBaku: .........fuck

So Baku has his own Gay Crisis to work through.

The next time they see each other in the wild, Bakugou's like: okay. act normal.

Baku: HEY KIRISHIMAKiri: BakugouBaku: ....Kiri: ....Baku: ....Kiri: uh what's up?Baku: NOTHING I HAVE TO GOKiri: ...???Baku, internally: nailed itBaku, internally: wait no i didn't wtf happenedBaku, internally: I HAVEN'T MOVEDKiri: dude are you okayBaku: i'm fine.Kiri: ... are you?? leaving?????Baku: i changed my mindKiri: oh okay.Baku: ...Kiri: ...Mina and Tsu, who happened to be on a date, saw Bakugou stomping up to Kirishima and decided to watch from a bush Mina pulled them into: wow they're bad at this

It’s the most awkward interaction they’ve ever had, because both parties know about their own feelings and they’re trying to work out what the other thinks and they’re just. Staring at each other.

Bakugou decides to bite the bullet.

Baku: KIRISHIMAKiri: ah! dude, i'm right hereBaku: date meKiri: whatMina and Tsu: !!! oh he just went for it okayBaku: Date. Me.Kiri: what. I mean, YES but? ? what? ???? ?

They exchange numbers and just sort of... grin at each other for a few more minutes. Idiot boys. Then they part ways and start textin each other and arrange a date.

It goes really well. They actually do get on when they’re not trying to find things to pick at each other about. And Kiri is definitely flirting and Baku is flirting back and it’s just an all-around success. Baku walks Kiri home and they smooch outside his door.

They show up to work the day after the date both of them are like 'hhhhhh' the whole time because the date was so fun and they’re both still pretty giddy about it.

Bakugou is noticeably less crabby and actually tells Uraraka she's doing a good job at one point

Ura, crying slightly out of fear of the unknown: who ARE youTsu: Kirishima's boyfriendBaku: not yetSero: but soon?Baku: fuck yeahTodo: so you DO have a crush on him.

meanwhile Kirishima is sparkling all over Fourth Grind. like, beaming. radiant. clearly head-over-heels.

Kami: what happened?Mina: Bakugou asked him out and they went on a dateDeku: sorry did- did you say Kacchan asked him? not the other way around?Mina: yeah i was there it was hilariousIida: please,,, please wait until your breaks to discuss these things i can't hold the line all by myself

and the rest is just mushy happily-ever-after stuff. they bicker about their tastes in coffee, of course, but the rivalry has turned into Competitive Flirting and now they yell sappy things and stupid pick-up lines at each other when they’re opening up instead of insults

[loopy777]

So you read mha? Whats your overall thoughts on it?

Well, to clarify, I watch it on Toonami. I think that’s the anime equivalent of “filthy casual.”

Also, I’m giving the disclaimer that I had to look up 90% of the names I list in this post. Japanese names are very hard for me to remember, for whatever reason, and a lot of the hero names in MHA just sound weird to me. I usually make up my own simpler names for them.

But I think the show is pretty good. Let’s go through some random thoughts.

It’s a bit slow-paced for my taste – every other sentence of dialogue could probably be removed without losing anything – and as I said before, the worldbuilding holds up only to casual scrutiny. I think I’d enjoy things more if Deku toned it down a little. And to me, any fan-service is too much fan-service, but this show has fairly little of it, so I can usually forget the transgressions when Bubble Girl isn’t on screen and Creati is in her school uniform. (Yes, I know their powers are based on skin exposure. Which is only ever an issue for female characters. I don’t think that justifies the specific designs of their costumes.)

All Might is wonderful; for all his ridiculousness, his character shows a greater understanding of heroism than most of the supers getting movies these days, while still being a flawed figure. As I frequently say, the people attempting to make Superman movies these days should be taking notes. And I really just love how over-the-top he is. As if anyone doesn’t. I can understand why he shares a dub actor with FMA’s Major Armstrong, because there’s a lot of the same mojo going on, and that’s a mojo I can’t get enough of.

