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#what could be better to wake up to than a gay spring tune?
happyheidi · 1 year
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𝑆𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑒 - 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑣𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
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“Suddenly Moomintroll lifted his nose and listened! Far away Snufkin was playing his gayest song: ‘All small beasts should have bows in their tails.’ And Moomintroll began to run towards the music."
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Down by the river he came upon Snufkin who was sitting on the bridge with his legs dangling over the water, his old hat pulled down over his ears.
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Hello,’ said Moomintroll sitting down beside him. ‘Hello to you,’ said Snufkin, and went on playing. The sun was up now and shone straight into their eyes, making them blink. They sat swinging their legs over the running water, feeling happy and carefree.”
- Finn Family Moomintroll, 1948
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wrctings · 3 years
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Pre-serum Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes | Let your heart be light
fandom: Marvel Univers characters: Pre-serum Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes summary: Where Steve and his mom spend Christmas Eve’s at the Barnes’s, Bucky takes a nap and Steve draws him. word count: 1.7k 
writing a christmas one shot in february isn’t too late, right? i missed 30s steve and buck so of course i had to write some fluff <3
New York City, Christmas 1935
When the two boys slid their shivering frames through the doorway, shaking off the snowflakes caught in their hair and coats as they took the latter off, the first thing to welcome them was the delicious waft of food which had enveloped the entire apartment, the perky jingling of cutlery that emanated from the kitchen accounting for the fact that an active cooking activity was indeed taking place in there. Their cheeks rosy from the piercing cold and their breath short from having spent the afternoon out in the snow, they untied their shoes, leaving them in the corridor, and proceeded to the living room, where the warmth radiating off the crackling fireplace eased the prickling of their skin at once.
“Mom, we’re back!” Bucky announced, heading for the kitchen, Steve in his wake. “How are you? It smells so good in here!”
“We were wondering when you boys would come back and give us a hand,” Mrs Barnes gave them a smile, shaking her head. “It’s all fine. We should always make joined Christmas dinners, it’s a lot less exhausting than doing it yourself for the whole family,” she added gratefully, glancing at Sarah, who nodded in approval.
“Are you okay darling?” The blond woman caringly asked Steve, who reassured her with a light-hearted nod.
“If there’s anything we can do, we’ll be glad to help,” he then assured voluntarily, earning an affectionate look from the two women.
“Actually, I have a feeling you’ll cause more trouble than anything…” One of Bucky’s sisters retorted humorously.
“That may not be wrong…,” the brunet boy conceded sheepishly, eyeing all the culinary supplies suspiciously.
“Maybe you could dress the table, how about that?” Mrs Barnes proposed an alternative. “It’s a little too early now, but we’ll call you when it’s the right time. For the time being, why don’t you go put some records on?”
“Sure!”
“Steve, stay close to the fireplace!” The other boy’s mom called after her son as Bucky and Steve took off, shaking her head fondly as the blond promised that she didn’t have to worry (although he had barely recovered from a cold). “Kids…” Sarah muttered, sharing a knowing glance with Winnifred, who could only chuckle. “But at least they look after one another.”
“Thank God,” the brunette woman laughed, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder whether that causes less or more trouble.”
Meanwhile, Steve and Bucky set to complete the task that they had been asked to undertake. Rummaging through the music collection of the Barnes with great care, Steve selected a record which Bucky then placed upon the turntable, sparking up the soft whirring of the record player while he was cautiously manipulating the needle. A few seconds later, the merry tune of a Christmas song erupted from the device, taking over the far-off clattering and voices coming from the kitchen with smooth notes of jazz that swirled through the room.
“There we go,” a satisfied smile played upon Bucky’s lips, the young man letting himself tumble on the nearby couch with a deep sigh. “I feel like I could take a nap just now…,” he breathed out, lazily stretching out his arms while letting his head fall backwards against the backrest.
“Tired already?” Steve raised a daring eyebrow, teasing his friend with his usual playfulness.
“Shut up,” without even looking, Bucky grabbed a pillow and threw it toward the other boy’s voice, but missed the target. “How the hell do you still have energy?”
“I don’t, I just pretend,” the blond actually confessed, shrugging as he laughed. He never had to play pretend with Bucky, who always accepted him the way he was, no matter whether he caught Steve on a painful day of suffering from sickness, had to come to his rescue in a fight or simply met with him to hang out. Plus, his best friend had seen him in dire straits one too many times to unnecessarily play tough. “Alright, you take a nap, I’ll get my sketchbook.”
“Wake me up if I happen to actually drift off,” Bucky mumbled, momentarily straightening up just so he could cuddle up to the cushion set in the corner where the armrest and the backrest formed an angle. Through half-closed eyelids, he noticed Steve taking a seat on the floor and flick through the pages of his sketchbook, the flames happily waltzing in the chimney behind him sending glimmering beams across the young man’s shirt and skin, their reflection playing in the golden strands of hair that brushed his forehead as he craned his neck, concentrated on his sketch.
Lulled by the gay rhythm of the music and the regular, soft sound of his friend’s pen scraping a piece of paper, Bucky feared that he in truth might just doze off, the both peaceful and jolly atmosphere of the room exacerbating his body’s will to rest. However, there was no way he was going to leave Steve alone on Christmas evening, especially since they spent it together this year, so Bucky fought sleepiness back by trying to keep his mind awake. Just a few minutes, he told himself, I’ll rest for a little bit, then I’ll be ready to celebrate.
Since the early December evening had already dawned, the room would’ve been bathed in darkness if not for the chirping chimney and the bright lights that had been turned on, making it easier for Bucky not to let his thoughts succumb to the strain of his body. He wondered whether his family would like the gifts he got them, but especially if Steve would — since Bucky had more money, he always tried to get his friend a present that he would be particularly fond of for Christmas, and he knew that Steve would also do his best to offer him something nice in return, though with more limited means. But most importantly, Bucky was merely glad and excited to spend the 24th of December surrounded by everyone he loved most, especially since Steve and his mother were joining them around the table this year. In the end, gifts mattered little.
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?” Running a hand over his face, Bucky groaned while blinking several times, struggling to adjust his clouded sight to the lighting of the living room. It turned out that keeping oneself awake was quite a difficult task, even when one might tell themselves that their lively thoughts would keep their distracted from the lure of slumber. “What time is it?”
“Don’t worry Buck, it’s only been fifteen minutes,” Steve reassured him distractedly, still hunched over his drawing. “It’s nearly seven.”
Pushing himself away from the armrest of the couch, Bucky’s fingers tangled in his hair as he tried to make it sit properly, pushing loose brown strands off his forehead.  Only fifteen minutes, that was acceptable. He yawned into the back of his hand, stretching his back, then swung his legs onto the floor and bent forward, trying to get a glimpse of Steve’s doodles — his gaze landed on the outline of a sofa, on which he recognised his own silhouette.
“You know I’m gonna become famous too if you do, right? I’m your number one drawing reference, at this point.” He joked, but the soft glow of his eyes, from either remnants of sleepiness or fondness, made it seem like he was actually both touched and impressed.
“It’s not my fault if you fall asleep on my watch. What do you want me to do? For once, something stays still while I’m sketching, I gotta make most of it.”
It took Steve another few minutes to come to end of his sketch of a sleepy Bucky, fixing the shadows playing in the folds of his friend’s clothes as his pencil adroitly glided across the paper. Bucky, still towering over the blond, kept on watching him draw above Steve’s shoulder, having always been fasciated by the way his friend could so beautifully make images come to life out of nothingness — no matter how much the other boy would get frustrated over a doodle that he struggled with, Bucky knew that it would still be infinitely better than anything most people could come up with. Seeing the curves and edges of his own body forming such meticulous shapes under Steve’s fingertips, the brunet felt like he had caught his own self plunged in a slumber; as if time had turned back to just minutes ago, and he could witness his reflection laying on the couch.
“Alright.” After one last stroke of a pen, Steve held the sketchbook up, analysing the outcome. Bucky could tell that he wasn’t disappointed with the result as the young man put it back down, not getting another hold of his pencil either. “You’re not still sleepy, are you?” He then turned around to give Bucky a quick smile, emerging out of the state of concentration that had taken over him while he was drawing.
“No, I’m not. It’s time for celebration now!” His friend retorted energetically, alluding to the festive Christmas tree that had been set in a corner of the room, the few colourful decorations tangled up in its branches and the golden star at its top gleaming as light ricocheted off them.
With a brief glance at the window, Bucky noticed that the snowfall had grown even stronger, thick and fluffy snowflakes coating the entire street and delicate flowers of frost already starting to spring upon the panes, adorning them with whimsical motives.
“Boys!”
Before Steve and Bucky had time to do anything else, Mrs Barnes’s voice reached them from the kitchen, rising above the music that had continued playing.
“Boys, come and set the table!”
“On it!” Her son shouted back, not a single trouble weighing his heart down as the only think he could focus on was this special night, full of the joy and warmth of sharing it with all the people dearest to him. “Shall we?” He took a look at Steve, unable to suppress a wholesome smile that he just couldn’t contain. And he didn’t want to.
“We shall,” his friend agreed, smiling back. “First to get to the kitchen wins?” and, before Bucky could answer, the blond was off.
“Steve, you have asthma!” was all that Bucky could yell after him, laughing as he trailed behind, however catching up fast.
“But I’m winning!”
A very merry Christmas indeed.
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*****
A/N:  You can thank the Bellas for releasing the song and providing inspiration for this chapter. I'm not sure how soon I'll get the next one up, seeing as my oldest child was recently infected with COVID-19. She is asymptomatic, but understandably very upset and frightened. Please send positive thoughts, prayers, and/or good vibes that she tests negative this Friday (and that her brother and I do as well)!
*****
Beca
Beca was feeling pretty lonely. She’d gotten an apology text from Aubrey, which she appreciated, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t even know what to say, and a part of her was still angry. However, the hurt she’d felt when Chloe hadn’t had her back was far worse than her anger at Aubrey. Also, Jesse had gone from barely speaking to Beca to completely ignoring her.
She was glad that she had Spring Break coming soon. She was looking forward to spending some time with her mom, and she really liked the idea of working at the radio station, even though it was the night shift.
She kept picking up her phone to call or text Chloe and then putting it down. Every time she wanted to forgive the girl, her mind kept flashing back to that moment after the semi-finals. She’d been looking to the one person on whom she thought she could count for support to find she wouldn’t even meet her eye. It kept reopening the wound. She knew this wasn’t the healthiest way to go about things, but she just didn’t know how to get it out of her mind.
A few of the Bellas had texted her. Ashley, Denise, Cynthia Rose, and even Lilly had each told her they’d liked what she’d done. It had made Beca feel a little better, and she’d even replied to them to thank them for their support and shared that she’d be working the night shift at the radio station during Spring Break. They’d all replied that they’d try to tune in.
She’d been most surprised to see a text from Stacie, although it came in sometime in the middle of the week.
S: I know Aubrey apologized to you, but I wanted to apologize as well. I thought your improvisation sounded amazing. I spotted the judges’ reactions, and I think they were impressed. Either way, I know you were just trying to help. I should have helped you out, especially since your girlfriend didn’t. For what it’s worth, I know Chloe feels awful about what happened.
Beca simply responded that she accepted her apology and shared about her spring break slot at the radio station. She didn’t know what else to say.
Things had been quiet on Chloe’s part. Beca wasn’t sure whether Chloe was giving her the space she’d asked for, or if she’d ruined things by slamming a door in her face. She felt bad for doing that, but she’d still been hurting so badly. Coffee and donuts weren’t going to fix the problem, especially not only a few hours later.
The most surprising part was that the shower had been silent. She found she missed the duets far more than she thought she would. She found herself wanting to check and see whether it was Chloe’s nodes bothering her, or if she was just too upset to sing. She didn’t like either situation, actually.
Friday morning rolled around, and, by then, Beca had put together several new mixes for her shifts. She’d even managed to create playlists for each night, a few with a theme. She had no idea if Luke planned to listen, but she hoped he caught at least some of it. She’d had another night of lousy sleep. She’d first dreamed that Chloe had apologized to her, and she’d been more than a little disappointed to wake up alone. When she’d gotten her head together, she was especially sad that it had been a dream. She’d so vividly remembered kissing those lips, but none of that had happened. She went back to a fitful sleep, waking with a start. She’d had a nightmare this time. Chloe’s plane had crashed on the way to Portland, and the girl had died before the two of them could reconcile.
She put on a pot of coffee and dragged herself to the shower. Just as she stepped under the water, she heard a familiar voice begin to sing.
You gotta go and get angry at all of my honesty You know I try but I don't do too well with apologies I hope I don't run out of time, could someone call a referee? 'Cause I just need one more shot at forgiveness
“No!” called Beca. Chloe knew she disliked Justin Bieber.
I know you know that I made those mistakes maybe once or twice By once or twice I mean maybe a couple of hundred times So let me, oh let me redeem, oh redeem, oh myself tonight 'Cause I just need one more shot at second chances
Yeah, is it too late now to say sorry? 'Cause I'm missing more than just your body Oh, is it too late now to say sorry? Yeah, I know that I let you down Is it too late to say I'm sorry now?
Beca called, “No Bieber!”
Chloe was quiet for the rest of the shower, and Beca immediately felt guilty. Chloe had been trying, hadn’t she? Besides, Beca really didn’t want to be mad at her anymore. Her second dream had put things into perspective. The idea of something happening to her girlfriend before they could reconcile was just too awful to bear.
Once Beca finished her shower and dressed, she was just pouring herself a cup of coffee when she heard a knock at the door.
She looked out the peephole to see Chloe holding a bouquet of flowers. As Beca opened the door, Chloe began to sing.
I never meant to cause you any sorrow I never meant to cause you any pain I only wanted to one time to see you laughing I only wanted to see you Laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain Purple rain, purple rain Purple rain, purple rain I only wanted to see you Bathing in the purple rain
“You know Prince?” asked Beca.
“Have I been living under a rock? Yeah.”
Beca laughed. “Why does this conversation sound familiar?”
“I brought you some flowers. I didn’t even know if you liked flowers, but these are my favorite,” said Chloe, handing the bouquet to Beca.
“Come on in,” said Beca, grabbing a big cup and filling it with water because she didn’t have a vase for the flowers.
“I really am sorry,” said Chloe. “I should have had your back. I’m an idiot. There’s no excuse for what I did, and I hope you can forgive me.”
“This week has been one of the loneliest I’ve had since I joined the Bellas,” said Beca. “I know I made mistakes too. I accept your apology, and I’m sorry I shut the door in your face.”
“I should have given you some more space,” said Chloe.
“Right,” said Beca. “So, can we just agree to move past this?”
“Definitely.”
“I’ve missed you so much,” said Beca.
“I’ve missed you too.”
“But I do have something to tell you. Luke gave me the night shift for Spring Break. So I’ll be staying at Barden. I guess we’ll take a raincheck on that visit?”
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Chloe. “It turns out I’m having nodes surgery that week. My mom told me on Sunday. The season is over, and I’m tired of the pain.”
“I think that’s probably a good idea.”
“Please don’t tell Bree.”
“No danger of that. We’re not exactly talking.”
“She said she apologized,” said Chloe.
“Yeah, she did. But...I’m just not ready to talk to her yet.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
“Want some coffee and pop-tarts?” asked Beca.
“Sure,” said Chloe.
“Why did you sing a Bieber song to apologize to me?”
Chloe gave a sly grin. “Because I know you hate Bieber. If you hadn’t reacted at all, then I’d know you weren’t ready to talk. It was actually Aubrey’s idea, at least in part.”
“You’re lucky you’re that pretty,” said Beca. “Justin Bieber sucks.”
They caught each other up on what they’d been doing for the past week. Chloe laughed when Beca told her that Luke had asked her out.
“He didn’t know you were gay?” asked Chloe.
“Nope,” she said.
“That’s hilarious!”
“He was really nonchalant about it when I turned him down.”
“That’s Luke,” said Chloe. “I’m so excited for you next week. I’ll try to listen online.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Okay,” said Beca. “Hey, could you give me your mom or dad’s contact information? I want to know the minute you’re safely out of surgery.”
Chloe texted her mom’s contact info to Beca.
Once they were done breakfast, it was about time to head to campus for their classes. Beca found her girlfriend climbing into her lap before she could clear her breakfast dishes.
Chloe pushed a lock of Beca’s hair back over her ear, causing the girl to shiver a little. “Can I?” she asked, staring at Beca’s lips.
Beca could barely even nod before Chloe’s lips were on hers. She instantly sighed into the kiss, pulling Chloe close. She’d missed this even more than she’d realized. Kissing Chloe was like coming home.
“I’ve missed this,” Beca murmured when they broke apart.
“Me too,” said Chloe. “Do you have some time to spend together tonight?”
“Yeah,” said Beca. “I’d like that.”
“Why don’t I just bring over some Chinese food? We can watch Netflix, or…”
“Sounds good. Now let’s head to campus. I have some stuff I need to turn in before the break.”
“Me too.”
*****
Chloe
Chloe arrived on campus for her classes with a spring in her step and a much lighter heart. A huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders when she’d reconciled with Beca. She hadn’t realized just how much pain she’d been in until it was gone.
She muddled through her classes, her mind wandering to the evening’s plans to spend time with Beca for the first time in nearly a week. They’d rarely gone a day without seeing each other since Bellas’ practice had begun. Between that, being neighbors, and then being girlfriends, Beca had been a constant in her life this school year. She’d been so lonely since their fight.
As soon as her last class was over, she headed back to her apartment, taking some extra time to trim her nails and shave her legs. She’d slacked a bit on maintenance in the past week, and now she wanted to make extra sure she looked nice for Beca.
She texted Beca around 5:30 to make sure the time worked for her and to get her order, and she was at Beca’s with Chinese food an hour later.
“Hey, Chloe,” said Beca, giving her a kiss. “Why are you wearing a dress?”
“I wanted to look extra nice. It feels like it’s been forever.”
“I’m not complaining. It’s cute.”
“Good,” said Chloe, taking her shoes off, and leaving them at the door. She put the bag of food on Beca’s table and put a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, grabbing one for each of them.
“Thanks,” said Beca. “Just please take whatever’s left with you when you leave.”
“Sure, but why?”
“Oh, right, I didn’t tell you. My mom is going to fly here and stay with me during Spring Break. I’m sure she’s not naive enough to think I don’t ever drink alcohol, but I’m not going to have it in the fridge either.”
“That’s great, Beca. I’m sure you miss her.”
“I do,” said Beca. “I need to pick your brain on something, though.”
“Okay.”
“Jesse’s mad at me. Like, really mad. He acts as though I don’t exist, now. He’d barely been talking to me after regionals, but he hasn’t even looked at me since the semi-finals. I tried apologizing, but, for all I know, he could have blocked my number.”
“I really don’t know,” said Chloe. “Have you talked to Benji?”
“A little. I don’t want to throw him into the middle of this, though.”
“Right. I don’t know right now, but I’ll think about it.”
Beca nodded and the two of them ate their food, Chloe stealing bites of Beca’s food, and Beca pretending to be mad.
“Maybe next time we should just split our orders,” said Beca.
“But swiping the food from you is half the fun!”
Beca rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You’re so weird.”
Once they’d finished their food and put away their dishes, Chloe walked behind Beca and snaked her arms around her waist. “What should we do now?” she asked, already starting to kiss Beca’s neck.
“I have a feeling you already have something in mind.”
“I’ve missed you, Beca. A lot.”
“Oh, have you?” asked Beca. Chloe could hear the smirk she knew was on Beca’s face.
She spun Beca around so they were facing each other. “A whole lot.”
Chloe’s lips were on Beca’s before she could respond verbally. Beca immediately kissed back, sliding her tongue into Chloe’s mouth. Chloe reached her arms around Beca, squeezing her ass. The moan Beca let out told Chloe that Beca had missed this just as much as she had.
Chloe soon found herself being backed into Beca’s living room. Beca turned them around and sat on the couch, pulling Chloe down into her lap. She soon felt Beca’s hands reach under her dress. Chloe’s hips had already begun to buck as she felt Beca’s fingers going up her inner thigh. She soon felt her underwear being pulled to the side.
“Damn,” said Beca. “You’re so wet.”
“Beca…” Chloe could only whine her girlfriend’s name in response.
“These need to go,” said Beca, pulling at Chloe’s underwear.
Chloe stood up, yanked them down and kicked them off. She sat back down on Beca’s lap, gasping as Beca ran her fingers through her folds again. She began to rub circles into her clit, and Chloe came in record time.
“You don’t need to look so smug,” said Chloe.
“I think that’s the fastest I’ve gotten you to come,” she said.
“I haven’t come in a week!”
“Same for me,” said Beca.
“Sounds like I’ll have to fix that,” said Chloe. She stood up, took Beca’s hand and headed to the bedroom, both of them removing each other’s clothing as they headed down the hall.
“That’s quite the trail of clothing,” said Beca.
“Sign of a good time.” She threw back the covers and lay Beca down. She massaged Beca’s breast and took one in her mouth while moving her other hand down to Beca’s clit. She had Beca screaming her name, both hands tangled in her hair in record time.
“So, who won?” asked Chloe.
“Let’s call it a tie,” said Beca.
They spent the evening intertwined, screaming each other’s names, fists in sheets. As the night went on, things slowed down, focusing more on connecting with each other than simply getting off. Chloe glanced at the clock on Beca’s nightstand once they’d stopped.
“Damn,” said Chloe.
“Hmm?”
“Looks like we’ve been having sex for a good two hours.”
“Nice,” said Beca. “I don’t know about you, but I think I needed that.”
“Me too,” said Chloe, pulling Beca closer to her. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.”
The two of them drifted off to sleep, Chloe feeling far more relaxed than she had since the debacle that was the semi-finals.
*****
Beca
Beca woke up to Chloe’s cell phone alarm and a kiss on her bare shoulder from the woman spooning her. It was the most rested she’d felt in a week.
“What time does your flight leave?” she asked.
“Two,” said Chloe.
“Want to go out to breakfast?” asked Beca. “All I have here are pop-tarts. And I think I have some cereal, but it might be stale.”
“Breakfast out sounds great.”
“Are you packed?”
“Yeah,” said Chloe. “I figure I’ll be spending most of the week recovering from my surgery, so I mostly packed pajamas.”
“Will you have to stay in the hospital overnight?”
“Not unless there are complications.”
“Good,” said Beca.
The two of them got into the shower, and Beca was the first to sing this time.
Honey honey I can see the stars all the way from here Can't you see the glow on the windowpane I can feel the sun whenever you're near Every time you touch me I just melt away
Chloe joined in immediately.
Now everybody ask me why I'm smiling out from ear to ear (They say love hurts) But I know (it's gonna take the real work) Nothing's perfect but it's worth it After fighting through my tears and finally you put me first
Baby, it's you You're the one I love You're the one I need You're the only one I see Come on, baby, it's you You're the one that gives your all You're the one I can always call When I need to make everything stop Finally, you put my love on top
Ooh come on, baby You put my love on top top top top top You put my love on top Ooh ooh Come on, baby You put my love on top top top top top You put my love on top My love on top
Beca began the next verse.
Baby I can feel the wind whipping past my face As we dance the night away
Chloe took over, slightly changing the lyrics.
Girl, your lips taste like a night of champagne As I kiss you again and again and again and again
They continued the song, Beca being backed against the shower wall just as it ended. Chloe’s lips were on hers before she could even ask what was going on.
When they finally came up for air, Chloe whispered, “That’s another one of my lady jams.”
Chloe was on her knees, putting Beca’s right leg over her shoulder before Beca could even respond. She moaned the instant that Chloe’s tongue touched her clit. Chloe worked fast and Beca came quickly, a stream of curses flowing out of her mouth.
She smiled when Chloe stood back up to kiss her. “It’s your lady jam, but I’m the one who just came? Interesting.”
“You could fix that,” said Chloe, winking.
She didn’t have to tell Beca twice. She turned them so that Chloe was back against the shower wall this time. She kissed her hard and put her hand between Chloe’s legs. She slid her fingers inside with ease as she felt Chloe spread her legs. She pumped her fingers while Chloe moaned the words “harder” and “faster” mixed with Beca’s name before her body went rigid as she came.
“Remind me to sing that one again later,” Beca said as she gently took her fingers out of her girlfriend.
“Definitely,” said Chloe as she kissed Beca again.
“Okay, we really need to get clean or we won’t have time for breakfast.”
“I thought that was breakfast,” said Chloe.
Beca rolled her eyes before laughing at the inappropriate comment. “It’s like my stage crew days in high school all over again. Well, except none of those jokes were from someone as hot as you.”
“And hopefully nobody who was sharing your shower.”
Beca shook her head and passed Chloe a washcloth.
As they were getting dressed, Beca asked, “Do you want me to make you some hot tea?”
“No, I’m okay,” said Chloe, gently touching her neck. “I can’t wait to get rid of these nodes, though.”
“Will you still be able to sing?”
“I think so, or, at least, I hope so. I know the doctor said something about vocal therapy, so I guess I’m going to do that.”
“You should. I know how much you love to sing, and I’d hate for you to get nodes again.”
They headed to breakfast, and they had a nice, long conversation over the meal. Beca opened up about her childhood.
“I’m not sure my parents did their best handling the divorce. I told you I don’t remember them being happy. They fought all of the time, and then my dad traveled for work a lot. I remember hearing Sheila’s name a lot, and my mom yelling about lipstick and perfume. I was too young to understand that my mom had essentially caught my dad red-handed. It wasn’t much after the business trips happened that they separated. He initially had an apartment near our house, but it wasn’t long before he moved across the country.”
“You were eight?”
“I was seven when they separated. The divorce was final shortly after I turned eight. I think he was across the country by then, but that was a long time ago. Sheila tried to be the ‘fun stepmom’ but I wasn’t having it.”
“What did she do?”
“She bought me Barbie dolls, and My Little Pony stuff, not realizing that I didn’t like either of those things. I was way more into Legos.”
Chloe laughed.
Beca continued. “I didn’t spend a lot of time here in Atlanta, though. I had either Thanksgiving or Christmas here, depending on the year, plus a week in the summer. My dad would come up to Seattle and visit sometimes, but it didn’t happen all that much. I actually spend a fair amount of time in New York, though. My Gram - Dad’s mom - lives there, and I visited her a lot. I even - I...went there a lot, even with my mom after the divorce. Gram really likes my mom and I think a part of her is pissed about the affair.”
Beca couldn’t believe she’d nearly slipped and told Chloe she’d lived with her Gram for her entire seventh-grade year. She didn’t know how to talk about her brief stint on Broadway without seeming like she was bragging.
“That’s cool,” said Chloe. “I wish we’d been able to go to the finals. I didn’t get to see New York last year. The day the Bellas were touring the city, I stayed in the hotel room with Aubrey. She was so upset.”
“Maybe we can go visit my Gram sometime,” said Beca.
“I’d like that.”
“Tell me more about life with four older brothers.”
“Well, the oldest one - Dave - was in his senior year of high school when I was in kindergarten. So, he was off to college when I was in first grade. I hardly remember living with him. I do know that sometimes he picked me up from school and the other kids thought he was so cool. I was the only kid with an older sibling with a car and a driver’s license.”
“That’s insane.”
“I don’t think I realized my family was all that different until probably my kindergarten year. My parents had us all spaced about three years apart, so, the year I was in kindergarten, my brothers were in third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth grades.”
“So, who’s who again?” asked Beca.
Chloe pulled out a picture on her phone. “We took this on Christmas at my mom’s,” she said. She showed Beca a picture of herself with four men - everyone in a different “ugly Christmas sweater”. Not only was Chloe the shortest, but she was also the only redhead. They all had the same blue eyes and smile, though.
“Okay, we actually stood in birth order this time. Dave is all the way to the left,” she said, pointing to one of the blonde men. “Next to Dave is Danny, and then Steven. Chris is next to me.” Danny was blonde like Dave, while Steven and Chris both had dark brown hair. They all had at least six inches of height on their sister, from what Beca could tell.
“That’s quite a group. I can’t believe you’re the only redhead.”
“My dad has red hair,” said Chloe. She flipped through her phone and showed Beca a picture.
“Wow, no mix-up at the hospital.”
“Yeah,” said Chloe. “Anyway, I definitely got away with a lot as the youngest and only girl. I didn’t have hand-me-downs, for the most part. I got all the girly toys my family could buy, and, as I told you before, I practically had four bodyguards by the time I was old enough to date.”
“Wow,” said Beca.
“It’s probably why my parents put me in dance when I was little. I even competed for a few years before deciding it wasn’t for me. I liked to dance, but the competition circuit can be a pain in the ass.”
“Which is why you can twist my hair up like that so quickly.”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But, I really have always been good with hair. I used to help the younger kids back when I was in high school. I have no earthly idea why my teacher let five-year-olds on the dance competition team, but I guess it was because their parents would pay the money.”
“When did you compete?”
“I was ten for my first competition. I think it’s a good age. I was young enough to not be ridiculously nervous but old enough to appreciate the opportunity.”
“Tell me there are videos of this,” said Beca.
“My mom has some videos of the recitals. Most of the competitions charged a pretty penny for a copy of the video, so we never bought them. I did the same dances, though, in the recital.”
“I bet you were adorable.”
Chloe shrugged. “So, what about you? What haven’t you told me?”
Beca felt her stomach do flips. Did Chloe know about her time in High Society? Beca decided she wasn’t up for discussing that.
“I don’t know,” said Beca. “My parents tried a lot of different activities with me when I was younger. Not dance, though. They tried sports, but I’m so not athletic. They tried karate, but I was the only girl and so much smaller than the other kids. My mom took a look at the kids my age and told my dad she wasn’t letting them kick my ass. They wanted me to take piano lessons, but I think their divorce lawyers took the money they probably would have spent on those.”
“Ouch.”
“I had one lesson, and I liked it, but I didn’t even touch a piano again until high school. It was an elective my senior year.”
“Can you play it?”
“Not really. I know some basics - like which key is which and how to read music. But I never got the hang of two-handed playing or anything.”
“So, what did you do in high school?”
“I was in choir, and-”
“You told Aubrey and me you didn’t sing,” said Chloe.
“We’ve long since established that was a lie. I was just...I don’t really even know why I said that.”
“Okay, so, choir, and…?”
“I was part of the stage crew in high school. For one show. I realized the group didn’t do much except smoke pot and make perverted jokes. Pot wasn’t for me, and even I can only handle so much inappropriate humor.”
“So, they didn’t do any stage stuff?”
“We did, but not really until tech week for the show. The ‘meetings’ were an excuse to smoke pot and make perverted jokes. And sometimes drink, although that didn’t happen more than maybe twice. We had a meeting at the supervising teacher’s house and he gave it to us.”
Chloe’s eyes widened.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the rebellious teacher was my favorite.”
Chloe laughed. They spent the rest of the breakfast enjoying each other’s company, and Beca went ahead and gave her a ride to the airport, insisting that the parking was way too expensive. Once they’d parted ways, Beca headed back to her place, cleaned it, and bought groceries. She didn’t want her mother worrying too much about how she’d been doing on her own.
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The Handmaid’s Tale: Prophecy or Inevitably?
Lydia Cole-November 2018
“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” It’s amazing how much the world has changed within the past decade, and even within the last few years. Eleven years ago, the first iPhone was released. Ten years ago, Obama was sworn in as the first African American President of the United States. Scientists are close to figuring out how to edit human DNA. Twenty-seven countries have legalized same sex marriage. This is truly the era of change. Sometimes, change happens so quickly that we don’t even really realize that life is different from what it was before.
The Handmaid’s Tale, a thrilling show set in a near future dystopia is all about change, big or small. The story itself isn’t new: it’s been around for over 30 years, since Margaret Atwood’s novel (by the same name) was published in 1985. Bruce Miller has done a better justice to the harrowing themes in Atwood’s novel than any other adaptation has; Atwood herself even stated that the realness of Miller’s story was too horrific to watch at times. It draws inspiration from different historical avenues: Lebensborn (a Nazi program that encouraged higher birth rates), America’s Puritan roots, and East Germany/The Iron Curtain, to name a few. The greatest accomplishment of Miller’s show is that it’s a feminist driven shock value, meant to prevent us from making the increasing anguish throughout the world our  new normal.                                                                 The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. The world is plagued with environmental disasters, as well as low fertility and birth rates. A religious extremist group took it upon themselves to make America great again; They made it look like their actions to abolish the government were the acts of Islamic terrorist groups. Once the religious extremists gained power, they forcibly separated fertile women from their families to create reproductive slaves or forced surrogates or ‘handmaids’. These handmaids are captives in the houses of a specific commander and his wife, who cannot bear children.  Once a month, these women are held down and raped during ‘The Ceremony’. It was either this or exile to the Colonies, where these women would spend the rest of their lives cleaning up nuclear waste from the waging war.
Moss leads the cast as the protagonist, Offred, a feisty feminist trapped as a handmaid in a society where a single toe out of line could end her life. She can’t let that happen though. She has to stay alive so that she can find her daughter, Hannah, who was taken from her. Moss’s narration gives us an insight to all Offred’s snarky thoughts. Many people tend to find voice-over narration an example of lazy writing, or unnecessary exposition. But for a character who is allowed to speak very little (mostly in repeated phrases) the voice-over is a welcomed device.    
We get to know Offred quite well throughout the show: not just through the narration of her thoughts, but also through flashbacks to her life before, with her family. These flashbacks allow the audience to piece together how not just Offred ended up in Gilead but also how little changes led to America becoming Gilead. . We see her and her colleagues being escorted out of the office because women can’t earn an income anymore. She can’t withdraw from an ATM or even use her debit card to pay for coffee. Flashbacks also tend to be an annoying narrative.  But in this case, they work in favor of the story rather than against it.
   It is not the flashbacks, narration, or dialogue, that shows off Moss’s spectacular acting. Rather, it’s the silence in between, the expressions on her face, the defiance that shows in Offred’s eyes as she is being slapped or tazed or whipped. Moss does have some of her work cut out for her because Offred is a brilliantly written character. I mean, what kind of person cracks jokes while looking at the dead bodies hanging above her? But Moss’s choice to play the character with astonishing nonchalance is audacious and sensational; her performance carries the show. You can’t have a well written protagonist without an equally enthralling villain. Or in this case, villains. We can say that the obvious villain is the patriarchy, or the system that designed the role of handmaids in the first place. But these are just ideas, mentalities.  The Handmaid’s Tale is less about the  patriarchy itself and more about the women who uphold it.
Acting alongside Moss is Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) as Mrs. Waterford and Ann Dowd (Compliance) as Aunt Lydia, the tormenting handmaid handler. Neither of them are inherently evil. They believe that what they are doing is for the greater good of Gilead. What makes them great villains is the fact that they aren’t far off figures, like ‘Big Brother’, or whimsical in their villainy like Captain Hook. They’re written well because they’re so real, so raw. Mrs. Waterford helped create Gilead because she believes in love and in family. All she wants more than anything is a child. Aunt Lydia, though harsh and unwavering in her punishments, truly cares for the handmaids, ‘her girls’. She is a twisted motherlike figure; she punishes but only to ready the handmaids for their divine purpose. Miller has effectively created villains that you will love to hate.
Although the show has many strong points, there are many people that argue that it’s distastefully explicit. Even if you know it’s coming, there’s something new and unnerving about watching Offred lay on the lap of Mrs. Waterford while she is being raped by the Commander. We see the handmaids casually observe the bodies of hanging men, marked by their crimes: Catholic, gay, abortion clinic worker. There is a woman who is repeatedly shamed until she believes that it was her fault that she was gang-raped. These scenes don’t show everything, but they show enough.  Margaret Atwood herself  said that there were a few times where she had to avert her eyes because it was a scene was so horrific.  The show tells a fantastic story but the violence show on screen is what’s preventing a wider audience from tuning in. it’s not a show for the faint of heart.
The show would be unwatchable if it was all doom and gloom; American Horror Story being the example that springs to mind. But, it isn’t. Just like in every story of oppression, there is resistance. There is a spark, hope, that crackles in the darkness. Many of the handmaids come together in resistance, the taste of freedom on the tip of their tongues. In our society, women resist by speaking up: they post on social media, they petition, they protest, and they march. They make themselves known, because how else will they make change happen?. But in Gilead, resistance is a quiet whisper that is carried on the wind: Mayday. Hope. Freedom. Reunion. It is human nature to resist oppression, and the Handmaid’s Tale provides a splendid exhibition of that fact.
The most horrific part of this show does not lie in its explicit nature.. It’s the extreme similarities  to the reality that we live in, even though the story is based off of events that happened 30+ years ago. Moss herself thinks that using the violent nature of the show as a reason not to watch it is a weak excuse. She said, “I hate hearing that someone couldn’t watch it because it was too scary[…] I’m like, ‘Really? You don’t have the balls to watch a TV show? This is happening in your real life. Wake up, people. Wake up.’” The show’s timely premiere, close in hand with Trump’s inauguration seems coincidental. Was it? Either way, women have started dressing up in the iconic red robes and white bonnets worn by the handmaids when attending various women’s rights marches. Trump’s new policies, especially those in favor of anti-abortion, are being perceived as threatening to women. Discrimination against working mothers and women who choose not to be mothers are still battles that women continue to fight.
This ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ wasn’t written to be some urgent prophecy, but still as a potential warning of what might come to past. Aunt Lydia, a strong believer in the ‘greater good’ said it best: “Things may not seem ordinary to you right now. But they will.” It’s a dictation of the process that humans go through when they start to numb themselves towards the harrowing atrocities happening around the world, to the point where it’s becoming normal. It’s only when we look back on ‘the good ole days’ will we realize that it’s too late.  
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rosesisupposes · 5 years
Text
What I’ve Been Looking For
Part 4 of Breakin’ Free, a High School Musical Sanders Sides AU
Chapter Pairings: Prinxiety
Chapter Warnings: Roman Is A Disaster Gay (If Only He Was Out Enough to Know That)
Reader tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice   @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby  @sparkly-rainbow-salt @astral-eclipse​ @thelowlysatsuma
<<3. Get’cha Head In The Game | 5. The Status Quo>>
read on ao3
SCENE: Homeroom and Hallways of East High
A particular air was flowing in the Ms. Darbus’ classroom the next morning. There was a humming undercurrent of excitement that didn’t quite spread to every occupant, but filled those it touched.
Dee Evans was in full form, glowing in gold accents, from the line on his sneakers to his eyeshadow and lip liner. His head was out of his phone for once as he smiled at every student he walked past on his way to homeroom. Cee was in an equally good mood, in complementary shades of silvery blue with a matching hat in navy. He carried a small gift bag with artfully arranged tissue paper. Cee handed the bag to Dee, who placed it on Ms. Darbus’ desk with a flourish. “Just a little something for you in honor of today!” he said with another bright smile.
As he returned to his desk, the rest of the class filtered in. Virgil and Roman made eye contact as they found their desks, sharing a small smile before Remy called Roman’s attention away. Patton Baylor chatted happily from his spot at the center of a small crowd of students, all of whom looked up at him with slightly starry eyes. Logan McKessie brushed past the crowd, his face buried in a book on theoretical physics. Murmurs of chatter slowly quieted as Ms. Darbus stepped on the stage at the front of the room.
“I expect we all learned our homeroom manners yesterday, correct? If not, we have some dressing rooms that need painting,” she said imperiously. Remy rolled his eyes at Roman as he leaned on his basketball as a pillow.
“Now, a few announcements,” she continued, brightening. “This morning during free period will be your chance for the musicale auditions, both singles and pairs.” Dee sat up even straighter in his seat, clapping in excitement. “I will be in the theater until noon for those of you bold enough to extend the wingspan of your creative spirit.”
Remy snorted. “When you’ve got auditions at 11 but have to be back on the mothership by noon,” he snarked under his breath. Roman had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from catching the teacher’s attention with his laughter.
Unaware of her students’ commentary, Ms. Darbus began to instruct. “Today, we are going to discuss the importance of William Shakespeare and his works. Can anyone tell me of a phrase or word we use in everyday language that was originally coined by the Bard?”
Behind him, Roman could hear Remy sliding dark glasses over his eyes as he settled in to nap.
~~~
Later that day, Roman was sorting through the books in his locker when Remy came up, spinning his basketball on a finger.
“Sup, gurl.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“So the whole team's hitting the gym during free period. What do you want to have us run?”
Roman looked directly at the books and binders in his locker as he answered. “Uh, my dude, you know what, I can't make it. I gotta catch up on some homework.”
Remy snorted. “Bitch, it's only the second day back. I'm not even behind on homework yet. And you know I've been behind on homework since preschool.”
Roman forced a laugh. “Oh, Rem, you’re so funny! I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” He closed his locker and walked off before his friend could offer another objection.
Remy pulled his sunglasses down his nose to stare at his friend’s retreating back. “Homework? Girl, nah.”
He followed Roman down the hallway as the team captain turned into a classroom to chat with another student. Remy slid up to the door as he tried to see where he was going, listening to their idle chatter. Then someone bumped him. He turned to see Patton and a small handful of admirers.
“Remy! How are you today?”
“Hi Pat - I’m good, thanks, just busy…”
“Not too busy to miss the GSA meeting this afternoon, right?”
“Never too busy for my little minions, you know that,” Remy said with a fond smile.
“Oh good,” Patton said, his bright teeth a contrast to his brown face and browner freckles. “See you later, gay-ter!”
He turned and walked off with his friends as they giggled and Remy rolled his eyes. Turning back to the classroom, he realized it was empty. Roman has escaped him. “Boo, you whore,” he muttered to himself. “What could possibly be more important than basketball?”
Roman slipped down the southern stairwell of the school, checking behind him to make sure Remy was off his tail. He wasn’t sure he say why he felt so compelled to at least watch the auditions, but he knew that for some reason, he needed to be there. That need wasn’t quite enough to admit to even his best friend in the whole world what he was doing, though. He strolled through one of the lower courtyards, alert for any team members who might see him and ask why he wasn’t heading to the gym. He turned a corner and immediately turned back. Here he’d been worried about teammates when Coach himself was in the next courtyard, clearly looking for him. Had he seen him? Were those his footsteps walking in his direction?
Crapcrapcrap gottahide gottahide
Roman ducked into the closest door, the auto body and mechanics shop. He put on an air of nonchalance as he leaned behind a car, seeing his dad glance into the shop from the corner of his eye. Coach didn’t spot him, though, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He turned his head to see the shop teacher staring at him oddly.
“Uhh, shortcut,” he said lamely. “I’m… late for class. Gotta go, thanks, bye!”
He walked quickly out, from the auto shop to the woodshop. He could hear snatches of a tune played on the piano from here, where the woodshop connected to the backstage and green room areas of the auditorium. He took a deep breath. This was it - the auditions. He could as least get up the courage to watch, right? He walked into the backstage, trying to summon more confidence. Then he heard another person walking towards him and immediately ducked behind a janitor’s cart, hunching over to hide his face behind the mop.
SCENE: Auditorium
The auditorium and backstage were buzzing with chatter as multiple auditioners filed into the audience seats. Ms. Darbus strode to the stage to welcome them all, a small person in her wake. They seemed to be trying to hide from the crowd behind their bright orange beanie and also behind Ms. Darbus herself. The drama teacher took center stage and addresses the crowd.
“This is where the true expression of the artist is realized. Where inner truth is revealed through the actor's journey…”
She was interrupted by a loud ringing, and immediately glared at the crowd in front of her. “Was that a cell phone?”
“That was the warning bell, Ms. Darbus,” the student at her elbow whispered.
“Ah, I see,” she said, clearing her throat. “Those wishing to audition must understand that time is of the essence. We have many roles to cast and final callbacks will be next week.”
Roman slowly made his way to the back of the auditorium, still hiding behind the janitor’s cart as he listened. Callbacks, next week? In the same week as the big game? Luckily, even if he somehow got the nerve to audition, there’s no way he’d get called back. That was a thing that only happened to real actors, right?
Ms. Darbus was still reviewing the audition process. “Please come to the stage on your turn. Once you’ve introduced yourself, you will sing a few bars and I will give you a sense of whether or not the theater is your calling. Better to hear it from me now than from your friends later.” From his hiding spot, Roman gulped. Maybe this whole ‘audition’ thing was a mistake. “Our composer, Joan Stokes, will accompany you and be available for rehearsals prior to callbacks. Shall we?”
Joan took their seat at the piano bench as the first singer came to the stage.
“Hi, I’m Derionna!” she said with enthusiasm. She dove into singing, with plenty of energy but perhaps not a lot of rhythm.
“It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t see that you were always right beside me. Thought I was alone, with no one to hold, but you were always right beside me”
Joan played well, trying to get her to match their beat, but she was snapping to her own beat and seemed unaware.
“Thing feeling’s like no other, I want you to know…” she paused, seeming to have forgotten the rest of the song. Ms. Darbus took the opportunity to jump in.
“Uh-huh, thank you, next!”
A nervous-looking, gangly boy came to the stage. He seemed to be speaking rhythmically more than singing, and kept checking his hand for the words he’d written there.
“It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t sneeze - see! That you were always right there next to beside me!”
“Camden, I admire your pluck. As to your singing... That's a wonderful tie you're wearing. Next!” Camden smiled and smoothed his tie as Ms. Darbus’ words sank in. His face fell as he shuffled off the stage.
Roman winced through the next singer. Even he could tell she was badly off-key and trying to conceal it by winking frequently, directly at Ms. Darbus. Joan mouthed the words along with her, trying to get her back on rhythm, but it was to no avail.
“Please, stop,” Ms. Darbus finally interjected. “Thank you, Brittney. Next!”
Another auditioner. She was clearly talented, but was also singing as if in an opera, not a musical.
“So lonely befooorrrre I finally fooooo-hooounnddd what I’d been lookiiiiing fooooooooooooooooooor!” She held her last ear-piercing note as Joan stopped playing in shock and audience members tried to subtly cover their ears.
“Ah... Valerie,” Ms. Darbus said with forced cheer. “What... courage to pursue a note that has not been accessed in the natural world. Bravo! Brava! Perhaps the... spring musicale?”
Valerie frowned and looked over at Joan. They forced a smile as Valerie hmphed in affront and left the stage. She was almost knocked over by the next auditioner, a tall, graceful man who leaped onto the stage to the opening bars of the audition song. Joan stopped playing once again, confused. The auditorium was silent as the dancer pirouetted and jetéd before elegantly leaving the stage. The effect might have been perfect, had not he crashed into an unseen obstacle backstage that was audible to everyone. Joan looked over in concern as Ms. Darbus coughed politely. “Thank you, Leo. Next!”
Up came a pair of auditioners, one very short student with brightly-colored hair, the other a man with a headband and bangs swept to one side. The shorter of the two started delivering a dramatic reading of the song as the other whispered echoes of their words.
“It’s hard to believe that I could not see”
“See”
“That you were always right beside me”
“Beside me”
The pair accompanied their words with strange motions that appeared to be attempting interpretive dance
“Thought I was alone!”
“Alone”
“With no one to hold!”
“Hold”
“But you were right beside me”
“Beside me”
They both began to roll and crawl on the floor as Joan backed up their piano bench as far away as possible.
Ms. Darbus had been stunned into silence, but finally found her voice again.
“Talyn, Dominic, that was… that was just... very disturbing, go see a counselor. Next!”
A hand suddenly tapped Roman on the shoulder, and he jumped so high he almost hit his head on the doorway. Virgil had come up behind him, smiling wryly.
“Hey there - did you decide to sign up for something?”
Roman ducked his head. “Uh, no. I was just… watching. Did you?”
Virgil shook his head, his purple bangs falling into his face. “So, uh, do you often hide behind mops, or do your friends just not know you’re here?”
Roman flushed lightly and shook his head in response as another auditioner came to the stage. She stood tall and adjusted her glasses as Joan began the opening bars. She took a breath to sing as she looked out at the audience, and froze.
“Thank you, Dahlia. NEXT!”
Roman winced. “Ms. Darbus seems a little… harsh,” he observed quietly to Virgil.
Virgil smirked. “Roman Bolton, Wildcat superstar, afraid?”
“Not afraid,” he protested. “Just… a little, uh… scared.”
“Me too, usually,” Virgil said, rubbing his neck. “But, um. I was thinking of actually auditioning, if someone could sing onstage next to me?”
Roman blanched with fright. “Um, uh, I could--  I mean, possibly, uh--”
“And for the lead roles of Arnold and Minnie we only have one couple signed up,” Ms. Darbus said happily. Virgil pushed Roman slightly as he hurried to hide behind the janitor’s cart with him. “Diego and Cedric, I think it might be useful for you to give us a sense of why we gather in this hallowed hall.”
Cee and Dee walked from the audience to the stage, flashing smiles at the remaining audience. As Cee started up the stairs, Dee stopped him so that he could go first.
Joan caught Cee as the twins picked up their microphones. “What key did you want?”
“Don’t worry about it, we had our rehearsal pianist do an arrangement,” Cee said with a smile.
Joan deflated. “Oh. Okay.”
The curtain closed as Dee & Cee prepared to sing. Virgil tugged on Roman’s arm to follow him as he found a seat in the last row of the auditorium.
The music started, jazzy and far more upbeat than the previous auditions. Two pairs of hands stuck through the curtain and snapped to the beat, before the curtain opened to reveal Cee & Dee with matching bedazzled microphones in silver and gold, respectively.
“It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t see,” Cee sang. He had an unarguably nice voice, and his perpetual smile matched the bouncy drumbeat the accompanied them.
“That you were always there beside me” Dee joined in, singing in harmony with his twin. Virgil wrinkled his nose as he watched. The pair were both excellent singers, but they kept adding in a lot of over acting, pretending to be surprised by each other on “beside me.” Even for a musical, this felt corny. But Ms. Darbus was clearly enjoying it, bopping along from her spot in the audience.
Roman physically recoiled as Dee handed off his mic to perform a peppy tapdance solo in the middle. “Is this normal?” he whispered to Virgil, who grimaced.
“I don’t think so,” he responded, nodding a head at Joan. The pianist watched from their bench, looking vaguely horrified at the spectacle in front of him.
The pair continued on through the song, adding full choreography. Cee even broke in the middle to do a highly energetic jazz square with accompanying jazz hands before accidentally bumping into Dee. His twin scowled and pushed him, but both recovered and smiled as they continued to sing.
They finally came to a close, Ms. Darbus and the sprinkling of audience members applauding enthusiastically. Dee shot Joan a glare until they clapped too.
Holding their final pose, Dee hissed in Cee’s ear. “I told you not to do the jazz squares.”
“It's a crowd favorite. Everybody loves a good jazz square,” his twin shot back, grinning hugely.
As the applause quieted, Ms. Darbus stood. “Are there any last minute sign-ups?”
Roman stood and tried to edge out of the theater without being spotted as Cee appealed to the dispersing crowd. “Don't be discouraged. The theater club needs more than just singers. It needs fans, too! Buy tickets!”
Joan caught Dee’s attention as he strode backstage. “Oh, actually, if you do the part with that particular song, I imagined it much slower…”
“If we do the part? Joan, Joan, my sawed-off Sondheim, I have been in 17 school productions. And how many times have your compositions been selected?”
“This would be the first,” Joan admitted.
“Which tells us what?” Dee asked with a tight smile.
Joan flinched and offered, “That I need to write you more solos?”
“No,” Dee snapped, his smile dropping. “It tells us that you do not offer direction, suggestion, or commentary.” He advanced on Joan, who backed up nervously into their piano. “And you should be thankful that Cee and I are here to lift your music out of its current obscurity. Are we clear?”
“Yessir! I mean, Diego.”
Dee backed down, then smiled brightly, lifting his mic closer to his mouth again. “Nice talking to you!” He followed his twin backstage with a tiny wave.
“Any last minute sign-ups?” Ms. Darbus called again.
“We should go,” Roman whispered at Virgil, reaching out to grab his hand.
“No?” The theater teacher said, looking around. “Good. Done.”
Suddenly, Virgil was pulling away from Roman’s hold and speaking up. “I'd like to audition, Ms. Darbus!”
Roman’s mind went into overdrive. What is he doing? What? How!? Why?! He gestured wildly at the smaller man, willing him to somehow take back his words and for them both to disappear.
