#this is something that's been floating around in my drafts for about 8 months

[femalefemur]

An Introduction

warnings: none, please let me know if i missed anything!

Rumours follow them like ants to sugar, always milling about and floating in the air in hushed whispers as they pass, even from the most proper and uptight amongst them, almost as if one can’t help but mutter about the 141 and their work. 

The 141 are close, much closer than most people and definitely a lot closer than the other priests, bishops or cardinals that roam the halls of the Vatican. They spend all their time together whether they are fighting or not and rarely seem to let anyone in though they’re friendly and will gladly talk to others, they stick together and have an air of distance about them. One supposes this could be attributed to the amount of time they’ve spent together and the things they’ve seen and been through due to their job. 

And what is their job exactly you may ask, as many others have, especially the newly ordained who watch the group of four men make their way down the hallowed halls, talking amongst themselves as they pass by. Well they’re exorcists, exorcists of the highest calibre, exorcists who fight unholy evils that many could not conjure in their wildest imaginations, exorcists who are revered and talked about in hushed whispers in the dead of night when sleep should have taken those talking.

They’re led by the great John Price, Father Price to those who welcome him into their homes in their time of need, who reports directly to the Pope and grins at the other priests as they complain about him smoking a cigar indoors and tells them to take it up with his boss if they don’t like him, knowing they would never have the balls to. He dresses how one would imagine a priest to dress, all black cassock with a fascia, red socks of his own choosing, though he also wears a pellegrina, not many priests do and certainly none of the others in his group but he does. Perhaps it is a nod to the fact that if he so desired he could be a bishop or even cardinal but instead he chooses to stay as a priest, stating that he has more freedom as one when asked by Kyle, the newest of their group. John was never one to care much about the paperwork that followed as one rose in ranks within the clergy and he certainly didn’t want the responsibility of a whole diocese, he much rather preferred being able to travel around and help those in need, his diocese was the world and he was happy to serve. 

The group’s second in command as it were is a priest named Simon Riley, Father Riley or Ghost as many called him for the way he blended into the shadows and appeared out of seemingly thin air. A stoic man, dressed in an all black cassock, fascia and socks that somehow seemed to be a deeper shade of black than the standard cassock. He also donned a balaclava, no one except for John Price and the Pope knew why, though the other two of the group would soon find out what lurks beneath and perhaps the reason for the balaclava in the first place. 

Next is the newest member of their group, Father Kyle Garrick, a man with features so beautiful he looks like he belongs on a runway rather than being a member of the clergy. He prefers teal socks, a contrast to the otherwise black monotony of the priest’s uniform, something that made him smile whenever he caught a glimpse of them as he sat or kneeled, something that was still his when everything else had been stripped away so he could be moulded by the word of God. Kyle’s a good man, a valiant man who had stumbled into something out of his depth only to be swept up by the 141, a little to the envy of others and the surprise to many more. Taken in by John Price and taught the skills to survive and fight in this world he had only just discovered. 

Finally is their sunshine, Father John MacTavish, a Scottish priest and the youngest of them though no stranger to the things that go bump in the night. A priest who somehow has managed to keep his mohawk much to the disdain and confusion of others, a priest who likes to wear emerald green socks that stand out against his black cassock and somehow make his eyes seem even more bright. He’s talkative and full of laughter, a much needed presence in the 141 and their work. A priest who puts everyone at such ease they’ll forget why they even called for them in the first place. A priest who is exceptional at his job, who fights with everything in him and won’t back down until he’s won.

The 141 they’re called, a name given to them by John Price and approved by the Pope himself. The number one symbolising unity and god, the beginning, the number four symbolising order in the universe, the four elements, the four seasons and the four horsemen, the number one once again to bring balance and keep everything in order.

This is their beginning and perhaps their end.

[mut3-devblog]

DevBlog #1: First Steps

I’ve always been one of those people who has story ideas floating in their head, developing for years while never having the time or energy to put pen to paper. With crushing existential emptiness to the left and the pressures of capitalism encroaching from the right, I decided it was time to try something different.

I decided I would actually write a story.

And so I opened up a fresh document, typed a couple sentences and immediately realized: this might work better as a game. I exited my word processor and downloaded Gamemaker Studio.

And so my brief stint as a writer came to a close.

Vague Notions -> Sketches -> Drafts

I am not an artist. I am not a programmer. But what I am is persistent! I won’t get into plot details until later, but the basis of my game is for it to be yet another Earthbound/Mother-like RPG. But I wanted it to have a large cast of characters with relationships that develop in player driven ways like in Hades. I’m doing my best to not thinking about the nightmare it’s going to be to code that right now, and instead have been focusing on character design and style, using Gamemaker to make the sprites and eventually the tile models.

How do I want the game to look?

How do I want the game to feel?

While those questions bounced around the empty Yahtzee shaker that is my head, I started just making people shapes in the Gamemaker pixel editor. 8x8 made me cry, 16x16 was just a bit too simple, 64x64 was way too complex, but 32x32 was just right.

And on that 32x32 canvas I found out that pixel art was basically just digital marble carving. How do I take this square grid of empty pixels and carve out a person? For me, I started by making shapes with reckless abandon. Not following the various “rules” of “good” pixel art that I’d come to learn and implement later. Regardless or maybe because of that, I didn’t love what I was seeing. And then I made The Shape.

The Shape of Reckless Youth

Persona 5 is a wonderful game about reckless youths who decide to take their fate in their own hands regardless of the oppression they face. The problem is they are almost without exception Right™ about their decisions, the only real consequences really coming from when the actions of the bad guys catch them off guard. They are also some of the most beautiful anime teenagers you will ever see.

This is an issue because when I was growing up I was an absolutely misguided chicken nugget. I looked like a child til I was 17, even up to my early 20s depending on who you ask (( and they’d be mean and wrong so )) I wanted to capture that spirit of rebellion, but translate it to the muted grey tones of suburban America life. Write what you know, etc. And so I see The Shape and from it comes our main protagonist’s head.

Max is our PC, an overly serious teenager on a mission to right the wrongs he feels have been committed against him. I knew this going in and The Shape being SO round and wide spoke to me, and the rest of the design came to be. He’d unfortunately get slimmed down in subsequent versions but this moment of design inspiration gave me his glasses and signature cowlick that would remain in every further design iteration.

Above is the current version of Max. This post is already getting overlong so I’ll just summarize and say I spent most of the rest of the month giving him 8 directional movement animations and designing his 12 potential party members. I’m sure you’ll see them at some point. And what’s that in his hand? It’s a binder! We’ll talk more about that when we discuss battle mechanics, next month, or in the new year depending on how well everything goes. Til next time!

Keep it cozy

— Mute

[draftingteacups]

Hello Draft, I was wondering if you’re currently busy IRL at the moment for the next upcoming chapter of The Eternal Blooming Flower where the 1st Overblot happened? Given how the Episode 6 Part 2.2 just grown more mysteries around Grim’s condition and Ortho did something that the mysterious voice told him to turned off the Cerberus System that is only thing to keep the Phantoms in check under the test runs…

I've been writing the next chapter for The Eternal Blooming Flower for the past few weeks, but the action scenes were hard ☠️ I'm not used to them and there were two back-to-back in the span of one chapter ☠️☠️ Not only that, but I'm back to college and doing writing in those classes too as well as other things in my life that are going on ☠️☠️☠️

The next chapter is almost done, clocking around 18K words at the moment (although I do need to do another round of self-editing for final author notes) and once that chapter's finished, I can move on to the fun stuff and not have to deal with fighting scenes for a while 🎉

For Episode 6 stuff, it's under the cut:

As for Chapter 6 2.2, I didn't know that it was released until I saw fan art floating around about it and I'm glad that I watched the subs and stuff beforehand because I would've been spoiled like oof. I've been so occupied with writing that I forgot the story update rip ☠️

I love the new things we're learning about our little buddy Grim because I have a feeling that the game is gonna go beyond Episode 8 or whatever and just expand on the world because TWST is really popular at the moment with the English release two months ago.

[needcake]

day 4: cardverse

Arthur/Teo, PG-15 (for some violence), 2k.

@engportevents

Three times the Queen of Spades almost caught the Diamond Bandit, and one time he did (sort of)

.

.

.

There had been talk – rumors – of a band of bandits roaming the borders between the four kingdoms for months. Their usual targets were trains loaded with gold and silver and the occasional rich traveler going from one kingdom to the other.

Arthur, currently, was the latter.

“Can’t you make the horses go faster?!” he shouted at the conductor who yelled back something he didn’t quite catch over the noise of the fighting in the carriages behind them where the rest of his security detail was being held back instead of doing their job of protecting him!

He shut the small partition between him and the conductor with a violent shove and noticed the inside of the cabin now smelled of lavender.

When he turned back on his seat, the Diamond Bandit was smiling at him, sitting with far too familiarity with his arms spread open over the back of the cushions and his legs crossed.

“My, so you’re the next Queen of Spades?”

Arthur breathed deeply. His powers had not fully developed yet and the masked man he had seen in the wanted posters all over the towns in the Diamonds Kingdom was very much not a rumor.

“What of it?” he asked, trying to buy himself some time while summoning enough energy in his hand to blast the damn smile off the man’s face.

The bandit shrugged, that idiot smile still plastered on his partially covered face.

“Does your future husband know?” he asked and Arthur could feel the small ball of pure energy in his hand growing even smaller and denser. It needed to be as small as the head of a pin before he could cast it and cause any real damage.

“Know what?” He needed more time, just a little more time and concentration.

The bandit leaped onto his lap and pressed a dagger to his throat. His smile turned wicked. “That you’re no longer a virgin,” he whispered in his ear and Arthur’s concentration evaporated, the energy in his hand expanding until it blew up like a firecracker and blinding white smoke filled the cabin.

The pressure of another body over his was gone. Along with his engagement ring.

When the smoke cleared, the conductor announced the bandits had retreated and they were safe now. Arthur nodded and pressed a hand to his chest. How had he known…?

-

Next he saw him was during a ball in the Clubs Kingdom to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. Clubs was a Northern kingdom with a long and proud tradition of horseback fighting and hunting, and Arthur was trying very hard not to look directly at the animals’ heads hung on the walls around the room.

The music changed and his dancing partner – an older gentleman and high-ranking noble, probably belonging to the House of 8 – was shoved out of the way to make room for a younger and more vigorous partner who strode across the ballroom with Arthur in his arms, barely giving him time to keep up.

“Watch it!” he scolded when his feet almost stepped over his.

“Are you going to throw another feeble spark at me?” the man laughed and Arthur only had time to catch a glimpse of pale green eyes and a dark mole beneath the right eye before the entire room went dark and a myriad of gasps and faint exclamations of fright and surprise replaced the music.

“It’s you!” Arthur hissed and felt strong hands hold him tighter against a firm chest.

“Does anyone in this room know, dear Queen?” the bandit asked in a whisper and Arthur felt his entire body shiver with the proximity and the smell of lavender. “Have you told anyone that you used to be just another one of the butcher’s kids until you began manifesting the powers of a Queen?”

Arthur’s anger grew white and hot and powerful, and when he shoved him away and flicked his wrists the entire room exploded in searing light.

He had to blink several times before the room had regained color again, the servants hurrying to light the candles again. Nobles and monarchs were looking at each other with surprise and astonishment. A lady clutched at her neck only to find it bare.

Her scream pierced through the night, followed by many others like hers.

-

The situation had to be dealt with. The Diamond Bandit could not just steal from under their noses and be allowed to go unpunished. After what happened in the ball, the King of Clubs raised the reward on the Bandit’s head and the Queen of Hearts volunteered to bring the man and the rest of his band to justice.

Arthur approached Kiku afterwards and asked to be a part of the task force. Kiku only looked him over once before acquiescing silently.

It took them a month to gather the information that led them to the humble stone house where the bandits were hiding deep in the Diamond countryside near the border with Spades. Kiku and his men went after the larger group while Arthur was left alone to chase their leader into the forest.

He aimed a single arrow at him when he had him in his sight and the Diamond Bandit fell to the forest ground, clutching at his shoulder and crying out in pain.

Arthur approached him slowly and balled up magical energy in his hand. He had trained for this moment. He was now so much better at it than when they first met.

The bandit smiled through the pain, writhing on the ground beneath him. His mask was slipping; the shape of his nose oddly familiar.

“Is your mother still the best seamstress in Spades?” he asked, grinding his teeth as blood flowed down between his fingers. “Does she still bake the most awful scones?”

Arthur stepped on his hand and he screamed. The ball of energy in his palm shrunk to an impossible miniature size, no bigger than an ant, more lethal than any weapon.

“How do you know that?” he hissed.

Green eyes looked up at him. “Have you forgotten about her too?”

Kiku’s horse distracted him as it rode with its master into the space they were in, and when Arthur looked back at him there was only a small pool of blood seeping into the earth in his place. Kiku dismounted and came closer, inspecting the blood.

“He has some sort of magic,” Arthur tried to explain even if he himself didn’t entirely understand. “He disappears.”

“Not disappear,” Kiku corrected him lightly. “He changes. A tanuki.”

He pointed at a small trail of blood, droplets that went further into the forest. Arthur looked at his friend. “Only Diamond high nobility can shape shift.”

Kiku nodded. “You should pay Francis a visit.”

-

It was not hard to convince his husband to send a letter to the King of Diamonds. It was hard, however, to sit at his table and pretend to enjoy the dinner when all he wanted to do was to strangle Francis’ neck between his hands.

“I see you have a new Jack,” Alfred said politely, raising his glass at the man on the other side of the long table and Basch raised his own politely in return. “What happened to the last one?” he asked Francis beside him.

“He died,” Arthur supplied in a dry tone and Alfred looked between him and Francis, noticing Arthur’s glare and Francis’ cold demeanor.

“His ship sank during the war,” Francis said and took a sip of his wine. “What kind of a Jack would he be if he hadn’t been willing to sacrifice himself for King and country?”

Arthur got up. His hands shook beside him with uncontrolled energy that seeped light between his clenched fingers. He stormed out of the dinning hall before he lost control. He left and did not come back, forgoing what he had come all this way for.

“Did you know the guy that died in the war?” Alfred asked him late that night after Arthur had forced them to pack up their things and take their carriage back to their kingdom.

“I did,” he said, staring out at the dark through the carriage window. “He was my best friend.”

-

Arthur woke up with a draft coming into his room through the open windows.

“You’re not too heavily guarded for a Queen,” the Diamond Bandit said, smiling at him under the moonlight.

He sat up on the bed and clutched the sheets to his chest. “What do you want from me?”

The man took a step forward in his direction and froze on the spot. A circle of light with intricate runes glowed beneath his feet.

“I see you’ve gotten better at magic.”

Arthur threw the sheets aside to reveal himself fully clothed and stood in front of him. He could already hear the guards coming closer, alerted by his spell. “Who are you?”

“Do you still remember when we first kissed?” he asked, still smiling despite having been caught. “Behind the house while my mother tried on dresses in your living room?”

The guards came into the room and took him away. Arthur prided himself for not collapsing to the ground until he heard their steps on the far end of the corridor. It was where Alfred found him minutes later, when he held him until he stopped crying, not understanding why since they were safe now. The bad guy had been caught.

-

The rest of the group had been hanged in the early hours in a secluded location as not to distract the people from the main event. Only the Diamond Bandit was to be given a public execution under the eyes of the four monarchs and the people gathered at the central square in the Spades capital.

Arthur had to give out a few golden coins, but he did manage to have the room alone with the Bandit before they took him to the gallows. Teo had his head down, his shirt had been removed along with his mask and his long hair hung over his shoulders, barely concealing the fresh bruises and cuts the guards had given him since he had been brought to their care.

“Did your companions know that you cheat at cards and that you once spilled black tea on your mother’s new dress and blamed your little brother?” he asked and Teo laughed, coughed, spat out blood. Arthur came closer to the bars separating them. “How did you survive?”

“The sea didn’t want me,” he said, his shoulders rising and falling as he spoke. “I floated to the surface with the debris and the enemy ship rescued me.”

“Francis would have paid the ransom.”

Teo laughed again, wet and raspy. “They tried that.” He looked up at him, green eyes almost swollen shut and Arthur felt his chin tremble at the sight of his mangled face. “He said he didn’t negotiate with barbarians.”

He curled his hands around the bars, pressed his face between them. “Then why? Why come back?”

Teo smiled. “You know why.”

-

Arthur sat beside his King and they watched as the Diamond Bandit was brought out. The crowd watched in silence. No cheering, no murmurs.

They put a sack over his head and a noose around his neck.

When the trap door opened, Arthur shut his eyes and flicked his wrist. Something small, smaller than a grain of sand, shot out from his palm.

The crowd gasped, someone screamed. When he looked again, the Bandit had disappeared.

-

Arthur came into his room followed by a chambermaid who was frantically trying to undress him while he gave her no attention and went on talking to his secretary about the seating arrangements for the banquet next week. The other kingdoms’ delegations should be arriving soon and their rooms and accommodations had to be prepared ahead of time, there was no time to waste.

He stopped when he noticed the open window over his desk.

On top of his books, there was a single stalk of lavender.

He smiled.

.

[strangerays]

Nothing in Particular Update #3

About seven months and I finished the first draft at 93k!

I always imagined how it would feel to finish a first draft (I’ve been writing novels “seriously” since about 2017) and now that I’ve finally done it, I can say it’s a better feeling than I imagined! Telling my friends and family (and even my doctor, who was really quite excited about it) was an amazing amazing thing. I’m generally pretty nervous to tell people about my work, but I had a really positive reaction. Honestly all of it has me on a creative high (not sure I’m coming down from that any time soon lol).

I’m going back for my last year of school in two days, which means I’m not going to have as much time as I did to write all summer. This is okay, because I’m actually going to take an entire month off of writing! I’m really burnt out - don’t want to start editing a story that’s so near to me if I don’t feel ready. I’ll talk more about editing when the time comes!

In a lot of ways, I found that my life mimicked my art. I think for a lot of people, it tends to be the other way around, but this story did a lot to heal me.

Going to hop right into excerpts now! I’m not going to explain much this far into the story because I would like to try to publish this story (FAR in the future) so I apologize for that! Also, I stopped naming most of the chapters until I go back and edit because there are just SO MANY and I didn’t have the time to stop and think of cool names. Anyways... enjoy!!

(Here is the link to the original masterpost!)

#1

text: Rays of gold curled to the ground, primordial and shy as the fire reeds on the cusps of shallow pool around the bay outside of Mothouse combed them to fine sparkles. I remembered the way Lonan kneeled on the edges of this pool. He never dove in – just blinked slowly as he watched crabs and minnows chase each other in a swirl of sand. I could not resist the water. I’d made it a part of me. My hair was longer then; down to my elbows, fading from dark red to orange and white, soaked always. Lonan let me borrow his shirts when I forgot to bring my own. They hung from my waist, too big for me, and I was warm even as the breeze rocked us inside.

#2

text: The sky was never blue in Point Blink. At least, I couldn’t remember the last time the clouds hadn’t given way to a dark gray mist. Jude was here. I was out of place. I was floating – watching slender, underfed pines wave in the breeze behind houses on the water before they disappeared underneath furls of cloud. Bursts of warm light shone in windows on the bay, like hungry eyes watching for a storm. A group of kids our age chaffed on a rocky expanse, their heads popping over pockets of darkness when they laughed. Froths of cloud stretched across the sky, moving the ground with it. Long stretches of trees and islands far on the other side of our small pocket of ocean looked more like large freight ships. Lights glittered and beamed on the roads and highways that belonged to the city. Pink was starting to show over the horizon. Lonan was on the other side. Somewhere.

#3

text: 

Jude sucked her lips in and flopped onto her stomach so she could see the blue below her feet. Her dark curls draped over her ears and hid her nose.

“I can’t see the bottom of the ocean.” She cupped her fingers with the other hand. “See where the water fades to white and back again? The endless tide. Why do people say the ocean is blue?”

I leaned forward. She was right. Blue ocean climbed up the side of the cliffs and turned the rocks a dark gray; ate the erosion as if from a plate. I’d never had the ocean explained to me that way before.

“I think I like it that way,” I said.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was at the bottom of Point Blink.

#4

text: 

She smiled weakly. “It’s okay. This is just guesswork. Patchwork.”

I wanted to apologize again, but I had a strong guess that it might make her annoyed with me. “It’s kind of like… I’m just waiting for the next bad thing to happen.”

She wrinkled her nose and eyebrows, scrunched up her little face. “That’s dumb.”

“I think it’s a smart way to live.” Sometimes it felt like worry was the only thing that kept me alive. It wasn’t dumb at all.

“You’re going to be fine though. We’re going to be fine. If something bad happens, we’ll deal with it. Don’t let it eat you.”

There was wisdom in what this seventeen-year-old girl on my bed had offered me. I caught it like a gold coin. Before I could reply with anything, she launched into another question. I didn’t want to think much about change anyways.

#5

text:

“Oh. Wow. That’s like, next year.” I sort of laughed.

“A year can be a long time,” Lonan said with a wince. “What do you think?”          

I sighed through my nose and leaned back with him. The sun was going down. Sometimes, my life felt less like a golden hourglass and more like a stopwatch with a broken face.

“For once, I think I agree with your mom.”

Lonan just stared at me, with something like awe.

“I think you should do what you want,” I said.

 “Ray,” Lonan started.

“No,” I interrupted him. “It’s not about me. She’s stopped you from doing anything and everything you’ve wanted to for the last four years, so when you go to college, you’ve got to separate yourself from this place.” I pointed to him. “You’re allowed to do this.”

#6

text: 

Maybe I was just being strange. Lonan was my best friend. It didn’t help that there was a little bit of him in everything – the tide pools, the echo of shells, my broken camera.

Soon, we stood in the center of the field. A breeze whispered through the cattails, fanning against our knees. Ellis loped behind me as I stepped in and out of tire tracks under the cloudless sun. She wasn’t much different than Jude. Her footsteps crunched excitedly behind mine, excited at the prospect of an unprecedented adventure. I’d missed those.

Lonan said he didn’t like to walk in fields because the wind tricked him into thinking that someone was behind him. Every brisk of his heel was a trick of the mind. Sometimes I felt the same way, like I might be haunted.

#7

text: 

The ageless water begged me closer, frizzed my hair and swathed my arms in a sweet, familiar scent. I remembered galloping down to the shore with a childhood friend in one May. Soft piano accompanied croaky lyrics from someone’s radio when we fell chest-first into the water. Static erupted in my head. There had been nothing new for me in Point Blink for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to float. Grass turned into pebbles, and I heard Ellis’ footsteps soften to the beat of the sand. Our eyes crumbled the shells that walled the long expanse of dark sand where waves rolled in. We leaned over like two swans, crunching shells beneath our feet, displaying shells to one another, naming the ones we recognized, and when I looked out at the horizon, I saw blue.

Red plastic cups, cigarettes, and even some broken glass stuck out through the sand as we made our way further down the shoreline, as if someone had thrown a party. My brow furrowed. Maybe this part of the beach wasn’t so abandoned after all.

Between the spit of the waves and dry sand lay some sort of book. Sand trickled out of the pages and onto my shoes when I swept it out of line of an oncoming wave. Ellis was beside me in moments. Shells tolled under her shoes.

#8

*Warning for mention of blood (fake blood and fake knife!!) this takes place on Halloween haha*

text: 

Jude held the container in her palm, kneeled down so we were shoulder to shoulder. Her eyes fixed on the knife in my neck, mine on her hands, then her focused expression. Her fingers tipped my chin up, cold on my skin. I tried not to move. Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about Dad, or Raven, or Lonan. I only let Jude in – this girl who had come out of nowhere and wrecked me, saved me. And she didn’t know any of that. I didn’t owe anything to her, but I needed her. She kept us afloat when I couldn’t even keep myself above water. Her fingers painted blood over the center of my throat, our breath quiet on each other’s cheeks. She held my shoulder as she set back.               

“Absolutely feral,” she said.

#9

text: 

“Point Blink is all I have. It’s where I am, what I am.” My throat was tight. “It’s all I’ve known. I am happy with my life. And I’m sorry, but I’m not willing to throw all of that away so we can dig up answers. I want to stay.”

 Jude sat there for a moment. I think Florian and Ellis had turned to look at us, because when we went silent, I could no longer heat their hushed whispers, only the sound of water as it rose and rose and rose. I wondered if it would rain.

Jude sat up on her hands, then her knees, then she stood over me.

“Is that what you honestly believe?”

Tears bubbled in her eyes. Blood streaked down her cheeks. I’d been so focused on not crying, I had missed when she started to.

“Point Blink is just the same as anywhere,” she said. The words sat somewhere above her inside her chest, weak and frail, as though they’d been realized a long time ago.

I’d stared into her eyes until they disappeared. She grabbed onto a branch above her and quietly swung herself around a corner. Her footsteps echoed until they dissolved into waves and birds and frogs and left me in the dark.

#10

*Warning for strong language!*

text:

“Why didn’t you tell me how you’d been feeling?” he asked after a few moments of silence. It was beginning to stretch uncomfortably.

“I know I don’t deserve to know,” he added, “but you’ve always put me first.”

I picked at the wood that peeled from the fence.

“I just want you to be okay,” Lonan croaked. “Please tell me what to do.”

Even when we were together, we still worried about each other. It wasn’t always that way. Maybe that was my fault. I didn’t want to think about it.

 “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I mumbled into the crisp, red air. “To be fair, I didn’t know it like I know now for a long time. I think sometimes I got the same way as a kid. Now I have a name for it, and I still don’t know if it feels right.” I sighed. “I guess… I guess I just thought that was how things were supposed to be. I thought I was only the humming low and the high.”

“Of course that’s not how you’re fucking supposed to be.”

 I coughed on a laugh, wiped away a new set of tears. On the rare occasion that Lonan did swear, he sounded much like he was doing it for the first time.

I hadn’t fully realized what I’d said before Lonan’s hand was around my arm. He pulled me close to his chest. I felt smaller than him; warm and safe. I exhaled and sunk into him, didn’t allow anything else in. I’d almost forgotten what that felt like.

“You’re funny and smart and better than a lot of people.”

And... that wraps up all of my excerpts for the time being! I really enjoyed writing the last four chapters of this book. Of course they aren’t perfect. A lot of the book needs improvement. There are entire characters who are flat and plot lines I just forgot about! Come October, I plan to get back into my edits/rewrite the story.

Really quick before I finish writing this:

I just wanted to thank everyone who read about my story and showed genuine interest in the characters. Had I not received all of this love from people in real life and online, I might never have finished this draft at all. When I started this story, my mental health was really quite bad. (I’m doing a whole lot better these days!!) I guess you could say the idea started as more of a journal entry. All of these characters are like little parts of me coming together to help the main character, and I think there’s something really special about that.

Thank you so much! Good luck on all your creative endeavors! It pays off in the end, I promise :)

tag list (ask to be +/-); @wannabeauthorzofija @a-completely-normal-writer @baguettethebooklover @corkytheguar​ @writeherewaiting @cryptid-s-wips @kingsinking @author-a-holmes

[sapphicscholar]

Fanfic Writer Question Meme

Having just submitted 45 dissertation pages, I decided today is the day to do this fun little fanfic writer thing I’ve seen floating around on my dash lately!

1) How many works do you have on AO3? 89

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?  2,031,148 ... jfc. I aspire to be this prolific in my academic life.

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?  Only 5 shows, though a variety of ships in one of them! Supergirl, Grace and Frankie, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Wynonna Earp, and This Way Up (I’ve got some draft-y stuff for a Hacks fic but dissertation stuff sent it to the back burner)

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos? -Stronger Together (Supergirl, 1-shot compilation with a variety of ships) -Welcome to the Gayborhood, Danvers (Supergirl, Sanvers academia AU, my first ever fic, too!) -6,500 miles away...but getting closer (Supergirl, Sanvers long distance epistolary fic that I co-authored with my wife; we actually ended up, unexpectedly, writing a big chunk of it while we did long distance for the first--and hopefully only--time) -Noise Complaint (Supergirl, Sanvers neighbor AU that’s mostly canon compliant) -Supercat Sanvers 2020 (Supergirl, Supercat and Sanvers political AU)

5) Do you respond to comments, and why or why not? I try to because I really do love and appreciate them SO MUCH! But I often binge write during my breaks from the academic year and post when the semester is at its busiest, and then I do the thing of going “oh no! it’s been 2 weeks and now I feel weird, I shall let it go another 4 months until I feel much too awkward to ever reply!) But I’ve been trying! 

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Forgotten, But Not Gone! Thanks to fan demand I turned it into a 2-part series, but that first fic ends on a note that is, at best, a kind of gesture at some sort of future but with no guarantees (which is the kind of ending my wife likes best of all haha)

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? Hmmm I often don’t love super sweet endings, but one of the few where I’ve given an epilogue that’s pretty straightforwardly sweet and happy is Her Knight in Tiny Spandex 

8) Do you write crossovers? Not really where the characters from one universe mix with another, though I’ve done some, like, Buffy AU type fics, and I had a series where Supergirl characters were active participants in other shows’ fandoms

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic? Holy shit so much hahah! I took a break from fandom for a while after the worst of it, and even though there are some really lovely people still in that particular ship’s fandom, my level of involvement and investment dropped considerably. I’ve been much more...cautious since then about feeling out fandoms before really jumping in 

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind? Yep, plenty! I’ve only ever written for femslash ships and poly arrangements, though

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen? Uh yeah once or twice several years ago, but I think I was able to report it and show proof of my posting it on AO3 many, many months before it showed up on Wattpad or something

12) Have you ever had a fic translated? No, I got a request once, but it was for a longgggg fic and I don’t think it ever appeared (totally understandable, it would’ve been a huge endeavor!) 

13) Have you ever co-written a fic? Yup! A couple with my wife, plus one with a group of Supercat writers where we rotated and did a sentence at a time

14) What’s your all time favorite ship? I genuinely don’t think I can pick! I rotate through my ship-of-the-moment, and have plenty that I’ll probably never write for (came late to the fandoms) but love reading 

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? I do aim to finish all my fics, but I have 2 WIPs (one dystopian AU that suddenly felt very close to the world we were actually living in, and one that involves a major character death that I put on hiatus after having a number of family members pass away in a single year) that I think it’ll take me some time to get back to

16) What are your writing strengths? Dialogue! I like to think I also do a good job of infusing humor into fics--something that makes the reader smile, even in what can be a fairly heavy fic

17) What are your writing weaknesses? Fighting scenes. Oof, they take it out of me, and especially writing for a fandom like Supergirl where so much of what happens includes fighting...damn am I out of my element! I also have no vocabulary for it, so it’s like...she punches a thing. Then another punch. Then a kick. Then an elbow. Also I think people use knees??

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I think there are ways to do it that can be really important and ways to do it that can veer into shitty fetishizing (e.g., when characters will slip into a language other than English only during sex and always with the exact same phrases borrowed from fic to fic). I only feel comfortable writing in other languages myself it if it’s a language I actually speak to avoid the weird awkwardness of Google Translate speak, but I know some writers who will find a language beta for this purpose, and that’s really awesome!

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for? Supergirl (I arrived to fandom much, much later than my wife!)

20) What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? It’s a total cop out, but I don’t know/it changes depending on the definition of best! I think one of my recent favorites has been I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bone

[polandspringz]

Fanfic/Writing Updates!

I know I just put this in a mess of tags on my last post, but just an update for my readers:

Sorry for the delay in updating fics/writing stories! I was dying towards the second half of my semester so I didn’t have time to much other than some one-shots. Right now though, I’ve kicked it into high gear, lol. So here is what I can currently promise you to look forward to.

Obey Me

You Don’t Really Wanna Stay (Sequel to “Cause You Don’t Really Wanna Go”, now known as the Hot n’ Cold series): Chapter 2 has been finished since mid-April. I haven’t published it because I sort of screwed myself going off script and publishing chapter 1 before I wrote the entire fic (unlike how with CYDRWG, I wrote the entire thing in one week and then published it over a few days/like a week). I’ve had the entire story outlined in this case, but it was just a matter of writing it. Chapter 3 is also finished now, so I will be working over the next few days to finish Chapters 4 and 5 before I start publishing the rest of the work on a schedule. This was a story that was originally only meant to be 2 chapters, but as you can see, things have expanded. An epilogue may or may not be written later on (similar to the Mammon fic as well). I may or may not have plans for a third fic in this series.

Siberia: This story has had the entire plot and every detail outlined since I started writing it last fall. Again, it’s just a matter of writing it all together into a long chapter with scenes instead of plot points and summaries of events on a notebook page. Once the above fic is finished being written, I will immediately resume work on Chapter 8 of Siberia, and similarly, will try and get through 2-3 chapters before I start publishing again. At the earliest, I can guarantee an update by the end of May or June. I’m hoping to get ahead in my writing to help me out later on.

Designing in the Devildom (Series): There are SO many one-shots planned for this series still. I originally planned on having a loose chronological order for them, but as some of you may have seen, we’ve kind of deviated a bit. I have several documents with drafts for various stories that have been in the works for months, but am putting this series as less of a priority compared to the above works. I received an ask suggesting I continue the “M’Lady” fic with a follow-up of the actual fashion show the demons would participate in, and have drafted sketches of each outfit the characters would model, which I would like to publish alongside the work, so that is one of the projects that is taking some time.

gen:LOCK

I have so many stories still planned for gen:LOCK, and as I work on my other fandoms, I find myself itching to get back to this fandom that I love so much. I don’t want to give a lot away, but I have at least 3 ideas revolving around Yaz and 1 idea focused on the gen:LOCK team as a whole. They aren’t short one-shots or drabbles, so I ask you to be patient and promise by the end of the summer you will see something from me soon.

Cars gL AU: Believe it or not, I did plan a sequel to that joke fic. The idea came about after I wrote the ending to the story, and the response from the actual Cars fandom was so nice, it really made me want to write a follow up. It will be significantly shorter, but I hope everyone will enjoy it as well.

Miscellaneous

Omori: I have plans for a multi-chapter AU that if I nail it the way I want to, well it might not do anything but be self-indulgent for me, but I think it might obliterare the fandom (as I joke to my friend often). I won’t be working on this story until I finish Siberia, as there is a similarity between them and I wish to give each their proper attention.

SK8: I hate Adam but I love writing for Adam and Tadashi. I had another story idea floating around in my head but no concrete notes on it, so I can’t guarantee when this will be written, but know there are plans for it.

FF9: I’ve been promising my sister an FF9 fic for about 2 years now. I had an idea after beating the game but forgot half the location names in the game, and that’s what’s been holding me back. I planned for it to be more long winded and descriptive, but might go a more straight to the point approach. I’m hoping to try and finally sit down and write it before May 31st.

Genshin Impact: I have notes in my fanfic writing journal for a Xiao fic and a Dainsleif fic. Writing for Genshin Impact feels very volatile though and as much as I appreciated the response on my Albedo fic months ago, I cannot guarantee I’ll ever get around to these, lol.

Yu Yu Hakusho: ON GOD IVE GOT NO IDEAS FOR THIS YET BUT I DO HAVE THE DESIRE TO MAKE SOMETHING GOOD BECAUSE I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH. SO SOMETHING WILL COME OUT OF THIS BRAIN OF MINE

Demon Slayer: SAME THING I AM DETERMINED TO DO SOMETHING, DONT KNOW WHAT YET

[softowlhours]

paperclip chains

akaashi keiji (officeAU!)

a collection of scenarios following you and akaashi as you try and finesse the art of navigating life as working adults.

genre: a bit sad at times, but hopefully fluffier in the future.

a/n: my first piece of writing and this is pure self indulgent because work is hard and nothing makes sense sometimes. hope you all enjoy and find some comfort in it. 

word count: 3500~

pt. one 🦋 blank like a sheet of paper. 🦋

[friday. 3:00 p.m.]

someone had cracked open the window. the air inside the office had been much too oppressive, stale with the smell of the murky, insipid coffee you could get from the cafeteria. for free. staff privileges, they call it. late afternoon sun pours in through the large square windows. it ignites the office, dying it in the shades of an inferno. however, the warmth of it does not reach akaashi’s heart. the way the rays set everything aglow was in contrast to the chill crisp autumn air. akaashi could hear the leaves rustle, clinging to the branches waiting for that particular gust of wind, strong enough to blow them off. the leaves would then twirl and twirl until they’d softly land on the damp earth becoming one with it again. he wishes he were a leaf.

He tries to focus on nature’s gentle melody, but the hubbub of the office is overbearing. the incessant clicking of alphabets on the keyboards, the murmur of pages being turned, someone sneezes loudly and it is immediately followed by lazy ‘bless you’s’. his ears are attuned to the low electric groan of the printer, and he hopes someone would get up and unclog the jam of papers before the white noise drives him insane. he ends up doing it himself, almost losing a finger in the process as he tries to pull out a badly stuck paper from the printers’ rollers. today had been one of those days where nothing had gone right, a domino of disasters triggered the moment he’d opened his eyes. these days had been coming by way too often lately for his taste. he felt tired.

none of these turmoils showed on his exterior though, he wore a calm, unbothered mask. despite his depressing inner monologue, he diligently read through the manuscript highlighting bits he’d like to go over with the author at their next meeting.

it wasn’t like akaashi hated his job, infact, this was his dream job. he loved what he did but sometimes his love for his work was eclipsed by the politics the workplace was entrenched in. the naivety from when he had first joined almost a year ago had worn off quickly. it took him a mere week in the workforce to understand that a job demanded more than the list of skills and tasks specified in the job description. in any office, beneath the veneer of civility, there always remains an undercurrent of competition, jealousy, idle minds looking for entertainment at the expense of each other. there were people who did not love their job, the free loaders who somehow never did their share but managed to take home their bag of coins. they would slack and slack some more until the burden of their neglect would be shifted upon the shoulders of the new comers. too timid to resist. he pulls out his leather bound planner, a gift from his friend to celebrate him landing the role of an assistant editor all those months ago. it is almost filled from start to finish with his scribbles and the leather is soft with constant handling. his eyes scan past all the work he had wrapped up for the day, until one of his seniors had dumped an endless stack of files containing short stories that had been sent in for the monthly writing contests. they’re not short anymore when you have a hundred of them to read at once. apparently, the senior had a date he’d forgotten about and had to leave early. akaashi couldn’t report this to the boss, he knew how offices worked. its venomous hierarchies slithered like snakes ready to diss whoever defied them. rookies must act like rookies. akaashi quickly jots down in his planner a list of things he must get done over the weekend and the bulleted list slowly fills up two entire pages.

when he wasn’t picking up after someone’s mess akaashi did enjoy what he did. he enjoyed being on top of his work, found an euphoric satisfaction in duties well done. while his colleagues took it easy during the day and whined as they worked overtime in the evenings to meet deadlines, akaashi was most probably done for the day by then and already at home; fresh out of the shower and lighting his favourite candles that made his bedroom smell like cinnamon. he’d curl up under his soft comforter letting the tension of a busy day dissipate from his body. he kept his favorite books on the nightstand and would read them as he waited for sleep to come.  

“akaashi-chan,” he hears the soothing voice of his supervisor, an old well natured man in his sixties who had worked here for almost thirty years. he walks upto akaashi’s desk, his eyes crinkling with a gentle smile as he takes in the mess that was his desk.  “its difficult being a rookie, huh?” hatori-san says. “i would’ve just let you gone home, but the design and printing departments are an anxious bunch. they’re breathing down our necks for the final draft of the magazine two weeks before the release date.”

“please don’t apologise, hatori-san. It’s always like this towards the end of the month.” you aren’t the one who should be apologising.

“hmm...” the elderly muses, “maybe you should dilly dally like your colleagues, afterall, who is to blame you? the youth are meant to be reckless. ”

“but hatori-san if i did that not even a quarter of our magazine will be ready by the end of this month!” akaashi’s voice is filled with amusement, and mild terror.

hatori-san chuckles. “yes, yes i’m aware. i’ll rely on you then akaashi-chan. i do have a bit of good news for you though.” a bonus-

“we’re getting another assistant editor on monday, hopefully your workload can be halved from then on and a be little more manageable. i’m worried you’re starting to look older than me akaashi-chan.” he jokes. “i’ll leave her in your care.”

❀ ✿  ✿ ❀

[friday. 8:20 p.m.]

he stays in the office until late that night, finishing as much of his work he can before the words on the screen begin to blur and he can feel his brain churn in his head. he packs the documents he needed to read over the weekend, putting them neatly in his black briefcase. the temperatures have dropped quite low and with his tan coat on and a scarf wrapped around his neck, he steps out into the world. outside, tokyo is buzzing with life, the lights twinkle and a bubbly atmosphere engulfs even this usually grim and dull part of the city; where most companies found their home. salary men and women chatter excitedly as they pour into the office district from the high rise buildings of concrete and glass. groups of people stand on the sidewalk chatting amicably, smoke rises from cigarettes, plans to go hangout at karaokes, bars and restaurants float in the air.

it wasn’t that akaashi did not have friends, or ever had trouble making any. he was easy going, attentive and though not the loudest in the room, he was enigmatic. people were drawn to him. especially the weird and loud ones. not that he minded. not that he ever judged. which is what made people open up their hearts to him so easily. they knew he’d take them for who they were. but, like earlier today he couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease that clawed at him. he had his dream job but the hours he spent on his desk day after day, the endless exchange of apathetic emails, the unlimited cups of coffee, had all amalgamated into a kind of hollowness. he felt empty instead of fulfilled. he idly wonders if bokuto-san ever felt this way, or knowing him, did he charge straight ahead without any inhibitions? if you asked bokuto whether he could see himself playing volleyball for the next twenty or fifty years, bokuto would say ‘yes, ofcourse!!!’ in a heartbeat. and akaashi knew bokuto would mean it.

he wonders how hatori-san had spent his entire life in that office. could i do the same?

akaashi considers hanging out with some of his friends from university, maybe take hatori-san’s advice and just let go and forget everything for a while. he could be your typical 20 something, going to the bars with his 20 something friends where they’d shit talk their rude colleagues. He could console that one friend who wouldn’t stop crying over his ex-girlfriend who left him 3 years ago, every time he’s drunk. he could go home with that girl at the opposite end of the bar who wouldn’t stop looking his way, and who in his drunken haze, he thinks to be pretty. but eventually akaashi decides he is too tired to do any of that.

much later, when he settles into bed, he mindlessly picks up a book from his nightstand. he starts reading from where he had left off the night before but his eyes don’t really register a single word. for all he knew, he could’ve been staring at a blank sheet of paper. after a few more minutes of seeing nothing, he puts the book away and buries himself deep underneath the covers.

he feels the tears fall.

❀ ✿  ✿ ❀

[monday, 9:45 a.m.]

its odd. akaashi feels well rested. very very well rested.

his eyes fly open, and the first thing he sees is the blue sky peeking from the gap between his curtains. he’s afraid to look at the time.

9:45 A.M. well, shit.

akaashi feels winded by the time he makes it to the floor where his office was.from the door he sees hatori-san standing next to akaashi’s chair, his back towards him. akaashi’s heart is in his throat, an apology that sounds fake dances on his tongue. he then hears hatori-san chuckle. a soft female voice says something he cannot catch. ah, the new assistant editor.

“good morning” he calls hoarsely, as he approaches them.

“Ah, hello akaashi-san,” his supervisor beams, “meet y/n. hopefully, your new partner in crime.”

“i was told i’m supposed to help slow down your aging process.” her voice is soft, and despite the shyness there is a mischievous lilt to her tone.  “i’ll do my best. please do guide me.”

hatori-san excuses himself. she’s practically buzzing with excitement, akaashi notices. before he can say anything, she pulls out a brand-new notepad from her bag, pen clicking open. she looks ready to take on the world.

he has to bite back a smile. she’s cute, cheeks flush and lips in a pout as she  jots down something on it. he genuinely wonders what it is she writes, considering he hasn’t even spoken yet. her hair is neatly tied away from her face but a few stray tendrils fall and delicately frame her face.

he wonders if this is how he had looked on his first day at work. face pink and eyes bright. probably not as cute though, oh no, definitely not cute. he internally cringes at the memory of his awkwardness.

but you miss it. that excitement.

“it’s fine.” he says, “please just sit down and relax, i’ll guide you as we go through our daily routine.” he gives her a small smile.

they spend the morning, going through the basics of the trade, she's a fast learner, he notes. and later during the lunch hour he divulges to her the little ‘how to survive in this office 101s’. he tells her how how she mustn’t drink the free coffee they hand out at the cafeteria (even though he’s come to accept it himself, for he welcomes caffeine in any state and form). he suspects they reuse the coffee grounds more times than considered acceptable. how if you ever jammed the printer, try and leave before anyone realises it was you if you don’t want to be the recipient of death glares from colleagues all day long. He tells her which restrooms are the best and which elevators reach their destinations the fastest. the grimmer and more ruthless bits of working here can wait, he thinks.

passion was something he lost some time ago and hasn’t been able to find ever since.

“make sure to take it easy.” he mumbles to her as they are putting away their trays, “if work gets too much, you can always place the manuscripts and drafts  on my desk when i’m not looking.”

she looks at him incredulously. laughter bubbles from her lips as she tells him with mock indignance that she’s better than that. she asks the cafeteria lady for two cups of the infamous coffee, offering him one.

“lets toast!” y/n proposes .

“to what?”

“to all the times we’ll be the the last two brain cells holding up this company. together.” she jokes, touching her paper cup to his. 

he likes the sound of ‘together’.

❀ ✿ ✿ ❀

[steve0discusses]

The Full Metal Alchemist Live Action Movie Part 8: Watch This Episode Covered in Butts be the Only One Not Flagged by Tumblr

Gonna be risky business and not only upload all of these caps the way I screenshot them--which has just SO MANY poorly CGI’d butts but also gonna do it on the Tumblr Drafts folder, which I have been assured works now.

I’m so worried about so many things, but considering all the fears I have about like...everything else in the world right now...I guess I’ll take a risk on tumblr.

Edit: I cannot believe that I had 8ish episodes of Kaiba’s tall dueling tower get flagged but not this movie. I just....wow I cannot.

So anyway, last we left off, General Hakuro stepped in and was like “Hi guys, you like my wily plans that no one in their right mind would have ever guessed???”

Yo remember this part of the anime? Where the bodies drop from the ceiling and it’s a hunk out of the final arc--it’s here. In this movie. This movie that can’t possibly afford to do that. Lets get some CGI animated bodies in here ASAP.

(see some texture regrets under the cut)

It’s like a Monet, as the Mean Girls say, because far away and shrinked to 500 pixels this looks kinda neat. They sort of look more like those slime ball that grow in the back of your throat rather than human bodies, but they still look pretty gross hanging up there.

But then.....we zoom in. Remember again that this was full screen on my computer, and at one point was on a freakin movie screen. This level of 3d...was on a movie theater screen.

The mind boggles. The mind boggles!

Like as you know, I am an artist, and I’ve dabbled in...basically everything in my pursuit to make a dollar...and I have taken about 2 years of classes in 3D art with Maya and all those. I’m not thaaat great at it--I’m much more an illustrator/painter--but I feel like I have that reference point. Can I just say--the model is...fine...you can do a lot with layers of bump maps so you don’t need a truly detailed model (not like they did that, because they didn’t do that, but I can figure that maybe they had an intention to do that and forgot?)

But, there’s no connection of the wires to bodies. They just kinda float? The bodies are also all the same shiny-ness? To the point that it looks like a copy paste? (I don’t think it is, the wires are slightly different on a few of them) There’s just not much in the way of a texture map or a bump map. It just...there’s also something missing from the skin.

Skin is actually kind of rough to render, so when I did it back in the day, I followed like a checklist to make sure I had all the layers and steps to make someone look...clammy. Some things are kinda translucent, they reflect light a different way...especially white skin like this wouldn’t be just...white like putty. Dunno if you ever saw a white person, but we got so many veins...there was so much potential to make something really gross and fleshy.

Instead we got silly putty. It’s fine. I’m fine.

So General Hakuro decides to just...kill everyone right now.

This makes no sense to me.

That means that the whole thing of Lust killing Hughes was completely unrelated to General Hakuro. All Hakuro needed was Shou Tucker, who has been in prison for...I assume months since Ed shipped him off. And Shou was only released today? Just now? Just now when Hughes was shot?

So this all just happened at the same time by accident?

I mean the General sent us to the wrong lab initially, so he didn’t actually want us to be here, and now that we are here, he’s going to set off an entire army as a reaction to three people walking in and going “oops”?

So, lets get a look at our army.

Oh it was so disappointing, this reveal. Not just the eyeball that has a bounce light coming from below the top lip there (how did that even happen???) but also when it opened it’s mouth, it had a flat animation of skin breaking--it wasn’t actually rendered 3d skin, it was like a jpg wrapped around it or something (or at least that was the illusion I got. That is fine for a video game or a TV show, but this is a movie. This is shot so that it can be displayed in a size bigger than your own house.

What happened to the animation team on this one? Not saying I can do better, cuz no, I can’t, that 3d chapter in my life was a while back, but I’m just one guy. This was an entire animation studio and they just...didn’t render 3d face ripping (which is their entire job, to work in 3d) and then they kinda just turned on the stock physics dynamics and dropped em instead of animating them.

The way they fell was like fish from a bucket--the same amount of speed, too. they all ragdolled like a 3D shooter, their rigs just hanging on for dear life (and yes, you could see the deforming happen on the joints of these models.) I’m fine with having a computer program render something out with a physics engine...but there is a balance.

You do have to still go in there and finangle it back because...real life is hella stupid. Real physics? So stupid. It was hilarious how nonthreatening it was, too because they’re like...the size of shrimps in that zoom out image. The scale is just so wild!

It was like one bored guy in a sound booth and they multiplied his voice three times. Golden. Absolutely golden.

So these guys stride over, all of them with the same amount of speed (leading me to think it was probably a recorded walk cycle they all share with slight alterations between all of em) and they kinda just...pile on eachother in a weird way.

I will give them this: I was happy to see something that wasn’t physics or procedural. They mo-capped and animated that part for sure. It had the touch of an artist’s hand. It was also a very funny way for Hakuro to die because this guy was on screen for like 5 minutes, and maybe 7 minutes of this whole movie.

Youknow...I think it really says a lot about your nude 3d models if they’re not disturbingly human enough to trigger the tumblr filter, youknow?

Anyway, Envy looks on.

And then Gluttony saves the city.

Meanwhile, they decide to bust out the fire effects and Mustang becomes the most useful person in this entire movie. Like honestly this movie was poorly named, because it should have just been “Mustang saves the FullMetal Alchemist’s Entire Ass.”

The next part seems like I forgot a cap, or maybe missed something. I swear to you, I did not.

First off, Al becomes fullmetal and makes this happen without an alchemy circle. The show doesn’t really care to talk about that though, it’s just a thing he can do now, and you’d only notice it if you were writing a Tumblr post about it.

I swear to you, Winry is just inside of Al and there is no explanation.

There is no explanation for this.

She was on the couch...why is she not on the couch? What?

And then when you think they might have a moment, Ed’s like.

Damn.

For reals what the hell was that entire scene except for a way for Ed to get his arm stitched back on in like 2 minutes?

Outside, Envy and Lust are just strolling around the back-alley of this red brick building we have seen used for this entire movie.

And like...it’s so funny to me because they weren’t trying to run or hide. It makes complete sense why they got shot. This is what happens when you just...walk away when the whole military guard wants to kill you.

Now lets go see how Hawkeye is faring.

Luckily, all of the ambling bodies have decided to walk slowly through this one weird grass section between extremely long buildings.

And Hawkeye tells everyone “You have to shoot their heads off” and I want you to look at that scene and tell me how many of those bodies still have heads.

Oh, all of them. Don’t worry about it.

Kinda hard to see, but Ed shows up to give Mustang a hand, which was fully unnecessary but we’ll get to that in a bit.

This movie is such a gem.

Ed goes big brain and realizes that Envy is still burned up, and thus is about to pass on.

And whatever, I’ll take it. It’s not like the movie has told us that they are made out of 1000000 lives, for all we know, in the movie universe, they really are only 4 lives. Like half a cat. Maybe Father only killed half a cat instead of an entire city.

Yugi Muto would be so freakin proud of Envy for how often this guy gets hit square in the chest with fire balls. It’s basically every scene where Envy and Mustang share screen time.

And don’t worry, I don’t think Envy died? But they sure made it look like he did, which I’m sure everyone everywhere was really happy to see, since Envy’s death was one of the climaxes of the whole series. Like people used to make these lists of “top 10 saddest anime deaths” and how many people had Envy on there? Like everyone? People freakin love Envy and they did him so much dirty in this movie.

Again I have no explanation for Winry.

So Mustang is like, Ed, you make sure Winry doesn’t biff it in that corner, and I’ll do my actual job over here on this side. And yo, he did.

And so then that’s it, Lust is dead, and now we have a Sorcerer’s stone.

Man it looks delicious, right?

I’d eat the hell out of that.

Anyway, we only have one more update and we’re done with this movie!

I know!

I know! They only have 10-15 minutes to resolve pretty much everything, and that’s assuming that the credits don’t take up a heap of that. Hell, I might only have 3 caps next episode if that’s all credits. I honestly don’t remember.

Anyway, hope y’all take it easy this February, here is a link for people who just got here to read these FMA recaps in Chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/fma/chrono

[handfuloftime]

Fanfic authors tag game

Tagged by @the-prince-of-professors--thank you!

AO3 username: handfuloftime

Fandoms: At the moment, just The Terror, though I’ve also written an Ace Attorney fic (and if you want to get into ancient history, I’ve got a handful of decade-old Ace Attorney and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fics floating around on ff.net).

Number of fics: Three on AO3, and another three on Tumblr that were so short I didn’t bother to put them on AO3; they’re all here. (It does feel a bit weird to be answering all these questions when I’ve published maybe six thousand words total.)

1. Fic you spent the most time on: The Hope that keeps alive Despair, which took about six months from start to finish. I write very, very slowly (I was only actively working on it for about two months out of that time, but still).

2. Fic you spent the least time on: Anything for the Terror Decameron, deliberately so--I wanted to try to break myself of the habit of writing at a glacial pace (and of having a full-on anxiety attack whenever I posted a fic), so I wrote all of those in 48 hours or less.

3. Longest fic: The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fic I’ve been writing since high school that’s something north of 100,000 words across five drafts, none of which made it more than a quarter of the way through the planned story.

The Hope that keeps alive Despair (The Terror, 2,688 words).

4. Shortest fic: The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime (The Terror, 544 words).

5. Most hits: No Strings on Me (Ace Attorney, 1,457 words).

6. Most kudos: And die of age and not of pain (The Terror, 1,338 words).

7. Most comment threads: And die of age and not of pain.

8. Favourite fic you’ve written: The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime is very close to my heart, and I’m genuinely very proud of how it turned out.

9. Fic you want to rewrite/expand upon: Hmm. I’ve been poking at a little coda for The Hope that keeps alive Despair since I published it, but I still haven’t gotten it to work. There’s nothing I particularly feel the need to rewrite at the moment (though I’m sure if I go back and reread that would change.)

10. Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea you’re planning: My current pile of ideas includes: the aforementioned coda to The Hope that keeps alive Despair, a pre-canon meeting between Lady Franklin and James Fitzjames (it’s about masks), an extremely long (1833-59ish) and crushingly depressing Crozier and Ross fic, an archival finding aid for a Franklin Expedition newspaper (look, I’m desperate for an expedition paper fic and absolutely don’t have the pastiche skills to write one myself), and a short Ham Common-era Raffles fic. It looks like I’m going to have a lot more free time than I anticipated this summer, so maybe I’ll actually get to some of them. Who knows!

Anyone who wants to do this, consider yourself tagged!

[insanityclause]

For the last five weeks, the British actress and playwright Zawe Ashton has been zipping back and forth between West 45th Street and Lower Manhattan. She has gone from speaking the words of her character Emma in an acclaimed Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” to watching her own words brought to life by a cast of others in her play “for all the women who thought they were Mad” at Soho Rep.

“It’s like doing a boxing match and then swimming the Channel,” she joked recently over breakfast at a French cafe in Chelsea, dressed stylishly in a black dress with luminescent buttons and billowing sleeves, her glasses perched carefully on her nose.

Everything seems to be falling into place for Ashton, who also released her first book this year and starred with Jake Gyllenhaal in the dark art-world satire “Velvet Buzzsaw.”

Her play, which began previews the same day it opened at the Hackney Showroom in London, has its New York premiere on Oct. 27 and has already been extended. But the moment was a long time coming.

Ashton, who grew up in London and whose mother moved from Uganda to England as a teenager, wrote “for all the women” 11 years ago, when she was just 24. She delivered the draft by hand to the Royal Court Theater, the culmination of her participation in the theater’s young writers program. But the experimental play has had multiple starts and stops since then.

It features a constellation of women ranging in age from 8 to 65, and is based on months of research Ashton did on the myriad ways the British health system has failed black women, particularly when it comes to mental health and overmedication.

The career-focused protagonist, Joy, begins to fall apart after witnessing a woman falling past a window, presumably to her death.

Joy soon starts taking pills prescribed by a doctor. The other women surrounding her are a mixture of contemporary and ancestral voices. At times they serve as a kind of African-inspired chorus, interjecting and instructing Joy; their poetic text is influenced by Ugandan lullabies among other sources.

The script, though set in Britain, feels relevant in the United States in light of recent disturbing data about black women’s health, including their significantly high maternal mortality risk.

Ashton is both accepting and frustrated by the decade that it took for the play to find a home.

“When I’m thinking about it in the most positive way possible,” she said, “I believe it had to brew and had to find its time and find its zeitgeist and find its conversation, which is very much a conversation that’s happening now in the U.S. in regards to the black female body.”

“And then when I’m more my cynical 35-year-old self, I wish this could have just been produced earlier, at its most pure. Because it’s had a lot of face-lifts, it’s been handed around to many theatrical institutions and brilliant minds and it has changed a lot on the way.”

She went on: “Everyone has wanted to make this play make much more sense. They wanted to turn it into a much more linear and literal document and that was never what it was. My 24-year-old self wrote it in 24 hours. I don’t say that in a boastful way — I say it as an invitation to understand what it’s like when things you’ve deeply intuited for a long time, even as a young person, are suddenly unlocked. That’s what happens when you are 24. You get married in a night — you break up in a night — you change countries in a night. ”

She declined to offer too direct a connection between the material and her own experiences, but admitted she was influenced by women she has known and said the voices of the characters had been floating in her head for some time.

The nonlinear, destabilizing nature of the piece appealed to Sarah Benson, the artistic director of Soho Rep, which regularly takes chances on formally experimental works, recently including “Fairview,” which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in drama.

“It can only happen in theatrical form, this melding of content,” Benson said. “She’s making vivid something that black women have experienced for decades.”

Whitney White, who is directing the Soho Rep production, said the play’s abstractions make sense for the current moment in New York theater.

“Refracted black conscience is hot right now,” she said. “New writers, emerging writers are chopping and screwing all our lives, and spewing it out in an interesting, visceral way.”

White said that often black women who are misdiagnosed or overprescribed drugs don’t report what they’re going through and can be demonized by the medical field. “There’s stigma. It’s unfortunate and it’s real and it happens,” she said.

Even as Ashton gets ready for her own play’s debut, she is still performing eight times a week in “Betrayal,” where Ben Brantley in The New York Times praised her “breakout” turn as a vulnerable, world-weary wife caught in a love triangle between her husband (Tom Hiddleston) and his best friend (Charlie Cox).

Despite the intense schedule, Ashton said she’s finding strength and inspiration in Pinter.

“He’s not concerned with the truth, necessarily, in art and I love that,” she said. “You’re supposed to stumble across it in the dark every night. Good writing shouldn’t be wrapped in cellophane. It should be open to the elements and full of maggots and it should be left to grow and deepen and fester. I hang on to that.”

In New York, she has found rare moments of solace wandering Chelsea and the halls of the Guggenheim, spending time with the Basquiats. She sees herself aligned “with the poets or the writers during the jazz era, more improvisational, truly collaborative. I’m in a nostalgic place, and I’m in America trying to figure it out.”

Lingering after breakfast, Ashton said she finally knows herself well enough to trust her instincts. No longer does she believe, she said, that there can be real distance between the person and the creative artist.

“It’s closed up since I’ve gotten older.,” she explained. “I can’t be in a situation where I feel distanced, othered, underrepresented, cross-questioned, put down, unseen as a person or as an artist and pretend that I will be O.K. That’s suppression I have released myself from.”

Finally seeing her play onstage is part of that release. “Eleven years of this group of women in this play not having an audience to commune with has been a phantom limb,” she said. “I can’t wait to see it soar or fail. I just need to see it.”

[current-mcr-news]

Casual Interactions #8: Full Transcription

John: Alright, so welcome to another episode of Casual Interactions with Frank, Shaun, and Hambone. We're gonna keep answering your questions because there's a ton of questions that you sent us. So, we're gonna start off right over the plate with this one. Frank, this is from Valeria in California. "Why did you choose the name The Future Violents for the new band?"

Frank: Oh. It's funny. That's like a two-fold. First off, it was actually- we were travelling to Australia on a flight and it was the, I guess the last tour before Parachutes came out, and it was the last tour before that crazy shitty accident happened and everything. We were on the flight, and the steward came over and was like, "Are you guys like a band or something?"

J: What gave it away?

F: I know! Yeah. And we were like, "Uh yeah," you know, and I think at the time, we had said either Cellabration or The Patience, and he was like, "The Future Violents?" And I was like, "That's a fucking name!"

Shaun: Really?!

F: Yeah! I swear to god.

S: Wow.

F: It was really weird. And I was like, "No, but that's gonna be the next name."

S: Oh wow.

F: And then I started to think about that and what that meant to me, and kinda like, the definition of the word "violence" and how life is kinda- basically like the action of living is a very violent action, you know? We kinda, you know like, if you're just floating along thorough say, water, very passively, you're not causing ripples or anything like that. But if you're actually living your life and swimming through, you know, you're gonna cause all these breaks in the water, and you're gonna cause ripples and things like that. If you think about it, it's a violent action. The action of living or trying to survive. The idea to change the spelling into Violents, meaning people that are active in that action.

J: Cool.

F: You know? The idea is that collectively, we are all progressing in this violent way, and I don't mean it in a negative connotation. I mean it in a positive survival action.

J: See that everybody? He's not just pulling it out of his ass.

F: No!

J: There's a very specific reason for that.

F: There's a very specific reason, yes.

J: So thanks for the question. Natasha from Ireland wants to know, "If there was ever a time in your lives when you wanted to quit music."

F: Yes.

J: What about you, Shaun? Like, quit music, quit writing.

S: I did. I'm not writing music.

J: Yeah, so there you go. Shaun quit.

S: Yeah.

F: Yeah. But sometimes you still do.

S: I mess around, yeah. It's fun sometimes.

F: Do you think there would ever be a moment in time, or something that would happen to you, that would make you never want to create sound again?

S: Oh, no. I don't think so. I don't think so.

F: No. How about you?

J: You know, I never wanted to quit. I just knew I kinda had to take a knee on it for a little bit. I think where I'm at was, I wanted to be able to do it and I wanted to be able to create, but I knew I couldn't tour anymore. Or at least not for a while, because I kinda needed to make some money. So yeah, I mean, I never wanted to quit, I just knew I needed to kinda do it differently.

F: See that's the thing right? Alright, again, you know, there's the music and the music business, and one sometimes has nothing to do with the other. It's always the thing surrounding music that cause you wanna fucking stop doing it. It's never really, you know, the actual creating of music that does it.

J: Well, I think that the most fun part is the creation. And that's second to only getting to play for like 30-40 minutes, and actually be able to perform it for people.

F: Right.

J: My favorite part of any band that I've ever been in was the time I got to spend with the people who I was in the band with, writing, creating, and working on stuff, and bouncing ideas off each other. Like, that whole creative process was always the best part of it. But you know, I hated everything else. I hated like, "Oh, now we have to get out, and more work. Now we have to like-"

F: See, but that could be considered, you know, part of the creating of it. But I get what you're saying. Those times in the basement or the garage somewhere, making loud noises, and fucking you know, kinda riffing off of each other, that's such a precious time. Figuring out what it's supposed to sound like.

J: So let me ask you guys this, because you know, you both are in a field working very creatively. Do you ever feel as if, you know, we had all that time, right? You know, say, for you know, us as kids writing that first record, right? And then you know, you're writing your first comic, and you kinda have that first moment of success, where it's like, "Okay, what do I follow up with." How do you follow it up? Because you know, it takes so long to get that first one out, but once you get your foot in the door, what's the process like for you to kind of produce it again? Or produce something else? And kinda just keep moving forward.

F: There's that saying where you have your whole life to write your first record, and then 6 months to write the second, or something like that. There's a definite pressure to kinda like, if you did trap lightning in a bottle to do it again, to recreate that, I feel like you can't let that pressure seep in. I think that's also why subconsciously I wanted to do that thing where I change the band name every time, because you have that- there's never a sophomore record. It's always a new one! You know, it's always a new band.

J: It's a great idea!

F: Yeah! Until people can't fucking think! People get real annoyed with you. "Alright what's it called now?!" Like, I told you it was gonna change every time. "Oh, well how is it spelled?!" People get real fucking mad, dude!

J: That's like an angry uncle at Thanksgiving.

F: Seriously! He's so mad!

J: "I already bought the t-shirt! Why did you change the name of the band?!"

F: Because you gotta buy a new one now.

J: So Shaun, how does that work for you? Because you know, I've always thought what you do in comics is really interesting because you're not writing a, "Well, now I'm 66 issues into this one story."

S: Yeah.

J: But you write, which I think is cool, you write a project, you do 5-6 issues on it. I think Art Ops was 12, right?

S: Art Ops was 12, yeah.

J: And then you move on to something else.

S: Yeah.

J: Is that a way to keep it fresh for you? And kinda like Frank said, you never have a sophomore record.

S: Yeah. I think for me, it's important to move on and do something different. I feel like I wouldn't want to be writing the same- you know, unless it was something that I was doing that I had a lot of, not even inspiration, but a lot to say on it, then I feel like I could keep going. But for me, it's important to move on and do something different, and something that I try to do is do something very different than the last thing I did.

F: Right.

J: Right.

S: You know?

F: I'm sorry, I don't mean to jump in. When you start a new project, is it imperative for you to have like, a beginning and an end in sight?

S: Yeah.

F: Like, "This needs to end here."

S: Yeah, you wanna have an- I mean, I like to have an idea of where I'm going with it, because if you don't- the thing with comics is you kinda have to because you don't have the opportunity as if you were writing a novel, where I'm gonna write this whole first draft, and then I'm gonna go and do a second draft, and really weed out what the story is and what I'm trying to say. Comics most of the time, you're writing issue 1 and then it's coming out in 3 months, and you know, you're on this deadline to get shit done, so if you don't know where you're going at the beginning, you might fuck up and not go anywhere.

F: Right.

S: You know?

J: So, for you, I wonder, you know- with Frank, so Frank has different members of his band. Evan's been the constant, which is awesome, but every band you have some different members of the band. Do you find working with different artists, Shaun, gives you the ability to stretch out and find a different voice for the characters that you create in these new stories?

S: Yeah. I think that there's definitely the right person for each project.

J: Because every project that you've done has a distinctly different look.

S: Yeah.

J: And what I love about the characters is every character is their own character. So you're not- what I found in the stories that you tell, is you're not rehashing the same character, just kinda with a different outfit and a different scenario. Every story is specifically different.

S: Yeah. No, I think there's definite themes in the stuff that I do, but like I said, I need to move and I need to something different. I can't just be stagnant and keep telling the same story over and over again.

J: That's awesome.

F: Yeah. After you put one to bed though, like down the road, do you ever think like, "Oh man, I could go back and do another."

S: Yeah, I think so. But I feel like I haven't had something where I've been dying to do that so much that I needed to keep going with something, you know?

J: Avery from Sacramento wants to know, "Frank, is there any particular message in any of your songs that you want your fans to hear the most? If so, what song and what's the message?" Do I need to get a secret decoder ring for this? I think I have enough coupons from Ovaltine saved.

F: I feel like I tend to just kinda touch on a lot of experiences that I've firsthand gone through, or witnessed other people go through. I don't think that there's one specific message that I'm trying to get across. A lot of it's just fucking therapy for me. If that translates to someone else's life and something that they can get out of it, that's awesome. But I don't know if I'm trying to really communicate anything to anyone else. I don't like talking on the phone, you know?

J: Yeah.

F: I like hanging out and talking to like- you know? I don't wanna communicate.

S: "I hate talking to people."

F: I don't wanna talk, yeah. So like, if I can write a song that says something that gets it off my chest, then I don't have to say it.

S: "I hate this podcast."

J: There you go.

F: You would never know that too, because I'm the fucking wordiest motherfucker on this thing!

S: Yeah you are, yeah.

J: You are.

S: No, I'm not saying that in a bad way!

F: Yeah, like, I don't know. I think it's because I'm nervous.

S: I'm glad you are.

F: Alright thanks.

S: Because I'm not like that.

F: Right.

J: Yeah, you're nervous and I give you coffee so it's just-

F: That too, yeah.

J: It's on.

F: It's like word urine. Just have to pee out of my fucking orifices.

S: Just milk it. Milk it out.

F: At all times. But yeah, I mean, alright well. Shaun, is it like, for writing comics, the same thing. You know, I feel like you get to kinda hide behind a character, you know, or characters.

S: Right.

F: Is that easier to do if you're trying to get something across? Or you're just telling a story and you're not trying to like, push an agenda.

S: I mean, there's definite shit in there if you look for it, but I'm just trying to tell a good story.

F: Right.

S: You know? There's always stuff in there. And maybe you'll see it, maybe you don't. I'm not trying to come out and tell you anything other than try to give you a good story.

J: I think it's actually a great question because-

F: Yeah it is.

J: When you really distill it, I remember being a kid and being like, "Oh my god, this person's writing this song about me!" And it's a lot of interpretation of what people write. Like, some people come out there like, you know say, off the top of my head, a person like Bruce Springsteen. He wrote, you know, 41 Shots and he's very specifically writing about something that happened because he has a point of view on, and he wants to share that point of view with you.

F: Right.

J: But for the most part, if you look at Springsteen's lyrics and you look at the things that Springsteen writes, you know, you relate on a fundamental level because it's stuff that kind of happens to everybody, and it's stuff that you feel like you're going through at the time, or you relate a time and a place in your life to. I think a lot of, you know, I look back at- we did the Pencey Prep record and I just had things to say, I had feelings and I wanted to get them out, but it wasn't so much that there was a message I was trying to get out. I'm just trying to get it off my chest, and if you related to that and you wanna hold onto that as something that you attribute to something special, or maybe not so special that has happened in your life, cool. I feel like we did our job.

F: Yeah.

J: But that's kinda like what it is. Like you know, even with the podcast thing. I just talk. I talk a lot. And now, you know, I have a platform for it, and I just like to laugh, so here we are.

F: You know what, no, I take it back. It's about lizard people.

J: There you go!

F: It's all about lizard people.

J: See, breaking news, folks. It's about lizard people. April from California wants to know, "What we think about music today compared to the music we grew up with?"

F: Uh oh, shit talk.

S: There it is.

F: There it goes.

S: That's it!

F: All downhill from here!

J: Yeah, we're about to burn some bridges y'all. Get the popcorn out. I got a whole box of Lipton and I'm ready to spill some tea!

F: There's some shit that I can really get into, and there's some stuff I don't understand. I'm an old person now.

S: I find myself just listening to shit from back when, most of the time.

F: Yeah.

S: And even finding new artists from that era that I maybe didn't know of before.

F: You know what? Yeah, I like doing that too. I just worked with Steve Albini and he got us into this band, Budgie from the 70s that I never knew about. Did you ever listen to Budgie?

S: Budgie.

J: No, it's just a fun word.

F: It's great! Dude, it's fucking awesome!

S: Yeah?

F: It's like, you know, the bridger between Sabbath and Rush, it feels like. You know, it's like doomy prog and it's fucking great, dude.

J: You know why they never went anywhere? Because they're called Budgie. You know what Australians call bathing suits? Budgie smugglers. "My favorite band is Budgie!" Okay.

F: Yeah, it was one of those bands that I totally fucking missed out on, and what's really funny is there's some killer Budgie artwork. Like, album art is kinda dope.

J: Yeah.

F: But as far as, I don't know, there's a lot of-

J: All your Australian fans are giggling real hard right now.

F: I think they're from England. I think Budgie was from England. Anyway, I think there's a lot of new bands that I really really do like, but as far as like, the popular stuff, I don't know. I think it's over my head. I don't know if it's written for me.

J: And you know what, that's kinda where I'm coming from it too is, I'm with you, Shaun. I listen to pretty much all stuff- my musical taste gave up the ghost in 2003. That's kinda where it ended for me. I listen to a lot of stuff I used to listen to growing up, and things that are related to it. I hear some stuff now that's new and I'm like, I either think it's cool, or if it's not cool to me, I just think it's not for me.

F: Right.

J: And I don't think I would classify it as good or bad, it's just not that vibe I'm going for and the things I kinda like to listen to, so I think it's cool. I think music is a very subjective thing, and you know, if it's not for you, it's okay that it's not for you. And if it's for you, buy tickets, go see the band. Abby from the UK, I'm floating the idea of trying to do the UK accent.

F: Please do.

J: But I'm not.

S: You're very good at it.

J: "Oi! Besides projects you're working on, what-"

F: I love this! This is my favorite part!

S: Yeah, this is good.

J: Abby from the UK wants to know-

F: I like that Abby has this, "Oi!" Real like, gravelly Cockney accent.

J: I'm thinking Vinnie Jones in my brain. Not that I imagine, Abby, you look like Vinnie Jones. It's just I have a very limited scope of the accents I can do, and they're all bad.

F: Oh shit.

J: But Abby from Newcastle UK wants to know, "Besides the projects you're working on, what excites us most about 2019?"

F: Fuck, man! Yeah! I don't know about that. Just that it's not 2018, I guess. Because holy shit! Yeah, here's the thing. When you start at -4, you're hoping that the only place you can go is up.

J: Yeah, I kinda feel the same way. I mean, I'm excited to turn 40 this year. I'm excited to go to WrestleMania.

F: You're gonna turn 40?!

J: Turning 40.

S: Wow, Hambone!

F: Holy shit!

J: Yeah.

S: Wow.

F: Oh man.

J: And that's it. You know, I'm excited to go to WrestleMania and to turn 40.

F: Wow.

J: So it's pretty much downhill once we get past April.

F: Those are hefty goals, I like that.

J: They're pretty hefty goals, like. Mads from England wants to know-

F: Nads?

J: Mads, yeah.

F: Oh. Sorry, I missed that.

J: I've already blew it on the other accent so-

F: Alright, real quick before you go into this.

S: Nads.

F: So you know, this accent thing started for my family a couple of weeks ago. We had a family accent contest because my daughter, Cherry, is really into doing voices.

J: Oh wow!

F: And doing accents.

S: That's great.

F: Yeah, they're pretty-

S: That's awesome.

F: She's pretty good at it too. And so, we decided, because she ended up saying, "I'm the best at this." And we were like, "Wow!"

J: That's a bold claim.

F: That's a bold claim! So, we had a family-wide accent contest where you had to do a British accent, and we had to pick a random series of words. So we picked "delicious burrito."

S: Oh.

J: Wow.

F: Because that's probably something that you don't hear very much in England because they don't have delicious burritos there!

S: Did she win?

F: Well! What we did was we- I taped everyone saying "delicious burrito," and then I sent it to our friend, Cara, who is British.

S: Oh!

J: Oh so you had a judge!

F: We had an actual Brit come in.

S: Wow, that's legit!

J: Who won?

F: Lily won.

J: Wow!

F: Yes. Which was troubling because I thought I would win.

J: Well, listen, it's a bold move when you just show up to the plate and go like, "I'm the best here."

F: Yeah, "I'm the best here, you all can go home."

J: Did you get her like, a title belt or something?

F: And fucking Lily won.

S: Wow.

F: I don't know if we're like the best parents or if we're the worst, but she won- we picked her up early from school and took her out to lunch and Build A Bear.

S: Oh! That's great.

J: That's fantastic.

F: But I wonder if she told her teacher, like, "Yeah, I won a British accent contest and now I'm leaving school early."

J: Well, I mean, in fairness, you did have it judged by a real Brit so.

F: I mean, it was a legitimate, yeah, le-Brit-imate contest.

S: Le-Brit-imate.

J: I love it.

F: Oh sorry, uh, what's up Mads.

J: Yeah, Mads from England wants to know-

S: Oh there was a question there.

F: There was a question here.

J: "What are your favorite horror movies?"

F: Oh man! I kinda like the slow burn. I like Rosemary's Baby, I like The Omen, I like House of the Devil.

J: House of the Devil's awesome.

F: I like The Strangers but I don't know if it holds up.

J: Yeah, I haven't watched it in a good number of years, but it's definitely-

F: Strangers 2, I wouldn't even watch.

J: Well yeah, I mean, sequel.

F: I know. We talked about this though, right? When I went to go see The Strangers and there was a lady? I went to go a midnight showing of Strangers in Clifton Commons.

J: Well that was your first mistake.

F: Well... And we show up, and there's a woman there with a baby. I know.

S: Like a crying baby?

F: Well, a sleeping baby. And we were like, "Oh no."

J: "That ain't good."

F: "This is not gonna be good."

S: Yeah.

F: And then immediately, the baby wakes up.

S: Oh.

F: And starts to cry. And the movie has just started and everybody's like, "Why the fuck do you have this baby here?"

S: That's stupid.

F: I know. And so people are like, you know, yelling obscenities at her and stuff. And then she finally stands up and she's like, "Deal with it!" And some guy right behind me goes, "Put yo titty in its mouth!" It was the greatest heckle I've ever heard!

S: Oh my god!

J: I think we just end the episode there.

F: Oh sorry, yeah yeah.

S: That's it.

J: Holy shit. How about you, Shaun? Do you have a favorite horror movie?

S: I don't know if I do. I'm not a huge fan of horror, the genre in general. I don't know. I like some stuff if it's good.

F: Alright, yeah.

S: Right?

F: I hear you. Hey, can't argue with that, right?

S: That makes a lot of sense, yeah. If it's good, I like it.

J: Instead of comics, he's gonna do movie reviews next.

F: I like that, yeah. If it's good, put yo titty in its mouth!

S: That's the title of this episode, by the way.

J: Put your titty in its mouth? Yeah. Trust me, as I'm going, I'm talking mental notes as for what the episode should be called. Add the layer of mystery. Without telling you definitely, this one starts off with Budgie and the-

F: Budgie and the Tiddie. And I'm sure it's spelled Tiddie.

J: Yeah, I think it's gonna be Budgie and The Bawling Baby. Alright, we'll do one more question before we wrap this up. This is the feel good question. Aothie from Singapore-

F: What is it?

S: Who?

J: Aothie.

F: Aothie, that's a good name.

J: I'm going with it.

F: Alright.

J: Trust me, there's going to be a tweet going out later where I apologize in advance for slaughtering everybody’s names because I am illiterate. "Do you guys have any advice for holding onto your friends?" Call people.

F: Oh boy. Didn't we just do that one?

S: Yeah, I think we did this.

J: I think we did that one.

F: I'm sorry, we did that one already.

J: Yeah, we're gonna- but I will tell you thank you for the question.

S: Sorry.

F: Try hard.

S: Sorry, friend.

J: Just you know, reach out to your friends.

F: See, if it's good, Shaun will answer it.

J: Yeah.

S: Yeah, if it's not, I mean.

J: Reach out to your friends.

S: Come on.

J: Don't just Facebook them. Like, go see them.

S: What do you end the episodes with? Hold your friends? Touch your friends?

J: Hold onto your friends.

S: Something your friends?

J: I forget it every time. I gotta remind myself.

S: I feel like it's new every time.

F: Call them.

J: It's always close enough to it, and I'll listen to it and I'm like, "Oh that's not right," so I often recut the ending of every episode.

F: Do you really? Oh!

J: Because sometimes I blow it.

S: That's good.

J: Yeah, we're gonna call it what it is.

F: "Know when to hold them."

J: "Know when to fold them and know when to walk away, and ask good questions."

S: Stop!

J: Yeah, I think that's a good spot to stop.

F: No no! We got one more, come on!

J: One more?

F: I got one more in me.

S: That one was kinda shitty.

J: Yeah. Andrea from Peru would like to know, "Where do you find your inspiration to write songs?"

F: Kinda just, I feel like everyday situations or, like you know, the things that kinda happen to you in your life that made huge impressions.

S: Bus accidents.

F: Bus accidents are big one. Hey, if you can-

J: Yeah.

F: If you can get one of those in your back pocket.

J: I feel like you're Travelocity review for that wouldn't be too high marks.

S: That's part of Tips For Teens, right?

F: Yeah! Jesus Christ. That's a rough one. Yeah, these milestones of, you know, hopefully they're not all near death, but if you- you'll know them when you have them. Certain things that you can not let go of without writing a song about, you know?

J: Yeah. It's also okay to write songs if you're feeling happy and good.

F: Yeah! I don't know how to do it.

J: Like, it doesn't always have to be bad experiences. I couldn't tell you, yeah.

F: But by all means!

J: The wrong guy to let you in on that secret.

F: Yeah, man. Jeez, I'd like to try that once in a while.

J: So, we're gonna wrap up this episode of Casual Interactions. Until we meet again, hold onto your friends.

[anistarrose]

Some Sunny Day - Chapter 8: It Won’t Be Long (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: Mabel bursts some bubbles, Dipper cracks a code, and Ford makes a wisdom saving throw.

Warnings: manipulation, flashbacks to torture (see note below for more detail)

Previous / Next

The Beginning (see here for AO3 link)

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris, and this chapter was beta’d by @porkpop!)

Given the subject matter, I guess it’s fitting that this fic would appear to die and then unexpectedly rise from the ashes months later, isn’t it? In all seriousness, I’m sorry it took so long (life has been… not exactly conducive to writing multichapter fics lately) and hope this update ends up being worth the wait! Good news, though — I wrote my first draft of Chapter 9 a while back, so the next update should come in a much more timely manner!

Important warning: This chapter contains flashbacks to torture by electrocution. The torture itself isn’t described in particularly graphic detail, but a decent amount of time is spent describing the consequences (there are references to temporary character death as well as to PTSD) so if you don’t want to read those parts but want to continue following the fic, feel free to ask me for a summary of the chapter with potentially upsetting parts omitted.

(On a lighter note, there’s a reference to one of my favorite GF fics in this chapter, so see if you can spot it!)

In another world of shimmering bubbles and wispy pink clouds, deep within a mountaintop temple, an Oracle addressed her patron.

“If he is to remember,” she asked, “it will be soon, won’t it?”

From within one of the bubbles, a frill-wreathed head bounced up and down in a nod. Its voice was musical and ethereal, like the sound of distant wind chimes.

“If you wish to help them, then now is the time.”

Jheselbraum bowed, and departed to an adjacent room of the temple where she kneeled down on a simple, woven mat. Concentrating on a single image — the face shared by two brothers whose destinies were so tightly intertwined with that of a demon, forming tangled loops that crisscrossed all across time and space, spanning eons and dimensions — her eyes blinked closed. When they opened again, they were glowing a faint lilac purple, and watching the events of a dream as it played out within the mindscape of Stanley Pines.

Interacting with the flow of time in such a way that it already knew the results, yet still observing intently, the Axolotl smiled.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Mere moments into her quest to break out of her dream bubble and save Stan, Mabel had an unpleasant realization: this time, she could see no literal bubble to burst — and therefore, no clear way to escape the dream world. No way back to her family.

Oh god, what if she fell back under the bubble’s spell before she could find a way to escape? And what if she didn’t snap out of it the next time —

“Think, Mabel, think,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t panic, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere…”

She heard movement in a nearby room of the Shack, and tiptoed away in the other direction, slipping into the gift shop and hunkering down behind the counter. The scenery around her was a good approximation of how the Shack really looked, but now that she knew she was in an illusion, the only thing that felt real was her pounding heart.

What would Ford want me to do? Stay calm, stay safe, and think through things logically, right?

She took a deep breath. Okay, Mabel, take it from the top. What’s the situation? What do you know?

She was in a dream, created by Stan because he was afraid of Bill. (Well, afraid of something, but what could it possibly be if not Bill?) It didn’t seem like Stan had realized she was aware of being in an illusion, so that was something she had going for her. He probably wouldn’t be actively trying to stop her, at least not yet.

And if she’d gotten here after being doused in the dark water, then Dipper and Soos were probably in dream bubbles of their own — maybe even Ford too, by this point. She had to get back to the regular mindscape, and see if he was alright. Or better yet, find Dipper and Soos’s bubbles and bring them back with her —

Right, she was still technically in the mindscape, wasn’t she? Which meant that if she focused on something hard enough, imagined it vividly enough…

She climbed out from behind the counter and rested her hand on the gift shop’s doorknob, bracing herself to open it and leave the Shack.

Okay, door, listen up, she thought. When I open you, you’re going to take me back to Dipper. In three, two, one…

She swung it open and a freezing black flood rushed in, knocking her backwards. With great effort, she opened her eyes to see the colors of the dream dissolving around her, and reforming new bubbles that floated in the ink-black sea, beckoning her with their colorful fantasies.

There was Ford, safe and holding hands with Stan and eight other familiar faces in a nearly complete circle. Eyes lit up with an optimism she hadn’t seen in him all day, Ford gave her an encouraging smile and reached towards her —

“Just take my hand, and we can complete the Zodiac!” he exclaimed. “We can banish Bill once and for all, together!”

She could feel her hands drifting over, fingers outstretched and ready to wrap around Ford’s own — but she yanked away at the last second, wrapping her arms tight around her shivering chest. A faint glow emanated from the star on her sweater, melting away the icicles on the tips of her numb finger and shining through her foggy, jumbled thoughts like the guiding beam of a lighthouse, exposing the true nature of the treacherous sea surrounding her.

It was never going to be as easy as holding hands, not this time. She knew better than to let any dreams within dreams convince her otherwise.

She took a strenuous step forward against the flow of the current, and the rejected bubbles burst as new illusions appeared in front of her, each singing a different siren song of temptation.

Here, Ford never fell into the portal.

Here, Ford and Stan never argued in the first place.

Here, you never broke your promise to help Dipper with the laptop, and he never got possessed by Bill…

Some of the visions hurt more than others, and she forced herself to look away. “Dipper?” she called out. “Soos? Grunkle Ford?”

There was no reply, except for a new stream of bubbles rising from the depths to float in front of her. In the closest one, she could see Bill Cipher warp and distort, limbs glitching and flickering as his pupil dilated in fear, and Mabel just knew that one good punch was all it would take to shatter that triangle beyond hope of repair —

And it would have been so satisfying, so cathartic, to deliver that punch, but she was painfully aware of it just being fantasy. It was exactly what she had hoped to find, exactly what she had envisioned as a best case scenario — Bill not just weakened, but completely distinct from Stan, easily separated and destroyed — and she couldn’t help but wonder if the illusion had been summoned entirely from Stan’s mind, or from her own.

Something about a larger bubble on her left side caught her attention. It just felt tangibly distinct from the others — still pulling her towards it, but in a different way. She was drawn to this one because it was… well, not entirely real, but more real than anything else around her. It was more familiar, more comforting — and not like the guilt-laced comfort of denial, but like the warm, genuine solace of companionship.

She approached it one step at a time, careful not to let the current around her lift her feet off the ground and wash her out of reach. She was scarcely five feet away when the voice of the bubble suddenly grew clear, and she realized — it wasn’t calling out to her like the other bubbles had, but rather having a conversation with itself.

No, not with itself. With someone already trapped within its illusion.

“All right, we’re rolling in three… two… one…”

“Welcome back to Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Today, we’re coming to you from my uncle’s lab, where we’re running some tests on the ghost we captured last episode! Be sure to check that one out if you missed it, because —”

She could see Dipper now — appearance distorted by the bubble’s convex barrier, but unmistakably (and so relievingly) him. He was in a sophisticated but messy-looking laboratory, Ford smiling proudly at his side and Soos standing behind the camera…

But even a ways outside, and with the current working against her, Mabel could make out a spark of light in Dipper’s eyes that the other two lacked. Relief washed over her as she realized she’d found her real brother — accompanied by no small amount of worry for the real Ford and Soos, still nowhere to be seen.

“Dipper!” she called out. “This isn’t real! You have to get out of there!”

The water garbled her voice, distorting it so much that it sounded unintelligible even to her, but Dipper frowned as she spoke. Glancing between Ford and Soos, he asked:

“Did you guys hear that? Was that an audio glitch or something?”

Both the illusions shook their heads as Mabel spat out water, fighting against the tide to get closer to the bubble.

“Dipper, you’re in Stan’s mindscape, remember? It’s a dream bubble, like — like the one Bill trapped me in last summer!”

This time her words came out clearer, and Dipper turned around, somehow both looking right at her and staring right past her at once.

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “Bill’s gone…”

Ford put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Of course he is. We’re safe from him now — and Stan and Mabel are, too.”

The current around Mabel grew fiercer, threatening to drag her backwards, but she managed to wrap her arms around the bubble, hugging it as tightly as she could.

“We came to Stan’s mind to stop Bill!” she yelled. “You remember that, right?”

Dipper shook his head. “I — I don’t know…”

“You can remember! You can snap out of it — I know you can, because you snapped me out of it last summer! You’re stronger than this cheap trap, I know you are!”

Dipper grabbed his head, shuddering and gritting his teeth as the bubble began to distort. Hand still on Dipper’s shoulder, not-Ford’s eyes turned a dull red.

Please, Dipper, Mabel thought, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on…

The facsimile Ford’s form began to darken — at first fading to a monochrome shadow of his former self, and then melting like tar, liquifying into a shuddering column of darkness that spewed out rivers of black ink all around the lab just as quickly as it spewed out lies.

Do you really want to go back there, Dipper? Back to everyone you love being in grave danger? Back to not understanding what’s happening to them or how to help them? Do you want to go back to that uncertainty, to that fear?

Tendrils of darkness crept towards Dipper from every angle, surrounding him as if preparing for an embrace.

Here, Bill is dead for good. Stan is safe from him, and his mindscape is perfectly normal and healthy. Here we’re all safe, and happy, and living the lives we’ve always wanted. It’s not so hard to pretend —

Dipper finally met Mabel’s eyes, just staring at her for a moment. As the tendrils snaked closer and closer to him, he looked down again and took a deep breath.

“Dipper! Let’s beat Bill and save Stan together!”

He turned back towards Mabel and smiled, extending both arms in her direction.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he whispered.

The tendrils recoiled in shock as Mabel plunged her hands into the bubble, grabbed ahold of her brother, and pulled.

***

Ice-cold waves submerged Dipper like he’d plunged into an Antarctic sea, and a numbness quickly overtook him, paralyzing his chest and racing up his arms to —

It didn’t reach his fingertips. Mabel’s hand was warm even as she released him from her embrace, and Dipper realized that he could see her clearly now — a bright spot in the darkness, radiating determination like a falling star lighting up the endless void of the night.

Instantly, the last wisps of fog clouding his brain evaporated away, and everything fell into place — how it wasn’t Bill trapping them in the bubbles, but Stan himself. How finding and destroying Bill would have to mean finding a way to pierce through Stan’s own denial.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Mabel blurted out, and pulled him back into a hug. “I — I wasn’t sure I could save everyone alone.”

“Well,” he told her as he returned the embrace, “you sure saved me.”

The current raged around them, sending them spinning — but for all its strength, it couldn’t even come close to tearing them apart.

***

Ford stepped out of the portal to a not just familiar, but nostalgic sight — a temple carved of pink-tinted marble stone, craggy mountain peaks peering out from the blanket of clouds beneath them.

“Jheselbraum?” he called out, and the curtains at the entrance to the shine parted, revealing a humanoid figure clad in flowing red and purple robes.

All seven of her eyes blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “Stanford! It’s good to see you again — and you’ve brought friends this time!”

“Sure did!” Stan said. “The guy would be lost without us. I’m Stan, nice to —”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stanley, I know who you are. And you must be Mr. McGucket?”

Distracted for the moment, Fiddleford tapped one of several pink bubbles that had floated out of the shrine. Its shape distorted, but it didn’t burst. “Would you look at that…ah, yes, sorry! McGucket, that’s me alright — though ya can just call me Fiddleford or Fidds. It’s a pleasure to meet ya!”

“Likewise! Would you three like to come inside? I know the view out here is spectacular the first hundred or so times you see it, but it’s honestly even more interesting in there.”

“Of course!”

Ford led the way in, marveling at the richly colored tapestries lining the halls. “Jhes, do you weave these yourself? I don’t think I saw this many the last time I visited.”

“I do! You’ll find some seers and oracles that weave their predictions directly into their tapestries, but I honestly just need to be doing something with my hands while I concentrate on seeing the future.”

“I can relate,” Fiddleford chimed in. “Er, not that I’m a prophet or anythin’, but I can never figure out what’s wrong with my code unless I’m fidgeting with somethin’ in a free hand.”

Something in a room to the side caught Ford’s eye, and he stopped so suddenly that Stan nearly slammed into him from behind. “I never got a chance to ask you before, but — why do you have so many tapestries of axolotls?” He felt like he had a second question on the tip of his tongue, but it stayed stubbornly just out of reach no matter how hard he tried to remember it.

Jheselbraum smiled knowingly, not so much with her mouth as with her eyes. “The Axolotl has always been something of a kindred spirit towards those who seek to see beyond the linear flow of time,” she pronounced, “and I like to show my gratitude this way.”

“The Axolotl, with a capital A…” Ford mused. “I’m sorry, Jhes — just a few weeks ago, I’m sure there was something I was thinking I’d like to ask you, but… it’s escaping me now.”

Jheselbraum put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and a dull purple glow rippled across her eyes, so briefly that Ford would have missed it if he’d blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and echoing, as if originating from the other end of a long hallway — but also more lively, more lifelike, the subtle accent a bit more pronounced and the inflection of her words more rhythmic, more poem-like.

“Did you want to ask why the Axolotl watched over your brother’s house, for all those years? Why it manifested before Stanley, of all people?”

“That’s — I think that’s it, I…” The ground ceased to feel solid beneath Ford’s feet, and a wave of nausea washed over him as he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how sluggish and muddled his thoughts felt, as if stifled by fog. “There’s something — something wrong about this place, isn’t there? What am I… how did I get here? Is —”

“Hey, Sixer! Check out what I found!”

Simply hearing Stan’s voice was an instant relief, a rope he could grab onto and use to pull himself out of the stormy, disorienting sea of uncertainty he’d found himself cast adrift in. “Huh? What is it?”

Stan frowned. “You okay? I’ve never seen you not recognize a D38 at first glance.” Sure enough, he held a thirty-eight sided die in each hand, one purple and the other blue.

“I… it’s just the thin mountain air getting to me, I think. Where did you find those?”

Stan snickered, pulling aside a tapestry that hung over the doorway to a room Ford had passed by. “Oh, you ain’t seen anything yet. Feast your eyes, nerd!”

The room had two sides that were completely open aside from ornate marble guard railings, providing a stellar view as the first of the world’s three purple moons began to rise above the horizon, but Ford’s attention was instead captivated by the table at the center. Crisscrossing gridlines glowed a dull blue-green, dividing the surface into hundreds of tiny squares, and holographic projections cycled through a variety of miniaturized, perfectly adventure-suited environments — a lush oasis within a dust storm-battered desert, a sprawling and bustling space station floating just above the rings of a pink gaseous planet, an impenetrable-seeming castle of gray brick overlooking a murky moat and surrounded by expansive and bountiful farmlands.

“Jheselbraum, have you always had this?” Ford asked. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“The last time you were here, you spent every waking moment either recovering from head injuries or drunk on Cosmic Sand. It hardly would have made for a quality campaign.”

Detachedly, Ford realized that the echo was gone from her voice, but he couldn’t help but pay more attention to Stan, who hoisted himself into the throne-like seat at the head of the table and diabolically rubbed his hands together.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, and I’ve got some big ideas up my sleeve… so, who’s up for a game?”

“Stanley, I can think of literally no better way to spend the next six hours to six weeks of my life,” Ford declared. “I’m in.”

***

“You hear the slappin’ tunes, Mr. Pines? That’s how you know it’s a boss battle!”

“Slappin’? Is that seriously how you people describe music these days? And what’s a boss battle?”

“Well, it’s pretty much what happens when you defeat all the minions of the biggest, baddest dude in the level, so then they finally have to throw down with you themself! Doesn’t look like you’re having any trouble with it, though — you must be some kinda natural, ha ha!”

“You bet I am!” Stan laughed as he dealt the final blow, and tossed the controller down triumphantly. “I’m gonna break the young’s monopoly on gaming skills, just you watch —”

The congratulatory chiptune jingle cut off abruptly, and a pattern of static rippled across the TV set. When it subsided, two new character sprites had appeared — two sprites that Soos knew he’d recognize anywhere no matter how stylized, thanks to that lumberjack hat and shooting star sweater.

“Hey, dudes! I was just teaching Stan how to play some of my favorite games — but how’d you two get in there? You’re looking kinda pixely — what happened?”

“Pixely?” Dipper looked down at his hands for a moment, confused, but then shook his head. “Never mind! Soos, this is all just an illusion! You’ve got to snap out of it!”

“All this is just inside Stan’s mindscape, remember?” Mabel added. “You’ve gotta out of there so you can help us stop Bill and save Stan!”

The ripple of static crossed the TV screen again, but this time it spread out all throughout the room, making the furniture and walls flicker and glitch like they were in a corrupted game. A high-pitched electronic whine prompted Soos to clap his hands over his ears, and the light from Mabel’s sweater pulsed in sync with the sound, like the noise and the static were emanating from her and Dipper somehow. Soos felt like he was missing something — why did the two of them look so distraught, with those pixelated frowny faces?

“Are — are you sure, dudes?” he asked. “Stan said Bill was gone, and we were having a lot of fun here — weren’t we, Mr. Pines?”

“‘Course we were!” Stan gently punched him in the arm — too gently, almost intangibly, like it was just a simulation of the actual sensation — “And do I look like I need saving? I’m doin’ great over here, just having a —”

“You don’t look like it, but you do, Stan!” Mabel cried out. “I know you do, and we can help you, I promise we can — but first you have to admit it!”

“No! I’m fine! We’re all fine!” Stan yelled, but dark red and purple pixels began to flicker at the edges of his form. He looked almost two-dimensional as the glitchy appearance slowly crept up his arms, consuming them and disintegrating them into a sea of dark, flashing rectangles that cascaded towards the ground —

“Mr. Pines?” Soos gasped. “Are — are you okay? How —”

Stan extended what was left of an arm in his direction — and then froze in horror, as he saw what the loss of the pixels had exposed.

Four slender, cartoonishly simple fingers trembled in place just inches from Soos’s shoulder — all of them a smooth and solid black, and wreathed in electric blue sparks.

No! Stan’s voice came out desperate and distorted, crackling and cutting out like a broken speaker. PLEASE, no —

Two pairs of human hands grabbed ahold of Soos from behind and pulled him away from Stan, back towards the television. From all directions at once, his ears were filled with a resounding POP —

And then the three of them tumbled down onto the grayscale yet familiar wooden floor of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, dark clouds above them receding towards the hallway. Just feet away, the vending machine stood shining brighter and bluer than ever, a now all-too-familiar song playing softly from within like the melody from a music box.

Keep smiling through,

Just like you always do,

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

***

An elven wizard resembling Ford, a human bard resembling Fiddleford, and a silver dragonborn paladin with two additional rows of eyes like Jheselbraum forged a path up a mountain, undeterred by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Their route wasn’t particularly steep, but shrubs and small trees grew all over what had once been a trail, making their climb more tedious than Ford had hoped for.

“So Ford, this dungeon — you say no one’s ever returned from it alive?” Fiddleford asked, absentmindedly plucking his banjo to the tune of Country Roads.

“No one has ever returned from it period, dead or alive,” he answered, shoving a branch out of his face. “Necromancy will likely be of little help to us there. But all the divination magic in the world agrees that the depths of Mt. Somnifell hold, and I quote, ‘all the treasure an adventurer could ever dream of.’ You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“More like muddy feet,” Fiddleford groaned, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth with clear visceral disgust as looked down at the ground beneath his shoes. “Are we close yet?”

“Should be.” Three of Jheselbraum’s eyes were directed down at a map, while the other four scanned the surrounding area for landmarks and hazards. “Do you see a crooked tree anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ford replied. He craned his neck up towards the sky, past the transparent storm clouds and into the pink marble room surrounding them. “Stan, are there any landmarks that you forgot to imagine into the game and would like to tell us about?”

Stan snorted and leaned over the table, resting his elbows on a neighboring mountain. “Have a little faith, Poindexter! I may be a first time DM over here, but I think you’ll find that I’m the master of the imagination!”

“Fine, I’ll look somewhere else for your dumb tree,” Ford shot back. “Alright, gang, let’s check some other spots at the same altitude — ugh! What’s going on here?”

A long, brown tendril had wrapped around his left ankle and was binding it in place — the root of a nearby oak, he realized.

“It’s got us too!” Jheselbraum called out, drawing her sword. Without hesitation, Fiddleford whacked the root ensnaring him with his banjo, and it seemed to flinch — as much as a semi-mobile plant could flich, at least — but stayed tightly bound.

“I cast Scorching Ray!” Ford declared, and three yellow-orange bolts flew out from the tip of his wand, one striking each of the three tendrils with impressive precision. Several inches of each root instantly crumbled into ash, and the oak tree that they led back to shuddered, green lights flashing in its leaves as a dark-skinned figure with pointed ears and vivid emerald eyes flickered into view. Immediately, they held up their hands in submission.

“Alright, I’m sorry! You’re stronger than I bargained for. I’ll leave you alone now, I promise.” Their voice held a hint of Stan’s hoarseness, but also a distinct inflection pattern of its own.

“You’re a dryad, I presume?” Ford asked, cautiously lowering his wand. “We’re sorry for trespassing on your territory.”

“I suppose dryad is the closest word to it. Most dryads are only tied to one tree, though — I watch over this whole grove, even though I can only control one tree at a time. You can call me Balsa.”

“You must know this region like the back of your hand, then,” Jheselbraum commented, and Balsa beamed, nodding. “Do you think you could help point us towards a certain landmark?”

Their face immediately fell, and they let out a sigh. “It’s the crooked tree, isn’t it? You’re looking for the entrance to the depths?”

“That’s correct. Is something… wrong with that?”

They shook their head. “No, it’s just that… you seem like half-decent people, you know? Same as a lot of other treasure hunters that I’ve seen vanish into that cavern, and never come out. I try to make the plants overrun the trail, make the crooked tree grow straight again so no one can find this place and go boldly marching to their deaths, but…”

They waved their hand halfheartedly, and a mere five meters away, the undergrowth parted to reveal a crack in the earth — a nearly circular dark chasm that rested in the mountain’s light grey stone just as a black hole might sit in the center of a shining galaxy.

“Why are ya showin’ us this?” Fiddleford asked. “You just said ya wanted us to stay out.”

“It’ll call to you anyway.” Balsa sighed dejectedly. “It always does. Everyone who goes looking finds it eventually.”

“How long have you been trying to keep people out?” Jheselbraum hesitantly stepped towards the edge of the chasm, lower row of eyes blinking as she tried to make out what lay within.

“About a century and a half now,” Balsa told her. “The legend draws people in from all four corners of the world, and everywhere in between — seemingly pleasant people like you three, a lot of the time. People whom I wouldn’t expect to be so driven by greed and the promise of treasure. Are you in debt? What is it that draws you to this… this suicide mission?”

“Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it doesn’t exactly hurt to have it, either,” Ford replied, and above the table Stan stifled a laugh. “But for us three, I think the main thing drawing us in is the thrill of the discovery. We’re not so much treasure hunters as simply adventurers.”

“Well said,” Jheselbraum told him. “Balsa, we appreciate your concern, but we know the risks of this mission and we’ve made according preparations. If we’re ever in grave danger, we’ve prepared spells to teleport out with. ”

Ford nodded. “The depths of Mt. Somnifell are a mystery that we plan to solve, no matter how many expeditions it takes.”

Balsa shook their head. “Well, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure you’ll like the solution to that mystery as much as you expect. Will you really remain so dedicated to the truth, if it starts to look like you’re headed towards answers that you don’t want to hear?”

With that, they turned their back and vanished in a burst of green light.

“That was ominous, wasn’t it?” Fiddleford muttered, and then after a pause added: “Well, who’s jumpin’ down that hole first?”

“I think I’ll try to climb, rather than jump, but I’ll be happy to lead the way.” Ford intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, preparing himself for the descent.

“Be careful,” Jheselbraum warned him. “It doesn’t get any brighter down there, and the air flowing out felt humid. It may be slippery.”

“To quote our infinitely wise DM — have a little faith! For one thing, I have dark vision, and for another, I never said I was climbing the rocks themselves.”

One use of Rope Trick later and Ford’s feet safely struck the damp stone floor, having reached the bottom of a twenty-foot long, near-vertical shaft. Fiddleford was about halfway down and had all four limbs wrapped around the rope for dear life, as Jheselbraum brought up the rear and offered words of reassurance.

“Don’t you even think of explorin’ any further without us, Stanford Pines!” Fiddleford shouted, shrill voice echoing loudly. “You’ll just get yourself killed an’ you know it!”

“Relax!” Ford yelled back. “I’m taking a look around, but I’m not moving any deeper in!”

Once he felt certain Fiddleford was more focused on the climb than on him, he took just a tiny step forwards — and then another, and one more after that, because he really had expected to be able see a bit further down here with his dark vision —

The world around him went white, and two firm hands came out of nowhere to grasp both of his shoulders. Jheselbraum stood facing him in the featureless bright space, once again in a robed human form… and with glowing purple eyes.

“I think something’s wrong with your table, Jhes. This doesn’t look like something that should be happening in a campaign —”

“Ford, please listen to me — you’re falling more deeply entranced by the second. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to you again at this rate — you must snap out of it! I know it’s an upsetting truth to face, but you are strong enough, and so is your family, as long as you all face this together. I believe in —”

Ford blinked, and he was back in the cave. Fiddleford kneeled a few feet behind him, looking relieved enough to kiss the ground if only he could see it in the darkness, and Jheselbraum gracefully leapt down from the rope to land at his side. She didn’t look especially worried, or speak like there was any matter of particular urgency at hand.

“Ford, you’re giving me an… odd look. Is your touted night vision malfunctioning?”

“No, I’m… just thinking.” He’d witnessed something, he knew that, but the memory felt the same way an object might look if viewed through unfocused eyes in the dead of night — blurry and undefined, only straining his brain more and more the harder he tried to focus on making it out.

Oh well, then. No need to hurt myself — it’s just a game. And speaking of which…

“Stan?” he called out, and the roof of the cave grew holographic and transparent, revealing Stan’s face as he watched the party attentively.

“Yeah, Sixer?”

“I have to admit, I had my doubts about you as Dungeon Master, but… I was wrong. This is such a well-crafted, captivating story you’ve created here — you know that, right? I’m really, genuinely enjoying it — keep it up, and I won’t ever want to leave!”

“Yeah.” Stan smiled, but broke eye contact with Ford — was he surprised? embarrassed? guilty? “Yeah, that’s just what I’m shootin’ for. Thanks, Ford.”

***

“Can you hear us, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out. “Where are you?”

No one replied, but the dark clouds in the hallways crept a few inches closer and the piano notes grew slightly fainter.

“Do you think he’s behind the machine?” Soos asked. He took a few steps away from the nearest hallway and towards the kids, nervously scanning the room for any sort of surprise attack.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we might not get another chance to check,” Dipper replied. Dark droplets rained down from a crack in the roof, narrowly missing him and splattering across the vending machine’s glass door.

“You’re right, we should hurry — wait, what?” Mabel gasped as she rushed over to the machine. “Dipper, the buttons are different — it’s some kind of weird code! How are we gonna get in?”

“Let me see. There’s got to be a way… wait, hold on. I… I’ve seen this code before.”

“That’s great! I should’ve known you’d know how to… Dipper? Is something wrong?”

Dipper’s stomach was churning with nausea and he hated it, because he knew it wasn’t a real sensation, a physical sensation, but couldn’t still couldn’t will the feeling to stop. “No, it’s just… this cipher was in the Journal, but I wasn’t able to crack this one until after Weirdmageddon, when all the pages got restored. I don’t think even Ford knows I solved it.”

“So what’s it doing in Stan’s mind?” Soos asked. “Did he crack it, or —”

“Bill was the one who wrote in this code,” Dipper added more quietly. “He used it while he was possessing Ford.”

“Oh… right.”

Dipper took another, more careful look at the keypad, where four buttons were already glowing — corresponding to the letters S, T, A, and N.

Now, if we press B, I, and then L twice…

His hand had barely left the keypad when the machine shuddered, swinging open with a groan to reveal a sight that was both unnervingly alien and chillingly familiar.

Descending beneath them was a staircase, mirroring the design of the stairs beneath the Shack — only these were carved from a shimmering light wood, like the bark of a birch tree. Elliptical knots and whorls covered the walls, slowly swirling and moving and growing as they turned to stare up the steps at Dipper and the others, flickering yellow so faintly you could almost convince yourself you’d imagined it, if only you didn’t know better.

“Oh, fuck this,” Dipper whispered, and neither Mabel nor Soos — the two most profanity-averse people he knew — gave any sign of disagreement.

He did, however, hear a sickening crunch behind him, and turned to see the floorboards on the other end of the room collapsing, dragged down into a slowly widening sinkhole in which dark currents frothed and churned. One at a time, grey planks were ripped away from their neighbors and dragged below as the rupture grew, its edges creeping steadily closer —

“I don’t like the look of that place either, dudes,” Soos told them, “but we might not have a choice…”

“You’re right,” Mabel agreed. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed Dipper and Soos’s hands, and before any of them could lose their will, they barreled down the stairs together.

***

The cavern was sloped downwards with countless twists and turns, and Ford got the impression that the tunnel was slowly snaking its way through just about all the interior volume Mt. Somnifell had to offer. Lurking in the shadows, monsters sprang out to ambush them at surprisingly regular intervals — humanoids with bat-like wings, wolves lacking eyes but with long-reaching claws that more than made up for their blindness, slimes that could precipitate stalactites out of their bodies and hurl them at whoever looked most defenseless — but the party dispatched them all with relative ease, burning through healing potions at only about half the rate Ford had expected, given the dungeon’s reputation.

But the cavern also had some less pleasant surprises in store, as was quickly proven when Ford spotted the first body.

“They’re still breathing,” Jheselbraum reported after he pointed out the dwarf’s unmoving form. “It doesn’t even look like they’ve been knocked unconscious — they’ve simply fallen asleep. And they’re smiling like they’re having a pleasant dream, at that.”

“Huh,” Ford murmured. “Can you tell if the cause is magical, or some kind of ingested or inhaled substance?”

“This might end up provin’ itself to be a stupid question,” Fiddleford chimed in, “but can you, ya know… wake them up?”

Jheselbraum shook the dwarf gently, but they remained limp. “I’m trying to, but it doesn’t seem to be working. But this is a magically induced sleep, Ford, I can tell you that much for certain. We should stay alert — there could be any number of magical traps lying ahead, and we don’t want to get stuck in a slumber like this ourselves.”

“That’s some high-quality armor they’re wearing,” Ford commented. “They must be a serious treasure hunter.”

“We’re not lootin’ an unconscious dwarf, Stanford!”

“I never said we were! I was just wondering if it would be feasible to carry them with us, or if they would be too heavy!”

“Normally, I would hate to leave behind a person defenseless like this, but the monsters seem to be leaving them alone for now,” Jheselbraum cut in. “If we carry them with us, and into more of those ambushes, they might actually be less safe.”

Ford and Fiddleford nodded their agreement, and the trio set off down the tunnel once again. They’d scarcely been walking for five minutes when Ford held up a hand, signaling for the others to stop.

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

Fiddleford cupped a hand around his ear. “Water dripping, and… it sounds like breathing?” he whispered.

Ford nodded. “Heavy breathing, just up ahead — maybe even more than one person.” Readying his wand, he took a few cautious steps forward —

It was a heap of sleeping bodies this time, almost comically mismatched in size but leaning up against each other as they snored. The largest figure wrapped its arms around two smaller ones, one of which had their arm around a fourth figure who was smaller still. They were an orc, a human, an elf, and a halfling, Ford realized — almost certainly a team who’d ventured into the dungeon together.

Jheselbraum closed her eyes for a moment, teeth gritted in concentration, and then opened them again with a gasp. “It’s a very powerful spell affecting them. I tried to dispel it, but the magic… it fought back in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost as if…”

Her voice dropped to a low, uncertain whisper. “...as if the victims didn’t want their curse dispelled?”

“Odd,” Fidds remarked, and gingerly poked the orc’s arm. Their eyes twitched ever so slightly, but stayed closed.

Ford carefully stepped over the human adventurer’s legs, and conjured four small orbs of light, each tinted a slightly different color. They floated down the darkest hallway yet, illuminating a set of straight, carved stone stairs that didn’t at all match the natural, winding paths of the rest of the cavern.

“I’ve found something over here,” he announced. “Not sure if it’s the final stretch before the treasure we’ve been looking for, or simply the start of a more daunting and deadly area, but it definitely seems to suggest the influence of something sentient. This cavern, whatever it is, is more than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

The stairs weren’t especially steep, but walking down them was as exhilarating as sprinting down a hill, like there was nothing in the world that could stop your legs from moving once you began to descend. The smooth, flat walls were damp with condensation, but the droplets of water reflected even less of Ford’s light than the stone did — he only noticed they were there in the first place after he ran his fingers along the wall for a moment, then pulled away to find them cold and wet.

But the condensation seemed to stay off the steps themselves, and when Ford glimpsed a light at the end of the staircase — bright orange, and unlike any of the ones he’d created himself — he broke into a run, startling Jheselbraum and Fiddleford for a moment before they too saw what he’d seen, and rushed to catch up with him. They careened to a stop in front of an ornately carved wooden door, candles on each side of it lighting the hall, and Ford pushed it open to reveal —

An expansive, well-lit library, bookshelves stretching up from a plush-carpeted floor all the way up to the high and majestic painted ceiling, each and every available ledge crammed full of ancient-looking but well-preserved scrolls and tomes. Ford walked in slowly, not out of a lack of interest but out of an indecisiveness regarding where to investigate first — so many of the nearby books looked so enticing, but he was also drawn to the luxurious mahogany desks that seemed to come pre-equipped with inkwells and long, fluffy quill pens, and it was equally hard to tear his eyes off the statues of ancient wizard scholars, lit from behind by elegant, resplendent chandeliers…

As he marveled, Jheselbraum picked a book from the shelf seemingly at random, flipping through it at first but then skimming the pages with a bit more care, eventually sitting down with it and turning back to the beginning to pour over every word.

“This is the work of scholars that have long since been relegated to legend!” she reported. “Knowledge that for centuries, people have accepted as being lost forever! This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

Fiddleford chose another tome and opened it up on one of the desks, pulling a blank scroll out of a drawer and placing them side-by-side in preparation for taking notes. “That is, if you could even catalog all this in a lifetime! I can’t even see the end to some of these shelves!”

It was all so perfect that Ford couldn’t help but laugh — a deep, genuine laugh that the library’s acoustics amplified, bringing smiles to the faces of his companions. Skimming the titles and authors featured on the nearest shelf, he mused: “I wonder if we could find an explanation for why those explorers were asleep. This place surely would have —”

His gaze came to rest on a moderately thick book bound in black-dyed leather, and held closed by a clasp seemingly carved from bone: A History of Earliest Necromancy, Volume 2 — The Rise of Liches and Innovation of Archliches.

“Though really, I don’t think that’s the highest priority in the grand scheme of things.” He immediately curled up in a cozy chair with the volume and opened it to the first chapter, the world outside of the pages becoming effectively nonexistent as far as he cared.

Stan watched the whole scene play out from above, with only the faintest, most easily stifled hint of guilt hidden behind his smile as he saw his brother happily and peacefully settle down to read.

***

The staircase was longer than the one beneath the Shack, and each footstep felt heavier than the last. At some point the stairs began to alternate light and dark colors, as if the white color of the bark had been peeled off every other step, and a faint chime sounded beneath each footfall, harmonizing with the intensifying piano music. Neither the clouds nor the waves appeared to follow them down, as if the brightness of the stairs and the eyes were driving the darkness away.

The end came up on them quickly — Dipper had been expecting another door, some other puzzle, but it seemed that the vending machine had been Bill’s last line of defense. Hallways branched out all around them, winding and turning every which way and lined with doors just like the ones upstairs. Closest to the three of them was the hall labeled Memories, in the same cipher from the vending machine; it was also the hallway from which the music seemed to emanate, growing so clear that Dipper could almost make out a voice singing the accompanying lyrics.

“Do we follow the song?” he asked, and Mabel nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it’s been working so far.”

The patterns in the walls shifted, eyes staying fixed on the trio as they forged ahead.

***

Ford flew through the first book and found the other volumes soon after, all on different shelves yet well within his line of sight, like the library had read his mind and rearranged itself. Every once in a while, he heard a murmur or exclamation from Jheselbraum or Fiddleford, and though a part of him wondered what they were reading, it felt almost like a waste of effort to tear his eyes up from the page. The books were so detailed, so well-researched, that he could almost forget he was playing a game…

“Stanley, do you mind if we stay here just a bit longer?” he asked. “I know you probably have plans for the rest of the campaign, and I don’t want to ruin those by taking too long to move on…”

The roof of the library turned into a magnificent glass window, through which Stan looked back at Ford. “Well, are you having fun down there?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

Stan smiled. “Then you can stay there as long as you feel like! Hell, you can stay forever if you want.”

“That’s considerate of you, thanks! But I think forever is a bit too long, even for me…” Ford turned back to his book and flipped to a new page —

But found that he couldn’t quite pour all of his attention into the words anymore. As interesting as phylacteries and demiliches were, there was something that just didn’t sit right with him — something about Stan’s smile. It had seemed… off. Exaggerated.

A tiny voice in the back of his head (a familiar voice, he realized, somehow reminiscent of both Jheselbraum and Mabel) whispered five simple words to him — five words that every D&D&MD player knew well, but Ford hadn’t yet heard on this adventure:

Make a wisdom saving throw.

Without getting out of his chair, he glanced around the library, and for the first time really thought about how every title he spotted sounded like something he’d happily dedicate hours of his life to reading. He thought about how hard it was to tear his gaze away from those books once you started, how easily they captivated his curiosity — and how effortlessly Stan had woven this entire story, how instantly Ford had found himself enthralled, how frequently he would forget that he was actually in Dimension 52…

And how did we get to Dimension 52, again? Stan helped somehow — right? Before Jhes, there was…

There was…

Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?

Ten minutes. That’s all.

A die fell from his hand and struck not the plush maroon carpet of the library, but rather the color-drained wooden floor of the Mystery Shack, bouncing half a dozen times before it came to a rest wedged between two floorboards. On the uppermost face, glowing blue, was the number 38.

Stan stood alone on the other side of the room, dark fog spilling from the arms of his suit where hands should emerge instead. The clouds sunk low to the ground, creeping forwards like a smoky, immaterial tide, but they stopped at the edge of the circular blue glow that the die cast onto the floor, seeping all around the circumference of the light but unable to move further inwards.

“Why, Ford,” Stan choked out, “did you have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know if the being I’m facing is my real brother,” Ford began softly, and Stan flinched, raising a cloudy tendril to cover his face. “But Stanley, regardless of where you really are — I want to help you. I want to find Bill and stop him, once and for all this time; I want you to be safe —”

“I just want you to be happy!” Stan yelled, and tight cuffs snapped shut around Ford’s wrists. Wisps of fog snaked upwards from his hands, and chains materialized out of them, lifting him off the ground as they grew towards the ceiling —

“But i-if you go looking for Bill…”

In the mind, where anything conceivable is just a few seconds of concentration away from manifesting into existence, a vivid imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy — and Ford couldn’t help but remember, imagine, almost feel the faint sensation of tingling electric shocks at his wrists, of static charges creeping up his arms as his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed involuntarily, bracing himself for the current to intensify…

“If you keep looking, then you won’t be happy,” Stan went on, oblivious to Ford’s panic as he stared down towards the floor with practically glazed-over eyes. “None of us will.”

***

Old, flickering incandescent lightbulbs cast a blue-tinted pallor over everything in the hall, illuminating particles of dust that drifted through the air as if no one had come this way in a very, very long time. Separate hallways branched off every few feet, some behind doors and others not — and many with no visible end in sight.

Dipper and Mabel sneezed with almost perfect synchronicity as they passed by a dimly lit offshoot, ending at a chained-up door with the image of a scalene triangle etched into it. The symbols on the doors grew more familiar the further they explored — glasses, a llama, a bag of ice. The same code labeled every door with a transcription of the symbol, and Dipper flinched, trying to repress a morbid curiosity as they passed Pine Tree, and Question Mark, and Shooting Star…

Then finally, they stumbled upon Sixer.

“Sounds like this is where the music is coming from,” Soos murmured. No one stepped forwards to open the door.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Mabel asked.

“Hopefully Bill,” Dipper replied. The word hopefully felt tainted and wrong in his mouth.

Mabel closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing in concentration. When she opened them again, a water gun-like apparatus had appeared in her hands, just transparent enough for Dipper to tell that it was filled not with liquid, but rather with sparkling bright glitter.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

Soos curled his fingers around an invisible hilt, and a pixelated sword popped into existence, surrounded by equally retro-looking orange flames. “Me too.”