I like how ridiculous the powers and costumes are for both the heroes and villains. It’s actually very hard to design a superhero with a distinctive look that isn’t stupid-looking, so I like that MHA’s solution is to run fervently in the other direction and just make everyone goofy. At the same time, the looks of the supers are all distinctive and full of personality, so they’re not objectively bad; on the contrary, that’s the basics of good character design. I just appreciate that it’s not trying and failing to be cool. (Unless I’m really missing something?)

I wish Deku’s classmates got more to do. I know they’re relatively unimportant, but I’d enjoy more subplots with them. I waver on whether I hate Bakugo or love to hate him. Uravity looks like a character from a Mega Man game and that’s pretty cool so she can go ahead and marry Deku. I think Froppy is the student traitor. Todoroki‘s fine but I did like him better back when he was Zuko. Mineta is everything I hate about anime but his dub actor does have really good delivery. Everyone else is pretty neat.

I’d like to see a bit more of the day-to-day in the school, as the story seems to have gotten bored with that pretty quickly. After the especially slow-paced first season introduces the setting, the story hops into the Sports Festival, then jumps into internships, somehow reaches final exams right after that, then it’s summer camp which leads directly into One For All, and then we’re straight into the Provisional Licensing Exam, and now the work-study thing. All the actual learning happens off-screen, so I guess I’m supposed to believe that it’s mostly pretty boring? But then we have instances like the actor-victim from the Licensing Exam berating Deku for not knowing how to treat injured civilians, so maybe these kids really are being rushed through their education and they’ll graduate by being PLUS ULTRA enough despite not knowing how to do their Hero jobs. Either way, I can’t help but think that there has to be something going on in the day-to-day of a superhero school that would be interesting.

I do think the League of Villains is a little lacking. Some of them are cool (Kurogiri, Mr Compress, and Twice), but most of them leave me cold, especially Shigaraki. I rather enjoyed All For One’s brief arc, so Shigaraki being his heir really underwhelms. I guess I just don’t like those mopey, creepy anime villains; give me someone with charisma. And for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you why Toga is so popular, but maybe she actually does something important in the manga and the anime hasn’t gotten that far? Or geekdom just loves its ‘psycho girls.’ I can’t tell you why Harley Quinn is so popular these days, either.

I am intrigued, too, by the fact that the whole concept seems to be a Japanese-take on X-Men. Not, like, someone just doing in the X-Men with manga/anime sensibilities, but a real rebuilding of the concept of, “Some but not all people are born with powers, explored by way of focusing on people in a school.” X-Men is about outcasts, with mutants being a hated and feared minority, while MHA is about an outcast who becomes socially accepted by finding a power, and the people with powers are revered by society. The X-Men are constantly fighting with each other because of melodrama (at least in the incarnations I’ve consumed), while MHA is about one of those mutually-supportive class of kids that apparently they have in Japan but not in America, and the rivalries are all pretty benign, with the worst being the result of family conflict. (Families are messed up in X-Men, too, to be fair.) In X-Men, the line between hero and villain can become very blurred, while MHA basically says that all criminals are morally-depraved crazy people who you don’t want to hang out with. It’s kind of fascinating how the two cultures have come up with completely opposite ways of looking at the same basic premise. Of course, that’s generalizing a bit, since both MHA and X-Men are the creations of very specific people (not counting spin-offs and X-Men now being over 50 years old and sprawling), but I can’t help but think that their respective popularity is significant of something.

Overall, I’m never going to put this show on the same level as something like Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood), but I think I’m underselling it. It’s fun, I enjoy spending time with these characters, the stories are intriguing, and even when I roll my eyes at the worldbuilding, I enjoy the stuff it’s setting up.

[purplesurveys]

706

What weird food combinations do you enjoy? I’m willing to experiment mayonnaise with most food. I also dip my fries in hot fudge sundae and because I’m Filipino I have to have my fried chicken paired with banana ketchup. Where do you get your news? Usually from the Twitter and Facebook handles of my go-to news outlets. My dad is also the only one who turns on the TV in the dining area so whenever he’s home and watches the evening news I get to hear the reports as well. What social stigma does society need to get over? HIV/AIDS, dating or marrying the same sex, tattoos... even breastfeeding is a fucking stigma lmao. So many people are babies. What is the best/worst prank that you've played on someone? I hate being the victim of pranks so I never pull them on anyone. What was the last photo you took? My dog jumping up to ask for food last night.

What makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it? Lately our president has been wanting to give nightly addresses on TV every midnight so when I hear another announcement from the government I just roll my eyes because I know it’s gonna be another hour-long speech that not only has absolutely zero substance to it, but made everyone unnecessarily stay up that late. What are you currently worried about? I’m worried about my remaining academic requirements. With the suspension of online classes and the lockdown being extended until April 30 (which is virtually the end of the semester), I have no idea what’s gonna become of our academic calendar and my grades – and the status of my graduation.

A notable school in the country already mass-promoted (read: passed) all their students and is planning to give tuition fee refunds since only two months of the sem were used. It’s honestly the most responsible thing to do for now and I hope all other universities follow suit.

Do you think aliens exist? I believe we aren’t the only ones alive out here but I also don’t think they look like the creatures books or movies have made them out to be. What mythical creature do you wish actually existed? Meh, was never a fan of anything mythical/mythological. What are you interested in that most people aren't? Pro wrestling. In my 15 years of being a fan I’ve only found literally a handful of people (at least who are also Filipino) who shared the same passion or amount of interest as I have. It’s just never been a popular topic or fanbase here so I never get to bring it up – and I’m afraid to bring it up because people seem to judge anyone still into wrestling these days. What's the most ridiculous thing you have bought? My most pointless purchase was a pink bar of soap with lettering that says “Gay Bar.” It’s a novelty item at best and I never needed to buy it, but I had money that day so I did and now it’s gathering dust in one of my drawers. What sounds hit you with major nostalgia every time you hear them? The PS1 start-up noise is a big candidate. If given the oppurtunity to open a museum, what kind would you create? They have museums about everything now, so I think it’d be a good idea to turn to my roots and make an ancestral house instead and have it in our home province. My family has a rich history and it’d be a waste if we allowed ourselves to forget. When was the last time you immediately regretted what you said? I think last night? We were having pork belly bought from outside for dinner and I was talking about how good it tasted and that it was the best thing I’ve had in a while. I forgot my dad has been cooking us a different meal every single day since the quarantine started and they all have tasted amazing as well. After I realized what I said I felt like shit and immediately downplayed the pork belly so that he didn’t feel left out. What's the silliest thing you've seen someone get upset about? My mom is a champion of this list lmao, there’s so much stupid shit she’s thrown a fit over. The most ridiculous one happened last year when my sister sprained her ankle and my mom would not help her walk around and even walked faster than the rest of us. It was like she was purposely leaving us behind, which confused and pissed me off. Anyway I was left assisting Nina as she hobbled on. Eventually I caught up to my mom and asked her to slow down and to be with us and to help my sister walk. Apparently it was enough to piss her off and the whole ride home she was yelling at me and legitimately sobbing about how humiliated she was when I called her out because she thinks people overheard and are judging her for it. I mean if you’re afraid of getting judged isn’t that proof you know you did something shitty?

The sermon also turned personal and she started screaming about how I was a horrible daughter and that I’ve never done anything right, and that I was a disappointment, and that I was straying further from God everyday and she could see the horns growing on my head. How’s that for abusive? What was the best thing that happened to you today? I finally finished the level I’ve been stuck on in Mario Kart 8 and now I’m officially done with the game. I’ve never finished any video game before so it feels pretty bitching!!!!!!!!! Do you consider yourself a good cook? I don’t even consider myself a cook. What's the dumbest thing someone has argued with you about? ^ The thing I just talked about, even though it wasn’t technically an argument because my mom didn’t let me talk throughout.

