#totally reasonable but I just need to get this bitchiness out of my system | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dontworrysunflower · 3 years

Text

Merry Fucking Christmas | h.s.

a/n: i’m baaaaccckk!! lol idk it took me a while to finish this and i was gonna have it finished before christmas but then i was exposed to covid so i was little paranoid but anyway (i’m good tho). merry christmas and happy holidays!! i know this years been hard but hopefully we can make it a little better :)

warnings: drinking, angst?? idk not proof read word vomit, some language too

word count: 3.1k

also thank you @watchmegetobsessed !!

feedback/reblogs appreciated

You knew the holidays this year were going to be difficult. You procrastinated on getting gifts for your friends. Your work seemed to pile up on your desk since you got your promotion. You weren’t able to fly back home, and you still had some thanksgiving weight you weren’t able to put off.

Oh yeah, another thing. Harry was still with his girlfriend.

You met Katy, Harry’s girlfriend, at his birthday party in February. She was the epitome of ‘his type’. She had bleach blonde extensions and the bluest eyes you've ever seen. She was tall and really, really loud.

Since then, she’s all he ever talked about when they weren’t together, but when they were in the same room, boy did you want to gag.

You thought they would last maybe three to four months, you were so sure, you bet with some of your other friends.

Needless to say, you lost quite a lot of money.

You tried not to let it bother you, really. But it was so hard when Harry is the literal sweetest person you’ve met, had the voice of an angel and wasn’t bad to look at.

You felt you were the closest with Harry when you moved to London. He made you feel welcome in your little friends group. There was a little flirting game between the two of you that you didn’t even notice until one of your friends brought it up.

“Oh c’mon, it’s so obvious you like each other.” Margot slurred, her second glass clinking against the table as she finished every drop.

“What?” You asked, baffled. Your eyes were wide and your face started to heat up. “He doesn’t like me.”

“But you like him?” Ava, a friend from work, smirked at you.

You stumbled on your words, wiping at the condensation on your glass.

But since he was in a relationship now, you felt almost icky around him. You felt so uncomfortable around him that you did whatever you could to not be in the same room as him.

You were ready for the holidays, you thought. It would give you a break from constantly thinking about him being so busy with your family back in your hometown.

You should’ve known London weather wouldn’t be in your favor. It rained constantly everyday and the fog seemed to get closer to the ground every other day. The weather was getting so bad that you started working from home, the roads too wet and icy to drive on. So honestly, you weren’t that surprised when airports closed due to the weather, meaning you had to spend Christmas in London.

With Harry.

The day after flights were cancelled Harry texted on your group chat saying he could host a dinner and party on Christmas eve and everyone was invited. You watched texts from your other friends flood in, some excited vulgar words were thrown in there as well.

You never responded. Not only because you still felt weird around him for having this massive crush on him, but because things haven’t really been the same between you two.

You can’t remember the last time you had a full on conversation with him before you had to excuse yourself because you couldn’t take the ache in your chest when you were around him, and he wasn’t yours. You can’t remember the last joke he ever told you or when you went out for lunch or drinks when it was only the two of you. You were sure he noticed how weird you were around him, but never said anything, so you let it be.

As the day neared, your mind would change on whether you were going or not. You didn’t want to seem bitchy and cold on what was supposed to be the happiest and cheerful day of the year, so you thought you would go. You thought of every reason you shouldn’t go that had nothing to do with Harry, but you knew you wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him cozy up with his very serious girlfriend.

But there would be alcohol, so you decided to go.

•••

Hey (y/n)! Think you come over early and help me set up for tomorrow? H xx

You stared at the text for what seemed like hours, but it was only a couple seconds. Before you could even register what your fingers were doing, you tied up a quick message and hit send before you could stop yourself.

Of course!! See you tomorrow!

You hated yourself for the rest of the day. Why would you do this to yourself? You could barely be in the same room as him and some other friends. How would you survive being alone before the party started?

•••

The butterflies in your stomach have not been able to settle since you woke up Christmas Eve morning. Just the thought of seeing him made you nervous. You almost didn’t get out of bed that morning. But you pat yourself on the back when your feet finally hit your wooden flooring and moved on with your day.

Your shoulders hung low beside you as the time to meet up grew closer, the sun lowering behind you, Christmas lights and inflatable decorations coming to life as stars dotted the sky.

You sighed heavily as you styled your hair and naturally did your makeup.

You slid on your silky, tight dress and grabbed your coat and quickly made your way to your car to get away from the bitter cold.

You rubbed your hands together, blowing into them to regain some feeling before turning the key into the ignition, quickly turning the heater on, Mariah Carey blasting through your speakers.

You were about to pull out of your driveway, mumbling along to Mariah’s notes when you realized you forgot the gifts.

•••

Your shoulders were hunched up as you knocked on the white door, your foot tapping against the brick stairs of Harry’s house as you waited for him to open it in the freezing cold.

You could hear shuffling from the other side and watched the doorknob wiggle, Harry having trouble with his lock since June and still hasn’t had anyone fix it.

The door swings open to reveal Harry in his glory, brown corduroy pants and an ugly Christmas sweater under an apron that’s tied around his slender waist that you’ve always been jealous of.

“Hey, sorry, come on in.” Harry said to you before moving out of the way, a bowl nestled between his side and his arm.

You mumbled a quiet thank you before stepping in, your cheeks reddening at the warmth enveloping you as you walked through the foyer of his home.

“Mm,” he hummed as he remembered something. He puts down the bowl he had on his white kitchen counter and waddles over to you, a small curve on his lips as he wrapped his arms around you. “Merry Christmas, love.”

You hate that nickname. But you don’t. You hate the butterflies that flutter in your stomach when he says that word. You hate the goosebumps it causes you and the hairs sticking up on your neck when he says the one thing you feel too harshly for him. And you hate how much he doesn’t feel it back.

“Merry Christmas, Harry.” You mumbled into his neck, his cologne flooding your senses bringing you comfort.

He doesn’t let go of you yet, but he backs up just a little to see you. “You look gorgeous, (y/n).”

The air gets stuck in your lungs and you almost forgot how to formulate words. You hoped Harry thought the pigment on your cheeks would be from the cold because it totally was. Before it was obvious how his words affected you, you stuttered out a few words. “Thank you, you look nice too.”

He chuckled at you, the breath passing his lips hitting your neck, a tingle passing through your spine. “You don’t have to lie, darling.” He squeezed you one last time before letting you go, your body instantly becoming colder as he backed away.

There's a low hum of Christmas music playing in his surround sound system, a tall tree tucked in a corner between his burning fireplace and window looking out onto the street.

You turn your attention back to Harry as he speaks up again, his famous dimples puncturing his cheeks. “Thanks fo’ comin’ early to help me out.”

You rolled your coat off your shoulders and hung by the door, walking up to him as he moved around the kitchen. “Oh yeah, it’s no problem. Not like I had anything else to do.”

He gave you a small sympathetic smile before throwing a tray full of greens into the oven. “I’m sorry you couldn’t go see your family.”

You shrug as you run your finger on the edge of his marble counter. “It’s alright, nothing I can do much anyway.” You perk up when you remember what you’re doing here so early in the first place. “Guess that’s why I’m here, no? What can I help you with?” Your heels click as you move around the counter closer to him.

“Nope.” His lips puckered as he pushed you back to where you were standing. “Just stand there and talk to me. Wine?”

Your brows furrowed in confusion as you blindly nod, watching him uncork a bottle of Moscato. Your favorite.

He hands you a glass of the sparkling wine before turning back around to the dishes, prepping food of all kinds for everyone and most importantly; eggnog.

“But, you said you needed my help.”

He chuckled nervously, his cheeks reddening. From your comment or from the wine? You weren’t going to get your hopes up. “I just need some company before the party. Just stand there and look pretty.”

You try your hardest ignore the blush on your cheeks. You twirl the wine glass from the neck, watching the liquid swirl around in the depths of the glass. “What about Katy?”

He sighs deeply, opening the oven to check on the food. “We’ve been kind of fighting lately.”

You did your best to stop the grin from forming on your lips, hoping he did notice your sudden burst at the new information. They are still together, so you can’t act on anything. “I’m sorry. Can I ask what’s going on?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know really. Anything and everything. Every little thing I do annoys her and anything she does annoys me. It just wasn’t the same.”

“Is she coming?” You ask before you can think about it.

He shrugs again, shoulders hanging more than usual. “I don’t think so. She said she was staying home since she can‘t fly back to her family either.”

A silence hangs between the two of you when neither of you said anything, not really sure of what needs to be said next.

“I don’t think I feel the same way for her as I did in the beginning.” Harry mumbled, arms crossed over his chest as his hip leaning against the counter, his usually bright eyes a little darker, a little sadder.

You walk up to him and lay your hand on his shoulder, giving him a small smile. “It’s not my business but, if you really feel that way, you shouldn’t lead her on, it’ll only hurt both of you.”

Harry looks down at the floor as he nods. “Thanks, love.”

There’s a wave of silence between you again as he raises his head to look at you. You almost felt small under his gaze. Something about his crystal green eyes always made you nervous. You were scared he could see what you were really thinking.

And you also swear his eyes fell to your lips.

•••

The dinner party was in full swing now, people’s laughter bleeding in with the loud Christmas music playing around the house. Some people were dancing in front of the fireplace, drinks being refilled every once in a while.

You were standing by the counter with your friends, Margot and Ava, chatting and drinking your eggnog instead of the wine you had before the party started. You had completely forgotten about the wonderful man hosting this party, the conversation you had earlier with him slipping your mind as the drink in your hand lowered to the bottom of the glass, intoxicating your thoughts.

Even though you offered to help, Harry didn’t let you help with the rest of dinner before everyone came over, so now the food still wasn’t ready as people flooded in. You heard him say something about potatoes and that was as much as you knew of the food preparation and when you would be able to eat.

The music is lowered a bit and then a clicking sound was heard, everyone turning their heads towards Harry, who clinked a fork against his glass. “Dinner is ready!”

Everyone cheered and started making their way towards the dining room. Most people had already filtered towards the next room when a knock on the front door was heard.

You turned your head as Harry twisted the knob. You were sure Harry's face mimicked yours when you saw who was standing at the doorway.

There stood Katy, hair newly bleached and a little overdressed.

She wasted no time in wrapping her arms around him, her plump lips repeatedly marking his face with the bright lipstick.

“Oh god,” you waltzed over towards Ava, who was pouring herself a new glass of eggnog. “pass me the eggnog, I can’t stand this sober.” You pushed her over slightly and grabbed the handle of the ladle she was using, filling up your cup almost to the brim.

Ava looked at you in curiosity at your sudden change, carefully looking over at the lovely couple still by the door. “Wait, I thought you told me they were fighting.” She whispered beside you, eyes widening as she watched you gulp down some of the eggnog you just served yourself to give yourself some more.

“Guess fucking not.” You were much less sober now, on the brink of tipsy and drunk. Your words slurred, eyelids heavy, vision blurry. “Let’s go fucking eat.” You dragged Ava by the wrist towards the commotion in the dining room, almost, but not quite forgetting about the couple behind you.

•••

You’ve had four glasses of eggnog. Or was it five? But now, you stand in front of the bowl, pouring some into your glass again, making it six.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” You hear his sultry voice behind you, his tone a little sassy and annoyed, but you didn’t care.

“What are you gonna do about it?” You slurred, turning around to face him. His pink lips were turned down in a frown, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration, his buff arms that were constricted in his sweater cross in front of his chest. “Gonna go kiss your girlfriend some more?” You stumbled on your feet, your drink almost spilling over the rim.

“What does that have to do with anything?” His face changed from annoyance to confusion. His thumb twisting the ring on his other finger nervously.

You open your mouth to retaliate, but even in this drunk state you knew not to say anything. You chug the creamy drink, keeping eye contact with him, watching his face change again. You didn’t care.

He obviously didn’t care either.

You sighed dramatically as you finished the drink. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

•••

You had sobered up quite a bit after your little encounter with Harry, mainly because there was no eggnog left.

You realized it was for the better though, so you made your way back into the kitchen, doing your best to not stumble or bump against anything as you grabbed an empty cup to fill with water.

“I am really sorry.” You knew his voice anywhere. But it wasn’t his usual chirpy, charming voice he had that always soothed you, it sounded more sad and somber.

“On Christmas? Out of any day you chose today?” Katy sniffled, voice wobbly and hurt.

“I know but, you know we can’t go on any longer, we’ll just hurt each other more.”

“I think I'm going to head out.”

You don’t hear Harry say anything back, but the sound of the door clicking open catches your attention and you almost turn around to watch.

“I just have one question.” Katy said weakly.

You walked away before you could hear anything else.

•••

Even though you were still a little upset at Harry (For what? You weren’t sure anymore), you stayed behind as everyone left to help him clean up before you head home.

You were putting things back in his refrigerator when you heard the front door close, the light chatter and drunken goodbyes silenced by the wooden door.

You kept your back towards the door, suddenly nervous of the words that would be spoken between the two of you.

“(y/n), can we talk?” Harry’s voice was low and sultry, your knees almost gave out.

“I should um-I should get going. It’s late.” You hurry around him to grab your things and for the door, but he holds your wrist.

“Please?” He sounded desperate, and for the first time in what felt like days you looked up into his emerald eyes. There was that desperate look in his eyes, his eyebrows furrowed and lips turned down into a frown.

You sigh and nod slowly.

He lets go of your wrist and stuffed his hands in his back pockets, his pink cheeks either from the cold or from nervousness.

“I’m sorry.” He said suddenly. “I didn’t mean to get mad and I know I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Is that it?

You weren’t going to lie, you thought he would profess his love to you or something.

“I um- I also,” he swallows and takes your hand, his rings cold to the touch. “I broke up with Katy.”

Your mouth opened for words to come out but nothing ever left your lips.

“Do you want to know the real reason why Katy and I were fighting?”

You’re still speechless, scared of the answer, even though you have an idea of what he'll say.

“I’ve always liked you, (y/n).” His shoulders rise in a deep breath. “I guess, I don’t know, I thought if I started seeing someone else it would it easier but, not being with you this past year has been hell and I know I haven’t made it any easier with being with Katy but—”

Your lips crash on his, your arms wrapping his neck, your fingers immediately tangling in his brown locks.

He stumbles back in shock but grabs at your hips, bringing you closer to his chest.

His pink lips press against yours, the corners slowly turning up into a smile, breaking your kiss.

“Merry fucking Christmas to me.”

•••

Taglist:

@samaratheweirdo @sarcasticallywitty15

(Let me know if you would like to be added or taken off taglist.)

403 notes · View notes

s1utspeare · 3 years

Note

Hi darling

You write such an awesome metas on fictional character so I wanted you to ask that what's your thought on Huo Dao Fu.

😊

AH OMG!!! Your ask could not have come at a better time, cause I have a feeling this man’s gonna be an important part of my next fic, so I really should start figuring him out. He’s SUCH A LIL WEIRDO??? honestly i love him, even though he’s a total Bitch 97% of the time, but I think at heart he’s just Looking For Something, as are all the characters in this show.

What really interests me about Huo Daofu are his character parallels with Wu Xie, and I think that’s where most of the conflict between them comes in. Wu Xie, whether he means to be or not, is the Focus of Jiumen a good seventy-five percent of the time. Not always in a positive manner, because in Sha Hai they were all about ready to kick his ass, and in Reboot he pisses them off pretty good with his Warehouse Eleven stunts, but there’s a level of attention on him that other members of the families don’t receive, and I think Huo Daofu notices that, and is like “hey wait a minute why is he getting all the spotlight I want some spotlight >:( He’s not even doing a good job why is everyone paying attention to him”

Cause this bitch. THIS BITCH. He tried to be that bitch. He TRIED SO HARD. He went to EUROPE. He went to EUROPE and got a fucking like??? medical degree???? Like he went to GERMANY??? who does that?? not fucking wu xie, that’s who. Wu Xie went and got like a history degree or some shit which was just par for the course. But HUO DAOFU. He was DIFFERENT. He was gonna be THE SHIT. He was gonna be the unabomber of Jiumen, was gonna blow all that shit up and then say “fuck u” and all the future generations of Jiumen children were gonna hear horror stories about how Unique and Wild Huo Daofu was and he was never gonna have to deal with any of them ever again.

BUT THEN WU XIE DECIDED TO BE PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE AND HE DIDN’T EVEN DO ANYTHING OFF THE BEATEN PATH. HE LITERALLY JUST FOLLOWED WU SANXING AROUND FOR LIKE. A YEAR. AND EVERYONE LOST THEIR MINDS. Like if I had been Huo Daofu and tried SO HARD to be different from everyone else in my generation and then this Dumb Little History Twink kissed a Zhang and found some wild swamp treasure and everyone went nuts about it, I would have been pissed off too.

Cause Jiumen is like. Annoying as hell, and everyone has a different way to deal with the fact that they’re a part of a treasure hunting org that has been around for hundreds of years and features immortals and weird-ass dudes with unbelievable martial arts skills and also Wu Sanxing. Xiaoge deals with them by Fucking Off Forever. Zhang Rishan deals with them by being The Most Competent Person In Any Given Room, and Huo Daofu deals with them by being The Biggest Bitch He Can Be, which isn’t even that much of a bitch, because there is always going to be a bigger bitch in Jiumen, and his name is Wu Xie. So it just backfires on him, because NO ONE GIVES A SINGLE FUCK.

We’re introduced to him at Xiao Hua’s fake funeral (which lmao i love that) when he’s making some Evil Plans with the rest of Jiumen, but not for the same reasons, cause when they actually get to the desert, Huo Daofu does not care about the treasure pits. He doesn’t even go down into Gutongjing (I’m pretty sure), he just hangs out in the camps because he doesn’t CARE about the treasure, he just wants to keep Wu Xie from succeeding, wants to say, see, look, I can do things too, I can be clever and cunning, I can take them all down from the inside out and I don’t even need friends to do it.

Huo Daofu is jealous of Wu Xie, I think, because Wu Xie is free of the confines of Jiumen, and Wu Xie has friends, and Wu Xie didn’t have to go to another country where he knew no one and didn’t even speak the language and work so hard and be fucking brilliant in ways that no one knows about and doesn’t always, always get overlooked in favor of someone who disregards everyone’s favor, but receives it anyway.

So when Pangzi shows up with Wu Xie, half-dead, on Huo Daofu’s doorstep, I think a little vindictive part of him goes serves him right.

But Huo Daofu is not a part of Jiumen in the ways that matter, and he’s a doctor, first and foremost. He took oaths because he wants to help people, he wants to save them, and even if he hates Wu Xie down in the pits of his stomach, he’s not just going to let him die. And so he follows Wu Xie to thunder city because, as he says, “I want to be there when you die.” He’s not going to kill him, he can’t do that, he’s a doctor, but that small, mean part of him wants to watch Wu Xie fall.

(Also I love @kholran’s headcanon that Huo Daofu is Wu Xie’s bitchy ex, bc like YES??? OF COURSE???? like they had an on-again, off-again thing cause they were like “we’re not doing this with the Jiumen women” but they’re WAY TOO ALIKE and just ended up fighting all the time.)

Reboot loves the Rule of Threes, which is where an idea is repeated three times in order to create a pleasing pattern. Human brains love patterns, and so when we see the Iron Triangle, when we see the three pills that mark the stages of Wu Xie’s illness, when we see the three missing people from Sanshu’s journey, our brains go oh that’s important (and Reboot ALMOST kills the game, ALMOST knocks it out of the park, but then they have FOUR story arcs instead of THREE, and it drives me ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE. WHY DID THEY DO THIS. WHY).

And Huo Daofu is a FANTASTIC tri-tier replica of Wu Xie’s Greatest Hits, which are:

Being a sort of outcast/family runaway (Wu Xie has very clearly said Fuck Everyone Who Isn’t Sanshu, and Huo Daofu has aligned himself with the Chen clan, because the Huo’s are like Fuck Men (which honestly good for them but pLEASE love ur special doctor boy he’s getting a Complex))

Acting based almost Solely on Emotions when in the Heat of the Moment (i.e. dropping his entire life to go play doctor with a man who will not calm down for any length of time in order to actual REST)

Solving problems that no person should be able to solve because he’s smart as shit

Narratively, he’s a FANTASTIC foil for Wu Xie, because not only does he essentially hold this man’s life in his hands, but because he is what Wu Xie could have been if he hadn’t met Pangzi or Xiaoge, if he hadn’t had support from other people. And I don’t think that’s Huo Daofu’s fault, because he and Wu Xie are so, so similar. He just never got the people he needed, and its so clear that he’s achingly alone all of the time, so no wonder he’s jealous of Wu Xie and wants to become part of this little group so damn badly, even as he’s protesting and saying, “no, no, I want you to die, literally nothing would give me more pleasure, please die right now, I’m waiting.”

Sure, he’s a flipper-flopper ass bitch, but he’s trying his best with what he’s got, and shit, that’s not a lot. He’s got zero support system. I mean why the fuck is he making street churros? Even Zhang Rishan, who has NO culinary expertise or connections whatsover, gets to live in a restaurant, while Huo Daofu has to make fried dough in an alley and then keep people from choking on their own lungs on his damn kitchen table. Someone please help this man.

this is SO LONG i’m sorry but essentially I think that Huo Daofu is Like That because he’s trying so hard to be someone, and no one is paying any attention, and the person he would most relate to, Wu Xie, is off doing God knows what with his polycule of friends and Huo Daofu’s all by himself and like??? i would be SO FRUSTRATED??? please give this man a break and also give him Love??? like, this screenshot speaks VOLUMES (photo credit to @hey-its-wei)

LOOK AT HIM!!!!! LOOK AT HOW FUCKING HAPPY HE LOOKS!!!! JUST TO BE THERE!!!! WITH A GROUP OF PEOPLE!!!!! WHO HAVE SEEN HIM AND LISTENED AND SAID “hey, you can come with us, we’ll take you, you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

I said earlier that Huo Daofu, like everyone else in this series, was Looking For Something. And like many of our beloved Wu Crew, he was looking for a family. And look! He found them :)

#thank you so much for this ask???#i literally cried when i got it it made me so so happy #i love u nonny!!#dmbj #the lost tomb #the lost tomb reboot #huo daofu #huo dao fu #sha hai #tlt #tltr #meta #character meta

46 notes · View notes

jemej3m · 4 years

Text

objection

because im now a law/crim student, this is all im gonna fuckin write about

anyway here’s andrew as neil’s defence attorney (totally inspired by @aymmidumps‘ amazing andrew here)

gruesome crime descriptions but neil’s not a butcher in this one

“Wesninki’s applying for an appeal,” was all Andrew heard from the minute he’d stepped into the office. It was all anyone could - and would - talk about.

Reasonably so, Andrew presumed. Nathaniel Wesninski had been locked up since his nineteenth birthday, when he slit his father’s throat. Andrew reckons he should’ve never been charged with murder, especially when considering his father was the Butcher of Baltimore, but Andrew had been just an undergraduate student at the time. There was nothing he could’ve done.

Now, though.

Now Andrew was just over thirty and steadily climbing the ranks. He hadn’t intended on becoming a defense attorney, but it just so happened that he was damn good at keep kids out of jail. The juvenile detention system was just a cog in the wheel of dysfunction, after all: he knew that first hand.

Survivors of violent assault who had killed their attackers were also common clients of Andrew’s. Those with mental illnesses and drug addictions found their way into his stack of case files, too. He’d always thought he’d be on the right side of the law, throwing shitty people in jail and fixing the system one day at a time.

This was alright too, he supposed.

“Hey, Minyard,” Boyd leaned against the door-frame of Andrew’s office. He had his own private space, unlike the others, who often shared offices with two or three of their colleagues. Andrew was just lucky. Or favoured.

“Let me guess,” Andrew said, without looking up from his file on a thirteen-year-old being charged with battery and theft. “Dan’s pissy because I didn’t turn up to dinner on Friday, there’s free coffee in the break room, Wesninski’s applying for appeal and Wymack wants me?”

“Uh,” Matt squinted. “Yes? How the hell did you guess?”

Andrew gave Matt a bored look. “You talk too loud. The walls are thin, you know.”

The man huffed, conflicted between being impressed and disgruntled at Andrew’s usual bitchiness. He simply threw his hands up and vanished from Andrew’s doorway, most likely to groan to his wife about how incorrigible Andrew seemed to be.

He threw his file onto his desk, locked his office door behind him and swung past the break room to dump three packets of sugar into a free latte. By the time he arrived at Wymack’s door, the man was already stood up, most definitely unimpressed by Andrew’s tardiness. And his lack of tie.

He did wear a tie to court. Most of the time.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” the old man grunted, tugging on the cuffs of his casual blazer. Andrew fucking hated blazers. They were always too tight around his shoulders. “I suppose you already know what this is all about?”

“Seeing as Allison, Robin and Renee have all tried to talk my ear off about it, yes. I’m aware Wesninski is trying for appeal.”

Wymack wasn’t impressed. “What you don’t know is that he’s come to us to represent him.”

Andrew paused. Now that was interesting. Nathaniel Wesninski was halfway between New York and Baltimore. Why the fuck would he recruit from seedy South Carolina? There was no viable reason, unless -

“Kevin,” he deduced. “How do they know each other?”

“Moriyamas and Wesninskis ran in the same circles, before it all got shut down.” Wymack arched a brow. “Wesninski figures that Kevin is the only person he can trust.”

“Kevin won’t do it,” Andrew shook his head. “He doesn’t touch anything Moriyama related with a ten-foot pole.”

“Wesninski knows that. Which is why he’s asked for you: Kevin passed him on.”

Andrew closed his eyes, very, very briefly, as he cocked his head at his boss. “You want me to get the most notorious gangster’s son out of jail.”

“At least have him commuted to manslaughter,” Wymack suggested.

At least, Andrew thought. He remembered looking over the Wesninski case in his third year. Nathaniel Wesninski had laughed, incredulous, as the FBI lead him away in handcuffs, nearly losing his fingers in an effort to cling onto the knife that he’d used to end Nathan Wesninski’s life.

That wasn’t manslaughter. That was homicide of the first degree, plastered over the front page of every newspaper the next day.

"You’ll owe me,” Andrew warned.

“I’ll cover your bar tab at the Foxhole for the rest of the year,” Wymack conceded.

Andrew huffed. “It’s February.”

Wymack arched an eyebrow.

Andrew had a feeling he’d regret this. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks and rocked back on his heels, looking to the ceiling. “Fine.”

“It was an order, not a request,” Wymack grunted. “Get out of my office and get a visitation permit.”

Andrew, already fed up with a case he’d only just been assigned, turned on his heel and dutifully marched off.

The drive was nine and a half hours. Andrew could’ve made it a single-day round trip on a plane, but he refused to fly somewhere he could drive instead. He booked a half-hour slot with Wesninski on Saturday afternoon: if he found the man interesting enough, he’d bribe a guard to let him back in Sunday morning. Then he’d drive home, midday Sunday.

At least Wymack was letting him stay in a nice hotel in Philadelphia. It almost made the journey worth it, but he wouldn’t jump the gun. It would only be a worthwhile trip if he figured that Wesninski wasn’t hopeless. The man was just 29. It was nearly 10 years since he’d been locked up. Andrew’s chances were - practically slim to none.

Half-way through the drive Nicky called.

“Heard you’re going to see Wesninski,” he said, the phone somewhat masking Nicky’s obvious curiosity.

Andrew sighed. “Aaron needs to shut his mouth.”

“Aaron comes to family dinners,” Nicky objected. “He has every right to tell me whatever he wants. Speaking of - if I promise you a whole loaf of garlic bread, will you come to the next one?”

Andrew huffed. “I’m busy.”

“Yeah, yeah, you hate socialising, you’ll tolerate dealing with Aaron at work but nowhere else, blah blah. What about me? Your dear, old cousin?”

“Fine,” Andrew grunted. “Now, leave me alone.”

“Yes!” Nicky crowed, but whatever response he had after that was cut off. Andrew dropped his phone back in the passenger seat, turning the radio back up and relaxing into his chair.

It was a further five hours after that disturbance till his arrival at SCI Phoenix, Philadelphia. Andrew would always despise how depressing prison complexes looked. Chain link fences and brick boxes, splayed out like a progression of architectural failures. The parking lot was enormous and empty. Andrew parked far enough away that his nice car wasn’t in direct sight from the prison’s visiting entrance, fixing up his suit and tie and slinging the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder.

The guard by the door snapped his fingers for identification. Andrew flicked his license towards him, gaze deadened by boredom. The guard almost winced when Andrew sighed, looking to the clock. Once he was finally granted access, he took the lanyard and shoved his way through the doors.

Visitation was close to shutting up when Andrew arrived, miserable loved ones reaching for final hugs and brief kisses. Andrew was lead by the duty guard to a private room, waiting by the barred door.

Wesninski was already waiting for him inside. His hands were cuffed to the table, fiddling with a blunt key. His red curls were overgrown and messy, the grey jumpsuit hanging off his small frame.

When the door clanged shut, Wesninski looked up. His eyes were the most spectacular blue Andrew had ever seen, his face marred by horrific scars and the stitches used to hold him together. He looked ridiculously unimpressed. Andrew, meanwhile, smothered any flickers of emotion as intrigue sparked in his chest.

Damn, he thought.

“Unlock him,” Andrew said, to the guard.

The guard arched an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Obviously,” Andrew said, rolling his eyes. He didn’t have knives on his person - they’d set off the metal detector - but he was never vulnerable. He made a promise that he’d never be taken advantage of again.

Wesninski flexed his wrists when the guard unlocked them, giving Andrew a thinly veiled look of appraisal. The guard immediately skittered off to stand outside the door, holding the interrogation room’s keys in tightly clenched fists.

“So,” Wesninski said, holding out a hand. “You’re the famous Andrew Minyard.”

"And you are the infamous Nathaniel Wesninski,” Andrew returned, ignoring the warmth of his skin as they shook hands. He sat down: the shitty metal chair creaked. “We both seem to have names and reputations that precede us.”

Nathaniel’s eye twitched slightly. “I prefer Neil.”

Andrew leant back in his chair, leg crossed at the ankle. “You seriously think they’re going to let you out?”

“Well,” Neil admitted. “Probably not. But I figured I’d give it a shot. It should be safer out there now.”

“You’ve been hiding in here? Who from, your father’s ghost?”

Neil was not impressed. “His bosses, actually. But since Kengo’s second son was shot between the eyes and his first son locked up for it, I should be fine.”

“Riko and Ichirou,” Andrew deduced. “Kevin’s mentioned them once or twice.”

Neil just glared. “I can’t believe that coward won’t help me.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “He owes you, does he? What for? Helping him escape the Moriyamas? Wait - that was me. What about coping with his trauma and reestablishing his career? Nevermind - that was me, too. Goodness, you haven’t been around much, have you? Right, right,” Andrew leaned over the table, resting his chin on his laced fingers. “You’ve been in jail for ten years.”

“You are not funny,” Neil snapped, gripping onto his blunt key.

“I don’t know if it’s worth my time, Mr Wesninski,” Neil flinched again. “Convince me.”

“Other than it’s what is just?” Andrew arched an eyebrow. Neil huffed. “Fine. I’ll pay you. Double your normal fee.”

“Prison pays well, does it?”

“Blood money,” Neil had the audacity to wink. Dammit, Andrew thought again. “I already know you’re quite happy to spend dirty cash, Minyard. A G6, right? Bit of an upgrade from your mother’s car.”

He should not know that. “You’re not exactly winning me over, here.”

Neil leaned back in his chair, fiddling with the stupid little key. He must have spent the last decade tracing it down to its current blunt status. Andrew wondered what it used to unlock.

Okay - he was intrigued by Neil. And yes, his narrative fit Andrew’s bill. And some spare cash wouldn’t hurt: he could sent Nicky and Erik over to Christmas for the summer.

“What’s something you’ve never given anyone?” Andrew inquired.

Neil looked up from under his ruby-tinted lashes. “What?”

“I want something that no one else has.” Andrew leaned further forward, leaning in close. “What do you have to offer me, Wesninski?”

For a moment, Neil simply stared. His fingers stilled. He definitely had a few tattoos and scars, from what Andrew could glean at the little slice of a sharp collarbone, exposed by the jumpsuit.

It was silent - almost electric. Andrew watched as something behind Neil’s eyes crumbled, the exhaustion settling in, the loneliness of a man who had known nothing but pain and suffering and isolation.

“Everyone knows Nathaniel Wesninski,” Neil said. “No one knows Neil.”

Andrew felt the remnants of a smirk tug at the corner of his lips.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” Neil offered, glaring at the table like it offended him. “I’ve never told the truth before.”

Andrew stood up, offering his hand. Neil followed suit, grip hesitant where he clasped Andrew’s hand.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Andrew said.

“You’ll try,” Neil corrected him.

“Here’s something you should know about me, Neil,” Andrew tugged on his suit jacket, fixing his cuffs. “I never fail a promise.”

Andrew felt Neil’s gaze, watching him as he left. As Andrew filtered past the guard, he snuck a two hundred into the guard’s pocket.

“Nine o’clock, tomorrow morning,” he said. “Bring him here.”

The guard, moon-eyed, just nodded.

Andrew glanced over his shoulder for one last assessment of his newest client. Neil was leant against the table they had spoken at, arms crossed as he glared in Andrew’s direction. His hair flopped forward, masking one eye. Like this, with his tattooed forearms and shoulders and hell-fire hair, he looked dangerous.

In his right hand, he played with his key.

Andrew spun on his heel and left. He knew he’d made the right decision.

Neil Wesninski would get out of jail, if it was the last thing Andrew did.

#andreil #andrew minyard #lawyer!andrew #felon!neil #neil josten #all for the game #defence attorneys don't always suck!#aftg #tfc #the foxes #law firm!foxes #david wymack #kevin day #tw: a lil bit of mentioned murder #the tension between them is just #mwah #i love my boys #jem writes

758 notes · View notes

deathisanartmetzli · 3 years

Text

More Than Meets the Eye || Vic & Metzli

TIMING: Early August

PARTIES: @natusvincere @deathisanartmetzli

SUMMARY: Vic runs into Metzli and gets a lot more than just unwanted flirtation.

CONTAINS: Gore

As the final remnants of the sun dissipated, Metzli let out a soft sigh. It was a long day, a little too long for their liking, but it was finally over. Giving the place a final look, checking off each box on their nightly routine list, they heard a faint crack. Curiously, the crack seemed to echo. The sound of rock breaking apart likewise broke their concentration.

Following the sound, it led to the sculpture section of the gallery. Nothing seemed out of place in the slightest. Metzli walked through to make double sure, and when they found nothing, they headed back towards the front to grab their things.

Metzli was quick to swing the strap of their bag and engage their security system, doing it twice out of cautiousness. Their footsteps clacked against the tile floor, coming to a stop as they exited. The key slid in and an audible click sounded as the door locked. Pocketing their keys, their eyes caught sight of a rather beautiful woman. They smiled and thought maybe they could get lucky today. “Good evening, miss. How do you do? Lovely evening, is it not?”

The definitive worst thing about being a vampire (besides that annoying eternal life thing), was being forced to avoid the sun and it’s beauty at all costs. Even in Vic’s worst days as a human, the sun had a way of adding both a literal and figurative brightness to her day, because even in the darkest of times, it always returned. Now, without it, darkness loomed. The quacks of the 21st century would say something about vitamin D deficiency.

The twilight of the late evening gave at least some sort of loophole from this problem, and it was when she found herself venturing out most when she wasn’t working. The plus side, too, was that most people were too wrapped up in trying to get home to their families to even think about bothering her. But fuck all, apparently she wouldn’t be so lucky tonight.

Vic usually lingered in her walks by art galleries, enjoying careful peaks inside if they were already closed for the night. She had been planning on doing just that, too, until a person locking the door all but accosted her. Her face instinctively formed into a scowl, automatically on the defence. “I’m not your miss. I am a grown woman”, she said. At their second question, she looked the person up and down, a firm scowl still set, though morphing into one a bit more judgemental. “Well, it was a good evening. Do you need something, or can I continue on my walk?”

“My, my. You really know how to make a gentlethem swoon,” Metzli retorted with a chuckle. It wasn’t often that someone met them with such disgust within the first second. It usually took about ten, so this was a remarkable record. “I never claimed you as mine, but maybe just for the night you can be,” They flirted, horribly so. The fact that Vic had no interest only made them want to bother her more.

Metzli faced Vic fully now, hearing no heartbeat and gathering a familiar scent in their nose. They leaned onto the door and crossed their arms casually to take in Vic’s unrelenting visage. The sight only made them smile wider, revealing perfect white teeth. “Do you treat everyone with such charm, or is it only special people like me?” This was no longer about the art of flirting, but the art of annoying.

Just as Metzli opened their mouth to continue, another echoing and rocky crack resonated in their ears. This interruption made their head snap towards the glass doors, to peer inside. “Did you hear that?” Everything, the annoying and flirting, was out the window now. Something felt off. Something felt…sinister.

Vic stared stone faced at the person in front of her, blinking twice as she tried to decide exactly what about their interaction was so swoon-worthy. She let out a huff, her stone face somehow becoming even more stern. “I don’t belong to anyone, blobfish. Especially not dense, odd-looking people like yourself.” The lack of a heartbeat didn’t help either, though the fact that she didn’t think to automatically call a hunter on this person made her gut flutter uncomfortably. Especially after hearing barely 3 sentences from them, it was already clear that they were relentlessly annoying. Turning in a potential vampire should have been easy, but especially when they were as antagonistic as this person was.

“Can I tell you a secret?”, she asked, slapping on her famous fake charm for only a moment before turning it off in an instant. “There is nothing special about you. Never was, never will be. When I leave here, I will never think about you again, even though you’ll spend the rest of the month at least thinking about me. Now I’m only going to say this once, so make sure you turn on your listening ears. Back. The fuck. Off.”

Just as she spoke the last of her threat, a loud, earthy rumble could be heard inside the gallery. She turned to it, her eyebrows furrowed in investigation. “Of course I heard it, stupid. Did you accidentally leave someone in there with the merchandise?” The sound rumbled closer rather quickly, and she forced herself to look back at the person in front of her. “Don’t you work here?! Shouldn’t you know what’s going on in your own place of employment?!”

Without a shadow of a doubt, Metzli knew they poked the bear thoroughly. Only, this was definitely a vampire bear with a vengeance against her own kind. Or maybe against amazing people flirting with her. They didn’t know, but they certainly knew she was way off base with the blob fish comment. “Whoa there. Blob fish? Fuck that. I’m attractive and you’re way too hot headed to acknowledge such decadence.” There was no malice in their tone, only a light joking one.

“Furthermore, while you have every right to turn down my advances, I don’t think I ever gave you a reason to be so…for the lack of a better term, bitchy towards me.” Metzli was mocking Vic, and it was obvious with the kind of voice they used. Layers upon layers of annoyance and sarcasm, molded together to serve in their words. Their toothy grin remained plastered on their face as they retrieved the keys from their pocket.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, gorgeous, I gotta ch—“ Something crashed into the door, breaking the glass and frame completely before Metzli could even put the key in the lock. “Fuck!” Glass sprayed everywhere as the two vampires were knocked to the ground by an unknown creature. It took a few moments, but Metzli managed to follow the trail of broken stone. Nothing but their eyes moved until they locked onto a grotesque and slobber-ridden chupacabra. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Hm, you seem really eager to prove how attractive you are. Am I sensing some deep-seated insecurity here?” Vic blinked in surprise when she was called bitchy, tilting her head in offense. “Ooh, I can see why you approach strangers on the street instead of using acceptable ways to find someone to validate you as a person with fake praise and sexual favors. Your lack of tact explains a lot. Having a hard time finding a first date, Honey? Try not insulting people you’re trying to pick up.” She wanted nothing more than to slap the grin off their face, but her words had the ability to cut deeper than any physical injury could muster.

She was about to bite again at the pet name, seriously second guessing her decision not to figure out for sure if this person was a vampire like she thought, when she was thrown to the ground unexpectedly, glass shattering all around her. Her eyes landed on a slimy, thin, reptilian creature, and she looked at Metzli with disgust. “What the hell is that?!”

She stood up quickly, dusting herself off and not bothering to help her companion stand up. Was the gallery doubling as some weird, supernatural breeding ground? She didn’t have time to ask, because the creature was seemingly bounding toward them without hesitation, fast and slobbery and with nearly nothing stopping it.

Gathering their wits about them, Metzli dove towards the chupacabra, not hesitating to halt its path towards Vic. Though most people would mistake this as a heroic act, it was more showboating than anything. “It’s a fucking chupacabra, numbnuts!” They barked out the statement, struggling to hold the creature still. Thanks to living over a century, their strength was more than quintupled now, but even that wasn’t a total advantage here.

Metzli huffed as they threw the chupacabra to the side, hoisting it several feet away. “That was a sculpture before it was this. Someone must’ve donated it as a threat or because they’re stupid.” They thought out loud as they moved over to Vic. Survival was crucial here, and so was keeping a low profile. God knows what this would do to the gallery’s reputation. And a woman dying in front of it too? No, that wasn’t going to happen. Not on their watch.

The creature growled and shuffled around, trying to refocus and find its prey. With widened eyes, Metzli watched as the beast loomed closer, baring its teeth in a threatening show of dominance. They stepped back slowly, trying not to make any loud noises. The time to get out of dodge was now, and they knew they’d have to bring the aggressive woman with them if they wanted to protect their gallery’s image. Before bolting for a dark area nearby, they reached for Vic’s hand, and uttered a single word, “Run.”

It was highly offensive to be thrown to the ground and then be called a name within mere seconds. Vic shot Metzli a look, one that was sure to let them know how incredibly displeased she was, before her eyes found their way back to the creature, trying to study it. She certainly had never heard of a kookaburra in White Crest, but stranger things had happened. “That’s not a bird, you imbecile. It’s a lizard!”

With the creature momentarily disabled, Vic took the opportunity to stand up, backing behind the person she had determined was responsible for this whole mess, Metzli. “You and your staff didn’t think of double checking the matter before you allowed the statue in your facility?” she asked incredulously, disgusted by the clear lack of customer service going on here.

At Metzli’s command, Vic took off immediately, pulling the other person with her and not taking a second to look back to see if they were being followed. Even if Metzli had clearly gotten the name of this thing wrong, they seemed to have at least some knowledge of what it might be. “What the fuck does it want?”, she asked as they ran, no more breathless than she’d been when they were standing still. “How do we fucking get rid of it?”

Metzli practically rolled their eyes all the way back as Vic ridiculed them and their staff. “I told you, it was a statue! A full blown, marble statue! No movement, and no charms indicated a live creature resided in it!” Their words jumped about as they ran, too frantic to keep it even. “In here!” Vic was pulled into a dark alley, a little roughly, but she was put behind them. Being much taller than her, they covered her completely.

“Chupacabras don’t normally go after anything but goats, I thought. But maybe it’s mad.” Metzli whispered, taking slow and controlled steps back, leading the two further into the alley. “If we stay put, it’ll go away and bother less important people. Like humans.” A quiet laugh escaped their lips and they grabbed a metal pipe, just in case. Vic seemed like she could beat the shit out of something, but Metzli couldn’t rely on pure assumption right now.

“Can you do anything other than be an ass? You look strong. Super strength or are you just one of the useless undead people with toned bodies for show?” Even now, Metzli just had to push some buttons.

“A statue in White Crest”, Vic shot back incredulously. “It’s entirely irresponsible to assume that anything brought to your facility is just going to be normal. Wouldn’t it make sense to hire some sort of...supernatural curator or something?” Normally, she wasn’t so forward when it came to issues of the supernatural. She wasn’t one of the idiots who flaunted her knowledge around the town as if they were speaking about the sales at the grocery store instead of something as life or death as supernatural creatures. But Metzli clearly knew about the subject, so much so that they might be the only person helpful enough to help her survive whatever situation they had gotten themselves into. She nearly let out a shriek as she was pulled, and her eyebrows pressed together at how close their bodies were pressed together.

She looked up at her companion, a huff leaving her lips before she spoke. “Mad like angry, or mad like losing its mind?,” she asked, chancing a peak toward the creature. She scoffed, pushing Metzli away from her at their idea. “What kind of immoral slob do you think I am?,” she demanded, clearly offended. “First of all, who said anything about being undead?”. Even with an admission she knew of the supernatural, and this person’s apparent knowledge of her lack of heartbeat, a stranger would never get the privilege of hearing about her status as a vampire. “Second- we cannot just let this thing off to destroy people’s lives. We have a responsibility to stop it before anyone gets hurt, you depraved ingrate!”

She swallowed, frustrated, and looked between Metzli and the creature once more. “I’m a rather adept boxer”, she said, clenching her fists as she spoke. “But I’m not confident that thing won’t turn itself back to stone once I try to take a swing- is that something it would do?” Her eyes settled on Metzli, who she just decided she hated asking for help. “What about you? Are you good for anything other than being annoying and irresponsible?”

Boy oh boy was Vic getting on Metzli’s nerves. She was so hot-headed that she couldn’t even give a semblance of grace. “Listen, I’m trying to help you, despite how fucking disrespectful you’ve been. I’m new to this fucking place, but you’re too fucking busy to even give me a chance. A single. Fucking. Chance.” A low, guttural growl tickled through their throat as they glared at Vic. She had finally gotten on their bad side, it didn’t matter how hard they tried to push through the anger, they needed a minute.

Forcing a breath through their teeth, they squeezed the pipe to the point of leaving indents before finally succumbing to calmness. Metzli simply muttered, “They’re mad, as in angry. And no, turning to stone isn’t a specialty. Someone else must’ve done that. Also, I can obviously hear that you have no pulse, and you’re fucking freezing.” They rolled their eyes and paced forward to the entrance of the alleyway to take one last look at the chupacabra. “Fine. We’ll take care of it. But only if you stop being such a dick. I was trained in a clan and can handle myself well, and…fuck. Fine. If you need help, I guess I’ll have your back.”

They reached a hand out, motioning for Vic to shake their hand, “A small truce for now. I don’t know what your problem is with your own species, but I’m willing to put aside everything if you are. I haven’t had the best few weeks so…I—so—ugh. Sorry I blew up.”

Vic blinked, stopping for a moment to let her gaze fall on Metzli as they blew up on her. She pressed her lips together, processing exactly what was being said to her. Everything that they said felt justified- they were thoughts that had been tossed around her own brain for decades now. Thoughts that she worried everyone felt anyway. But still, despite how her mind was feeling, her mouth went on the defense. “I’m too busy trying to survive”, she muttered, though her eyes flashed away from Metzli’s. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Her eyes wandered to where Metzli’s hand was wrapped around the pipe, and then back to their face, letting out a low breath of her own. “What do you suppose it’s so angry about?”, she wondered aloud, bracing herself for a fight with the creature, as if one were only moments away. “I have an undiagnosed medical condition”, she lied matter of factly, not interested in sharing the truth. She wanted to tell Metlzi that they’d probably take care of it in terms of self-preservation anyway, but maybe after upsetting them, it was best to leave well enough alone. She let out a huff before shaking their hand reluctantly.

“A truce”, she agreed, as ridiculous as it felt, “I suppose I can put insulting your character on hold until we’re in a safer situation. I’m… sorry if anything I said offended you”, she said through gritted teach. Before either of them had a chance to have any closure on their apologies, the creature was bounding toward them. It rushed it’s body into Vic, sending her against the wall of the gallery with a grunt.

“It’s probably mad at the people who turned it int—” Words were interrupted by the bellowing roar of the bounding chupacabra, followed by a crunching blow. There was no time to react, to stop the beast from running straight into Vic. Without thinking, Metzli threw their body at the chupacabra before it could do anything else to her. The metal pipe was thrusted into its chest with pure force and it screeched in pain.

Limbs thrashed and teeth snapped over and over again until Metzli was successfully thrown off. “Come on, Medical Condition! Rip its fucking head off!” they demanded, getting pummeled and bitten over and over again. Black blood pooled on the ground as it seeped from every bite.

A hand found a slippery grip on the protruding pipe, pulling it out and using it as a method of defense. It was the last resort, the last chance Metzli had against the devastating blows. Whether they lived or died didn’t matter, but they made a truce and told Vic they’d protect her. And if there was anything Metzli was not, it was a liar. They kept it distracted, trying to give Vic the chance to compose herself and attack properly. It was a struggle, but they wouldn’t lose their resolve.

Thankfully, Vic’s brain had the chance to process what Metlzi was trying to say before the wind was figuratively knocked out of her. It would have crushed her body if not for Metzli’s intervention, and for the first time, she was actually thankful for their presence. With the new defensive attack, the beast had found a new target in Metzli, and at first, all Vic could do was stare in disbelief at it’s anger and violence. Violence on this scale, while it was something she might have incited, wasn’t something she experienced first hand often, or even liked to think about. It brought back painful memories that were too stubborn be forgotten after 400 years.

But then her companion’s words shook her out of her temporary stupor and she sprung into action, using the chupacabra’s distraction to her advantage. She jumped on the creature from behind, muttering expletives in Swedish as it tried to throw her off, fighting for dominance.

She grit her teeth when she finally got a good hold of it’s head, and with Metzli’s earlier advice ringing in her ears, she tore it off. The creature’s body stood stiff for a moment, as if time had frozen between the three of them, but then it tumbled to the floor, sending Vic down with it.

She looked up at Metzli, the previous rigor of a fight in her features replaced with concern. It was the first time she had felt any type of sympathy for the other person. “Are you going to be okay?”, she asked, pushing herself up. “You’re looking rather rough.”

Stillness took over not only their body, but the air surrounding the two. Metzli felt their thick and congealed blood pool around them, and they felt so hungry. The chupacabra’s body was still very much warm as it laid dead on the ground next to them. “Nice job, Medical Condi…” But they trailed off, black consuming their vision as dizziness took over their head. Rolling over, they managed to get to their knees and crawl to a wall to prop themselves up. This was the worst condition they had been in since their days in the clan.

“I think after all of that, I should get at least a date at the bar,” Metzli coughed raspily until it bled into a dry chuckle. Despite the pain they were feeling, they wanted to give the notion that they were more than fine. Great, even. “I’ll even buy the drinks.” They continued to joke, only being half-serious about the gesture. Vic was definitely appealing visually, and even showed strength that they respected, but her personality was a little too hot-headed for their taste. But if there was anything Metzli had learned in their years of living, it was that people, just like them, put on a front to conceal their true selves from others.

“Hey…”, Vic said, walking the short distance to them. She rested her hand on their back, leaning down to get a good look at their face. Their condition was possibly even worse than she thought it was, and there weren’t many ways to help an injured vampire that she was comfortable with.

A Vic from last year would have seized the opportunity to turn them in to a hunter.

Instead, she said, “We need to get you some animal blood. I know a guy, if you don’t.” She tucked a hair behind her ear, still refusing to acknowledge the truth of what she was. Thank god for Metlzi’s impeccable timing for annoyance, because it gave her a chance to recover. “Don’t hold your figurative breath, Sweetheart. You know, you’re a lot more likely to get laid if you don’t sound so desperate. You sound like an insufferable teenager when you continuously come onto someone who’s clearly not interested.”

She pressed her lips together, leaning her back against the wall they were using as a crutch. “Sorry about your statue”, she said genuinely, gesturing to the bits of glass that surrounded what used to be a door. “I hope the gallery has good insurance.

Seeing Vic a little concerned, Metzli couldn’t help themselves and said, “Ha. You care about me. Well, you did. For at least two seconds.” They spit to the side, black blood spattering on the floor. Aches and pains cascaded to every nerve, making them grimace as they got to their feet. “Nah, I’m good, Vic. I’ve annoyed ya enough for one evening. It’s getting boring.” Each step hiccuped with a limp and they rolled their eyes at themselves. Being so injured was annoying, but it was also exhilarating to have been so close to death. So close it made them laugh. “That was a lot of fun though. Would’ve been funny as shit if I had died.”

Vic’s concern was so out of place that it made them stumble and reposition their hands on the alleyway wall. “My gallery will be fine. Thanks, though. Maybe you’re not so bad. ” Metzli teased, walking around the corner and passing the ruins of their entrance door. Glass crunched under every step. They sucked their teeth and took out their phone to start making calls for the door, subsequently taking out a business card and holding it out for Vic. “If you wanna keep in touch, here’s my card. Sorry your night got all ruined. Pretty women like shouldn’t have to deal with shit like this.”

Vic didn’t bother to suppress her eyeroll, which was so much easier than acknowledging that Metzli might have been right. Still, there was an itching of concern for them, especially when it was notable that they were still definitely not in good shape. “Our definitions of fun are vastly different”, she decided out loud. Inwardly, she decided to walk Metzli home, or at least make sure they got home okay. She figured it’d be better than having to worry the whole night if they made it safely or not. Even if she’d have to sneakily wait till whatever time they decided to leave.

She took their card, but vowed to destroy it when she got home. In her hands, if she were in another state of mind, it would be too dangerous for her to have that kind of information. She let out a breath, tucking it into her pocket and looking back at them, her face barely changing. “Nobody should have to deal with shit like this”, she argued, unblinking. “But I guess that’s the world we live in, isn’t it?”

For so long, she thought she had been making the world they lived in a better place by ridding it of vampires. When one proved to her the amount of humanity they could have, like Metzli did tonight, she had to wonder who the real monster was.

#wickedswriting #more than meets the eye #chatzy #vic and metzli #gore tw

4 notes · View notes

burnedbyshoto · 5 years

Text

Sickness and Afflictions

todoroki shouto x reader; bakugou katsuki x reader

warnings: angst, fluff, cursing

a/n: one crushes your heart. the other one fills it. pick your poison. bitch... this made me sad and happy....

Part Two ; Alt Ending

todoroki shouto

You had been happy in your relationship with Shouto. Happiness and longevity seemed to be something coined for the two of you. But you knew that you were the first real relationship he had.

Recently, Shouto was becoming better acquainted with his family. Often spending his free days with his family instead of spending it with you. Which wasn’t an issue in your opinion, but it was three months since this started… and you only ever saw Shouto at night when he would come to bed past midnight. You were becoming upset by this, and whenever you voiced your emotions he was quick to ignore you.

The reality of your relationship was that you were not happy at this moment. You were also sure you did not wish to break up with him… but you wanted effort. Today was your birthday, and you hadn’t received a single acknowledgment from him about it. Today was your day off and he didn’t so much as kiss you goodbye today when he left for work as you woke up.

Today, you sat at the kitchen table at nine at night, waiting for him to come home. Your fingers play with a gift you bought for the two of you as a way to get him to go somewhere with you.

Some part of you wishes that he isn’t here because he has some elaborate plan. That these past few months, he’s been making you insecure for this very night. That Shouto’s waiting for you to cave first so he can expose his birthday celebration plans. But you know better to assume that, Shouto has never been spontaneous like that.

So today, instead of celebrating with friends, you waited for Shouto to come back home.

One hour passed.

Two hours more.

It’s no longer your birthday when the front door opens and closes. Your weary eyes staring at Shouto who walks in, slippers on his feet, exhaustion on his face.

Your eyes lock with his, and you break the gaze to continue down his body. There’s no card in sight.

“Why are you coming home so late?” You ask placing your chin onto your hand. Your eyes boring into your boyfriend’s ambivalent aura.

“Long day at work.” Was his response and it irked you.

“Midoriya-san posted a video of you and your classmates at a bar. Why are you lying?”

“We only went in celebration of—“

“Bakugou’s early birthday celebration, yeah. I know.” You snark back, your hand dropping on the table and a frown on both your faces.

“I’m not in the mood to have a lecture right now. Especially since you know everything there is to know.” Shouto voice drips with sarcasm as he tries walking away.

“Only because if I don’t you won’t ever talk to me!” You exasperate standing up. The sounds of the chair scraping against the floor echoes through the apartment.

Shouto stares at you, his heterochromia eyes feeling empty, lifeless.

“You don’t talk to me anymore.” You repeat, your bottom lip quivering. You try not letting your feelings overwhelm you. Desperate not to give him a reason to walk away. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Keeping your business to yourself?” Shouto steely response. His upper lip presses into his bottom one. “Why do you need to know everything?”

You blink many times, your mouth dropping with failed sentences.

“You’re my boyfriend,” You’re slow to respond. “I’m curious and concerned because you’re my boyfriend.”

“If you’re going to be telling me things I already know, I don’t see the point of me listening to you.”

You laugh, unsure of what was wrong with him. In your inability to speak, Shouto begins walking away. His arm hitting your shoulder causing you to stumble.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” You seethe, your eyebrows scrunched as you push his back. He stills, not turning around. Your mind now in overdrive. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you! A conversation, Shouto! Something we haven’t done in fucking months! And you’re— you’re ruining it!!”

Shouto turns around, his face dark, his own eyebrows crunched as his lips are curling into a scowl. “Let’s make this clear, I’m not ruining anything here. I’m busy, y/n, I have a fucking job that requires utmost concentration and dedication. I can’t be waiting on your every demand and need. Don’t pretend that you didn’t know that coming in.”

“Of course I fucking knew that coming in! I’m the damn best fucking support employee Japan has! I’ve dealt with shit for you fucking heroes! I can see that you’re busy! But you’re not always busy! You just don’t spend any free time with me! And that’s what’s bugging me!”

That one complaint sends both of you over the edge. And insults pour out of both of your mouths. Eventually, you’re both just saying things to make the other upset.

You were too clingy. Demanding. Impatient. Unclean.

He was too bitchy. Completely unavailable. Dense. Opinionated.

He scrutinized what you had gotten him for Christmas. Claiming it was insensitive and embarrassing to open in front of his family.

You retorted that at the very least you had gotten him a present! You further added to the fact that he refused to meet your family.

He fought that you shouldn’t be too sensitive all the damn time because you’re a grown adult. Not some child.

It circles back to him not being attentive, the two of you in each other’s faces.

Red.

Angry.

Yelling.

“I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe you my time, my energy, or my presence. If you’re not happy with it, why the hell are you here?” Shouto growls at you, his face dark.

“Because you mean everything to me, you fucking dick?! Something I’m not ready to give up! Is it that hard to fucking see that I want to be here?!”

“I don’t owe it to you to spend my free time with you,“ Shouto repeats. “You’re my girlfriend, not a pet!”

“Oh, no, sorry!!! I forgot because if I was a pet, I would be getting much more love and affection than this!! You know what, Shouto? This is my place. This is my apartment, and you still have the fucking audacity to show up with this attitude? For someone who loathes Endeavor as much as you do, you sure don’t act any fucking different from him.” You hiss centimeters from his face.

Your mind doesn’t even register the terrible words that come out of your mouth. All you know if that pure rage manifests upon Shouto’s own.

“Don’t you dare fucking compare me to him. You know nothing about what it was like living up with him.” Shouto seethes, as his body stiffens, his eyes dark and angry.

“Let me guess, always distant and cruel? Emotionally manipulative? Using the people in his life for his own advantage? Seeing only his own fucking feelings and no one else’s? Hm, and the real question is who am I describing?! Pro-Hero Endeavor or Shouto?!”

Shouto’s right-hand grips your forearm, shocking you at the sudden movement from him. But Shouto’s too angry to notice that his quirk activates in his moment of anger and frustration. Ice cold burning pain shoots down your arm. It not until you’re sobbing out in pain does he see the blistering ice burns on your forearm and the tears in your eyes. And fear fills his being.

You rip your forearm from his grasp. Baffled and choking sobs leaving your lips as you examine the blistering skin. You tremble as you cry.

He burned you.

Shouto burned you and he wasn’t even apologizing. All he was doing was staring.

Your eyes rip away from your burned arm and stare at Shouto. A new sadness burning through you. “I only wanted you to show me that I mattered today… it was my birthday today. No yesterday Shouto… it was my fucking birthday! But… I get it now, how much I annoy you, and how much you’re unhappy with me but… still. It was my birthday and you didn’t speak to me or acknowledge it at all yesterday.” Your voice resonates with broken, cracked, and defeated tones.

Your throat tightens with overwhelming sadness as pain throbs through your arm. But it’s nothing in comparison to the pain in your heart. You cry as you walk to the table grabbing the white envelope in your hands as you give it to him.

“Take this, it’s yours…! I’m… going to the hospital to get this fixed up… please don’t be here when I get back. …we—we are…” Your voice cracks again as you know what you have to say, but don’t want to say. It’s too late to fix these mistakes. “We’re done. Please have Midoriya come pick up your things. I don’t want to see you, ever again.”

You don’t even conceal the flowing tears as you clutch your burnt arm to your chest. You want him to say something, anything! Anything to convince you that this has only been a few bad months, but that this was the extent of it.

But still, even in defeat, he won’t budge to your will. “Leave the key under the mat, goodbye Todoroki.” You whisper completely defeated as you turn on your heel and leave the apartment.

Shouto goes to open the envelope you gave him, unsure of what it is. But he freezes at the sight of the address. ‘for shouto so that you can have fun with boring old me!’

Shouto unravels a letter within the envelope and reads it over.

‘dear shouto, I don’t know how to start a letter! is it like this? oh well!!!! I figured you were going to get me something I would love for my birthday. so I went ahead and got us this! two tickets to go, drumroll please, see the All Might museum that just opened!!! yes! you read it correctly!!! so I know you and all your friends somehow lost the lottery system for getting it among the Pro-Heroes. don’t panic, we support techs are smarter. we bid on them like feral animals. this ended up costing me ¥125,000!!! totally worth it in my stance. I know somethings been off with us lately, and I’m not all that sure what it is, but I do love you. like a lot. I’m just at this point unsure if I did anything in specific to make you mad? god, I hope not… anyways!!! I know we’ll get over it, we always do!! I love you Todoroki Shouto, and I’m so excited to get to go to this museum with you!!!! love - y/n’

A splitting headache overcame Shouto. His heart is frozen as he stared at the two tickets for special entrance to this museum. It was made out for today, the day after your birthday. A birthday that slipt his mind until your choked up voice reminded him of it.

Shouto sank to the ground, tears falling from his eyes. Oh.

He fucked up big time.

bakugou katsuki

On god, you were going to murder your boyfriend.

How could someone so smart be this dumb?

This entire day he had been avoiding you like a ninja and simply ignoring your every action to get him to open up. It was pissing you off! He was acting like a damn cat instead of a human being.

“Katsuki, I swear, if you don’t eat this goddam soup and medicine, I WILL murder you!” You snap through the bathroom door.

The countless amounts of dry heaving coughs, sniffles, and sneezes heard from the door. You still continue to bang the on wall despite him ignoring you. “Soup is fucking disgusting, and medicine can suck my balls!” Bakugou’s voice weakly snaps back. The sickness heavy in his throat. You can hear him retching just a little bit.

How the mighty fall when they’re sick. But Bakugou fell hard. Plus he refused anything to make himself better! He was more typically relying on his own body to make him better. Which was dumb! But this was week three of him being this way, he needed something stronger than his own immune system.

“If you don’t open this door, I’ll find someone who can kick the door down. Like Deku!”

“Like hell, you would, shitty woman. Even like this, I can kick his ass across the country and—and—ACHOO!!” The crackling of his quirk goes off.

Yes, the worst part of Bakugou being sick was that he was no longer as in control of his quirk.

You grumble as you place the piping hot soup and medicine bottle onto the hallway counter. You walked to the kitchen grabbing your spare bathroom key. You opened it up to find Bakugo sweating profoundly. His body shivering, yet wrapped up in five blankets. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was plugged up with a tissue.

He looked disgusting.

“Don’t you dare,” He croaks slightly, his tongue heavy in his mouth.

You grab the damn soup and medicine and put it on the bathroom counter. Bakugou was trying to escape. But he was weaker than he typically was only because he would get a migraine from standing up. “Oh no, you’re not going fucking anywhere, dumbass!” You snap at Bakugou as you put your full weight onto his hips, trying to keep him pinned down.

Bakugou won’t let you challenge him like this, and is very quick to fight back. So there the two of you were, wrestling in the bathroom. Your healthy body pressed against his clammy and sweaty one, but still, he’s able to keep up with you.

“Let go of me, shitty woman! I don’t fucking need that crap!”

“Your nose is just about dripping on me, idiot! You’re taking the damn medicine!”

Bakugou’s hand clutched your forearms, ready to throw you off him. But he freezes, and your eyes widen in the horror of having his hands on you. And as he sneezes before he can pull away, his sweaty hands exploding against your arms.

“OH MY GOD!” You scream, scorching pain exploding against your skin. You pulled away from Bakugou, your arms quivering as you watched red blisters form on your arms.

“Shit, babe, I’m sorry!” Bakugou sneezes again, his fingertips exploding.

“You burned me!” You shriek, unsure on how to feel about your boyfriend using his quirk on you.

“Well, I told you to leave me alone!” Bakugou throws back at you, and youthrust your burned arms his way.

“Yeah, still! Also, WHY do you have zero control over your quirk when you’re sick?! YOU’RE SO ANNOYING!” You cackle despite the pain as Bakugou blows his nose before crawling over to you grabbing your arms.

“Stay here, shitty woman,” Bakugou says after examining your burnt arms.

You watch as Bakugou stands up and goes to the medicine cabinet and pulls out some burn salve he owned. He often got burns from overexerting his quirk, and it seemed that you were going to be the one using it today.

“This is why you need to leave me alone when I’m sick,” Bakugou grumbles as his clammy fingers touch your arms. The soothing balm kicking in at the slightest touch.

“NO, what you need to do is to let me take care of you, dumbass!” You counter, shoving him with your foot. “You’re sick, and you could’ve been better five days ago had you just let me take care of you.”

His eyes look up at yours when he’s done applying the balm, and he presses a kiss to your cheek. “Fine.”

Within a day you get him to feel better, but now it’s your nose that’s running. Chills running down your spine as Bakugou shoved soup down your throat.

"You’re gonna eat this damn soup.” Bakugou snaps as you groan.

Why was this soup literally the worst?

#todoroki shouto #todoroki shoto x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki scenario #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugou scenarios #bnha writing blog #bnha #bnha x reader #bnha todoroki #bnha bakugou #mha #mha x reader #mha todoroki #mha bakugou #todoroki angst #bakugou fluff

3K notes · View notes

tweedfrog · 3 years

Note

Hi! Just wanted to pop in and say how much I adore your fics. The Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon tags are nearly impossible to get through. 95% of the fics don’t even feature them prominently and of the remaining 5%, either they’re horrible people bullying faultless Lyanna and Jon 😒 or wonderful angels (unlike that awful witch Catelyn Stark 🙄) who exist to be Jon and Lyanna’s cheerleaders and absolve them of any guilt.

Also I wanted to commend you on your Rhaenys and Elia characterization. Especially Rhaenys! I think a trend I sometimes see is that female characters are only allowed to be happy after they’ve rejected any femininity and taken up weapons and become brash and daring and loudly opinionated. And those girls deserve happiness for sure! But it’s so nice to see a Rhaenys who does lean towards soft power. Who isn’t only a horse and weapons and wild sex enthusiast because she happens to be Dornish. Because that kind of characterization doesn’t really ring true to me for someone like Rhaenys who is in the spotlight a lot. Who’s actions and personality are going to reflect on her abandoned mother who lost out on the throne. I’m so glad characters like her and Elia and Rhaella get to be the heroes of a story while still performing femininity (and frankly using that as their weapons).

And I think you handle the Lyanna situation very well. Personally I’m ambivalent towards Jon and am not fond of Lyanna. But I also don’t like overblown animosity that feels cartoonish. There might be negative feelings directed at them by certain characters, but they aren’t acted upon in any uncharacteristic way. Those two feel more like afterthoughts to Elia and Rhaenys. And while I very much lean into the drama of it all (because it’s so rare for Elia to win this much) I can very much appreciate the reality that Elia and Rhaenys aren’t spending every waking moment thinking about Jon and Lyanna. They have lives to lead and it’s pointless keeping a scoreboard of who got what win over the other. There’s no need to compete, but there’s also no need to be friendly and accommodating is the vibe I’m getting from your story and I really love that. (But I also like that negative feelings exist because let them be human and relatable!!!!!)

Sorry for the word vomit 😅 but I really love your writing and it’s one of the only things I look forward to in this fandom anymore tbh. Thank you so much!

this is so sweet oh my goodness and I’m in a crappy mood today because of uni stress so this really made my day thank you for sending me this

I’m glad you find Rhaenys and Rhaella exercising soft power interesting. I think you’ve got the right take on Rhaenys! She is someone who would love to be able to be loud and brash and is quite opinionated (see: her outright telling her father she would marry anyone to get away from him) but in the red keep where her every move is scrutinized she doesn’t have the option to do that. She has a complicated relationship with the way she presents herself which is also heavily tied up in the fact that she is the only visibly non-white member of her family and she faces scorn for obviously being half-Dornish.

I think the whole “I’m not like other girls” vibe of only letting girl characters be cool and better when they dislike girls who behave in “traditionally feminine” ways is just as shitty as painting girls who don’t behave in traditionally feminine ways as “masculine” (and trying to say they have male privilege – like what?). The truth is that even though some traits are ascribed by society to one gender or the other – there aren’t any traits that are more inherent to one gender than the other. And quite frankly in a society like Westeros women are going to have a complicated relationship with their performance of gender regardless of how they perform it.

I also really enjoy women in old stories using the small tools available to them as women to undermine a system that disregards them because it’s fun!

Thank you for saying that my handling of the Jon/Lyanna situation is realistic! I once got accused of bashing - which I don’t want to do so that was a bit of a blow. But I don’t think I’m bashing them to have my characters think negatively of them or disliking them. I did some investigation (mainly by reading r/relationships lmao) into how people feel when their parents break up due to affairs and the common thread I saw was a LOT of pain and resentment and yeah some jealousy and dislike of half siblings who resulted from those new relationships. And that’s in our society where we have stuff like divorce and no one’s starting wars over kidnapped fiancées. Imagine how much more resentment there would be in a situation where not only did your father leave you but that also 1. Put your life in jeopardy 2. Put your inheritance rights in jeopardy 3. You can’t just leave and tell him to fuck himself because in this society the family you have grants you saftey and power. Honestly Rhaegar’s lucky someone hasn’t snapped and stabbed him yet.

You're right to say they aren't accommodating or friendly, saying that Lyanna and Jon are an afterthought is probably right. Rhaenys Rhaella and Elia have approached something like tolerance with Lyanna – they’ll leave her alone if she leaves them alone and that’s the way everyone likes it. In an everyone lived situation I simply don’t think it would be realistic to approach it in any other way. And because Elia and Rhaenys are more on the “winning” side of this I dont think they would spend every waking moment dwelling and brooding on Lyanna.

I think this tendency to have Elia and Rhaenys approve whole-heartedly of Lyanna and Jon is caused by 4 factors

1. The misguided need to have them be good or to “give them agency”. Making a character a flat nobody who doesn’t have any emotions towards a situation that would be dangerous and deeply personally humiliating to them isn’t making them good or giving them agency its making them boring and unrealistic.

2. Not wanting to “pit girls against one another”. Look i hate this trope of 2 girls catfighting over a guy as much as anyone else but I have noticed that sometimes people say “don’t pit women against each other” when....2 girl characters don’t like each other for totally legitimate reasons. Elia doesn’t dislike Lyanna because she loves Rhaegar and Lyanna was a homewrecker who stole him. Elia is understandably angry because the whole realm is destabilized, her children’s lives and futures are in danger, and she’s been nationally humiliated. Let female characters be as complex as the male ones. No one bats an eye that Ned and Jaime despise one another because they’re men and we don’t expect male characters to be beautiful angels who never have a bad thought about anyone.

3. To have them be good to contrast “bitchy” Catelyn. Cat isn’t a bitch and I will die on this hill. If you want to look at who was primarily responsible for the whole Jon situation Rhaegar and Ned are right there.

4. Being unable to conceptualize non-white characters as having motivations (and negative emotions) that are either directed towards or separate from a (usually white) fandom fav character like Lyanna or Jon.

#ladies rebellion verse #Anonymous #asks #also i find it funny that the fandom has seized on horse riding as being proof that a girl is special and cool and nota dumb girly girtl #when horse riding was one of the common forms of exercise noblewomen took part in

20 notes · View notes

marveloussupernerd · 4 years

Text

Baby Han - Jumin Han

I can’t believe the day is finally here. Happy birthday Jumin :)) here’s the last part of the pregnancy one-shot series !!!

Summary: Jumin is a very brave man for staying with you while you’re in labor.

You had been feeling mild contractions for the past 6 hours or so. Not bad enough that you couldn’t fight them off with distracting yourself with a bath or a walk or tv.

You had been in bed next to Jumin, watching tv when the pain increased. You grabbed his arm, needing to hold onto something as the pain overcame you, letting out a loud groan. “Are they getting stronger?” He asked excitedly, holding onto your hand as you fought through it.

“I’m glad you’re excited,” you whined, still holding a firm grip on his arm. Finally the pain had subsided, and you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

“Okay, so it’s not false contractions. You’re a few days earlier than we expected,” he commented calmly, looking at his watch. “I’ll call the doctor.”

“Okay, well no big deal yet. We have to track them for the next hour to make sure they’re actual contractions.”

“Great. I know exactly how we’ll pass the time.” He pulled out his phone and stepped out of bed, walking toward the doorway. His first call was to the doctor, checking in to tell him you had your first contraction. The second call, well you didn’t expect it.

“No, Assistant Kang, you don’t understand. I need you here right now. Yes, immediately. Drop everything you’re doing...” you had no clue what was the matter, but his voice was stern. Maybe he wanted a woman to be with you?

“Jaehee’s coming?” You asked. “I’m afraid I may scare her off.”

“She’s just going to help us pass the time. She won’t go to the hospital, unless you want her to.”

You stood up carefully, walking to the bathroom to grab your toothbrush so you could pack it in your hospital bag. “I know we haven’t discussed this yet, so are you thinking about being in the labor room, or sitting outside?” Of course you wanted him in there with you. Who wouldn’t? But it did fit the CEO in-line persona to sit outside and wait for news. You’d let him choose. Another wave of pain. You grabbed onto the counter this time to make your way through it. The good thing was your contractions weren’t too long at the moment, probably only 30-45 seconds. Still it felt like forever.

He was behind you in an instant, gently rubbing your shoulder as though that would help ease the pain, but you appreciated the gesture. “I’d like to be in there with you if you’d have me,” he replied, looking down at the counter, unable to meet your eye.

“Are you kidding?” You asked, grabbing onto his chin and pulling him down for a quick kiss. “I’d love that. It might be long, and it definitely won’t be pretty though.”

“I think you’re always pretty.”

You let out a breathy, teasing sigh. “I can’t wait to change your mind about that.”

The two of you got started packing toiletries and towels and robes to bring to the hospital, stuffing them in your oversized bag.

A knock sounded at the door and you perked up immediately. “Jaehee!” You cheered, hobbling your way over to the door, Jumin making it there before you and letting her in.

“I’m here,” she huffed, catching her breath. It was obvious she had hurried here. “What do you need?”

As if on cue, another wave of pain shot over you. You glanced at the clock. Looked like they were pretty normal. “ex...cuse me-“ you huffed out before letting out a yelp of pain.

“Oh wow! Are you going into labor? How exciting! What do you need me for? Would you like me to pack a bag for you?” Jaehee asked, bursting with excitement as you hunched over in pain.

Jumin took your arm gently and led you to sit on the couch. “I’m going to be in the labor room with her, and I’m begging you to trim her nails or file them or something,” he looked over at you, “I’m sorry love. I know your pain is a lot worse than mine, but...” he turned his arm over, showing the deep crescents you had made in his skin with the first contraction. “I’d rather play it safe.”

“Oh my... of course.” She sat down next to you and reached into her bag, pulling out a nail file. Jaehee really did have everything. She took your hand gently and began filing. “When are you going to the hospital?”

“We have thirty more minutes. If the contractions are regular, I’m more likely than not going into labor. Until then, we wait. Jumin, Honey, why don’t you grab some snacks to pack?”

He nodded, making his way to the kitchen. “Oh! And,” he whipped around to face you, “like a speaker or something? This is gonna be hard enough but I think some banging music will help.”

“Do you need me to start a playlist?” He asked, pulling out his phone.

“Nah, I have one thats like eight hours long. It should do.”

His eyes widened. You were sure he was thinning eight hours!? Poor Jumin had never realized it took that long.

By the time Jaehee perfected your nails and Jumin packed the snacks you were 50 minutes in. Jumin had said ‘screw it’ to the last 10 minutes, not enjoying seeing you in pain, and called Driver Kim to take you to the hospital immediately.

You started to feel nauseous with your contractions. Jumin demanded you get into a room immediately to give birth but that wasn’t how it worked. They put you under supervision; you weren’t quite ready.

“Are you kidding? You’ve been having contractions for how many hours and you still can’t give birth yet?” Jumin asked, more frustrated with the system than with you necessarily.

You laughed. “It’s okay. Turn on the speaker. I’ve heard dancing helps.”

A lot of your dancing was half-assed swaying to upbeat songs that shouldn’t be swayed to, but you had fun. Good thing the playlist was eight hours, because the ‘dancing,’ which actually branched into reading, playing 20 questions, and lots of holding Jumin’s hand took three hours. Jumin offered to send someone in to give you a massage, but you didn’t want anyone to see you so bitchy and messy. Halfway through he convinced you to ask for an epidural, which helped significantly.

Finally, you were dilated enough to go into the delivery room. You held onto Jumin’s hand and never let go. Lots of crying and screaming. Lots of concerned looks from Jumin and hushed words of affirmation because you were doing so well. Finally it was time to push. You were squealing at this point, trying to fight through the pain and keep breathing. Jumin was your rock, holding your hand gently, taking you digging your nails into his skin.

And then, it was done. The second you heard the baby cry you collapsed back, sweat covering your forehead. Jumin pulled out a handkerchief and used it to dab it away, his eyes glancing from you to the nurse taking care of the baby.

“Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Han, you have a baby girl. And she looks pretty healthy too,” the labor nurse exclaimed, cleaning the baby up and then putting her on your chest.

“Oh Jumin,” you whispered, looking at her tiny little fists. “Isn’t she precious?”

He kissed the side of your head. “That’s our baby,” he smiled.

“Darling I’m going to need you to give me one last push so that we can deliver the placenta. This ones nice and easy, okay?” The nurse asked, grabbing your attention. You nodded, sucking in a breath then starting to push. “Good girl. Now what are you thinking of naming her?” She asked, trying to help get your mind off the pain. She smiled at you, then nodded. It was finally over.

Jumin stroked your arm gently. “I think we decided on Isabelle earlier. If that’s still what you want?” He asked gently. You nodded. Baby Isabelle Han.

After some quality time spent with Isabelle, you finally let the nurses take her for a few tests, all of which she passed with flying colors (no surprise), and get her diaper on. At that point it was time to call the RFA.

Jumin was so cute, fanning out your hair to make it look nice, then starting the call. You were shocked that everyone joined so quickly.

“Baby Han!?” Seven practically yelled, earning a glare from Jumin. You nodded and waved at the camera, moving the blanket around Isabelle so that they could see her.

“Aw! She’s so cute. I hate to admit it but you two have made one very pretty baby,” Zen gushed.

“How are you doing?” Jaehee asked, switching the attention back to you.

“I’m exhausted. I don’t think I’m going to last much longer. Good thing her Daddy’s here to take care of her while I sleep,” you teased, looking up at Jumin and smiling. (Y’all pls don’t make a daddy joke let this be pure I’m begging you)

“How soon can we visit you!?” Yoosung exclaimed. He seemed awfully excited to spend time with the baby.

“My wife needs her rest. Maybe you can come in tomorrow,” Jumin recommended, his face totally calm. Of course, you could have however many visitors you wanted whenever, you were the Hans, but Jumin wanted you to take it easy. He didn’t even let his father come in today.

The call ended pretty quickly after that, everyone urging you to get your rest. You sighed, closing your eyes, but opening them immediately after hearing a knock on the door.

“V,” you smiled, watching him walk in with a stuffed bear and a balloon. “I’m glad you made it.”

“Well I had to bring a little something for my goddaughter,” he smiled. He pulled Jumin in for a hug, whispering something into his ear that you wish you could’ve heard, then making his way toward you and giving you as good of a hug as he could with a baby in your arms and you laying in a hospital bed.

“Jumin, would you mind holding her while V and I talk?” You asked. You were really just looking for a reason for Jumin to hold her. It had been one of his fears for a few weeks now; he was petrified of holding something so tiny and hadn’t done it even in the hour and a half she had been born.

His eyes widened, but you gave him a reassuring smile. He took a deep breath, likely going over the ‘protocol’ in his head, then gently took her from your arms.

“Are you happy it’s over?” V asked you.

You laughed. “Oh definitely. I much prefer her in person as to in my stomach. She really liked to wreck my system. Now what can she do? Annoy me by crying? Spit up on me? Much preferred. Plus,” you glanced at Jumin, rocking her lightly in his arms, looking down at her fondly, “now he gets to suffer with me.”

“You’re doing a great job with her,” V complimented, turning to his friend. “You’re a natural.”

“She hasn’t cried yet in your arms. She cries every five seconds in mine.” You liked to give him these words of encouragement; he wanted to be for her as much as possible, but he feared his shortcomings. You wanted to show him that he was capable of taking care of her.

“I’ll leave you guys alone. I just wanted to come say hi and meet her. Can I come back tomorrow?” V asked, polite as ever. You encouraged him to come back; he could even hold her next time because she was just too comfy in Jumin’s arms to be put into another strangers’.

That night, Jumin had encouraged you to keep the baby in a crib in the same room as you. He swore he would take care of her every time she cried during the night, which he better.

The staff was so friendly and accommodating and somehow (although you didn’t really pay attention to how) pushed two beds together so you and Jumin could sleep with one another. He helped you shower before bed, and then held you the whole night, even though you felt icky. He even did his job of taking care of Isabelle, letting you sleep. As you slept peacefully and he sat, his daughter in his arms, he realized he couldn’t be any luckier.

#mystic messenger #mysme #Jumin han #Jumin pregnancy

43 notes · View notes

borisbubbles · 4 years

Text

21. BELGIUM

Hooverphonic - “Release me”

youtube

Hmmmm girll i looooove the lack of energy, pls give me moar!

Hooverphonic’s song isn’t too bad for me. It’s sophisticated! It is refined! It is intelligent! It is also fucking miserable.

Song Analysis

Lol I totally reserve the right to be bitchy, eventhough I quite like the song. The chorus especially is lovely Besides, you know me, I’m all in for Weird Indie Women and Luca looks *exactly* like someone who would be inducted in the BorisBubbles hall of faves, alongside Blanche, Francesca Michielin and Zala Kralj.

So what went wrong? You see, I know what Hooverphonic were attempting to do and I like the ~concept~ of a “real song about personal hardship, with zero bullshit or fanfare”, but I find the execution lacking.

“Release me” is a dirge, plain and simple. Yes, it is literally and intentionally so because the subject is Alex’s dad’s death. However, it is also figuratively a dirge because as someone who experiences music intuitively, as opposed to an artificial system of checks and balances, I find it fucking anemic. I’m all for pure emotion, but “morose” and “sullen” are two not-fun emotions to be doused in ad nauseam.

The main core of the problem, at least how I see it, is the mismatch between Alex’s vision and well, Eurovision. Alex has good instincts, especially pertaining to the contest (which he refered to as a “circus”, YES, but so does everyone else in Belgium and hell even *I* fucking call it a fucking carnival all the time, all over the internet, so I fail to see what the problem was, exactly? Get off the high horses, eurofags), but this time his instincts have failed him. “Release me” doesn’t work for three reasons:

1) Luca’s energy matches the song too strongly. Luca possess a certain built-in melancholy that makes her instantly charismatic in most of the songs she performs. The issue is, “Release me” already possesses this quality in droves and it upset’s the song’s already fragile balance. Luca is best utilized with upbeat music, where her pathos adds a layer of relatable darkness. In a “Release me” she becomes whiny and anemic, which is something you wish to avoid 100% of the time.

2) "Release me” doesn’t have a bridge: this is a massive deterrent because the song itself is *already* so fucking monotonous to begin with. Yes, there’s a crescendo, but is too slow and the apotheosis hardly pays off. The song just repeats itself in only vaguely different states of nasal whine and then peters out.

3) Messages don’t matter until they do. It is very naive to assume that the vast contingent of Eurofans (most of which are either callow grindr gays or frumpy hausfrau casuals - two demographs that are unlikely to show empathy at first sight), would be willing to give “Release me” the patience and charity it would require in order to do well. “Release me” NEEDS the listener to think and allow themselves to be immersed in order to work and HELLO THIS IS THE FUCKING EUROVISION SONG CONTEST THE PROJECTED WINNERS WERE A BAND OF NINTENDO NERDS DOING A DERPY DORK DANCE.

Ultimately, I like the song. The score is particularly lovely. I wouldn’t skip this on my spotify. I would listen if I heard it on the radio. But my appreciation is mostly academic, not intuitive and intuitition >>>> whatever bs passes for “objectively” rating music (you can’t! give it up!). However, I feel like Hooverphonic, in their ambition to bring “quality music”, have ironically enough undersold their true potential.

Belgium 2020 vs Belgium 2021

You know how some entries just turn into self-fulfilling prophecies? Remember how Sennek (also Belgium!) echoed, echoed and fell? Hooverphonic soooo would have been released from their sad and losing game in a blistering 11th place in the semifinal.

Why do I think so? Well, I jotted Belgium down as BL at best (though my BL tier is massive in semi 1: Israel and Azerbaijan were also in it), and more on the lower end because the sadness of parental bereavement really isn’t a topic people *enjoy* tuning into against their will. (partially why mental health anthems are *always* such a hard sell).

Besides, my intincts when I first heard “Release me” amounted to “oh, is that it?” and that’s always a red flag: Hooverphonic *are* a big name, casuals will have heard of them and then would’ve been underwhelmed, like I was.

What disturbs me *even more* than Hooverphonic’s impending NQ is Alex having said that he had written a reported “uptempo ABBA Bop” but then ditched it in favour “Release me”.

. . .

Dude... 😒

The cancellation of Eurovision 2020 due to covid-19 was atrocious on all fronts, but Hooverphonic are the act who benefit the most from the current state of affairs. They were given a second chance and they fucking know it: The speed at which Alex DROPPED “Release me”, as if the song had never happened, is one of the most outstanding cases of retconning I’ve ever seen irl. “Song?😶 What song? 🙄 Ohhh *OUR 2021 EUROVISION SONG* Yes, I remember now... WE’LL BRING SOMETHING NEW, *everyone* will be bored with “Release me” in a year’s time 😏” a whole fucking week ahead of the “new songs only rule” ❤❤❤❤

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

When I said, “Yes we sen”, I didn’t mean “Yes, we Sennek”. Christalmighty, Belgium.

Score: 2 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovision Song Contest #Belgium #Hooverphonic #Release me

24 notes · View notes

daffietjuh · 4 years

Note

For the prompts list, #27 "Help me, I'm being hit on at a bar. Please be my fake boyfriend for a second" RNM - Malex or Kylex

This was a ton of fun! I went with Kylex. Thank you! It’s only about 1k, but I’ll add a cut anyways!

Alex arrived at the bar, immediately frowning when the loud thump-thump of the music bounced around his brain. How did people do this for fun? He should ask Kyle, seeing as he was the reason Alex was here in the first place. Kyle had send him a text, begging him to come save him. Apparently, Kyle had attracted the attention of a particularly persistent lady, but he was too nice to outright tell her to fuck off. Alex wasn’t.

He spotted Kyle sitting at the bar, doing that painful, uncomfortable smile while he leaned back as far as he possibly could. The lady had kind of cornered him though. She was leaning towards him and Alex couldn’t quite tell, but it seemed like she had her hand on Kyle’s leg. Annoyance flooded Alex’s system.

He hated people that didn’t take no for an answer and he hated people that made Kyle uncomfortable.

Still he plastered a smile on his face as he made his way over to the bar, slipping between drunk people to make it there. Kyle spotted him first and the relief that Alex could read all over him softened his annoyance at having to come out here at 1am.

‘Hey K.’ Alex said, sliding up next to him, brushing his shoulder past the woman’s as he went. Her eyes snapped over at him. Alex set a had on Kyle’s shoulder, sliding it closer to his neck.

‘Hey babe.’ Kyle said, grinning at him and slipping an arm around Alex’s waist. Okay, so they were really doing the please be my fake boyfriend thing.

‘What are you doing all the way in the corner, I thought you wanted to go out dancing?’ Alex asked, settling his arm around Kyle’s shoulders. How Kyle still found the time to work out, even with his insane schedule at the hospital was beyond Alex, but he did appreciate the firmness of Kyle’s shoulders under his hands.

‘We were just having a chat.’ The woman said, smiling at Alex innocently. Oh yes, Alex did not like her at all. He smiled, but he knew his eyes stayed cold.

‘Well, thank you for keeping him company, but I’ve got it from here on out.’ He ran his hand through Kyle’s hair. The woman’s smile tightened.

‘You should really keep a closer eye on a guy who looks like him, someone might come along and steal him from you.’ Wow, unreal.

‘I’m not worried.’ Alex said, giving her a quick once over, two could play the bitchy game. Alex spend enough time with Isobel to be completely comfortable dealing with this kind of attitude. Difference was, he liked Isobel, he did not like this woman. She titled her head, smiled coldly, flipped her hair over her shoulder (really?) and headed off.

Kyle let out a breath of relief.

‘You are my saviour.’ He said, squeezing Alex’s hip. Alex rolled his eyes.

‘With people like that, sometimes you need to be rude, Kyle.’ Alex shifted so that he could actually face his friend. ‘Otherwise they don’t take the hint.’

‘I know, I know, but it’s hard.’

‘No it’s not.’ Alex noticed Kyle had probably had a few drinks, that didn’t make him any more capable of being firm with pushy people.

‘But it is.’ Kyle whined, dropping his head forward against Alex’s chest. Alex couldn’t catch the little noise he made before it left his mouth. He bit the inside of his cheek. He needed to fucking chill. Kyle was tipsy, he had just had Alex pretend to be his boyfriend to get rid of a persistent woman, this was just him being a friend. ‘’Lex?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can you take me home please?’ Alex sighed, but nodded.

‘Sure thing, K.’ He squeezed Kyle’s shoulder to get him into motion. ‘You gotta get up though, I can’t carry you.’ Well, he might be able to, but he didn’t want to.

‘Myeah, I’m getting up.’ It was like Kyle was suddenly allowing himself to be as tipsy as he felt. Like he felt save enough with Alex to do that. Alex let out a soft laugh. He put his hand around Kyle’s bicep (yep, totally working out) and helped him to his feet. Kyle wrapped one arm around Alex’s waist and he didn’t try to stop him.

It wasn’t the easiest way to manoeuvre him out of the club or down the street, but as long as Kyle stayed on his feet, it was fine. Kyle started babbling about- well, something, Alex wasn’t really sure as they headed down the street to Kyle’s house.

‘- and you’re such a good friend and I miss you all the time but I feel like I shouldn’t because you have so much on your mind already and I don’t want to be a burden and-‘ Ah, okay, Kyle was talking about him. ‘-and you’re my best friend and I miss you all the time-‘ It seemed like Kyle was just going to loop around. Great. Alex tried not to let the endless stream of compliments tumbling from Kyle’s mouth get to him.

‘We’re here.’ Alex interrupted Kyle in the middle of a sentence (“You’re so smart Alex, have I ever told you-“)

‘You’re the best.’ Kyle said as they stumbled up the porch. ‘My best friend.’ He added in a mumble.

‘Can you unlock the door, K?’ Alex asked, settling him against the wall next to the door.

‘Myeah.’ Kyle hummed. He fished his keys from his pocket, only fumbling a little before managing to get the key in the lock. Kyle always talked a lot when he was tipsy, it was the first sign that he wasn’t sober anymore.

‘Are you going to pass out on the floor somewhere? Do I need to make sure you get to bed okay?’ Alex asked, automatically holding out a hand to steady Kyle as he nearly tripped over the threshold.

‘Nah, I’ll be okay.’ Alex stepped up so that he was in the door opening as Kyle turned. ‘Thank you though.’ Kyle said with a smile, leaning into Alex’s space. He was expecting a hug, Kyle also got even more tactile when he was tipsy. Instead, Kyle brushed his nose past Alex’s cheekbone and then pecked him on the lips before turning around, swaying a little as he headed down the hall.

Alex stood there, frozen.

What?

‘Don’t forget to lock your door.’ Alex chocked out before turning around in a jerky motion and pulling the door shut behind him.

What the fuck? That was new. Alex was startled to find out he didn’t really mind all that much.

#kylex fic #kylex #sometimes i write things #answered

35 notes · View notes

localmagicalboi · 4 years

Photo

🌙 FOLLOW FOREVER, PART 1 / ???. THE MOVIE. ✨

i've surprisingly reached a pretty hefty number of people here on this blog, despite my flightiness, unrelenting bitchy behavior, and excessive need to make 2000s pop culture references with zero context. to which i say, that's neat. you have fine taste and im grateful for that. here's round one! people i really fucks with.

✨ @chegadesaudade / @notevenjupiter 🌙 hey we’re engaged! that’s pretty cool or whatever. you’re my support system, apple of my eye, we’ve been together for like 10 years, rping with each other the entire time, and that’s honestly just disgusting. you write well and i guess you’re tolerable. i dont think i’ll ever meet anyone like u ever again and i don’t want to. you’re annoying and one of you is enough.

✨ @shimmerseas 🌙 when the tough gets going and i wanna be messy and discuss the fact that ppl in this community can be god damn ridiculous, you’re that b... and honestly you’re one of the best writers ive ever met. tida’s a great muse. you’ve taken him v far from when we were squared away in the square fandom and now he’s just?? the greatest?? and ur incredible too... ily wtf. if u readin this and u sleep on tida and alex, ur a fool. fix that!

✨ @roguestaroutlaw 🌙 colin!!! i luv u and u luv ur cat. every time u send me a photo of ur babey, im reminded that its ok to feel joy... anyway you really are one of those ppl that brings the best out of my writing. our muses??? crazy chemistry. *aretha franklin voice* great chemistry, beautiful chemistry. wes is one of the greatest cowboys ever. ever. there’s no space cowboy greater than him. like?? and ur art is so???? omg ur so talented send help.

✨ @hebiime 🌙 you... are so silly lkgfdjgfdkls. ur so fun to talk to on discord u got me crackin tf up half the time and ur reaction images... smh. where do u get them. listen, majima is such a treasure. when you can take a piece of media, present it to someone who dont know shit about it, and have that person want more? that's when you know you've succeeded as a canon writer. keep it up. like??? also when u show me ur projects? its like... ok. wig.

✨ @meyvn🌙 3 freakin years worth of building up a story around our muses and honestly i think that’s god damn bananas. and the payoff??? perfection... when we thread, it’s magic. whether it be angsty or fluffy or whatever else. taht shit slaps!!! it SLAPS! im gonna tbh nooj doesnt belong to square anymore, that company lost their privileges after the wack ass way they handled ffx. nooj is YOUR character. legit no one out here is writin him like u do and they never will. tea.

✨ @adoredbyprissy / @bloomingpaths 🌙 one of the wildest folks ive ever met... idk what it is about you but sometimes you say some shit that gets me deaddddd. u remind me of myself, sometimes. like when i was younger. ur like... a lil sis to me... and ur so bright and full of creativity. the fact that we can exchange bops in diff languages? ma’am, i think thats kind of iconic of us tbqh... n e wayz i will say that you’re so sweet and incredible and if anyone ever messes with u i will knock their fucking head off and that’s that.

✨ @dramaytan🌙 gippal makes me speechless. his energy makes me speechless. i... the fact that hs is so That Way that it causes vi to have such extreme reactions is hilarious. you write him beautifully and im gonna say that i said to kela and alex. your muse belongs to you. square dont own gippal anymore. you’ve given him the story and life that he deserves. gippal deserves more depth from the jrpg overlords but we all know that shit aint happening. anyway ur so great. god dammit, i luh u!

✨ @deadmenanddemons🌙 kane and undertaker belong to you. they do not belong to wwe or vince mcmahon or whoever fucking else lol. you're giving them extensions of their story that they deserve. and giving kane some happiness!! we love that in this house! your writing style has given them a totally different dimension. like that shit is next level!! on another astral plane!!! also... kanevi... them getting a cat farm when????

✨ @sharpsensations🌙 jay white is ridiculous. the fact that he's this cartoony villain lil man and you stay keeping him that way is... well lets just say he's the most extra mf thats ever graced my dash and vis life. and for some reason vi thinks thats the sexiest thing ever... lfkjgklsdf. anyway. *chefs kiss* thats really all i can say! johnhui... suzuron ( thats the name of the couple and im keeping it. ) we cook up great stuff in the kitchen aka discord. ty for being a great presence!!

✨ @bloodfcst🌙 teachers occasionally disgruntled by the absolute fuckery that goes on in the workplace unite... like yeah we dont thread in public as often as we should but we are a treat on discord gjfdgsf. and you’re one of the most rational people ever??? like you have common sense in a world where it isnt common. ur writing is beautiful, ur a swell human, and i really wish the best for u. u deserve it.

if you’ve made it down to this point. here’s a bop for you to listen to, happy birthday or w/e. :)

#( 🌙 FF! ATTENTION IS ALL ON THE STARS ABOVE. ✨ )#/ i dont know how many posts ill make but.#/ i wanna make one thing clear.#/ the moving text made my photoshop scream and curl up in pain.

16 notes · View notes

setaripendragon · 5 years

Text

So I’m just... sitting in a weird creative rut at the moment. Like, I’ve got all these half-baked ideas that aren’t going anywhere so I can’t write them, so I can’t get them out of my system so I can’t come up with any more solid ideas. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a room and someone’s just dropped three crates of interesting knick-knacks on the floor. Like, this is all so colourful and shiny, but... there’s so much? and they’re all so tiny? what do you want me to do with these???

SO. This is me venting. (And also throwing fic recs out into the void because I need someone to scream with about Supernatural, none of my irl friends have watched more than a few episodes.)

I got back into the Supernatural fandom recently, and I’m... god, it feels like heresy to even say it, bored with Destiel. Like, I still love them, I’m still eagerly awaiting Cas’s debut in my rewatch, but I’m also, like, looking at these thousands on thousands of fics about them, and I feel like... ‘yes? I know? God, I know these two are fucking soulmates?’ It’s how I usually get about canon pairings (that I like, anyway), actually. I just... don’t get invested (so much) in the fanfiction because, well, obviously.

On the other hand, I could really, really do with some good Dean/Cas/Gabe fics that aren’t The Nature and Kynde of a Lyon, or Frate, non far: ché tu se' ombra, e ombra vedi. (If anyone has an recs, send them my way, please, god.) I love that OT3 like you wouldn’t believe. (I should rewrite their entry for my OT3 drabbles series, cause I didn’t do them justice at all)

I want to write my own story about them. I want to write a fic where Gabe helps Dean deal with the trauma of Hell, where Gabe and Cas circle each other so, so carefully because Gabriel’s afraid of caring too much and then losing and Cas has ages old abandonment issues to deal with, I want to write Gabe shoving Dean and Cas’s heads together and being all ‘now kiss’, and Cas telling Dean and Gabe repeatedly that they are ‘very much alike’ when they each observe how much he cares about the other, and Dean being all insecure and bitchy because Gabe and Cas can relate to each other on a level he could never, and both of them having to come together to reassure him that, no, really, it’s not right without him.

I also really really really want Crobby-centric fics. It’s so hard to find them on Ao3 because it’s usually a side pairing to Destiel. And... it’s not like I don’t ship Destiel. I still love it. So I can’t just ‘exclude Destiel’ because... because then I wind up with side-pairings I don’t like? I just... I wish Ao3 had a ‘main pairing’ tag category, and a ‘side pairing‘ tage category, because what I really want is main pairing Crobby with a side of Destiel. I only have one Crobby fic rec, and that’s A Handful of Dirt.

I want to write a fic where Bobby and Crowley end up being really domestic together, and like, six months in, Bobby’s just like ‘lightbulb’ and then ‘damn, I can’t believe we coulda been having sex this entire time’. And then I want to write a Dean PoV Crobby centric fic where Dean has to face his internalised homophobia because of the Crobby, and has his own queer crisis, and Bobby is a Good Dad and the big emotional climax is Dean and Bobby having a chat (stilted and gruff because that’s just how they are) about it all, and Dean just... can’t say it out loud because he’s got John fucking Winchester’s predictable reaction in his head, and Bobby just claps him on the shoulder, gives him a little shake and is like ‘it’s alright, y’idjit’

(And in the epilogue Crowley surreptitiously slaps a ‘Not gay as in happy, but Queer as in FUCK YOU!’ bumper sticker on the Impala and Dean throws an epic shit fit and figures out it was Crowley and yells at him ‘you don’t go fucking defacing someone else’s fucking car, you hellspawn!’ and Crowley holds up his hands all ‘alright, alright, I’ll take it right off’ and Dean glowers at him and snaps ‘don’t you fucking dare’, because, hey, he does like the sentiment. It feels like something that fits him and his life more than cutesy little flags and all those weird-ass labels Sammy likes to throw around like the nerd he is.)

I so, so badly want to write (or read) a modern AU fic where Dean, Benny, and Charlie are Queer BFFs together. (Benny is Ace, fight me.) Maybe even a Leverage AU? Charlie is obviously the hacker, Benny’s the hitter, Dean’s the thief. (Bela is Charlie’s girlfriend, who they call when they need a grifter.)

Which reminds me, I need to go look for some Charlie/Bela, because I ship that so hard, you have no idea. I love them to pieces individually, they’d be so amazing together.

I also really want to write a fic where Dean and Sam get punted somehow into an alternate universe where everything is just... WEIRD. Like, a verse where the Men of Letters were still a thing, maybe even where John was one? Where John and Mary didn’t die, but got divorced, and it was messy and traumatic, and Dean has to confront the fact that the idyllic apple-pie childhood he remembers was a four-year-old’s rose-tinted recollection, not the truth. (I want Dean, Benny, and Charlie to be BFFs in that world, too.)

And Sam is married to Princess Mia, because I know it’s a crackship, okay, I know it was a fucking stupid ass joke on this stupid ass hellsite, but god do I ship it so hard. They have so much in common. They’re both ‘normal’ kids who got saddled with a ‘special destiny’ at birth (or close enough), which comes with a hell of a lot of responsibility (and a few perks), who keep trying to hold onto their freedom, and are actually super soft decent people who just wanna be happy and loved. (I am so very torn on whether I prefer it if it’s a literal world-merge and Sam is marrying actual European royalty, or if it’s an AU where instead of ‘surprise you’re a princess’ Mia gets ‘surprise you’re from a family of epic hunters’ (Julie Andrews as a badass hunter matriarch? Yes please.))

And I really, really want next gen shenanigans. Ben, and Claire, and Krissy, and Jesse, and Patience, and Jacob, and hell, even Lucas. (Instead of that weird ass ‘we’re being inclusive look women’ spin-off they tried to pitch) I want Ben and Claire bonding as not!sibling because their not!dads are totally gay for each other and being stupid about it. I want Ben and Claire getting into petty fights about who Krissy likes more because they both took one look at her and got massive life-ruining crushes on her. I want Claire and Jesse being BFFs, and Ben and Patience.

I may make a seperate post about the series I want to write about these kids. (It will be an epic post-season-8 fix it. Maybe I should turn it into an original series...)

I want to write a psychic wolves AU. I want to write a Daemon AU. I (do not) want to try and figure out a Hogwarts AU. I’m remembering my old crossover with Charmed that I had planned (doesn’t Patience just give you Charmed vibes?). I want to write time-travel. I want to write time-travel OT3 with Mia/Sam/Jess. I want to write time-travel where the next gen end up zapping themselves into the past for some reason.

God, wouldn’t that be fun? The kids trying to deal with teenage Dean and Sam? (I give it three minutes in the man’s presence before Jacob tries to eat John’s brains.) Or even have them older, and land just before the start of the series?

As you can see, I’ve got all these ideas, but there’s no real substance to them? Nothing that goes ‘yes that’s a story I can tell’ just... premises and moments and nothing really coherent.

18 notes · View notes

adamsvanrhijn · 5 years

Text

ok to clarify some posts from a few days ago:

i do not think that anyone needs to justify Why they want a character to be something, where “something” is like, an identity trait. like, i don’t need a reason for wanting combeferre to be the era-equivalent of a gay man (this phrasing is reductive but y’all know what i mean). i can just want that and that’s fine. whether my reasoning is “because i am a lesbian and like to write fanfic about gay people” or “because i think him and enjolras having unresolved sexual tension is incredibly hot” or “because he just gives off a gay vibe idk” it wouldn’t like, matter, at all.

again. anyone reading/writing this post is well within their rights to think that combeferre is gay, or that enjolras and cosette are long lost siblings, or that grantaire has four serious and expensive medical conditions that the amis must raise money for, is both salty and bisexual, and that he was a soldier in the war of 1812 and an insurgent in soviet russia and has deep and accurate knowledge of the israeli-palestinian conflict and that this is why he is opposed to devoting any energy to political action whatsoever or whatever the fuck is trendy nowadays. i don’t care why you want that, or necessarily understand why, but like, want all you want. i’m not taking that away or telling you that you cannot want that.

but when i CREATE FANWORK, and include my desires and realize them as headcanons and/or plot elements in my fanwork, i feel that it needs to be a justifiable choice within the work for the work to be good. my instinct is to say that a fic where grantaire was all of the above things would not work very well or be very good because it doesn’t make any sense. like, for one thing, france has socialized healthcare and one of the best cancer treatment systems in the world, so why would the amis need to raise money for his leukaemia where his symptoms are exactly the same as in jodi picoult’s 2004 drama novel my sister’s keeper, ET CETERA.

anyway, to be less bitchy:

if Combeferre canonically was said to be looking at women and judging them on their aesthetic value and desiring to include them in his collection [of mistresses] then it would take a lot more work and in-story character work for me to believably write him as a gay man. if he had had that canonical characterization, i would maybe want to write about combeferre using heterosexual posturing as a mask for his deepest, most intimately emotional but also sexual love, which is for his best friend enjolras*, or at least like, reference his past as a person who interacted with women in a manner implying sexual contact.

Combeferre is not those things, canonically; but he does have some other opinions on women that he gets a whole monologue about, so in some cases it could be appropriate for me to look at how he would relate to women. on a different note, being a man who loved other men and had sex with them in this particular time period was a whole clusterfuck of an experience that i’m not doing justice if i don’t take it seriously and try to write him as a person in the les misérables time period rather than just take what people expect a gay man to look like and throw those character traits at him willy-nilly.

i also have to use my knowledge of human beings and the brick to write a combeferre that is believably a man who loves and has sex with other men. this means incorporating this where relevant into dialogue and exposition and potentially plot elements, and looking at his choices in the context of the story, and seeing how they line up with his choices in the brick (because fanfic!) and where they’re congruent, where they need work, and then just, to have a believable story at all, looking at the time and place and environment of my story and how complex it is! like, examining, where i need to describe things that would not be obvious to a modern audience, and where i need to flesh out character traits or perhaps use another character to highlight something that the pov character won’t, where i need to learn more about the average medical school sexy possibly-republican-but-you-don’t-know-yet-because-that’s-not-a-first-date-question dissection partner’s knowledge of light polarization circa 1829 in victor hugo’s fictionalization of paris, france

anyway i meant for this post to be like two paragraphs max. wish i could overshoot like this with fanfic. so, to recap, you can totally think that enjolras bleaches and dyes his naturally dark hair blonde and doesn’t own a clothing item in a color other than red, or that enjolras wants to be tied up upside-down with lace ribbons by grantaire who is wearing a chastity belt, or that courfeyrac is a flamboyant gay man with a glitter-covered apartment who doesn’t know what a clitoris is, for whatever reasons you have that i probably won’t understand, but for the love of god if you’re gonna write fic about those things either own that it’s self-indulgent and potentially out of character, or make me believe that the characters are behaving in these ways for reasons that align with their reasoning and motives in canon, because otherwise they’re.... not... recognizably the characters from canon and possibly your piece just isn’t very well written.

#*i have never seen a gay courfeyrac fic like this and something tells me i never will #*i'm not going to write it because my courfeyrac is straight myself

8 notes · View notes

momestuck · 5 years

Text

Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim... volume 8!

Welcome back, apologies it’s been a good couple of weeks since the last one of these. Last time, we had a fun entertaining art heist and a fun horrifically traumatising mass murder! What are we in for next?

This episode is called Of Stresses, Song and Otherwise. Our trolls today are...

Tyzias and Chixie. Tyzias looks like a programmer (though so far ‘computer nerd’ stereotypes tend to be yellow bloods, not teal), while Chixie... not sure what her deal’s gonna be! (Watch as I get everything wrong again.) Not sure if Tyzias’s horns are naturally like that or if they’ve been cut.

Tyzias

Tyzias is written by Lalo Hunt, who has previously written Tagora - clearly someone with a thing for teals!

Tyzias’s theme kicks in almost immediately. As now seems to be standard for tealbloods, we have harpsichords.

Our narrator is starting to get the slightest hint of like... restraint about the ‘MUST BEFRIEND EVERYONE THAT MOVES’ attitude. They actually don’t immediately go for like... jumping on Tyzias and trying to forcibly befriend her, but walk past... unfortunately she falls over. Impressively, she keeps her coffee cup level despite tripping over a rock.

Her typing quirk seems to be using lowercase letters, and repeating all uses of ‘w’ and ‘m’ four times. OK...

The narrator convinces themselves that this is the prelude to some kind of teen romance where they’re the cool person who helps the fallen nerd. Uh huh. Our extremely cool protagonist.

So we start helping her out and find she’s a lawyer. That’s like... every tealblood we’ve met now? Canon said they were also civil servants but OK, I guess everyone just loves Terezi. (To be fair, I also love Terezi.)

We get our first choice, prompted by the realisation that she’s a lawyer:

Tradition dictates that one of these is an instant-death option. I can’t help but expect that the ‘obvious’ choice, picking up more papers, will be the one that fucks us over.

...maybe not. We carry on going, and find out our dear friend Tagora has been talking about us, and he may be in a ‘group project’ with Tyzias here...

We spend some more time trying to get her papers together, against the best efforts of the wind. The narration emphasises just how tired Tyzias looks - quite the contrast from Tagora.

In fact, that carries us all the way up to the second choice. We can either suggest a breather, or trying to sort it somewhere else.

Let’s take a breather.

Insufflation sacks! Guessing that’s a narrator improvisation rather than actual Troll terms.

We take her to a ruined tower, which the narrator has apparently been spending time in when they’re not busily befriending every troll who survives long enough to get a portrait. This merits a new background.

She’s not hugely impressed by the idea of urbex (unrelatable tbh, if an alien appeared and wanted to take me to do urbex i would be there in a heartbeat), but the narrator actually shows some backbone and encourages her to climb up anyway. (I guess our broken ribs have healed some by now? I can’t honestly remember if we’ve fixed them all in this particular series of branches...)

Tyzias explains to us a bit about the political order on Alternia - that the Condesce rules, and this used to be a watchtower before she got higher-tech drones and so on. She doesn’t seem entirely happy about ‘her imperial bitchiness’...

We reminder that she’s teal, which uh... gee, narrator.

Looks like we’ve found an Actual Decent Person troll! Wow.

She’s particularly fed up with her whole role in the system, which she describes as the work to maintain suffering - because everyone is guilty, no matter what, and trials are just a formality.

Depressed, exhausted, horrified by her society... this troll is pretty relatable after all actually.

We ask about political parties (lol, good luck) and rebellious movements. She fills us in a bit on what we know to be the Signless/Sufferer’s rebellious movement, and the subsequent rebellion by the Summoner (which someone might have written up an infographic about for you... pssst).

Tyzias keeps going in a spirit of ‘ah, fuck it’. And gets more confident as she does...

Sounds like she’s got some kind of radical law project in mind. To me, the idea of changing the system within is like... kinda obviously never gonna achieve the substantial change needed, but I can totally respect it as a harm reduction measure.

this screenshot is going on my main

We get to telling her a bit about Earth. The protagonist tries to, well...

That’s a way to put it lol.

How romantic!

Damn, this episode’s a bit real lol

As a final kicker we learn that what she’s been drinking out of her mug is... just water. She’s putting on an act to give people a reason why she seems so depressed and tired all the time.

And with that, she takes a nap, and we get another friend.

D’aww.

Unfortunately, we lucked onto the best outcome on our first playthrough, so that means it’s all downhill from here. Which is a shame because I care about this troll.

First, for our instant death option, let’s stand around paralysed by the image of a gavel instead of helping with her papers. So rather than the bait-and-switch I was expecting, this plays out in the way most people would expect: she tells you to stop trying to ‘help’.

I thought it was a picture of a gavel, not an actual gavel! But OK. [treacheryofimages.jpg]

Now let’s try the other option: helping her organise her papers someplace else instead of trying to give her a break.

Unfortunately, in the process of sorting her papers, we lose one. I’m sure that’s not a Chekhov’s gun or anything.

This is a Very Good typing quirk.

The bookhive (library) turns out to have, what else, hexagonal shelves.

That’s cute but damn, not gonna be efficient...

This narration turns out to be read out loud. ‘wwwwowwww, harsh’ says Tyzias, but says that’s basically true. (I would motion that nearly every caste in Homestuck, at least going by the characters we meet, is a nerd caste...)

Tyzias mentions a few. Interestingly she says ‘goldbloods’ rather than ‘yellowbloods’.

We learn a bit about her legislacerator training project.

The narrator doesn’t want to hear this, but I’m kind of amused by the ideas of ‘scrolls of evisceration’. On Alternia, they know all to well that the ‘law’ is just a way of describing the ostensible legitimising limits to violence.

Tyzias mentions the difficulty of finding scrolls that haven’t ‘been scrubbed nice and fuchsia’. Which suggests that the Condesce, or another fuchsia-blood has been fiddling with the law?

The narration draws attention to some of the recurring tropes. But to be fair, we’ve only actually had to fight a highblood one time.

But no, it’s time for more interactions between our friends! Hooray!

Are we still wearing his bathrobe?

The guy seems to know a bit about what Tyzias is up to. Uh-oh.

I’m so glad our friends get along so well!

Anyway after Tagora pisses off, we get back to working. And that’s when the missing page comes up.

Figures. We’re in the shit.

Inexplicable product placement. This, of course, leads to a pun: ‘goregle docs’. But of course, that is monitored by the Condesce.

It’s actually quit easy to get onto at least some parts of the darkweb. There’s pages on the normal web which list the .onion addresses of various TOR hidden services. It’s pretty fascinating to have a look around at what’s up for sale for the kind of nerd who actually owns a bitcoin wallet.

Anyway, losing the page scuppers our friendship. She goes to retrace her steps - without us.

Anyway that was neat. Total shock: Bryn finds the exhausted, depressed nerd with radical politics relatable?

Chixie

Chixie’s route is by the ever-prolific Aysha U. Farah.

So what’s the premise for Chixie? Well, it seems to be fashion.

I guess we are still in a bathrobe after all. Also... I would quite like to see the protagonist in one of Elwurd’s jackets. They’d look ridiculous, but it would be cute.

Anyway, we could always go back to our highly fashionable friend Cirava, but I guess our protagonist has other plans.

We seem to have found the ‘Alternian nightlife’. The protagonist briefly speculates whether it should be ‘daylife’ instead, but seemingly not. We pop round the back of a club, which merits a different take on the whole ‘back alley and dumpster’ setting!

Chixie shows up, standing outside a door. The protagonist contemplates a disguise, and we get a joke about cosplayers...

It seems like she’s maybe trying to convince the people behind the door she’s propped open to let her perform. We have the choice of grabbing the door or standing there like an asshole. Let’s grab the door, since that seems like the obvious option. Of course, you never know with this game if the ‘obvious’ choice will cause you to fuck up and accidentally murder someone.

We are still wearing Tagora’s bathrobe. Haha.

So we let her in, and she says thank you... and goes inside, locking us out. Welp. Guess this was the instant death option lol.

So now let’s try the ‘stand there like an asshole’ option.

Her typing quirk is all-lower-case, and separating lines with slashes, much as you’d represent lines of a song. The narration describes her voice as musical.

It seems she is, in fact, a performer of some renown. She presumes we know who she is.

While we might be experts in moisturewave, whatever her genre is... not so much.

Speaking of moisturewave, Cirava gets a shout-out.

She uses ‘they’ pronouns for the protagonist, which is nice. Anyway, she takes us to visit her dressing room, and orders us to put on some actual clothes while she deals with harassment from someone who threw all her stuff out of the dressing room. Well, the ablutionrobe was nice while it lasted.

We end up wearing a dress.

This might be a kind of ‘fuck you’ to the earlier narration which seemed to implicitly mark the protagonist as male. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Anyway I’m all in favour of wearing a dress for the rest of friendsim.

So does the protag! Nice :)

Anyway, we learn what’s up with Chixie. She’s been kicked off the programme because a band with a purpleblood drummer showed up at the last minute. Well, that’s bad enough, but oh god guess who shows up next...

I literally shuddered.

Please can this be the arc where we absolutely beat the shit out of Zebruh? Please Aysha, I’m begging you.

The narrator determines that Zebruh is ‘not the kind of friend they want to hang out with’. Which is putting it mildly.

Zebruh, incidentally, has not changed one bit.

We get to our second choice.

Honestly anyone’s guess which arc is gonna be the positive ending here. But let’s try exploiting our connections, as utterly odious as they may be.

That was absolutely a mistake, lol.

He goes off to go and put her back on the programme. She’s like... for fuck’s sake, protagonist.

Anyway, what Zebruh does in response to our mentioning her missed performance is... literally buy the club out from under the owner, who’s ‘just’ a teal, and makes Chixie the headliner.

Of course, this is obviously him just trying to get sexual favours of some kind from someone who can’t say no. Like so obvious it probably doesn’t even need to be said.

There we go. Can we please put this fucker through the mirror or something.

Chixie knows exactly what this is and she’s understandably not pleased. We’re gone.

Yeah that’s like... pretty fucking deserved.

Now let’s try the route where we like... don’t do that horrific shit we just did. Hey, finishing on a happy ending... hopefully.

Please leave, Zebruh.

She seems to like... actually like us, which we haven’t really done anything to merit, but here we go. She even invites us to follow her chittr.

She admits we doesn’t know we aren’t creepy, and we assure her we’re less creepy than Zebruh, which like... low fucking bar!

Anyway, the band that scooped her comes on stage. The narrator muses on whether trolls are forced to dress in their blood colour by law or tradition.

Wow, that is cruel.

She sings along...

Apparently like... all troll lyrics are black metal lyrics?

We get a second branch! How extravagant.

So, because I’m curious, let’s try ‘you should do something!’ I see this going badly, but let’s give it a shot.

She goes and puts on a phantom of the opera mask, and grabs a mic - which I guess is wired in and has its levels turned up? I don’t know...

That is a raw look though.

Time to interrupt their set. I am hype to see this, even though we’ll probably end up getting culled.

And she starts a friggin... rap battle?

It’s a rap battle that’s also a limerick! Yeah. That’s something.

Anyway, Chixie does... very well at the whole rap battle thing. (Only the first five lines are a limerick). Makes me wish there was voice acting, if only for this bit!

I strongly suspect this is mostly a parody of like, existing rap songs, which I’m too culturally ignorant to see. All the same, the scene is well written and satisfying.

We escape outside, and Chixie freaks out a bit. And then gets simultaneously relieved and disappointed that she can’t be identified because of the mask. But, since she hasn’t changed clothes, someone catches her... and praises her performance.

Ooh, diamonds huh?

So that was in fact the good outcome. Which means after that epic rap battle, we now have to see the branch where we go to a bar and get miserable. Yep.

Of course, on Alternia, we don’t have alcohol... but Faygo.

And it actually makes her drunk!

She speaks on matters of fame...

And of course, this is mediated by blood colour. Lowbloods must be hypervigilant, while highbloods will get praise regardless.

Again, the metaphor layer is paper thin here.

Come to think of it, nobody does seem to have a job in Alternia. It’s like... fully automated luxury imperialism.

Anyway Chixie passes out on the pile of clothes and we get a... well actually it’s given a ‘victory...?’ label, but it’s clearly less victory than the awesome rap battle.

So yeah. That’s an outcome.

And there we go! That’s the end of the episode. I have a... perhaps unfair feeling that like... if Hussie was writing, this wouldn’t be nearly so on the nose about like, oppression. But who knows.

Fun episode I think. This game’s grown on me a lot now we’ve gotten used to the format. Or is it just that if you spend enough time with a massive sprawling multimedia webcomic, you get a little obsessed with it, even if it’s not actually... good?

#momestuck #lets read hiveswap friendsim

8 notes · View notes