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bondsmagii · 3 years

Note

statement regarding the sudden disappearance of all my childhood memories and subsequent photos, gradually, over the course of four years

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Jasmine Harper, regarding the disappearance of all childhood memories and photographs over the course of four years. Original statement given July 21, 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I can’t really remember when it was that I noticed. It was a gradual thing, but at the same time it felt so sudden… like I woke up one morning and they were all gone, or at least most of them were. But I know that isn’t what happened at all, is it? The more I think about it, the more I realise that I began to forget years and years before I realised something was truly wrong. I thought it was normal, you know? I thought it was just part of getting older. I mean, how many of us get out of university able to recall the full names of everyone in our first primary school class? I took Psychology for one of my A-Levels, actually, and when we did our module on memory that was one of the tests. I must have been able seventeen then, so it was before I noticed this happening. We had to take a sheet of paper and write down every full name we could remember from our first primary school class. I won by a landslide, and I had five names. Only five names! But that’s the thing – I used to have such a good memory when it came to my childhood. That’s why I can’t understand what’s happening.

I had a good childhood. This isn’t any childhood trauma or anything like that. I mean, there were some nasty moments in it, like any childhood is prone to have – I had a problem with bullies when I first started high school, nothing out of the ordinary but you know how cruel kids can be, and when you’re that age it sticks with you. My parents divorced when I was fourteen, but there was nothing specifically traumatic about that. It sucked, and I was sad to see them sad, but they remained civil through the whole thing and actually got on better afterwards, so it wasn’t like there were screaming matches or anything. They were careful to keep my brother and I updated on everything, which I was thankful for. It was nice, that they didn’t do what a lot of parents seem to do – treat us like small children, and not young adults who would also be affected by the situation. If I ever get a divorce, I hope to god it’s as pleasant as my parents’ was. There’s nothing in my childhood that I can pinpoint that might have caused this, and that seems to be a common cause of forgetting, at least – trauma, mental illness, something like that. I’ve… struggled with depression sometimes, but never anything that I didn’t get under control with the right combination of things. Really, I’m a completely normal, average person. There’s nothing that could have caused this at all. I’ve been to doctors, I’ve had brain scans, I was worried it was some kind of tumour or stroke, but no. Nothing. I’m perfectly healthy, but I don’t feel it.

As I said, it began gradually. I realised I was forgetting things; small things. The address of the house I lived in until I was five. Old phone numbers. The last names of childhood friends. Some of my teachers’ names. None of it was unusual. I’m pretty sure everyone forgets those things, so I wasn’t worried at all. A little annoyed sometimes, because it really felt like getting old, or I couldn’t randomly look somebody up on Facebook to see how they were doing or something, but really it wasn’t unusual at all. It was only when I started forgetting bigger things that I began to grow concerned. I mean, this was stuff that I shouldn’t forget at all, or that was relatively recent. I know for most people, childhood probably means when they were a smaller child; before they hit their teenage years, perhaps. Well, this seems to be taking the legal definition of child as its guide, because I found myself forgetting things that happened when I was sixteen, seventeen years old. I mean, that’s not that long ago! That’s not even ten years ago! I began to forget huge chunks of time; before I knew it I couldn’t recall my earliest memories, and then I couldn’t recall anything from primary school. It’s just blank, like trying to think about what was there before I was born. Still I told myself it wasn’t that much to worry about, but then it began creeping up and up, and back then I still had the photographs. I could look through photo albums or friends’ Facebook pages and see what I was forgetting: a birthday party at Alton Towers when we were eleven, the school ski trip to Italy when we were fourteen, our school’s knock-off idea of an American prom when we were seventeen. There I am, in all of the pictures, grinning and present and definitely there. But I can’t remember a thing about the day at all!

I finally accepted something was terribly wrong at my aunt’s wedding. She was getting married pretty later on in life because she was kind of wild as a young adult, didn’t want to settle down or anything. Everyone was fond of her – she always had the most interesting stories and she’s just a lot of fun to be around – and so the whole family was there to see her get married: all the surviving grandparents, great aunts and uncles, cousins, partners, friends, kids, even the dogs were invited. It was a beautiful summer day and everyone was having so much fun and I know this sounds stupid but I feel so mad that this had to happen on that day of all days, because nothing bad is supposed to happen at a wedding, right? Well, everything was fine until late into the reception, and we were all a little drunk but not overly so. I was sitting with my mum and brother at a table with some cousins and my aunt and her new wife, and we were all reminiscing about other crazy family parties and stuff. I was talking about my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, that happened when I was twelve or thirteen. I was telling some story – of course I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was something about me and my brother and the cousins that were at the table with us, and I was talking about it just fine and then, literally mid-sentence, I forgot it. Not just what we were doing, but the whole event. I didn’t even know I was talking about the anniversary until my brother prompted me, and then it was just blank. My brother and cousins all picked up the story and I laughed along and played it up like I’d had a little too much wine, you know, haha, but I mean it when I say it was gone. And not only that – it felt taken from me. It felt as though somebody had reached into my head and just… plucked the memory right out.

It bothered me so much that I went to visit my mum shortly afterwards. We sat down and had a few cups of tea and eventually I worked up the courage to ask if I could root around in the photo albums, saying that the wedding had reminded me of a few things I wanted to look at again – ironic, I know. Mum was of course down to get out all the albums – she never went digital, she doesn’t like not having physical albums to look through – so we dragged a bunch of them down and sat around the table to look. The first one was normal, just a family holiday to Florida when I was sixteen, but as we started going through the older albums I noticed there were pictures of me missing that I know for a fact existed. They were just gone, and then there were others where I knew I should be there but I wasn’t. And Mum didn’t think anything was strange! There was one picture, I remember it so clearly because we almost got into a big fight about it, and it was of my brother dressed as Spider Man on Halloween. I distinctly remember that night because I was dressed as the Pink Power Ranger and the costume was uncomfortable as hell, so I know I was there. I know I was in that picture, because it was such a ridiculous picture, the two of us in full bodied costumes like that, and I finally mentioned to my mum that I should be in there. Not aggressively or anything, just oh, I could have sworn I was in that one!, and she denied it and I insisted and she kept saying no, she was sure it was just George in that picture, but then I pointed out that George had his arm out in mid-air like it should be around someone. It was clearly around my shoulders. The height was right, his fingers were slightly curled like they were pressing in to my arm. Mum just looked for a moment, and I thought, briefly, that she might finally see it – but then she just said George was doing a Spider Man pose, like shooting a web from his wrist or something, and I just… I don’t even know. I just felt so hopeless, I almost cried. I was sure, so sure! Mum’s always taken photos, even now – every holiday, every event, even just going over for Sunday dinner. She’s told me several times I loved being in front of the camera as a kid, so I know there must have been way more pictures of me than that. Mum just didn’t get what I was on about, though, so I gave up in the end. There was no use fighting. What could I say?

Well, that was when I went to the doctor. I’ve already outlined how useless that was. Nothing wrong with me at all, apparently, but I’m sure most of them weren’t really taking me seriously. I was told it couldn’t be all my memories, and that photographs didn’t just vanish. I was seconds away from getting referred to a psychiatrist when I decided I would be better off shutting up about it. I’m not—I don’t think this is mental illness. I’ve looked it up so many times and I’ve read about people being delusional, you know, not believing they’re the ones in the picture, or that other people in the picture have been replaced, but that’s not what’s happening here. I haven’t read anything about like what’s happening to me. Nobody is out there saying they’re forgetting their entire childhood, birth to eighteen, and the pictures are vanishing along with it. There is something else going on here but I don’t know what. I’ve never done anything to deserve this, I’ve never messed around with anything I shouldn’t. If this is something like—like what you people investigate, I do not know when I would have come across it. I don’t even know what I mean by this. It seems ridiculous to even consider that it could be a ghost, or a curse, or—or God knows what.

A few weeks after this I went to Mum’s again, and one of the photo albums was still out. I looked through it and I was gone from every single picture. I was not there at all. Even the ones I saw only recently, I was gone from them. Just George on his own, and in the spaces where pictures of just me should be, other photos had replaced them. Just scenery shots, or views from the hotel balcony, or Christmas decorations and piles of presents, or spreads of holiday food. Nothing Mum would put in there herself. She likes to preserve the details, but her albums are for people. Her photos in the albums always have people or pets in them. I showed her, pretending it was just out of interest, but she seemed to not know what I meant. “I’ve always accessorised”, was what she said. Something about context, making it a pretty spread, keeping all the themes together. I don’t know. It was nothing that Mum would say, anyway. She was always so militant about it – at least up until recently.

I walked around the house a bit and of course I was gone from the rest of the pictures, too. My school photos were all gone, and all the framed pictures on bedside tables or shelves showed just my brother, or more scenery. There was one picture of the rose bush in the garden and I knew for a fact I was supposed to be standing in front of it, because it was my prom picture and I was wearing a dress the exact same shade of red as the roses, and Mum wanted to get a picture of me standing in front of it to show off the perfect colour match. There was just the rose bush, and even when I picked up the frame and looked closely at the picture, I could see no signs that it had ever been anything but. I wondered why it was still there, because pictures of just me usually vanished and got replaced by something else entirely, but then I saw in the corner, almost hidden by the frame, the faintest pink blur of part of my mother’s finger. Is that all it takes? Is one blurry finger worth more than my entire being? I don’t understand what’s going on!

I think… I think I could deal with it easier, if it wasn’t for the fact that everybody seems to think nothing is wrong. If it was just one of those weird things, I think I could live with it if my parents and brother were also with me on it, knowing it was weird, being concerned. I’ve looked everywhere and they’re all gone, all the photos, in every relative’s house and on Facebook. The earliest ones I can find are on my eighteenth birthday party. Everything before that is gone. I don’t remember anything. It’s like I materialised at age eighteen and there was nothing before that; I don’t even really know who I am anymore. I can’t know, because all the steps I took to get here are gone, and everything I learned about my family and friends as I grew up alongside them has vanished. I feel completely… completely detached, completely adrift, and I don’t know if I’m being paranoid but it just feels like there’s a little less of me every day. It’s like I spent eighteen years building up, and now I’m just… fading away.

I don’t know what to do.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

This is a fairly straightforward one to follow up. There isn’t really much to say. On the surface it does very much seem like a case for a doctor rather than the Institute, but some things do seem to back up part of the story, at least. Attempts to get in contact with Ms Harper were unsuccessful, as it seems she does not exist. There are a couple of records here and there of a Ms Harper matching the age and occupation that she provided with her statement, but when Tim contacted the workplaces involved, nobody could recall her. As for anything else – records such as a birth or death certificate, a driver’s license – there is nothing. Of course, she could have provided a fake name, but Tim managed to get in touch with George Harper, Ms Harper’s younger brother, and confirmed it was the same George Harper by asking a few questions about his childhood. He recalled several holidays and weddings that Ms Harper mentioned, though he mentioned nothing about a sister. When questioned about siblings, he was adamant he had never had one, and had grown up an only child. I’m not entirely sure how he did it, and nor am I inclined to want to know, but Tim managed to persuade Mr Harper to give him the contact information for his parents. Both stated that they had only one child – a son. The only Jasmine in the family seems to be Mrs Harper’s pet pug dog; apparently, Mrs Harper “always liked the name”, but had never had the chance to use it.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much more we can do regarding this one.

End recording.

#tma #statement prompts #my writing #fakements #long post #anon #asks

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ask-anti-cosmo · 3 years

Text

The return of Anti-Cosmo part 2

Part 1

Anti-cosmo stayed in the suite, knowing you had to come back sometime, especially since you told him you were a day out to land. You dreaded coming back to your room but found him on the computer on a social media site.

“Is there a Anti-fairy Facebook page?” you asked sarcastically.

“Anti-Fairies, as well as Fairies, are very well connected believe it or not. You just need to know the right sites to look for. And even then, only magical beings can use it, if you’re mortal you only see a blank page.” He explained, not looking up at you. “Won’t be long now.”

“Won’t be long till what?” you frowned.

“Till my wand comes to me. My subordinates are going to help bring it back here, by magic or whatever means it takes.”

“Where were your subordinates when you were in the safe?” you folded your arms.

“I go off on my own a lot, they probably assumed I was following a chosen victim.” He shrugged and turned away from the screen for a minute to face you.

“Is that how you got in that safe in the first place?” you asked expectantly.

His eye twitches slightly. “Hunting requires risk, surely you know that. They had just set up an…elaborate trap I was completely unprepared for. A descendant from one of my victims. One of the only victims I left alive. No matter, I won’t make the same mistake.” He insisted with dignity.

“Why did you let them live in the first place?” you asked curiously.

He sat quietly before picking up a pencil and started doodling on a nearby notebook. He drew a young girl with ringlets and a frilly dress. She looked almost like a sweet porcelain doll.

“My perfect little Doll…in her perfect little dollhouse...” he said fondly.

“Why did she need your help if she was perfect?” you frowned.

“Her family was so painfully flawed, she was trying to save them from their own stupid actions.” He explained. “Then one day, she decided she was done cleaning up after them, left to make her own perfect house, and sent me away. Most of the time my victims call me back, whether conscious or in their hearts, but she never did. The last I saw her was at a ball she threw. I had a lovely time.” He said, looking at the pictures longingly before starting to sketch another woman.

“Who’s that?”

“She was my date to that ball…” he sighed. “I actually might have fallen in love with her…alas, she was human and it didn’t last. I probably could have granted her my immortality but…” he sighed and set down the pencil. He glanced at the computer screen, looking for a response or message for him.

“But…?” you asked expectantly.

He sighed at your persistence, but smiled. “She slit her wrists one night. Humans have such limited mental capacities, and Misfortune follows in my wake. It was probably inevitable.”

“You couldn’t bring her back with magic?” you asked curiously.

“I am not so cruel, I let the dead stay dead. After all, there are plenty of living to choose from.” He shrugged.

He stayed by the computer for the rest of the trip to the harbor. You found a trench coat to wear that you cut the bottom off to fit him better, and hide the fact that he wasn’t wearing pants. You felt he was your responsibility and lead him to your penthouse in the busy metropolis.

“My my my, not such a fancy pants that you own your own place eh? Just a simple flat?” he teased.

“It’s the best you can get in such a place jack*beep*.” You glared. “Besides it’s not my only one, and I do have a house, just not here.”

“Boring.” He rolled his eyes and checked the phone you gave him to monitor his messages. So far there was still nothing, making him huff.

“Alright now, what is there to do around here?” he asked carelessly.

“Why don’t you go check out my closet? You’d look lovely in one of my ball gowns.” You smirked as you greeted your cat.

Anti-Cosmo rose an eyebrow. “You’re just jealous cause I probably would.” He mumbled. “I doubt you have my color.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about yourself. Like, what’s with the Anti in front of everything?”

“We are Anti-Fairy dear, we are the equal and opposite forces of the regular fairies. Spelling our names backwards to prove that doesn’t always work. For some it does, but it’s often just easier to say Anti.” He stated simply.

“What, so there’s a regular fairy version of you?”

Anti-cosmo cringed slightly. “He’s an absolute idiot. A goodie goodie nuisance to all he meets. I want nothing to do with him.”

“So if you’re opposites, and you’re the annoying one…” you smirked as he shot you a glare. “Also, if you’re an all powerful magical being, why do you need to drink human blood?”

“Mostly to prevent a magic crash.” He shrugged.

“A what?” you frowned.

“Oh dear, do I need to explain what a crash is?” he sighed.

“No I know how drugs work.”

“Not those kind of drugs!” he insisted with annoyance. “I told you I am full of magic in my veins, correct? So are Fairies. Only they can only let so much build up before exploding. So it’s just called ‘magical build up’. They use the wands and become godparents to help expel the magic as well as do, what they hope is good, by making children happy.” He said with disgust.

“And you what? Use your build-up for evil?”

“Have you not been listening? I am the equal and complete opposite power that is my fairy counterpart! Meaning, my magic regenerates when used, but it is usually at max capacity, that’s normal for an anti-fairy. That being said, when I cast a spell, it takes longer to build back up. If I use too much magic, I will run out, causing a magical crash.”

“Do you explode from mortality?” you teased.

“No.” he huffed then stayed quiet for a minute. “…I implode. It is reversible so it’s not possibly to kill us that way.”

“And you drinking blood comes into play where?”

“I’ve discovered that nothing makes ones magic regenerate faster than human blood.” He licked his lips. “ESEPCIALLY the blood of the misfortunate. Just the thought of meeting a poor soul who’s never succeeded in anything makes my mouth water! Anyways, I always use magic, for everything, so it’s convenient to have a blood supply nearby. However I doubt you’ll have the same effect, so after I get my wand back I will be bidding you a fond farewell.”

“Sounds just fine to me.” You huffed.

“So, what to do till then?” Anti-Cosmo said thoughtfully. “Go to a rave? Go night shopping? Hunt for ghosts in the park~?” he smirked and waved his fingers at you.

“How about sleep? It’s been a long exciting day and I’m exhausted.” You huffed and started getting ready for bed.

“Oh, you can sleep when you’re dead!” he whined and pulled at your sleeve.

“Why don’t you get back online and catch up on the past 15 years worth of memes?” you said and got into bed.

“Oh please, nothing could be funnier than the troll faces that say “u mad?”” he waved his hand at you.

“Oh buddy, you’ve got a lot to learn.” You smirked and went to sleep.

He stared at your sleeping form, his eyes gleaming mischievously. “Soon my sweet…so I will have my way with you, you lovely immortal thing~” He licked his lips. He then checked for messages for his lackies and found nothing. “*BEEP*.” He pouted.

In the morning, you laid on your back and Anti-Cosmo was flouting above you. You frowned at the sight of his face and turned over. “Its bad enough I’ve had to deal with you till late last night, but now you have to flout over me while I’m asleep like a creeper?” you huffed.

“What can I say? You enchant me.” He said and started walking his fingers up your back. You shivered and swatted his hand away.

“Still nothing from your people?” you asked and sat up

He sighed and leaned back. “No…which is really odd.”

“Maybe you can try again? Post something else?”

“That would make me look whiny and desperate, then more of them would be less inclined to help me.” He huffed. “Besides, I’d much rather wait and possibly get some breakfast.” He said, looking at you hungrily.

“Oh for crying out…don’t even think about it!” you glared and got up. “You want blood, you’ve got to go to the fridge for a bloodbag.” You said as you walked to the closet.

“People healthy enough to donate blood rarely have enough misfortune to satisfy me.” He pouted.

“Boo hoo, you’ll have to have your cocktails AIDS-free then.” You rolled your eyes. “And if that’s the case, my blood would be nowhere near satisfying.”

“You think living eternally alone is a blessing?” he asked with his eyebrows raised. This did stop you in your tracks.

He drifted towards you, suddenly shrinking down and sitting on your shoulder. “Come on now, you got to taste my blood! I’ve never had Vampire blood before, I’m curious!” he urged.

You hesitated dispute knowing you’d get no benefit from this exchange, as well as you know darn well you owed him nothing. Before you could decide however, a ding came from the phone on the bedside.

Anti-Cosmo zoomed to it, growing to his original size as he snatched it up and read the notification. His mouth grew to a twisted grin, his eyes shimmering with joy.

“Ah, Anti-Juandissimo, you never fail me dear friend.” He smirked.

He suddenly stood up and held up his hand. A black wand with a star at the end appeared in his blue skinned hand. His face broke into a villainous grin as he spun it around and gave it a wave. Magic erupted from it and made his old clothes appear on his body, but they were new and pristine. His monocle returned, dangling from his earlobe before swinging up to it’s place over his eye. Small silver jewelry were placed on his clothes, ear, and wing. Lastly a bowler hat flouted above his hair.

He sighed with relief and stretched slightly. “Yes…perfect. I feel whole again~”

“You look like a Magical girl transforming.” You chuckled.

He looked back at you before waving his wand at you. Suddenly, there was a flash of light, smoke surrounded you, and your clothes changed into a vampire themed Magical girl outfit. Short skirt, a cape, even little bat wings on your head. Your costume was also adorned in silver jewelry and mirrored Anti-Cosmo’s black and blue.

“There, now we match.” He smirked.

You tried to pull the skirt down to cover your legs. “What the *Beep*?!” you yelled at him.

“What? You look cute~ oh yes, I have a wish to grant, be right back.” He grinned and vanished.

You huffed in irritation and immediately started stripping the cutesie outfit off. “What an *beep*!” you whispered angrily. “I thought he was awful before the wand…”

Part 3

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buckyscrystalqueen · 4 years

Text

Managed: Part 1

Pairings: Clark Kent x Reader (Henry Cavill Clark)

Warnings: Secret relationship.

Word Count: 4,532

A/N: Doesn’t have a completed end yet, but just giving you more content to try to get myself out of a writing funk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Starting a new job, in a position you knew nothing about, was beyond stressful to a partial introvert with bi-polar, anxiety, and depression such as yourself, but you didn’t have much of a choice. Bills kept coming in even though you lived rent free with your mother, you still had your car payments, and insurance. Your phone needed to be paid, and your medications weren’t just going to fall from the sky. So going to work it was.

“So this is your department.” The assistant store manager of the flooring department, Erica said as she walked you out of the employee break room and training room and on to the sales floor. “You’re going to be shadowing Clark today. He’s the department manager. He’s going to show you the ropes.” You nodded your head and looked away from her as a tall, muscular man turned away from one of the two computers at the flooring ‘desk’ to smile at you.

“Welcome to the team, (Y/N).” You almost gasped at how stunningly blue this absolute God of a man’s eyes were, but your shock came from tripping over a pallet you didn’t see sticking out the slightest bit in aisle. You flew forward into his chest and instantly wanted to die as you scrambled back a step away from him.

“I’m sorry.” You gasped with a shake of your head as your face turned bright red.

“Hey, it’s OK.” He chuckled as he put his hand on your shoulder with a smile that made you want to die just a little bit more. “It actually segways into our first job of the day perfectly. So every morning, when you first come in, we start with the DSHR, which stands for… daily safety and hazard review. Or something like that, I’m not quite sure.”

“That’s reassuring.” You said with a small smile, and once again, you wanted the ground to just swallow you whole when he chuckled and looked over at you.

“My apologies. You have to understand, we deal with more acronyms than I can count. Memorizing the full names of them all is just a waste.” You nodded your head as he pulled a mobile phone from his pocket. “So DSHR. Basically what that you do is each morning, you go through the department and point out any thing that is a safety concern or a hazard. Its easier if you start with 30 and work your way over to 35. That’s all of flooring.” You nodded your head and followed him to aisle 30 to start. “So first things first. I’m sure you at least partially payed attention to the fifty thousand training videos you watched. Can you see anything you think could be a hazard from those?” With a slight shrug, you looked down the 30 odd foot aisle for things that could be wrong.

“I mean, that doesn’t look safe.” You said as you gestured to some rugs that were hanging up down the right side; a few of them only being held up by two or three of the five hooks.

“Usually, you would be right, however this is a special case. Those are on back order through the company and they are taking their sweet time coming in. What else?” You looked around again, doing everything in your power not to look over at Clark, and shook your head when you didn’t see anything else. “What about that pallet that’s sticking out a little bit above your head? That could get pushed out even farther if someone isn’t paying attention on a narrow aisle reach, right?” You nodded your head as he handed you the mobile phone. “So you take a picture, and add the aisle number and the letter of where the infraction is. Then later today, we make sure it gets fixed so that it’s not a hazard.”

“What’s the letter?”

“This one is B. So for all products, they have an aisle number, a bay letter, and a spot it’s in or the bin number. You’ll see this come into play more in the next part of the morning routine. So hit submit there, and that will send me a note that there is something I need to address later on. You with me so far?”

“I mean it seems simple enough.”

“Well then you can do the next aisle. Walk me through it. What’s a safety hazard?” He kindly and slowly walked you the rest of the way through the section, letting you do the job you would need to do yourself one day so you had a better understanding of what you were actually looking for. When you were done, he showed you what he would see once the DSHR was complete. “So next is IRP’s.”

“Irritable… Rabbit People?” Clark paused with he was saying and looked over at you with a slight nod.

“That was actually really good.”

“I try.” You said with a small smile and a shrug as you took the mobile phone back from him to do the next job. “So what are we doing with the rabbit people?”

“Inventory Replacement Plan. So each night, the night shift goes though and scans empty spots on the shelf. And then we go in… well, you will go in and fill those spots the next day. So today we only have three, but that’s because I closed last night. So these three things are items that are blank spots on the shelf. Each one will bring up an information page on the product.“ You nodded your head as he walked you through the page, pointing out the location, the bin number, the product count, and so much more. “I know I’m losing you.” Clark chuckled as he looked down at the slightly glazed over look you were giving him. “So let’s start from the beginning. The rest you’ll get throughout the day. Where is the first IRP located.” With a nod of you, you pulled up the first product on the list and its information page.

“32 Z 15.”

“So what’s that tell you?”

“Aisle 32, bay Z, spot 15.”

“Show me.” With a nod, you glanced up at the aisle number and headed one row over to where you needed to go. The blank space was easy to find, and for some reason, you got a slight shiver up your spine when your supervisor nodded at you. “Perfect. So on the same page, the first line; how many of this mosaic tile do we have?”

“120.”

“Which means they are in top stock. So find the item number on the main page, and then we start looking.”

“Wait up there?” You asked as you looked up at dozens of boxes of tile on the upper shelves of the racks.

“Just wait until you see what you have to do to get them down.” He chuckled as he looked at the item number to refresh his memory from the night before and looked up to find the box he had purposely not pulled so that he could teach. “You’re in for a fun day, (Y/N).”

——

“So how was your first day at work?” Your mom, Kate, asked as you walked in the front door after your first nine hour shift on the floor.

“Long.” You sighed, tiredly, and set your purse and your lunch box down on the kitchen counter. “So very long. So much stuff to learn.”

“Did you do any sales?” You shook your head as you kicked off your sneakers and headed over to the couch.

“No, just spent most of the day learning the department and the products and stuff.” You said as you laid down on one side and pulled a blanket over you. “With the most gorgeous manager I have ever seen in my life.”

“You’re not there to look for a boyfriend, (Y/N).” She said, slightly scoldingly. “It’s work…”

“I know, mama.” You sighed as you pulled the blanket of your head and rolled onto your back with a yawn. “Doesn’t stop him from being hot.” Your mother stayed silent for a few moments, either playing Words with Friends on her phone or scrolling through Facebook, but just like you knew she would, she caved.

“OK, what’s his name?”

“Oh, my God.” You gasped with a smile as you threw the blanket off and rolled over to look at her with a giant smile. “OK. His name is Clark. He’s the department manager but it’s weird because there’s a department supervisor, and an assistant manager over flooring too. Because we need that many managers for like… I don’t know, seven people? Which is strange if you ask me.”

“They want you to be extra managed.” Your mom teased, which made you shrug.

“He’s really nice. He walked me through the day and what I’d need to do. It’s just. It’s hard ‘cause I don’t know anything about flooring.”

“You’ll learn.” She said reassuringly. “Give it time.”

“I know.” You said with a nod. “Clark said he’d help.”

“Oh, Lord. We are in trouble.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

——

“So I hear your a transplant too.” Clark said as the two of you closed flooring at the end of your first week. “Where are you from?”

“Umm… Florida. I’m from Florida. Naples.”

“You know, I actually know where that is.” You glanced over at him with your eyebrow raised before looking away to put away a box of flooring from the pallet he had brought down earlier. “Friend of mine from college got married down there few years ago.”

“Where did you call home before this?”

“Well… I hail from a town called Smallville in Kansas. It’s just outside Wichita…”

“I know Wichita. I have a half brother that lives there. Never heard of Smallville though.”

“The name says it all.” He chuckled as he picked up the last two boxes before you could, giving you the millionth chance to look at his muscles and the way his already form fitted shirt tightened around them with every move. “It’s a small farm town in the middle of a fly over state.”

“Sounds peaceful.”

“Should sound busy.” He chuckled as he glanced at the list you had made of things that needed to get restocked before you both went home. “Farm life is intense.”

“I always wanted to live on a farm… but I like my sleep way to much.”

“That, I completely understand.” He chuckled as the two of you backed up to look for two different colors of un-sanded grout. “Looking back now, I appreciate the lessons I learned, but when I was a teen, I hated the responsibilities.”

“I can totally understand that.” You said as you grabbed a tall ladder from the end of the aisle and pulled it over to where the un-sanded grout boxes were.

“So living in Florida, does that make you a Disney girl?”

“Oh don’t get me started.” You laughed as you paused on the second step and looked over at him. “I am a massive Disney girl to my core.”

“I worked there.” You stopped again and stared at him with your mouth slightly open in shock.

“Shut up.”

“Let’s see, I was ‘friends’ with Gaston mostly. And every once in a while Prince Eric… Sweetheart, you gotta hand me the box for it to go on the shelf.”

“Oh, shit sorry.” You said as you grabbed the box of grout you needed and passed it down to him.

“I was the Genie once, but that costume was way to hot in that Florida heat.”

“OK, so you know you have to do the voice for me.”

“Oh no.” Clark chuckled as he took the second box from you and pulled the tab to open it. “I don’t… ‘It’s not right for a woman to read.’ That all you get.”

“Oh my God!” You squealed as you climbed down the stairs. “Oh, I bet you killed so many mothers in your day.”

“Probably.” He laughed as you pushed the ladder or of the way and moved some grout bags forward.

“Is Beauty and the Beast your favorite?”

“That would be Treasure Planet.” He said as he stepped a little ways down on the opposite side of the aisle to straighten up the always messy boxes of mosaic tiles. “You?”

“Little Mermaid.”

“Good movie.” He said with a nod. “But for some reason, I’ve always leaned toward the more underrated flicks. The Great Mouse Detective, Atlantis…”

“Bed-knobs and Broomsticks, The Rescuers.”

“Classics that are under appreciated in the parks and that deserve more recognition in the bigger scheme of things.”

“Right?!” You gasped as you stopped straightening and looked over at him. “Like ‘The Hunched Back of Notre Dame’. How did that movie get just tossed away over time? That movie was beautiful.”

“You know, I don’t think I’ve seen that movie in years.”

“Honestly, neither have I. Sounds like a movie night is in order. So do you consider yourself a Traditionalist or a Purest?” You missed Clark’s glance over his shoulder at you, wishing that you were actually serious about movie night and that he could actually have a movie night with you since he was your boss and all, but he looked away back at the tile before you gave him the exact same look with the same hopes behind it.

“Honesty, I’m a purest…”

“Oh, boo!” You interrupted with a laugh as you changed your face from a wanting look to one of disappointment. “Come on, and I was just starting to like you.” With a laugh, he shrugged his shoulders and glanced over at you as you came over to help. The two of you easily spent the last hour of your shifts talking about Disney and the changes to the parks past, present, and future. The conversation was easy and comfortable, as if the pair of you had known each other your whole lives and not just a week, and you really didn’t want it to end when you stopped at your car door to go home.

“Well…” Clark sighed as he pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked a black pick up truck a few spots over. “Guess we’ll have to get into the discussion of the whole ‘which park is better’ debacle tomorrow.”

“That’s an easy answer. Magic Kingdom in Orlando is the best.”

“Some would beg to differ, hun.” He chuckled as he took a half step back from you, making you realize for the first time that night that he really didn’t want to walk away from you. “But if it makes any difference in the bigger scheme of things, I am not one of those people.” Your smile grew as you looked down at your feet for a moment.

“Hey Clark?” You looked up at his hum and you wanted so bad to ask your intended question, but changed your mind at the very last second. “Thank you. For making this job a little better. It’s… well it’s kinda shitty without you.”

“It’s my pleasure.” He said with a nod as he took a step back toward you. You waited a little expectantly as his question or comment danced on the tip of his tongue, but after a moment, he shock his head subtly and turned toward his truck to head home. “Drive safe, (Y/N). See you in the morning?”

“I’ll be here.” You sighed as you pulled open the door and sank down into your car, disappointedly. With one last glance at the pick up truck that roared to life beside you, you put your car in drive and pulled out of the lot to head home.

——

You weren’t expecting to get hit with it as quickly as you did, but after an absolute day from hell on your exactly one month mark of being at the job, you ran head first into an anxiety wall and almost completely lost it. You were headed off the floor, as a woman yelled at your retreating back for your short comment back to her, but you got commandeered at the last minute by a firm grip on your arm.

“This way.” Clark said gently as he turned you to the left and lead you away from the back room.

“I’m sorry.” You choked as you tried everything in your power not to cry. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you’re fine.” He huffed as he stopped in front of an office and unlocked the door. “I overheard.” You nodded your head and completely lost it when the door latched closed behind him. “Sit here.” He said as he pointed to a small space on the floor beside a filing cabinet. “You’ll be hidden there. I have a phone call to make so you can stay in here as long as you need.” With a nod of your head, you sat down where he told you and curled into yourself as shame washed over you for so many reasons.

‘You were supposed to be an adult, (Y/N).’ You thought to yourself as you rested your forehead against your bent knees. ‘Adults don’t cry on the job when they get yelled at for no reason.’

“Hi, is this Tim? Tim, my name is Clark Kent, calling from Blue Ridge Home Improvement, how are you?” You looked up at your manager with a small sniffle and hid your red, splotchy cheeks behind your bent knees and folded arms as he pulled a pen from his apron and slowly nodded his head. “Fantastic. Do you have a couple minutes to do a phone interview before you come in for the face to face? Perfect.” You sniffled once more and watched him work, easily falling for him a little more in that short expanse of time than you had. He was adorable, how could you not? You hated yourself for liking someone that was absolutely unattainable, but damn, did you really wanna break the rules.

‘But at the same time, how could he like you?’ Your brain thought, throwing a wrench in your thoughts and making you hide your face a little bit more in embarrassment. ‘You just cried in front of him. He probably thinks you’re a freak mental case. Which is the truth, after all.’ Your slight smile fell behind your arms for only a moment until Clark looked over at you with a smile. He stuck out his tongue and made a silly face, which got you to smile and temporarily unhide your face. It didn’t last long as your dark thoughts attacked again, and your manager looked at you worriedly as he wrapped up the short interview.

“What are you thinking?” He asked as he hung up the phone with a worried furrow of his brow. You shook your head and shrugged as he glanced at his watch. “Did you take a lunch today?”

“I’m off at four.” You said softly as you looked at your own watch to see what time it was. “Well, I was supposed to be.”

“Meet me at my truck.” He said as he pulled his keys out of his jeans pocket and held them out to you. “I wanna grab some food and show you something.”

“Wait… is that allowed?” You asked as he pulled you to your feet. He paused for a long moment and looked over at you with a sigh.

“Probably not… but all you have to do is say no. You are under no obligation to go with me because I’m your manager, please know that.” You nodded your head a little bit and tucked his truck keys into your apron to hide them.

“I’ll meet you out there.” You nearly whispered as you searched his blue eyes. “And I’ll keep the secret if you will.”

“That I can absolutely do.” He said with a sigh of relief as his face and shoulders physically relaxed. With a nod, you headed out of the office and walked quickly back to the break room before you could get stopped by another angry customer for no reason. Your apron went in your locker and your phone and two sets of car keys got tucked into the pocket of your jeans on your way to clock out. You sent a little white lie text to your mother, saying you were going out to eat with friends, and grabbed your purse from your car. You wiped off some stray makeup with one of your emergency baby wipes and tossed it in your trash can just as Clark was walking past your car toward his.

“Thought I told you to wait in my car.” He chuckled as you jumped out of yours and locked it behind you.

“I enjoy being difficult.”

“You’re off tomorrow, right?”

“What, are you stalking my work schedule?” You teased as you tossed him his keys.

“Nope. Just trying to figure out which of my work days is going to be better because you’re there.” You looked over at him with your eyebrow raised as you got in the passenger seat beside him. “You are going to be trouble for me.” He confessed as he turned the key to start his truck and looked over at you.

“I can say the same for you.”

“Well good thing trouble likes company.”

“Pretty sure the saying is misery loves company.” You pointed out as he pulled out of his spot and the parking lot.

“Whatever.” He laughed as he looked over at you. “At least we’re in it together.” You nodded your head and looked down at his middle console, where he had laid his hand, palm up on the leather.

“We could lose our jobs…” You pointed out as you looked up at him again.

“I would.” He countered. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would. You’re…” You cleared your throat and sighed with a shrug. “You’re the only reason I keep coming in.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything…”

“You never had to.” You breathed as you finally reached out and slid your fingertips up his palm to lace your fingers with his. He nodded his head and tightened his grip around yours and used both your hands to gesture toward a fast food restaurant.

“You ever eaten here?”

“What is this place?” You asked as you looked up the slowly spinning sign for the restaurant ‘Cook Out’.

“Awesome burgers, and even better milkshakes.”

“Classy first date.” You teased as you turned in your seat to see the menu. “Fast food in a pick up truck. You could write a country song about it.”

“OK, I had like thirty seconds to choose this.” He laughed before he leaned out the window to place your orders. You hadn’t even pulled your purse off the floor to get your wallet before he was pushing your hand away and grabbing his from his jeans pocket. “My treat.”

“Well thank you Mr. Prince Charming.”

“You’re very welcome.” You took the food and drinks from him so that he could drive, and daringly reached out to turn on the radio. “Oh, thank God.” You sighed as country music filled the cab.

“Kansas boy.” He chuckled as he headed back toward your job and toward town. “It’s in my blood.”

“Well you just made me like you even more. Two points.”

“Oh, I like this game.” He chuckled as he reached across the console and took your hand again. “Where else am I winning points and is there a max number I can win?”

“No max.” You laughed. “But you got points for being a Disney nerd. And for being adorable.”

“Just adorable?”

“Let’s just put it this way. There are so many other descriptive words I can use but they all would sound like words coming out of the mouth of a porn star.”

“Oh, fuck… don’t say shit like that, hun.” He groaned as he turned up a windy mountain road that was close to your house.

“I’m an innocent angel, Clark. I don’t know what you are talking about.” He hummed and nodded his hand as you squeezed his hand and looked out the front window. “So where are we going?”

“One of the best places in town to watch the sunset.” He said as he took the corners like a seasoned pro. You felt safe beside him, comfortable, and for the first time in a long time, wanted. “Welcome to Jump Off Point.”

“Oh, Jesus.” You gasped as you looked around the overlook at the gorgeous mountain ranges that surrounded your new hometown. “God, I still can’t believe I live here.”

“It’s beautiful, right?” He asked as he turned his truck around and backed up to the rail. “I come here on my lunch breaks every day. It’s nice to just get away from people for a while.”

“I can relate.” You sighed with a nod as you picked up the bag of food and your milkshake, and opened your door. “I have bipolar, anxiety, and depression and somedays like today, it kicks my ass.”

“I'm sorry you have to deal with that.” He started as he passed you your food container. “I don't deal with it personally, but I went to school originally to become a therapist.”

“Why’d you change majors?” A small smile pulled at the corners of his lips as he bit one of his fries in half.

“I umm… well I met a woman. A journalist. We ended up in Asheville when I was about 21 and half way through school. Because of course at that age…”

“You know everything.” You finished for him with a small giggle. “Yea, don't I know it.”

“So we lived together for three or four years, until she got a job offer in New York at a paper she really wanted to work for. And she thought it would be ‘better’ if I stayed here while she got her feet under her. Never heard from her again.”

“Oh, Clark.” You breathed, but he quickly waved you off.

“It was a long time ago, sweetheart. I've recovered since then.”

“Well if it makes you feel any better, I was 19, and dating a guy way to old for me. That was… phew, that was an interesting time of my life. Moved out of my parent's house, went off my meds, went completely manic for a few years and crashed and burned in a psych ward in Pennsylvania. Don't ask, I still don't know to this day how I got there. I black out in my mania, apparently.”

“That's atypical, but it happens. And since we are talking about it, let the record show that if I get a little councilor-y on you, please feel free to shut me up.”

“Will do.” You laughed before taking a bite of your burger. “Is that…. ummm…. well is that why you like me? Why you are drawn to me?”

“What, because I'm a shrink in training? No, not at all. I like the mischief in your otherwise innocent eyes.”

“Well I got a whole lotta that. Just you wait and see.”

Part 2

#Clark Kent x Reader #Clark x Reader #Henry Cavill x Reader #Managed

102 notes · View notes

jincherie · 5 years

Text

fox rain | intro

• ☽ — pairing: bts x reader • ☽ — genre: crack, fluff, angst, college/uni au • ☽ — words: 9.9k • ☽ — rating: sfw? • ☽ — warnings: this is PRIME crackheadery and headassery, this is literally such a mess fuckk, anyway-- accidental voyeurism, extreme amounts of stress, sleep deprivation (uni life amirite) • ☽ — notes: lets get it miss FOX RAIN!!!!!!!! also: links will be put in at a later date

— posted; 04.05.2019

When the love letter you wrote and submitted as an assignment is leaked to the entirety of your university, it becomes a race against time to dispel rumours and convince the seven suspected muses of the poem that they aren’t the subject before anyone realises that you are the author. Easy, right? Well... maybe not as easy as you think.

— • masterlist | intro | next • —

Living as a University student paddling through your second year means that, as one would expect, you aren’t exactly a poster-girl for good decision-making—especially when it comes to things like sleep and time management. Those two areas in particular are probably your biggest weakness, but at least, you think as you pass through the brief lawn that marks the beginning of your University campus and join the throng of tired, yawning students, you are not alone in your suffering. Inability to catch the recommended hours of sleep and manage your time is a common trait among the student population.

It is your poor strength in these areas that landed you where you are now; dead-tired and still dealing with a delayed stress response that was lingering from yesterday’s deadline. You were up stupidly late last night, running on probably about four hours of sleep across three days, and barely coherent as you hastily emailed one of your assignments to your professor. It wasn’t all that hard for you, but you’d forgotten and by the time you realised the deadline was looming so close it was practically on top of you. You’re pretty impressed with yourself that you managed to make it, in all honesty.

You aren’t unfamiliar with this particular state of exhaustion, but thankfully aren’t as completely out of it as you feared you might be when you finally allowed yourself to sleep last night—or rather, this morning. Which you feel might be a good thing, because if you were any more tired than you are right now then you probably wouldn’t have noticed the change in the air as you amble deeper into campus.

Chatter isn’t uncommon in the people you pass on your way to class most mornings, but currently the air is buzzing. A sense of excitement, anxiety and trepidation mixes together within you, a cocktail with a taste eerily similar to fear, as you push forward. The people are excited, animated… you don’t like it. What is there to be so hyped up about at 8AM on a Friday morning? You decide to ignore the buzz and continue to plod on as intended.

You don’t get too far before your ears are catching excited gossip and hushed whispers exchanged between friends, despite your best efforts.

“…who though? Do you think its someone we know? I really…”

Your ears burn with the effort it takes to strain them, but you’re still walking and now too far to catch anything more from them. The next few people you pass do an excellent job of filling in the blanks one by one, offering their own jigsaw pieces to complete the mystery in your mind. Each new thing you hear stirs a certain sense of paranoia in your mind, the voice that always whispers, is this about you? Usually dismissing it is easy, but the more you hear, the more a tendril of dread begins to twirl within you and entwine around your bones.

“… do they know it’s been leaked? I feel so bad for them…”

“… apparently it was sent to their whole class? That’s so embarrassing…”

Oh god, is it you? Something was leaked? Was it nudes? Wait—you don’t have any nudes to leak. Well, not digital ones anyway. You do your best to ignore the paranoid voice in your head that tells you the poor person everyone is so fussed about is you, hastening your pace and heading towards the building that houses your Music Composition class with renewed vigour.

The people you pass in the halls seem to be abuzz with the same news that everyone else was, and it’s at this point that the dread curling within you is joined by a powerful, burning curiosity. You want to know, god do you want to know what everyone is whispering about. What the hell happened that has everyone like this? How had you not heard anything by now?

More snippets of conversations brush your ears as you near your room, something useful finally brought to light as you hear someone mention an infamous facebook page made by students of the university. Perhaps that is where you will find the answer to the questions flitting across your mind. The morsel of excitement within you is squashed suddenly as you catch something else.

“… what an idiot, to accidentally email everyone. I mean, it’s something I’d probably do, but still…”

You almost trip as your legs freeze and your spine goes rigid, one very important detail surfacing from the depths of your memory. That sounds like something you would do too, and the realisation that just last night you were emailing something particularly sensitive has a horrified sensation sliding down your spine. Suddenly very, very worried, you bolt over the remaining distance between you and the classroom doors.

Your increased speed from before has landed you there much earlier than usual, and the few students that are normally there at this hour shoot you mild looks of alarm before returning to whatever they were talking about before you burst through the doors in your dishevelled, panting state. The teacher isn’t here yet and to your momentary delight there is much more space available, leaving you a wider spread of choices for your seat that what you usually have. You decide to plop your ass in a seat against the wall in the middle-back of the room, quickly pulling out the necessary items for the class and then whipping your phone out, nearly yanking your earphones out by accident in the process.

Hastily, with speed and agility you didn’t even know your fingers possess, you pull up the email app you have hooked up to your private and university emails and slam your fingertip onto the ‘sent’ tab. It takes a second to load, the duration of which you spend resisting the urge to vault yourself over the desk and flee, but when it does you feel your heart drop through your stomach in horror.

The first thing you notice is the abundance of typos and poor grammar that litter the very brief but very incriminating body of the email, and you internally die a bit as you take them all in. The second thing that catches your eye, to your absolute horror, is the actual email address you sent it from. You feel your cheeks catch fire, flooding with heat that spreads all the way to the tips of your ears, and you have never regretted not deleting that stupid, stupid email address you made when you were twelve, more than you did in this moment. You’d not even come anywhere near partly to terms with those first two observations, when you unwittingly make your third, and arguably the worst, observation.

‘bcc: Jodi, Yuki, Jacob… and 423 others’

On god, you’d fucking emailed your heartfelt poem-turned-assessment piece to the entirety of your creative writing course.

You sit in horror for a moment, brain producing some sort of static in the absence of intelligent thought. You feel kind of faint, would it be very alarming to your classmates if you suddenly passed out? Probably—you slap a hand to your cheek, the person in front of you jumping and turning around in alarm at the noise. You don’t even have the presence of mind to assuage their worries because your embarrassment meter is completely fucking maxed out and if you make eye contact with another human being in the next few minutes you know for sure you’re going to combust. God, oh god this is literally your worst nightmare—you’ve had nightmares about shit like this since the night before your first day in high school. Is this karma? You can’t think of anything you’ve done in your meagre years on this earth that would be atrocious enough to warrant a fate like this.

It is in the midst of your current humiliation-fueled crisis that you remember some of the people you passed mentioning a certain facebook page that the university students here held dear— CCU Love Letters, a page where shy individuals could anonymously submit love letters or other such media for the page to post without it being linked back to them. A new shade of horror begins to paint your insides and it’s almost at double speed that you bring up the app on your phone and search for the page in question. It takes a moment to load, but when it does you’re once more stuck fighting the urge to throw yourself over the desk and run away.

There, for all to see, is the poem you’d spilt part of your heart into and submitted as what was supposed to be a confidential assignment piece.

The sight of how many likes, reactions and comments there are already alarms you, but it is as you’re avoiding the comment section that you notice, with an incredible feeling of relief, that nothing like your name or anything similar is present to possibly link it to you. Pausing, you switch apps and go back to the email, scanning it to confirm your suspicions. The great gust of relief that passes your lips has a few heads turning as more people enter the room but you don’t even care, too busy trying not to cry as you console yourself.

Sleep-deprived and incoherent as you were, by some serendipitous miracle you’d forgotten to tack on your name or anything that identified you in the original email, aside from your student number. Even then, the only way someone would be able to link that back to you would be if they find your student card or hack the school systems or something. You’re really about to weep in relief right before your class starts, resting your face in your hands. Have you ever been so close to death that you could almost taste it before? The answer is that you haven’t, but today you almost glimpsed the ruler of the heavens and you’re not keen to repeat the experience.

Attempting to quell the remaining anxiety and humiliation swirling within you, you give yourself a pep talk of sorts. It’s fine, everything is fine. There is no way that anyone would know it was you, and yeah a private poem meant only for your eyes and the eyes of your teacher— perhaps even the person you had in mind while writing it— had been shared to a very public platform where the entire student population could view and read it, but it’s fine. Why? Because they have no way of knowing it’s you who wrote it. A shuddering breath leaves you as you attempt some sort of abridged form of meditation. Fine, it’s fine. You know what? You bet that by the end of your class, no one will even be talking about it anymore. It’s probably old news already, you doubt the mass of student that have better things to worry about than a leaked poem are going to keep being so fussed about it.

Yes, you reassure yourself as the teacher finally enters the room and you begin to prepare the necessary items. By the time your class is over this humiliating incident will be long gone and forgotten in the minds of the student populus, and everything will be fine— just fine.

x x x x x x x

Sweet cheese and bacon rolls, things are not just fine as you leave your classroom two hours later and return to the halls that are now ten times more busy and bustling than earlier. You’d stayed in the room long past the time your class was over, using the excuse of studying on the spot, but now you can no longer avoid leaving as the next class’ students begin to filter in and you dart out.

The buzz is worse, everyone is still talking about it and even though it kind of makes you want to throw yourself into the lake on campus you keep self-soothing with the reminder that no one knows the author of the poem is you. Slapping a half-assed smile onto your face in an effort to convince yourself and think a better mood into existence, you leave the building and head towards the food court. You’re in need of comfort and food mightn’t be the best answer but at least it’s better than letting loose a blood-curdling scream in the middle of the road.

Twenty minutes later finds you sitting at a table in the outside area of the food court with newly bought coffee and a big kebab, dissociating as you attempt to ignore the obnoxious chatter about you know what that floats around you. It’s to no avail, evidently, and you pout as you finally reach for the kebab that’s been sitting there for the past few minutes, untouched but still warm.

“... Are you eating a kebab?”

You don’t even jump at the sudden sound of a voice to your side, remaining in your seat and facing forward as the owner comes around to sit across from you, seat scraping the ground. The familiar sight of your best friend as she gets comfortable in front of you makes the urge to spill your current troubles to her rise within you, but just barely you resist. It’s already a mess enough as it is, you don’t need to add to it.

“And if I am?” you ask, raising a brow in challenge. If she’s surprised you’re getting defensive over food that is clearly a very indulgent choice, then she doesn’t show it.

Sera instead laughs, her eyes closing in her mirth as she sweeps her hair over her shoulder and out of her face. “Seriously? It’s almost ten in the morning, you didn’t want something a bit lighter to munch on? Lunchtime isn’t that far away.”

You grumble incoherently, taking a generous bite of the food in question and glaring at the sweet chilli sauce that threatens to drip down your hand as a result. She simply smiles at you, taking out the container of fruit she likely cut up and packed the night before along with a fork, and digging in. This is a bit of a ritual, since your classes align every second day or so— the two of you usually meet after the first class of the morning for something to munch on and chat over. You both eat in silence for a while before she speaks up again, the chatter of a nearby couple apparently reminding her of something she had to say.

“Oh!” she bursts around a mouthful of kiwi fruit, pointing her fork at you as her eyes widen almost comically. If you weren’t busy attempting to chew and not choke on an alarmingly sized mouthful of meat and lettuce, you might have laughed. “Did you see?!”

Ignoring the feeling of apprehension beginning to seep into your abdomen, you tilt your head in question, prompting her to continue. Thankfully, the overly excited girl takes a moment to finish chewing what is currently in her mouth before she speaks once more.

“Did you see?!” Sera repeats, with just as much zest as before. She quickly amends her statement at the perseverance of your questioning gaze. “Or rather, did you hear? Everyone is talking about it!”

The feeling of apprehension in your tummy grows heavier, weighing it down further, but you can only continue to chew your food with a sense of resignation as the girl reaches into her bag for her phone, pretty, manicured fingernails tapping against the screen with a satisfying sound once it has been retrieved from the depths. Her fingers fly across the screen a few times, metal bangles around her wrist tinkling as their charms collide, before she is setting it down and sliding it over to you. Just as you had expected, what she is showing you is the CCU Love Letter post that displays the entirety of your shamefully romantic poem. You swear, the one time you let yourself be a sap and it gets plastered all over the internet for the entire campus to see.

A part of you is thankful you’d figured it out and seen it earlier in the day, because you know that if the first time you saw it was when Sera showed you then your following reaction would have given you away instantly as the author. Of course, you didn’t know why that would be a bad thing— she was your best friend, this was the kind of shit you should be telling each other. You supposed you just weren’t emotionally prepared enough for the embarrassment that would follow your recount of events. So, it is a confession that can wait until another day when you’re less… vulnerable.

Eyes narrowing at the post displayed before you, you glare at the number that displays reactions and comments. It’s gotten bigger, much bigger, since you last checked, and you don’t like that at all. A sense of betrayal fills you at the thought of the student population doing you dirty like this— are you not bros in suffering? Where is the solidarity? The sisterhood? The brotherhood? The sting of this betrayal is not one that you will forget anytime soon.

You make a discontented noise around the food in your mouth, one that Sera misinterprets as one of incredulity and interest, and wallow in a distinct feeling of regret as she immediately takes it as a signal to let her building excitement flow. This is probably the most interesting thing that has happened for her all semester, you don’t doubt she’s going to hold onto it for a while— you can only hope and pray the same won’t be the case for everyone else.

“Some poor soul in our writing course accidentally emailed their assignment to the entire cohort, and then from there someone must have leaked it and submitted it to the CCU Love Letter page,” Sera whispers, as though she’s spilling trade secrets to you. Her words make it seem like she feels sorry for the idiot that has messed up so badly— little did she know that idiot is you— but the expression displayed on her elfish features is anything but sympathetic. It is excitement and a tinge of something else that gleams in her eyes, but you choose not to dwell on it for the sake of your sanity. You feel like you’re going to implode.

“God,” you begin after finally swallowing the gargantuan mouthful you’d taken before, like the idiot you’re gradually proving yourself to be. “That’s so… I feel so bad for them, whoever they are…”

Sera doesn’t even notice the awkward nature of your weak attempt at contributing to conversation, too busy scrolling through her phone— a quick peek tells you she is reading through the comments on the post. You resist the urge to smack the phone out of her hands. You’re a rational being, you’re above such caveman instincts.

“It sucks for them,” she agrees, once more completely unsympathetic. You can’t say you’re surprised; Sera is the type to develop tunnel vision of sorts whenever it comes to the latest bit of gossip or news across campus. “But god, it’s so juicy… I wonder who shared it— I wonder who wrote it?”

Wisely, you choose this moment to take another, perhaps unwisely-sized, bite of your second breakfast. Sera drums her fingers against the flesh of her cheek as she skims through the comments once more, making a sliver of irritation prick your insides.

“Is this what everyone is talking about?” you query, unable to help your next line of questioning. “Why is everyone so hyped up about it?”

Sera hums, bright eyes flicking from her screen to meet your own. You think she looks perhaps a bit too gleeful considering her best friend is suffering immensely at this current point in time, but then again… it’s not like she knows.

“Don’t you see it?” she asks, tinted lips curling. She pauses only to flick her finger over her screen, scrolling through the ridiculous plethora of comments under the post. “It’s like a modern-day rom-com storyline! Everyone is rooting for the mystery author and their ‘one true love’, and the fairytale ending that is bound to result… I’m pretty sure if people had any idea who the author was there would be OTPs and ships already, to be honest.”

Her words have a shudder of horror rolling down your spine before you can stop it, but thankfully her attention is otherwise occupied with the comments once more.

“Touching…” you attempt to smile but can feel it come as more of a grimace, the panic from earlier beginning to return at even the slightest mention of a hypothetical situation where your identity is revealed. “I suppose that would be kind of romantic…”

Sera hums, nodding, and spears the juice-box you didn’t even realise she had with an alarming amount of vigour. Her grin bunches her cheeks as she faces you again. “I’m dying to find out who the author is and who they wrote the poem about, though!”

With a slightly sickening feeling in your stomach, you take another hasty bite of your food. “Mmhm, me too.”

Is it too late to flee the country?

x x x

By the time your ‘brunch’ with Sera ends and you’re making your way to your next class, you’re fighting the imminent return of the anxiety and panic from earlier. You feel a little high-strung, admittedly, and you’re sure that anyone who passes you in the halls must get the message to give you a wide berth. Resiliently, you continue to console yourself with the fact that no matter your paranoia and fear, no one knows it was you who wrote it. You cling to this a bit like a lifeline, and while a part of you acknowledges that isn’t a very healthy way of dealing with the situation the other parts are living la vida fucking loca and dancing on the precipice of a cliff, the edge of which reveals the possibility of a minor mental breakdown. You’re far too tired to be dealing with this shit but karma got its kiss for you, you guess. What the hell did you even do to deserve this again?

It’s as you near the room where you attend your History of Music class that your attention is wrought from your depressing inner monologue and drawn to a slight commotion in the small seating area to the side. Unsurprisingly, the first person you see is the tall noodle of a man that usually haunts the halls of the musical arts building— surprisingly, the second thing you see is that he’s currently surrounded by a gaggle of girls and guys alike, who flock around him in a manner not all that dissimilar to the way reporters yap at people walking up the steps to a courthouse. You squint, wondering if you were seeing things— since when was Kim Namjoon this popular? Did he commit some blasphemous act forbidden to university students? You once heard he attempted to cut a fruit with the blunt side of a knife, but you didn’t think that counted as a crime against the university— that was more of a crime against common sense sort of thing.

As you walk past, pace quickening because that is one mess you most certainly want no part in from the looks of it, you catch a few of the words thrown into the air. Brows furrowing in confusion, you hasten your steps even more in accordance with the sudden shred of alarm tickling your ribs. The questions the students, who in all honesty look like a bunch of first-years, are throwing at him are all about the moon, and to the odd stranger nearby probably sound like nonsense. To you though… let’s just say that after the events of today so far you have a healthy dose of fear already coursing through yours system and aren’t about to risk your face being caught anywhere near that line of questioning no matter how ridiculously paranoid it made you seem.

“Hey, not to be rude but, uh, I kind of have somewhere to go…” you catch Namjoon’s low register as you zoom past, unable to resist the urge to spare him a brief glance out of curiosity. There are men and women grabbing at his clothes like lost children and he has a look of complete and utter alarm, mixed with a bit of befuddlement, as he attempts to pry their grip off. “Please… my reputation is at stake— HEY, WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TOUCHING—”

Unfortunately for you, your haste to leave the scene means that you’re entering your classroom, the door clicking shut behind you and muffling the sounds of the ensuing struggle, before you can catch what happens next. Angry at yourself for moving too fast for once, you move to your usual seat in a similar manner to a sulking toddler and settle in for the lesson. The teacher arrives soon after and you wish you could say your attention was stolen from the scene you’d just witnessed but alas, today was not the day your poor, weathered professor finally received your complete and undivided attention.

For once, the lesson that usually drags on passes quickly, although you think this probably has something to do with the fact that you weren’t paying attention like, at all. Which for you wasn’t unusual, but you were particularly distracted today— understandably so— and you were in all honesty surprised that your teacher hadn’t called you back to earth at any point in the lesson.

Pointedly ignoring the chatter and topic that is becoming so hauntingly familiar to you as the day wears on, you attempt to reassure yourself again as you depart the room once the class has ended. Everything is fine, this is just a temporary fad, a brief trend. It will die down soon like all trends do, surely.

You aren’t sure if you could have really convinced yourself of that completely, but the further into the day you get the wearier you become. As the day continues, you also begin to notice an increasing number of weird incidences. You haven’t touched your phone since this morning and, quite frankly, refuse to until you get home— at which point you will clear your alarms and attempt to sleep through your problems and the entire weekend. Just barely do you resist the urge to pull out your phone when, on the way to your next class, you see a large gathering of people in the lush, green courtyard area outside the older part of the campus. Slightly concerned, you eye the group when you catch sight of them in between columns, the fact that you’re a little pressed for time being the only thing stopping you from halting in the middle of the path and squinting to see better.

You nearly stumble in your steps though, when you finally discern what is going on. What you thought might have been a pop-up food stall or a club gathering was actually a tall male— who you quickly recognised as one of the campus heartthrobs, Kim Seokjin— who appeared to be holding court over the small mass of people that had gathered before him. You couldn’t shut your mouth it dropped so far open in incredulity at what you were seeing as the male yelled something indiscernible and stepped up onto— onto a stool?— and began gesturing emphatically, as though he was a fresh hire presenting his first pitch in front of company executives.

Coming back to your senses somewhat, you try to shut your mouth and turn on your heel, returning to your original path, as quickly as possible. You’re pretty sure his brand of idiot is contagious and you aren’t willing to hang around and find out if it’s airborne. A part of you desperately wants to know what the theatre major is being so dramatic over, but the remainder reminds you that he’s a theatre major and therefore prone to being dramatic about anything and everything he can get his hands on. You pointedly ignore the tiny minority in your mind that whispers suspiciously that god, what if he was talking about the poem?

Nope, he isn’t. Not a chance. You’re safe because the poem is in writing and you’re eighty-five percent certain Seokjin doesn’t know how to read.

Your next class passes in a little bit more of an anxious haze than the last, and you should be relieved because it’s technically your last class of the day but, unfortunately, your current source of income takes the form of tutoring sessions that occur three days of the week and are held in the closest library to the edge of campus that you leave from. Considering that, despite your two hour block of tutoring that you have yet to get through, you have finished classes for the day, your mood is considerably lifted. As well as that, you’ve either grown very good at blocking the voices out or people have finally stopped gossiping about your stupid poem. Regrettably and unbeknownst to you, the part of you that deep down knows the latter is most definitely not the case would soon be proven right.

The soft scent of vanilla and caramel isn’t one you’d traditionally associate with a library, but thanks to the soft-spoken library worker that resides in the one you frequent it’s a scent that greets you often. The young student enjoys having a nice-smelling work environment and you’re not one to complain; while you like the smell of books and paperback you hate the musty undertones that accompany it in libraries. The second you step foot into the library, somewhat early for your first session, your gaze first zeroes in on the table you usually take, free for you to plop your ass in once more, and second onto the tall form of the boy behind the front desk. You decide to throw him a quick greeting on your way over, for once momentarily distracted from the prominent problem that has followed you through the day.

“Hey, Koo!” you throw a smile over your shoulder as you pass the desk, missing the way the boy startles and drops the thick textbooks in his hold all over the desk. You hear the noise though, and when you turn back the boy, Jungkook, is flushed bright blossom pink and hurrying to bend and gather the scattered tomes. Embarrassed that you scared him so badly he dropped absolutely everything in his grasp, you hurry to take your seat and duck out of view. God, can you please just catch a break today? You’re not asking for much, just a little reprieve from the all-encompassing humiliation that’s been dragging after you like a second shadow all day.

Settling into your seat and avoiding looking back to the front desk like the plague, you bring out the books and materials you’ll need— your first client is a bright-eyed, bright-smiling boy whose name the whole campus pretty much knows thanks to a somewhat hilarious incident that ensued in his first year and had you instantly very easily convinced to stay away from moonshine when looking to get drunk off your face. His sunshine-y disposition meant that what would have been crippling for the social wellbeing of anyone else, had actually turned him into one of the most well-known and popular students that attended the university. It is incredible and you are in awe of it, but have yet to crack the code of exactly how he did it. In all honesty at this point you’re willing to accept that it was just part of his nature that had people loving him unconditionally.

The peace and quiet of the library is more than welcome at this point, and you are able to enjoy it without qualm for a good few minutes before your still-racing mind begins to get antsy. You’re not one that deals well with boredom or being patient for extended periods of time, and you got here early enough before the session that its too much time to pass quickly and not enough to spend doing anything meaningful, like studying. You consider your options for a moment, pondering your last resort. It isn’t the most appealing idea right now, but the thought of sitting in boredom for another however-long-it-took-Hoseok-to arrive is even more unappealing. It is for this reason that you finally cave and reach into your bag, pulling out the phone that has remained untouched since early morning. The screen lights up and regrettably unlocks before you can read the notifs, thanks to the over-eager facial recognition feature your phone has. Deciding to just bite the bullet, you open facebook and click the post to survey the damage so far.

Instantly, you are filled with regret. You don’t know how but the stupid thing has become even more popular since the last time you saw it, and to your absolute horror not only has the reactions and comments increased but also the number of shares. Wincing and regretting your choice of schooling, you allow your finger to press somewhat shakily onto the ‘view more’ option in the comments. Your screen adjusts to fit more into view and you don’t get very far before you’re freezing in your seat, heart stuttering anxiously. There, in the body of the most popular comment, is a link— your stomach sinks as you press it, swallowing heavily. What are you about to see, did someone post a response to your poem? Are people making fun of you? Of your shitty, sappy writing? You wait with bated breath as the page finally loads.

You nearly throw your phone.

Just as you feared, the link leads to a post made in a forum on one of the most popular sites that students at this university used to keep up to date on things that were usually dumb or none of their business, aptly named ‘CCU Campus Stalker Space’. It is the first post in a subforum labelled, “Mystery Moon Author & Their Mystery Muse”, and a feeling of nausea begins to rise within you before you even read the first word.

‘posted by u/triceratops [12:36PM]:

unless you’ve been living under a rock all day, you’re bound to have seen or heard about the latest drama to take the campus by storm. it has been learnt from various sources that in the early hours of this morning a poem was sent to the entire cohort of a creative writing course, presumably by accident, and then leaked to the CCU Love Letters page where it has since taken off and gone viral among the students. the questions on everyone’s minds right now are no doubt the same— who is the author, and who is the subject of this lovely poem? well, that’s what we aim to find out, and that’s what i have dedicated some time to figuring out this fine friday. this thread will be dedicated to getting to the bottom of this mystery, and finding the answers we all want, as well as bringing about the happy ending we’re all rooting for! now, please find below my analysis on the poem and the situation, and the connections i have been able to make thus far ^^’

Distantly, you feel your breath quickening slightly as your chest begins to pinch, wide eyes locked on the screen as you continue to read as though in a trance. Your fingers grip the pen in your hold so hard that it threatens to snap and still, you can’t stop reading— even as abject horror begins to seep into your abdomen and slide over your insides like slick ichor and oil.

‘after analysing the poem extensively, there is one clear theme that surfaces frequently throughout; that of the sky, the stars, but most importantly— the moon. evidence and instances of this will be attached in the post below this, but before that i will say that, taking into consideration the various personalities and reputations attending this university, i have been able to narrow potential subjects/muses of the poem down to seven people. each of them is tied to the moon in some form or another, leading me to include them in this shortlist— i will include my reasoning in the post below this along with the other information. without further ado, here are the seven people i believe to be strong candidates for possible subjects of the poem by our mystery author;’

You want nothing more than to stop reading, to throw your phone and flee the scene, yet you cannot stop— each word your eyes rake over hammers home a feeling of dread and horror that swirls with the distinct sensation of regret within you. One after the other, the names listed below the paragraph you just finished punch out the remaining shards of your sanity and ground them to bits.

‘Kim Seokjin’

Your teeth sink into your lip, gripping at the flesh anxiously.

‘Min Yoongi’

You feel kind of faint, hints of the panic from earlier in the day brushing your senses.

‘Jung Hoseok, Kim Namjoon’

The slightest sting of pain registers in the back of your mind from the pressure with which your fingers are gripping the table increases, knuckles turning white.

‘Kim Taehyung’

Each name your eyes pass over brings you closer to the section that has an undercurrent of fear thrumming in your veins.

‘Park Jimin, Jeon Jungkook’

Your brain almost refuses to let you read the next part, still reeling over the information it just recieved, but as though you’re in a haze your eyes continue to roll down the screen anyway, thumb scrolling absently.

‘these are the candidates i believe most likely to be the subject of the poem. before we explore further on that, i will list those i have narrowed down as potential authors. the list of students in the writing course is vast, but i have been able to discern the most likely few— only 115 of the 423 students in the course submitted their assignments by email, and of those only 12 were in the class that had the deadline that aligns with the time the author’s email was sent. here are the possible authors of the poem;

Jodi Figuro Lee Melody Sarna Sinter Lee Sera…’

Impatient and desperate to prove yourself and your worst suspicions wrong, your eyes skip ahead, scanning frantically. To your absolute horror, you find exactly what you were looking for, exactly what you feared.

‘and finally; y/n l/n.’

For a moment your mind is silent, buzzing almost like a fluorescent light in a classroom, and then the information fully registers and you kind of want to hurl. The last of your sense and sanity is thrown out the window, food for dogs, and you shoot from your seat, cramming your belongings back in your bag. Oh god oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no—

This can’t be happening— it is happening, oh good lord you’re a good person why is this happening to you? You shouldn’t have sent that stupid email in the state you were in, hell you probably shouldn’t have even written that poem in the first place. Now it’s a mess, a big, massive mess and oh god you can’t even console yourself because now you’re a suspect! Now people think you might be the one who wrote the poem! And you are! But people cannot know that! You nearly trip over the chair in your haste to flee. You want to go home, oh lord do you want to dive beneath your covers and perish in the suffocating comfort of their embrace. Is that too much to ask? You really don’t feel like you’re asking too much—

“Hey, y-y/n are you okay—”

You jump so badly at the sound of a voice behind you that you nearly throw your bag into their poor, undeserving face. The abrupt spin you perform on your heels has you facing who you quickly realise is Jungkook, who you rationally know works here and has likely come over out of concern, but all your brain can think at the sight of him is SUSPECT and suddenly your fight or flight instinct is decisively engaged.

“No! Y-yes!” your brain isn’t fast enough to catch up to your mouth, brain cells on their absolute last fucking legs. “It’s not you!”

Poor Jungkook stares at you with a look of complete and utter befuddlement, whipping out the puppy eyes that usually have you caving when he asks for help sorting textbooks at the desk but right now you’re a shell of a woman, a ghost of who you were this morning before all of this, and you can barely summon coherent thought let alone carry a conversation.

“I— what?” the boy is stuttering but you’re three seconds away from a mental breakdown wherein you scream and dig a hole to shove your head in the dirt like a disillusioned ostrich and you can’t handle this right now.

Your brain is running on a loop and the sad truth is that your speech isn’t much better. “Not!” you almost yell, voice at an absolutely inappropriate volume and pitch for a library. “Not you! It’s not you!”

You then have the sense of mind to flee while you can, and without further ado spin and bolt out of the library. If you can just get home in one piece you can gorge yourself on ice-cream, the expensive shit, and pretend none of this ever happened. Head in the sand, that’s where you want to be.

Unfortunately for you, it seems the universe has other plans. You don’t even make it out of the library before you run into the next person to push you closer to a mental breakdown.

“Woah, y/n, where are you going?” the alarm riddling Hoseok’s tone might have touched your heart on any other day, but right now you were too focused on your escape to appreciate the sentimental value of the moment. “We have a session right now? Hey, are you okay?”

You go to tell him that no, you are not, in fact, ‘okay’, but all that escapes you for a moment is a choked sound from the depths of your larynx. You don’t think Hoseok has ever looked as concerned for another person’s wellbeing as he does now, dark eyes wide and slightly frightened. Is it you? You feel like your head is about to explode, does it show?

“Nghgh…. Hoseok,” your voice is a little too high and it only serves to alarm the poor redhead even more. “For personal reasons… I will be cancelling away— passing today— away— I will have cancel. I’m s.. I need to go.”

Making the most of his current shocked-senseless state, you turn and begin to dash down the hall once more. Are you acting suspicious? God you hope not—

“y/n, wait—”

“IT’S NOT YOU!” you squawk in a mismatched response, scurrying down the hall as fast as your wobbly legs will take you. Each step you take is a step closer to home, each step you take is a step closer to home—

Careening around the corner of the library hall, only metres away from the glass double doors that mark the entrance, the last thing you expect is to almost run into two of the other people who are on that god forsaken list.

Kim Taehyung, with his artistically messy mop of light honey hair, is leaning against the wall that houses the vending machines. He appears to be mid-discussion with the shorter red-haired male before him that you know to be his friend, Park Jimin, who in all honesty you don’t think even goes here? You’re so close to the exit that you’re almost frothing at the mouth in relief yet you can’t help the way your eavesdropping little ears pick up on their conversation.

“Have you ever heard of this dude, Kim Nam— what was it? Kim Nam-Moom? Nam-Moon?” It is Jimin that is currently talking, gestures wild and emphasised as he shifts his weight and cocks the hip that has his hand on it. “Anyway whatever his name is that bitch has gotta go, there can only be one winning protagonist in this romcom and it’s gonna be me.”

Taehyung, who thankfully hasn’t seemed to catch sight of your wired form yet, slaps a hand to his chest as his mouth drops open. The part of you that isn’t running around and bouncing against the walls of your skull like a headless chicken thinks that he’d probably do pretty well in your Tuesday morning drama class, he has that sort of air.

“I’m on the list too?” he says, and points a finger at his friend, brows raising. You think the effect he is looking for with his expression is somewhere between heartbroken and accusatory and, oddly enough, he achieves it for the most part. His voice drips with challenge. “Are you gonna kill me, Jimothy, after all I’ve done for you?”

Admittedly, a particularly-wired part of you wants to burst into borderline hysterical laughter at hearing the male call Jimin, who is actually the second student you tutor every other day after Hoseok, something like ‘Jimothy’, but your instincts are still stuck on fight or flight and your poor brain gets stuck choosing between them. The end result is like when you can’t choose whether to say ‘have a good day’ and ‘goodbye’ and end up saying ‘have a goodbye’ instead.

Your first bet is to dart past and hope they don’t see you, but when you embark on that journey it takes all of a second for their gazes to move to you and for you to be, regrettably, caught out. Panicking, you halt to point at both of them and present your winning argument.

“It’s not either of you!” It comes out a garbled mess and you want to shrivel up and die already, but somewhat productively choose to instead channel that energy into your prompt escape from the scene.

Before either of them can even open their mouths and ask what you mean or, better yet, if you’re alright, you’re already bolting to the glass doors and darting through the first narrow gap big enough to fit you through it as they automatically open.

Realistically, you know that everyone is looking at you because you give off the energy that you’re about to have a mental breakdown and not because they know, or even suspect you’re the author. Even so, it feels as though everyone’s eyes are on you at once and you suddenly feel extremely paranoid, making the executive decision to shortcut through a building in an effort to escape the weight of their gaze.

Lady Luck has truly scorned you and thrown you to the dogs, you know this because the second you step foot into the building, the glass door not even having time to slide shut behind you, you’re being pulled to the side and hands are gripping your shoulders.

“y/n! Please tell me I need to know.” To your utter shock and horror it’s Namjoon that has you in a panicked death-grip and you want to fall back and let the wind carry you away to a place where none of this is happening to you. You’ve hardly come to terms with the fact you’ve managed to so far run into five of the seven candidates mentioned in that stupid post when he continues, shaking you a little. His eyes are wide and filled to the brim with concern, but for what you will never know.

“Do I look like a Nam-boob to you?”

A scream bubbles in your throat before you have the presence of mind and self-control to stop it, and you yank yourself from his hold with a shriek. You don’t even have the capacity to process how dumb what he just said is, nor the energy for the incredulity that would follow. All you can manage, mind stuck on the fact that he was listed as a possible candidate and you cannot have him thinking he is the subject of the poem, is a sharp, warbled, “IT’S NOT YOU, EITHER!”

With that, you leave him standing in place, wide-eyed and slightly scared as you tear off down the hall like a madwoman. In your haste to flee and the result of your poor decision-making earlier, you don’t even realise you’ve entered a building you’re completely unfamiliar with until it’s too late. Relief floods you as you find an exit, finally, and you bolt from the building as quick as your legs can take you.

You emerge onto the grassy area that you’d passed by earlier, bag slipping from your shoulder almost as you register the throng of people dispersing from the centre of the area— you choose to ignore it for the sake of your current mental state. Perhaps unwisely, you take this as a moment to catch your breath and adjust your bag, but evidently it is a moment too long because barely a split-second later there is another all-too-familiar voice greeting your ears and making you jump five feet into the air.

“y/n?” The voice is coloured with surprise and you turn, a knowing horror lurking in the pit of your abdomen, to see the one and only Kim Seokjin standing before you. His eyebrows shoot up at the sight of your face and the confirmation it is, indeed you. He is apparently blind to your frazzled appearance, you note this because he immediately continues like nothing is amiss in your current high-strung presentation.

“Aw, y/n, you literally just missed the greatest TEDtalk of my career, perhaps even all time,” his plush lips are tugging into a shit-eating grin and you can feel your last brain cells, the final frontier, depleting just looking at him. “You see, I just brought around thirty-something people to see the light on why I am the true subject of the moon poem. Don’t worry though, the next session will start soon, you didn’t miss out. I’m actually booked out until about eight PM so you’re kind of lucky—”

A muted sound, awfully akin to a sob, escapes you, but the pink-haired male doesn’t even notice, too busy enjoying the sound of himself talking. He turns to you, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder. Compassion drips from his features, brows furrowed as he places a hand on his heart.

“I understand you must have heard the news late and rushed straight here to hear my piece… fear not young padawan for I am nothing if not a humanitarian always willing to help those in need.”

“You’re so stupid,” you finally manage to dislodge the incredulity holding your tongue in place and your words come out in a sob. You slap your hand to your face as your eyes genuinely sting with tears. “You’re so— so stupid oh my god, I’m going to kill you—”

It’s like the fucker is deaf to anything that isn’t praise and compliments because he’s not even remotely phased by your words. The simper that curls his lips kind of makes you want to throw your fist in his face but instead you turn on your heel, choosing to be the bigger woman.

The sensible thing to do would be head in the direction you need to go to get home, but you’re currently too focused on the need to escape and instead end up darting across the field into another building. If the universe won’t let you go home then you guess you’ll just lock yourself up in a janitor’s closet or something for some reprieve. You hear Seokjin yelling after you as you make a hasty retreat, despite your best efforts to block him out.

“Should I book you in for a later session? y/n? HEY COME BACK YOU KNOW I NEED PRAISE AND VALIDATION DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE WITHOUT GIVING IT TO ME—”

The firm thud of the next building’s doors closing behind you might just be the best sound you’ve heard all evening. Eager to put even more distance between you and Seokjin, you start to move once more. Idly, you recognise the building as the one next to the engineering centre— the architecture building? You know this part of campus is actually close to the dorms you used to stay in, but the realisation isn’t as comforting as you wish it was.

Feeling like an absolute shell of a woman at your complete and utter witt’s end, you scrape your feet down the halls with all the energy of a tired victorian-era ghost. Closet, or a classroom? Which is a better place to have a mental breakdown? If you don’t cry soon you’re worried the suppressed tears are going to leak out your pores, and you really don’t want to look or feel like you’re sweating a monsoon’s worth of tears. Realising that classrooms come with the risk of students entering whenever they please, you settle on the next closet you see embedded into the wall. It’s a room deep into the bowels of the building, not too far from the bathrooms you accidentally stumbled upon last time you were here. The sight of it brings a morsel of hope amongst the trauma the day has brought you and you think any minute now you’re really going to cry from the stress. The thin plaque near the top of the door informs you that this particular closet houses cleaning supplies and you’re not really in a position to be picky so you take what you can get.

Eager for the next best thing besides the sweet release of death— complete and utter solitude, for anyone wondering— you waste no time in gripping the handle and yanking the door open. Usually you’d rather tear your own toes off and feed them to the monstrous fish in the lake than trespass into a cleaning closet but you’re truly a hair’s breadth away from total mental collapse and at this point in time you could care less. You should have known that the universe wasn’t going to let you choose a damn closet in peace.

As you swing the door open with enough force that the hinges squeak, there are several things that come immediately and alarmingly to your attention. First, is the light hanging from the ceiling which is already on and humming softly. Second, is the tall old-school mop leant against one of the walls in the small space, a pair of mismatched googly eyes slapped onto the twisted bundles of thread that hang limply, despondently, on the side of the mop not pressed against the wall. Third, the closet reeks of must and sweat and a sneeze is already building in your nostrils when you realise the fourth and fifth, arguably the most alarming, details about the closet.

You’re not alone in the space and the male standing kind of slumped against the wall, momentarily frozen and staring at you with wide eyes, is someone very familiar to you. Min Yoongi, your old RA from when you were staying in the dorms last year, stands like a deer caught in headlights before you— your gaze trailing the length of his pale arm leads you to the fifth and final discovery that, arguably, is probably the one that finally pushes you over the edge. Your brain flatlines and heat floods your face so unbearably you feel like your head is about to tip off your shoulders.

It would seem as though you’ve walked in on Min Yoongi having a bit of good, old-fashioned one-on-one time with Min Jr.

The two of you stand in silence for a few seconds as the situation sinks in, your eyes unable to remove themselves from where they are fixed on his Min Sceptre until you forcibly tear them away. It’s only as your cheeks burn and your gaze flicks shamefully between his face and where his hand stays frozen mid-stroke that Yoongi seems to realise you’re not an apparition and indeed he’s been caught with his literal hand down his literal pants— well, they’re open and halfway down his legs but you get the idea.

For some reason, the male doesn’t think to tuck away his junk before he begins speaking in defence of himself and his actions. It hangs loud and proud still engaged and engorged, ready for battle, as he sputters in an attempt to form a response.

“It’s not- not what it looks like— actually,” the shamed expression that had contorted his features quickly twisted into one of indignance; shamefully you note that he’s still full-mast and not looking like he’s about to lower any time soon. “It’s exactly what it looks like. What, you want me to say sorry? Can’t a man jerk his gherkin in peace? I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

Your mouth drops open, brain still decisively flatlining and out of commission for probably the next few days, and the male continues on, his free hand flying into the air to gesture emphatically while the other remains in a trusty grip around the long balloon that still— still— doesn’t look like it’s going to deflate anytime soon. “I just need five minutes— five minutes! — without a freshman asking me for some god damn fucking TOILET paper, alright?”

You really can’t help but wonder, how is it that he’s still got such impressive blood flow to his lower region despite the situation and his rapid, indignant defence. He drops into silence for a moment, dark eyes looking at you expectantly. You’re still speechless.

“Well?” he prompts, his free hand resting on his hip in a posture similar to that of a middle-aged mother with a can-I-speak-to-your-manager haircut scolding her misbehaving child. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I…” you feel kind of faint, too much blood rushing to you head, and struggle to formulate a fitting response— and really, what the hell can you say in response to this? He’s still standing there with his dick out! His DONG-saeng! His home-grown churro! Is he not embarrassed, at all? How is he still fully pumped and rearing to go?! “Y… p-pee- peen—”

“Go on, do you have anything to say about rudely walking in on me at such a crucial moment? Mop-ssi here was about to get to the good stuff, do you have any idea—”

For the first time since you’d entered the closet, Yoongi releases his grip on his ramrod serpent and your gaze is caught, once more, as it bounces heavily in the air. All the remaining blood in your body rushes to your head and you have a moment of realisation that you’re about to literally pass out, right before you do. At least, you think as your vision fades to black and the last thing you see is Min Jr winking at you salaciously, at least you were finally getting some reprieve from the nightmare this friday turned into. When you wake everything will be fine, this will be just a dream. It’s fine, it’s all over now.

Unfortunately for you it is, in fact, not over.

— • masterlist | intro | next • —

[please like & rb and pls pls pls let us know what you think!! <3 thank u for reading!]

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ninamontagutbordas · 4 years

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HOW CAN I KNOW WHO I AM IF SOCIAL MEDIA DICTATES WHO I SHOULD BE?

The first time I joined Facebook, I was thirteen years old. It was 2008 at the time and none of the existing social media platforms were a big thing in Spain yet. I had a total of seven facebook friends and I only used it to talk to my sister, who introduced me to the social network, while she was away during the summer. Actually, facebook was just a great solution to connect with people traveling or living abroad.

I didn’t understand the power of social media then and, to be honest, it’s still difficult for me to have an accurate understanding of how its power can affect people. It sure has affected me countless times to the point where social media was controlling the way I felt and, it still controls me sometimes.

I am about to turn twenty-five and I am very happy with who I’ve become this past decade. Obviously, I had to go through all the faces the majority of kids go through between the ages of fifteen and the mid-twenties (hopefully I’m not the only one!): I was a stupid teenager at times (to be fair, sometimes still am), there were moments were I behaved as a bad daughter, a bad sister, a bad friend, a bad girlfriend and as a bad “all the roles that a human being can possibly be”, but, still, I am very happy with who I am today and I have forgiven myself for all the damage I may have made.

During this past decade, I’ve managed to create different abilities that helped me understand a bit more how to navigate the awkward early twenties, such as pushing away toxicity, standing up for myself, accepting constructive criticism, and facing mistakes as soon as possible.

BUT, what if social media is dictating what’s toxic and what’s not, when do I need to stand up for myself and when I don’t, which criticism is constructive and which is not and which are the things I should see as mistakes and which are not?

It got me thinking.

I feel like the power of this digital “era” we are living in (is it even an era anymore or at this point is just our reality?) has brought us a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. There have been moments in my life where I found social media was actually very dangerous for me and reflecting on it now, I think my experience may be helpful to some of you as well.

At the beginning of this crazy 2020, I was in a very bad place. I had just quitted a job that was very damaging for me, I wasn’t comfortable with the way I looked, and I felt very isolated from the important things in life. I have suffered from severe anxiety since I was twelve and had to learn to manage that at a very early stage in my life, but it had never been as bad as it was in January. First world problems? Indeed. I totally agree, but it was a very dark period of time for myself and there was nothing I could do to feel better -or at least I thought so-.

I have the most amazing parents and the most amazing family, a great group of friends who have always supported me no matter what and I had a great loving boyfriend who not once made me feel non-deserving of a happiness that seemed impossible to reach at the time. My support system wasn’t the problem.

SO, why wasn’t I happy?

I knew I had to stop complaining and start doing things that would make me feel better, which would make me heel. Had I known at the time social media was a key element to get there, it would have been a lot easier.

My body had changed a lot during the past few years, I wasn’t exercising, and I handled my anxiety by eating literally my feelings. My pants didn’t fit, my body was way different than my friend’s bodies (yeah, I know, “don’t compare yourself to others” and “all bodies are beautiful” but still, we all know how it works) and I felt very insecure in general. I never have had the patience or the strength before to beat my laziness and it’s safe to say I had zero trust in myself then, but again, it was time. I had to do something.

I decided to start a severe diet.

If you know me, you know I have had a terrible habit in the past where I start things and never finish them, so of course, I didn’t think I was going to go through with an entire diet. I didn’t see myself capable.

It took me six months and nine days to finally feel healthy and good again, but I did it. (Two out of six months I was quarantined at home, which was not great neither mentally nor physically for the process I was going through). I discovered a lot of myself during that time though.

However, not everything I discovered was actually good, believe it or not. I discovered a lot of bad stuff and not necessarily was I aware of all the negative inputs I was receiving from the internet. One of those things was the social media strategies to engage with users in the wrong way and how that can control a person’s feelings. I was a victim of social media.

During the lockdown, I had to beat my anxiety in different ways so that none of them lead me up to interrupting the diet-plan my doctor had provided me. I had a commitment to myself and the more I proved myself wrong, the better I felt. I’m not a quitter and I wasn’t a quitter back then, but I just didn’t know it yet.

One of the ways to beat my anxiety, strangely enough, was sitting home to my computer and lose myself on social media, as many of us did during the quarantine. Without even noticing it, I ended up falling into a rabbit hole: Instagram food accounts.

Isn’t it so paradoxical? I was doing a diet but still, I was spending my hours looking at thousands of videos of people baking cakes, cooking pasta, and reading recipes I know I couldn’t have as long as I wanted to keep doing this.

Some said I should be proud of myself - being able to look at these videos and not once cheat or interrupt my diet is a great way “to train my strength”. I fully disagree. To me, this was not about strength, to me this was about how the channels in my brain had been educated to think this was normal behavior. It was not. Social media was tempting me.

What I’ve realized through this process is that, it wasn’t actually my choice whether to stop looking at them or not. The less I wanted to see, the more videos I had access to because of the complexity of the social media algorithms. They decided I needed to see that kind of content.

Social media was proving myself and it became an interesting yet dangerous dynamic for me, which is why I find myself writing down this essay. For months, I’ve been having conversations with my parents and my friends about the danger of social media.

BUT, where is the real danger?

In the months that followed, I was starting to feel better. Actually, I was feeling pretty good. Not just physically, but also mentally. I was better than ever and people around me started noticing the inside glow I was feeling.

The problem is that feeling good and being in charge of your own life are two very different things. I was happy but my life was not under control, quite the opposite. I wasn’t in control. Social media algorithms were controlling me.

That’s when it got tricky for me – How could I be the happiest I’ve ever been but feel so frustrated? Was I really happy? Was I pretending to be happy because everyone else seemed so happy? Was I really being myself or was I just pretending to be somebody who I wasn’t? Was social media training myself to think I was happy? Was social media LYING to me?

All of these questions were hunting me, and I just did not know what to do. I was back in shape yet all the pictures I saw on Instagram of these beautiful women in their amazing bikinis during their amazing vacations made me feel self-conscious about myself.

Why did I do this diet? Did I do it for myself or for the benefit of a social network that had thousands of pictures of myself where I could prove to people graphically I had lost a lot of weight?

Social media has an interesting way to make people feel bad and create this interesting millennial feeling of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) – the problem is, we only share 10% of what’s really going on with us. That’s why it was important to me to share this story – I wanted to use social media in a different way. Maybe I’m oversharing, but at least I’m oversharing in a true and authentic way, not in an unrealistic scenario.

A while ago, I decided I would delete all the pictures on my Instagram page and I was only going to leave there the ones that captured the moments where I was really happy and really present. From around 600 pictures I had posted over the years, I chose around 20. They could stay. Twenty-something pictures that reminded me of the important things in life, at least the important things to me. But then I said to myself: “Did I just chose when I felt happy because I deleted some Instagram pictures? This makes me so sad”.

Going through these old pictures, I could clearly tell how my body has changed “for the better” this past nine months but I realized very quickly something very unexpected - I was really happy back then. For sure I had that puffy face and a bigger body, but I was really happy and really secure. And that’s when I realized, social media was dictating what should I do and who I should be. Not because I decided to, but because I allowed it to.

The thing is that I don’t feel threatened by social media itself. I feel threatened by the way we consume digital content without even thinking of the impact this can have not only on ourselves but on others.

We get carried away because we don’t use social media in a smart way. We use it to compare ourselves and our life with others, directly or indirectly, whether we like it or not. We don’t consume media to complete ourselves with information and use it for our own profits. We consume media to fill the blanks we are missing in our journeys.

I’m scared of how fast the world is evolving and how fast digital progress is happening. Let’s see where my relationship with the internet stands in five years when my twenties are over. Until then, I’ll try to use social media for the benefit of the people around me. I feel like we all have a responsibility and, I’m going to commit to it.

The question is, are you?

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lothiriel84 · 4 years

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Can’t Fight This Feeling

What started out as friendship, has grown stronger I only wish I had the strength to let it show

A Cabin Pressure ficlet. Set in my These words are all we have (We'll be talking) universe. Aromantic!Tiffy.

They meet at a horse dressage event; she’s the friend of a friend of Minty’s, and he takes a shine to her right from the start. She doesn’t talk much, until he lets it slip that he’s an airline steward – or airdot, as it happens – and her face lights up all of a sudden. He tells her everything about G-ERTI – well, minus the bit about his Dad, actually – and she tells him about going plane-spotting on the riverbank south of Fitton Airfield sometimes.

In the end, he writes down his phone number on a scrap of paper he finds in his pocket, and she promises she will text next time she’s in the area. She doesn’t give him her number, but that’s okay, he thinks; still, he looks her up on Facebook that night, and he almost sends her a friend request, but in the end decides against it. If she wants to text him, that’s up to her, and he’s fine with it, honestly.

(He scrolls past the relationship status, trying really hard not to think about what ‘it’s complicated’ means, and closes the page.)

Tiffy texts him a week and a half later, but he doesn’t get the text until they land in New Delhi, and they won’t be back in Fitton for another four days, anyway. Pushing away at his sudden disappointment, he sends a photo of G-ERTI all locked up in her hangar, and Tiffy immediately texts back to say she’s a beauty, which brings a huge grin to Arthur’s face.

When he sprints to catch up with Skip and the others, Mum eyes him suspiciously, as if she’s wondering what he’s been up to; he slips his phone back into his pocket and tries to act as if nothing happened, which he suspects he’s not entirely successful at.

A week later, he’s doing the hoovering when his phone pings with a new text from Tiffy; he tells her he’ll join her in twenty minutes, very nearly forgets to lock everything up in his haste to leave the Portakabin. By the time he gets to the top of the riverbank, Tiffy’s already there, camera in hand, snapping away at the small Piper that just took off. For a moment there, he wishes he were like Skip, but Tiffy doesn’t seem to mind his questions about all the different types of plane she’s managed to photograph so far.

He tells her about Karl, how great it is to have his familiar voice welcome them home; she tells him about taking photography lessons, and when it gets too dark for plane-spotting, they go to a nearby café where Arthur buys her the most extravagant hot chocolate he can think of. Tiffy smiles, thanks him for a lovely afternoon, and promises to call soon.

She does, two days later, and he doesn’t care that Douglas is glancing at him across the Portakabin as if he knows exactly what’s going on; he’s just happy to hear from her, and no amount of teasing can change that, not even Douglas’. They arrange to go for a walk together next Friday; Tiffy said she absolutely loves dogs, and he can’t wait for her to meet Snoopadoop in person – or, well, in animal, he supposes, but it doesn’t matter.

It takes all of five minutes for Snoopadoop to decide she likes Arthur’s new friend; they spend a lovely day in the park, playing with Snoopadoop and wandering aimlessly through the trees. Tiffy is smiling a lot, and it makes his heart beat a little faster every time; he’s pretty sure he’s grinning like an idiot now, but she doesn’t seem to mind, so that’s all right, too.

When it’s time to say goodbye, Arthur impulsively leans in to press a little peck on her cheek; he means it as a friendly kiss, mostly, as he’s still not entirely clear what their little outings are all about, and he’s not at all prepared for the way she recoils, as if burned.

“I’m – sorry,” he hastens to apologise, feeling like he just did something unspeakably horrible. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

Tiffy’s face is carefully blank now, and Arthur has to fight the urge to step closer in his desperate need to comfort her. “I – have to go now,” she speaks stiltedly, almost trips in her haste to get away from him. Arthur stands there for a long time, ignoring Snoopadoop’s repeated attempts at getting his attention, mentally calling himself all the worst names he can think of.

Back home, he leaves a note explaining he’s not coming down for dinner tonight, locks himself in his room, and spends the next two hours writing and deleting several texts in rapid succession. In the end, he settles for a simple I’m terribly sorry for making you uncomfortable, and I understand if you don’t want to see me again.

He presses send, turns off his phone, and spends the rest of the night tossing and turning until he eventually falls asleep sometime around dawn. When he switches his phone on in the morning, there is no text waiting for him, so naturally he assumes she’s still angry for what he did, and he honestly can’t say he blames her.

Mum’s waiting for him at the office, so he downs a cup of lukewarm coffee, and settles for nibbling at a couple of biscuits as he forgoes his car in favour of a brisk walk to the airfield. He pauses in front of the door to the Portakabin, makes an effort to summon a smile so that the others won’t notice – much.

“There you are,” Mum sighs, reaching for her bag on her way out. “Drivers are already out there doing whatever it is they like to do when we’re on standby. I’m going down to the canteen, please don’t do anything stupid in my absence.”

“Right-o,” he shrugs, and very nearly trips on his own two feet when he finally notices there is someone sitting behind Douglas’ desk, and it most definitely isn’t Douglas.

“Tiffy,” he says, idiotically – yes, that’s her name, do keep up Arthur – finding it surprisingly hard to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. “Hi.”

She stands up, arms wrapped protectively around her front, which doesn’t seem terribly promising. “Sorry I didn’t text you back. I owe you a proper explanation, and didn’t know how to fit it all into a text.”

“It’s okay,” he blurts out from where he’s still rooted to the spot, not daring to come any closer. “I know it’s all my fault.”

“No,” she counters quickly, and way more forcefully than he’s expecting. “That’s the whole point. You were absolutely lovely, Arthur, and I shouldn’t have run away like that.”

He glances down, absently notices there’s a smudge of dirt on his right shoe. “I know I should always ask before kissing or hugging someone, I just – forgot.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she sounds like she’s about to cry now, and he can almost feel his stomach drop somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes.

“I don’t suppose we could still be friends, can we?” he pleads softly, even against his better judgement – which is not that good, admittedly. “It’s just, I really like you, and it’s okay if you’d rather not, but,” he trails off, wishing for Douglas’ eloquence to descend upon him, somehow.

Tiffy shakes her head, her fingers worrying at the thin white gold ring he’s always seen her wearing on her left middle finger. “I like you too. More than just as a friend, I mean. Only, I don’t – I’m aromantic, actually,” she finish in a rush, as if anticipating her statement will invariably get challenged, for some reason.

“Oh! Okay then,” he nods, brain working overtime to slot all the pieces together.

“It’s all right if you don’t know what that means,” she adds, sounding a bit like she’s been through this a lot.

“But I do, I think?” he frowns in concentration. “It’s sort of like being asexual, but with romantic attraction, right?”

She looks at him as if he just offered her a lift on his own charter plane, pilots and everything. “That’s – yes, that’s pretty much spot on. Most people haven’t even heard of either of those words, you know.”

“Oh, you see, Mum sent me on a course on understanding people in Ipswich,” he explains, heart leaping in his throat when the beginnings of a smile play out across Tiffy’s face. “In fact, I know what we could do – if you still want to spend time with me, that is.”

“Believe me, I do – I’m just not sure it’s a good idea, that’s all.”

He’s almost afraid to ask, but he finds he absolutely needs to know. “Because of what I did yesterday?”

“Because I think you’re romantically attracted to me, and as much as I wish I were attracted to you, it’s simply not going to happen.”

“I don’t mind,” Arthur says with absolute conviction. “We can just be whatever you want us to be. In fact, what I was trying to tell you is, we should make a list. Well, could – it’s up to you really.”

Tiffy blinks, slowly. “A list?”

“That’s another thing they taught us in Ipswich! We should write down all the things you’re okay with, and then all the things you’re not, so that I won’t get those two mixed up ever again.”

“That’s – really quite thoughtful, Arthur. It’s not really fair on you, though, is it?”

He tilts his head to the side, considering. “Actually, what is really not fair is you having to put up with stuff you’re not comfortable with, just because someone else assumes it’s fine.”

“Two lists,” she agrees at last, taking a step closer and extending her hand for Arthur to take. He does so with a smile, cradles her fingers ever so gently. “One for you, one for me.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’m fine with pretty much anything, except shouting – well, and fighting, too.”

They stand there holding hands and smiling tentatively at one another, until Arthur remembers Mum is probably hovering outside, waiting for the two of them to be done talking. “Listen, I need to be here for the rest of the day if the client decides to show up after all, but I’m free tomorrow. Do you think you’d mind joining Snoopadoop and me for another walk?”

Tiffy squeezes his hand, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “I’d love to. And I believe I owe Snoopadoop an apology as well.”

“Well, she’s a dog, so she probably won’t know what aromatic means.”

“Aromantic,” she corrects him, but she looks at least a little bit amused. “See you tomorrow, then.”

Arthur gets the brief urge to kiss her goodbye again, like he was used to with his previous girlfriends, but he clamps down on it straight away. And she’s not your girlfriend, Arthur, not unless she agrees to put that on her list.

He walks her to the parking lot, and she gives his hand another squeeze, before finally letting him go; he waves her off as she drives away, then slowly heads back to the Portakabin. There he finds Carolyn back at her desk, looking for all the world as if she never left the office – if it weren’t for the tall cup of canteen coffee sitting in front of her, and the faintest trace of maternal worry clouding her expression – and on a sudden impulse, he sidles up to her and throws his arms around her neck in the closest thing to a bear hug he knows she will tolerate.

“Not that I’m not touched by this sudden display of affection, dear heart, but if I may, what brought this on, exactly?”

“Just happy,” he mumbles, mindful of not mussing up her hair. “That’s all.”

She ostensibly shakes her head and rolls her eyes, but he can feel her posture relax fractionally. “Yes, well. Why don’t you go and make yourself useful, then? I believe our useless pilots will soon require their teas and coffees, and I’m not splurging out on any more fancy hot drinks from the canteen.”

“Righto, Mum,” he grins, and all but waltzes into the kitchenette.

#Cabin Pressure #Arthur Shappey #Tiffy #Arthur/Tiffy #aromantic character #one-sided romantic attraction #developing relationship #personal boundaries #Arthur is the sweetest human being ever #These words are all we have (series)#I wrote a thing

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chaoticgeminate · 5 years

Text

Freedom

This is the third part of the Outfoxed Series, my Lila Salt series that I started on a whim and got a ton of notes and likes. This is the last bit following the main plot of the series, which is the exposure of Lila and the fallout of that exposure, but I may consider exploring other POV’s like I did with Mrs. Rossi in the side story ‘Shattered’ posted to AO3.

The link below is to the AO3 page of this story, if you don’t want to deal with the Read more button.

[AO3]

Lila's arrest sent shock waves through Collège François Dupont, from the sexual harassment charges to the truancy and even the unlawful photography, anyone associated with her on a friendly level was scrutinized and that meant the class of the former teacher Caline Bustier.

Thanks to the school board there had been numerous counselors and therapists on site, to combat potential akuma victims from the accusations and anger that were sure to be part of the fallout, with a new security system installed with no blank spots in any hallways or rooms. Excluding bathrooms, of course, but there were cameras above bathroom doors pointing straight down to track who entered and when.

Nino wasn't at all surprised when Adrien was transferred out of their class, his Father definitely blamed them for playing a part in the mess and the teen DJ couldn't fault him for once, it was easy to see from the glimpses in the halls that his best bud was happier than ever now. He had managed to apologize to both Adrien and Marinette, telling them he wasn't asking forgiveness but that he wanted them to know he now realized he screwed up and had to work on some things, the pair had thanked him and that had been it.

As much as he wanted to go back to how things were, when they were all together and Alya was scheming her plans to hook them up, Nino was more than aware that if he wanted them to trust him again it had to be on their terms and he was okay with that. He'd believed in Lila because Alya did, no matter how strange the stories sounded, his girlfriend always researched everything so if she wasn't questioning then he didn't have a reason to.

Or so he thought, but Alya wasn't perfect and he'd made a mistake by not questioning it himself, Nino had promised he would do and be better for himself and his girl as well as his friends.

Alya walked into the room late, sliding a note onto their teacher's desk, after her blow-up in the cafeteria at Adrien the school put her on mandatory counseling sessions. For as tenacious and driven as she was, something he admired, Alya was stubborn and quick-tempered; in this case, though, she refused to allow any blame on herself. Lila was the liar in this and Alya had been loyal, Marinette hadn't told her the whole truth, Adrien hadn't told her the whole truth; but it was still Alya that hadn't done her research or trusted her friend.

He slid a note onto her desk, a simple love poem he'd found, he wasn't ready to give up on her as a girlfriend and he knew that once she accepted she'd made a mistake that she'd do the right thing and at least apologize.

He was a sweetheart, someone truly amazing that was far too mature for his age, Nino's poem made her heart race even if she'd seen it on Juleka's facebook page two weeks earlier. For the first time in a long time she felt lighter, her pocket no longer weighed down with her cellphone, the device submitted for evidence for her own lawsuit against Lila.

Aya wasn't an idiot, she hadn't believed a damn thing Lila Rossi was putting out, but she was too quick tempered and had moved far too quickly against the Italian. Giving the new girl a chance to fess up had led to a rabbit hole of trouble, Lila hadn't even tried playing clean and as soon as she had her ammo it was over, Alya hadn't thought the girl would follow her around for months in secret while she'd supposedly been traveling.

Lila had gotten video proof of Alya sneaking around with Nino, steamy make-outs in fairly public (though not in the open) places while they were supposed to be babysitting, and worst of all she'd gotten a series of photos with Alya and Nino in a VERY compromising position in the school.

'All I want is your support, you don't have to believe me but you do have to make the others believe me, I won't tell anyone or show these otherwise.'

It sucked but Alya had danced to Lila's song and done what she asked without question, it would ruin her and Nino's records and their parents would have a meltdown, she expected Lila to eventually make a mistake after all and even if Alya supported her that didn't mean one of the others was trapped by her web. Alya had tried hard to support Marinette, Lila's chosen target she soon learned, but after the first attempt at getting the designer expelled had failed Lila wasn't giving any leeway.

The second attempt worked far too well, after Lila took the picture of the funeral right from Alya's phone, and the reporter found herself doing the unspeakable at Lila's behest. Every article had her in tears and the public backlash made her sick to her stomach, if she wasn't terrified of the result from Lila it might've been easier to delete the Ladyblog entirely, and finally it all drew to a close with Lila's arrest.

Finding out Adrien had known all along, that he'd just said nothing, had ignited a fire in Alya that she couldn't extinguish and she tore into him for his inaction; the entire time he could have done something, he could have saved her from her own ruin. But now, finally, Alya had come clean on every last detail to her parents and the school; her parents, as disappointed and hurt as they were, contacted the AGRESTE lawyers with their own evidence of blackmail to add to Lila's charges once they spoke with Officer Raincomprix.

Nino was still in the dark, though not for long since his parents were contacted too in regards to the nature of the pictures and video, and several people had said her intentions to protect her boyfriend were noble even if she had done wrong. But Alya had a long way to go in order to forgive herself before she'd ask forgiveness of anyone else, she started with hand-written letters to be mailed out to a lot of people, her phone and computer taken and she was under house arrest for quite a while per her parents.

Focusing on the board, as their teacher talked about their assignment for geography, Alya scribbled her notes as the rest tapped and typed away on their tablets.

"BREAKING REPORT

BLACKMAIL CHARGES CONFIRMED AGAINST LILA ROSSI

As of Wednesday, we have word that more charges are being added to the already extensive list for Lila Rossi. The Italian student, living in France on a VISA due to her mother's work, has already been accused of a long list of charges by both the Agreste family and the Dupain-Cheng family as well as the school board. Sexual harassment, truancy charges, unlawful photography, bullying a French citizen, and now there is evidence surfacing of blackmailing a French citizen.

The Césaire family have come forward with very serious evidence that indicates Alya Césaire, the founder of the Ladyblog, was being blackmailed by Lila Rossi the entire span of her time at Francios Dupont and during the period she was skipping classes. E-mails, text messages, and threatening messages through Facebook and Snapchat depict Rossi as having compromising photographs and videos of Césaire and her boyfriend that could result in their own criminal charges.

When we asked Otis Césaire his thoughts on the matter he had this to say:

"My daughter was wrong in her actions, I will not try and say she was only a victim because she could have come to us before this started and we would have helped her, but I am appalled that the school officials were so easily fooled and allowed a girl to come in and manipulate them so thoroughly. They were supposed to protect their students, regardless of how much money the families of those kids have, but I see that their concern was elsewhere."

Alya Césaire herself is being reviewed for her own criminal charges based on the content of the photographs that were found on Lila Rossi's devices and has asked that any charges that might be applied to her boyfriend be dropped as she was the primary instigator for each incident. The AGRESTE legal team is asking that any other students, parents, or parties victim to any schemes of Lila please step forward so that they can compile a full list of charges and get this case closed."

The voice of Nadja Chamak played softly in the background of the office as Mayor Armand D'Argencourt adjusted his tie and looked around the bleak space, it was only a matter of time before the school board pursued the Mayor for his own corruption and Andre had paid out a hefty sum to avoid prison before being removed from office, the new election had come and Armand had taken post over Madam Lauren Richards.

As one of the few teachers not involved with Rossi, aside from Physical Education, he hadn't been questioned much and even then he never once allowed her any special treatment; if she cited an injury he made her go to the nurse, any conditions she claimed he would ask Miss Kensington for proof and there never was any. But his claims and reports to Phineas had gone unanswered and blown aside, as any with Miss Bourgeios often had, his reports to the school board had been added to the Dupain-Cheng case as had Priscille's own reports.

A knock on the door made him clear his throat. "Come in." He left the office door open, unlike the Mayor had, the knocking was just a courtesy. His secretary, Monsieur Hemsley, held a stack of papers and folders.

"I'm afraid to say there is a lot more of this, sir, but this is the start of what Mayor Bourgeios cited as unnecessary for Paris." The man looked apologetic and Armand shook his head, accepting the stack of things with no ill-feelings.

It was a new challenge. "I want to start with everything from the past year, Thomas, I've no doubt there were plenty of things he ignored or blew out to keep his hotel running and himself in office." Finding the corruption was the first step, all the business owners with an in that were paying into the Bourgeios to keep themselves on top, Armand wasn't going to fail his family's post or his city.

He glanced at his calendar. "Remember to keep tomorrow afternoon clear, I've got fencing to teach at the Agreste manor after school hours tomorrow." Thomas nodded and went to bring the next batch of papers to him.

"It's been quiet."

Sitting on top of Notre Dame, legs swinging freely as the lights illuminated the dark city below, Chat couldn't help but hum in agreement to the soft statement his partner whispered. With Lila's arrest and the continual charges being brought forward against her, as well as the fallout from the students, he'd expected much more in the way of akuma. "It's worrying, as much as I don't want it to be." He wanted it to be a good sign that there hadn't been problems with Hawkmoth, he wanted it to be an indicator that they were due for some peace and quiet, but they couldn't relax.

Ladybug's eyes were focused on the light at the Town Hall where his fencing instructor, now Mayor, was working diligently through years of corruption from Chloe's father in office. "I've been talking with Tikki and the other Kwami, they all agree that something feels... off. We have a lot of theories but nothing concrete, if I wasn't so afraid to bring the Miracle Box out in public I'd have brought it tonight with me." He almost choked with how deep a breath he drew in, that was not at all what he'd expected.

"You want- but you're the Guardian. Why would my-"

"Your thoughts and opinions are always important to me, Chat, we're partners. You just have horrible timing to be a flirty tomcat as well as an issue with the word no."

He opened his mouth to argue but didn't, she was right, he had no valid excuse for his behavior in the past. "I, uh, you don't have to worry about that LB. I have a girlfriend, outside the mask I mean, I won't tell you her name but she's incredible and I'm really happy with her." Chat could feel her looking at him and her expression was soft, fond and friendly, love without the romantic aspect of it.

Such a familiar look and he didn't even know why. "I'm really happy for you, Chat, you deserve someone who brings you happiness." He felt his cheeks warm, Marinette made him more than happy, he felt loved and like he was home when he was by her side.

But his expression schooled into something playful as his partner looked away, her own face pink. "Oh, is that a blush? Thinking of your own special boy?" Her scowl was lacking any real anger or annoyance and it twisted into a bright grin.

"The boy I like, the one I told you about, he asked me out and we're together now." At one point that would have hurt him, made his chest ache, but it just indicated how incredible Marinette was that he didn't feel anything but happiness.

His mouth spit out the phrase before he could even stop it. "Oh? So, the Bug has her Boo? I guess when you're on a date you're Bugandboo?" Her squawk of outrage had him laughing as he got up to run, delighting in just being able to play, a few people who were still awake cheered him on while others admonished him playfully for irritating the heroine.

By the time patrol ended he was sporting a sore arm, a hoarse voice from laughing, and the annoyance of being filmed falling off a roof into a dumpster when one of Monsieur Ramirer's pigeons flew in his face. But it was a good night and he promised to keep his eyes open for trouble in the form of butterflies.

Marinette knocked and waited for an answer, meeting surprised expressions, her own lips a flat line. "Can I...?" The nod was gentle as Marlena hugged her, whispering an apology of her own, but Marinette didn't blame her at all. Nora's hug was more like a wrestling move, cracking a few joints too, the twins were subdued for once. Walking to the open door, since Alya wasn't allowed to have her room closed off at all, Marinette knocked on the frame.

"Just cleaning my- oh." Alya emerged from her mess of clothes, the closet's contents emptied on the floor and sorted into piles, her expression guarded but somehow open.

Before she could lose her nerve, the designer cleared her throat. "I'm angry at you, for not telling me the truth about what was going on and then attacking my parents when you could have come clean before it got that far, but I'm sorry that you were a victim to her schemes too. I can't forgive you, at least not right now, but I respect you for trying to protect Nino even if I was the sacrifice because I don't know if I would have done anything different in your situation." Alya's eyes were watering and Marinette knew she was close to crying too, she'd decided that she wasn't going to hold onto grudges or anger any longer and had spent the day visiting her former classmates.

Part of moving on was deciding what emotions to hold onto, Wayzz and Longg had helped her come to terms with her lingering doubts and hurt emotions, she refused to be chained by the betrayal and hurt more than she needed to be. "Thank you, I always could trust you to be honest with me, for what it's worth I am sorry that I hid the truth from you." Marinette nodded at Alya and her grip on the doorframe tightened a little.

There wasn't a lot to say between them. "I want to trust you again, Alya, you inspired me to be better and to stand up for what was right and in a weird way you tried to protect me and Nino. Please do better so I can have my best friend back." Marinette's eyes watered and Alya's tears slid down her cheeks as she nodded, the designer opened her arms and the hug was everything she expected when Alya nearly tackled her, but it was what they both needed.

After their impromptu cry session, monitored by Nora to watch for butterflies, the two students said their farewells. Sliding under her Papa's arm as she exited the building, he'd insisted on coming with her to visit her former classmates, Marinette wiped her eyes with the offered handkerchief. "Feel a little better, dumpling?" He had been skeptical of this whole thing but supported her choice to do it.

"Yea, Papa, I do. I really do."

"Good, I'm glad. Now, I know you like to make all your clothes and for good reason, I've got a secret assignment of my own. You see, your Maman and I agreed I would know just what sort of dress you need to take Adrien's breath away for your date tonight. So, dumpling, we're going shopping." Marinette wanted to be upset but it had been a long time since her parents ever got to buy her clothes, a really long time actually, so she didn't argue as he caught a bus to the shopping district for them.

But she had to admit she didn't expect some of the choices he handed her to try on. Marinette might have accused him of asking Gabriel for help if not for the fact that all of the choices were all colors her father knew she liked and not things that were considered complimentary to her skin tone. After trying on what felt like hundreds of dresses, even if it was only twenty according to Tikki, Marinette and her Papa found one they both liked.

Pale rose in color with a fit and flare shape, the bodice was solid color with very short sleeves made of the same georgette lace that covered the knee-length skirt, she felt really cute in it and it wasn't too short or revealing. Marinette had white, round-toe, heels that she could wear with it and wanted to wear her hair down with loose curls. Her Maman, on their return home, admitted that out of the two of her parents it was her Papa that had an artist's eye and had often picked all of the dresses that Sabine herself wore on their dates.

Marinette hadn't known, though she decided it wasn't that surprising given her Papa's decorative skill, but she was glad that her Papa was happy for her relationship. "You have two hours to get ready before Adrien gets here, dumpling." That made her rush up the stairs and hurry to get ready since this was their first unsupervised date.

'That boy needs his Dad. Not his Father, Gabriel, or his boss. Adrien needs you in his life and if you don't shape up then I will report every last shred of truth on how you break labor laws and pull him from school illegally for photoshoots.'

Leonard's threat had hung heavy between the two men since the initial stirrings against Lila, the black eye Gabriel had sported for two weeks had been hidden with make-up but the bodyguard hadn't feared repercussions or assault charges, as a parent Gabriel respected Leonard and as a friend he respected him even more for doing what he'd done. Watching his son smooth down the jacket of his suit, planning to take his girlfriend to a restaurant known for their private settings so they could avoid the spotlight for some time, Gabriel was proud of Adrien and knew now that he had missed quite a bit.

Leonard met his gaze as the teenager rambled about his nerves, Nathalie busy reassuring him that Marinette would be thrilled to bits, the very slightest of nods from the man expelled most of the tension. Gabriel handed Adrien something he'd kept for his son, for quite some time, a delicate silver chain with loops for charms waiting. "You are under no pressure to accept this, or do what I had done, but I know you're nervous and hope that maybe this will help you with your own ideas for Marinette." Adrien's eyes were just as curious and warm as Emilie's were, it was both heartbreaking and so very amazing.

"Emilie had a book that she bought, I gave her a single flower on every date, she would press the flowers to preserve them; this is the start of a charm bracelet, I think perhaps Marinette would like something she can wear as a reminder of your affections." It was a guess but the girl proved to be very affectionate, though not incredibly handsy in public and it was a trait he appreciated, with her own anxious tendencies it would be best to have something tangible she could carry. Adrien grinned and nodded, looking at the time on his watch.

A smile on his face and a tight hug, Gabriel was nearly bowled over with the strength in his son's sudden motion, Adrien thanked him with a teary smile. "I already have plenty of ideas, thank you so much Dad!" Gabriel managed to hold off until Adrien left but the moment he was gone the tears started, it had been so long since he heard that title, Nathalie's hum was soft and Gabriel appreciated her quiet comfort. After a moment or two, managing to calm himself down, the man looked at Nooroo as the Kwami peeked out from behind the hall.

"Nooroo, if I were to give you back your Miraculous would you be able to find the Guardian?" The Butterfly hesitated but nodded, looking miserable to even admit that much. Gabriel removed the brooch and Nathalie only nodded as she took Duusu's brooch too, the two Kwami accepted them back with curious looks. "Nooroo and Duusu, I release you to be free and return to the Guardian. I am truly sorry that I allowed my grief to blind me to what I was losing and led me to abusing you as I had." The Butterfly Kwami offered a wavering smile, gratitude visible on his face as Duusu fluttered about energetically.

The Kwami nuzzled him. "I knew you were a good man, Gabriel, you just lost your way for a little bit. Thank you for setting me free." The two Kwami disappeared through the door and Nathalie followed him to what once was his lair, the butterflies and cocoons had disappeared, leaving just an empty garden and the glass chamber. Emilie had been embalmed in private, following her death, which was the reason she was in the state she was in now. Nathalie left him then to give him time to say goodbye, for the last time, Gabriel had no more tears to give and only apologized for losing his way.

"I will always cherish what we had, Emilie, I will never forget you; but I won't disappoint you any longer, I cannot allow myself to cling to us and continue to put Adrien in danger or push him away." As he placed his hand on the top of the glass, chest heaving with a deep breath, he contacted the burial company that had done the embalming. They hadn't thought much of his basement being a mausoleum of sorts, it was not new to plenty of the upper-class, once he activated the tinting on the coffin it looked just like any other.

Within the hour his wife was buried in her family plot, with the rest of the Graham de Vanily, and Gabriel gave himself the night to grieve. Free of the burden of the brooch, the burden of being chained to the past, and free to pursue a future beside his son once more.

Sabine laughed as Tom and Gabriel battled, with Adrien and Marinette on their date the two had contacted him and agreed to have him over, Leonard and Nathalie were on either side of her nursing hot drinks and their own chuckles. Having the man request to learn how to play Ultimate Mecha Strike had been a shock but he admitted that he wanted to be able to play with Adrien, he didn't know what his son was really fond of doing and needed a gateway of sorts, Sabine hadn't been able to help hugging the poor man and promising to help.

Watching him now, as he grunted with his hair free of styling products for once, she could tell there was something a little different about him this time; he ran another hand through his hair as he got locked into an animation sequence as Tom's mech unleashed a combo. "Take that you old pincushion." In the past she might have been worried but Gabriel never ceased to surprise her.

"Keep talking, you stale cream puff, once I figure this game out I'm going to make you eat those words." Gabriel was competitive, not that she was surprised by that, fashion was a cutthroat industry; but he wasn't to the point that he was a sore loser. In fact he appeared to be having fun and it warmed her to see a man trying to do better, especially after subjecting his son to harassment by that horrid little liar, Sabine glanced at her phone as it chimed.

Marinette and Adrien had both sent a picture, an adorable selfie of the two of them at the theater, they had done dinner and Adrien had gotten tickets for them to see Wicked together since it was currently playing. "The kids just reached the theater." Earning two non-committal sounds from the men, once again not surprised, the woman responded with a 'have fun' before leading Nathalie to the kitchen as Leonard continued to read his comic books.

"I've never seen him this relaxed, your family is quite amazing."

Sabine met the woman's gaze and smiled. "I like to think so too, shall we prepare some light snacks?" Nathalie nodded and Sabine was pretty happy to relay the ongoing news that Nadja learned from the interviews and messages flooding TVi.

“You mean-“

“I think he’s found it more important to prioritize what he has over what he’s lost.”

Chat Noir was quiet as Nooroo sat in his hands, Duusu perched on Ladybug’s shoulder quietly, the two Kwami had appeared in Ladybug’s room and she’d called him the following evening in order to give them time to rest. “I don’t understand why he’d do what he chose to, though I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same since I don’t know how I’d react, but I guess I’m glad he’s decided enough is enough.” Ladybug heard the sigh as she leaned on her partner’s arm, her own face wet with tears, she had taken one look at the tome that the two had brought with her and knew exactly where they came from.

Something she’d have to tell Chat Noir, she trusted him and didn’t want to keep him in the dark, but she knew how hard he’d taken it when she theorized her idol and boyfriend’s father as Hawkmoth the first time around. “I know who he was, these two coming to me only confirmed it, I am going to respect his request for a second chance. For me to have this make sense, Chat, you’ll have to know that I was one of Caline Bustier’s students at Collège François Dupont.” His eyes widened and he held out a hand for a moment, silencing her, then he cupped her chin and made her look at him.

Ladybug didn’t know what he was looking for. “Princess?” The hope in his voice sent a touch of warmth through her, making her throat tighten as she licked her lips.

“Mhm.”

Words escaped her then as she waited for his reaction, his pupils blowing wide and round, her heart thundering as her hands started to shake. She felt vulnerable and exposed, weightless as his silence kept her teetering on the edge of delight or misery, a part of her theorized who he was ever since Chat Blanc and she needed to be right. His mouth curved into a wide smile and his eyes glistened as green formed around him, leaving Adrien in his place, she’d never been happier to be right. “It’s you! It’s always been you! No wonder you’ve been wearing gray and pink a lot, you sneaky little bug mouse.” His weight crashed into her as she dismissed her own transformation and Tikki giggled above her as Plagg rolled his eyes, her mouth meeting Adrien’s in a frantic kiss.

Once they both laughed over how badly they had danced around each other, with promises to tell each other everything, Marinette knew it was time to finish what she’d been saying. “They brought me a book too, Adrien, the book Lila stole from you that got you pulled from school.” Adrien’s arms tightened on her waist and she squeezed his body a little, to remind him she was here with him, but there wasn’t any sort of anger on his face.

A weak acceptance, exhaustion, maybe some hope. “You want to give him a second chance?” Marinette nodded and cupped his cheek.

“I think we can do that, now that we know the truth, Chaton; he deserves that much, he’s been trying hard to be there for you.” He was learning how to play video games, the two were taking cooking lessons, Marinette had seen him at every photoshoot and he promised dinners with her family every other week as well as an appearance at the Parent’s Dinner the school was having for this year’s graduation award presentation.

Adrien’s eyes watered. “Thank you, Bugaboo.” He kissed her again and she giggled.

“I told you to stop calling me Bugaboo, Chaton, I like Princess more.” His eyes twinkled and he nodded as he cradled her close. “I’m glad though because I thought I liked two boys, I’m really happy it’s just one.” His chuckle into her collar made her giggle.

But he had a warm mischief in his gaze when he let her go. “Isn’t Chaton a little telling, I’m sure Aurore will connect the spots quickly.” Marinette poked his nose with a wink.

“I’ll just have to call you mon Chevalier.” He flushed and she transformed with a grin. “But, for now, I have to go to bed; I have school and I recall being promised fancy coffee and a wake-up kiss.” He tried to shout after her but she swung away with a whoop. The real surprise came nearly half-an-hour later, after a shower and changing, when her Maman said she had company.

Adrien had an overnight bag and a grin as he joined her in her room, the door left open per her parent’s request, they snuggled under her comforter and she cuddled Plagg as the cat Kwami snuggled against her neck. “A cat could get used to this, I’m moving in too Sugarcube.” Tikki’s giggle made Adrien hum as he agreed softly, cradling her close to him as Marinette felt her eyelids droop.

“So what now? No Hawkmoth or Mayura, you have all the Miraculous, just patrol and stop petty crime?”

Marinette grinned. “We learn how to be Guardians, not all threats are corrupt holders, I think there might be something bigger on the horizon now that the circle is closed again.” Adrien hummed as he nodded against her head, promising to study hard, sleep drawing them in and peace making it easy to feel at ease.

#chaoticwrites #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #sabine cheng #tom dupain #supportive gabriel agreste #gabriel agreste

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virgilsinferno · 5 years

Photo

SPILLR » CHAPTER ONE

important :: this is a horror fic and might contain triggering content. proceed with caution.

tw :: choking, getting chased (please let me know if i missed any)

word count :: 3073

notes :: i am not entirely sure with how many chapters there will be, but if you want to be removed from the taglist or added, just lmk.

intro

The year is 2058.

A new social networking site had been on the rise. It’s fairly new, existing for barely a month, and yet it had gotten people of all ages signing up to create an account. The site is renowned for the amount of gossip posted by its users; falsehoods so intricately woven that users and non users would find it hard not to believe them. Then again, Virgil had a theory that people’s IQs were decreasing.

There was a rumor going around that the site must have magical abilities. People also use it to vent, and users report a much lighter feeling similar to a relaxed state after doing so.

Where have their brain cells gone? It’s called being able to get something off of your chest, not magic.

Almost everyone he knew had an account. Scratch that, everyone he knew had an account. He had the basics like everyone else: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera. The one site he refused to be on was Spillr.

He had his doubts.

Except he was the only one left in the entire school who didn’t have a Spillr account, and though the students were nice enough to not tease him too much about it (playfully, of course), he couldn’t help but feel anxious. So he gave in. Everyone at school would freak out when they hear the news that he’s created an account. Just to be sure, he didn’t give out too much personal information and even created a new email account to use for the sign up.

SPILLR

Create Your Account

First Name: Nunya

Last Name: Business

Date of Birth (MM/DD/YYYY): 05/24/2030

Username: iinfernhoee

Email: thisisafakeemail @ gmail.com

Password: uhpassword

Confirm Password: uhpassword

☐ I accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Red.

The fake information he had typed turned red, and there was a note above the “Sign Up” button.

The note read: “Sorry! It appears you have used incorrect information. Please accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Try again.”

What kind of crap-filled hell was he getting himself into? That sounds creepy.

“Well fuck you, you shitty site. No way am I signing up now.” Virgil muttered. He closed the tab and turned off his laptop, then grabbed his backpack. He had a feeling this would be another day jam-packed with unnerving social situations.

Rushing past the kitchen, his dad tossed him a sandwich in a ziplock bag. “Eat breakfast on the way to school!” He yelled out, to which Virgil responded with a two-fingered salute— a greeting, a goodbye, and a “maybe”.

His school being a 5 minute run away was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing since he doesn’t have to wake up as early, nor does he have to take the bus. A curse since he’s always running late. The time was 6:56 am, and classes start at 7 am.

No, it was 6:55.

6:54.

6:53.

6:52.

6:51.

6:50.

Darn, watch must be broken. Virgil continued to run, a little bit startled by the stunt his watch just pulled on him. Not funny at all. It was almost like something weird was going on.

He arrived at school at the exact same time the bell rang. It usually did that 10 minutes before class started.

10 minutes before class… started? He’s supposed to be late, no way is it possible for time to go backwards.

Students hurried to get to first period. He wasn’t as determined as they were, but tuition is expensive so he had to. The dimly lit hallways gave him an eerie vibe. There was silence and noise at the same time, yet he didn’t know how that was possible. Virgil put his headphones on and put his playlist on shuffle. Where had they come from? Did he even bring his headphones in the first place? It was difficult to recall. To him, it felt like time fucked with his ability to remember anything that had happened before he got to school. No worries, at least he’s got something that will make him feel more at ease.

Virgil walked with his head down, looking at the ground and watching his feet walk through the familiar halls. The same boring floor pattern stretched for miles, and he was starting to think that he’s never going to get to class on time. He had 10 minutes. He can walk at a normal pace.

No one spoke to him. It was alright, it’s not like he’s going to interact with them anyways. He only had one friend and he didn’t even go to school there. They were a lot similar than one would initially expect; both of them disliked socializing with people and despised loud noises. If he were to be completely honest, their parents forced them to talk to each other since they’re neighbors and have no interest in talking to other kids their age but he only agreed when he saw that his neighbor is actually hella cute.

Of course he’s not going to out himself when there is this lingering fear of disapproval, so it remains a secret.

Speaking of lingering fear, there seemed to be thoughts of something that continued to gnaw at him, although he wasn’t sure what it is that he’s so worried about. His thoughts presented nothing. It is always in a state of chaos but also blank at the same time, so he tried to focus on the music playing instead. At this point, he’ll believe that whatever he’s thinking of that’s bothering him so much aren’t from his own thoughts. Sure he’s got stuff that’s going on in his mind as well that’s difficult to block, but that’s coming from the current environment he’s in. Nothing could stress him more than a place filled with people and noises filling every nook and cranny from all the chatter.

Upon walking in the classroom, he noticed that the seat next to his was taken by an unfamiliar person. He finds it difficult to remember names, but it’s a lot easier to recall faces. This person was a complete stranger to him. Not that he talked to people, though. He felt that it was best to avoid this guy so the stranger wouldn’t start a conversation with him. It’s what most people that sit next to him attempt to do, but they could rarely get a word out of him, so they give up trying.

For some reason, he struggled to pay attention to anything that was going on. His headphones were now hidden in his backpack and an open notebook lay on his desk. His fingers gripped a purple glitter pen, probably having a mind of its own as it danced across the page creating doodles that he’d later on look back at and cringe.

It was almost like for a moment, he felt at ease.

Looking around, he saw that everyone was too busy paying attention to whatever the teacher was saying. That was already worrying. Not everyone paid attention, especially people at the back. