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omegaxlore · 10 months

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전기 - 박진우 / 케빈

word count: 4646 trigger / content warning(s) : car accident

Odd yet continuous coincidences started happening with the Park family the day their son Jinwoo was born.

The moment Jinwoo’s parents heard his crying the hospital electricity flickered before going out entirely. The entire hospital stood for a moment, baffled. A select few managed to get the back up generators working within seconds, and the hospital was back to functioning as best as it could for what they had at the moment.

Of course Jinwoo’s parents brushed off the moment because they were just happy to finally have their son with them and that he was safely delivered. The next day as the Parks were leaving the hospital to go home with their son the power suddenly turned back on with no issues.

But the weird coincidences didn’t stop there.

Many electronic things began to not work in the Park’s home once they brought home Jinwoo. First it was the baby monitors in Jinwoo’s room. His parents thought he had been a miracle baby who slept through the night, but they found him crying when they woke up thinking it was weird that their son had not called for them.

After that they moved Jinwoo’s crib into their room and threw out the baby monitors.

But of course things did not stop there.

Over the years, more and more things would break. The most random things too. Most of the time Jinwoo was holding them. Most of his battery powered toys would short circuit and stop working all together. Very rarely did his toys explode. There was even a time when Jinwoo turned off a lamp light and the lightbulb popped and the room quickly fell into darkness.

Of course Jinwoo was never hurt. His parents were never hurt either. Of course things broke when his parents touched them as well. Oddly enough each time something that broke Jinwoo was either being held by his parents or holding on to his parents. Sometimes he would be just close enough for the object to break.

The parents just always figured they got a faulty object. Sometimes they would get replaced or they would change tactics and then it wouldn’t happen again.

But that all changed one fateful day. Jinwoo’s 10th birthday.

“Happy Birthday!” Jinwoo’s parents enter his room with a cake and candles already lit. Jinwoo wakes up and blows out the candles.

“Get ready! We have a whole day planned for you!” Jinwoo’s father rushes Jinwoo to get ready. Jinwoo got ready in record time, excited for what his parents had planned.

They enter the car, and drive off.

“We are going into the heart of the city today!” Jinwoo’s mother tells Jinwoo excitedly.

Jinwoo’s parents continue to talk about their fun day out and all they have planned for Jinwoo’s birthday. Jinwoo laughs excitedly in the back of the car. They had the zoo, aquarium, lunch, a movie, arcade, and dinner planned.

Suddenly the car jolted a moment before running smoothly once more.

“You got the car checked out like I said, right?” Jinwoo’s mother asked.

“Of course I did,” her husband answers, “maybe I just slid on the road.”

“In broad daylight where it hasn’t rained in a couple weeks?” his wife counters.

“It’s fine,” he tells her.

Then the car jolted again, but this time it didn’t resume running normally. Jinwoo’s father tries slamming his foot on the brakes but the car doesn’t slow. The car starts to sway to a side. His father turns the steering wheel in with the turn to stop the spinning.

That’s when it all started. One car slams into them. Then another, and another, and another. In total, 13 cars piled into the Park family.

Instead of a happy day full of adventures and fun things, they were taken to the hospital. Luckily nobody in the car piled up, and there wasn’t too much damage. Jinwoo was unharmed- just a few cuts and bruises. His parent’s came out with concussions. His mother with her broken leg and his father with a broken wrist and shoulder.

The Parks were clear of any blame once the dash cam video and audio were examined as well as the recent check on the car which Jinwoo’s father provided the paperwork for.

That was the final straw for Jinwoo’s father.

“That’s it,” he frustratingly called as he sat in the dining room with his wife, “we’re moving. Leaving the city. Leaving behind all electronics. We cannot continue to live like this.”

“Honey, you’re being rash about all of this,” his wife tries to calm him.

Despite suppose to be in bed, Jinwoo stands hidden behind the hallway wall listening to his parents.

“Look at you,” he tells her, standing up, “look at me. We’re lucky Jinwoo wasn’t even hurt. He was in the car where all the other cars collided with us. We can’t continue on with life. Things break around us and we need to get away from it all.”

Jinwoo’s father sat back down and with a slouch. His wife didn’t argue, just a quiet okay.

A couple weeks later they were packed up, Jinwoo was withdrawn from school, and they were on their way.

Jinwoo’s parents saw their new house as a blessing. Kevin thought it was like a prison. He had to throw out a majority of his toys because they were electronics. He did admit though, the house was pretty and the countryside felt like a fairytale. He could adventure around. Maybe his dad would finally build a tree house or a fort for him.

That first night they were there a storm rolled in, but it wasn’t your normal rainstorm. It was an electric storm. Something uncommon for the area. Lightning never touched the ground but would just bounce between the clouds.

Despite this being an uncommon occurrence in the area it became common over the years. The electric storm comes at least once a week during the evening and disappears by morning.

Jinwoo continued to grow up. If anything his education was better than in the city. He developed a passion for books and started a mini library in his room and around the house. The countryside grew on his but tired him out. Everything was the exact same. There was nothing new, no change, no excitement. That’s why Jinwoo always found himself reading- escaping to a world where he can be someone else- a magical being or someone with super powers. It made him want to be a librarian one day. To own something and inspire others. To have a place to escape- a place for others to escape as well.

“For my birthday this year,” Jinwoo says as he finishes his dinner, “I want to take a trip to a library in a nearby city.” His father chokes on his food and begins coughing.

“Oh, honey,” his mother stammers for a moment, “I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”

“Your mother is right,” his father follows up after clearing his throat and mouth of food.

“But I really want to go,” Jinwoo tells them, “I’ve heard it’s the oldest library in the country and it’s got the coolest architecture and it has ancient paintings done by famous artists inside. Plus I could see if they offer internships for when I’m ready to go to college.”

His mother looks at Jinwoo sadly, understanding his want to go. She looks to her husband.

“Jinwoo, there is a reason we left the city,” his father starts.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jinwoo retorts, “because of the electronics and we don't have a good relationship with them and working around us… if you’ll excuse me.” Jinwoo stands up from the table and leaves the dining room.

He closes the door quietly behind him and sighs.

The one time I asked to go to the city despite wanting to for years… and I can’t go.

Jinwoo walks up to his window and stares out at the clouds rolling in. Lightning bounces between the clouds like a game of tag. He closes his window and pulls the curtains shut.

Jinwoo sits in his little corner he set up as a library / study area. He sits on the comfy pillows and pulls out his text book. He’s studying for a college entrance exam- for a college far away from the small country area he lived in.

He reads through the book for a couple hours, answering practice questions when they come up.

A light knock at his door stops him from completing the question he’s on.

“Come in,” Jinwoo calls. The door opens and his mother smiles. She sits on the edge of his bed, across from him.

“I spoke with your father,” his mother tells him, “and I have convinced him to allow you to go to the library for a visit.” Jinwoo suddenly lights up.

“Your father would like him and I to come with you. If that’s alright?” His mother asks.

“Of course that’s okay,” Jinwoo jumps up, throwing his textbook to the side. He hugs his mother tight, “thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” His mother smiles and hugs him back.

Almost a week later, on a weekend, Jinwoo and his parents are on a bus towards the city. Jinwoo watches the scenery, enjoying the change from the countryside to the city. His parents sit worriedly. Their memories of the car pile up haunts them still.

The entire bus ride Jinwoo’s parents tensely sit, but watch their son enjoy his time. Eventually his parents relaxed, answering Jinwoo’s questions about certain things he saw.

“Do you know where we are going?” His father asks as they all finally exit the bus.

“Yes! It’s just around the corner!” Jinwoo excitedly claps his hands a couple times. He proudly leads the way to the library.

When Jinwoo spots it, he runs up the stairs, leaving his parents behind. He stares at the magnificent carved marble doors, but his eyes quickly land on a sign.

Closed for renovations.

Jinwoo’s heart sinks. He came all this way, just for the library to be closed.

“It’s closed,” Jinwoo turns around to his parents, defeated.

“Closed?” Jinwoo’s mother looks at the note, “oh honey. I’m so sorry.” Jinwoo turns back to look at the large doors once more.

“Hi there!” Someone calls behind Jinwoo’s parents. The three turn around and face their caller. Their eyes widen when they see Jinwoo.

“How can I help you three?” They smile, clasping their hands together, a row of bags handing off each arm.

“Oh, we brought our son to see the library,” his father explains, “but it seems it’s closed. We had no idea.”

“Well you’re in luck! I happen to be the librarian. My name is Poaegi,” they smile, “come inside!” Poaegi steps past them, opening the doors for them to walk inside.

The door slowly closes behind them. Jinwoo stares around in wonder, his eyes not staying on one thing longer than a second.

“Oh, wow this is beautiful,” his mother states.

“Thank you! My family has worked on this place for generations,” Poaegi tells them.

“Your family owns this?” Jinwoo asks.

“My family built this,” Poaegi corrects with a smile, “it’s now mine to take care of until I have children and pass it on.”

“That’s absolutely amazing,” Jinwoo’s father states looking at the walls and ceiling- covered in art, “Jinwoo has told us much about this place.”

“Oh yeah?” Poaegi smiles, “I’ll be more than happy to give a tour if you allow me a moment to set my bags down.”

“Take your time dear,” Jinwoo’s mother tell Poaegi. Poaegi quickly exits, leaving the three to wander around the front desk.

“There must be books dated back centuries if the library has been here this long,” Jinwoo’s father states.

“Almost 1000 years,” Jinwoo tells him.

“Okay. I can take you three around the library now,” Poaegi reappears brushing their hands off on their shirt.

Poaegi takes the three around the available parts of the library, explaining each section in great detail. All the artwork and who it was painted by. Showing off the oldest books that belonged to Poaegi’s ancestors.

“Well, that’s unfortunately all I can show you right now because the library is under renovations,” Poaegi circles the group back to the front desk, “but please do explore around for a little bit. I just ask please don’t risk yourselves going into renovation areas.” Poaegi smiles and leaves the group alone.

“I think I want to go look back at some of those paintings,” Jinwoo’s mother states.

“The ones next to the old books?” her husband perks up. The two walk off back towards an earlier section they toured leaving Jinwoo alone.

Jinwoo kind of wanders around. Just wanting to explore what he could. See the types of books the library held.

Jinwoo wanders up and down the library aisles for a while, just observing the book, until one catches his eye. It seems out of place.

Ethereal Trove.

Why would there be a book about the library in the history section when there is a whole area dedicated to the library and its history. Jinwoo reaches out and touches the book.

He instantly pulls away when a wave of lightning rolls off his finger and down the spine of the book. The lightning doesn’t disappear though. It sits in one place on the edge of the bookshelf, leaving no damage to the book or shelf. Jinwoo watches it. It moves a tad closer to Jinwoo before zipping off in the other direction.

Jinwoo watches it and then finds himself following it. He wasn’t really watching where he was going. His eyes were trained on the little wave of lightning bolts that wanted him to follow it. Was he dreaming? Were his eyes playing tricks on him.

Suddenly Jinwoo finds himself in a large open room. The wave of lighting rolls off the bookshelves and onto the floor, racing to the pillar in the center of the room. The lightning spirals up the pillar before entering the ceiling and zipping across to another pillar. It strikes it and then it all disappears.

A loud bang takes Jinwoo’s attention away from the lightning. A tall boy stands near another pillar, a book at his feet. He stares wide-eyed at Jinwoo.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t me-”

The boy picks up his book and runs past Jinwoo. He turns and watches as the boy scurries off down one of the isles. He feels a little defeated.

“Don’t mind Taedong,” Poaegi’s voice calls. Jinwoo turns back around to find Poaegi standing off to the side where the boy previously was, “he’s shy. But he’s a sweet boy. I’m sure you will become friends quickly.”

“I didn’t mean to startle him,” Jinwoo stammers, slightly embarrassed.

Poaegi lightly laughs, “Jinwoo, it’s okay. Taedong is still learning to open up to others.” Jinwoo looks back down the aisle. He can see Taedong sitting further down reading his book once more.

“How did you even manage to come to this part of the library?” Poaegi asks, “it’s hidden away from the rest of the other areas.”

“Oh, I-” Jinwoo stops, how does he explain what happened?

“I feel like it’s going to sound crazy,” Jinwoo tells them, unsure of himself.

“Crazy?” Poaegi perks up, “I love crazy stories. Nothing surprises me anymore. Try me.”

Jinwoo looks at them, eyebrows raised. He relaxes then takes a deep breath.

“Earlier, when I was looking at the books I touched one of them and these little bolts of electricity ran down the book and the bookshelf. They just stayed in one spot and rippled,” Jinwoo explains, “so I approached it. When I did, it moved. So I stopped. Then it stopped. So I followed it here and then it jumped off the bookshelf and onto the floor and into the center pillar in this room.”

“And then?” Poaegi asks, despite knowing what he’s going to say.

“All the little bolts separated and ran up the pillar, across the ceiling and down into the far… pillar over… there,” Jinwoo slowly stops talking looking at Poaegi, “why does it feel like you knew what I was going to explain.”

Poaegi smiles, “because I did. You are special, Park Jinwoo.”

“Special?” Jinwoo questions them, disbelieving the word.

“Jinwoo,” Poaegi calls for him. They put their hands behind their back and walk further into the open room, “let me ask you… or I guess I want you to think… think about all the times in your life when electricity was surrounding you and how you interacted with it… what happened?”

Jinwoo stands there, eyebrows furrowed. He watches Poaegi walk around looking at the twelve different pillars in the room.

“Most of the time they broke if I touched them,” Jinwoo plainly answers, “but things would break if my parents touched them too. So I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”

“Were you being held by your parents or hugging on to your parents? Or touching the object at the same time?” Poaegi continues with the questioning. Jinwoo takes a deep breath, slightly bothered by being interrogated. He wants a relaxing birthday exploring the most beautiful library in the country. But the more Jinwoo thinks about the questions, the more he relaxes and realizes Poaegi was trying to get at something. They were right. Every time something broke, Jinwoo was somehow touching his parents as well or touching the object too.

“I… I was,” Jinwoo answers quietly, “what does that mean?”

“It’s nothing bad,” Poaegi reassures him, “but like I said earlier. You’re special.”

Poaegi walks up to Jinwoo and grabs his hand. They pull him across the large room and up to one of the pillars.

“Look closely. This one didn’t get its gift until you stepped into the room,”Poaegi tells him, “the lightning you saw was your ability returning to home.”

“My ability?” Jinwoo looks at Poaegi bewildered but turns his head to look at the pillar. The pillar looks normal. Then he sees it. Lightning speeds across the pillar before disappearing. Then more began to do the same thing.. Jinwoo reaches out to touch it. When his hand comes into contact with the marble pillar, lightning crackles and runs up his hands and arms..

Jinwoo pulls his hand away, and watches as the lightning disappears instantly.

“You, Park Jinwoo, are an Ethereal. Created by the universe to help protect those who cannot protect themselves,” Poaegi explains.

“Now that is crazy,” Jinwoo tells them, “and crazy surprises me.”

“Oh?” Poaegi challenges. Poaegi raises their arm, a bracelet with 11 different charms dangle down.

“Pick one,” Poaegi tells Jinwoo, but they already know which one he will be drawn to. Jinwoo watches, observing each charm.

“That one,” Jinwoo points.

“Figured,” Poaegi smiles and pulls off the bow and arrow charm. The charm flashes and then appears in Poaegi’s hand life-size. The arrows crackle and they appear more like lightning bolts, but the bow looks like a normal ordinary bow. Jinwoo’s eyes sparkle in wonder.

“How-”

“I’m an Ethereal too, Jinwoo,” Poaegi tells him, “you, I, and ten others were created by the universe. Granted different elemental abilities.”

“But what are we protecting from?” Jinwoo asks, “everyday crime?”

Poaegi drops the bow and arrow to the floor which flash in a light then disappear, but the charm reappears on Poaegi’s bracelet. Poaegi's face darkens a little, “I wasn’t told much about it. My parents kept a lot hidden from me because they didn’t think it would appear back in my lifetime. But, there is this monster. From what I’ve managed to find in this library, it’s hunting down the Ethereals and it steals their powers before taking their souls.”

Jinwoo stares at Poaegi horrified.

“We don’t have to worry too much yet,” Poaegi tells him, “despite being born with our abilities, it doesn’t mean the monster has woken up. We might be able to find the monster before it wakes up and destroy it.”

“That still doesn’t sound much better,” Jinwoo tells them.

“If I can’t get all the Ethereals together, we will be easier to hunt down and I won’t be able to protect us all if we are all separated,” Poaegi explains.

“I thought we all protected?” Jinwoo asks.

“I’m the Protection Ethereal,” Poaegi tells him, “it’s why I have copies of all your relics on my bracelet. I have the ability to mimic your abilities to a limit and my natural instinct is to protect.” Jinwoo stands still momentarily, thinking. He turns away from Poaegi and looks at the rest of the pillars in the room.

“Which one is yours?” Jinwoo asks quietly. Poaegi smiles and grabs his hand. Poaegi walks to the center pillar in the room.

“But there is nothing. It doesn’t look like it has a gift,” Jinwoo states looking up and down and around the pillar.

“Nope,” Poaegi smiles, “that’s the point, it's so I can fit and shape to everyone else. I am the protector and I need to be able to step into anyone’s place at any time when needed.”

Jinwoo hesitates, “...you mean if they die?”

Poaegi whips their head to Jinwoo and catches their tongue. They pause for a moment.

“Not necessarily,” Poaegi starts, deciding to not hide the truth, “I can also step in and aid as well. If there needs to be two of someone, I can do that too.” Jinwoo looks back at the pillar and nods his head.

Jinwoo steps away and walks past each pillar, examining the cravings.

“Everyone’s pillar is a bit unique to their ability,” Poaegi stands by their pillar watching Jinwoo, “do you recognize some of these elements?”

Jinwoo stares up at the bright white pillar, it almost illuminates. “Light.” Jinwoo walks to the next one, he has the instinct to place his hand on it, it beats- like a heart. “Healing or Life.” The next is charred. “Fire.” After that is a black one. “Darkness.” Next wasn’t a pillar. Jinwoo reached out and his hand hit something. Invisible? But that’s not an elemental.

“Air,” Poaegi answers.

Jinwoo nods his head and moves to the next one.

Broken? Jinwoo stares at the pillar. It was broken in half and almost dulled compared to the others but not black to be darkness. Jinwoo looks to the next one, vines wrapping around, and flowers constantly blooming.

“Life,” Jinwoo points to the living pillar. He turns his head back to the one in front of him.

“This is Taedong’s pillar,” Poaegi quietly tells him, having approached him in silence, but it didn’t scare Jinwoo, “death.” Jinwoo’s eyes slightly widen. That’s why he didn’t want Jinwoo near him. He wanted to stay far away from what he could potentially hurt.

“Is that why?” Jinwoo asks.

“No,” Poaegi half chuckles for a moment, “he’s just afraid of letting people close to him. He can’t kill people. Well I mean he could. Anyone can kill someone. But Taedong’s abilities are very unique. They don’t possess the power to kill.” Jinwoo stares at the pillar for a moment more before moving on to the next one beyond life. This one looks similar to the Air one, but it’s blurry. It hurts Jinwoo’s eyes to look at it for too long.

“Mind,” Poaegi says looking away as well, “it hurts everyone’s head but our other Jinwoo.”

“There is another Jinwoo?” Jinwoo asks, and Poaegi nods. Jinwoo moves onto the next pillar and it's plain. Just like Poaegi’s… and so it's the one after that.

“We’re missing two more Ethereals,” Poaegi explains before he can ask, “water and earth.”

“So these pillars are here for what? Decoration? Power up?” Jinwoo asks.

“I’m still not sure,” Poaegi answers truthfully, “like I said earlier, my parents kept a lot of things from me before they both died. So I’m having to learn everything as I go. I do know they are helping train and control your abilities. That’s what I am using them for right now, but I know they can do more. I just don’t have any of the knowledge or books.”

The two stand quietly for a moment near the entrance of the room.

“I-I should probably get back to my parents, then,” Jinwoo states.

“You are welcome to stay. Just like the others. You’ll have a space here and learn about your abilities,” Poaegi tells him.

“I don’t know if I can convince my parents to let me stay in the city and about this whole Ethereal thing,” Jinwoo awkwardly laughs, “they would probably flip if they found out I’m the reason we can’t be around electronics.”

Poaegi softly smiles, “I understand. I just can’t protect you if you are far away. I don’t want anything to happen.” The two stand in uncomfortable silence now.

“We could give them a white lie,” Poaegi suggests after a moment.

“I can’t lie to my parents,” Jinwoo tells them.

“It’s not really a lie,” Poaegi counters, “you want to be a librarian one day right? I have the legal grounds of getting you an internship to help you with your career path. You could tell you parents I offered it to you and that you would be able to stay here for free with food and a room.”

Jinwoo hesitates, “it would take some convincing.”

“That’s okay,” Poaegi tells him and hands him a card, “give me a call when you do it.”

Jinwoo takes the card and the two of them walk back into the library where Jinwoo’s parents were waiting by the door.

“Thank you again for coming,” Poaegi shakes their hands and bows once more to them.

“Thank you for opening up the doors for us despite being under renovations,” his father thanks Poaegi. Poaegi watches them leave, knowing Jinwoo would come back.

“Poaegi offered me an internship there,” Jinwoo tells his parents as they sit on the bus ride home.

“An internship?” His mother inquires, “but the whole library is under renovations.”