Dipper curled his fingers around the handle, and cringed as a jolt of electricity stung his palm — not strong enough to really hurt, but plenty strong enough to startle him and send his already pounding heart racing even faster. The door swung open with a creak as he recoiled, revealing another hallway lined with more doorways, this time unmarked. The lightbulbs overhead hummed and crackled quietly, blue-white sparks leaping off the sizzling filaments and striking the glass to create a noise that sounded almost intelligible —

(tzxmeaiz jfjlpc ZI afb-wavdiik xlmevmuxvj)

(aesldlk'x ysdb ximaqiu em)

(f'q jg alviq aqeexwoh)

(z'e al wfjzv)

“There’s too much background noise. I can’t tell where the music’s coming from anymore, can you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel rubbed her ears. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere, but also everywhere. I guess we should just… check the doors one by one?”

“I guess.” Dipper’s hand hovered just above a doorknob as he took a deep breath, Soos and Mabel readying their weapons behind him. There was a sickly-sweet smell permeating the air, like sulfur mixed with the scent of a dusty, seldom-used home heater.

(The smell of burning hair, he would realize a few seconds too late.)

“Okay, Bill. Let’s see what you remember about Ford —”

His fingers had hardly brushed the knob when the door exploded. Dust filled his lungs and splinters impaled themselves in his hands, stinging like a million tiny lightning bolts —

But still stinging less than the memory that now played out before him, stripped away of any enciphering, or euphemism, and at last exposed for all to see.

Ford’s limp body was suspended from a dark red brick ceiling, chains fastened around his neck and wrists. He seemed to fade away into the folds of his scorched and tattered trench coat, and his unblinking eyes stayed worryingly blank as wisps of smoke drifted up from his smoldering, ashen hair.

“Oh, WHOOPSIE-DAISY! This was all my bad this time, it really was — I just keep forgetting how sensitive your puny little organs are!”

Bill jabbed a single finger into Ford’s stomach, and Ford swung back and forth like a pendulum, remaining completely limp. “I wonder what circuit blew this time? Bet it was your sentimental, oversized old man heart again, wasn’t it? I’m tellin’ ya, you’d be better off without it — maybe now you’ll consider throwing your lot in with world domination!”

He cackled, loudly and bitterly. “What are you saying, Cipher? Save the spiel for when he’s awake again to hear you, dumbass!”

He snapped his fingers, and a pale yellow glow began to manifest around Ford’s body, starting at the hands and slowly making its way towards his chest. His voice dropped a few full octaves as he went on:

“Now, let’s get you fixed up for ANOTHER ROUND —”

“NO!”

Dipper didn’t have any memory of stepping through the doorway, but he was well-inside the Fearamid now, racing towards Bill as fast as his legs could carry him and fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore!”

What?

Bill’s voice came out different — still an echoing, high-pitched whine like usual, but smaller somehow. It held less brash self-assurance, less of that absurd, larger-than-life personality that the world had come to know and fear — and was more full of uncertainty, of panic.

Less horrifying, and more horrified.

P-P-Pine Tree? No, no, NO —

Why are you — what am I —

What am I DOING?

His eye darted all around the room as his body turned to a screen of static, familiar images flashing inside — a pine tree, a six-fingered hand. A sock puppet, a glowing blue chain.

He grabbed Dipper’s hand, but no cold flames ignited this time. His grip was tight and trembling as his wide, desperate eye met Dipper’s —

Pine Tree, why are we here? What IS this? What’s HAPPENING?

I don’t want to be here, Pine Tree, please —

“Let go of my brother!” A blast of a thousand tiny, glittering yellow and pink stars struck Bill in the eye, knocking him backwards as he howled in pain. “Yeah, that’s what you get for what you did to Grunkle Ford!”

Mabel ran towards where Ford hung, smoking less but still limp. “Are you okay?! We’ll get you out of there, just hold on —”

It’s… it’s not the real Ford, is it?

Bill sat up, blinking slowly as if coming to his senses. His voice still echoed, but it was lower-pitched now, and had an unmistakably familiar hoarseness to it as he turned towards Mabel —

We’re in the past, pumpkin. You can’t undo it —

and

neither

can

I

***

“Stan,” Ford whispered. don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity —

“I. Need you. To let me go.” He tried to enunciate carefully but overcompensated, the words coming out stiff and robotic. “Please,” he added.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tight around his chest as he shook his head, motions jerking and marionette-like. “No, I — I can’t.”

“Calm down,” Ford told him, even though his voice sounded anything but calm. He could smell the all-too-familiar scent of burning hair and clothes now — was his hair already beginning to smolder, or — no. Ignore your senses if you have to, they’re lying right now. Just talk.

“Stan, look into — look into my eyes. I’m your brother, Stan, you can trust me —”

“But you can’t trust me,” Stan interrupted, still staring straight down. “All this time, I was — you were wrong about me. I’m a horrible brother, and I just tricked you into thinking I wasn’t.”

Something reached its breaking point in Ford’s mind, and tears began to fall from his eyes — an ionic solution, exactly what makes your body such a good conductor of —

“Fuck it, Stan, put me back in your tabletop game if you want, but please, you’ve got to let me out of here or my own mind is going to —”

Stan’s neck flew backwards with a sickening crack, craning towards the ceiling as his eyes flew open, but he still wasn’t looking at Ford — no, he was staring far past him, spheres of blue plasma sizzling where dark brown irises should have been.

WHAT?

Why are you DOWN THERE?

Dipper, NO!

The fire in his eyes moved in cascades, in waves, like static across a television screen.

What am I DOING?

NO, NO NO

Kids, I — oh, pumpkin, it’s not —

I can’t —

I can’t undo it

I CAN’T UNDO IT

He blinked and his eyes were brown again, human again, staring into Ford’s own —

“Stanford, w-what am I DOING?!”

Ford’s chains vanished in a puff of fog, and he tumbled to the ground, landing more softly than the wooden planks beneath him should have allowed for. Stan staggered away from him, raising his hands to cover his mouth as black tears spilled down the left side of his face, leaving dark trails on his cheek and staining his fingers —

While from the corner of his right eye, shimmering crystal blue droplets welled up and dripped down — liquid fire, blazing so bright that it lit the whole room.

“Stanley —!”

In a quick one-two punch, the roof of the Shack buckled and then exploded, as a torrent of water crashed down upon Stan and submerged him instantly. A violent cyclone surrounded him, biting winds slicing through Ford’s coat and stinging his arms as they grew stronger, more desperate —

But Ford could still make out something inside the waterspout, a glow that jumped in jagged paths like lightning one moment, then floated and flickered like tongues of flame the next — a bright blue light, refusing to be drowned out. Refusing to be forgotten.

***

A couple of end notes this time:

-If I did my job as a writer well, this should hopefully be apparent, but because this detail is very important to me and my interpretation of the characters in this context, I just want to clarify: All the electric shocks that (non-memory) Ford felt were due to his own mind/imagination working against him, not due to Stan. Stan, as he now exists, would absolutely never hurt Ford like that — but he was desperate to keep Ford from searching for Bill, and because of that desperation (plus possibly a bit of influence from the Bill memories the kids were rooting around in) he made an unfortunate choice in terms of how to restrain Ford, prompting Ford to flash back to Bill’s torture. Once Stan realizes what’s happening, he’s horrified and immediately wracked with guilt, which we’ll see a bit more of in the next chapter. (finally going back to Stan POV! It’s been so long!)

-If you want a hint for the long code encountered in Bill’s part of the mindscape, hit me up and I’ll be happy to give one!

-For the record, most of my Dungeons and Dragons knowledge comes from listening to podcasts rather than actual playing experience, so if anything doesn’t make sense, let’s just chalk it up to being a difference between D&D and D&D&MD.

-I also threw in a reference to Flat Dreams by Pengychan, which is a Bill-backstory fic that I absolutely love! Of course, you can understand SSD without reading Flat Dreams, but you should totally read Flat Dreams anyway because it’s just that good.

-Last but not least, look out for the next chapter — also known as my favorite chapter — within the next couple of weeks ;) As usual, comments/predictions/etc are welcomed!

[fangirlfiction]

Out of Time [1]

i. come back to me

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Word count: 1.9k

Summary: WWII has started for the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, changing the lives of men all over the States, Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes among them.

Warnings: There are some spicy moments, so 18+ only please! A lil bit of angst and sadness, but also some fluffy fluff.

A/N: hello angels! This is a reupload of chapter one, which I believe is the only chapter of OoT that was affected by tumblr’s idiot procedures. I am a little heartbroken that I lost so many sweet comments from this chapter, but it is what it is, I guess. also, FYI, ‘spicy’ is my new code for uh, intimate, moments.

ii. letters from hell // series masterlist 

December 8, 1941

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace… I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”

January 1, 1942

You lift your head in surprise at the quiet knock on your front door, unsure of who it could be. You close your book and set it on the couch before moving to the door and pulling it open. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion and surprise at the dark haired man in front of you. “Bucky?”

You glance down at the pocket watch that once belonged to your father before looking up at him again. “I thought we weren’t meeting until 8 tonight?”

Bucky steps forward and presses a soft kiss to your lips. When he pulls away, you notice the weight on his shoulders. The heaviness in his blue eyes. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

He looks up at you, giving you a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Can you cut my hair? Ma’s been too busy.”

You nod, whisper a soft, “Yeah.”

You grab his hand and pull him inside, leading him to the small bathroom of the apartment. He settles onto the chair you pulled in, and you grab a comb and scissors from the cabinet over the sink. You move to stand beside Bucky, deciding to cut the hair on the sides first. Pieces of hair float down between you before Bucky breaks the silence. “How’s George?”

You pull back and look down at him, giving him a smile, before continuing on the sides. “He’s good. Nearly a month into boot camp and I can already tell from his letters that he loves the Marines. I just wish my parents were around still. They would have been proud.”

Bucky hums in acknowledgement and whispers, “They’d be proud of you, too.”

You’re behind him now, so he misses the smile on your face, but you press a kiss onto the crown of his head in thanks. You finish trimming the back and move to stand in front of him, trimming the front into the style he likes. Bucky reaches forward and puts his hands on your waist, and the gesture causes you glance down at him. The look on his face has you sinking onto your knees in front of him, leaving you at eye level. You whisper softly, “Bucky. Talk to me.”

His eyes lift from the ground to meet yours. “I got drafted.”

You intake a sharp breath and whisper, “When?”

“Got the letter this afternoon. Basic starts in 4 days.” He grabs your hands and looks at you in earnest. “I know that you wanted to enlist as a nurse. To save lives, make a difference. But Steve…someone has to stay and look out for Steve.”

You nod, understanding his plea. “Have you told him?”

“Not yet.” His tone is serious when he continues, “And he can’t know that I was drafted, it’ll just fuel his drive to enlist.”

You pull your hands from his and place them on his cheeks. “I’ll stay.”

April 5, 1942

Your eyes scan the Expo Hall for Bucky and Steve, and you let out a sigh when you see them on the outskirts of the Hall, arguing about something. You catch part of their conversation as you near closer. “Bucky, c’mon. There are men laying down their lives, I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.”

“Right, because you got nothing to prove.”

You watch as they stare at each other, stubborn in their own opinions. You raise your voice to be heard over the noise of the hall. “Is everything okay?”

Bucky turns to face you, a carefree smile on his face. You don’t miss the scared look in his eyes. “Of course.”

He turns back to Steve and sighs, shaking his head as he backs up towards you. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

Steve quips back, “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

Bucky walks back towards Steve, pulling him into a hug as he mutters, “You’re a punk.”

You hear Steve whisper, “Jerk.” They pull away and Steve whispers, “Be careful.”

You walk to Steve and hug him, asking, “See you in the morning?”

Steve nods. You turn to Bucky and grab his hand, both of you starting to walk away. Steve yells out, “Don’t win the war til I get there.”

Bucky drops your hand and turns, giving Steve a salute, before grabbing your hand again and leading you to the door. As soon as you’re out in the cool night air, Bucky sighs. You squeeze his hand. “Let’s skip dancing. Go to my place instead.”

He glances down at you, a playful smirk on his face. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

You walk back to your apartment in silence, each lost in your own worlds. You know Bucky is thinking about Steve, worried that he’d enlist. But you were too busy thinking about Bucky, worried he’d…

Minutes later, you’re back at your apartment. The door closes with a soft click, and you turn to Bucky with a smile. Wordlessly, you drop your purse onto the floor at your feet before reaching out and grabbing his hand. You walk backwards through your apartment, leading him back to your room. Once inside, you drop his hand and push the jacket off your shoulders and onto the floor. You slip the shoes from your feet and step towards him, reaching up to grab his hat before settling it onto your head. He laughs as you give him a salute and he reaches out for you, ready to kiss you. You step out of his grasp and whisper, “Not yet, soldier.”

You step closer to him again and unbutton his jacket slowly, your eyes locked on his the entire time. You push the jacket off his shoulders and onto the floor before removing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. His shirt, shoes, and pants join his jacket on the floor, and you guide him backwards until the back of his knees hit the bed. He lowers himself onto the bed and watches as you take a step back and unbutton your shirt and skirt, pushing them both to the floor. You prop your leg on the bed beside him, before unfastening your stockings and pushing them down your leg slowly. Bucky watches in quiet awe, eyes tracing the newly exposed skin, hands eager to touch you.

You move over and settle yourself onto his lap, one leg on either side of him, your hands resting on his cheeks. You can feel his arousal, just from watching you undress, and it sends a thrill of excitement through you. Bucky leans forward until your lips are almost touching, breath mingling together. He whispers, “Permission to kiss you?”

Your lips brush his when you reply, “Permission granted.”

Your lips crash together in a frenzy of anticipation, the haze of arousal already taking over all your senses. Your hands slide from Bucky’s face and into his shorter hair, and his slide all over your body: up and down your sides, your back, your chest. Each pass of his skin over yours leaves prickles of electricity dancing along your skin, lighting up every nerve ending in your body.

Bucky stands with you in his arms, making you squeal, before turning and laying you on the bed softly. He pulls back and hovers over you, eyes roaming over your face, your body. You hide your face in your hands and mutter, “You’re staring.”

He pulls your hands away, his eyes searching your own. “I’m memorizing you. This moment.”

He reaches up and traces a finger over your brow, down to your lips, pausing to let you playfully nip at his finger. You whisper, “Why?

He continues his path down your face and over your neck, stopping at the base of your collarbone. “To get me through the war when things get bad.”

You smile and pull him down into a kiss, dripping every ounce of love you have for him into it. The night is spent memorizing every part of each other; every freckle, every scar, every mark catalogued and stored away. The reality of it all hits you when Bucky is thrusting into you, both of you chasing your highs together for what is possibly the last time. Bucky pulls back when he feels you crying, pausing to reach up and wipe the tears from your face. “Promise me you’ll come back to me, Bucky.”

Bucky smiles at you and replies, “I’ll always come back to you. No distance or time could ever change that.”

Dizzy with arousal and high on promises, you both come screaming each other’s names.

April 6, 1942

You thread your fingers through Steve’s and Bucky’s, giving them each a wide smile. They smile back at you before continuing their conversation about Steve’s latest art project, an obvious conversational attempt meant to distract from the destination of the morning’s walk. The sign to the Brooklyn Shipyard looms ahead, and just beyond it is hundreds of soldiers saying goodbye. The three of you weave in and out of the crowd, moving closer and closer to the ship that is going to take Bucky away from Brooklyn. Away from you.

You step back as you reached the edge of the ramp to the ship, allowing Bucky and Steve to say goodbye. Finally, Bucky turns to you, a sad smile on his face. Tears instantly well up in your eyes and you throw yourself into Bucky’s outstretched arms, allowing the tears to fall. You pull away minutes later, and Bucky reaches up to wipe the tears from your face. Voice hoarse from crying, you mutter, “I have something for you. A good luck charm.”

Bucky flashes a lopsided grin, suddenly looking too young to be in uniform. You swallow back a fresh wave of tears and reach into your pocket, before dropping the heavy item into Bucky’s outstretched palm. Bucky looks down at it and realization dawns on his face. He instantly starts shaking his head. “I can’t take your pa’s pocket watch. It’s all you have left of him.”

You fold his fingers over it, nodding. “Yes, you can. Pa always said it was the reason he and ma survived the ship over here. The day he and ma died, he had given it to George. George was the only one to survive the crash. It’s good luck. It’ll keep you safe.”

Bucky nods, too choked up to say anything. The blast of the ship’s horn echoes in the harbor, signaling that it’s time to leave. Bucky pulls you in for one last kiss, he pulls away and whispers, “I love you.”

You choke back tears as he reaches down and grabs his bag. “I love you too.”

He smiles and waves goodbye to you and Steve before boarding the boat and sailing away.

[1dcraftawards]

April Author of the Month

Drumroll please.... our author of the month for April is...... 

@harrysdodgyankles!

Congratulations! Check out her interview with us below! 

1.Did you start writing fanfiction for One Direction, or was there another fandom that you wrote fanfiction for before this?

One Direction is the one and only fandom I’ve ever written fanfiction for. It was my first foray into the fiction-writing world--I’ve been reading fic since 2012 and I initially started exchanging stories with one of my best friends from high school in this email chain we had. We never planned on letting those stories leave our inboxes, but one day I guess I felt driven enough to start publishing my stories on the 1DFF website--and here we are, six years later!

2.How old were you when you started writing fanfiction?

I started properly writing my own fanfiction in 2013, so I was 16/17 years old. It was a while before I published anything I thought was quality (at least, back then), but I wrote pretty consistently until my sophomore year of college. I took a bit of a break, mostly to focus on school and get through my last two years of undergrad, but I’ve found a new motivation for writing and this resurgence has been treating me well so far!

3.What’s been your favorite fic you’ve written to work on so far?

All of my fics are my favorites for lots of different reasons. I love writing Sit Back because of the amount of research I’ve had to do for all of the different historical periods. I know far too much about the fall of the Roman Empire than I’d ever thought I would. I loved writing my various fic exchange pieces because of my love for beginning stories in media res; these challenges are the perfect opportunities for me to create AU worlds from scratch. Each story has a really special place in my heart--I reminisce on my writing processes for them pretty often, especially when I’m looking for inspiration and drive to formulate new stories.

4. Is there a fic that you really wanted to write, but you just never did?

I have a fic I started and never finished. A League of Their Own--I started publishing it, gosh, probably back in 2014. It has such a special place in my heart, but with where my life was at the time and all of the other responsibilities I had, I couldn’t give the story the time and effort it deserved. It was my only OU story and I wanted to do its characters justice--one day I hope to come back to it, but for now it’s sitting in my drafts folder collecting dust.

5. What’s your favorite trope to write?

I’m allergic to angst, so I try to stay away from it (mostly out of self-preservation for my emotions). I love writing friends to lovers and established relationship fics. Dad!Harry, Husband!Harry--anything fluffy involving commitment. I’m really into that.

6. What’s your ideal space to write in?

In my bed, usually at night when the rest of my house is asleep. I like the quiet stillness of my house--it helps me clear my brain and focus on the content of my piece. It’s also because no one knows I write fic, so there’s less chance of them accidentally seeing something on my screen and asking questions.

7. What inspires you to write?

Honestly, telling stories for people who don’t often get their stories told. This was an important lesson that took me a while to learn. I didn’t used to do this, but now I make a point to write characters who are often underrepresented; for me, as a South Asian Muslim woman, I come from a very miniscule corner of representation in the One Direction fan community. It’s important to me that I try to give us a voice in any way possible. Lots of people don’t realize the impact seeing someone like yourself on a screen can have--it’s a little thing, but it says a lot. It makes sure we aren’t erased, that we aren’t cast aside. That’s why all my fics have characters of color, especially characters of South Asian descent. And when people resonate with that--that’s the biggest inspirational motivating factor for me.

8. Do you typically like to listen to music when you write? If so, what do you listen to?

If I listen to music, it’s music that I don’t know the lyrics to. If I know the lyrics, I’ll start singing them, then I’ll start typing them! I typically go for soft, slow, vibey music--Majid Jordan, Daniel Caesar, Miguel, 6LACK. Mostly hip-hop stuff.

9. Do you have any plans for any future fic ideas you’d like to pursue?

I do! I’m currently writing a post-doc Harry fic that I’m SO excited about. I also have plans for a rewrite of ALOTO and an orchestra AU.

10. Do you have any advice for other writers in the fandom?

I don’t know that I’m entirely qualified to give advice, but I will say this. The most important thing is to write for yourself. When you put your writing out into the world, you don’t owe anyone anything--especially in the fic community, where the vast majority of writers are putting hours of effort into content that they post with no expectation of compensation in return. Yeah, it gets pretty easy to get bogged down in the number of likes and reblogs or the number of asks you get after posting something. But in the end, you’re writing because you’ve found a story you want to tell, so focus on telling that story in the best way you can. Everything else will come later.

11. What is your writing process like?

I’m still trying to find what works best for me, honestly. I usually start with one big document that has all my notes, researching, outlines, etc. Then I’ll break a chapter/one-shot down into scenes--I’ll write specifics of what I want to include, bits of dialogue that have come to me that I’d like to incorporate, and the like. Then I’ll write a full first draft in that same document. Once that’s done, I move it to a separate document and start editing or I’ll send it to my betas. So a finished piece for me looks like one big planning/draft document plus individual docs for each part of a story.

12. What inspired you to write “Sit Back”? How did you come up with the story idea?

I saw a prompt on one of those AU posts that was something like “we’re an immortal couple who likes to kill each other for fun.” I thought it was brilliant. I cranked out the first chapter in less than a day because I was so excited about all the possibilities swirling around in my head. It’s been an exhilarating story to write because of all the different AUs I’ve essentially created in this one story--a Civil War AU, a Roman Empire AU, a 1900s AU. And the elements of mysticism sprinkled throughout have been the most fun--I didn’t think it’d be this enjoyable to create a fantasy world, but I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to doing it again. There’s still one part left, and it’s proving to be the most difficult to write mostly because I know it’s going to break me.

13. Tell us about your upcoming story, “All The Things Yet to Come”.

The idea popped into my head after I caught up with my old departmental advisor at my university. He got married last year to a doctoral student in the same department, and I’d often wondered how that relationship came to be. They’re both two fairly quiet, incredibly intelligent, charismatic people. I wanted to explore that a bit more--so ATTYTC was born. Also, I wanted to write something other than a Uni AU since I’ve written too many of those. Harry as an academic is so enthralling, and the Harry in this story is one of the more guarded versions of him that I’ve created. It’s definitely going to be a journey and I’m thrilled to share it with everyone.

14. What is one thing you wish you would’ve known before you started writing 1d fic?

I don’t think there’s anything I wish I’d known about the 1D community, but I do wish I’d known what my own personal limits were in terms of how much I could handle. I think I went into it with unrealistic expectations for the amount of content I could produce. I wish I’d known a little more about my writing process and how long it takes me to be satisfied with something. Probably would’ve saved me a lot of disappointment.

15. Who has been your favorite OFC to write? Why?

I think it has to be Sofia from ‘You’ve Woken Up My Heart.’ There are certain qualities about her that I admire so much--her drive, her wit, her diligence. She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. Because I’m also pursuing medicine, it was also fun to channel some of what I hope to be my future into her life. (Except I definitely don’t want to be a pediatrician. Yikes.)

16. Would you ever consider writing for any of the other boys?

I’ve written for Niall and Zayn in the past. I think there might even be a Louis one-shot from 2013 floating around somewhere in my drafts. At this point, however, I’ve been writing for Harry for so long, I feel like I’m pretty comfortable here.

[tasharii]

Your Colors: Ch.9.

A/N: Sooo life caught up with me basically. I've got a new full time job in a new state that's taking some getting used to. But I'm not giving up! I love this story and I'm invested and it's killed me to not have time to write. This is my happy place. In order to accommodate and hopefully get a new chapter out every week, or every other week if things don't work out, my chapters are going to get a little shorter. I'm going to try and restrain myself, but still be proud of them.I hope you guys can work with me and stick around. I've got another Bucky story coming up involving ghosts and circuses...... BUT I'm forcing myself to at least finish a rough draft before I start posting it. This is the only story I'm going to allow myself to write on a week by week basis.Thank you guys so much for all the feedback on the last chapter and for giving me so much support. It really means a lot to me and I love hearing everything that you have to say. Enjoy! <3

Summary:  Art was the one good thing between college, work, and the grey minutes in-between. Sometimes, it felt like she wasn’t alive at all. Just drifting. When she joined her new art class, she never expected to start experiencing everything in an entirely new light. All thanks to him. Or: Where Bucky Barnes gets more than he bargained from his new drawing partner.

Pairing: Reader x Bucky Barnes

Word Count: 10K

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Language, unrequited love angst

Masterlist

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3 Chapter 4  Chapter 5  Chapter 6 Chapter 7  Chapter 8  Chapter 9  Chapter 10   Chapter 11  Chapter 12  Chapter 13

****

Sharp pounding on her door drew her out of a very deep sleep. It dug into her temples and instantly pissed her off. Groggy, Y/N reached out a heavy arm and patted around on her nightstand until she found her phone. The light made her eyes squint, and she brushed her tangled hair back off her face. 10AM. It was 10AM on a Friday morning. Her day off. One of the few days she didn’t have anywhere to be until the afternoon. Just fantastic.

Annoyed, she tossed her phone beside her on the bed and groaned, scrubbing at her face. As if that would make the dust bunnies in her head clear up. Then the banging started up again. Growling, Y/N sat all the way up and kicked at the knotted blankets around her feet. They fell off the bed in a clump, and chills sliced down her spine from the brisk morning air. Pale blue sunlight filtered in from her drawn curtains.

Somehow, she managed to clamber out of bed and shouted, voice rough from sleep, “I’M COMING!” The knocking stopped for a minute, and she yanked at her tank top, straightening it. The air nipped at her toes, and she stumbled over to her bathroom door. Fluffy robe in hand, she loosely tied it on. Covering her bare legs, and underwear. Not a care in the world about how she might look. Just brushed a hand through her hair to get it out of her face and headed to the door.

Flinging it open, Y/N automatically glared at the three men across the threshold in the dimly lit hall, “Can I help you?” She asked, yawning halfway through. Words muffled by the hand over her mouth, she slumped against the door to keep herself standing.

The first guy gave her a very unimpressed once over, and scratched at his balding head, “We’re here to fix a leak.” He drawled. When she continued to stare at him, dumbfounded, he slowly elaborated, “Your landlord said you’ve been complaining about a leak in your kitchen.” Even from where she was, she could smell his abundant amounts of aftershave. See the sweat stains along his shirt. Could even count the little scabs littering his neck from nicking himself shaving. Yet he was looking at her like she was an idiot.

Blearily, Y/N blinked and glanced over at her kitchen in question before it finally dawned on her, “Oh! Ya, there’s this huge stain. Luckily, it just drips into my sink. Not the floor.” She nodded, happy the landlord finally listened after months of complaining, but then frowned, “He didn’t tell me he scheduled anything.” Eyebrows together, she stood up straighter and fidgeted with her pale blue robe, adjusting the belt. The man’s dark eyes were roaming across her just a hair more than she appreciated.

Shrugging, the balding guy, his nametag called him Rick, tilted his head, “Do you want us to fix it or not?” He asked. Behind him, the other two were playing around on their phones. Already checked out for the moment. Lazily, Rick glanced down at his notepad, and tapped at it with a pen.

She pulled her hair over one shoulder and bit her lip, “How long’s it gonna take?” The open doorway let a cool draft that fluttered the edges of her robe around her legs. Goosebumps covered her thighs, and she really wanted to be doing anything else but this.

Yet again, his shoulders bobbed up and then down, “Depends on the damage. Hopefully we’ll get it done today. If not, we’ll come back tomorrow. Got someplace you can go to kill some hours? We’ll be out no later than 7 tonight.” A hint of impatience made his words sharper at the ends. He scribbled something down with his pen, scratching it on the top corner like he was trying to get ink to come out.

Ya, Y/N had somewhere she could go. Just hadn’t planned on actually going today. It took her just a minute to think about it. To hesitate. There was no guarantee that her landlord would follow through with rescheduling. He was flighty like that. And if the leak got worse, she could see him trying to pin it on her. Make her pay for it. Say that it was her fault.

Reluctantly, she stepped back, and waved them in, “Ya, just let me get around. I’ll be out of your way in a bit.” When the door shut behind them, she tried to hide a grimace. Their shoes were muddy, and no one offered to take off their boots. Well, the carpet was already stained to hell. Not like it would be very noticeable. But it was rude.

After showing them the leak, Y/N disappeared into her bathroom for a shower. Took her time, and even blow-dried her hair instead of letting it dry on its own. Dressed and ready for the day, she could hear them banging around in her kitchen. Loudly. She peaked out and saw that they had started digging in the ceiling. Her kitchen had a dropped ceiling with panels. They had at least three panels scattered along her floor. Along with debris and questionable dust.

One of the other guys, David, spotted her over by her bed, and called, “It’s going to take us at least today to fix the pipe. Nothing too bad, but we want to be safe.” He offered her a thin-lipped smile. At least he was trying to be polite. Toolbox in hand, and handing supplies to the other two up on stepstools. Distantly, she wondered why it took three big guys to fix one leak. Rick cursed and yanked a wrench from David’s hand, growling out something she couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it didn’t make David happy. He rolled his eyes and dropped the toolbox down on her counter, hard. Before she could get too stressed out, she turned away and tried to not think about the mess they were making.

Honestly, Y/N didn’t know a thing about plumbing, or maintenance and she didn’t care. Even if she should. So, she walked away and picked her phone off her nightstand and shot her landlord an email to thank him for finally sending guys over to fix the issue. And to also, subtly, verify that he did indeed send them. That they didn’t just pick an unfortunate mark for a robbery. Even if they had, she didn’t have much they could steal. Just some ridiculously expensive, used, art supplies that probably didn’t have a good resell value.

Legs crossed up on her bed, she felt a shot of pain twinge through her ribs. A quiet, tired sigh left her as she racked a hand through her hair and stared up at her ceiling for a second. Despite feeling better after her shower, Y/N’s stomach twisted as she glanced back down at her phone. Specifically, at her text messages. Bucky had messaged her around 9, before she woke up.

Bucky: Still want me to come over at 1?

No. No she didn’t. At least she had a legitimate excuse as to why he couldn’t come over. Before, she planned to just fake a stomach bug or something equally juvenile. Her thumbs hovered over her keypad, debating on what she should send back. If anything.

Things weren’t ok. Hadn’t been in nearly a week. Since last Sunday, she’d only seen him in class Monday and Thursday.

Monday had been the worst.

 Monday, December 3rd

If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were presenting their final watercolor projects, Y/N would have skipped class. She felt sick enough. Dehydrated from crying. Exhausted from a restless night of tossing and turning. Between intermittent bursts of pathetic sobbing. It was obvious that she was nothing more than a reanimated corpse. Shadowed rings under her eyes, ashen skin, and she could barely manage to stand upright. All wrapped up in an oversized cozy hoodie, and unwashed hair scooped up in a tangled knot.

“Y/N?” Ramsey’s voice tickled her ears, and she blinked, looking over at him curiously. Standing only a few students away from her, annoyance radiated from the firm grinding of his jaw. Right along with the way his mouth disappeared in a fine line within the bushy hair of his beard. He raised his equally thick eyebrows at her, pointedly gesturing to the front of the room, “I was asking if you had any thoughts on Mr. Barnes’ work.”

Embarrassed, fiery scarlet crawled across her skin, and she reluctantly looked over at Bucky. Fully acknowledging him for the first time that day. The entire class was gathered, as usual, for a critic. She hovered near the back of the crowd, arms buried in her deep front pocket, barely registering the class at all. Everything was just white noise. Like flickering static on a TV set. And Y/N just floated above it all. A specter to her own life.

Bucky was staring at her, eyes shining with hesitant curiosity. She’d not said anything about his project since he got up there. Hadn’t even reacted. Which was uncharacteristic of their relationship. Even meeting his eyes made her want to cry. Like his mere presence was crippling. It was pathetic. She averted her eyes to the painting instead, taking a step to the side so she could see past an older guy in front of her. Nails digging into her palms to distract her.

The painting was good. Emotionally moving even. It was of a group of men. Soldiers. Walking together towards the viewer. They’re all beat up, and obviously exhausted. The color pallet was limited to brown, green, white and red. The red was used sparingly, careful to not muddy it up with the green and brown. She could just make out Steve and Bucky in the painting. They were the focus, closest to the viewer, and leaning on each other. Bucky’s arm was around Steve’s shoulder, using him as a crutch. The painting was so impressionistic, that Y/N figured most people wouldn’t even recognize Bucky in the work.

Just a group of men, walking into the light with their shadows stretched out behind them. Like they’re heading towards something better. Hoping to leave the worst darkness behind them.

Bucky had vaguely mentioned it was inspired by different events he witnessed during his time at war. Men grateful to finally go home.

Suddenly aware that she’d been silent for too long again, Y/N awkwardly shrugged, “It’s beautiful. Like all of his work.” The words were stilted and cracked somewhere along the way into the air. Chin down, she shuffled her feet. Tried to ignore the eyes on her. Ignore the momentary flash of disappoint across Bucky’s face, before it was buried again. He stared away from her too, at a point on the floor a few feet in front of him. His eyes distant, and expression perfectly chiseled into nonchalance. Like he wasn’t bothered by anything at all. Lately, he hid behind a blank mask. Just shut it all down.

If only she could too.

Ramsey stared at her, surprised, and waited for her to add anything else. It was her most pathetic critic ever, and she was entirely aware. But her head and heart both hurt. And when she accidentally met Bucky’s eyes again, all she could think about was the ache chewing away inside of her.

If it didn’t stop soon, there wouldn’t be anything left inside at all.

 Pressing her lips together, Y/N hit call on her phone and held it up to her ear. Her hand was sweaty, and she hugged her free arm around her ribs. Like maybe she could hold back the overwhelming sense of dread if she just squeezed hard enough. There was a string of banging, and clattering to her right just past her dividing bookshelf. Along with deep, monotone strings of buzzing conversation. But she barely heard any of it.

Just let it ring to voicemail. Please don’t pick up. Eyes shut, she bit her bottom lip hard enough to almost drop blood.

It rang three times before Bucky answered, “Hey! I was starting to wonder if you were going to sleep the day away.” He chuckled, the melody to unlock her heart. The smile in his voice made her lips turn up a little, making her teeth release their abusive hold. But hers was a bittersweet sort of smile.

“If only,” She huffed and covered her other ear to block out the noise filling her apartment, “I’ve got some bad news. My landlord schedule maintenance on the leak in my kitchen. Didn’t even tell me. These guys are gonna be here all day, so we can’t meet up.” Her toes curled under her thighs, eyes drifting up towards the ceiling. With every word, she wondered if he could hear the tremor of anxiety in her voice. It was so embarrassingly obvious to her.

Of course, Y/N didn’t mention alternatives. Like the library, or even one of the studio classrooms at Orion. Because she didn’t have the heart to see him. Or the heart to disappoint him by bluntly admitting to being too weak to see him. Neither felt like an option.

Bucky was quiet for a moment, but then he offered, “We can work at my place if you want.” He sounded hesitant, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. The offer made her suck in a surprised breath and sat up straighter.

To be fair, Y/N couldn’t believe it either. She’d never been to his apartment before. Had started to think she never would. Immediately, she had a war going on inside of her. She wanted to but didn’t want to. Was so damn curious about his place, but it hurt to even be around him at this point. Wasn’t sure if she was strong enough to do him the curtsy of keeping her emotions in check. She covered her face with her hand, and curled forward, like she might hide inside of herself. Elbows on her knees, she tried to calm her mind, blocking out the sudden blast of music from someone’s phone in her kitchen. Some obnoxiously loud rock band.

As of late, she felt like a ticking timebomb. One wrong word, or touch, and her façade would rip apart. Sometimes she wanted to scream at him. Other times beg for an explanation, or just cry like a baby. Then, every other minute, she was just numb, but that didn’t make for good company either. All those emotions were just barely held back by her fingers, and she was tired. So tired.

“Are you sure?” Y/N asked softly, standing up and walking over to the window in her bedroom area. Restless. She parted the thick curtains and stared up at the heavy, grey sky, “They’ll be out of here by Sunday, you could just come over then.” If he’d just agree to a reschedule, maybe she could put herself back together by Sunday. Bury it all and be the friend he wanted her to be.

An early Christmas miracle. Afterall, it was December.

Sometimes Y/N wondered, if given the option to go back. All the way back to two months ago. To the moment she asked him to be her partner, what she’d do. Would she still ask him? Honestly, she wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe it would just be easier to have never met James Buchanan Barnes.

“I really don’t mind.” Bucky replied, conviction getting stronger with every syllable, “You need all the practice you can get with acrylic.” He added, and he wasn’t wrong. Y/N fiercely loathed acrylic. It was the next section of their class, now that they were done with watercolor. And it was Bucky’s favorite. Which made his help very valuable.

Biting her bottom lip, she let her forehead rest against the cold window. It was starting to snow. Thick, heavy white drops drifted down from the darkening sky. Pure crystals that blotted out the muddy streets of the city below. Y/N huffed, trying to keep the frustration out of her words, “They want me out of here till 7. I don’t want to get in the way.” She tried. It was the last excuse she could come up with. At least, without making it obvious that she was actively avoiding him.

Another beat of silence passed. Despite the harsh weather outside, throngs of people passed under her window. Finishing their work before the weekend. Rick cursed behind her and yelled at one of the guys to steady the ladder. The sound of Bucky’s voice focused her hazy mind, “I’d really like to see you today.” It was a timid, sweet admission, that made her lungs stumble. He added, “But if you don’t want to, I get it. Really.” Of course he did, because he could read her well enough to understand. Understand that she was practically a raw nerve left out in the winter wind.

Closing her eyes, she swallowed the lump in her throat, “I’ll be over in a bit.” She wanted to see him too. Because the really fucked up part about it all, was that the person who made her feel better also hurt her at the same time. A perfectly figurative double-edged sword.

“See you soon.” Bucky finished before hanging up. For a second, he sounded just as grim as she felt. With just those three words. She pressed her phone to her chest and tried to ignore the bubbling excitement at getting to see him. Because right along beside it, was a flowing tar river of dread and heartbreak. Things weren’t getting any easier like she had hoped they would over time.

Desperately, Y/N wished she could skip the heartbreak part. Skip ahead to the point where she figured out how to be Bucky’s friend. Just his friend. Figured out what was ok to do and say. To a point where she knew what crossed the boundaries he was trying to set. To a place where she wasn’t an emotional ball of knotted string.

  Bucky met her at the entry way of his apartment. Soft snow clung to her hair, and she dusted it off her backpack. His footsteps echoed off the walls as he stood up from the stairwell, coming over to meet her at the door. There was a moment where his arms came up, like he was about to hug her, but then he stopped. Let them fall, and gave her a small smile, “Just got to um, get my mail really quick.”

“Ok,” Y/N replied, ignoring the disappointment that he hadn’t hugged her. It shouldn’t be surprising. Since Sunday, he’d avoided most physical contact. Didn’t stand too close to her. Didn’t touch her arm to get her attention anymore. And, of course, hadn’t hugged her since Sunday either.

If it wasn’t for his obvious attempts to spend time with her, and talk, she’d think they’d only just met again.

He turned away from her, and she shuffled away from the door. Out of the way of a couple who were coming in from the weather. A gust of air chased them in and swirls of snow swept across the stained, tiled floor. The lobby was cold, and she rubbed at her gloved fingers. Bucky clicked the lock of his box, just to the left of the door, and she watched him quickly sort through the mail. Up ahead, the staircase started, and beyond that, under the stairwell, was the landlord’s office. As well as the laundry room. The building was old and drafty. Too much brick and not a lot of windows. If she looked up, she could see the twisting of the creaking staircase up all five floors.

The woman snickered as she started up the stairs, and then squealed when her boyfriend yanked at the tail of her scarf and chased after her. Y/N could hear them laughing and the echoing of their footsteps all the way up. Until a door slammed and cut off the carrying sounds of their joy.

Bucky glanced over at her, locking it back, and held up the mail, “Just junk and bills. Shouldn’t have expected much else.” She noticed how tense he seemed. Nervous and tired under the mask of content, casual banter. It showed in the deep circles under his eyes, and the jittery way he moved his hands and held himself too straight. Not too long ago, she’d concluded that Bucky didn’t sleep much. Somehow, it seemed he was sleeping even less.

“No one writes letters anymore.” Y/N mused, trying to mimic his casual pointless chatting. She could do this, “It’s a shame.” Hands tucked in her pockets, she shrugged, and took a step closer to the stairs. Part of her was excited to see the inside of his apartment, but she had no idea how she was going to survive 7 hours of this. Pretending everything was ok.

“Damn right it is.” Bucky snorted, waving for her to follow him to the staircase. Didn’t have an elevator, so she enjoyed a three story climb up the echoing, wooden and iron stairway.

By the time they reached the third floor, Y/N was winded. Bucky hadn’t even broken a sweat. He grinned cheekily at her over his shoulder, “When it gets warmer, you should come on jogs with me.” He pulled his keys from his pants pocket and shuffled through the ring with his free hand. Distractedly glancing between the keys and her as he stopped in front of a dark wooden door. His gloved hand tapped his mail against his thigh, impatient, or just nervous.

Unimpressed, she rolled her eyes, leaning against the pale green wall next to his door, “What? You gonna drive all the way to my apartment, and drag me to Central Park?” It would take him 30 minutes alone to just drive there.

Bucky’s smile didn’t fade as he unlocked his apartment door, “Maybe. Don’t tempt me.” He swung the door open and held it for her to come inside. When she stepped past him, she made sure to keep her arms close to herself. To keep from accidentally touching him.

His apartment wasn’t what she thought it would look like, but it suited him. It was about the same size as her studio apartment but broken up with walls. From the doorway, she stood in the small pathway between the living room and kitchen. The back of a couch to her right, and a counter to her left. The living room doubled as a studio. A couch, two black beanbags, and TV stand took up half the room closest to the door. To her left stood the small kitchenette, no bigger than her own, sectioned off with a counter. A hallway opened past the kitchen, disappearing around the bend. Likely leading to the bedroom and bathroom.

Bucky was watching her observing everything. Hands propping him up against the back of the couch. Mail and glove discarded on the kitchen counter. In a soft blue sweater, and dark jeans with paint stains he was the epitome of a dreamy artist. Eyes bright against the color of the shirt, and dark strands framing his face. Dried green paint clung to his fingertips, even speckling the silver of his left hand.

After taking off her soggy boots next to his at the door, Y/N dropped her bag next to the armrest of the couch. Bypassing it to cross the far side of the room. Next to the only window in the room, stood a wide wooden desk. A tall silver lamp and bookshelf beside it. The bookshelf was overflowing, and scraps of paper littered every available space. Sketchbooks were stacked haphazardly against the wall on the floor, most too big to fit into a drawer. Drawings and notes covered every spare inch of the cream-colored wall around the window.

Quietly, she studied every drawing she could. Some she recognized. The bakery where he worked, half sketches of the street view from his apartment, Steve, animals, scenery from the park, a girl she suspected was his sister from the dimple on her chin, and even a few of herself. And more. So many more.

Distracted, she unzipped her coat, slipping it off and holding it against her chest. After a minute, Bucky cleared his throat and she jerked, he was right behind her, “These are just some I’m proud of, or ideas I haven’t finished.” He explained, standing to her right. The grey light from the window made his eyes shine molten silver, “I was thinking, maybe would watch a movie while we work?” He lifted his dark eyebrows, gaze darting over her features, and rubbed the back of his neck.

Already feeling her nerves getting the best of her, Y/N nodded and made her way back to her bag. Just wanting to keep her hands busy, she tugged out her art supplies, “Sure, what you got in mind?” First her 9x12 Bristol sketchbook, then travel set of paints, pencils, bag of brushes and eraser. She sat on the couch, flipping to the page she’d already been working on. A drawing of the Brooklyn bridge.

Bucky’s lips flickered like he wanted to smile, but didn’t quite manage it, “I was thinking a Marvel marathon?” He grabbed his own sketchpad off his desk, and two cups for rinse water. He tucked a clean paintbrush behind his ear, his sketchpad under his arm, the cups stacked in his one hand, and a few other brushes in his other. Tubes of paint were already scattered on the coffee table, along with a pallet stained with green paint.

Pencil in hand, Y/N snorted, “Don’t know if we’ve got that kinda time, but sure. I haven’t seen Captain America in a while.”

  They worked without talking too much until close to 6. Only stopping to pop a frozen pizza in the oven and eat sometime around 2. Bucky on one of the bean bag chairs closer to the left side of the TV. She ended up on the floor, back against the couch, so she could spread out her paints. The hardwood floor underneath her made her butt numb, but she didn’t have to worry about being too messy. It’d clean up easier here than her carpet. Which had plenty of paint stains she’d have to pay for when she moved out.

It wasn’t as unbearable as Y/N expected it to be, but every so often she still felt a knife twist around inside her. With a constant weight on her body, pressing her down like a shadowy shroud, every action was strained. She was attempting to paint a robin on a branch. Had given up on her bridge an hour ago. Was about to give up on the bird too. The feathers were getting clumped together, and kind of starting to look like a mutant falcon of some sort. Her fine pencil lines lost in her clumsy use of a paintbrush.

“I really liked your watercolor piece.” Bucky stated, pretty much out of the blue. Y/N paused and peeked up at him for the first time in a few hours. She’d made it a point to stare at her horrible painting the entire time, and even when she needed help, she didn’t ask for it. Because she didn’t want him to be as close to her as he would need to be to help save her painting.

It took her a second to pull her mind away from her work and focus in on him and his words. Her paintbrush stilled, and she lifted it up, holding the top edges of her sketchbook. Slowly, she stretched out her legs, flexing her ankles to regain feeling in her feet. The sketchbook came to rest flat on her thighs, and she frowned. Oh ya, her painting from Monday, “Thank you.” That was all she had to say to him Monday, and that was all she could think to say to him now.

 Monday, December 3

Ramsey, spurred on by spiteful annoyance at her lack of response to Bucky’s painting, made her go next. Y/N didn’t want anyone to look at her, or her work. Didn’t want to have to try and explain why she did what she did. The heart behind her painting wasn’t there anymore.

“I um love Greek mythology,” Y/N started, words immediately failing her. Flying out of her mind like wisps of smoke, “So I chose to use Aphrodite, goddess of love, as my focus. White doves are symbolic to her.” She stopped, arms crossed and leaned back against the white board. Already finished.

Everyone stared at her, waiting for her to continue, but when her silence stretched on, they finally focused on her artwork. It felt like needles were pricking at her skin. Too hot all over, and mouth dry as the summer sun.

The painting had been one of her favorites. A beautiful woman with a flowing dress, arms back holding up the tail end of it like a cape. Serene while she glided forward across the canvas. Then two doves flew right in front of her, together like they’d come directly from her heart. The ends of the dress melted down into a stream of colors and brush strokes near the bottom. Shifting into a galaxy. The doves were mostly white and surrounded by darker colors to help contrast them out.

When she’d painted it, Y/N had been thinking about love. Not just Bucky. Love in general and how scared she was to fall in love. How fickle Greek gods were, just like emotions, and prone to mistakes in many of the stories. Love and gods were both tricky things. It was fueled with so many of her emotions, all poured out onto a page.

But now, she didn’t feel anything like before. Nothing but achy longing.

“I was just wondering if I could buy it from you. After the show.” Bucky’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she met his eyes, surprised. His sketchbook was propped against his knees, a pallet of paints on the floor to his right. Brush in the cup of water, he swirled it around and wiped it clean on a stray paper towel in a practiced motion. Not even looking down when he did it. Just studying her.

“Buy it?” Y/N asked, eyebrows pinched in confusion, “Why would you want to buy it?” Iron Man played in the background, the sound of him working on his first finished suit filled up the apartment. She set aside her bird, a lost cause, to dry. Despite the paintings being awful, she’d have to turn them in Monday. Maybe after it dried, she could clean it up some.

Bucky’s mouth curved into a teasing smile, setting aside his brush, “Cause it’s awesome? And I want to hang it up?” He asked slowly in return, like he was spelling it out to a child. Elbows propped on his knees, he pushed aside his own sketchbook. From where she sat, it looked like he was painting one of his original sketches of her. From her apartment. One of the poses where she sat in her recliner, reading.

Once again, he made her beautiful. Y/N could tell that much, even from where she sat.

Blinking, she shook her head, a bit reluctant to the idea of him paying her. Especially for that piece. Which had revolved around him so tightly. Tense, she sat up straighter and rinsed out her brush. The water was just a tint away from scarlet now, “Mn I guess so, but you don’t have to buy it. You can just have it.” Water dripped dark splotches from the brush onto her jeans before she wrapped it in a stained paper towel and dried it off. Dried paint coated under her nails, and fingertips. Coating them crimson.

Immediately, Bucky scowled at her, “No, I’m going to pay you for it. I personally know how many hours you spent on that. I’m not just going to take it from you.” He gestured with his hands as he spoke, sweater rolled up to his elbows, and scratched at his jaw. There was a smudge of paint across his scruffy cheek.

Flustered, Y/N stood up with her pallet of colors and cup of dirty water. Stepping around the couch, her socked feet slid just a bit against the smooth floor, “I don’t really know what to price it at.” She stopped at his sink, picking up a few dirty breakfast dishes, and setting them out of the way. Then she started rinsing off her supplies. Water cold against her skin, but slowly warming as it ran. Soft scarlet, black, white, and green paint swirled against the silver sink, and away with the water. Fingers against the pallet she scrubbed the dried paint off, and then picked as much of the paint out from under her nails as she could.

She figured once she was cleaned up, it’d be close enough to 7 to justify her leaving. AKA bolting. Bucky followed after her with his own dirty pallet and water, “I was thinking about 100. Maybe more depending on what you’re offered at the art show.”

Sputtering, she sat aside her pallet to dry and finally meet his eyes. He was suddenly close, and she had to take a calming breath. Or else her heart might stop beating, “That’s a little much don’t you think?” He was standing at her left and tilted the faucet towards himself, so he could rinse his own materials. Arm brushing hers, she got to feel that his sweater was softer than it looked.

Bucky shook his head, and she stepped aside so he could better use the sink, “No, I bet if you price it at 100 someone will buy it.” She wiped her damp hands on a brown kitchen towel.

“Someone crazy.” Y/N grumbled, but then shrugged, “I’ll make sure Ramsey puts a ‘sold’ sticker on it for you. You don’t have to pay me till you get it, though.” There wasn’t any good reason to justify her not letting him have it. If she was being honest, she didn’t really want to keep it. It just reminded her of dark thoughts that she didn’t need to dwell on.

Bucky nodded, and glanced up. It looked like he was about to say something else, but then he frowned, “It’s really coming down out there.” His eyes were over her shoulder, focused on something across the room. Hands dripping water, he turned off the faucet and placed his supplies next to her own and dried his hands on his jeans.

Y/N turned, following his line of sight towards the window. Her heart dropped into a pit, and she quickly paced around the counter, bundling her cold fingers against the hem of her shirt. Crossing the living room, she peered out the window over his desk. It was a blanket of white outside. No cars passed through the road, and the ones parked along the side were nothing more than little white hills. Barley distinguishable. Part of her, the artistic part, wanted to draw it. Try to capture the shining white crystals contrasted with the stark grey of the buildings. Splashes of cover peeking out, about to disappear under a blanket of freshly falling snow. But that part of her was background noise to the roaring anxiety that made her grit of teeth.

“Shit.” She groaned, racking a hand through her hair. Hadn’t even noticed that it was snowing so hard because she was too busy not looking anywhere but at her artwork. It was quiet too. That sort of peaceful silence that came from the snow dulling out noises.

Back over at the couch, she picked her phone off the cushion and sat down to investigate. Darcy had messaged her, sending a selfie of her snuggled up with a cup of something steaming, and the caption ‘Snow days rock!’. A little later after that, Peter had let her know that he was super bummed because Mr. Stark made him leave work early.

Her weather app had issued a ‘winter weather warning’. High freezing winds, lots of snow, and lots of ice. Y/N carefully shut her sketchbook, the paint barely dry but she didn’t have the time too care. Then began gathering up her stuff, “I better get going. Before the roads get any worse.” Before she got stuck there. Hastily, she unzipped her bag and stuffed everything back inside. Then hurried to the kitchen, snatching her damp pallet off the counter.

Bucky stood by the window, watching it come down, and turned back to look at her, perplexed, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” His arms were crossed, fists fight against his shirt. Lips in a fine line, he kept glancing between her and outside.

Y/N snorted a very thin, awkward laugh, putting her tubes of paint in her bag, “What’s the alternative? Stay here?” Her heart skipped at the thought. It was ridiculous. No, she couldn’t do that. For her sake and his, it would be better if she went home.

“Well ya, I mean, you could.” Bucky shrugged, taking a couple steps away from the window. Arms still crossed, and shoulders tense near his ears. It was obvious he didn’t seem to like the idea either, and that only made her feel worse. Guilty, and uncomfortable.

She shook her head, “No, I can get a cab. They drive in all kinds of weather.” The weather app had said to stay off the roads and inside if at all possible. It was getting dark. Earlier than normal due to the heavy clouds blotting out the sun. But Y/N couldn’t imagine staying the night after this week.

Maybe last week it would have been a fantasy come true. Like in some stupid romcom, but now? After Sunday? It was a fully-grown monster of an awkward, awful idea. Complete with horns and a snake tongue.

At the door, she slipped on her shoes and zipped up her coat. Bucky grabbed her arm just as she was reaching for the doorknob, “Stay.” He stated, quietly, but seriously.

She glanced up at him, swallowing the lump in her throat the formed from being able to smell his cologne, “I can’t.” Y/N was surprised at how vulnerable her voice was. She hadn’t meant to sound like that. It was supposed to be stronger than that. More resolute. Jerking, she pulled her arm from his grip and shook her head again when he opened his mouth to argue. Hand on the doorknob, she opened the door and stepped into the hall. It was even colder now, and the dim lights overhead flickered, buzzing. Even colder without Bucky’s hand on her arm.

Only just making it to the stairs, Bucky caught the strap of her backpack. Y/N whirled around on him, “I can’t stay here.” She repeated, managing to be just a bit firmer this time. Not even flinching, he took another step closer to her. Her hands trembled slightly as anxiety started to pour into her veins, clawing at her head.

Cautiously, Bucky guided her heavy bag down. Taking it off her, and she found herself letting him. The way he stared unwaveringly at her, as if seeing the dark tidepool of emotions behind her eyes, made her face grow hot with bit back tears. He shouldered it, and placed a hand on her arm, “You can.” He took a breath, closing his eyes as if to gather his thoughts then continued, “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you out there.” Bucky squeezed her arm and then stepped away, giving her space back.

“But it’s,” Y/N’s breath hitched, panic making her stomach feel sick. The cold bit at her fingertips and her hands balled into fists. Nervously shaking her head, she tried to swallow all the wrong words and find the right ones to explain herself, “It’ll be so awkward after—”

“It’ll be ok.” Bucky assured, giving a light smile. It reached his eyes, making them shine with tender light, “We’ll just watch movies and have fun. I’ll even make you dinner.” Slowly, he took another step back, edging closer to his apartment door. A hopeful expression making his handsome face soft, and sweet.

It didn’t take much for her resolve to crack. Too exhausted and strung out to even put up a real fight. She let out a shuddering breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding in, “I can take the couch then.” With that, Y/N stepped past him and retreated into his apartment. Taking off her boots again, she cursed the weather. Cursed winter. Cursed her landlord. Cursed everything that led her into this position.

Bucky shook his head, going back into the kitchen. Her bag made a solid thunk against the countertop when he plopped it down, “No way, you can take my bed. It’s fine.” She wanted to argue some more but then he was opening the fridge, changing the subject, “I was thinking tacos?” Bucky offered, and she unzipped her coat, throwing it over the back of the couch.

Leaning against the counter, she watched him pull out a thawed pound of hamburger. Then shrugged, “Works for me. Guess this means you’re finally going to cook for me.” She couldn’t help the small upturn of her lips. Every time they were at her house, they usually ordered takeout. There were a few rare times where she made easy stuff. Like hamburgers, mac-n-cheese, or stir-fry. But not all that often. Whenever they first started working together, Bucky never stayed long enough to need food. Once they did start eating together, Y/N didn’t feel like she had enough skill to even try and fix anything for him. It was only recently that she got comfortable enough to try.

“You are a guest, and it is dinner time.” Bucky waved a spatula at her, flicking on his stove. A light blue flame burst to life under the burner. Once the hamburger was in the pan, he used his spatula to divide it into chunks, starting to cook it.

“Anything you want me to do?” She asked, and Bucky shook his head.

“Nah, why don’t you go finish the movie? I’ve got it.” He waved his free hand towards the living room. Then he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, rummaging through some of his cupboards near the stove.

Nodding, Y/N left him in peace. Somewhat relieved that she didn’t have to try and carry conversation. It was getting easier to ignore. The awkwardness fading back just a bit, but it still couldn’t be considered comfortable.                                              

   After dinner, which was delicious, Bucky disappeared with their plates. Y/N relaxed down into the couch, pleasantly full, and continued watching the Incredible Hulk. Since she was staying the night, they might actually make a dent in the Marvel franchise.

Bucky returned with a bottle of scotch and two glasses with ice. He set them down on the table in front of her and she eyed him, eyebrows raised in a silent question. He snorted, lifting the amber and black bottle closer for her to see, “Just thought you might want a drink.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” She asked skeptically but didn’t deny it. She wasn’t much of an alcohol person, even less of a scotch person, but a buzz did sound tempting. Y/N was a happy drunk. The giggly kind, and she liked how it made her feel. As long as she didn’t get too sad. If she got too emotional, then it didn’t go well.

Bucky poured himself a glass, and tipped the bottle towards her own, waiting for the go ahead. Huffing a sigh, she waved her hand towards him. He smirked and filled up her glass, “I don’t want you to get drunk. We’ve just never drank together. Thought it might be fun. A buzz and Marvel movies could be a good mix.” Then he screwed the lid shut and sat the bottle on the table, taking up his drink. Fluidly, Bucky moved back over to his seat on the beanbag, dropping down heavily. Not spilling a single drop.

She picked up her glass, stirring the ice with her finger to try and thin out some of the scotch, “Never been to your apartment either.” She quietly mused, crossing her legs up under her thighs. His apartment ran warmer than her own, but her feet were chilly even in her socks.

“Guess tonight’s just full of firsts.” Bucky agreed, sipping on his drink. They were sitting further apart tonight. Further apart than they had in a while. It made her heart heavy, so she took a drink as well. Bucky didn’t even flinch, and she full on grimaced.

“God it’s awful.” She laughed, shaking her head, lips smacking to chase the flavor away. It made her tongue feel dry and bitter.

Chuckling he took another drink and hummed, “It’s an acquired taste.” His eyes danced with mirth in the dim lighting of the living room, a smirk made his mouth tilt in a sinfully charming sort of way. She had to look away, back down to the melting ice in her glass.

“I think you mean that you drink enough until your tongue goes numb and then it’s not so bad.” Y/N translated, taking another mouthful, and flinching again. It burned all the way down to her stomach. Nose wrinkled, she blinked as her eyes began to water, but she tried to school her expression. Not liking that she could hear Bucky trying to stifle his laughter.

“Try not to let it hit your tongue so much. Come on, haven’t you taken shots before?” Bucky teased, eyes flickering from the TV back over to her. The light made his jaw sharper and caught streaks of his hair, making them almost blue. From her position on the couch, she could still see snow coming down through the window across the room. It glowed like fluttering glitter past the streetlamps. Not slowing at all.

She nodded, focusing back on Bucky, “Ya, some but I always had a chaser.” Her skin was already feeling honey glow warm. A little tingly. It was good scotch. Bucky hummed, the sound of the movie filled up the empty space between them. At least, it was empty if you ignored all the things left unsaid.

Over the next hour, Y/N finished her first glass, and poured herself another. Right alongside Bucky, who refilled his glass a few minutes before her. By then, she could tell she was tipsy. Giggling at some of the terrible humor in the movie, and really at anything at all. Until she found herself watching Bucky more than the movie. If he noticed, he didn’t say so.

By the time her body started to feel flickering warm all over, Y/N didn’t have a clue what was happening in the movie anymore. It was nearing the end, and the apartment was faintly lit from the kitchen. Mostly flooded with the light from the TV. It reminded her of their situation a week before, but she didn’t want to think about that. In fact, she wanted to focus on another problem at hand.

Standing up, Y/N felt her head swim just a bit, but she managed to walk perfectly fine. She wasn’t that far gone. Just the kind of buzz that gave a false sense of bravery, and horrible impulse control. Right then, she couldn’t understand why they were sitting so far apart. So, she closed the few short steps between them and plunked herself down on the second beanbag chair next to Bucky’s. His eyes widened, and he stared at her, snorting a laugh when she grinned cheekily at him. Then she wiggled in the seat until she was comfortable and leaned over to let her head rest on his right shoulder. All without saying a single word and took another sip of her half full drink. It didn’t taste bad anymore.

A few beats of silence passed, and she tried to focus back in on the movie, rather than the obvious fluttering of her heart. From her position, she could feel the strong muscle resting just under the sweater. Bucky finally shook his head in disbelief, the beads rustled as he relaxed back into his own chair, and asked, “Comfy?”

Y/N hummed and nodded, nuzzling against his arm because god he smelt good. And damn if he wasn’t cozy and perfect. Her hand curled loosely against his sweater, thumb rubbing the soft material. Knees up on the beanbag, and her body contorted into a small ball.

When she didn’t offer a verbal reply, Bucky didn’t push. Instead, he shifted his arm until it was wrapped around her shoulders, forcing her closer. Head on his chest, Y/N laughed again at the awkward adjusting she had to do to get comfortable again. Shift till she was halfway on his beanbag and hers. Legs stretched out further to balance, and her hand holding her glass rested up on his waist, other tucked underneath her to stay propped up. His arm around her shoulders, and other hand still holding his own scotch on his thigh. But then everything was flawless. And she didn’t want to ever have to move again.

“Why don’t we do this all the time?” Y/N asked playfully, fingers rubbing nonsensical circles against her glass. She could feel every breath he took, and faintly hear the beat of his heart under her ear. He was so warm and strong underneath her. It was comforting. The credits of the movie were starting to play, and she loathed the thought of one of them getting up to put in another.

Bucky tensed, but didn’t move. He rubbed his thumb against her bare arm. Sometimes it felt like everything he did was the most natural thing in the world to do. Like their relationship had reached a point where it should have been as easy as breathing. If he would just let it. Then he shrugged, the motion jostled her just a little, “I guess cause it’s not really what friends are supposed to do.” Words mumbled and stilted. Awkward. He wouldn’t look at her when he said that, just stared down at the cup in his hand. Metal contrasting against fragile glass. Both glinting in the harsh light from the TV.

Before he could pull back, she caught his wrist and sat up to meet his eyes. Her hand kept his arm around her shoulders, and she only adjusted herself just enough to look at him properly. Their faces were dangerously close, but she barely noticed, “But we do it, and we’re friends, so it can’t be too bad.” Her voice was soft, insistent. Eyes betraying the sadness welling up deep inside of her. It felt like the burning in her stomach was heading up into her throat. His skin was smooth against her fingers, and his arm was a reassuring weight over her shoulders. Bucky made her feel safe. Even when he was breaking her heart.

Bucky whispered her name like she was squeezing the life from his chest and sighed harshly. His eyes darted away from her own, lips pressed into a fine line, “Ya but it’s wrong, and makes things complicated.” He closed his eyes and tapped his finger against his glass, the sound sharp over the TV. She could already see his walls closing, shutting her out again.

“It doesn’t have to.” Y/N shook her head, clasping his hand tighter to try and keep his attention. His callused fingers were rough against her own, and she could see his chest rising and falling faster. Like he was trying to keep himself calm. Still, she pushed, “If it makes you happy, and me happy, and doesn’t hurt anyone, then why is it so wrong?” She spoke quickly, and her voice was starting to slur just a tad. Like her mouth was running faster than her head. The hand holding her drink gripped it tighter. Condensation making her fingers slick. Head tilted, she tried to make him look at her. Suddenly desperate to make him understand.

At that, Bucky did tug away. Stood up and moved a few steps over to the other side of the coffee table. He picked up the bottle of scotch and refilled his drink. Again. His hands were shaking just a tad, and he slowly put the lid back on and sat the bottle down. Then he waved his glass in the air as he tried to explain, nearly sloshing it over the edge, “Because it can’t happen. And that—” He jabbed a finger at the beanbag chair he just vacated, like it was an example, “Will lead to things happening, and nothing can happen between us.” He pointed between the two of them, face flushed, and took another drink. Eyes sharp and glistening, his hair fell across his forehead as he swallowed. Then he carded his fingers roughly through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. He sounded so sure. So stubborn and it just pissed her off.

“Does this make you happy?” Y/N stressed, gesturing between them. She stood up too, stumbling a little when her feet caught on air. Still, she steadied herself, head high, and finished her drink. When he didn’t respond, she sat her empty glass down on the coffee table a bit harder than necessary. It echoed over the music filling up the room with background noise. When had they started arguing?

Frustrated, Bucky groaned and turned so he wasn’t facing her. He shifted his glass to his right hand, knuckles white. Delaying time, he swallowed another mouthful, quiet. His shoulders were tight, the muscles rolling as he clenched his fist. When he glanced back at her, his face was blank again.

Seeing his emotional barricades up again made irritation burn the back of her throat like hot coals.

A whine caught in her chest, and she shut her eyes tight. The anger melted into something darker. Something harder to swallow that had her arms wrapping around herself, and made her shift awkwardly from foot to foot, “Don’t I?” Her tone dropped at his silence, vulnerable and nearly drowned out by the end credits music. Hurt at him shutting down again. Shutting her out again, “Make you happy?” Y/N clarified. Emotions switching on a dime as she stared at his broad back.

The TV cut out to the title page, and he turned, snatching the remote off the table and flicked it off. Then tossed it back onto the table, only for it to clash and skitter off the edge onto the floor. Shadows clung to the room, only pushed back by the small light from the kitchen and window behind her. Then silence pressed in on the room and highlighted all the words not being spoken. Ears ringing in the sudden quiet, Y/N tried to keep her breathing even and to stay quiet. Let him boil in whatever emotions were making him pace between the couch and wall.

In the cluttered space of his apartment, she felt small because he took up so much of it. When he got like this, she could see the soldier. Could see everything he tried to keep in control burning just beneath the surface. All the things he tried to never say. The panels of his left hand hummed and shifted, flexing into a fist and relaxing again when he finally stood still.

Bucky’s jaw clenched, and he brought up his hand to rub at his face, messing up his hair. When he glanced back at her, he grimaced, and exclaimed, “Of course you do!” His eyes were shining bright in the dark, glimmering with bit back pain. Eyebrows pinched and jaw tight, like he was fighting to keep everything in check. Even every perfectly measured breath he took.

“Just not enough?” Y/N asked, still soft and stepped closer. She reached down for the bottle, eyes never falling from his cooled expression, body swaying in a fluid motion as she stood back up. Bucky silently watched her as she unscrewed the top and watched him. Forgoing a glass, she took a drink from it. The edges of the cap bit at her fingers. Desperate to feel anything but what she was feeling right then. Maybe it’d numb her the rest of the way out. Make her pass out, or black out to a point where things just didn’t hurt anymore. With the way things were going it might be nice.

It’d be a blessing. Even for a minute.

“It’s not like that.” Bucky denied, words cracking in his throat at the end. Y/N edged just a bit closer, until they were chest to chest. The bottle brushed against his thigh where she let it swing at her side. She had to stare up to meet his eyes. He finished the last drink from his glass, then stooped to sit his down too. Every movement tickled the air around him and made her skin tingle from how close they were. His shoulder brushed her hip when he straightened back up. Then his hand cupped over her own and he took the bottle from her loose fingers. Forging his glass as well. His touch still burned. He didn’t offer to clarify what he meant. That it ‘wasn’t like that’ didn’t explain much of anything.

Instead of rounding another pointless circle with him, Y/N asked, “Why do you want my painting?” She crossed her empty arms, rocking back on her heels, but not moving from her stubborn position in front of him. Not yielding again. The scotch made her stupid brave, and she was cracking up. The façade she tried to keep up falling apart piece by piece. Part of her understood that this conversation would lead to nowhere good.

That she was tearing everything apart. Messing everything up. Spilling all their rotting issues out between them. Ripping up her heart for him to see as she desperately tried to understand his. But she couldn’t bring herself to shut up again. Too angry and hurt and frustrated and tired.

This had been a bad idea from the start. She should have just stayed in bed this morning.

That jarred him a bit. Bucky snorted incredulously, “Because it’s beautiful, and I love your work.” His full lips wrapped around the bottle and he took a swig. Rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, he let out a slow breath. Disheveled, he dropped the bottle back on the table, almost spilling it. The cap still bit at her thumb where she pressed at it. Flipped it around between her fingers. Something to fidget with.

“Do you know why I painted it?” Y/N continued, licking her lips, mouth full of cotton. She rocked back forward, nearly toppling into him, but he caught her shoulders. Steadying her and almost smiling, but it died before it could reach his eyes. Her hands came up to balance herself and she dropped the cap to the floor. It clattered, but neither of them bothered to try and pick it up, “Why I picked the subject?” Her fingers curled against his chest, enjoying the touch and slow to pull back.

Bucky shrugged, shaking his head, hands running down her arms to her elbows before he released her, “You were pretty cryptic about it in class.” He took a half step back, but she caught the hem of his shirt, and stubbornly held onto it. Stopping, he glanced down at her hand, but didn’t force her to let go.

Willing her fuzzy mind to focus, she explained, “It’s about love.” She pressed a free hand to her chest, hysterical laughter bubbling from her as she continued, “It’s basically my heart poured on a canvas.” Y/N tugged at his sweater, voice cracking at the end. Jaw clenched like she could keep her words from shaking, she stepped forward challengingly, “Still want it?” Her bottom lip trembled, but she kept her head high and proud.

Bucky’s voice dropped and sounded rough like gravel when he replied, “Of course.” His eyes held her own, and she ground her teeth, exasperated. Nearly stepped on his toes when she let go of his shirt and threw up her hands, catching her fingers in her hair, yanking roughly.

“I was thinking about you.” Y/N whispered, flinging her hand in his direction, nearly hitting him, “Not just you, but enough. Doesn’t that bother you?” Bucky was quiet, so she continued, shaking her head as the words tumbled out, “It’s about how scared I am. To care about you this much. About how messed up these feelings are, and how happy I was.” The tears were coming now. All the ones she never wanted him to see. They caught in a knot in her throat, making her words thick. Her cheeks were wet, and she didn’t know when she started crying, “And I couldn’t explain it in class because I don’t feel that way anymore. It just hurts.” Her hand curled in the front of her shirt and she clawed at it, like maybe she could just dig out her beating heart and give that to him too, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault, but I don’t know what to—”

The words were stolen from her lips. Immediately forgotten. Taken the moment she felt his breath against her mouth, and then nothing but soft warmth. His hands caught her wrists from where she’d been wildly gesturing, and he stilled her. Cold metal and warmth contrasting against her skin. He tugged her forward, arms caught between their chests, and his hair tickled her cheek when he stooped down. So much taller than her that he had to duck his head.

Bucky was kissing her.

Y/N’s eyes fell closed, and her lips parted against his. Everything floated still around her. His hand released her wrist, and cold metal cupped her cheek. Confused, she pushed her hands against his chest, pulling back just an inch, “Why? What—” Then he tilted his head and kissed her again. His teeth nipped her bottom lip and he crowded against her. A soft groan caught in her throat, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, stretching up on her tiptoes to be closer. Questions buzzed through her head, but her world was spinning too fast. Everything suddenly felt warm and happy with him anchoring her to the apartment floor. In that moment, she couldn’t imagine to trying to ask him again. Not while he was finally kissing her.

Bucky shuddered when her tongue brushed his top lip, and his fingers curled gently in her hair. Leaving her no room to move away again. For just a second, he broke the kiss, and let his hands rest against her shoulders, thumbs brushing across her neck. He kissed her forehead, and then her cheek, tongue lightly brushing against the tears still damp on her skin. A soft bubbling giggle left her. Relief mixed with euphoria and disbelief left her insides sparkling like liquid gold.

Nearly floating, Y/N fisted her hands in the back of his shirt against his shoulders. Then took a step back, making him follow her. Still bent over but his hands came to rest against her hips. A tender smile spread across Bucky’s lips while a grin made her beam back at him. Every step she took he matched. Never more than an inch apart. A breath of laughter escaped him when she stumbled, nearly taking him down with her.

When she sat on the couch, he pressed her back until he was hovering over her and kissed her again. It’d been a long while since she had a make-out session like a desperate teenager, but everything fell into place with him. It wasn’t hard to remember why she loved kissing.

Not when she was kissing Bucky.

Next Chapter

Tags: @boy-leave @wtfholland