Ms. Darbus looked up, surprised, but her surprise quickly morphed to disapproval. “Timeliness means something in the world of theater, Mr. Montez. The individual auditions are long, long over and there are simply no other pairs.”
Roman stuffed his fear into a tiny corner and emerged from his hiding place behind the theater door. “I’ll sing with him.”
The drama teacher pursed her lips. “Mr. Bolton? Where is your sports posse or whatever it's called?”
Roman stared. “Team”
“Ah.”
“But I’m, uh. I’m here alone,” Roman stuttered out. He felt as nervous as he ever did right before a game. “I’m actually here to sing with him.”
Ms. Darbus was unimpressed. “Yes, well, we take these shows very seriously here at East High. I called for the pairs audition, and you didn't respond. Free period is now over.”
“He has an amazing voice,” Roman protested, gesturing towards Virgil. Virgil looked vaguely queasy over the confrontation, and appeared to be attempting to will himself out of sight or out of existence, whichever came first.
“Perhaps the next musicale, then,” Ms. Darbus said, and left the auditorium.
Just then, Joan tripped as they turned away from the piano, spilling sheet music in every direction. Roman and Virgil hurried to the stage to help them.
“So, you’re a composer?” Roman asked, smiling at the piano player. “You wrote the song Dee and Cee just sang? And the entire show?”
Joan seemed unable to speak, but nodded weakly, staring at Roman like an alien had just landed in the middle of theater.
“Well, that's really cool. I, uh, can't wait to hear the rest of the show,” he offered, helping them up. “So, uh, why are you so afraid of Cee and Dee? Or, Dee, at least. It’s your show, isn’t it?”
“Um, it is?” Joan asked, confused.
“Isn't the composer of a show kinda like the playmaker in basketball?” Roman asked with a smile. Both Virgil and Joan stared at him in incomprehension.
“Playmaker?”
“You know, the one who makes everyone else look good. I mean, without you there is no show. You're the playmaker here, Joan.”
“I am?” they responded, smiling tentatively. “Do… do you want to hear how the duet’s supposed to sound?”
Virgil nodded, and tossed a small grin Roman’s way. The taller man covered his face with a hand to hide what felt like another blush and followed the composer back to the piano, standing behind them to read the sheet music over their shoulder.
Joan tapped a foot to the proper timing, a much slower, sweeter tune than the one the twins had performed, and prompted Roman to begin at the right moment.
It was like New Year’s Eve all over again, and yet nothing like it. The fluttery nervousness was still there, but without the surprise or fear of the crowd. And this time, he wasn’t standing with a mysterious stranger who might run away. It was Virgil, smiling up at him as he came in for the second line. He no longer felt the same electrifying urge to grab the other boy’s attention at any cost - he just wanted that smile to keep being directed his way.
“I've never had someone that knows me like you do,” they sang in harmony, eyes meeting. Was Virgil blushing? Roman couldn’t be sure, especially as the shorter man turned back to the sheet music.
They finished in harmony and paused, all three appreciating the sweetness of the tune.
“Wow,” Roman finally said. “That’s really nice, Joan.”
Suddenly, a voice sounded from the rear of the theater. “Bolton, Montez,  you have a callback.” Ms. Darbus stood at the entrance, looking less severe with her glasses removed. “Joan, give them the duet from the second act. Work on it with them.”
Joan gasped in delight, then started bubbling over with plans. “All right. If you guys wanna rehearse, I'm usually here during free period and after school, and even sometimes during biology class. You can come and rehearse anytime. Or you can come to my house for breakfast. I have a piano, we can rehearse there. After school, before school - whatever works. After basketball class… do you have basketball class? Is that a thing?”
Virgil listened to the pianist, smiling a bit bemusedly, as Roman stared after Ms. Darbus’ retreating back in shock.
“We- she- what?”
a/n: Look who's able to write fluff again! Trust me, no one's as surprised as I am
(I know all of Thomas' friends are incredibly talented and would never be awkward/bad auditioners, but I feel like they'd have fun acting it out anyway :])
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brightandunique · 7 years
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Boku no Hero Academia Fiction Recommendation Master Post
I have decided my new favorite anime and its fandom deserves some appreciation. Every work I recommend are - in my personal opinion - beautiful and I want everyone to read them. If you see your work up here that’s cause I loved it to the moon and back! I welcome suggestions too!  
♥ - ultimate fav
★ - they do the do
(★) - implied sexual activities
ロ - unfinished
■ - finished
✿ - multi chapters
TodoDeku (Todoroki x Midoriya)
count your blessings, not your flaws by PitViperOfDoom  ♥ ■  
Sumary:  Midoriya Izuku has never been asked out, confessed to, or flirted with, except as a joke.
drink my thoughts by celestialfics  ■
Summary:  [02:13 AM] todoroki: Are you awake?
Gradations by Haurvatat  ★■ ✿
Summary:  U.A.'s Heroics Division's Class A was graduating. Moving on. Never coming back. And Izuku is going to be left behind, solidly trapped in a prison of his own making. There might be a few things that could make it more bearable, though.
it could be worse by bigspoonnoya  ♥ ■
Summary:  Todoroki is bad at presents, and worse at confessions.
It must be the heat by Sleeves  ■
Summary:  I wrote some silly fluff for Izuku's birthday. Happy bday, little hero egg!
Nerves of Ice by furihatachlookie  ♥ ■
Summary: Todoroki felt his own breath drop in temperature as the nerves settled in, steam rising with each steady exhale. He continued to stare, as if expecting the same to happen to Midoriya when he caught a whiff of cool mint as the boy spoke, face inches from his. In which Midoriya has a better grasp on the changes happening in Todoroki than Todoroki himself.
one string, fit for a bow by furihatachlookie  ♥ ■
Summary: There was no magical moment that played a part in Midoriya's realization that he liked Todoroki. The thin red string that greeted him every time he looked down at his hand was an obvious factor, yes, but it wasn't love at first sight either. It sorta just... happened over time.
project cupid by amoxicillings  ロ ✿
Summary:  In which Todoroki Shouto is trying to ask Midoriya out and the whole class is in on it.
Riddles in the Heart by PitViperOfDoom  ♥ ■ ✿
Summary: The law is clear: whoever correctly answers three riddles will marry the prince, while all who fail are to be executed. The people live in fear as more challengers try and fail, and the throne grows bloodier with every passing year. But a young prince, nameless and in exile from his home, believes there may be more to this brutal challenge than meets the eye. Of course, there's only one way to find out: ring the gong, and take the trial.
Summer Starts by PitViperOfDoom  ■ ✿
Summary:  It's been judged safe to send the students of UA home to their families for the first three weeks of summer, much to the relief of everyone whose name isn't Todoroki Shouto. Luckily, Midoriya has a solution for him, and Midoriya Inko has a lot of love to give.
Note: Part 6 of Send Endeavor to the Shadow Realm series. First part: Spring Cleaning
waterlogged (red blue, green) by lein  ■
Summary: Izuku has never been one to curse but the only way to describe himself as his mother hugs him goodbye that morning, is royally fucked.He’s really, truly glad no one in their class has a mind-reading quirk because from the minute his feet touched warm sand, his mind has been screaming in tune to the same famous classical overtures Tenya listens to when they study together. Occasionally, the music pauses just long enough for his brain to point out observations about Shouto that make Izuku want to stick his head under the waves and just breathe in.
prince & prince by Authorless  ♥ ★ ロ ✿
Summary:  Note to self: don't accidentally fall in love with a prince who's in an arranged marriage keeping your kingdoms from declaring war against each other. Especially when you're spying on him as his manservant.
Note: Part 1 of the kings & queens of promise series.
saltwater room by reapers  ■ ✿
Summary: It starts —like all ideas that inevitably lead to one’s downfall do— with something akin to this: Midoriya Izuku. Midoriya Izuku and a five-story house by the beach, completely devoid of any entry-fee --save for the one where Todoroki has to pretend to be Deku’s boyfriend. All-in-all though, not an awful price to pay for the vacation of their dreams, right? Right?
how would you feel by celestialfics  ♥ ■ ✿
Summary:  It’s Wednesday morning when Izuku’s mother texts him to remind him about his cousin’s wedding coming up the following weekend, and it’s Wednesday evening, when Izuku’s back in his room after classes and has time to call her, that she tells him she can’t go to the wedding with him.
One of “Those” by Ultimatum  ■
Summary: Todoroki and Midoriya are pro heroes. They're also dating.These two aspects clash when they're outed to the entire world as Japan's first officially gay heroes.
a burger and extra salty fries by SportsAnimeRuinedMyLife (KnightOfRage)  ■ 
Summary: In his third year at UA, Todoroki Shouto works in a burger place, catches on fire and falls in love. Only two of those things are on purpose. Or...Todoroki Shouto's exciting adventures in customer service.
Note: First part of the extra-salty/twitter-verse series! The next TodoDeku part of the series: get in loser, we’re going heroing
How to Be a Hero by Hummus King  ♥ ロ ✿
Summary:  Shouto Todoroki is a cold Pro Hero who never uses his fire side. He refuses to be like his father, Endeavor, but every day it seems like he's becoming more like him. Shouto meets up with Izuku Midoriya, a quirkless Pro Hero counselor and discovers that his power is his own. Also... he might be falling in love with his counselor. // AU where Deku never received One for All and became a quirk counselor instead!
that is just the way by celestialfics  ■
Summary: Shouto has his first sleepover.
the end of the world as you know it (and what comes after) by jambell  ■
Summary:  In the wake of All Might’s death, Izuku grieves. (Post-Graduation/Future Fic)
demolition lovers: beginnings by TMOTC  ロ ✿
Summary: It was a mistake, Shouto thinks, to fall in love with a hero. (Or the one where Todoroki is a Quirkless school nurse and Hero Deku’s longsuffering boyfriend.)
Note: Part 1 of the demolition lovers series.
KiriBaku (Kirishima x Bakugou) 
2am Knows All Secrets by Sarahhaley  ♥ (★) ロ ✿
Summary: … It wasn’t that he was annoyed. Okay, maybe he was a little annoyed, but that was just the lack of sleep talking. Because a certain explosive punk thought it was a good idea to test the flammability of his sheets at 2 in the morning. Every single morning. (In which Bakugou's quirk wakes Kirishima up, and Kirishima gets way too invested in his bro's well-being.)
a heart swelled to bursting by eggstasy  ★ ■ ✿
Summary:  The summer training camp of Bakugou's second year at UA descends upon him with all the untamed fury of- well, himself, honestly.
Communicate With Your Body by xX_KUUHAKU_Xx  ♥ ★ ロ ✿
Summary: "Hey! Wake up you piece of shit! Are you alive?!" The man winces and scrunches his face in pain but Bakugou continued to hold him in place. Good, he's alive- Piercing red eyes flutter open and gaze lazily straight at Bakugou's face and Bakugou feels his heart skip a beat. Oh, Fuck- AKA merman! Kirishima au
downhill by eggstasy  ■
Summary: Bakugou sleeping in the common areas like it’s no big deal seems to give everyone else permission to be just as bizarre, and little by little Kirishima starts learning things about his classmates he never knew.  
Love, Buried in the Ice by Tukson  ロ ✿
Summary:  Bakugou Katsuki and Kirishima Eijirou are paired together for a winter survival assignment! It's inevitable that the two clash, but neither of them could have predicted an accident at the height of their tension. Trapped in the wilderness at the mercy of the environment, how will the two cope with finding help and mending what was broken?
parted, and never parted by Authorless  ■
Summary:  Before going into battle, it’s only proper to make an offering to the god of war. But Kirishima’s run out of things to give. AKA God of War! Bakugou au
yes, you say you’d like to by Authorless  ♥ (★) ■
Summary: “You’re a popsicle biter, you fucking animal,” Bakugou says. “You’re not?” Kirishima says around a mouthful of ice cream. “No,” Bakugou says. “I prefer my teeth unfrozen, thanks.” He wraps his mouth around the popsicle and Kirishima realizes his mistake very, very quickly.
don’t count on me to let you know when by newamsterdam  ★■
Summary:  Kirishima has always made things easy for Bakugou. But that doesn't mean that Bakugou's gotten any better at these things, even after all of these years.
come @ me bro by SportsAnimeRuinedMyLife (KnightOfRage)  ■
Summary: Bakugou works at a convenience store, flirts like a loser, blows up nineteen aprons, gets a hashtag trending for all the wrong reasons and maybe manages to make a friend. Or...being Bakugou Katsuki is suffering.
Note: Part two of the extra-salty/twitter-verse series
it’s pouring out here by shizuumi151  ■
Summary: With phone, money, and keys in his pocket, Kirishima wandered around the city for an age. With his legs on auto-pilot his mind wandered too. To the new movie that peppered the streets in posters and trailers, a new move he wanted to practise for another basketball play, wondering about how the current arcs for his favourite manga would turn out in the next issue of Jump. And, of course, he thought about how many of those things he could see and do with Bakugou.
The Beauty of a Beast by starofjems   ロ ✿
Summary: Once upon a time a lonely beast lived in a manor deep in the forest. He dreamed of the day his true love appeared to break his curse... When a beauty finally appears in his life, it is not quite as he imagined. For who could have thought a beauty would be more of a beast. Or the beauty and the beast AU nobody asked for but here it is.
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Rokuhoudou 1 - 12 (REWATCH) | Fruits Basket 25 (FINAL) | Demon Slayer 25 - 26 (FINAL) | Mob Psycho 100 II OVA | Cop Craft 11 - 12 (FINAL) | Dr Stone 11 | Ahiru no Sora 1 | Shinchou Yuusha 1
New anime of the season, here we go!
Rokuhoudou 1 (REWATCH)
I’m doing a new project where I rewatch some of my favourites to test their integrity in that regard. Here’s the first show - Rokuhoudou. So what I remember about Rokuhoudou is that it’s very simple – the guys make food and help people, occasionally there’s cats – and that was enough to help me through a mental rough patch I was going through at the original time of airing.
Being sick and watching with a cinnamon roll really brings home the idea of Rokuhoudou as “comfort food for the eyes”…No, it’s not what you think. I’m eating a cinnamon roll.
I always assumed the title was translated to “Four-Coloured Daily Life at Rokuhoudou”, because that would be the best translation if the title was fully in kanji. It’s not though, so the hiragana-rendered parts could mean anything.
Rokuhoudou almost gives you this sensation of being spirited away by good food (and Good Boys).
Sui sometimes reminds me of Kunikida (BSD)…must be the glasses.
Gure’s such a tease, LOL.
Tokitaka’s so refined, yet also has the heart and patience to help old people, plant things and make pottery. I love him~!
“You don’t need to show appreciation with bodily functions!”
I only just noticed it…but Gure has a nice eye colour.
Oh…I just realised this since I now know Tokitaka grows the veg and herbs out back, but Tokitaka must’ve grown them.
Hmm…I was wondering why you’d need a spoon for chazuke, but then I realised it’s because of the soup…D’oh.
I wonder if Tokitaka also made the chopstick holders…
Update: The ikura reminds me of Hinamatsuri…
Rokuhoudou 2 (REWATCH)
(Sorry, I had a note, but I didn’t write it down fast enough so I don’t have any for this ep…)
Rokuhoudou 3 (REWATCH)
Tokitaka has a flower in his hair (during the pottery wheel scene)…cute~!
Rokuhoudou 4 (REWATCH)
“You need to chill out.” – More like “you need to calm down”, amirite??? (LOL)
Look at how badass my bois are!
Now that I’ve been seriously working on my customer service skills, I sort of get the ethic behind the Rokuhoudou workers in general.
Rokuhoudou 5 (REWATCH)
Oyaji ga Susumeru Café Iko! – “The Old Guy Recommends Cafes to Go To!”, literally speaking. However, it’s quite slang and seems to be hinting at the positive connotations of an oyaji (fondness, the sort you’d have for your dad), so I approve of the chosen translation “Daddy-o’s Café Go!”.
Oh yeah…this is the weird delusion from Isago, isn’t it? I still rmembr writing a blog post about it!
Why does Tokitaka look so evil in this one scene (where he’s helping Tsubaki), anyway?
Rokuhoudou 6 (REWATCH)
(no notes, sorry!)
Rokuhoudou 7 (REWATCH)
(no notes, sorry!)
Rokuhoudou 8 (REWATCH)
I love how Gure gets all fired up just to pedal a duck boat.
Is it just me, or does young!Gure look like he was designed by Rihito Takarai (creator of Ten Count)…?
I can’t believe this…my stomach grumbled in the middle of an espresso episode…
“Who else could it be for?” – The dog?...I’m kidding, man…don’t get so angry at me, dog lovers.
I think this might be the 2nd time I thought the kid was called “you” (2nd person pronoun), but his nam is “You” (given name).
Oh! I don’t think I noticed this special ED the first time around.
Update: Gure is a happy drunk, LOL. Also, Gure is half-Italian, with his father being Japanese. (see ep. 1 of original watch-through for corresponding notes)
Rokuhoudou 9 (REWATCH)
Is the land of love France or Italy…?
Shinchosha is real…in fact, they’re the ones who publish Rokuhoudou’s manga!
Oh, seriously, I ship it now! Isago x Hayashi, that is…and Sui x kittens.
Update: Somehow I only just ralised it…but the titular “Mont Blanc Boy” is Tsunozaki, even though technically the only boys we see in this episode are young! Kyousui and Yakyou.
Rokuhoudou 10 (REWATCH)
The Napolitan episode…this is where Astral’s post comes from.
I get the feeling this segment’s title is a shoutout to “You Don’t Know Gunma Yet”, which is in…Kurage Bunch, also by Shinchosha, if I’m remembering correctly.
Gure and Tsubaki are like children sometimes, I swear…
Kuromitsu = brown sugar. (It means “black sweetness”, literally translating and it used to confuse me so much that I want to mention it here.)
VAINO computer, eh?
Tokyo NX, LOL. (Parody of Tokyo MX, which has a lot of anime.)
Short-haired Tokitaka!
I think Koto(ko…?)’s words, in particular, were one of the best monologues in this series when it comes to relaxing by realising I wasn’t alone in my doubts of the world. “Can I make it to my dreams?” I was asking the first time I saw this and even though I haven’t achieved the dreams of past me, I just had to adjust my expectations, make some new dreams and keep on going.
Rokuhoudou 11 (REWATCH)
Good heck, Gendo-I mean, Kyousui. (re: finger tenting)
Also, there is one univeral truth about this show: don’t watch it on an empty stomach…I had to go get some food a few eps. back in this rewatch because my stomach grumbled…
When I thought of “something rich”, I thought of a pudding too. Maybe my memory is better than I thought, huh?
I thought there was something dirty on my screen…turns out it was just Gure’s beauty spot.
Rokuhoudou 12 (FINAL, REWATCH)
“I’ll wake you up, then.”
I learnt this from the manga, but Itou is the old tea vendor.
Gin-chan reminds me of the inventor Logicalist from Hina Logi.
Karamimochi. By the way, from earlier in the ep…ankoro mochi.
Neneko was meant to be into kimonos, wasn’t she…?
Nion (sic) camera, LOL.
Okay, that’s the end of my first rewatch. It’s a keeper!
Fruits Basket 25 (FINAL)
Shihan = shisho = instructor.
Notice the Jizo, protector of children.
“…didn’t have to block…”
LOL, Tohru’s shocked face going from Kyo to Yuki.
Ooh, Makoto Takei and Machi Kuragi…
Isuzu!!!
Okay, that’s the end of that. See you next time!
Demon Slayer 25
So the other butterfly mansion girls (aside from Aoi, Shinobu and Kanao) are called Naho, Kiyo and Sumi, huh?
Tanjiro is seemingly a freakin’ masochist right now to those girls…
Ooh, there’s a butterfly in a chrysalis on the title card!
It seems, based on the kanji for Tsuguko, the word literally means “inheritor”, “successor” or “one who makes [another person’s role flourish by being in it]”…Like a Legacy Character from TV Tropes. Also, “Tsuyuri” literally means “chestnut flowers fall”, if I understand the characters right.
Kanao does the Naruto run. She wants to see them aliens too!
“Putting in effort isn’t my thing.” – Now there’s a sentence after my own heart!
Why does Kanao not talk???
Kanao’s coin says “front” and “back” instad of heads and tails.
Hmm, hmm…very heterosexual reading of Kanao here. It almost makes me lose hope in the “gay Shinobu” department (not that I’m angry about that).
This guy with the hat…I swear he looks like a jellyfish…
Why do all the swordsmiths wear that mask???
There’s one thing I realised this episode…anime humour means I expect exaggerated reactions to a lot of things, such as Inosuke chipping his swords like that.
I remember being a bit annoying about the interchangeability between the translation of honoo as “fire” and “flame” when I was a Boueibu rookie...*sighs happily* good times.
Okayyyyyy…Tanjiro’s gone cuckoo…
Nezuko, Inosuke and Zenitsu, huh? There’s a combo I’ve never seen!
Mob Psycho 100 OVA
Isekai hot springs, LOL.
I think I can see Saitama’s bald head, LOL.
I think there might be CGI on this hot springs establishment…
This is Reigen, king of bulls*%$, everyone!
Nanbanzuke.
“[P]air of plumbers”, eh…?
Ooh, 8-bit graphics! Remember season 2’s early scenes? That 8-bit one was good.
Dude, Reigen…just leave the train already…then you’ll get out.
LOL, “Mobpis”...Mobpis 100, maybe?
Strangely, Teru looks vaguely hot in one frame of one scene where he has his eyes closed.
Why do I get the feeling the capybaras on TV will be relevant later…?
Now, this parallel world brings a new meaning to “Infinity Train”!
Nice callback to the opening words of s1 and 2.
…and randomly, Dimple can be seen in the red waves.
It seems Dimple likes sprouting legs these days.
Cop Craft 11
Tourte’s career…almost sounds like Trump’s…
“No one treats me like an alien.”
Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight, Tilarna…
The name “transitional crises” is perfect for this episode…geesh. Just like episode 1, there’s a cliffhanger.
Dr Stone 11
Notice the focus on E=mc2 when Senku talks about passing on knowledge.
Ahh, science…the cliché says it’s for loners, but truth be told, science works in tag teams just like anything else. (Yes, even IT, if you look at it a certain way – such as how creating your code builds upon the people who built that code and the people who made the programs you code in.
Why do all the villagers have platform shoes anyway???
Demon Slayer 26 (FINAL)
Is that woman (not the Biwa player, the other one)…Muzan?! Update: Yes.
Genya…he got so tall in 2 years(ish)…poor Tanjiro. He’s fated to kill Kibutsuji, but he’s also fated to be short.
Does every girl in this series have to fall in love with Tanjiro?!?! (or be implied to be shippable with him, even Nezuko???) I obviously don’t like that kind of direction, as you can see.
Ah, Kanao speaks…for once.
I guess Nezuko has a really loud heart voice, to contrast Kanao’s tiny heart voice, so to speak.
How does Inosuke eat anything through the boar head if he’s taking it off all the time now to do things with his mouth???
Darn that ninja Giyu, leaving as soon as he feels sentimental. (LOL)
*starts yelling at top of lungs* MU-GEN TRAIN! (roughly to the tune of TM Network’s Love Train, which I heard about a few months before this)
I just realised Tanjiro’s probably never seen a train, considering the only transport he’s ever known is maybe a carriage/cart…or maybe just his legs.
As Zenitsu’s struggling to keep up with the train, I almost expect the Harry Potter theme to play and a flying car to appear in the distance…okay, I’m kidding about the car, but I did wish for a second the Harry Potter song would play. Nur-nurr-nur-nurrrrrr-nur-nurrrrrr-nurr…(or something)
Cop Craft 12 (FINAL)
“…taking the lead in the mayoral lead.” – That sounds redundant.
Hey! It’s that one Demon Slayer joke again! (i.e. Kei used his head.)
Dead Randall: too much for TV.
I still can’t believe they properly managed to incorporate the porn case into the finale…
I watched Hellsing today and all this “Sir Matoba” this and “Sir Matoba” that made me wonder…why is Integra a “Sir” as well…?
Zelada does look like Alucard in some senses…hmm.
I think the large bruise over Kei’s eye disappeared in one of the scenes…Now it’s just under his eye.
Wait, Tilarna has a sibling??? Wuh???
I like how they transitioned into the OP, but man…talk about a fast ending. That’s a Hellsing kinda ending fo’ sure. Oh well, see you next time.
Ahiru no Sora 1
New season, new faces, new series. Let’s get into it.
Man, this sparrow freaks me out…
Lyrics from the outset. This must be something special to warrant such a thing.
I always thought Kuzuryuu (“nine-headed dragon”, literally translating) was a cool surname to have! Or just a place name, in this case.
LOL, his name is Momohara (peach field).
The arcade machine says “fist” in the back.
Uh-oh…nothing ever goes right when a boy tries peeping into the girl’s locker room…
*sigh* The male gaze…geesh.
“What are you doing?!” (Nani yatterun da?!) doesn’t translate to “This isn’t the circus!”.
Oh right…Momo = 100, chi = 1000, haru = spring, aki = autumn.
Hey, Chiaki actually got Sora’s name right for once…
Basically everything I know about basketball is from Kuroko no Basuke, so…uh…Sora’s reminding me of Kuroko right now.
Shinchou Yuusha 1
I just call this “TUEEE” instead…don’t mind me. Obviously, my target here is Ume…y’know that, right?
Most of these gods and goddesses look suckish, but I wouldn’t mind an anime about the one with the long hair and Monkey King headband.
Ristarte’s already a bundle of fun…although her leg jiggling’s a bit annoying…
(mocking) There must be a downside to this, right, Listarte…?
Can we not with boob storage??? I bet no matter how big a woman’s knockers are, you can’t store anything between ‘em in real life! (I think we’d need an anime Mythbusters for something like that…make it happen, someone!)
YesyesyesyesYES! OOH, Ristarte, you sure know how to pick ‘em! The fact he’s over 180 cm in height is…well, it’s bad for trying to kiss him, but otherwise it’s just a cherry on the cake of smokin’ HOT!
“[F]ish story”??? You mean “fishy”, right? (Oh well, seems like synonyms work too…)
I…don’t quite get this song…but I think I saw a hot guy (might’ve been a woman, but I’d like it to be a man since there are already so many women in the OP as is) about halfway through the OP. It’s a real 2 for 1 bargain here, people. Update: Argh…that’s a woman after all…
Argh! *is suddenly sabotaged by one Ariadoa* If you’ve read the Spellbook, you’ll know one of my aliases is “Aria Noyed”. It just happens to be the same as an anime and manga already, but now I have it ruining my fun here too…
LOL, did you hear that “ba-bing!” acquistion sound when Rista produced the money?
To be honest, I think regular Seiya (with the purple-highlighted armour as you see here) looks pretty hot anyway (plus Ume’s voice, which I came for), so I think I have a lock-in for the season right here.
The sakuga in this show is way too good (according to all the cubes of soil I keep seeing)!
This ED is a pretty cool bop, yo.
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“Holy Shit, I’m Gay”
A drabble in which Todd Brotzman realizes he’s really gay for Dirk Gently. He knows he’s not straight, but never in the context of Dirk.
Todd Brotzman had shared rooms with plenty of people in the past, but none of those experiences could be compared to living with Dirk Gently. Dirk was… loud. Dirk was messy. Dirk was somehow awake at the least convenient hours of the day. Dirk was always begging for attention. Dirk was a picky eater. Dirk was clumsy. Dirk was… his best friend. Todd was never annoyed by Dirk’s presence - just always, ever so slightly confused.
When Todd had suggested Dirk living with him, Dirk was snuggled in Todd’s bed, shaking. After a string of nightmares, Dirk had let himself into Todd’s apartment and slipped into the bed. Todd held Dirk just as Dirk would hold him in the midst of a pararibulitis attack, whispering comforts and reaffirmations into his ear. Dirk never said a word, drifting to sleep once again before he could find his voice. Todd figured then that Dirk hadn’t heard his offer, or was too overwhelmed to process it, which was probably better anyways. Not that he didn’t want Dirk living with him, but the idea of sharing space with someone else so intimately once more – he wasn’t sure if he was ready for that.
Of course, upon waking the next morning, Todd found himself being bossed around by an over-enthusiastic Dirk. He’d brought all of his things from the apartment upstairs, asking Todd about rules and arrangements and living situations that Todd hadn’t even considered before. For a moment, he cursed his past self for putting his current self in this position, but it would be a lie if he were to say he wasn’t happy.
Learning to live with someone new was hard, he realized one day while sitting at the kitchen counter. Adjusting to their quirks and schedules, compromising your space, learning how to respect their boundaries. For Todd, adjusting to Dirk Gently was a process, made up mostly of taking everything in stride and not raising his voice. He wasn’t going to yell at Dirk, threaten to leave him again – something he found himself feeling guilty for, even months after the Patrick Spring event. No matter how frustrated Todd got, he tried not to take it out on Dirk, even if he had broken three plates or flooded the bathtub.
Regardless, observing the small details of Dirk more than made up for any shortcomings in their roommate dynamic (if you could call it that). The way Dirk’s eyelashes brushed his cheeks as his eyes fluttered open in the mornings; the way he ran a hand through his hair when puzzled; the light in his eyes when you asked him a question about previous cases; the humming that came from the bathroom in the mornings as he shaved. It was… nice. There was nothing, though, that could’ve prepared Todd for Dirk’s awful taste in music. Okay, maybe that was a little harsh, but Todd had never exactly had a casual interest in music. Dirk almost exclusively listened to pop music. His favorite playlist featured pop hits from the ‘60s until now – almost five hours of it.
So there Todd was, sitting by the counter, watching Dirk make questionable looking sandwiches for the both of them, babbling along about “Todd what do you mean Nutella and marshmallow can’t go on a sandwich?! Those are the most fundamental ingredients of a peanut butter sandwich! Besides the peanut butter, of course…” Todd was barely listening though, taking in all of Dirk. The way the afternoon sun was hitting his face, making it glow slightly and the overly cheerful pop tunes playing in the background warmed Todd to the core, and he found himself smiling – a more sincere smile that he could remember having for years. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, couldn’t really place a finger on it. It wasn’t love, he thought, but something closer to that than anything he’d felt before. His heart swelled.
If that wasn’t enough to leave Todd a melty mess of emotions softer than he thought he was capable of, the sound Dirk made as one of his favorite songs definitely put him there. Dirk had made a sound somewhere between a gasp and squeal, hands flapping excitedly, carefully though not to get marshmallow all over the kitchen. And then, came the singing.
Todd never thought of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” as anything more than another one of those cheesy pop songs – especially being from the ‘80s. But the way Dirk sang it into the butter knife, so cheerful and snapping to the beat; it made him weak. Todd found himself unable to look away, despite his face probably turning five different shades of red. It was… beautiful. Dirk Gently, in his kitchen, making him lunch, hips swaying, drowned in a light that made him look all too ethereal – even if silly, yet unabashedly flirtatious looks covered his face. Todd wondered if in the future, he would find himself dancing to the horrible music himself, with Dirk, sharing looks only they might understand. Holy shit, I’m so gay. Not that this was the first time he’d thought that, at all- but the first time in was thought in the context of Dirk.
The four minutes of the song passed all too fast and Dirk had settled back into a less bouncy state, finishing the sandwiches. As Dirk handed him the sandwich, Todd was still a bit dazed, love-struck, and not thinking clearly at all – a perfect recipe of which resulted in a rushed kiss to Dirk’s forehead, pink blush on his cheeks, and a small smile, uncertain but thoroughly pleased.
Todd could get used to this falling-in-love-with-Dirk-Gently thing.
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violetsystems · 5 years
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#personal
I don’t think anybody would disagree the weather out here in Chicago is on some bullshit.  I was kind of glad to have a day off.  People around this time can be extremely moody and unpredictable.  I’ve been there so I can attest but this year I’m not at all.  I’ve been positive enough to keep pushing forward towards my goals.  One of those is no longer music and I think it’s starting to settle in with people finally as to why.  I already work hard enough.  All music has ever brought me socially was unwanted problems and stress to deal with.  I still make music on my mpc 2000 in the back bedroom.  I stayed home last night and played this Yugioh game I ordered from Amazon.  People expect me to be social and front facing every waking moment of the day.  It starts to bleed into my commute sometimes if I don’t bark it off.  This city can be brutally oppressive when it isn’t welcomed.  When people talk about scams and being scammed, Chicago can be as tricky as they come.  I think the reverse is true.  When someone like myself has had every single dirty trick in the book thrown at them, there’s a wisdom in that.  People still try me.  I’ve isolated myself enough to know where I’m comfortable and how far I can push that.  A good night’s sleep helps.  It’s ridiculous to me sometimes the pattern of behavior that I’ve set up for myself.  I’m up at five drinking coffee.  I wander into work or the gym before seven.  I had to adjust my schedule.  We all remember why.  I was being sexually harassed at the gym by a group of men.  You peel the onion layer back deep enough with me and you know that isn’t normal.  I’ve been targeted online and in real life more than anyone could possibly know.  Some people cry out for help.  Some people call uncle.  And some people shift out of phase and watch from the rafters.  I’ve lived to tell about it.  Over and over again.  People believe what they want to believe about me but one thing is for sure is that I have been through some shit.  Particularly with this city.  I can never escape it.  I was sitting in an airport in Shanghai and a pilot started talking to me about the area back home I went to college.  I had totally forgotten it was a pilot school.  I went there to study English and Psychology.  I told the guy I knew the place.  There in Pudong airport I announced our college was conveniently located right across from the state Maximum Security Prison.  The same prison where they executed that clown.  Also the same radio station I used to broadcast at four am and receive letters from inmates.  Here I am years later writing the love letters tuned into the CVS satellite radio’s broadcast of Ambrosia’s timeless classic “You’re the only Woman.”  It’s hard enough to stay focused when it follows me around everywhere I go.
Things follow me to New York too.  There’s this concept many people promote of the idea of a global citizen.  Someone who travels respectfully between boundaries and margins and gets things done.  Promotes culture, tourism, and goodwill.  There’s expectations traveling alone that I have never even imagined.  There are also cues wherever you look.  When you are focused on something like myself, it tends to drag me in.  It’s like gravity.  I like to have my emotional baggage light so I can be completely crushed by the romantic weight of it.  So I live how I talk.  And I love just as deep.  And it’s very hard to explain and there’s never really any need to when you feel free.  And for a person like myself regardless of a few bumps here and there I am free to feel that way.  I am also a white cis male heterosexual with a career in a world full of glass ceilings.  I don’t flog myself over it.  People have projected their own fears onto me for decades too.  If anything I seek the place in my heart to empathize and show love rather than hate.  And what happened a couple of days ago here in Chicago is something that is not representative of what belongs here.  An openly gay Black actor travelled in much the very same way as I would like from New York to Chicago.  That person became the victim of a very obvious, targeted hate crime.  The assailants even had the balls to say this was “MAGA” country.  The arguments stop there.  There’s nothing really more to understand.  Hate crimes don’t belong in Chicago.  That was a hate crime.  To me that’s terrorism.  I know terrorism in this city very well.  People have been gaslighting me for years to prove me wrong.  I realized the futility of constantly fighting to justify myself.  I only know what we’re fighting against.  And by we I mean us as a community of people.  The strengths in my life that I’ve come to rely on has been community.  Togetherness.  A care and appreciate for the life that each of us leads regardless of how that plays out.  Validation that isn’t just for show.  Some sort of anonymous virtual private network that phases us just out of reach from bullshit.  Prying eyes, judging glances, toxic rumors, and organized crime.  Those things evolve with the times.  Safety has to as well.  And the infrastructure of safety within communities is the power we all share together.  
Chicago is something I’ve shared with the world at this point.  Much like my love, care and respect for one person very far away yet close in my heart.  It haunts me over satellite radio and airplay every once and awhile.  It has it’s own language and way of speaking.  It’s own magic and rules.  It’s my own perspective and right to see a better future for myself.  I was really struck by that quote from Kazuki Takahashi about the hidden self.  I just like yugioh as a game for the most part.  I never really got that deep into the manga or art until recently.  But what he basically says is that we all have this egg inside of that might hatch into something amazing one day.  But outside forces and society tries to mold us and trick us away from our focus.  Sometimes it takes a long time for that egg to hatch.  Sometimes it requires a person to become very inward and quiet.  Sometimes if it’s a relationship in it’s infancy, it’s far too delicate from the social pressures put upon it.  Everybody is judging everybody these days.  Everybody wants control of the greater narrative.  People like myself tune in and out of that narrative.  Nobody has ever listened or respected what I have to say up until now.  When people anonymously ask if I think it’s worth it to visit Chicago, I will still say very much so.  And I say this full well knowing what is safe and not safe.  I’m appalled that anyone would commit a hate crime let alone an organized one.  That was two people that attacked that guy.  That speaks to me as being premeditated and organized.  It’s crime.  It’s terrorism.  And if you know one thing about how small this city is and how people work together, you know that’s a dangerous thing to try here.  Because this city is organized in ways that you don’t know.  Just like Chicago and New York are two places where I feel accepted no matter what.  That is a right for everyone.  This is not MAGA country.  These people are nothing but amateur terrorists like John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy.  People who hate women, minorities, people of color and the people like me that protect that idea of inter-sectionalism.  These things keep bubbling up.  I keep standing my ground.  That should be a very clear signal that the time is up for this bullshit.  Just like the vortex will lift and spring is around the corner.  Hate won’t last.  Only love will.  And this is a city where love should grow.  <3 Tim
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minusram · 7 years
Text
4/? bonny and blithe, good and gay
actually yelly anon reminded me that i forgot to crosspost the penultimate chap of bbgg. not sure i actually have any tumblr-only readers, but hey; better safe etc etc
[ch 1 / ch 2 / ch 3] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]
They emerge into a carpeted receiving room thronged with what must be at least half a hundred psychics—even if a significant percentage of them weren’t palpably genuine practitioners Ritsu would recognize their trade from the terrible way they all dress.
‘Significant’, of course, is relative, but considering the concentration of spiritually gifted individuals in the general population, meeting even one other esper is noteworthy.
Ritsu and his employer remain mostly unnoticed by the mass of people clustered away from the door, but a few turn to peer at them suspiciously, to size up potential competition. Reigen's taken aback for less than a second—and Ritsu only knows because of the particular way he rolls his shoulder—then he gets started, working the room with his usual oily flair and carving a space for himself where he doesn’t belong with just fast talk and the force of his repugnant but bafflingly effective personality.
He wades into the crowd, a cloud of jovial introductions left in his wake, handing out business cards and subtly enforcing his social superiority in a way that is confident, but not overly so; avoiding alienation by the sprinkling of a few specks of modesty amongst the uptalk. Ritsu trails silently behind.
Reigen cuts a swathe through the room, speaking the way he does to clients and moving with purpose in the face of his skeptical marks. It’s difficult for Ritsu to tell which of them have powers; a staticky aura hangs in the air, but his impression of the energy’s source remains indistinct. He’s unused to sensing others of his kind—every psychic he’s ever met has found him first.
Reactions to the rapid-fire establishment of their standing vary from baffled to condescending. Psychics are either good with people, intimidatingly bizarre, or just extremely lucky, but even in all the strangeness of this past year Ritsu has never met anyone quite like the man he follows now. His employer, energetic, manic with possibility, reaches a new target, and begins again. Ritsu can feel his mood souring, the longer they’re here with nothing happening. He didn’t come to network, he came to help people. And, yes, to serve himself; in hope of personal gain.
Judging by how many people are here, the lure of money or fame had a similar effect on his fellow exorcists.
He’s spared half an ear for Reigen’s spiel, the prattling stream of words a ceaseless rhythm that's grown familiar over time, but tunes right back in, affronted, when he hears the direction it’s taking.
“Oh, yes, I’m Reigen Arataka, and this is my assis—”
“I’m not—”
“My assistant, Kageyama Ritsu. Bright kid, but a little uppity, if you know what I mean. Won’t you excuse us for a moment, please?”
Reigen ushers him away and they reach the edge of the crowd. His employer bends for a harshly whispered exchange, unaware or uncaring of the fact that whispers in public tend to draw more attention than they deflect.
“Hey, Ritsu, pipe down, alright? I liked the silent act, that was good. Keep it up, and follow my lead unless for some incomprehensible teenage reason you are actively trying to blow this. If you ruin our reputation, then where are you gonna find your little exercises, huh?”
“You mean your reputation. I have nothing at stake here, I just work with you.”
“You work for me, kid, and if you don’t want to be cut off, you’ll stop trying to screw up my moves.”
“Your moves, Reigen-san, are the pathetic graspings of a man past his prime and lost in a world on which he has no bearing, a con artist who can only survive by leeching off society and the gullibility of desperate fools.”
His employer’s lips part, then twitch up into a smirk.
“Tell me how you really feel,” Reigen says, raising arch eyebrows at him, “And, by the way— I’m twenty-seven!” he hisses, before turning to greet another psychic who’s just walked up.
Ritsu fades back subtly, uninterested in ingratiating himself to strangers or to Reigen Arataka, and disappears to lean against the wall. No one notices him there, so it leaves him free to watch.
The people move, swirling together and apart in patterns Ritsu’s sure would be easier to track from above, but he does his best—his habitual level of effort; customarily more than adequate for his purposes. He compares what he sees to the display the day before, and finds substantial differences. The cultists were constrained, stuck together in a static train despite their wild laughing. Their grouping was starkly different from the one he observes now. Unnatural, even, though he has yet to devote the matter much thought.
The psychics here are stiff but organic, clustered in clannish clumps that remain cohesive with and within the greater group. Ritsu can’t deny that there seems to be a hub, some sort of slimy nucleus around where the century’s self-proclaimed shining star is making his way through the crowd, interrupting the previous order like sediment irritating a mollusc. Noise rises in the room, low conversations springing up like weeds in his employer’s wake.
A few more people show up, on the verge of being late as the start time on the invitation grows nigh, and receive the same scrutiny that greeted his own delegation of two. The crowd murmurs, louder now, energized by impatience and anticipation, his employer’s voice and bright hair lost in the thrum.
He catches sight of the eccentric uniform—black with pale wooden beads—of the Psychic Moon System, which may or may not be the organization’s real name, but he can’t tell from his limited glimpse whether there are any bandages on the person’s face. Guilt twinges regardless, and it occurs to him that he has no idea how long a Glasgow smile takes to heal. What happened to Shouda Katsukaru is tragic, and no little part of the blame falls at Ritsu’s feet; both because his association with Reigen was what got the man involved with such a dangerous spirit in the first place, and because Ritsu was unable to subdue it when the time came for him to step up.
They were all lucky that the thing was so indivisibly linked with the myth it was based on. Ambiguous answers and tossing anything they could find in their pockets confused it long enough for all three of them to get away—but not unscathed. Another one of his failures; something he can use now, and does, when he needs a little extra boost from his powers.
He wonders if every psychic’s abilities fuction this way. If this negative existence, life spent relying on a capacity powered by murk and suffering, is how it’s meant to work.
A clock strikes the hour from somewhere out of sight, across the room and the mass of people that despite their numbers don’t come close to filling it. Ritsu steps away from the wall to find Reigen, in order to present an arguably united front in the face of their competitors and the expectation that suffuses the room.
The leather doors open, swung by suited security personnel, and a man enters, clad in a pinstripe suit.
Ritsu finds Reigen, finally, or is found, and they stand together in the midst of the crowd as their client, mustached and desperate, steps forward to introduce himself.
Asagiri Masashi has, apparently, put stringent effort towards only inviting bonafide psychics to this event. Ritsu and Reigen trade a silent, speaking look while they can still see each other, before the room darkens and they turn their attention back to the presentation.
Through a slideshow, Ritsu learns about their client’s spoiled daughter; a year older than him but miles further from mature, the product of wealth and an upbringing unfettered by empathic concerns. The kind of girl his mother would call a minx and his father would call a hellraiser.
“Something is inside her,” Asagiri intones ponderously, lit by spilled light from the image of his locked up daughter, ten feet tall. Minori is tied to a bed, ropes snug on her wrists and snaking under the blankets, watched by spirit tags and a sleuth of toy bears; a disturbing picture.
Ritsu reserves judgement on the possibility of possession; he’s experienced enough of the evils of his peers to wait on a verdict until he sees for himself, and can decide on his own what’s been happening. Familiar too are the evils of adults—intimately, a hole in his family only half-healed—whether parent or child is in the wrong here, it’s inarguable that something must be done.
The crowd shifts uneasily, an atmosphere of apprehension gathering at the revelation of their task, but Ritsu is ready to understand, to learn if it’s delusion or premonitive intuition that’s thrown Asagiri Minori to the dark.
Asagiri opens a panel in the wall, a hidden spiral staircase, and leads them down to find out.
The stairwell is narrow, and it takes minutes for every one of them to make it down the story and a half to the small anteroom at basement level. Ritsu ends up next to Reigen somewhere in the middle of the relocation, which means queuing at the top of the stairs and loitering at the bottom until Asagiri shuffles to the front of the herd to open the plain wooden door that is the room’s only other feature, leading the ragged lump of them behind him when he’s the first one through.
It’s an observation room, made of depressing concrete, dominated by the enormous pane of one-way glass that practically composes one wall. Their side, filling in tighter all the time as people jostle to get a view of the occupant, is dimmed; the inside, lit up bright enough that the mirror must be opaque to the girl staring blankly across her coverlet, is fishbowl-like, leaving Ritsu with the uncomfortably voyeuristic impression of being at a zoo.
Reigen, behind him, speaks right into his ear and Ritsu twitches away from the feel of warm breath against the side of his face.
He turns to talk over his shoulder, meeting Reigen’s eyes level with his own since the man is partially bent over to invade his personal space.
“What?” Ritsu hisses, irate.
Reigen flicks his eyes reprovingly from side to side, hands in his pockets, indicating the people that surround them and how little he wants every one of them to be party to this conversation. Ritsu turns back around and mutters out the side of his mouth.
“What? And don’t breathe on my neck this time.”
“I was just asking, what do you think?”
Ritsu concentrates, and senses... nothing. Just a person, kept and unkempt; a girl his age stifled by her father and pinned behind glass for people to peer at, offered up to a parade of probing eyes that seek to find her flaws.
Minori’s head rolls on her neck until she’s looking at the mirror, giving the illusion of eye contact. She looks weary; deep bags dug in under her eyes, blonde hair lank on her forehead.
“Nothing,” Ritsu says quietly, “I don’t sense a thing.”
He stares, rude but comfortable with his lack of etiquette since he knows he won’t be caught, tracing her searchingly with his eyes for signs of possession while Asagiri answers questions, going into a narrative explanation of the smeared blood on his daughter’s whitewashed ceiling.
Ritsu looks and pretends she’s looking back at him, like this whole farce isn’t a gross violation of her privacy. Her head tilts a little as she looks at herself in the mirror, a wry smile fleetingly upon her face, and Ritsu wonders what she sees in her reflection, how differently she thinks of herself compared to his picture of her, built only on what he can presume to discern from the outside.
The psychics grow loud around him, each asserting their experience and suitability; Reigen rises to the top of the pack with glib presumption and loud aplomb, claiming the case in their name about as sophisticatedly as a dog marking territory.
The room devolves, adults barking at each other like animals as they yell and argue, except animals aren’t driven by avarice and pride. Ritsu considers whether the glass is soundproof; concludes it must be since Minori has no reaction to the disagreements being bellowed just beyond her walls.
It resolves in a rock-paper-scissors tournament, a juvenile solution; fitting considering the behaviour of people that are ostensibly—according to society, though he has massive trouble believing it right now—his betters. His employer employs mind games and Ritsu uses strategy. Either age or experience declares Reigen the winner, leaving him triumphant in first place while Ritsu languishes in seventeenth.
Reigen gloats his way through the door, drawing the ire of everyone in the room as he disappears down the hallway that curves around to open on the far wall of Minori’s upsettingly ursine bedroom. He enters as all of them watch, closing the door gently behind him, and goes into one of his usual routines.
Ritsu recognizes his manner, courteous and comforting, as the way he deals with the more delicate clients, fragile people with ghostly problems that seek remedy at the agency. For the first time, Ritsu wonders how many of them he never sees; how many clients’ issues are solved with just kind hands and words, and the attention of someone willing to simply listen. He feels the violation all over again, watching the work, like an intruder to the private rapport Reigen is building with Minori.
The observation room is silent, ogling with bated breath as Reigen massages and chats, drawing a chilling, sordid account of her time here out of Minori’s waifish throat. The psychics turn again, inconstant as a weathervane, to stare mistrustfully at their client when she pleads to be let go.
Reigen emerges, subdued, and Ritsu tries to get a hint of what he’s thinking. Reigen notices him and subtly waves a hand, wait, with an enigmatic cant to his head. Ritsu waits, for now, with silent and watchful eyes, as their client is berated by the mass of people he’s hired for what is seeming increasingly likely to be no reason at all.
It’s looking like a consensus, the room united against a common enemy and piling on Asagiri with the easy conviction of a mob. Majority rule, maybe, but it’s one against many until his employer steps out to speak in their client’s defense.
Ritsu, attuned to Reigen’s theatrics, is not surprised the man chose the most dramatic moment possible to proclaim their client’s innocence.
Well, almost. Reigen’s moment is blown out of the water when a psychic—someone who slipped away into the room while Ritsu’s attention was elsewhere—is blown like an explosive cannonball through the glass, instantly transforming the wall into an expanding burst of shrapnel.
A piece of whizzing glass cracks to splinters on Ritsu’s barrier; his employer is gashed across the face, a shallow cut that in defiance of its depth weeps heavy blood in a curtain down Reigen’s cheek.
Ritsu glares, first at the minefield of glass shattered across the room, then at the psychic who was so destructive an instrument in spreading it, before he’s drawn inevitably to look at the source of the power that caused the victim’s unfortunately violent exit.
Minori laughs at them, lively and spiteful at the chaos she has wrought. Ritsu berates himself for feeling betrayed.
She challenges them with chuckles and mocking words, reveling in the panic that’s starting to poison the room, and Asagiri, reactive, shouts at them to save her. If anyone were to consult Ritsu, he would say that she’s not the one who’ll need saving, an opinion borne out by the maniacal cackling that throws back her body’s puppeted head.
A psychic with long straight hair and a ruched shirt—third in line of fifty-eight—steps forward to try his hand; his incomprehensible but intensely delivered chants prove extraordinarily ineffective. The next is also unsuccessful, and they all blur together into a useless chain until it’s almost Ritsu’s turn, attempt seventeen.
Reigen guides him off to one side for yet another private tête-a-tête and hovers a hand above his shoulder, a pseudo-touch that’s just on the edge of what he’ll tolerate.
“Are you okay with this?” Reigen asks, “You don’t have to do it, we can leave it to someone else.”
The condescension burns, and Ritsu knows they’re both remembering his failure at that apartment building, and in the face of the Kuchisake-onna. He thinks the second man, the ballistic psychic, was also a member of the same group—another tally, two of them now he hasn’t managed to save.
“I’m fine,” he snaps out, crisp, and turns away to end the subject.
“If you’re sure,” Reigen says dubiously, just to twist the knife.
“Positive,” he says, quellingly frosty.
“Okay, pricklepuss, just checking.”
“Well, don’t. I know what I’m doing.”
“Right,” a brief pause, and then:
“If you say so,” Reigen says with a mocking grin.
“You know what—”
“Fine, fine, sorry. I get it. You’ve got this,” Reigen flashes him a confident smile, another expression Ritsu recognizes from work. “Knock ‘em dead, Ritsu, let’s show them how it’s done.”
Ritsu shrugs off the hand that bracingly pats his shoulder as they rejoin the group.
There’s no ‘let’s’ about it when his employer stays behind, one of many watching Ritsu step gingerly through the broken glass. Ritsu makes it through without cutting himself and looks up again to find himself closer than he expected to end up; in arm's reach of the comforter, practically the foot of the bed.
“Asagiri-san,” he says, wary and lacking anything else to call it, whatever’s wearing the body in front of him like a human marionette.
“Ritsu-kun,” she—it—replies.
And smiles.
for added verisimilitude, wait three months before reading the next chapter on ao3! although life willing it won’t take that long for the next chapter
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