“Well someone is going to need help with organizing and cataloging the books when they get back on the shelves. They said certain parts of the library will be worked on at a time, so it’s still somewhere functional for the librarian and assistants to use,” Jinwoo tells them, coming up with an entire lie. He felt so guilty but if what Poaegi said is true then he knows he can’t stay far for too long.

“Plus it will look really good on my resume for when I finish my degree,” Jinwoo finishes.

“I’m just a little nervous about it all,” his mother states, “what do you think, honey?” His father has sat quietly this whole time.

“We didn’t have any issues with electronics today,” his father states. Jinwoo wants to facepalm. That is what he was thinking about?

“That’s true,” his mother agrees. Double facepalm.

“Is this really what you want to do, son?” his father turns to him.

“Yes,” Jinwoo smiles.

“Okay,” his father nods, “but the moment those little electronics act up I want you back home.” They will never let go of this… but I mean at least Jinwoo had an answer to it all now.

“Okay, dad, I promise,” Jinwoo tells him, yet another lie.

“Good. Good,” his father turns to look out the window again.

“When will they want you to start?” His mother redirects his attention.

“As soon as possible is what I was told,” Jinwoo answers and his mother smiles.

“You’re growing up so fast,” she smiles, “we’ll help you.” Jinwoo smiles. He may have lied really about one thing. A promise he can’t keep. But if it means keeping his parents safe he could live with it. Hopefully they can destroy this monster thing and then Jinwoo can come back home to his parents and not have to worry about it anymore.

#kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop imagines #omega x #omegax #omegaxlore #park jinwoo #omega x kevin #omega x park jinwoo

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heliads · 3 years

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Deserve You

Based on this request: “Bucky imagine where you're dating but you're not an avenger, so you sometimes feel not good at all for him even though he loves you more than anything. one time he comes from a mission to you waiting in his room, doubting again but he immediately tries getting this thought out of you and gives you his dog tags to prove he's yours forever and it's all cute then? :)”

masterlist

You open your eyes gradually, the last remnants of sleep being dragged away by the brightness of dawn. You allow yourself one final moment of lingering silence before sitting up with a yawn. A brief spurt of panic flashes across you when you realize that you’re alone in your bed, but then you hear a quiet noise from the kitchen and your pulse begins to settle once more. Bucky must have already gotten up, there’s no need to worry.

You keep having moments like this, where you turn to find yourself alone and keep thinking that this is it, that he’s finally left you. Then you mentally chide yourself for thinking that way- every single one of the Avengers that you’ve met on your trips to the old Stark Tower keeps talking about how Bucky’s head over heels for you, so why would he ghost you out of nowhere? You always smile for a second, thinking about your boyfriend, and then the doubt creeps back in and you glance around to find him. Every single time, without fail, those lurking remnants of doubt always worm back into your mind, and sometimes it feels like there’s nothing you can do to get rid of them.

The only available option is to find Bucky and put your mind at ease by knowing that he’s still here. So, you slide your legs out of the still-warm blankets, grimacing at the shock of the cold air, and pad over to the kitchen. Sure enough, Bucky is holding a mug of some hot beverage, maybe coffee or tea, and staring out the window at the city below him. He does this, sometimes, just watches the city like he could do it for hours. You have a feeling that he’s studying the city for any last lingering resemblance to the New York he’d grown up in, when the most pressing news was World War II and he didn’t see himself in Siberia for anything more than a ski trip, if he could put together enough pennies to afford it. However, life has a way of throwing you for a loop, and all of Bucky’s plans for the future evaporated as soon as he plummeted from the train all those years ago.

Bucky turns when he hears you approach. “Good morning.” You smile, joining him by the window. “Good morning yourself. Are you up early for an assignment or because of a nightmare?” Bucky frowns. “The latter. Did I wake you? I thought I was quiet.” You shake your head. “No, I was asleep the whole time. I just knew because you have that same look on your face after you have your nightmares.” Bucky laughs quietly. “And here I thought I was supposed to be the spy who knew everything. Sure you don’t want a job at S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

You raise your eyebrows. “I’m not sure that paying attention to my boyfriend really qualifies me for FBI: Avengers Edition, but I’ll keep it in mind.” You head over to the fridge, starting to pull out some items for breakfast. Bucky leaves within a few minutes, mumbling something about an early morning meeting, and you head to work yourself soon after. Your own workplace is no Avengers Tower, just a typical office building, and you slide into your seat just in time to start the day.

The morning itself is fairly uneventful, and you’re just starting to think that it’s going to be another boring day as usual when you head off to your lunch break. As you’re waiting in line to use the microwave, you hear a pair of women talking at a table near you. You had no intention of eavesdropping, but although their voices are fairly loud your attention was hooked from the beginning when you realize they’re talking about Bucky. More specifically, they’re talking about Bucky’s girlfriend, or lack thereof.

Ever since you started dating Bucky, he had been careful to keep you out of the public eye. When you work as an Avenger for long enough, you learn to keep everyone important to you out of focus, out of danger. If a HYDRA agent got word of the former Winter Soldier’s girlfriend, you’d be on a train to Siberia with handcuffs and a blindfold within the hour, a ransom request already placed on your head. That’s if they were patient- if not, they would just shoot you to send a message. By making sure nobody heard about you, Bucky could keep you safe.

The downside of this is times like now, when you have to listen to two of your coworkers discussing how strange it is that a man as attractive as James Barnes would still be single. Obviously, you can’t say anything, and you’re not sure that they’d believe you if you tried, but it’s still slightly uncomfortable to hear the conversation swirling around you even as you have to stay silent.

One of the women clicks her tongue in confusion. “I mean, isn’t it weird, though? He’s a friend of Tony Stark, there’s no doubt he’d have a shortage of girls who’d be willing to go out to a bar or something on a weekend.” The other woman laughs. “I bet that surplus of girls includes you, right?” The first woman grins cheekily. “I wouldn’t say no if he asked, but even I don’t have a chance. I mean, he’s an Avenger, and one of the hottest ones there. No one here could hold a candle to him. He saves lives on a daily basis and what do we do, sit around all the time? The only woman I could see him with is an agent or maybe Black Widow. At least then he’d be dating someone who’s his equal.”

The words feel like shards of ice threading through your heart, and you turn to go back to your desk, hunger suddenly forgotten. As you stare at your work, though, you find you can’t concentrate. You keep hearing what the women had said, that no one in this miserable office could be worthy of dating the famous Avenger Bucky Barnes. They’re right, aren’t they? Bucky was saving lives all the time while you complained and acted so needy. You sigh to yourself, feeling your spirits dampen by the second. Why did Bucky see in you anyway?

Bucky’s shoulders feel like they’ve been carved from stone. He’s been tense for so long that he’s certain he’ll never be able to move again. Today is the day that he has to begin reviewing case files from his time as a Winter Soldier. He’ll have to come face to face with photo and video evidence of all the wrongs he’s done, of all the killings and blood shed by his own damaged hands. He’s been trying to avoid it for a while, but S.H.I.E.L.D. needs his input on all of the past Winter Soldier missions in order to proceed with the ongoing investigations into the last HYDRA strongholds. Bucky has no choice but to confront his past, he knows that, but it doesn’t make his job any easier.

It’s not like he’s alone, though. Natasha is here, because her experience with the Red Room could prove useful with putting together some pieces of the HYDRA-Siberia-Soviet puzzle that’s been plaguing them for some time now. Steve is also here, one door down, looking at his old medical files that detail exactly how some brilliant scientists turned a scrawny kid with a death wish when it came to standing up to bullies into the strongest man of the century.

Bucky clenches his jaw, and turns back to the manila file folder in his hand. He flips it open, taking out the diagrams and security camera stills and laying them out onto the table before him as he reads. He’s flipping through the rest of the contents of the folder when he pauses, staring at the images awaiting his acknowledgement. Natasha sees him freeze slightly and glances over to see what’s troubling him. Her brow dips in understanding.

Lying before him are photo after photo of death and destruction. Bucky remembers this day now, after it was buried so long under HYDRA mind wipes and his own crippling want to forget. The bodies of the dead line a small street, buildings reduced to rubble. He can see the dead, so many of them. There aren’t just the few military commanders he was sent to exterminate- no, HYDRA wants no witnesses and so Bucky had killed everyone in sight. There are children in pools of blood, their mothers reaching over them as if to shield them from the inevitable bullets coming their way. He tells himself that their deaths were quick, efficient, maybe even painless, but it is not enough. There is no way to justify this amount of bloodshed.

Natasha puts her hand on his shoulder. The gesture, meant to bring comfort, startles him and it takes all of Bucky’s self-control to not flinch. Bucky swallows hard. “I did all of this. I killed every one of them.” Natasha’s voice is low and quiet. “It wasn’t you. You had no choice in any of this.” Bucky laughs, thought it is heavy with horror and breaks in upon itself. “It’s easier to say that, but it was still my hand pulling the trigger.” He leans back against the wall, trying to steady himself.

“How were you and Steve able to convince anyone to trust me? Why did you even want to save me in the first place?” Natasha stares at the photos, taking in the broken bodies of the dead. “Steve knew the real you, the one who’s standing here right now and would never attempt this sort of carnage. I knew what it was like to lose all control and feel like your hands would always be stained with blood. Second chances are more powerful than you might think.”

Bucky shakes his head slowly. “I don’t deserve that chance. I don’t deserve any of this.” He closes his eyes for just a second as if by blocking out the world he can block out the memory of the methodical shudder of the rifle in his hands, the recoil as he fired again and again. “I don’t deserve Y/N. She-” Natasha cuts him off smoothly. “Y/N knows what you’ve been through, and she knows that you are not that same man. I’ve spoken with her before, and she knows the full extent of what you did.”

Bucky’s eyes cut back to the photographs. “Then why does she stay?” Natasha’s gaze feels like a leaden weight, unflinching and unyielding. “She stays because she loves you. She stays because she knows that the real Bucky Barnes is a hero, someone who is willing and able to move on from their past. Y/N is one of the most important parts of your life, not because she’s a good kisser but because she’s one of the only people who can see straight through you and know that you’re a good man.”

Bucky nods. “I don’t need you to tell me twice.” Natasha’s right, though, and even the barest mention of Y/N brings back a wave of good memories to fight against the bad. She’s like an anchor, someone holding him in place even when all of the darkness he’s had to endure threatens to pull him under. It astonishes him sometimes that he still wakes up beside her every morning. She’s so perfect, so wonderful. What does Y/N see in him anyway that would make him so lucky to have her with him?

You’re in a despondent mood for the rest of the day. You slump home, not even bothering to turn on the lights but discarding your coat and bag in the dark of the room. The faint light still shining through the windows is all you’ll need. You stare unthinkingly at the apartment for a while, then head to your bedroom. As you catch sight of yourself in the mirror, you stop with a sigh, leaning your hands against the dresser underneath.

You stare at yourself, at the dark circles under your eyes. Who are you, anyway? Who are you to think that you would ever be good enough for an Avenger? At this point, it’s only a matter of days before he breaks up with you. No wonder he keeps waking up before you- he’s trying to leave without seeing you that often, as a way to lessen the blow of the eventual goodbye.

The problem about gloomy thoughts is that they tend to wrap around you, pulling you away from everything else. You’re so distracted that you don’t hear the front door open, and you don’t notice Bucky enter the apartment until he knocks softly on the wall of your bedroom as he stands in the open door. You turn around with a flash, plastering on a smile, but your reaction is too late and his brow furrows. “Are you alright?”

You try for a smile, reaching out to kiss him in greeting. “Of course I am. How was your day?” Bucky is not to be deterred. “I saw your face, Y/N. You looked really upset. Is everything okay?” Maybe it’s that velvet tone of his, or the concern laced in his eyes, but your few fragile defenses break down. You turn to him, fighting back tears. “Why are you still with me?” Bucky frowns. “What?” You hold your hands up uselessly. “You’re an Avenger and you’re out there saving lives all the time. Why would you ever be interested in some girl from the city? I’m not half the person you are.”

Bucky stares at you for a second, then wraps his arms around you, drawing you close. “Y/N, love, why would you ever think that?” You look away. “Because it’s true. You should be dating some other superhero of a woman who could be your equal.” Bucky’s frown tinges slightly with anger. “Did you hear about this on some news show? I told that one news outlet that if they said a single thing about me I’d shut them down, and I’ll do it-” You cut him off. “It’s not like that. It’s just- You’re an Avenger, Bucky, and you deserve someone equally as brave as you are.”

Bucky guides you gently over to the bed, and the two of you sit down on the edge. He pulls you into his arms. “I don’t want some superhero. I want you. Y/N, I love you because you’re the only one here who sees me for who I really am, not just some soulless Avenger but a faulty person. Honestly, if anything I’m surprised that you’d still stay with me.” Your tears dry up as you stare at him. “What?” A quiet smile spreads across Bucky’s lips. “Every single day, I come home and you make a difficult day a thousand times better. You know me better than I know myself, and even despite everything I’ve done and the monster I’ve been, you still make me feel like a good man again. You’re one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met, Y/N, and you deserve someone equally as good as you are.”

You shake your head slowly. “That’s not the same. Anyone can be nice.” Bucky cups your cheek in his hand. “Nobody else knows that I always get up in the mornings and pace around because of the nightmares. Nobody else knows that I always stare down the alleyways on the walk home because I keep thinking I’ll see Steve in there getting beat up, or help me pick out jackets based on how easy it will be to remove the left sleeve. You’re the only one for me, doll, and I wouldn’t trade you for a heartbeat.”

He reaches into a pocket. “Here, I’ll prove it.” He takes out something silvery, like stamped metal. With a jolt, you realize they’re his dog tags, the ones he had from fighting in World War II all those years ago. He gestures for you to turn around and you do, feeling the weight of the metal around your throat as he fastens them. When you look back at him, he’s smiling. “See? You can’t get rid of me, love. Not in a million years.”

You smile, running your fingers over the faded lettering. “Won’t you want them? You know, as a memory of your old life?” Bucky shakes his head, a content expression lingering in his eyes. “I don’t need them to remember. I’ve got you, and you’re the only home I’ll ever need.” When he kisses you again, you can feel the dog tags right over your heart, like a promise that he’ll always be with you, no matter what.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagines #bucky barnes x reader #winter soldier #winter soldier imagines #winter soldier x reader #avengers #avengers imagines #avengers x reader #tfatws #tfatws imagines #tfatws x reader #catws #catws imagines

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dinosaurtsukki · 4 years

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random bungou stray dogs hc's that exist in my head

a/n: no real reason for me writing this other than the fact that i’m depressed and need to procrastinate on my studies and other WIP’s dklajdlas hope you guys like this (there might be a pt. 2)

akutagawa is Banned from drinking coffee. mori himself forbids him from ever drinking it

thats because the first time he drank it (in a meeting when chuuya was serving coffee) he just went completely fidgety and broke the ceiling with rashomon

so no coffee for him. ever.

higuchi tries to quit coffee too because akutagawa-senpai doesn’t drink. she ended up crying on day 3 without coffee

also, contrary to what everyone thinks, akutagawa is very much a cat person

he doesn’t go out of his way to pet cats but he thinks they’re cool and doesn’t mind if they rub themselves against his legs

and then fukuzawa was walking around and found akutagawa pretty much doing nothing and is yet still surrounded by cats and he feels so fUCKING BETRAYED

he carries cat snacks and everything AND THE CATS STILL WON’T NOTICE HIM

fukuzawa feels a bit better about atsushi wrecking akutagawa’s ass in their first fight

ranpo visits the convenience store near his house SO MUCH that all the employees already know him by name

ranpo thus makes it a point to remember their names and ask a lot of personal questions about their life that he just randomly deduced

sometimes he opens the snacks and eats them already without paying for them but they let ranpo off the hook

dazai actually knows how to play the keytar. he learned back when he was in the mafia because it pissed off chuuya so much

he also cuts his hair by himself but it always ends up disaster so he calls kunikida to help him

at first kunikida’s like ‘no it’s not in my schedule’ but dazai sends him a pic and he’s like ‘ok i’m on my way’

he’s actually very, very intimidated by the sole fact that someone like kenji exists

that’s because dazai accidentally opened up about his entire life story to kenji after just a few minutes of knowing each other and the fact that kenji hasn’t used it to his advantage frightens him

everyone in the ADA has tried to scare kenji at some point but every single one of them failed

kenji likes giving people cow-print socks on christmas and they look horrendous but everyone wears them

atsushi loves collecting mugs and whenever he buys one, he always buys another one for kyouka

that said, recipes involving mugs and a microwave fascinate him and he tries to make mug cakes as much as he can

kyouka personally isn’t a fan of these mug cakes (she thinks they’re weird) but it makes atsushi happy so she can’t bring herself to say no

atsushi has only said ‘fuck’ once and that was after he was so shocked at hearing kyouka say ‘fuck’ that he just yelled ‘KYOUKA-CHAN SAID FUCK’ only for dazai to go ‘ATSUSHI SAID FUCK’

not a good time for fukuzawa and kunikida to come in with a very esteemed visitor

kunikida does a fair amount of yoga to keep himself sane

but he does have a tendency to emit a low-pitch scream when the instructors tell them to let out their worries

he has a book full of crossword puzzles that he likes to work on in his spare time but then one day he came to the office to find that ranpo had filled out every single one

kunikida has never considered punching ranpo but he did for one second

he is ASHAMED of this but he did use his notebook once in a while to make a spare key to his apartment because he keeps losing his keys

jk dazai steals them from him

chuuya makes Really Good Coffee, specializing in drip coffee in particular

the reason why he wears black a lot is because the coffee stains would be less visible

he’s actually REALLY BAD at technology. he’s been so busy working at the mafia that the whole smartphone revolution went past his head but he still only knows how to work a flip phone

yosano sometimes wears a nice dress to work but that’s only when all her other clothes are in the laundry

she actually visits the port mafia casinos quite often and is a sucker for slot machines. she wears a really long coat when she goes to visit and mori was pretty sure he saw her once

yosano definitely saw him and proceeded to hit her head against the slot machine so that she’d look like just another crazy casino-goer

the tanizaki siblings love buying matching phone charms and switching them out every few weeks

they actually rehearsed that part where tanizaki pretended to bomb the agency with a whole script and everything

tanizaki has maybe used his light snow once in a while to skip out on work and play video games in the corner and ranpo noticed but he promised not to say as long as he was in on it

chuuya accidentally called kouyou ‘mom’ at one point and the two of them just stared at each other before swearing to never speak about it again

kouyou has probably used golden snow once in a while to help her dress and she needs help with dressing because she conceals knives everywhere

the metal detectors light up like a christmas tree whenever she passes by them so no, she doesn’t go to malls much

while elise has a sweet tooth, mori is really into salty food. it’s quite addicting for him actually

for the longest time, people thought that the mug on his desk was full of coffee but no, it’s actually just salted peanuts that he snacks on while doing paperwork

he actually doesn’t know how to play chess. people assume he does because he’s an evil mastermind but mori can’t remember the rules please stop asking him if he can play chess

***********************************************

taglist (check out my post for details on being part of my taglist): @waitforitillwritemywayout @tpwkatsumu @laure-chan

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spiked-tea-writing · 3 years

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and they were roommates?!

SapnapxFem!Reader

Summary: Imagine being in love with your roommate, couldn't be you.

Pronouns: She/her

Warning: Swearing

Word Count: 2.3k

A/n: I don’t watch or know anything, I just like these people and I had a concept. Also, he and Dream aren’t roommates in this for the sake of I can’t figure that out. Also also, my timeline is probably fucked but who cares

The dynamic in the apartment was...interesting to say the least

In the two years of living together, it had shifted a lot

In the beginning, you and Sapnap had been... less than cordial to each other

Both eighteen, fresh out of high school, off to college thinking that you knew everything.

There was lots of fighting, to say the least.

All of the “No it’s your turn to vacuum”, and “I swear to god Sapnap I will punt you halfway across the world if you eat my pineapple again”

The only reason you didn’t slit each other’s throats was that if the other person was dead, who would pay rent?

It was the summer before college started at the time, and you were working long hours minimum wage so coming]’/ home to an annoying prick caused a crap ton of conflict

After a few months of being little bitches to each other, y’all got piss drunk in the apartment and it all just sorta fell apart

Got that good drunk therapy, spilling your deepest secrets

(y’all were underage but shhh)

So by the time college started, the two of you had become actual friends and started enjoying each others company

A few months into the friendship, you encouraged him to post the video of “Minecraft, but it’s Raining Cats and Dogs” on a whim

Lmao little did you know what you had created (we’ll get to that later)

You mocked his train of thought constantly, laughing at the timing of it all.

“Ahhh yes, I am Sapnap, the genius who thought it’d be great to become a YouTuber while in my first year of college.”

He’d always just laugh and roll his eyes, playfully shoving you while stealing your chips.

The next few months were a haze of studying, work, and him.

It was truly a friendship of convenience since you guys were so busy, him starting his youtube career, and you working restaurants, then school on top of that, it was just easy to find friendship in your roommate.

Of course, he had his close friends which he spoke to over the internet, and you had your friends from back home, but as for college, it really was only him.

You guys had a fun time just hanging around the apartment, and it became so easy to be friends with him

And it WAS truly platonic (we’ll get back to that as well)

The best thing he brought to the friendship was his animals

You got on fabulously with Cash and the cats

They were all so cuddly and honestly loved you more than him lmao

You guys were just trying to get degrees and not be too stupid, was that too much to ask???

Well to a certain 2020, it was

The beginning of that year was great.

He was sorta realizing that he liked putting himself on social media, but on top of that, it seemed like a great start to a year.

February brought him to twitch, which you loved

You found it hilarious how he would just sorta play games and have people watch him live.

But you were incredibly supportive, as a friend, of course

He really liked it so, you tried to ignore the shouting at three am, and the loud anthems at night

Sure you’d give him hell in the morning, but why kill his fun?

March started great, as it was his birthday.

You got him a glittery lighter as a gag, but it was the perfect gift for a broke-ass college student

Then a certain pandemic came a-knockin’ on y’all’s door

It was a hard hit on both of you.

An executive decision was made that you two would stay put, but being away from your families was incredibly tough.

That spring was the birth of The SMP.

It brought him so much joy, which in turn made you happier.

The rest of the school year was a blur of zooms and test

Nick nearly killed you on multiple occasions when you made fun of the fact that he was learning computer science over the computer or made him help you figure out what the fuck zoom was since it was tangentially related to his major

“SAP HELP ME YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ITS YOUR FUCKING MAJOR!!!”

“NO, IT’S- AHHHHHHHHH”

Yall got more than a handful of noise complaints shhhh

That summer was fill was spent trying to fill the time in weird ways

Note to self, he can’t cook (which you learned the hard way)

Yall spent so much time trying to cook and bake, then sweating off the calories working out with The Fitness Marshall lmao

As sucky as the situation was, that summer was so incredibly fun for the both of you, and truthfully the only arguments were about what music to blast

“Y/n I swear if I listen to Cosmicandy one more time I will drown you.”

“Well if I hear American Idiot one more time someone’s knee caps are getting harvested.”

(that argument was settled with Elton John.)

When school started up again that fall, something shifted

After a year of actual friendship, you guys were no longer just friends, and the tension was so thick it could be cut with a knife

You had watched every single one of his streams since day one, but within 2 seconds of his Love or Host, you felt the need to hurl for some peculiar reason

It was bizarre because there was no way you could ever like him, of course not.

Within the apartment, you guys suddenly got a lot more touchy, but only because it was getting cold with winter and all that jazz.

It wasn’t because yall were secretly in love, what is this, a romcom?

The number of times you guys woke up on the couch, definitely not cuddling was too many to count

You started sitting in his room while he streamed, definitely not watching him with heart eyes because of how excited he got

He always had a pot of coffee full and a 6-pack of monster in the fridge since he knew you ran on spite and caffeine, and definitely not so that he could spend more time with you in the early hours of the morning.

The laundry started getting all mixed around, resulting in just sharing any sweats, hoodies, or socks.

The same thing went for food.

No longer was anything labeled with a name, if it was in the fridge, it was fair game (unless there was a post-it because come on, yall weren’t monsters)

But no, y’all were just roommates, not dating, lets make that clear.

Feelings? We don’t know her.

This entire time, his friends have had to hear about you rip.

But they got front row seats to your relationship development

“OMG my roommate is the worst she ate all of the frozen strawberries”

“Y/n kidnapped Storm all day while she studied and I thought I lost the fucking cat asjvdk”

“I had to run down and talk to the landlord because we dropped a pot of pasta sauce all over the carpet and couldn’t get the damn stain out.”

“She is so nice in preparation for a family dinner zoom, she ran out to the local Filipino food place and pick stuff up.”

“Sorry I’m late I overslept and didn’t want to wake up Y/n.”

They weren’t stupid, and could clearly see how whipped he was.

Dream and Geroge teased him about it constantly.

“Woah, calm down Sap, you should probably tell her you love her before you propose.”

“Yeah Dream’s right, it’s kinda weird that you’re living together before ever dating.”

He always flushed and denied it with a shake of his head.

He wasn’t into you, are they crazy?

Quackity and Karl messed with him in more unorthodox ways

There are a solid number of clips where they are fake crying over how he’s cheating on them, and even more tweets to match

It only got worse when you met them accidentally.

He was chatting post-stream on a video channel with George, Dream, Karl, and Quackity, and just his luck, you came into his room.

Like of all the times you could walk in, it was the time he was with his five closest friends but I digress

“Yo I got some extra tips yesterday so I picked up some extra Red Bull if you want to do one of your weird all-nighter streams.”

“Y/n I’m on channel.”

“Oh shit sorry my b. Catch.”

All the guys heard was a thud and a groan from Sapnap as the six-pack hit him in the chest.

Dream was the one to recognize your name.

“WAIT IS THAT Y/N I WANT TO MEET THEM!”

You could hear Dream’s voice through his headphones

“Sap… who is that?”

“No one. I’ll be out in a sec to help with dinner.”

You could hear a British voice come through.

“Oh so we are no one now, huh.”

Another voice piped through.

“Common... ¿Qué intentas ocultar?”

You cut in.

“Your headset it shit my guy. I can hear everything. I’m down to talk to them.”

He let out a groan.

“Fine. But you’re gonna have to do the dishes tonight.”

“Deal. Now move.”

“What? No.”

“Fine bitch.”

You collapsed onto his lap, plucking the headphones off of him.

“Hello, Sapnap’s friends. I am Y/n. A pleasure to meet y’all. Can you hear me?��

You heard a series of laughs through the headset, and a voice came through.

“Yes, we can see you too. I’m Karl, it’s so nice to finally meet his girlfriend.”

A blush rose on both of your faces, and another voice came through.

“Yeah, we’ve heard lots about you. Plus we can’t see your face in that picture Sap sent us. I’m Quackity”

That remark stopped your embarrassment in its tracks.

“What the fuck? How do you guys know me? I’m not even his girlfriend? And what picture?”

Sapnap grabbed your arm to calm you down as another voice cut in, but his one you recognized as his friend Dream.

“Hey, it’s okay. He just talks about you a bit, and the picture I believe was of you holding like three cats with like a red bull can on your head.”

“Jesus fucking christ why do they have that photo??”

He looked guilty but chuckled.

“Because that photo is a damn masterpiece.”

Karl’s voice came back in with a giggled.

“Soooo, Y/n we’d love to hear about you. Specifically anything funny or embarrassing that you have learned by living with him.”

Sapnap let out a groan from behind you as you went off.

“WELL lemme tell y’all, he has no cooking knowledge, well I mean, now he does, but one time, about a year ago, I had I been keeping a pot of water boiling for about an hour, soft boiling eggs, cooing noodles, blanching bok choy, etc. but this fucking genius is like ‘oH tHe HaNdLe Is StIcKiNg OuT. LeMmE mOvE iT wItH mY bArE hAnD.’ Needless to say, he burnt the crap outta his hand and kept the bag of frozen blueberries on it for the entire night. It took me like a solid five seconds to actually help him because I was laughing.”

By the time you had finished that story, you had seen Nick roll his eyes like 5 five times while the rest of the guys were wheezing.

“Yeah, well remember the time you were trying to imitate Rapunzel after we had watched it over Zoom with my sister, and you swung the edge of the frying pan into our head and got a nasty bump on it? At least I moved quick enough to put some ice on it.”

“Ice? It was the damn leftover Slushy that I had been freezing.”

“True, but you got to drink it after, so it was a win-win situation.”

“Sap, I had a bump the size of a golfball coming off of my temple. There was no winning.”

“Fine, you’re just making me sound like such a shit roommate.”

“No that’s not true, you do all of the talking to the landlord, and you at least tried to muffle the noise when you stream.”

“I guess that’s true, but you do like 80% of the cleaning.”

“Yeah but only because you’re working. Plus in the past 6 months, you’ve made coffee every morning, AND made sure I was taking my meds.”

“Those things aren’t that hard and I do it to make sure you don’t die because I lo- care about you.”

“What?”

You heard Dream’s wheeze laugh and remembered that you guys were still on call.

“Smooth.”

You both went red, and Sap moved his arm around you to leave the channel.

The next few moments were complete torture, the two of you just sitting in silence.

You were wondering if he meant what he was about to say and he was scared that you had heard it.

He was the one to break the silence. (mind you you’re still sitting on his lap lmao)

“I’m sorry about that.”

You weren’t sure how to respond. Should you ask him if he meant it? Because that wouldn’t be that bad. Or just pretend it never happened. Nah that’d be hella awkward. Or-

“I love you too.”

“You what?”

Wow, okay your brain is being a little bitch rn, but fuck it. Balls to the walls baby.

“I love you, and I have for a while now. I just want you to know.”

You finally looked him in the eye, and he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

“Thank god. I love you, and nearly fucking told you for the first time in front of my friends accidentally. Damn, I’m smooth.”

You laughed and he smiled wider.

“Can I kiss you?”

After a quick nod he swooped in and holy hell his lips felt great. His arm wound around your waist and your hands made their way to his jaw as he pulled you closer to him.

The only thing playing in your mind was “and they were roommates”

#sapnap x reader #sapnap #sapnapxreader #sapnap fluff #sapnap fanfic #sapnap fanfiction #sapnap x you #sapnap x y/n

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enviroexpression · 3 years

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WLW tv recs

Ok, so these are my personal favorites that probably have a similar, more ‘mature’, vibe like Leyren.

(Link in titles)

Maggie & Sydney (Saving Hope)

These two are VERY similar to Leyren, imo. Maggie is one of the main characters and served a similar position in the ensemble as Lauren being the ‘reckless’ one that needed to get her personal life together, and Sydney came in season 3 as the unique recurring love interest that took her by surprise.

(looks like the videos in the playlist can get a bit out of order, so look out for that)

Root & Shaw (Person of Interest)

Person of Interest actually became one of my all time favorite shows. I started watching because I had heard about this potential pairing, but I became obsessed with the whole thing. Root is introduced at the end of season 1, is recurring in season 2, and then is a regular from 3 on, and Shaw is introduced mid-season 2 and becomes a regular from 3 on. If you find yourself liking the vibe, I highly recommend the show. The first season is meh, then half of season 2 is incredible, and then from 3 on its truly high quality and some of my top favorite tv ever. Their story might not make a ton of sense without the greater context of the show, but I’m sure you’d still enjoy it.

Pepa & Silvia (Los Hombres de Paco)

This was a random show in Spain like... nearly 15 years ago, but I was watching their story at the time thanks to people subbing and I just adored everything about them. (tragic but beautiful ending)

(go to the channel to see all the parts. I think they sometimes don’t sub parts without the girls in it, but it should all have english subs)

Jamie & Dani (The Haunting of Bly Manor)

A good show on Netflix if you’re okay with gothic romance type stories. Not really scary, but ghosts are involved. This couple was a surprise and one of the most lovely things I’ve ever witnessed. I would recommend just watching the show since it’s so short and I can’t really find their romantic scenes edited out (they’re the lead characters). They had/have a massive fandom on tumblr, so there’s lots of great content when you’re done. Also, The Haunting of Hill House (technically the first season, but they’re separate stories) is brilliant and has a lesbian main character too.

Yorkie & Kelly (Black Mirror 3x04 - San Junipero)

Black Mirror is an anthology show on Netflix, so each episode is like its own separate movie (just go there to watch the full thing). This episode is a masterpiece and a wlw classic.

Juliana & Valentina (Amar a Muerte)

I think they’re one of the first lesbian couples on a Mexican telenovela. Or at least one that was able to show affection (they actually cut most of their intimate scenes, but they shared them separately online later). Very sweet. Some similarities to Leyren--almost as if it’s Lauren and Leyla meeting as teenagers. The first half of their story is a beautiful love story on their own, but then they get swept up in the bizarre larger plot of the show and it gets kinda weird, but the first half is beautiful and totally worth watching.

(the last video on that drive is the full story)

Alex & Maggie (Supergirl)

I don’t really care for coming out stories, but they did a nice job with this one and the actresses had great chemistry. Sadly the recurring one, Maggie, left because the actress got better work, but I still think they were great while they lasted.

(link is first part, go to channel and scroll through to find each part. sadly not a playlist)

Cosima & Delphine (Orphan Black)

A good show on its own, so I’d recommend it. This relationship kinda gets wonky in the middle, but they get a happy ending.

Cristina & Isabel (Tierra de Lobos)

Girl falls in love with her father’s prostitute. Tale as old as time, right? Not a very happy story, and the second half is... brutal, but there was something about them I’ve always loved.

Jenny and Emma (Hand Aufs Herz)

Probably my top comfort ship. It’s a cheesy, dated German soap that was trying to be like a cheap version of Glee, but these two... they make it worth it. Top 3 personal favorites, but I understand they might not hold up for a lot of people.

(Playlist might not go all the way through, so you might have to use the ‘all vidoes’ section of the user)

Petra and JR (Jane the Virgin)

They’re just cute. And hot. There was also another lesbian couple on the show (Luisa and Rose), but while they were also very hot, they weren’t really one you ended up rooting for.

Quinn and Isabela (Harlem)

A show on Amazon you might like. These two haven’t really taken off yet, but it was picked up for a season 2 so I’m hoping that’s what Quinn’s story will mainly be about now. They cute.

Florencia & Jazmin (Las Estrellas)

An Argentinian telenovela about 5 sisters with different mothers but the same father inheriting a hotel when he dies that they have to run successfully for a few years together in order to actually get anything from his will. Florencia is one of the sisters who has tourettes and falls for the redheaded hotel cook, Jazmin. It’s campy and dramatic, as any good telenovela is, but unlike the others they got the same treatment for intimate scenes and screentime in general, so they were a really big deal.

And then movies I would recommend:

Kyss Mig (’With Every Heartbeat’ in english)

A really beautiful well made romantic drama (from Sweden I think). Before ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ I thought this was the best quality film we’d had so far.

Imagine Me & You

Probably the best (and only) true classic rom-com. It’s iconic.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Just... brilliant. This is one you need to really sit and be present for.

The Half of It (Netflix movie)

Cute teen romance movie. We’re all hoping there will be a second one but who knows with Netflix.

The World to Come

It’s a harsh movie, but it makes their romance more beautiful. I hate the ending with a fiery passion... so I just pretend it didn’t happen.

Gia

Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Mitchell. Enough said.

Desert Hearts

A classic, and one of the only older movies we have with a happy ending.

D.E.B.S

Super campy but a lesbian cult classic.

Carol

I would categorize it more under a movie about gay people but for straight people, like most things, but still stunning cinema and beautifully well made. Nothing to really dislike about it.

Saving Face

Cute, and refreshingly not about white people.

Summerland

HUGE Lauren and Leyla vibes. Just with eccentric writers, not doctors.

There’s lots more I can recommend, but these are my favorites.

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script-nef · 4 years

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No need for jealousy, sweetie | Kageyama Tobio

Category: fluff

2k words; Is it a famous idol? Is it a high-skilled setter? Nope. It's his own son.

Everyone knows Kageyama Tobio, the genius setter of Japan’s national team and a member of The Monster Generation, is a love-struck fool. It’s not that hard to find out, seeing how his normally rigid and scowling face immediately turns soft and full of tender affection as soon as his wife is mentioned. His reaction is the same when his son, who celebrated his first birthday just a few months ago, becomes the topic of conversations as well.

The news of his son’s birth was posted all over Japan’s news as it consisted of a video uploaded onto his SNS account where you were beaming like a sun with your newborn baby in your arms while Tobio was silently crying his eyes out. He then moved to embrace you, words of thanks and love spilling out in between hiccups and cries. You joked that he cried more than you during the labour and everyone in the room was either laughing or comforting him.

You once attended one of his matches with Hikari in your arms, cheering for your husband and his team. As soon as the match was finished and congratulations were given, he zipped to your side and took the baby off of you. Hikari, recognising his father, gurgled joyfully and snuggled deeper into his embrace. As you started talking to Tobio, they both looked at you with an identical expression, like it was copy-pasted, that fans nearby took hundreds of photos. It’s one of the highlights in compilations of “Kageyama in husband mode” videos. (Other popular uploads include interviews where he doesn’t shut up when asked about your health or questions about your relationships. A lot of his fans started liking him thanks to YouTube’s wacky algorithms.)

Tobio is the embodiment of a devoted husband and father. Despite his odd memorisation skill which seemed limited to all things volleyball related, he never once missed an anniversary, birthday or doctor’s appointment. He even excused himself from practices for you. You can still hear how Hinata screamed “You’re skipping volleyball practice? You?” when he delivered the news. Interviews and commentaries after matches were cut short, much to his company and team officials’ dismay, because he couldn’t waste a second returning back to your side. He always repeated “[Name] is waiting. Goodbye.” with a bow and took off. He also wakes up practically instinctively to the baby’s cries even after he’s wiped out due to his rigorous training. The amount of superhuman stamina he has made you jealous since you’re half-dead after exercising a bit while he’s fit as a horse. He says any exhaustion he has evaporates as soon as he sees his son’s cute little face. A weird and floppy smile appeared on his face whenever he took the minuscule hands in his.

Hikari is practically a carbon copy of his father. Same piercing black eyes which look odd but strangely suitable on a one-year-old, smooth black hair growing in tufts and a round face with baby fat filling out his plump cheeks. Tobio sometimes pokes his chubby cheeks while he’s sleeping, hands trembling like he’s about to touch a priceless artifact. If you took a photo now and compared it to one of Tobio’s childhood ones, even he would be confused. They’re just that much alike.

When his teammates and friends visited to celebrate Hikari’s first birthday, their reactions were… quite interesting. Apparently they didn’t expect the child, a genetic offspring from Tobio and you, to have the similarity percentage lopsided to 99 and 1. Hinata argued 99.5 and 0.5 which caused another fight to explode between him and your husband.

It was very childish, the arguments thrown around being the equivalent of “Look at him! Are you sure you didn’t just split into half like that thing with the cell?” “Mitosis, idiot.” “Why are you still so mean, Tsukishima?! But yeah, mitosis!” “What the hell do you think you’re saying, dumbass? He’s so much like [Name]!” “Only you can see that, Mr Wife Idiot!” and so on. It was cut short when Hikari started crying due to the influx in noise and Tobio’s Dad Mode kicked in.

In your eyes, it’s absolutely adorable. Two copies of your favourite face in the world to wake up to and fill your life with. While pregnancy was a pain, right now is paradise. Especially since Hikari is a quiet and calm kid just like his father. By now, you should be concerned if they’re clones rather than father and son.

But recently, Tobio’s kind of miffed at Hikari for some reason. That doesn’t mean he’s neglecting his child, he would rather die than do that. He’s as attentive as ever, if not even more so than usual. Using his overpowered athletic skills to respond to Hikari’s whines or cries much faster than you, he drops everything and runs out at the smallest indication of discomfort. It’s also not because having a baby is a handful, they’re meant to be like that.

No, he’s just incredibly jealous of a one-year-old because “he’s taking up all your time and affection when you promised to love me most in the world”.

When he first said that, your initial reaction was to double-take because you thought you heard him wrong. The thought of “Well. My hearing is failing now” echoed in your head. But no, this dork was being possessive and filled to the brim with envy over his son. His own. Son. As unbelievable as it sounds, it’s kind of in character for Tobio. Tobio who has various epithets like:

King of the Court

Volleyball Idiot

Number 1 Wife Fan

Mr “I have two brain cells and one’s for volleyball and one’s for my wife. A third one is sprouting for my son.”

And plenty of other variations.

So far, the attempt to make him understand the needlessness of his concerns and jealousy haven’t gone well. Generally, it starts with your defence of “Tobio, I love you and Hikari equally.” “You said you would love me the most in the world!” “Fine then, I love you the most in the world.” “I know you’re lying!” “Sweetie, please.” Rinse and repeat.

He turns dejected after every single “fight” and curls up into a ball, refusing to talk to you unless you hug and kiss him. He thinks he’s sneaky and manipulative. He really isn’t, you have him playing in the palm of your hands.

But it’s going to become a real problem if he’s going to be jealous with the tiny tenant who’s going to be around for at least another 2 decades. And the worst thing is that you can’t regularly find advice since his closest friends aren’t… much of a help.

Hinata looked at you like you were crazy in one of your rare meetups. Tsukishima acted like he was actually getting sick from your concerns, that salty bastard. Yachi, kind and helpful and sweet Yachi, was the only one who made valuable contributions with Yamaguchi. It’s such a shame they’re so busy that they can barely have a social life nowadays.

“Hmm… I mean, he stills loves Hikari, right?”

“Yes. Endlessly.”

“Well then… how about treating him exactly the same as you did before Hikari came, if not more affectionately? That’ll show him that his son, his one-year-old son who doesn’t even understand the concept of jealousy, is not a quote-unquote threat.”

“Just threaten to leave him alone for like, a month if he keeps on being possessive. That’ll wake him up.”

“Tsukki!”

“Oh hello, Satan, didn’t think you'd be contributing. How’s roasting the souls of the innocent going?”

“It’s going fine. Would they really be innocent if they’re in Hell?”

“It’s a joke, Sea Salt. Also, that would crush him!”

“That’s the whole point.”

“I think you’re using this just to annoy him.”

“You’re thinking correctly.”

“Back to the topic at hand! [Name]-chan, just reassure and spend a lot of time with him.”

“That’s literally what I’m doing right now! Ughhh what should I dooooo…”

“You know it’s really annoying when lovestruck couples come and complain about their relationship like it’s a problem when in reality you’re happy, right? Just saying.”

“Tsukki, she has a real problem here!”

“Eh, does she though?”

And of course, that line of conversation took off before you could object and continued for the rest of the visit. So all in all, the two-hour lunch date with your friends resulted in a public commotion which nearly got you kicked out of the café. You were about to return home with no solid solutions when Hinata grabbed and stopped you.

“Hinata?”

“[Name]-chan, I’m sure it’s going to be fine. I think he’s just like this because he spent his entire life looking at either volleyball or you, and now that a third party has entered, he’s just not used to it. Time fixes everything or something like that, right?”

“It’s already been a year though…”

“Yeah, well… I’m sure he’s getting better. I remember when we visited you on Hikari’s okuizome, he was literally looking at you for the entire time. The entire time. When it was his son’s 100th day anniversary.”

Yes, Tobio spent the whole 5 hour party/ceremony with his eyes glued onto you, until everyone berated him for his lack of attention. Hinata literally flung a rubber band at his head and he didn’t even flinch. It was the main topic of conversation in your friend circle for the next month or so.

“But when we came again for his first birthday, Kageyama was all over Hikari! I think the transition of his love for you to Hikari is a bit slow, if that makes sense. He probably thinks the love you have for him is getting smaller compared to his love for you. Our Kageyama’s a bit of an idiot like that, right?” You don’t really know whether to nod or shake your head. “The fact that you’re hesitating kind of says everything, [Name]-chan. It’ll get better when his love for Hikari matches yours, okay? Hang in there!”

With a swift but warm hug, Hinata ran off to do his training.

The entire walk back home was filled with ruminations. Hinata was probably right. Kageyama’s attitude was slowly, but surely changing now that you’re thinking back. The ratio of his time with you and Hikari was 9:1 when he was just born, but recently it was more like 8:2. It should be concerning that this is the progress after a year of living together, but it’s better than nothing. You probably have nothing to worry about.

“Tobio, I’m home!” Silence welcomed you back. “Love? You home?” It was one of his rare days off and he said he would be taking care of Hikari so you could enjoy some free time while he can sleep in for the day. Also because his team instructor forbade him from meeting with Hinata since it always ends with a 3 hour volleyball match.

“In here.” A tiny reply emerged from the nursery. He always came running as soon as the front door creaked open like an overgrown puppy since you started living together, so this was surprising. Quietly tiptoeing in, you were met with your baby sleeping soundly in your husband’s arms, sucking on his thumb and sleep-babbling intermittently. Tobio’s face was one of love and pure happiness as he watched Hikari snoozing away like he didn’t have a care in the world—the same face he made when he stared at you. When he raised his head up to look at you, his eyes were filled with joy and warmth, crinkling in the edges.

“He’s so small.” He whispered, careful not to wake Hikari up. You joined him by his side, gently nudging your child’s chubby cheeks and revelling at its softness. “I have this… this feeling in my chest whenever I look at him… the same one whenever I see you.” Tobio’s hand came up to cup your face and he pressed a tender kiss to your lips.

“I love you both so much.”

Yeah, you have nothing to worry about.

#kageyama x reader #kageyama imagine #kageyama tobio x reader #kageyama tobio imagine #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu!! imagine #haikyuu one shot #haikyuu!! one shot #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#kageyama #kageyama tobio #fluff #female reader

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together! or Days of Summer

Hello all you happy scottaholics! Welcome back to those of you who’ve read the rest of this retrospective and welcome to those of you just joining us. This is the Scottrospective, my look at all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim, the game and the movie. It’s all the video game refrenes, slice of life story telling and boob punches you can handle!

It’s been three months since I left off with “The Infinite Sadness” , and while I intended to cover this one for Valentine’s Day, my schedule got away from me and with March being full up, this ended taking till April

I”m not too put off by it though as the hiatus between these two reviews is fitting for this one both in story and out. In story there’s a couple month time skip between books, while out.. this book got delayed a few times.

This is notable to me at least because this was the first volume of the series I bought when it came out. As i’ve brought up before I came into the series via the Free Comic Book Day Issue and the second and third volumes, picking one up later. I still have my original copies despite no longer really needing them thanks to having the color editions in general. Always will provided something dosne’t happen to them. So this was my first instalment that I got to read fresh and got to wait for and be hyped about and i’d saved enough money that I was able to pre-order it. So the experince of waiting and waiting for the book only to keep seeing it slide back is vivid in my mind as is the frustration I felt having the one thing I COULD NOT WAIT FOR, keep going further and further back.

So with this long wait and the fact I bought this one when it came out, as I would for the next two which didn’t get delayed thank god, this volume naturally means a lot for me. When I wrote Scott Pilgrim fanfiction, this volume’s status quo is what I based it on. It was the coolest to me and the one I loved to reread the most. It has the most contained story, the most character growth at the time, and the best art due to Bryan’s style having finally hit it’s stride. Not that the art for volumes 1-3 is bad mind you, but it’s very clear his style was changing and shaping into what it is now with each one and while it’d change a bit more, this volume is where the style and quality everyone thinks of when they think of this series and the kind you see on various art done from it comes from.

So as you can tell i’m excited for this one. Before we get started there WERE two shorter comics released between this one both for Free Comic Book day, the first of which, Free Scott Pilgrim, is the reason I got into the series and the second, the Wonderful World of Kim Pine .. was both delightful and sets up Kim moving in with Hollie for this volume. Originally I intended to cover these in this review.. but I realized they wouldn’t of helped the pacing and this review is going to be way longer than my standard as is.

So instead I came up with the compromise. I did review them.. but as bonus reviews on my patreon. For just one buck a month you can read them and help me reach my stretch goals which now include reviews of Lost at Sea, Seconds and SnotGirl, aka Bryan’s OTHER comics. You can find my patreon THROUGH THIS LINK HERE if your intrested in the exclusives or helping me reach my reviews. I also intend to do an exclusive of Monica Beetle, a short comic Bryan did starring Scott’s dad in the 70s at some point so keep your eyes peeled for that, as well as the three strips he did of Style, the comic that gave us the prototypes for Lisa and Kim.

I will talk about their connections and setups for this volume briefly: FSP sets up the next ex as a ninja, with Roxy having a bunch of posters come to live and pummel our boy, while Wonderful World has Hollie tell Kim she can move in with her. It’s not much, hence why i made these exclusives but they are good stories, so check them out. And with that JOIN ME UNDER THE CUT, as we enter Scott’s world once more as he grapples with the past, employment, and saying the L-Word... which might be Lesbians. I don’t know. Find out bellow!

So we open Two Months after Volume 3 with a beach birthday party! Complete with Kim in a swim suit!

But it’s for Julie who lobs a volley ball at Scott’s head when he and Ramona try to make out.

I also dont’ know if “Manfiesting out of all the world’s collectives sorrows” counts as a “birth” necessarily but whatever. I love a good beach story. It’s just a fun setitng for swimming, romance and battling a giant crab with the help of the bird what lives in your backpack.

So after the beach our heroes get dinner and Ramona sweetly calls Scott the nicest guy she’s ever dated. He responds with “That’s sad”. Blunt, but entirely accruate. Julie calls it pathetic and tries to counter Ramona RIGHTFULLY saying “who the hell asked you?” something that really should come after EVERYTHING Julie said with “Back off bitch i’ts my birthday”

So later that night Sex Bomb-Omb has a beach sing along, and I can’t help but notice Neil’s hairy legs.

I mean yes it does make since for a 19 year old to have leg hair, but of all the characters besides Stephen, the ONLY other character we’ve seen it with to give it to, why the character you specifically single out as “Young” it’s just a weird choice I never noticed before.

But anyways Julie has to whine about it because she’s Julie, she can’t stand other people being happy and complains the song...

One of my faviorite moments of the series. Knives puts a nicer spin on it, she’s here too and not over with Neil because, as we’ll find out later they broke up, but she just asks if Knives should be drinking. She shouldn’t but for fucks sake lady she was just trying to talk. I also do like that despite Julie trying to control Ramona’s love life, you know the thing the VILLIANS are doing, Ramona cannot stand her now.. and honestly probably never did.

But Julie, SOMEHOW turns out to be right for once as Kim and Knives have disappeared later that night, and Scott elects to go look for them. Also Ramona says she wants to marry kim while drunk after Julie asks if she does. The throuple is strong with these three... serioulsy that’s my one true pairing for all three now. I mean it ballances out their collective flaws, it’s cute and Ramona is just as into her boyfriends ex as she is her actual boyfriend even when she’s not hamered. Why the fuck not?

Scott instead finds the two making out. I will confess I shipped these two when I was younger.. but I don’t. Not because their gay or anything or because I found another ship for them but because the age gap is still just as wide as it was for Scott. The game did not get this memo and made them a couple which is... ehhhhhhhhh. I mean I wouldn’t mind either being bi, but it just brings up the same problems even if their both hammered. I also question why this scene exists. No really outside of one face punchingly dickish comment from Scott later, this never comes up again and it doesn’t effect Kim’s or Knives character any. Why have this? it’s clearly not fanservice, it’s just a thing that happened. And while Scott Pilgrim as a series does have some of those, as does life and that’s fine.. this is a bit too major, i.e. Kim and Knives, two of the main cast, making out, drunkenly or not, to just.. gloss over you know? I feel Kim would feel majorly guilty for this, as she has the most active moral compass of the main group, and Knives would be massively confused but it’s just.. forgotten because I dunno. In a story that’s otherwise pretty stellar this stands out as an utter waste of potential. I’m not saying have them hook up, gay or not it’s still not better than what Scott did, but have them at least talk about it and have both grow or something from it. Sheesh.

So we cut to.. another day. Maybe the next day I dunno but it’s August. Point is Scott and Wallace are grocery shopping and Wallace notes they can’t get fancy mayo as their barely in budget. I would’ve glossed over this scene... but @panur pointed out back around the Infinite Sadness review that this scene reveals something very intrestng: Scott.. is kind of a fincial burdern to Wallace. Before this while Scott mooched off him it wasn’t all that clear that Wallace was struggling.

But here we notice that outside of some Havarti, it’s just the simplest stuff imaginable: turkey, bread, boxed mac and cheese ramen noodles... it’s nto BAD stuff, I have all of that in my house and it’s good stuff... but it’s not the kind of thing that you need to carefully budget for. Now granted part of this probably is Wallace as he likely spends a LOT on drinks, condoms and two 2 liters of diet soda a day.. but while he really needs to adress his alcohol issues, the rest is fair. He should be allowed to have as much sex and diet coke as he wants it’s his money. Same with the havarti. He earned it if he wants some really delcious cheese with herbs, seriously Havarati is the best, then that’s his bidness. But the rest of the time he’s barely managing to get a basketfull of cheap food.. because he has to provide for Scott. It’s clearly something Scott dosen’t get and something I can relate to not getting. It took me a while to get how hard it is to budget for a full family, let alone two people on one income like Wallace has to. But Wallace is working on a nice job... but still a call center or something. He can’t pay for everything and the finccial stress is about to give as their landlord wants to meet with them. And as we’re about to learn things were even worse than we thought.

Our heroes head home where we get a truly iconic conversation when, over margeritas (again proving my point that while Scott certainly isn’t HELPIGN wallace’s finacials, it’s not all on him)

This will be imporant later.. both the Lesbians part and Scott’s struggle saying it. he tried earlier on the beach but couldn’t get it out and Ramona clearly didn’t want to hear it as she kapt sshhhhing him.. playfully of course but still.

So some time later it’s moving day! Kim is moving into Hollie and Josephs, and Scott, Stephen and Jason are helping. You might be wondeirng who the hell Jason is. He’s Kim’s boyfriend. I do not likes him. Not because he’s kim’s boyfriend, getting upset because a fictional character you fancy is dating is just patently stupid. I’ts like getting upset a celebrity crush is in a relationship: you had no chance anyway why. I wasn’t even bothered as a kid. I don’t really like him.. because he has no real personaliy and no real baring on the plot and I struggle to think why Bryan included him other than for a really annoying plot twist next time, which does not help my liking him knowing what’s coming.

But while our heroes help our heroine move in, and Scott is suprised Hollie is there despite Kim having told him a minute ago she was moving in with her, something I can relate to sadly, we get something vitally plot important; Stephen passes Joseph’s room.. and notices he has a small recording setup in his room. Stephen quickly begs him to record the band’s album and Joseph agrees if only because he finds Stephen hot. Eh i’ve seen better relationships start on less, fair enough. And yes I said relationship more on that in a bit.

So after a brief scene of Scott and Ramona having lunch where Scott fails to know her age and when Ramona says he could just ask.. hea sks and she dosen’t tell, not a bad scene character wise just not very plot important and probably should’ve bene swapped in order with the previous scene, we get to the next day. There’s a heat wave so Wallace orders Scott to go to the mall maybe find a job. He emphasises that.

Instead Scott just sorta bums around thirst but nto having any money.. until an old face shows up.

For those who forgot like Scott has, it’s Lisa Miller from the Volume 2 flashback, the girl who had a crush on Scott and was close friends with him and Kim. After a tackle hug and some panic Scott eventually remembers.... if in a curiously unique and self serving way

At the time this was just hilarous. Now it’s very clear foreshadowing for the big twist in Volume 6. The two catch up while Scott is very clearly attracted to her but very clearly dosen’t want to be, with Lisa wondering where kim is, finding about Ramona, etc, before offering Scott lunch as the two catch up and Scott is very conflicted about how he feels. It’s nice visual stuff as he’s blushing, something more clear in the color version and trying to desperatley sort things out. As for why Lisa’s here she’s moving to the states soon, but is staying with her sister for now.

So after an incdental scene with Wallace we catch up with Knives, who has broken up with Neil. And after some talk about Clash at the Demonhead, Tamra notes Knives apparently put a big x on her shrine of Scott... which baffles Knifves as she sure as hell didn’t do it and is still, sadly, obessed with Scott as ever. Granted Tamra isn’t at all helpful here claiming she did it even when she says she didn’t, is clearly confused and while yes we don’t know who else would care Tams, that just makes it all the more creepy. Stop gaslighting your bestie, she’s already got enoguh issues. She dosen’t need thinking she might have a split personality on top of the stalking, obession over a guy who has no intrest in loving her back, and attempted stabbings. Knives dosesn’t get a ton of focus in this one sadly. She kind of takes a back seat, and while sh’es not GONE from the volumle and someone close to her does impact it, she dosen’t really have any personal progression, negative or positive, like she does in every other volume, a shame since her personal jouney is one of the most intresting of the main cast.

Anyways that night Scott hangs out with Lisa, having not gotten around to telling Ramona she exists yet and plays a game of find the Kim Pine. She goes to Neil’ and Stephen’s place for practice, but finds no one there and Neil being a dick... get used to that it’s going to get about 80 times worse soon enough. Though we do get this classic panel i’ve gotten some use out of

He goes to Kim’s place, but she , Hollie and Satan’s Misterss have all left to Sneaky Dee’s, the local mexican place, for something to eat and Stephen is either high or doing.. something with Joseph.

Yeah i’m not hiding that Stephen turns out to be gay in the final volume or cheating on Bitch and a Half with Joseph. And even if I hate Julie with the power of a frozen sun, I still dont’ think cheating on her is kosher. He could’ve just broken up with her and while part of it was likely confusion, and he could also be bi and not decided which one he wanted to be with, it’s still a dick move.. and later makes him a hypocrite but that’s a rant for next volume.

So our heroes FINALLY find Kim, along with Hollie and Mouthface. And a nice thing I like is that Kim and Lisa are just.. increidbly close, happily catching up and making plans to hang before Lisa leaves, that despite Lisa having feelings for Scott the two ended up as close and She and Scott did and i’ts sweet to see. it’s also just.. rare to see Kim GENUINELY happy. I mean look at her

It’s not like she HASN’T smiled across the series but normally she’s just so miserable, likely because her best friends are a grumbly asshole who forces them to hang out with a raging typhoon of bitchiness, and an insenitive asshat who she never got closure with. This is the first decent human being whose not Ramona or Hollie, and that last one’s not going to last, in a while. It’s genuinely sweet to just see her.. enjoy the moment for once, honestly engaged with someone. Ramona shows up and finally meets Lisa, who apparently was on Degrassi.. I mean she says candaian show no one ever watched, and I watched that plenty but i’d like to think she was on there for a season or two. I liked Degrassi.. I honeslty miss it and think it could use some form of revivial and think porting it to netflix was a smart decision.. what wasn’t so smart was not having the other seasons leading into it on there. Need to watch more of it.

So the next day Ramona stumbles into Scott’s dreams and both are annoyed, with Ramona suggesting he get a job. This finally gets him to try. He asks about Wallace’s work but understandably, he dosen’t really want scott there and asks if he even knows. So Scott sets out to ask his other friends for jobs, while Knives shows up saying she’s “totally not stalking him” but someone is following HER, a mysterious spiky haired dude in a black leather jacket, shades and with a sword on his back. Whu-oh.

He tries Second Cup, with Julie annoyed that Stephen’s recording.. it’s hard to tell if she’s annoyed because she’s a bitch or because Stephen is both gneuinely annoying right now and clearly screwing around behind her back. My take?

But Scott realizes maybe getting a job at his Sister’s place of work who also works with his arch enemy might be stupid and backs out. He next tries Kim’s, but backs out of that too, admitting to kim it’d be stupid and Kim lists off all the reasons (His lack of resume, the fact them working together would be stresful and his ountain of late fees) why that’d be stupid, but in a jovial way. For once i’ts clear that while she’s still taking the piss out of them she isn’t mad at Scott.

In fact she genuinely helps him get a job, taking him to Stephen’s work since hers is dead right now anyway, a vegan place. While Scott naturally compares things to a job system as he’d start as dishwasher while Stephen taught him prep, Scott agrees to genuinely take this seriously and Stephen’s boss decides “eh why not” when he asks her to employ him. Scott is gainfully employed baby! God I miss that. Seriously i’m not pimping my patreon for shits and giggles.

But as he celebrates and Kim wishes she could punch his life in the face, they run into some trouble on the way home: Katana man who slices a motherfucking bus in half and chases them, with Scott reluctnat to fight because he has a sword and Scott does not, which is valid. He does escape though using subspace. He and Kim part awkardly and he returns home to Wallace throwing a party with two intresting charcters, a woman and a man of color, one of the few in the entire work, who are never seen again.

The next night is practice.. or rather recording, and we start to see Neil get edged out, with him unable to come due to exams and clearly not happy about it, and Stephen just kind of ignoring anything he cares about like the dickhead he is. It dosen’t get any better as “recording” ends up just being Scott, Ramona, and Ratfaced Knacker watching bored with Joseph and Stephen work. Eventaully Scott and Ramona decide to get out of there as things are getting tensed between thing one and thing bitch, and leave.. and take Julie with them for some reason.

So the three have dinner with Lisa, Kim, and Jason before The Mummies Curse thankfully leaves. Jason thought they were friends.

We also get this exchange.

I mean.. she is the better option. She his THE option. But before we can get the obvious answer of

Stephen comes in with Knives. He smuggled her in. This leads to problems when Scott returns from the bathroom to find Queen Bitch throwing a bitch fit about him having brought her and screechs at her when she dares to talk to him “How do you even know my name?” Well Ted Cruz, you see when someone is an actually thoughtful and likes other people, they keep track of things about them and don’t constnatly tear them down or assume their partneer is automatically bonking a 17 year old instead of you know, actually forming something of a friendship and not shutting her out sensing she needs this friend group. Some people are not vacous piles of vitriol who care about nothing but themself and seem to go off at the slightest thing.

Scott takes Ramona home but finds a drunken barely awake wallace so no sexy times. Not that he could anyway as the next day is the meeting with Peter their landlord.

Peter reveals they’ll have to clear out by the 27th as their lease was for one year and their paid up.. as in only the first and last month. The two part melacholy knowing this sucks and isn’t a great situation. Then it’s time for Scott to work work, angelica, work work, eliza and peggy. After grueling day, can relate, he runs into a wisp on teh wend and steels himself for a fight.. okay he bitches about it being too hot but it’s Scott. so it’s expected. He does get a hit in on his mysterious persuer.. and that’s when we meet Roxy.

Via boob punch, something Scott’s not proud of but in his defense, as Roxy keeps complaning about it, he was blindly struggling for a hit and din’t know the next Ex, or any of them, were female.. not that Ramona didn’t suggest it loudly enough by empahsising “exes” but scott’s a bit of a fuckwit. She mentions “everyone allways remmebers you”.. which is kind of ominus and tells me she tried to hook back up with ramona despite her having a boyfriend and she rejected her. Still on good terms though. But this confusing encounter ends with Roxy vowing she’ll get him next time gadget, next time.

So we get some assorted slice of life scenes with the band, lisa and what have you as Scott tries to get in touch with Ramona but she keeps avoiding him. THat’s not worrysome at all. And Lisa brings up high school while drunk and clearly hits on Scott. He sidesteps it with her drunkness.. but this clearly isn’t over or going to stop being a problem.

Speaking of problems Wallace makes Scott confront the truth: He either needs to find a new place to live or commit to staying, though Wallace is trying to nudge him toward asking Ramona to move into her place. Scott starts thinking it over, it being very hard especially since, as Stephen points out this was his very first place of his own.. but Stephen also points out these things are temoporary.. right before Scott ducks from katana guy.

At work Scott wonders who it could be, though it turns out Stephen’s met him before, as he’s brought his family in here. So he’s PROBABLY not one of the exes.. but it leaves the question why he wants to cut Scott in half like Dewey Cox’s brother. But it turns out he’s nto the only enemy Scott’s casually running into as Roxy is there too.. with Ramona.

The two talk, clearly about Scott and Lisa with Roxy trying to convince her he’s cheating and Ramona rightfully trusting Scott: while he IS attracted to her, he’s been fighting it every step of the way. Scott storms over to find out what’s going on and while Ramona is more distracted by his new job, she eventually realizes Roxy did attack him and he simply dscribed her poorly when he mentioned the incident over the phone. Scott is confused as he dosen’t get it. Is she with one of the exes what? After some hiinting from both parties, and Roxy rightfully mocking him for not getting the obvious... he finallyg ets it in the grandest way possible.

So Roxy gets ready to fight and Scott can’t because sword, and gets fired in the background as he hides in Ramona’s bag and Ramona prepares to step in. Roxy screams at her for trusting him and defending him when Ramona.. just dosen’t her boyfriend to be bisected by her ex. A fight insues and a damn cool one at that. I honestly wish the movie had taken more from this, but simply didn’t have time leading it to instead be more like the envy fight with a bit of the Winfried Hailey fight from Free Scott Pilgrim.

Roxy chases her and Ramona rightly points out Scott can’t run forever but takes him into Subspace.. where Roxy heads them off, having “taught you everything you know bitch” leading to a cool fight in the wintery version of subspace. Again why THIS wasn’t used instead I have no real idea. We also find out she’s a half ninja but she eventually leaves afer Ramona presses that button.. but Rammy is actually apologetic about it and Roxy’s “I hope you and your 24 children are happy together comment” is telling.

Upon this readthrough of the volume.. I realized Roxy is the most layered and intresting of the exes next to Gideon himself. None of them are out and out terrible, but most of them have pretty simple motives: to kill Scott, ???, profit. Or in Todd’s case to kill scott, bang around and be a dick. But Roxy.. genuinely wants Ramona back. She’s the ONLY one who does: Gideon kinda does, but only in the sense that he wants her for his collection. But Roxy geninely still loves her, admitting so during this fight. And it’s not like she has no chance: out of the 7 exes she’s the ONLY one who parted with Ramona on anything resembling good terms. While intrestingly we don’t find out WHY they broke up, Ramona didn’t cheat on her like she did everyone else she was with. The two have coffee and hang out and Ramona geninely dosen’t even consider until Roxy tries to attack Scott that she’d really try killing him and tries her best to talk her out of it. But what holds Roxy back is her anger: She’s so bitter about the fact Ramona is bi or pan, so dedicated to viewing Ramona’s very orintation as a betryal (though Ramona calling it a phase dosen’t help and the movie RIGHTLY has Roxie comment on it and fly into a rage over it), and so driven to make sure the woman she loves dosen’t get hurt again that it blinds her to the fact Ramona dosen’t love her the same way anymore, and that while Scott is objectively a dick, and a cheater, and a greasy buttcrack pooflap, he is not a terrible person. A meh one sure, but he’s got good to him. She’s so biophobic she simply can’t see he’s a harmless moron.. well harmless to Ramona even with the cheating. He’s killed two people at this point and will kill again. Also she apparently has issues with only being a half ninja but this is never adressed. Point is Roxy’s really grown on me and is now probably my faviorite ex.

Scott and Ramona talk it over on their way to Sneaky Dees and Scott finally asks to move in and gets a yes. His response is downright adorable.

So at Sneaky Dee’s Young Neil is just a bit absolutely irate with Scott.. which isn’t fair as them not playing things is entirely on the blocky face asshole. Yell at him.. which he does, pointing out that they haven’t played shows in forever, and that the lady who owns Sneaky Dees not only runs shows, in the upstairs space, but has been asking them to play. Kim is rightly curious about this and to both Stephen just keeps saying “We’re recording right now.” And some of you may of wondered why I hate him. Well while he’s not exctly stellar in the first half in the second Stephen becomes goddman insufferable, slowly destroying the band for his affair and not giving one iota of a shit what anyone else wants. He’s a selfish, egomanical cheating prick. And yes I get it their recording an album.. but doing live shows would give them extra practice, MONEY, even if likely not a lot and exposure for said album. I get professoinal bands stop touring for a bit to do an album but you are not a professional band, and said bands still often iron out the album on the road. God you suck.

But while Scott sidesteps this argument he walks into another where Ramona confronts him about lisa about liking her.. and he rightly says if there was anything, which there was not it’s in the past. And while yes he is a cheater, she does not know this yet. This plot honestly would’ve worked better if she learned about the knives thing sooner, but instead she just comes off as paranoid for listening to Roxy about something that isn’t happening. Yes Scott’s been shown to be attracted to her.. but he’s been ashamed of it, fighting it and in denial about it, and is clealry all in with Ramona. Being attracted to someone else on a phsyical level does NOT mean your relationship is doomed.

Things get worse as he goes home to ruminate.. and instead sees a man’s Penis. And Wallace..is at his second most unsymapthetic, not letting Scott get a shirt or a bus pass or something like a decent human being for no goddamn reason. Usually when Wallace is a dick to Scott, Scott’s earned it and badly needs a slap in the face. Here he’s just being a prick because.. the plot needs him to? I dunno it dosen’t work for me. It’s in character, I just don’t have to like it.

So with no other options.. Scott ends up at Lisa’s. And so we get the last temptation of Scott. Lisa admits, embarassed that she’s been wearing sexy dresses and what not specifically to attract him, with Scott also mentioning how things are rough, Lisa tries to fight it herself pointing out he’s with ramona.. and when Scott points out they didn’t do anything in the past Lisa points out they should’ve.. and maybe they should now.

We fade to black as Scott ends up in a dream and finds Roxy, who naturally has the same skill and tries to Freddy Kruger him before he wakes. He finds Lisa but they didn’t do anything: Scott pushed her away and babbled about how much he loved Ramona instead. As i’ve said.... his heart was never with LIsa... and even when he was so close to giving in he couldn’t. It’s a tangible sign of growth: He screwed around on Knives with Ramona, and given how bad things were getting with Ramona, it would be oh so easy to once again ditch a relationship the minute he found something else and oh so understandable. But... he dosen’t. He loves Ramona even if he hasn’t said it, he wants to make this work, and he’s changed. She’s changed him. He’s not quite a good man yet.. bu he’s getting to be good enough. Love turned him from a skeezy dumbass into a far more loveable dumbass. Ramona’s gotten him to stop dating a teenager (even if again he cheated), face his past with envy to finally move on and now get a job. He’s realized just hwo much she means to his life and world and so he goes to tell her.

Riggghtttt after going to get his job back and works a shift, with steven wanting to punch his life in the balls. Stephen shut the fuck up. Just because Scott is lucky and your stuck dating satan’s scrotum does not mean you get to punch his life int he balls. Kim does, because he’s put her through more shit but not you.

He goes to second cup to talk to Stacey.. only to end up at the wrong one where Knives also now has a job... and we finally get an answer to who the mystery katana guy is...

Yup turns out wielding giant weapons in vengance runs in the family. As for how he knows about Scott her aunt mentioned her boyfriend, everyone freaked out and obviously while her mom was mentioned as knowing in volume 1, they did not tell her dad whose brain turned into an engine of vengance and defaced the shrine. While part of it is apparnetly racisim for Scott being white the fact is he clearly saw Scott’s photograph. The guy is 5 years older. I get him being protective. Still dosen’t justify cutting off his head. His balls maybe but not his head.

And then Scott ran, once agian finding a subspace entracne.. and this time we see inside ramona’s head and well...

Yeah.. that’s.. kind of fucked, and Ramona isn’t happy scott saw that, though she backs down once Scott explains..a nd then gets upset over him staying at Lisa’s but before SCott can tell her he loves her it turns out Roxy stayed over. So yeah, Ramona might of cheated, she tells him to alk it off and he runs around in a psycadelic haze of emtoinal confusion. And meets.. someone new...

Scott snaps out of his funk and ignores his doppleganger heading back for Ramona... whose fighting Mr. Chau. Scott left the door to Ramona’s head open and he followed him through Subspace. Scott lures him into the house and away from her only to run into Roxy. This leads to both of his attackers fighting and her wondering if Gideons ent him “Why does no one ever belivie in me?!”

She soon realize no i’ts just unrelated and calls Scotto ut on hiding behind not having a sword and behind her being a woman, caling it a flimsy excuse. I mean she’s tring to kil lhim. It’s okay to hit an enemy combatant. Scott realizes he has to stop running... and get real with ramona leading to a truly epic, romantic and heartfelt speech and given how far he’s come and just how heartfelt it is it’s a real sign of how deep he feels. Sure we’ve seen genuine chemstiry between the two.. but htis moment is a shit.. from a simple relationship.. into true love.

I may of only had a few but Relationships are not easy, They take work, they take time, they take patience and theyt ake love.. but if your willing to work with someone, look past some flaws and help them with the rest.. then it’s worth it. And Scott has finally realized it and for the first time in a while is running TOWARDS something difficult, actually working on this relationship and talking with his partner instead of running finding someone else or wallowing. He’s truly grown up. While he still has miles to go.. he’s taken about 50 steps forward with this. And as such given the kind of unvierse we’re in, as Ramona is genuinely touched by it he levels up a glowing sword with a heart shaped hilt coming out of his chest.. and realizing what’s happening he pulls it out....

So Scott faces off with roxy and in an awesomly short battle, their sords clash.. and he bisects her.

Scott then honestly talks down Mr Chau who leaves after a nod, and Ramona tells Scott she loves him two. The two make out and all is well.

One make out fades into another, as we cut to Scott moving in with Kim and Blockhead’s help. Well kinda they only had one box but they owed him one. He and wallace comiserate over the end of their time as roomies. They’ll always be friend but it’s truly the end of an era. Also Wallace gets off another bit of dickery as he’’s very glad it all worked out for scott...

Now there’s the Wallace I know and love. Dickish but just the right loveable kind of douchebag with that swagger.

Back at Knives house she’s apparenlty into somebody though who I have no idea, Mr Chau give sher his blessing and she.. apparenlty doesen’t know chinese. I dunno. As I said her subplot this go round was her weakest overall.

And so we end with the whole gang gathered to see Lisa off. It’s a REALLY nice shot, and one of the only times Wallace is seen with the Sex Bomb omb side of the group. Oh sure he goes to their shows and what not, but generally their never in the same vincinity so while there’s no interaction I still find this neat. Seriously the whole main cast is there, it’s a really lovely shot

Also Jason and Hollie.. who are getting awfully chummy. Whu Oh. And of course Craphole and Mouth Face are as likeable as ever.

So we jsut get a genuinely nice sene. Except Stephen and Julie reconciling. Fuck that. Please move on. And as everyone fondly wishes Lisa adeu and wish she stuck arond the res tof the series we end on Scott and Ramona snuggling, Scott asking her her birthday and finding out she’s 24, and they both will be come september. Scott wishes this moment could last.

They probperly snuggle as the volume ends on a high.

Final Thoughts:

Yeah.. Gets it Together is, on rexamination, DEFINTELY my faviorite of the 6. Besides personal value i’ts hte best contained story, contaning lots of character development, great character moments, jokes, and EASILY the best art so far, with goregouness and creativty abounding.

There is a problem here or there: Stephen and Julie’s subplot feels underbaked, and not just because I hates them, and there are several scenes that don’t further plot or character stuff. Ther’es also stuff that could’ve been expanded on.. but given this is still a pretty meaty graphic novel, it’s understandable why it wasn’t.. though it is why I’d love a streaming series since while the movie is excellent, a full series could expand on stuff from the books more Brian simply didn’t have time for. Knives also didn’t get a lot to do.

But their drowned out by tons of great decisions: Lisa was a wonderful additoin to the cast and I genuinely wish she’d stuck around, adding in some energy, blending well with the Sex Bomb Omb crowd, and having great dynamics with everyone and her arc with Scott is heartbreaking,knowing she can’t have him but wanting him anyway having never gottne proper closure on the man she’s always wanted. She’s a heartbreaking character and its nice to see her end in a decent place and on good terms with Scott, having let him go for both thier sakes.

And while Lisa is a highlight everyone is on their a game here for the most part apart from knives, girl hitler, and captain dumbass: Scott grows signfigantly but is funny as hell, Wallace has an intresting arc trying to nudge Scott out without being overt about it, scared to really confront him, Kim is in a happy and serene place for once and it shows. The villians are also intresting: While Mr Chau is a tad underbaked, he’s sitll a cool imposing presence. I do think he shoudl’ve had more to do with the plot.. but is still just so freaking cool it papers over that and him just.. disappearing after this like poor Lisa.

Roxy is far more intresting, having clearly more going on than we see and while I wish we’d got her backstory, she’s easily the most engaging of the exes, being the only one to actively compete with Scott (All her and ramona end up doing is making out a little it turned out), and have bigger stakes than just “The glasses wearing douche asked me to beat up my exes boyfriend and I was like alright.

All in all Gets it Together is really magical, the series high point, and just damn fun and it was a pleasure to go through

Next Month on Scott Pilgrim: It all falls down as we take a look into what once was my least faviorite Album, vs the unvierse. Two perfect assholes try and murder scott with Robutts, his relationship and band crumble and things get sad so very very sad.

Next on this blog: More LIlo and Stitch! The Proud Family come to Kauai and get into a fight with our heroes. Also wizard kelly... who if nothing else is now far more tolerable now i’ve had to spend another volume with the wicked bitch of the west. Touche universe touche. See you at the next rainbow.

#scott pilgrim #ramona flowers #wallace wells #roxanne richter #knives chau #stephen stills #julie power #mr chau #stacey pilgrim #neil nordgraf #young neil #comics #oni press #scotrospective #lisa miller #kim pine #jospeh

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madammobius · 3 years

Text

Chao Update: #3!

Heyo! Madam Mobius here again, and welcome back to the Mobius Garden! I’ve been really busy, and tonight I’ve got some special stuff for you, but first I just wanted to have a bit of transparency and go over a few things.

Since last time, I’ve started using Chao World Extended, a mod meant to enhance and improve the overall Chao World experience! However I’ve always been a *bit* of a purist when it comes to modding games, so I went through the customization options and only checked things that met one or more of these requirements

1: Aesthetic only: Things that only effect looks like the day/night cycle option

2: Was in the Dreamcast/GC port, but was somehow made unobtainable on PC. A good example of this is the jewel chao. The dreamcast had a little gadget called the VMU packaged in, and if you had enough of the in-game emblems you could unlock jewel chao, a special chao variant, with it. However, since the gamecube and PC have no VMU they have become completely unobtainable. Chao World Extended adds a different way to earn them through the Jewel Races! I thought this was fair because it’s still a challenge, and there would be no other way to do it anyway.

Here are some screenshots of the only options I have checked for the mod (as well as my SA2 application as a whole):

I’ve talked to some of the chao island admins and one has confirmed that beyond one thing (which we’ll get to when the time comes) there are no other vanilla changes, just additions

Okay cool, that’s probably the most infodumpy I’m ever gonna get here lol, like I said just trying to be transparent

Now who’s ready to see some cute chao?

They’re conversing :00

youtube

Full video with sound here! (You can hear them talk !!)

He loves when I shake him hehe :))

Onto some of the more substantial changes though! I’m still trying to decide what type to evolve these little babies into, so throughout this post you may notice that I change course a little bit in the types of animals I give and which stats are highest. Rest assured though! By the end of this post I will definitively have the answer for my evolution plans!

Took a look at UwU’s stats, and it looks like her personality has cycled from the last time I checked! It was cry-baby before but now it’s energetic

Veeeeerrryyy interesting combination !

You absolute troll ( ⚆ ◡ ⚆ )

Work hard

...nap harder

Time to learn some wonderful singing! I wanted to focus on UwU for a bit so I left OwO in class

I’ve decided that UwU is going to be a power-type! Her highest stat grade is an A in Power so I decided I want to raise it to an S when she evolves

Soon she will be strong enough to demolish the competition in karate (｀\/´)

More stat grinding...

OwO has returned! He is now a wonderful singer :))

Accidentally gave UwU a vulture but the new wings and hair kinda look cool with the arms lol

Laaaaaaaaa!!!

I threw a bear at him lol (￣\/￣ )

Checked the black market and they had a very interesting item for sale! It seems my emblem collecting has paid off and there is a shiny blue egg for sale

( I actually saw a rarer orange one much earlier but didn’t get it so (ゝз･) )

I mean I really SHOULDN’T buy this one... I have enough emblems for much rarer eggs to appear... plus I’m already swamped raising the other two chao and... hmmm

I bought it.

They have all gathered around for the hatching!

Well..... at least she was there at first...

Guess she was curious and decided she doesn’t care ¯\_༼ ಥ ‿ ಥ ༽_/¯

She’s aliiiiiiiive!!!!

Welcome to the world, small child

DRAMATIC POSE

𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙑𝘼𝙏𝙀

...this is literally the most adorable creature on the planet I would die for you （；へ：）

Stat check!

Not terrible! I don’t think I’ll evolve her based on stats though, she’s way too adorable NOT to be evolved for looks

Checks out

Taking her to the fortune teller to get her named next...

hmmm... blue... shiny..... water name? uhhhh hydro? no no.... ocean? nah nah...

wait.

Heheheheheh....

Heheheheheheh...

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH...!

Everyone say hi to Soleanna! (Second N was removed in-game because of character limit, but her name is Soleanna)

For those unaware, Soleanna was the name of the City of Water in Sonic 06! I thought it was fitting because it’s water themed but also silly and a sonic reference lol

You know truth be told... UwU and OwO’s names were just kinda pulled out of a jokey joke hat because I needed to call them SOMETHING. I was gonna wait a little longer, but now that we have a naming theme...

Elise and Mephiles it is! (again, Mephiles had to be cut short because of character limit but...)

I thought it made sense because they’re both hero and dark chao, plus it fits with the Sonic 06 reference theme

Mephiles would be proud to have an evil chao named after him :))

I guess Elise has taken a liking to Soleanna’s eggshell.... I can’t tell if that’s endearing or SUPER weird...

bird :))

looks like Mephiles is going to the races!

LITERALLY ANNIHILATED THOSE OTHER CHAO

ONCE AGAIN

He won a shovel!

Elise is gonna do some Karate! Use the strength of all those bears I gave you!

OHHHHHH!!

TWO HIT K-O!!

She preceded to absolutely annihilate the entire tournament!

Owned

whatcha got there, Soleanna?

SHE’S RIDIN’ THE DUCK!! (ⅈ▱ⅈ)

Awwww, Elise and Mephiles are singing and playing music for her while she rides!! They’re all so cute !!

So uh.... I kinda did some stat grinding with a dark character on Elise and well...

...she looks a bit like moldy cheese now

I’ll get her fixed up with Tails, don’t worry ε-(´ D｀) ﾌ

no thoughts, head empty

wait a minute... i hadnt even noticed! Elise’s evolution stat traits are starting to come in! that means she’s getting closer to evolving into a power chao! (power chao have these sort of stripey patterns on them)

We did some more karate to celebrate

It went about how you would expect after her last performance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In other news though, I’ve decided Mephiles’ final type! I’m gonna go with run! Mephiles’ namesake is a Shadow impersonator, and since a Dark-Run chao looks like Shadow I thought it would be funny :))

So I went to City Escape to collect some rabbits! And uh...

They are looking....

...and I do not know if it is respectfully ●﹏●

Mephiles understands that even dark lords of evil can have cute pink bunny rabbit ears

I’m sure you’ve noticed, but Mephiles’ evolution stat traits are coming in too! He’s growing spines and getting a little bluer!

You’re so adorable I’m gonna lose it...

Alrighty! Before we go, here’s a final stat-check for the road!

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That’s all for now folks! Thank you for reading it all if you made it here :))

Remember to check out https://chao-island.com/ if you want to learn more about chao and the raising experience! It’s a great resource

My chao posts will always be tagged with #MobiusGarden in case you wish to block them

Love u!

#chao #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #Sonic Adventure 2 #dreamcast #gamecube #pet sim #pet simulator #vmu #soleanna #mephiles the dark #mephiles sonic #Chao Garden #long reads #long #MobiusGarden #gif

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angelaiswriting · 3 years

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Undercover | Bandit x fem!reader

[video by Yogendra Singh from Pexels]

✏️ Pairing: Bandit x fem!reader

✏️ Summary: In which Dominic realizes he's fallen too hard for a woman during an undercover mission and he doesn't think he's fit to work for Rainbow anymore.

🎁 A/N: I wrote this for @kind-wolf‘s birthday but she gave me the okay to post it, so hopefully y’all will enjoy it too 💛

✏️ Warnings: slight angst, 18+ only? idk (the sex is generally only implied but there are some paragraphs in which it’s a little less implied), also a dash of fluff?

✏️ Word-count: 11,555

UNDERCOVER

There was something about early-morning runs that just calmed his nerves, even with music blasting in his ears. There was something in the way his trainers would rhythmically slap against the ground; something in the burning in his lungs, in the way the wind would blow against his face every now and then…

The British countryside expanded to infinity on his runs and it erased anything Hereford Base inevitably brought along—training sessions, mission calls, even more simulations, and then endless tests to pieces of equipment that he surely had not missed while on his last undercover mission.

He didn’t think much about it. About the mission. He always tried his best not to, although he did so unconsciously, probably more out of habit than anything else. It was never easy, to go back to a daily routine that didn’t feel yours anymore, to a routine you couldn’t recognize after having pretended to be someone else for the past six years. Some things just get to your head at some point, and going back to who you had once been feels like being reborn completely, and into someone you can’t recognize. You wake up one day, and you find yourself being forced to put on yet another mask, with the only exception that this is no mask. This is your face. Who you are. Or who you’re supposed to be, at least.

And although most likely unprofessional, this was how Dominic Brunsmeier still felt, six months after his mission had come to its end. He woke up every day and for the first, endless minutes he simply lied there, staring at a ceiling he had problems recognizing, with the reality that he was thousands of miles away from Germany hanging like Damocles’ sword above his head. His ears still subconsciously strained for the sound of two dogs’ nails ticking against the tiles of the floor to come to say good morning, and his left hand still stretched out to feel for someone who wasn’t there—who would never be there again.

That’s why running helped. It emptied his mind—and it also filled his lungs with the smell of wet grass and dirt. And although he still turned around to check behind his back every few minutes in search for furry snouts—one of the habits he had developed in the past life he had been forced to leave behind—, it was getting better, and the music in his ear pods seemed to be starting to do the trick.

Sometime later, when he got back to the Base, he was somewhat ready to be a Rainbow operator once again. At least for that day.

The truth was, he had somehow grown almost detached from anything and anyone Rainbow. He would do something, and then he’d mentally compare it to how he did it before. The way his morning coffee would taste; the way her laundry detergent would smell fresh and somehow cozy; how peaceful car trips would feel, almost as though he could lose himself into one of them for the rest of his life. Now his coffee was just Marius’s boring blend, and the detergent they used in the laundry at the base had no scent. And when he did end up tagging along on short weekend trips, there was no dog whining ecstatically in the back of the car and trying to lick his neck.

“How was your run?”

Monika was looking at him from above the file she was reading—a mission report, a test session report, he didn’t know and he also found himself not caring. That life still felt alien to him.

He shrugged. “Good.” He had somehow become a man of few words, and he had also started to realize that maybe undercover missions weren’t for him. Not anymore, at least. Maybe he had let this one get to him a bit too much, and everyone he had met had grown under his skin without him wanting so and he still did somehow feel like he had betrayed his family, sent them all to jail.

It was a stupid thought—he tried to remind himself of that every time that feeling came up, but maybe he just wasn’t cut for long undercover missions anymore. He didn’t remember when it had become difficult to tell right from wrong, but it had happened, and every time his mind stopped on that period of his life, he found himself growing homesick for a home he never had, not there.

“Just good?”

Elias was there, too. Of fucking course, he would be there. He had been keeping an eye on him for a few weeks now, and Dominic was too much of an expert not to notice. It hadn’t been a surprise to see him enter the kitchen a minute or two after he had.

“Just good,” he nodded

There was some staring, then. Dominic stared at Elias because he wanted to be left alone, and Elias stared at Dominic because he wanted to understand what the problem was, so that he could help his friend. It was all useless, though, and they both knew it: one had closed off too securely to let on anything—or let anyone in, and the other was too stubborn to just stop caring about someone he loved.

That afternoon, though, he was running some errands in town with Marius when a dog stopped right in front of him to sniff his pants. It was a lovely animal, with fur of an almost bronze-red color and a tail that never once stopped wagging.

It brought him back in time, and for a moment he stood there, frozen and rooted to the spot. He could almost still feel the rain on his skin despite that exceptionally bright sunny day. But then, the Irish setter’s owner called Bonnie, let’s go! and Dominic was back to the present day, a bag with stuff he had bought at the hardware store just on the other side of the parking lot in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other.

“Everything alright with you?” Marius asked when Dominic reached him. He had been waiting for him, leaning against the door of the truck, and he hadn’t missed the way his friend had grown rigid. It didn’t matter how much pride Dom felt at the idea of being good at hiding feelings: there was always someone that saw right through his shit. And called him out on it.

“I used to have two dogs,” he blurted out with a smile on his face before he could stop himself. They were both loading bags into the trunk of the car and he hadn’t even felt the words slip through his lips that they were already out there in the open. But the memory had hit him with the same force of a freight train, and he had found himself basking in that warm feeling that had started to blossom inside him at the memory. After all, he loved those two pests like his own kids.

He looked up, the feeling of being caught red-handed quickly seeping in, and he found that Marius had a weird look in his eyes as he watched his every move.

“You had two dogs?” his friend quoted, one hand reaching up for the back door of the car. He closed it shut, and the frown didn’t leave his face for a second. “Back during your mission, you mean?”

“Forget about it. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said it in the first place.” It had always been custom for him to not open up about his undercovers—the person he was when he was on one wasn’t the person he was when he came back to his real life, and that’s how things had to be.

“To hell with your bullshit!”

The first five minutes in the car, however, were spent in silence.

Dominic was still cursing himself mentally for opening his damn mouth—or his memory vault, for what it mattered. It had been the first time he had mentioned anything about her since his return—his return home his friends had cheered him with six months ago, but that homely feeling still had to make an appearance. She had become taboo, and he had done so to protect her—and himself, in a way, for not having to bring her up had seemed to be the most sensible way to forget all about her, at least back then.

But now here he was, catching himself just in time before worsening his case.

“Where are those dogs now?” Marius used the excuse of a red streetlight to speak again and when Dominic looked at him from the corner of his eye, he found his friend already staring.

A shrug of his shoulders will do the trick, or that was what he hoped. Unsuccessfully.

“You’ve barely put full sentences together outside of missions since you came back from Germany. And now you mention two dogs. That you owned, apparently.”

“I didn’t own them, they weren’t mine,” he corrected.

“Whose were they, then?”

The first time Dominic sees her is on a chilly early-April morning. It’s pouring rain outside, and she’s walking two dogs with nothing to shield her from the rain but an old sweatshirt.

It’s half past five in the morning and his first thought is: What the fuck is this girl doing out here in the rain?

He almost slows down his truck when he drives past her. Probably he should be a good person and ask her if she needs a ride, but this side of town is new to him and he doesn’t want to risk anything that would have Fabian put him on his boss’ black book the month after having been fully accepted into the gang.

She’s in his rearview mirror before he has the chance to think his civilized deed through. He finds himself staring for two seconds at most—red sweatshirt, jean shorts that are a tad bit out of season now, and two happy dogs that walk on either side of her without the need for a leash. Then, he’s pulling over and stopping the truck right before the closed garage door of his new two-bedroom house. He still has to fix it—along with other things inside—but Christian has been keeping him busy with errands and whatnot, and he’s lacked the time.

He’s barely out of the vehicle when there’s barking—short, quick barks in succession coming from two different dogs, defying the sound of the rain and the otherwise silence of the early morning. When he turns around, the girl’s dogs are running across the empty street, their owner right behind them, and they’re aiming at him, tails wagging happily and tongues lolling out from open mouths.

They don’t jump up as he expected them to, but they still do take their few seconds of freedom to sniff him up. His shoes, his legs, a hand—and all the while he’s getting soaked through just as much as the girl running over with two leashes in a hand is.

“Hey, buddy,” he coos, almost involuntarily, as he presents the bigger dog with the open palm of his left hand.

It looks like a nice mutt, the fur a shade of brown streaked with white and black, and it excitedly licks his skin after a moment of indecision.

“I’m so sorry.” When he looks up, the young woman is panting, a hand on her side as the other comes up to wipe the rain from her eyes. “C’mon, Otto, come here.”

The white dog with a chocolate-colored stain on the left side of his face is quickly put on his leash, and he sits still by his owner’s feet as she pries Rex from his hand.

“I’m sorry they’ve bothered you,” she offers, and then groans when she can’t seem to attach the leash to the ring in the dog’s collar. “They’re usually well-behaved.”

“No problem,” he smiles.

Rex lunges forward one last time to get a good-bye caress on his head before he eventually chooses to behave and steps back.

“They didn’t do anything but smell me up a bit, it’s all cool.”

She smiles. He smiles. Rex barks happily and turns back to nudge Otto, and both their tails are wild whips against the soaked grass-less ground of his short driveway. Then, she’s gone.

He stares as she runs down the street, thunder finally rolling up high in the steely sky, and he smiles when he hears her laugh and call for the dogs when the rain starts pouring stronger. Then he turns, walks around the back of his truck and up to his door, and leaves the world outside.

That night Dominic sat at the desk in his room. His things had been relocated to a smaller one while he had been away on his mission and although he would have probably complained once, he found that this new accommodation somehow suited him better now. It felt much more secluded and since it was in the newly-built dorm area where his buddies didn’t reside, it felt much calmer. It didn’t give him much need to lie.

And it didn’t give his friends the chance to see that most of his stuff was still in cardboard boxes he had yet to unpack. The mere thought seemed to overwhelm him somehow and even that night, all he did was stare at them for endless minutes before eventually begrudgingly opening his laptop.

The brief and vague chat with Marius that afternoon had given him that sort of push he needed to finally pull out the hard disks and SD cards he had hidden away but that still contained all the files he had to organize. It was nothing major, of course—that kind of stuff had been transferred onto Rainbow servers the moment he had set foot onto British ground, one could say. But he still had private stuff, videos and photographs he had never thought he’d one day keep, back when he had first taken them, but then again, here he was.

Part of his brain did know that wasn’t the smart thing to do, but when he plugged in the black hard disk with that owl sticker she had slapped on it one night after tipsy sex, he found that his hand hesitated on the mouse.

He had chuckled—even now, he could still hear the sound in the otherwise quiet room. It had been at the beginning of that thing that had slowly—and then more and more quickly, like an avalanche effect of some sort—turned into a relationship. Why? he had simply asked, putting his lighter back on the nightstand when she gave it a disgusted look. And she had laughed, too, and he had stared at her sweaty skin glistening in the light of his bedside lamp, at the way her messy bangs stuck to her forehead, and he thought that fuck, what the fuck was he doing? Because I felt like it, she had answered with a shrug and he had laughed deep in his chest before pulling her back over his body.

Maybe he could keep what was in there. He did not have to look, but maybe he’d keep those files stored away in some folder-in-a-folder kind of thing, hidden away from his eyes and hopefully from his mind, until he’d forget all about them. Until he’d stop being a spineless dick, murmured a mean voice in the back of his head.

“Fuck it!” he groaned, finally opening the main folder and watching as his old laptop loaded everything.

There were some pictures he had never stored away in their respective folders, and he suddenly remembered now that it was because he loved them. Loved those two dogs piled up on each other as they slept in his armchair. And loved the way she’d scream song lyrics using an almost-empty beer bottle as a microphone.

Those were memories—and damn good memories at that! There was no reason to shy away from them. Just as a reminder, he reasoned—something to keep for a long time so that it could remind him to keep his head on his shoulders next time he’d be assigned on some other undercover mission. Something that could tell him not to fall for a chick he’d eventually have to leave behind forever. Something that could prove to him that yes, he could enjoy things while living a lie, but that no, there were things he could not bring back home.

Like Rex and Otto.

Or like Y/N.

He meets her again two weeks later, when Fabian drags him along to a club to have fun and maybe get some pussy. Dominic’s not exactly in the mood for pussy for once, still exhausted after having come back from a quick ‘business trip’ to Austria with two other guys, but he doesn’t want to be the buzzkill. He’s also not been in the city long enough, so he’d rather fly low and not risk making even the slightest doubt arise.

So he goes. He dresses up in an all-black combo of pants and shirt, and meets his friend outside one of the clubs Christian owns. The air is warm, and the night traffic buzzes behind his back as Fabian leads him all the way up to the entrance while recounting the weird-ass trip Alex had the first time he did acid. Domi laughs along in all the right points and for a split second, before Julian lets them in without a question, he finds himself thinking that it isn’t so hard after all, to pretend to be someone he’s not every time Fabian’s around. The dude is chill, five or so years younger than he but just as crazy, and there’s this tiny voice in Dominic’s head that seems to whisper to him that they could actually be great pals if the situation and the setting were different.

“What’s your poison?” his friend of sorts asks as he takes him through the place and then to a table—not right up under the stage, but a bit in the back.

“Just beer,” is his reply. He didn’t think he’d be seeing girls perform when he left his house, but now that he’s here and he gets a glimpse of a redhead beauty before she disappears offstage, he’s not exactly opposed.

Fabian’s face is contorted into a grimace of confusion before it opens up into a grin as things seem to clear up in his head. “Oh, yeah, as a warm-up, I see!”

He laughs, leaning back against the seat before he shakes his head. “One of us gotta stay sober enough to take you home when you’re shit-faced,” he bites back, subtly implying to that one time, three months after Dom had officially become a rookie, when Fabian had ridden himself into a tree on his bike. The others had made him look after and take care of the younger idiot, and he had had to swallow down his pride and cater to any and all silly needs he had been presented with and that had felt like a setback in his undercover path.

A girl hurries by then, a serving platter with drinks in hand as she flags down another waitress and mouths something over the music of the new performance, and Fabian is quick at grabbing a hold of her forearm. When she turns around, an expression on her face that makes it clear she would be more than ready to throw hands, it takes Dominic half a minute to recognize her in this new setting.

“Come back to us later, Baby,” Fabian says, his hand moving to swat at her ass before she grabs a hold of it and presses down hard enough to make him wince.

“Don’t make me kick your ass.”

Dominic turns around when she walks past him and watches as she serves drinks at a table. She’s all smiles as she replies back to something she’s being told, and steps back a little when one of the men tries to stretch a hand out and touch her.

“Is that how you act with women?” he asks when he turns back around.

His friend laughs over a text he’s sending—probably to one of the other guys they’re supposed to meet here tonight, or probably to someone else entirely—Dominic does wonder about it, just as he wonders about many things when it comes to the Club, but he voices none of his thoughts. He never does.

“It’s not what you think,” he shrugs, grinning at him before glancing at the brunette performing on stage. He stares for a long while, and Dominic has the time to study some more of the details in the snake tattoo that crawls up the side of his neck and disappears into his hair. “She’s a friend.”

“She’s still not excited about you slapping her butt, though,” the girl in question chimes in when she finally reaches their table again, her serving platter now held securely against her abdomen. “But Fabian’s— Hey!” she grins, stopping mid-sentence when she seems to recognize him from that rainy early morning of fifteen or so days ago. “You’re the new guy on the block.”

“You know each other?”

“Sorta. The boys ran up to him when we were on a walk a few days ago,” she nods, eyes trailing down to where Domi’s left the first two buttons of his shirt undone, tattoos on full display underneath, before moving back to meet his.

Fabian’s pout distracts the both of them, and when she sets her eyes on him, he’s quick at letting out a childish complaint. “You never smile at me like that.”

“Don’t be a douche.” And then, to Dominic: “I’ll pay you real money if you drag him out of here.”

“Geez, women!” Fabian scoffs. “Anyway. Nic, this is Y/N. Y/N, this is Dominic.” He watches briefly as they shake hands before continuing. “She’s off-limits, unless she’ll somehow consider you worthy enough of her and her p— I’m just kidding, Angel!” he pleads, leaning away from her hand as she slaps at his shoulder. “C’mon, be a good girl.”

“You be a good boy and I might not spit in your drink.”

Dominic’s still thinking about her sometime later, after some of the guys have joined him and his company for tonight. They’re watching girls perform, but he’s unfocused. Even the beer in his hand has been forgotten for a while now, as his gaze finds itself being attracted back to the bar—or to wherever she is at the moment.

He stares, and even blatantly so, half listening to Fabian’s words echoing in his mind, and half ignoring them. She’s close to Christian, that’s what he knows: she used to be his sister’s best friend before the girl passed away a few years after finishing high school. And, as Fabian has half-heartedly complained more than once, she’s not that friendly with gang members—if you know what I mean, Nic. Not that he’s thinking about that with her! He barely even knows her. What he does know, however, is that there’s a file, back at Rainbow, that he has to fill with pieces of information he finds out here, and he’s starting to wonder what she could know.

And sometimes—every once in a while and almost covertly—she glances back and meets his eye, and when she finds him staring, she seems to stumble over her words for a heartbeat before the smile is back on her face and she turns her attention back to whatever patron she’s tending to.

He’s back the next Friday night, and the week after that, and on the third week, it starts becoming a habit. Fabian’s with him sometimes; sometimes it’s someone else, but more often—because he starts hanging out at the club on whatever free nights he has during the week—he goes on his own. He drinks, spends money on women, and goes as far as paying for personal dances—and maybe it becomes a bit too often, because one day Christian asks him—through Alex, because Christian’s too busy with a rival gang to do it in person—and mentions something about it.

But the more he sits in there, the closer he somehow seems to get to Y/N—and the closer she seems to get to him. It’s just smiles at first; even when he goes up to the bar to order drinks, she’s always too busy to focus on him only. But then they start exchanging a few words—and in the meantime they wave at each other from opposite sides of the road they live on, when they pass by—and then a few puns, until at some point, probably three, almost four months into his habitual trips to the club, she starts actively seeking him out. And if by any chance he’s absent on one of his regular nights, he finds her politely asking whether everything’s alright on the first night he’s back.

He missed that—missed his club nights and the dancers, even the waitresses. Y/N, of course, although he always did his best not to allow his brain to bring her up. But sometimes, out of the blue, the most random things would make one of the many memories he had stored away out of sight resurface and he found himself thinking about her. It would start subconsciously—with something someone said or did, or maybe it was something he saw in the window of a shop, or in one of the girls he’d find himself dancing with when his friends dragged him along. And then, when he caught himself red-handed, it was hard to stop. His brain would fixate on a memory and the more he willed himself to shift the focus of his attention onto something—anything—else, the harder it was to actually do it.

So, he turned his strategy around. He did that when he transferred all his secreted files onto his laptop—and then onto a new one yet again, when the old thing slowed down too much for him to be able to do work-related things on it. The reasoning was, if he kept those memories where he could easily reach them, then maybe they’d lose that hue of exceptionality and he’d get so used to them that it would finally be easier to coexist with them and all they had once meant.

And the next time Marius asked, tried to pull things out of him the same way he’d done with shards of glass after that one assignment in Bosnia, Dominic found himself loosening up. With him only, no one else for the time being, but it still felt liberating. Marius would listen, and he wouldn’t try to guilt-trip him the same way Domi had done to himself. He’d listen, and chime in every now and then, and then he’d stop asking when it was clear his friend wasn’t comfortable with continuing for now.

Y/N hadn’t come up yet. He told him about the dogs, and the guys—about Fabian most of all, and Markus, the two he had bonded with the most. He talked about the club—and he won’t lie, about the women there and the ones he had ended up in bed or against a wall with, as well. Not many, but enough to make Marius tease him for a while before he eventually relented.

But then one day, when most operators had been sent off on various missions, they decided to go on a trip. They took a Jeep car, loaded it with backpacks and food and tents, and took off for a week to spend camping far from the Base.

It had been quite a long couple of months—with training and simulations and tests, and even weeks spent abroad. And meetings in Harry’s office so that the Agency could see where Dominic’s loyalty lied, and how he was doing, how he was settling back into his old routine, now almost ten months after having come back from Germany. Which he… was, in a way. Settling back into his old routine, that is—everything was normal when he was working, at least.

But opening up to his Director wasn’t the same as opening up to his friend. And probably even Harry knew, or had at least come to that conclusion, for he had relented in his questions and had given him more free time, away from his Rainbow responsibilities.

“So, you were telling me about Fabian the other day.”

Marius’s voice shook him out of his thoughts, and Dominic found himself blinking a couple of times at the pale light of the sun that still had to fully rise. He felt almost as though he had dozed off, his tongue still heavy and laced with the slumber he had been forced to wake up from at two.

“What?” he mumbled, fumbling with his seat belt when he realized his friend had parked the car and it was now time to get out.

He had been sleeping poorly the past few days, with endless thoughts incessantly mulling around in his mind and keeping him awake. Stuff about Germany, but also stuff about Rainbow—missions and briefings and that upgrade he was helping Elias come up with for his shield. It all slowed him down, left him less reactive than he had been in a while, always dozing off when he was supposed to do something else. Even his morning runs had stopped being that nice a distraction.

The cup of coffee Marius pushed into his hands was hot, almost comforting in a way, and it sent a shiver throughout his whole body as they stood there, in the low, late-March temperatures. It was supposed to get warmer as the day progressed, or so the forecasts seemed to promise, and he surely found himself hoping for that to be the case.

“You were saying about how Fabian introduced you to this Angel dude,” Jäger insisted sometime later, when they had heaved their backpacks on their backs and locked the Jeep. They’d be back in a week—or that was the plan, but they both knew that if the weather would take a turn for the worst, they’d be back much sooner, neither of them willing to deal with storms and cold temperatures when they could feel warm somewhere else.

“Angel’s not a dude,” was Dominic’s chuckle.

The sun had finally risen and its light, although still pale, filtered in through the foliage of the forest, casting shapes on the ground and on their faces alike. The temperatures had gone up a bit, but Dom was still glad he had listened to Lera’s advice and had taken off with thermal clothes on.

“Angel is— was,” he quickly corrected himself, casting a quick glance at Marius, walking by his side, “my girlfriend… I guess.”

“You guess?” His friend frowned, not even taking his eyes off of the path they were currently trekking on. They still had quite a few kilometers to go before their next stop and he had absolutely no intention of spending them in silence, not now that Dominic seemed like he had slowly regained his ability to talk and let his tongue loose, although not in everyone’s company. But progress was progress, and he didn’t want to risk and ruin it.

Dominic shrugged. “I’m not sure Y/N and I ever officially defined the relationship.”

“Y/N… Angel, you mean?”

“Yeah, we called her that most of the time. Those dogs I told you about… they were hers.”

Marius nodded. Dominic had started to introduce him to bits and pieces of his undercover life—the clubs, the gang, the dogs, the speed races at night, the way Fabian would often crash on his couch when his partying got too wild and out-of-hand, or the way Markus, three years his junior, would often trail behind him like a lost puppy. It was never a chronological recollection of events, with some kind of thread that would link them together. Sometimes he’d ask questions, making sure to remain as vague as possible when it came to enquiring about someone’s life, and Domi would reply with what came to mind.

But now… Now he had slowly started to piece all those memories together, bit by bit, and he was seeing that it was not all black and white, the way some back at the Organization would make it out to be, but more like grayscale. The good and the bad would mix together in the same bowl, and it would make it hard for anybody to draw absolutes.

“Tell me something about her.”

Dominic’s sitting in Christian’s backyard for the first time in two years and a half. It’s something new, but at the same time it feels so familiar, in a weird and convoluted way, as he’s surrounded by people he knew nothing about just three years ago. He laughs at what his friends say, and even whistles with them when the girl Fabian has shown up with leaves in a hurry after printing the fingers of her left hand across his cheek.

“You truly can’t keep them for more than a week, can you?” Christian laughs, taking a sip from his beer as he and Marcel flip the meat on the barbeque.

Fabian groans. “Always pointing out the details, gee. Anyway!”

Some bickering ensues, and Dominic sits back against the seat of his plastic chair with the rim of his beer bottle grazing his lower lip, barely containing his laughter, but still trying his best because he’s usually the one taking Fabian’s sides—even if just out of pure sarcasm. It all only settles when Franziska walks out of the house, a bowl of salad in each hand, saying something about leaving the poor child alone, what are you? Five? before Marcel pulls her into his side for a kiss.

They’re cute—it’s a weird and intrusive thought as Dominic watches, eyes glinting with a badly concealed smile, but it’s also the truth. Franziska and Marcel are like opposite sides of the same coin, but they somehow fit so well together… He’d tell Marius that, years after that day, and he’d recall the way she’d look up into her lover’s eyes with such emotion that, before Y/N came along, it would have made him feel the pangs of jealousy stab his stomach.

“Ugh, lovebirds.” Markus rolls his eyes, and when Dominic turns his head to look at him, he adds a snort and a wave of his hand.

“Kids.” Marcel shakes his head at Domi, almost as though he knows just how Markus and Fabian can get, and Dominic’s the one who’s spending the most time with them. “Always moaning about what they don’t have.”

But no one’s that serious. They all sort of envy what Marcel has, but they cherish it most of all, and although there’s often some playful mocking during gatherings, Marcel still knows they’d all jump in front of his woman without batting an eyelash if that meant keeping her safe.

There’s commotion coming from inside the house, then. The old dog that had been snoozing by Christian’s feet lifts her head, barking low in the back of her throat, still sleepy, before two dogs dash outside and she’s suddenly chasing them on her three paws, long fluffy tail wagging.

The guys cheer the new-comers and although the white one—it takes Dom a while to recognize Otto, Angel’s dog—jumps and huffs to play with Christian’s Stella, the loud and cheering voices send the other one in a frenzy. Rex runs back and forth, tail wagging as hard as a whip, tongue two meters out of his snout. And it’s such a hilarious sight that it sends Dominic laughing with his other friends as the dog almost trips Eva and that jar of cold lemonade over.

Then, when Dominic’s regained enough breath to stop the wheezing and wipe the tears from his eyes with a hand, he calls him over. “Hey, Rex! C’mere!”

He has no time to see the surprise flash across his friends’ faces, for it’s all downhill from there. Rex stops dead in his tracks, front paws down on the grass to his elbows and butt up in the air, his tail still wagging wildly—and really, he doesn’t know how he hasn’t sprained it yet, or how he hasn’t taken off like in some cartoon. His head turns here and there for half a second before his caramel eyes zero in on him. Before Dominic has the time to beg Stop!, the dog is on him: The impact sends his empty beer bottle flying backward as the chair tips back, a leg snaps, and he’s suddenly half-laying, half-sitting almost horizontally with an ecstatic Rex licking his face and his beard, barely able to keep still in his arms.

The other two dogs are quick to join them, and before Dominic can turn his head to the side and see the way Christian kisses Y/N’s cheek hello or hear the way she groans out a fuck! before she can intervene, two more wet snouts blind and sniff at him.

Sometime later, as Markus is complaining under his breath about the ladies’ ‘rabbit food’, Dominic turns towards Fabian and half-says, half-asks: “I thought she didn’t do members.”

“Huh?” Fabian looks up from where he’s stuffing his face with pork ribs and Franziska’s salad, moaning for a second about how much I love fucking onions, God. But he’s quick at looking where Domi’s quick tilt of the head is pointing.

Y/N and Christian are sitting next to each other, heads close as they discuss something before she feels them staring and sends them a quick smile.

“Oh, no. No.” Fabian coughs as he tries not to choke on his food when he picks up with what Dom’s implying—Jeez, no, shit, Angel and Christian? He laughs, still breathless, and chugs down the glass of lemonade Verena’s poured him. “Nah, she’s like a sister to him. Same for her. It was hard for a while after Mia’s death. The gang…” But he shrugs, cuts himself off and trails his gaze back down on his plate. “It was rough. And they’ve grown real close, but there’s nothing more than fraternal love between them.”

Dominic nods. “Oh, okay.”

He’s thinking nothing of her—or is he? They’ve been hanging out quite a bit these past few weeks. He’s been over at her house for a leaking sink just last Saturday afternoon, and she’s made him stay longer so that they could eat dinner together, watch the wrestling match on TV. He’s not… into her like that, he thinks—yet. Because, really, he wouldn’t mind being.

“Why?” There’s a suggestive smirk growing on his friend’s face. “You thinking of—”

But he’s cut off when Christian calls Dominic and steals his attention. No one discusses business during this kind of gatherings, but there’s a look on the man and his right hand, Marcel’s faces that just makes him think he’ll be hearing from them not long after going back home that night. He’s already made great progress on his undercover assignment, but this truly does start feeling like a step in the right direction.

When the party’s over, that night after dinner, he ends up sitting in Y/N’s car as she takes both of them home. Her dogs would be all up in his neck if it weren’t for the shield provided by the passenger’s seat, and she’s apologizing—although with a grin on her face and a tone that doesn’t make her apology come out that sincere—about their behavior.

“I just don’t understand why they like you so much,” she muses. “Rex most of all.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t even know I was that good with dogs before these two.”

Years later, he’d tell Marius Streicher how pretty she looked, with her make-up slightly smudged and the hair locks that had escaped her now messy bun. How accessible she felt—and not even in a bad way, but more like, he could reach a hand out and poke her cheek with his fingertips, or trail his index along her hairline, down the curve of her ear and touch her piercings, or even just lean back against his seat and just, look at her. How peaceful the interior of her car felt.

He’d tell Marius how Rainbow didn’t exist back then. How it was just him and the wrong waitress he had started falling for. And at the same time, how he still had this thought in the back of his mind, constantly nagging him—what if he ended up blowing up his mission in smoke?

“You’re staring,” she’s saying, smiling, eyes still on the road ahead.

“And you’re blushing.”

If there’s one thing he’s learned about her during his countless nights at the same stupid club, then it’s that she doesn’t blush. Not when his eyes are glued to her. He has stared at her much more lewdly than he’s doing now, most of all with a few drinks too many in his stomach and in his system.

She shrugs, and when she stops the car and Dominic turns back around, he notices they’ve arrived at her house. “You should come in,” she says instead, already getting out of the car and opening the back door to let the dogs out. “You don’t have to,” she adds quickly when he gets out, too. And he can’t see her face now that she’s unlocking her entrance door, but he knows she’s still blushing. “Only if you want.”

He wouldn’t tell Marius how her lips felt against his, nor how the drinks they had in her kitchen tasted when her tongue brushed against his. How she felt in his lap, one of her hands on the back of his head and the other up his shirt, against his tattooed chest. How she ground her hips down against him just right and tore a grunt from deep inside his belly and that vibrated against her lips, making her smile.

He’d tell none of that, but his friend would still understand.

What he did tell Marius, however, as they laid under the starry sky, was that, somehow, no one had felt like her again. Not his random hook-ups, the ones he was guilty of picking either because he needed a distraction or because they reminded him of Angel, and not even Katie, that kindergarten teacher Seamus had introduced to him and with whom he had hung out for a month or so. Nothing serious, and he hadn’t even exactly put effort into it, but a part of him still had tried. More for Seamus’—or even just Katie’s—sake than his own.

It was exactly Katie that Marius brought up with a yawn. And when he asked what had been wrong with her—or, well, maybe not wrong per se but more, I don’t know, brother… Amiss?—Dominic had found himself scoffing.

Katie’s not her—but he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t say how he had fallen for the way Y/N fought in the ring, how she grimaced or grinned, the way her braids would slap against a cheek or a shoulder when her movements would be too abrupt. He’d go to her after the fights, and sometimes still sweaty and bruised, she’d straight up fuck the living sanity out of him—a hand around his throat and the other on his chest to keep her balance as they went at it on either his or her couch.

“Katie was…” He thought it over, fighting with his words and his brain’s ability to pick the right one. “Too nice.”

Y/N hadn’t been just black or just white—she was a whole spectrum of grays, ranging from one end to the other of it. Soft and kind on any day; but then also fearless and strong when she needed to be, ready to raise hell and fight God when she had to.

Dominic would have never been able to picture Katie on a ring, taking blows and also giving them back, because that wasn’t who Katie was. And although there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with being who you are, it just… wasn’t the same. He never found himself with his wrists tied to the headboard of Katie’s bed, with a blindfold over his eyes, almost holding his breath to see—feel—where she’d touch him next. Or how. Or even with what.

And probably that was why he couldn’t take Angel out of his mind—because he knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t be able to have her again. That she was gone, lost in a chapter of his life that he had reached the end of, and that he had left in the past. And although he did often go back to reread it, that was exactly all he could do—read, but never change a word of it.

“You still have time to add something more, though.”

He had almost dozed off to sleep, the exhaustion and exertion of that day’s worth of hiking catching up with him and his tired limbs. And it was only when Marius uttered those words that he realized he had spoken that inner monologue out loud into the darkness of the night.

The stars were blinking down at him, almost winking at his powerlessness in that situation. He wasn’t scared that she might cut his balls off and feed them to the wolves; nor that she might pull her hair back into two braids and teach him a lesson or two.

What stopped him from working was the very last voicemail she had left him, when she had called his German number for the last time. He had seen her cry—cry with laughter at some stupid joke, or sob her lungs out that one time they watched Marley and Me together, the mere idea of one day losing her dogs tearing her up from the inside out. But the way she had breathed into the phone, trying to hold back the sobs, and the way her voice had broken on every other syllable—Please, Domi, pick up. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know you’re not with the others—it still wrecked him.

He had listened to it so many times that not only did he know every word by heart, but he could hear her voice—the way it cracked, when she’d sob, when Otto would whine in the background. And what was worse, was that he could see her with his mind’s eye—sitting in the empty tub, or on one of the stools in the kitchen, or even behind the wheel of her car. So strong and resolute… crumbling apart because all he had had to offer was a lie.

Or maybe not all—he had been honest with her. Honest the first time he had told her he loved her, and honest the last time he had professed his love. That hadn’t been a lie. The way he’d hold her at night, when she’d sleep with her head on his chest, or the way he had always been ready to pounce on way-too-daring customers at the club, or when he told her she was the light of his life—none of that had been a lie.

But everything surrounding that? His loyalty to the gang? To the guys? To Christian? His made-up past before he settled down in the city? The real reason he’d sometimes love to go on solo trips and enjoy some peace, when he was in fact meeting up with people from his real life?

“I had my chance,” he decided to say instead, closing his eyes against the night sky. He’d been out stargazing with her, once, the first time they had fucked. It had been sweet and peaceful, until it had turned hotter and messier and sweatier. If he stared up at those stars one minute longer, he knew it, he’d be back on that field, with her trapped between him and the plaid blanket, clothes strewn haphazardly all around. And that was the last thing he needed. “And I wasted it.”

He didn’t say how he wasted it by coming back, but the implicature was still out there, heavy and acrid in the otherwise fresh air of the mountains.

But there had been no backing out of it. Rainbow would have come; something would have been done anyway. At some point in his staying, things had moved too forward before his heart had been able to pick a side, and there had been nothing else he could do. He had broken her heart, but he had also broken his own, and that had been inevitable. A fate he had had zero chances escaping. They had found each other too late, and he’d probably die regretting anything about that case.

There was absolutely no going back there, but he had also started to think that his future didn’t lay in Rainbow anymore, either. It had become too much—and also too little, all at the same time. Gang life surely wasn’t for him, but he was starting to realize that his last undercover mission had ended up messing up with him a bit too much, and although it didn’t exactly interfere with the way he acted in Rainbow, it did with the vision he had of it—and of himself as part of it.

“I think I need a break from this,” he muttered into the night, eyes closed both out of tiredness and that lingering sort of embarrassment he felt any time he addressed how inadequate he now felt. “It’s almost been a year and I still haven’t been able to stop long enough to think.”

He didn’t know if Marius had turned to glance at him in the semi-darkness, before they turned off their torches to sleep, but he knew he had heard.

“What Angel? You’re a little minx,” Dominic chuckles, still out of breath, his chest burning with exhaustion every time it rises and falls. His sweaty back sticks to the leather seats of the car, and he knows the sensation she must be feeling can’t be much different.

But he doesn’t turn to look at her. His gaze is glued to her lace panties, hanging from the gear shift in the front. If he didn’t feel too boneless to lean forward and take her phone from the passenger’s seat, he’d for sure take a picture.

“Who are you calling little?” Her laugh is breathless, and when she moves around like a contortionist to sit up straight, her lips brush against the side of his neck, making his skin break out in gooseflesh and the short hair on the nape of his head tug. “I’m still taller than you with my heels on.”

Laughter rumbles deep in his chest, and he lets her pull his head back when she tugs on his hair with a hand. “Details, pretty doll.”

She doesn’t remind him how she’s kicked his butt just a couple of weeks ago during training and part of him is happy because all they’ve been using that accident as is some sort of foreplay that always ends up with her straddling him, making him tremble with the unexpected touches his blindfold always seems to heighten.

When her finger traces the underside of his cock, however, that chuckle dies on his lips and he gasps almost inaudibly in the back of his throat. Suddenly, his suit pants pulled down to mid-thigh feel constricting and he knows that if she keeps it up, he’ll be hard again soon.

“Don’t.” He didn’t intend for it to come out that way, but his prayer is soft on her lips, when she turns his head to the side to stare into his eyes. “We’re running late for the party.”

She shrugs—and he thinks that fuck, if this car didn’t feel this cramped, he’d fuck her brains out, party or no party, not even when it comes to his boss. “You made me come twice,” she replies, matter-of-factly, not at all moved by his begging or by his breath hitching in the back of his throat when her fingers move down to his balls. “I think it’s just fair I pay back the favor, no?”

His chest and neck are still flushed when he walks into the villa Christian has rented out for his New Year’s party. The initial surprise of Y/N caving in for a member has quickly subsided, and no one whistles in their direction when they see them walk in hand in hand.

They greet their friends, exchange quick hugs, and before long, they’re all drinking and chatting.

“You were late,” Christian says. The expression on his face is serious, but the left corner of his mouth is slowly twitching up into a smirk he manages to hide when he tips his head back and downs his shot.

Dominic shrugs, gaze wandering back to where Angel is catching up with Franziska and Verena, one leg crossed over the other, left bare by the slit in her dress. “Yeah,” he clears his throat, trying not to think about how her panties are still hanging from the gear shift of the car. “We had a setback.” He hesitates on that last word, for he tries to come up with something that could at least sound unassuming, but by God, the crotch of his pants feels like it’s growing tighter and he just knows kissing her won’t be the only thing he’ll be doing when the clock strikes midnight.

Christian laughs. “If my car smells like sex—”

“We rolled the windows down. We’re not animals,” he replies with a snort.

“Just… get it cleaned before you give it back.”

Y/N glances back at them then, eyes twinkling and lips still kiss-swollen and bruised under the lipstick she reapplied before getting out of the car, he’s sure. But before she can call him to her or he can walk up to her a bit stiffly of his own accord, Christian speaks again.

“We still have some time before dinner. There’s a meeting in the other room. Marcel has news on that seemingly lost package.”

Dominic turns around, brows furrowed in confusion, before his brain manages to quickly piece everything back together and he follows the other man down a corridor and into another room. He’s almost forgotten about the new cargo coming in—it’s been a feat lately, to remember he’s not actually one of them but an undercover agent trying to blow a gang up. It’s harder and harder, and he knows the lines aren’t blurred—not yet, at least—but it’s become way too easy, to lose himself in his new friendships and in the unexpected love he’s found here.

But when reality strikes back, it’s hard to distract his mind again.

Anton’s there—and while he isn’t the boss, he’s high up enough to be one of Rainbow’s main concerns. The oldest in the group, he’s rarely there, he rarely shows up. He does work behind the scenes, but that’s where he’d rather stay—away from the kids’ stupidity, or that’s how he always jokes about it.

He’s tall and strong—a whole wardrobe of a man, but Dominic’s still been promoted to be his bodyguard and he can’t help but feel a pang of something deep in his brain, and there’s this unsolicited thought bubbling up that makes him feel all sorts of ways. Maybe someone’s had some suspicions about him, and this is all a test—or this is what he thinks before Anton moves the wrong way and he’s forced to explain that the reason for that agonized groan is the extent of the injuries he’s incurred into not too long ago.

But then they’re all back for dinner, and Dominic doesn’t have time to bask in that wave of relief washing over him when he figures out there’s nothing to fear. They eat and drink and play stupid semi-drunk games, until it’s half an hour to midnight and Y/N has dragged him into a bathroom and unbuckled his belt.

It’s quick and messy, and his fingertips dig hard into the flesh of her hips as they stare into each other’s eyes in the mirror.

“I was thinking,” she hums, wrapped tight around his arm as he walks back with her at five minutes to midnight—enough time to make her come once more, or maybe twice, but Alex has promised a great pyrotechnic show and neither of them wants to miss how he almost gets himself blown up like last year.

“My thoughts are still in that bathroom and you tell me you’re thinking?” he chuckles, pressing a kiss to her cheek before he gives her hand a squeeze, almost as though he’s telling her to just continue.

“You dork,” she laughs. “But yes, I was thinking. Why don’t you move in with me?” she asks. “You’re already there most of the time, and your house is always messy and your couch not comfortable enough for…” She shrugs, trying her best to hide her smirk. “Plus, I’d really love to have you there.”

He feigns thinking about it, but when she gasps in mock shock, he pulls her in for a kiss—and that is when their friends must see and whistle. “I’d never say no to that, Angel.”

Her smile is bright and in the moment, he doesn’t even realize he doesn’t have forever with her, although that’s what he’s come to crave for.

He didn’t know how he let Marius convince him to go back to Germany and see her. He really had no clue, just as he didn’t have a clue about many things—what he’d tell her, how she might react, what he’d do after. How he’d feel after—relieved? like he’s finally had some closure? and how would things be once back in Hereford?

There were a million and one thoughts in his mind as he sat there, on his hotel bed. Harry had offered to let the organization pay for it, but Dominic would have felt too bad if he had let him. This was personal, and there was no saying if his heart still lay within Rainbow schemes. He’d probably keep in touch; he’d probably always be available for anything, really, but the more time passed, the less he thought that was still the right place for him.

Düsseldorf was still buzzing with life despite the torrential rain when he walked out into the street. Y/N—he feared too many emotions and memories would resurface if he let himself think of her as Angel—had moved from the city three years after her lifetime friends had ended up in jail, sent behind bars by none other than her lover. They wouldn’t stay inside forever—he knew how these things worked, he didn’t live a delusion.

He had called her, the day before he had booked his flight. If there was one thing he owed her, it was at least that—let her know he’d be coming… if she wanted him to, that is. If she didn’t want to meet up, then so be it: he’d go on with his life the way he had done throughout the past year and try not to regret too much stuff he had been forced to do because of his job.

But when she had picked up the phone—he had called her old number with his old number—things had felt… well, not normal, of course—he had disappeared overnight without leaving a note or a text or a simple word that could let her know what the fuck had been going on during the past six years of his life—of their life. But she had picked up the phone and she hadn’t killed him through the device, and although she had remained silent for most of the call—and he had done the same, truly, not even knowing what he wanted to tell her, for the words just wouldn’t come—she had eventually agreed to meet up.

Not at her new house, although Harry had done some digging and knew where she lived—a nice apartment in a nice part of the city, but Dominic hadn’t wanted to know where, exactly, when his Director had offered to share the knowledge. She had picked a café, a nice and cozy place he had looked up on the internet, but still popular enough that the awkwardness of their date of sorts would be easily drowned out by the other patrons’ presence.

She was scrolling through her phone when he walked in and spotted her in the far left corner. It was secluded enough to guarantee them some privacy, but still not enough to cut them off from the rest of the world. He figured it was just perfect.

“Hey,” he greeted when he walked up to the table she had picked and he tried not to sigh when he noticed she had pulled her hair back into two braids.

She looked up at him—she didn’t glare the way he had expected her to, but she also didn’t smile. “Hey.”

He sat down, and they both stared at each other until a waiter came up and Y/N called for a coffee and an orange juice before glaring the guy away.

The awkwardness of it all quickly filled the space between them, and wrapped them up like a blanket, but it wasn’t just that. She was pissed, and angry, and probably murderous, but under all that he could still see the heartbreak in her eyes.

“Well, I’m here,” she said. “Say what you wanted to say. It’s the least I deserve, I think.”

Dominic opened his mouth to speak, but then the waiter came back and he closed it again as he watched their order being placed on the table. His cup of black coffee and her glass of juice seemed to put even more distance between them and he had to resist the impulse of passing a hand over his shaved head the way he did when he was nervous.

“I’m sorry,” was what he sighed, lowering his gaze first to the table and then back out of the window and the rain-washed street outside.

She leaned forward and took a sip from the straw before crossing her arms and sitting back against the cushioned back of the booth. “That’s it? You came all the way from wherever the fuck you’ve been hiding to just say I’m sorry? No explanation whatsoever?”

Another sigh, but before he could open his mouth to speak again, she cut him off.

“Was any of that real? Was there at least a crumb of truth? I opened up to you and you just—” Her voice trembled, but whether it was out of tears or pure anger, Dominic couldn’t tell.

“It was real.” He was quick at biting back, probably a bit too aggressively than he had any right to be. “It was real,” he repeated after a moment, voice much quieter and eyes boring into hers. “I did love you.”

“Love’s too big a word for the things you’ve done.”

“It was work,” he tried to reason. “I got sent here on an undercover mission—”

“I know that. I’ve been interrogated by the ones who didn’t go in. They suspected me. Because of you. Because I had been fucking the snitch for almost five years.”

He gaped at her for a moment before sighing in defeat. “I loved you,” but he didn’t say I still do, or You’re still on my mind day in and day out, and not even I still see your panties on the gear shift of Christian’s car. “That wasn’t fake, it wasn’t part of the mission. I told myself I wouldn’t fall for you, that it would mess things up, that it wasn’t fair to you. But I still did. Every I love you I said was real. Every single one of them.”

She was silent for a minute before she scoffed and shook her head. “You’re so full of shit, Dominic.”

It was different this time. She had told him that he was full of shit many a time, always laughing, always joking, but this time those words cut deep—deep enough to rob him of his breath for a moment.

“I trusted you,” she continued then, much quieter, voice barely audible above the sound of the music and of the other people chatting. “I thought you’d be my forever. How stupid I was…”

He looked down at his cup, his throat too knotted to even stomach the idea of drinking his coffee. “That makes two of us. I thought that I—”

“Don’t you even dare—”

“That I’d have more time,” he continued unrelenting, shaking his head with closed eyes for a second before opening them and staring at her again. “That I could buy more time. I kept on hoping I’d fuck up somehow, that things would go wrong and that I wouldn’t have to complete the mission. Or that I could have the time to make you hate me before it was all over.”

“Well, I do kinda hate you now.”

“Breaking your heart was never in my plans, though.” He almost moved his hand on the table to place it over hers, but a last-minute realization made him understand that that was most definitely the worst thing he could do at the moment. And not because she could snap his wrist easily, but because he had no right to. “I really did love you. I wanted to take you back with me. I tried to tell you.”

There was a spark of recognition in her eyes, then, and he knew what memory his words had brought back. The two of them relaxing in the bathtub, her back against his chest, her damp hair tickling his neck and cheek. Come away with me, he had told her, fingers trailing up and down her arms, making her shiver. Let’s go far away, where no one can find us.

“I didn’t want it to end,” he confessed. “Any of that.”

“You built everything on a lie, Dominic.” A scoff. “If that’s even your real name, that is.”

“It is.”

It seemed to take her off guard and erased the words she had been about to say.

“My name’s Dominic Brunsmeier, not Neumann. I work for an international unit of elite agents that fight terrorism. I was assigned on this mission because we were informed Anton was doing more than simply dealing drugs. I went undercover with a Hells Angels chapter in the past, so the GSG-9 called me back for this one,” he confessed, voice flat and almost professional. He would have never thought he’d one day be making such a speech out loud, but there he was, in a busy café, in front of the woman he still had the nerve to love but who didn’t love him back anymore. “And my love for you could’ve never been a lie.”

She nodded once and turned her head to the side and to the city outside. He was trying to gauge what she might be thinking, what might be going on inside her head. But she remained unreadable and distant. “They’d kill you if they knew you’re back,” she eventually said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye, her chin still resting on the palm of her hand.

He shrugged. “I’ve been close to death too many times to be scared today. This past year…” He couldn’t tell her it had been rough; he didn’t think he had the right to when in her eyes he had gone back home. “I knew I had to see you, even if it was for the last time. I didn’t think you’d agree to meet up, but I’m glad you did.”

They were silent after that. They drank their beverages, and all without speaking a word. But then, when they paid and left, she let him accompany her home.

“I thought you’d break my bones,” he confessed with a chuckle as he stood outside her apartment complex and she picked the right key to open the building’s door.

“I thought I would, too.” She was pensive, lost in thought, and it took her a couple of minutes before she pushed the door open. “But the truth is, I probably could never.”

They stared at each other, and before he could have the time to chicken out, he said, “I know it’s too much to ask, but… We could still have time together.”

She looked at him for a moment longer before she stepped into the building and closed the door behind her back.

Later that night, as he sat on his hotel bed once again, on a phone call with Marius, he couldn’t stop thinking about the last words she told him.

Yes, we could.

Feedback is always welcome if you want to drop old me a line 💛

If you want to be tagged, hit me up! xx

#dominic brunsmeier #dominic bandit brunsmeier #rainbow six siege imagine #r6s bandit imagine #dominic brunsmeier imagine #dominic brunsmeier x oc #r6s bandit x oc #rainbow six siege fanfic

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haeyeongs · 3 years

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#ShowYourProcess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

@lan-xichens tagged me and choose this gifset of mine. Thank you so much!

I’m tagging:

@cuddlybitch with this set

@mercurialhigh with this set

@therukurals with this set

@baijingting with this set

@moonlightsdream with this set

My process is below the line!

1. Planning

I’ve made this gifset as a gift for a kdrama secret santa. I knew I wanted to gif Healer because both my santee and I love this drama. As for the format, I had no idea what it would look like except that I wanted to make a gifset that would look like a graphic. At the time, I was really into experimenting graphic-like gifsets! To get me inspired, I’ve decided to search for a quote to include and found this one from Caitlyn Siehl. This gave me the direction to follow: I wanted to find soft scenes with the couple but also a shot of Young Shin because she would be the center of the gifset.

I don’t remember much since it was a long time ago but I’m pretty sure the first scene I’ve selected was the first hug because I’m very fond of this shot and I always want to gif it lmao. The second hug serves as a parallel because in this one, he is the one to embrace her and they both are at peace (if you’re seen the drama, you know this wasn’t the case in the first hug scene). I wanted to pick a full body shot of Young Shin without really knowing what I would make with it and ended up selecting this one!

2. Creation

I am not sure which version of Photoshop I was using but I also used Avisynth to process my video and help me make gifs with a better quality (now, I actually use Vapoursynth instead).

1st part: the middle gif

The first gif I’ve made was the middle one. I wanted the text to be big so I decided to make a big gif (which was quite rare back then) with a lot of negative space so the text would look great in the background. I wasn’t really sure how to include Young Shin but I ended up deleting the background around her (which took a lot of time!). This is how it looks like for now:

Then, I add a background with a cyan/greenish blue gradient (I always gravitate towards those colors when I’m giffing Healer) and put the text behind her. Once the composition is done, I color the gif to make it more vibrant and to increase the yellows (the main color of my set is cyan but the color accent is yellow, this is a color combinaison I often use). Then, I add some overlays I’ve found here (i’ve added an embossed effect to it) to both make it a bit more dynamic but also so I can use my accent color!

2nd part: the last gif

Yes my process is messy!!! I actually didn’t really know what to do with the last gif. I initially meant to use that scene horizontally, the way it was in the show

But the ratio felt off because of the previous gifs... And I didn’t want to crop it because I thought having a close up on their faces would also feel weird. So I just turned it to the side! You’ve probably noticed both this gif and the first one of the gifset do not have a 540px width: I just wanted to experiment using different widths and thought it was quite harmonious because it gave some movement to the gifset!

As for the text, I had to find another solution. I ended up “cutting” the gif so the text images would show up between them (this sounds weird but if you click on the images of my gifset, you’ll see that the last gifset is actually 5 images : the main gif in the middle, the small gifs at the top and bottom and the two text lines in between the gifs. Back then, tumblr’s gif size limit was still 3mb so gifmakers would be creative to subvert it). The coloring is quite simple but I’ve made the background cyan to match my color palette for this gifset and the text highlights are yellow, of course!

3rd part: the first gif

The last part! This was actually probably the first gif I’ve colored but i didn’t know how to include the text so it was the last one I’ve finished. I struggled a lot with this one and tried many ways to put the text but none looked right to me. And then I’ve randomly put a circle around them because a lot of things in this shot are circular: the way Young Shin holds Jung Hoo (her hands around his head but also her body curled around him), the line of the blanket, the camera movement (which you can’t see because i had to cut it but it spirals). Here’s the uncolored shot so you can see what I mean about the lines:

And then, I realized I could just put the text on the circle to emphasize the lines of this shot ! Once again, I’ve added a yellow highlight which was very useful since the word “favorite” was actually quite hard to read because of the background! And I’m done!!

3. Posting

Well this is quite embarrassing but I tend to be quite anxious about what I create/post so I always keep my sets in my drafts for some time. When I finish a gifset, I put it in my drafts so I can look at it a few days later to make sure I didn’t make any typo or any technical mistake (you know like when your coloring doesn’t show up on one of your frame? or when there’s a layer that moves without you wanting to?). This one was meant to be a gift for the 2019 kdrama secret santa so I didn’t keep it very long in my drafts because I had to post it before the deadline ended. I’ve used my usual creation tags and the secret santa one. Once it’s posted, I’m usually done with my set (even tho I’ve recently started self-rebloging and using the post pinning!)

#showyourprocess #lan xichens #challenge #cuddlybitch #mercurialhigh #therukurals #baijingting #moonlightsdream #text

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regrettablewritings · 4 years

Text

Preferences: Guilty Pleasures

Characters: Okoye, Lucifer Morningstar, Dewey Finn, Peter B. Parker, Ahkmenrah

Okoye

Okoye is straightforward and stony upon first impressions. And, admittedly, even afterward. The only real difference is that, if one gets to know her better, they might find shock in the fact that in spite of her appearance, she Dora leader actually likes sweets. However, it’s not sweet things in general that Okoye feels guilty for enjoying: It’s Starbucks.

Starbucks is the antithesis of everything Okoye is associated with: Supremely un-Wakandan, a chain establishment, and overall just not worth the absurd cost. Not to mention superbly unhealthy when compared to the rest of a fighter’s typical diet. But yet you can bet that every time she needs to go out of the country or off-continent, there’s an invasive shout for joy at the possibility that she might be able to get her hands on a Frappucino (followed by an internal scolding).

She can’t even explain exactly why she likes it; there are plenty of good, even healthier sweet things back in Wakanda -- heck, back anywhere else!

But it’s a bit like when someone craves the cheap taste of school pizza over a legit pie cooked in a stone hearth: She just loves the sugary sweetness, the application of whipped cream to an already tooth-rottingly saccharine icy drink, the addition of chocolate. But Bast, she also hates it. But ever since T’Challa practically shoved a grande cup of caramel frappucino into her hands, she hasn’t felt entirely the same.

Against her better judgement, she’s more or less unintentionally tried 45% of the menu drink-wise. She doesn’t particularly care much for the food part of the establishment, though if she should ever find herself in one during the fall, she might indulge in a chunky slice of pumpkin bread under the conviction that it’s healthy enough for being gourd-related. Never mind that it’s just a cinnamon mixture with more sugar than actual pumpkin-derived anything.

Really, of all those mentioned on this list, Okoye is the one who probably feels the most disappointed in herself whenever she indulges in her guilty pleasure: It’s a betrayal to her patriotism, to her dignity, and to her attempts to eat healthy. But damn, if this type of betrayal doesn’t taste so addicting . . .

Lucifer Morningstar

The thing about Lucifer is that it’s actually a bit hard for him to feel any regrets over liking anything; he’s the Devil, after all, so his whole thing is about embracing the things that make you feel good. And even besides that, he’s mostly managed to skate by in his time on Earth by categorizing things as Stuff He Likes, Stuff He Tolerates, Stuff He Doesn’t Bother With, and Stuff Humans Seem to Enjoy But He Doesn’t Quite Get. It’s a tad restricted of a system but you can’t argue with results.

However, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. The Devil can, in fact, recognize absurdity in liking certain things. Hence why, to a point, he’s fallen prey to his own bizarre pleasures: The Devil has guilty pleasures, and it’s in stupid YouTube videos, Vine, and TikTok.

After he finally drank the Kool-Aid and got himself a smart phone, it was only a matter of time before Lucifer fell down the rabbit hole that is YouTube prank videos and strange uploads about nonsense and animal humor. It was also only a matter of time before he found himself stumbling into Vine compilations. The Celestial is terrifically mystified by the creative power of humans, managing to tell entire stories and peak comedy in only a span of seven seconds. But he’s also quite loathe to have realized it’s been long defunct by the time he’s discovered it.

He’s even more loathe to find himself making references in his daily life: He has actually quietly blurted out, “I sure hope it does” in response to seeing a Road Work Ahead sign, causing Chloe some confusion (and Lucifer lots of embarrassment). He has referred to a culprit as “Jared, Age 19″. Since discovering Vine, there has been at least one night wherein he and a bed mate were sitting there with barbecue sauce on his tiddies, but that was by sheer coincidence.

But eventually the Vine compilation well dried up, and the inevitable transfer over to TikTok happened. And Luci honestly doesn’t know what to make of TikTok. He would describe it as Vine’s Molly-addicted cousin based on its obsession with dancing, but the dances are so stationary that even that doesn’t seem quite right. The videos on the platform are also much more . . . bizarre. And some of them admittedly trigger a fight-or-flight response in him, to which he always chooses the third option of freezing if only so he can keep watching the train wreck unfold before his eyes.

The trouble with TikTok, he’ll admit to himself, is that it’s not as easy to find iconic content the same way he could with Vine. However, this isn’t to say that he hasn’t found anything worth watching over and over and over again . . .

(Let’s just say the “Wolf Pack Compilation” lives in his head rent-free, and he’s both too amused by it and too overwhelmed by its vibe to try and evict it.)

Dewey Finn

Dewey is . . . a special case. Given that he associates messy living and indulging in one’s pleasure a part of the rocker lifestyle, he’s generally quick to embrace whatever makes him happy. He’s very upfront about his interests and is arguably almost incapable of feeling shame. But it’s in there: Deep down. No, not in himself -- in his Spotify. Specifically, a Spotify account made on an email he never uses because it was made specifically to create this separate, uber secret playlist.

One marked “Actual Musical Bops.”

Dewey hates musicals: They’re cheesy, uninspired, gaudy, ridiculous, totally aimed at chicks with weird fantasies that he could never aspire to, and the music is just overall unimpressive. And yet, somehow, against his music elitist nature, a handful have managed to slip through the cracks. At the very least, a handful of numbers have clawed their way past his defenses and into his ear, where they now live rent-free.

In spite of his best efforts, the problems are that he’s a New Yorker, so it’s inevitable that he hears a song or two; and also that, as an instructor (to wealthy New York tweens whose families can afford frequent tripes to the Great White Way, no less), he’s definitely going to wind up hearing about some shows and their stand-out numbers: Against his will, he knows the lyrics to “My Shot”; he has cried in the secrecy of his apartment to “When I Grow Up”; in the never-necessary reason he needs to remember how many minutes there are in a year, he sings it inside his head; hell, he’s even found himself trying to figure out the electric guitar riff from “The Phantom of the Opera” during his down time.

What’s all the more embarrassing is that, given how he presents himself as a music elitist, there’s just no way he can come back from this if anyone were to know. He has to catch himself when he finds himself humming “Johanna” in the teacher’s lounge. He scowls at himself when he can’t sleep and gives in and starts playing “No One is Alone.” He wants to kick his thick ass every time he realizes he’s excited to have stumbled across a “slime tutorial” on YouTube, this one with better quality than the last. The reason he actually put a password on his phone wasn’t out of privacy like a sensible person would, but out of a need to make sure that no one ever found out that he had downloaded the entire Beetlejuice soundtrack, including jankily-recorded songs that never made it to the official cast recording for whatever reason!

And should anyone ever find out about any of this, Dewey has a plan: “Oh, I’m doing research. I’m studying these songs so I can give the kids a lesson on what not to do as actually competent musicians.”

But the lesson would never actually come. Mainly because he keeps prolonging his “research” . . .

He’s also developed a bit of a soft spot for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic due to some students gushing about it, but he would rather sooner die than ever be associated with the term “brony.”

Peter B. Parker

Peter is at a point where he’s too tired to really care about the idea of guilty pleasures. The way he sees it, there are bigger priorities at stake than worrying about someone finding out about your love of some hokey activity or food or form of entertainment.

Besides, he’s a New Yorker: There’s way weirder stuff for people to just not pay any real attention to. Hence why he thinks nothing of his bizarre eating habits. And no, this isn’t referring to his disastrous appetite: This is about his tendency to eat food with his hands. Foods that, well, he really should probably utilize eating utensils for.

To be fair, this habit has always existed in him in some form or another, especially since, as Spider-Man, he often needs to eat food on the go. But during the time he spent living the life of a depressed bachelor, it came out in full force. On the rare occasion he wasn’t eating a food that deserved to be eaten by hand, he often found himself loathing the idea of doing the dishes afterward. There would be days he’d feel only slightly less depressed; enough to make a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese in the pot, but not enough to avoid cutting out the middle man.

He’s thankful the craptastic apartment wasn’t also see-through because if it were, he’s positive his neighbors would’ve thought they were bearing witness to a man’s breakdown as he wept into a pot of macaroni and cheese, his hand full of the stuff, while wearing a Spider-Man costume. (And, to be fair, they actually would be.)

In addition to this, there were also those nights where he would be prepared to actually tuck in to a plate of spaghetti, only for some crime going on elsewhere in the city to drag him away. By the time he’d return, the plate would’ve been cold and his energy too depleted to want to even dream about cleaning more than he already had to.

The great news is that he’s thankfully done a 180, now able and willing (if begrudgingly) to clean up after himself. But bad news is that this feral man will still eat a fully-loaded baked potato like an apple. In a park. In front of women and children. He’s just too tired to care anymore. He’s aware of the guilt in this as a concept, but he’s also aware that he needs to take whatever happiness he can get out of whatever he does. And if that means eating everything by hand, then so be it!

Ahkmenrah

Funnily enough, Ahkmenrah doesn’t seem to experience much of any shame for enjoying the things most might feel the need to hide: He’s constantly curious and has missed out on a lot over the centuries, so why should he feel bad for wanting to indulge in them? Celebrity gossip is just a more fun version of the palace gossip he’d grown up hearing as a boy; reality TV is like watching a play, but with much more fights, less deaths, and more faulty romances; and sloppy meatball subs are like a feast for a man of his time!

Besides, he’s a king: Kings shouldn’t have to feel embarrassment over what the common folk might think.

And yet . . . It took some time, but eventually Ahkmenrah did experience it: Guilt in his pleasures.

He couldn’t even recall where it had all started. Maybe he was searching for more content to swallow after the most recent season of his new favorite show had ended? Whatever the case, he wound up biting off more than he could chew when he stumbled upon . . . fanfiction.

The adorable yet sad thing is that he didn’t even think anything of it at first. It wasn’t until he brought up a ship he’d invested his last few nights awake exploring on the computer: Nobody knew what the crap he was talking about, so of course he felt the need to explain it. But the more he talked, the more perplexed his friends looked. And the more he could feel his cheeks and ears burn.

Oh, he thought. Is this . . . embarrassment? Is that what this feels like? Oh, this is just foul.

Thankfully, nobody pressured him to keep talking about it, but the poor king sure as heck didn’t feel much of a desire to talk any further about it. But he needed to talk to somebody about his newly acquired “feels” as those online were calling them.

Joining fanfiction-oriented sites was the next obvious step, of course, but he’s experienced mixed feelings about it: On one hand, it’s nice to talk with people who share similar views and excitement about a fictional couple. But on the other, the digital wars that have broken out both disturb him and bring out the worst in him.

Like, of course there are bigger things to deal with than whether or not So-So is better off with Him-Ham, but if you truly think that Blah-Blah and Himhaw are a healthy relationship, then you can go do a service and bury yourself in the desert sands to provide substance to the hungry beetles with your flesh --

Suffice to say, a lot of the guilt in this pleasure seems to come from the fact that Ahk can get a little too emotionally invested if the work is really good. He tries to limit his interactions to commenting and praising certain works, and encouraging content creators. However, he’s also contemplated contributing his own pieces of fiction to the fandom . . .

#okoye #lucifer morningstar imagines #dewey finn #peter b parker imagines #ahkmenrah #okoye imagines #lucifer imagines #dewey finn imagines #ahkmenrah imagines #regrettablewritings #spiderman into the spiderverse imagines #spiderman itsv imagines #spiderman imagines #i tried posting this on my phone and it literally fucking deleted EVERYTHING #anyway @staff: the fuck is up? fix that shit because now i literally cannot post SHIT on my phone from my laptop #preference #preferences

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