The next dumbest thing I could think of is probably when my grown-ass aunt fought me back when I was 13 on whether Beyoncé lip-syncs or not. It was a random family discussion and I was just talking about how much I like Beyoncé and she not only stole my thunder by picking a fight with me, but she also made me feel bad about something I loved lol. She was so insistent that she lip-syncs and was so hungry for an argument, I didn’t understand why?????? so I just dropped it and rolled my eyes at my dad. IT’S SO DUMB RIGHT What did you google last? Information I needed for an article I’m currently writing. What fashion trend makes you cringe or laugh everytime you see it? Skirts paired with either denim jeans or leggings, and short vests. All the Disney stars wore them and it was the epitome of fashion for us at the time aaaahhhhhhahahahahaha. What's your favorite holiday movie? LOVE ACTUALLY. For sure. I’d also say It’s A Wonderful Life but it has some very low points that ruins the Christmas-yness for me. How ambitious are you? I’m pretty ambitious and also a bit of a perfectionist, but I’m also aware of my limits and I don’t always jump onto tasks feeling confident. I know what I’m capable of so if I’m faced with something I know other people can be better at, I’ll consciously be less ambitious at it cos I usually let my insecurity get in the way. What was the biggest realization you have had about yourself? As someone who’s always thrived on being an introvert, the last few months and years have taught me that I CAN talk to people if I have to? And they’re not scary? I had little hope for myself prior to my internship - but it ended up being fun and I met a lot of awesome new people. I also never thought I’d get to write articles solely because I hate interviewing people - but my sources have all been nothing but nice to me. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve always doubted my ability to talk to people and dive in to unfamiliar scenarios, but when I do either it’s always turned out to be great experiences for me.

What topic could you spend forever talking about? If we’re going for what’s been the most recent hot topic, it would be the government’s incompetence in dealing with COVID-19 so far. Which way should toilet paper hang, over or under? Over. What word is a lot of fun to say? I dunno. I don’t think of words in terms of how fun they are to say. Maybe curse words? HAHAHA If you didn't have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time? Assuming the internet is nothing to worry about, I’d watch all the series I’ve long planned on watching but can’t because Netflix does a big pull on the entire household’s connection. Are you usually early or late? Early or on time. There is no ‘late’ for me. What do you wish you knew more about? The future. Not knowing the answers to it is so irritating/boring to me. What is the most annoying question you've been asked? Asking if I go to rallies/am an activist/am part of the NPA just because of the school I come from. None of those things are bad at all, but I’ve always been annoyed at the stereotyping. How different was your life 1 year ago? I wasn’t graduating yet then. And I was OUTSIDE MOST DAYS because there wasn’t any fucking virus. What movie title best describes your life? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, except I literally have to be stuck at home. What was the last lie you told? Telling my groupmates I had some family stuff at home to fix before getting started on our group project, but really I had to take a bath first because I wanted to feel fresh while working. It’s a minor lie, but it still made me feel bad. What type of music do you listen to? It’s usually varied but my go-to genres are indie pop, electropop, alternative rock, punk rock, *some* indie, R&B, and pop.

Are you a good listener? Yeah, it’s why I prefer to be one than a talker. What is your favorite milkshake flavor? Cookies and cream or some peanut butter/chocolate concoction. Do you think you're brave? I can be. Just not about everything. What are you most grateful for in your life? The relatively comfortable life we live considering where we live. And that covers everything from the food we eat, the schools we’ve been sent to, where we get to travel (or the fact that we can travel at all), etc.

What was the worst phase in your life? My rebellious, no-one-understands-me, angsty teen phase when I was 12-13 and my time readjusting in college when I was 18-19. What is a relationship deal breaker for you? Verbal abuse. What are some things that give you complete peace of mind? Staying in coffee shops, driving at midnight, views of the skyline at night, staying on the rooftop at night and being under the stars... I just like a lot of things about the night. Would you like to explore another planet? Yesssssss. Who was your favorite cartoon character as a child? Spongebob. Cosmo from The Fairly Oddparents comes at a close second. What would you do if you were the president of your own country? Right now? I’d assure people everything was being taken care of – mass testing, support for doctors, provision of PPEs and free transportation for frontliners, making all the senators (who are all expectedly not doing anything, save for one) work their asses off, put part of the P275B fund to assist middle- and lower-class people who can’t  – instead of imposing shoot-to-kill orders for the military to anyone criticizing the government or rambling about absolutely fucking nothing in nation addresses.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Explaining ‘Joker’s Negative Critical Reception

SPOILER WARNINGS FOR ‘JOKER’ AND ‘THE PERFECTION’ (LIKE, ALL THE SPOILERS)

TRIGGER WARNING: I BASICALLY THINK THE JOKER WAS RIGHT

In my recent review of Joker, I alluded to an enclave of (predominantly middle class) film critics who absolutely hated the film, not because of its actual quality, but because it drew attention to widespread social inequalities in which they themselves are complicit. To be honest, I was going to leave it there and not provide any commentary on these film critics, since, y’know, they failed miserably: people went to see Joker in their droves and it made roughly enough money to fund two moon-landings and a year-long block party. However, I did some googling and it turns out that the phenomenon of insane critic-hate for this flick is much more widespread than I initially thought, and so it behooves me to give the reasons for this hate a little more thought.

Now, obviously, I’m dismissing the idea that this is simple, honest criticism that just happens to differ from me out of hand. I try not to do that too often, because I think its far too easy to start seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any. However, if you’ve been to see Joker then you already know that it’s a self-evident and transcendent work of artistic accomplishment the likes of which almost never actually show up in cinemas. A handful of bad reviews I could understand, since all taste is ultimately subjective- but a million thinkpieces about whether the film even has a right to exist looks suspicious to me.

In order to start dissecting Joker’s own private backlash, I’d like to draw a comparison to another film (which I also mentioned in my initial review): The Perfection. You see, Joker references a lot of classic films, from King of Comedy to Taxi Driver to The Network, but the film that it most reminds me of is The Perfection (which, incidentally, is the only other film I’ve ever called ‘transcendent’ without the faintest trace of irony). Both films are revenge films about people suffering from an invisibilised forms of pain. The protagonists in The Perfection survived rape but couldn’t have their suffering recognised because it was an accepted part of the sexist world to which they belonged. They eventually killed their rapist and his minions. Fleck (the Joker’s real name) suffers from mental illness and crippling poverty, but finds no sympathy. Instead, he’s alternately abused and ignored by the people in his life and those he turns to for help. His mental illness is even exploited by TV personalities who he’s never met for a cheap laugh. In the end, he takes revenge and in so doing, starts a violent uprising.

The big difference between The Perfection and Joker is that the former attracted praise from the majority of critics and ambivalence (rather than abject hate) from those who weren’t on board, while the latter was hit with a tidal wave of abuse. Both films are of comparable quality and both are thematically similar. so why is one widely accepted and the other denounced.

Well, one of the major differences between the victim-protagonists. The Perfection’s victims are lucid, relatively financially stable women from two different ethnic groups. The Joker, in contrast, is a mentally ill white man from an impoverished background. The sad fact is that some types of victim are trendy and others aren’t. Dirt poor, mentally ill honkies just aren’t as on-trend as well-spoken middle class women who have had something horrible happen to them. I don’t intend to be dismissive of the type of suffering portrayed in The Perfection (nobody deserves to go through what that film’s heroins did, yet sadly, in real life, many people do). Nor do I want to put Joker on a pedestal for giving a crap about a less socially-acceptable type of victim. My point is merely that there’s a double-standard at work in the review press. Most film critics have social circles that are ethnically and gender-diverse (which is a good thing, obvs) and can therefore empathise to some extent with people from different backgrounds. They get a nice warm glow from supporting people they know in real life. However, by the same token, I doubt most of them have ever met a working class person who wasn’t serving them coffee, or dealt with someone whose illness prevents them participating in mainstream society. To the average film critic, the working classes and the mentally ill are just ‘those dirty looking people from the other side of town’, whether they’d admit to thinking that way or not.

However, I feel like the learned inability to empathise with poor people doesn’t fully explain the hatred for Joker, though it undoubtedly facilitates it. One of the interesting factors about the hate the film’s received is that it seems to emanate equally from both ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand you’ve got yer neocon fuckwipes wringing their hands about the bad influence the film could have on children (they fail to mention how these children are going to sneak into see an R-rated film en masse) On the other hand, you’ve got virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks bemoaning the fact that the film dares to portray violence committed by a white dude in a sympathetic light (I’m not entirely sure how sympathising with the justified anger of a downtrodden, abused version of the Joker is supposed to equate to endorsing spree killings perpetrated by racists and misogynists in real life for completely different reasons in real life. Then again, the aforementioned virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks don’t seem to know either, so I suppose we’re just supposed to ignore the discrepancy).

It’s rare for a film to attract such ire from both conservatives and liberals, but it is telling. You see, as a die-hard commie (or, at least, a fairly stubborn socialist), I look at conservatives and modern liberals from an outside perspective, and they seem to me to have more in common than they’d like to admit. Both fundamentally believe that the society they live in is good and worth preserving- they just can’t agree in what form. This is particularly the case in America, where most of the film’s audience and critics are pooled. The idea that there’s nothing particularly great about American civilisation- that maybe, just maybe, there’s not much there worth salvaging- is equally anathema to the most hardened bigot and the most free-wheeling hippy libertine. The idea of American exceptionalism is so ingrained that anything that the thought of it failing beyond repair is horrifying to practically everyone.

This, I suspect, is the real reason for the hatred that Joker has attracted. The version of Gotham portrayed in the film is beyond redemption and, ultimately, you’re meant to feel happy (or at least relieved) when its smug, self-assured elites are shot dead; when its infrastructure burns; when The Joker- that cackling pop culture nightmare- is finally unleashed.

As it builds, Joker toys with the idea of tragedy. It walks a tightrope, making you question whether the Joker’s actions are really justified, but in the end it comes down on his side. It just waits until the last possible moment to suckerpunch you with that fact. The Clown Prince of Crime himself articulates the way the film has kept its sympathies in check until the right time when he says that “killing those three young men was funny, and I’m tired of pretending it that it wasn’t” (I’m misquoting, but only slightly,  for the sake of expediency). This line is the pivot for the whole movie- the point at which the movie openly admits that its villain-protagonist isn’t just a sympathetic character study, but someone who might have a coherent point. His first murders were of the “awful” elites of his society and yes- in the grand scheme of things- their deaths were pretty necessary. And funny.

Had Joker just shown us its protagonist’s descent into villainy without hinting that he might actually be right, I suspect the films would be praised as a morally complex work of genius. But it dares to suggest that America might as well burn, so film critics- who occupy that relatively wealthy and stable rung of society where society itself starts to seem like a good idea- can’t really cope with it.

Is my interpretation correct? Who knows, the film is carefully ambiguous- maybe I’m not meant to be quite as on-board as I am with Joker’s brand of civilisation-collapsing nihilism. But the fact that it even has that element; that possible interpreation probably does explain why critics hated it.

Either that or they’re just tasteless fucking idiots. Oh fuck. It’s that second one isn’t it? I just wasted two hours of my life writing this didn’t I? Well bollocks. Off you fuck.

[uraniumwriting]

Awful Tuesdays

Taglist: @soul-write

POV: Diana

Mondays aren’t that bad. What I really hate are Tuesdays.

Just imagine, your body is now realizing it has a lack of sleep to deal with, you actually have to worry about if you didn’t have enough time for homework, and you’re realizing that you’re not even halfway through the week yet. Oh yeah, and the gloominess.

It’s always gloomy on Tuesdays.

“Are you sure that we can’t ditch today?” I looked to my older sister, Isabelle, as we walked up the sidewalk to school. The buses weren’t even decent enough to drop us off right in front of the doors.

“Well, we are walking into school at this very moment, so I don’t think so, Di.” She seemed preoccupied as she spoke, looking in every direction but mine. “Do I have any tests today?” She mumbled that, but it was loud enough for me to hear.

“Yes, you have a test in history. You were literally talking about it ten minutes ago.” I shook Isabelle’s shoulder, trying to get her to focus. “You better not be thinking too much about your poor damsel-in—“

“I’m not worried about her, Miss Drama Queen. She just has a stomach bug. It’s just, I’m just fogged, alright?” Isabelle finally looked at me, giving a tight smile. “Nothing to worry about. Gotta go.”

I watched as she ran off, leaving me without anyone to talk to. She thought she was being slick, but she really had no cover. Whenever she says that ‘there’s nothing to worry about’, it means that she’s in a ton of pain. Which made me worry even more.

Shaking it off, I just kept going into school, up the steps (which, by the way, there are just too many) that were running with the washed out chalk that the staff had used to write messages on for that day.

Positivity week. The cheesiest week at the private, all-girls, Marie Curie School of Independence, where our slogan is “Where girls learn they can do anything!”.

I just hoped the day would go by fast.

I walked to my locker without really talking to anyone, since all my friends’ buses came in later than mine. Awful planning, if I’d say so myself. They almost walk in late to our first class every morning, while I’m stuck, all alone, for twenty minutes. When I got to my locker, though, there was a while paper taped onto it, as well as on every other locker in the hallway.

Oh yeah. “Hopeful Messages Day”. That was a thing.

I ripped the paper off of my locker, not paying too much attention to the writing on the other side as I drilled my combo into the lock.  

God I wish Tuesdays didn’t exist, why the hell do they have to be so boring, why can’t I just go on some cool adventure or—

“Hey, Diana, what does your paper say?” My thoughts were interrupted by someone nearby calling out to me. I looked around as I opened up my locker, seeing one of my, well, peers, waving her paper and looking at me.

“Oh, hi Karlee, I didn’t look yet.” I tried not to force my smile too much as I finally looked at the paper I was holding. “Good news, is coming?”

“That’s really cool!” Karlee began, and I knew she wasn’t going to stop. “You see, mine is ‘Success is a journey, not a destination’, which I guess makes sense, but I don’t really know how to apply that into my life oh wait, maybe I can ask Derrick about that after school oh my god have you met him he’s from Jockey and he is so cute and—“

“Well, I, uh, would love to keep chatting, but I have to go ask my sister about something, but maybe we can talk more later.” I quickly grabbed the binder that I needed, slamming my locker shut and busting tail down the hallway.

After school that day, I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling instead of doing homework. I couldn’t get the whole “Good news is coming” thing out of my head. Not that I was hopeful or anything, I was just, curious.

“Hey, nerd.”  I sat up on my bed, looking over at my younger brother, who looked very close to passing out at the desk all three of us had to share.

“Me?” His voice was hoarse, as if someone had just recently punched him in the throat.

“What other nerd named Joseph would I be— Wait, do not tell me that you’re getting sick.” I started to get up, knowing that if he got sick, all of us were getting sick. It was kind of the trend.

“No, I’m not getting sick, I promise. What do you want?” Joseph turned around the chair at the desk, making a very poor “cool kid” impression as he rested his chin on the back.

“Okay, so today at school, we all got these hopeful messages right? For positivity week?”

“Sounds normal. Continue?”

“Trust me, it’s gross. Anyway, my message was “Good news is coming”. But, no one else got anything that vague, or weird, or…”

“Cryptic?” Joseph cocked his head sideways, giving me an SAT vocabulary word that did nothing to prove my point. “It was probably just the luck of the draw.”

“But what if it isn’t? What if, maybe it’s a call to something, a change from the normal, everyday life I’ve always had, or what if it’s maybe a potential romance, or well, anything cool like that.” I stood up, starting to pace around as I started to imagine what the message could mean.

Yeah, I was starting to get into this a bit too much.

“You’re not making it like the guy in the library, right? Because that was nothing, just as likely as this is nothing. It’s making you hopeful, right? That's, like, what a hopeful message is supposed to do.” Joseph put his head in his hands, giving out a slight groan as he spoke.

“But, I think this may be different. You know, like how musicals go?”

“I thought everyone died in musicals.” I stopped pacing as Joseph said that, turning around and giving him a slight glare.

“No they don’t!”

“Yes they do!”

“No they don’t!”

“Yes the—“

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, but dinner’s ready.” The two of us stopped as we heard Isabelle’s voice, turning to see her in the doorway of our room. “I’m guessing you two would want to eat?”

“Yes!” I sprinted out of the room, pushing past Isabelle, and not stopping until I got to the kitchen, when I suddenly stopped in my tracks.  

It was steak for dinner.

Steak.

“Uh, mom? I don’t think I can eat that.” I gestured towards my mouth, where I basically was a tin can, full of every piece of orthodontic machinery possible.

“Now, don't overreact sweetie, I think you’ll be fine. Just cut small pieces, and you’ll be fine.” My mom brushed off my concerns as if they were dust, which was really annoying, to say the least. But, there was no arguing with her, so I sat down at my spot, silently fuming.

“Mom, dad, is Isabelle not eating with us?” Joseph asked as he walked in, pointing to her normal spot at the table, which was now empty.

“Her stomach’s been bothering her all day.” My dad was already taking food, probably having been forced to skip lunch again that day at work. “She’ll be fine, she just needs rest.”

“Probably because she was making out with Vivi after school again, and got the stomach bug from her.” Joseph leaned over and whispered to me before he sat down, and it took everything within me to not crack up.

The four of us fell into a relative silence afterwards, our parents talking about work and whatnot. It did slightly trouble me, though, that now it seemed like both Isabelle and Joseph may’ve been getting sick, which wasn’t good at all.

Well, maybe a bit more than slightly troubling me, since when I wasn’t paying attention, I bit down a bit too hard into the steak, and something in my mouth snapped.

Shoving my chair back and nearly falling in the process, I sprinted to the sink, already feeling blood pouring into my mouth. It was a taste that I was used to, but still didn’t enjoy. Spitting as much of the blood, metal, and half-chewed steak as possible into the sink, I waited for the normal routine to begin. My mom would feel terrible and start cooing me, Joseph would grab the gauze to shove in my mouth and nearly choke me (he’s gunning for the Superior Child™ status), and my dad would rush to call the orthodontist for an appointment.

A series of events that always led to me curled up in Isabelle’s bed, mouth full of cotton, as she would silently comfort me. Expect for that this time, Joseph also joined on Isabelle’s bed, which led to some conversation.

“Jo, how has school been?” Izzy asked over me, her arm keeping me from sitting up so she could talk to Joseph, who was sitting on the other side of the bed.

“Good. Happy that I don’t have any spirit weeks, though. Did Di tell you about her whole crazy theory about her message?” Joseph was writing in his notebook as he spoke, probably a poem or something.

“Thuduhpeyemmmreyehearewwmo.”” I tried to yell through the gauze, which roughly translated to “Shut up, I’m right here, you know.”. Not like they got that, obviously.

“Be careful, Dragon, you’re not supposed to be talking. Just try and rest, okay?” Isabelle gently brushed her hand against my arm, as if she pressed too hard, she would break me.

Like I would be the one that gets broken.

“Anyway, it had to do with good news coming soon and all that. She thinks we’re going to get sent on a mystical adventure or something.” I kicked Joseph as he said that, startling him and making him drop his pen.

“Well, actually, I do have a piece of news for you two, and I think it can be seen as pretty good, maybe,” Isabelle said cheekily, which made me jump to attention.

So maybe it was right after all, unless...

“Bhbhnn?” I try to choke out of my gauze, despite Isabelle’s warnings. Joseph got it this time, though.

“Do not tell me you’re breaking up with Vivianne.” Joseph stood up on the bed, as if that would make him threatening. But, honestly, even though we always tease Isabelle about her dating Vivianne, we actually thought the two of them were adorable.

Makes me a bit jealous.

“No, I’m not.” Isabelle could hardly suppress her laughter as she spoke. “It’s not anything like that, I promise. It’s just that… I’m on the shortlist for the volunteer thing I applied for. The one where, well, if I get in, I’ll likely get to go out of state for three months.”

“Wait, three months? Without you?” Joseph flopped down onto the bed, starting to give his signature “accidental puppy eyes”.

“It’s over the summer, Jo. I think you’ll be fine.”

I tuned out the rest of the conversation, running through the thoughts that were colliding into my brain, all at once. Isabelle was like the glue that kept us together, even when it felt like we were all falling apart. She always stayed focus on a task, and usually took a bit too much onto her plate, just to make things easier for Joseph and I.

But, without her? I could tell that she was excited and all, for the opportunity, but what would become of Joseph and I? It would be impossible to keep each other afloat without her.

“Good news is coming”? Sounds like a cruel joke.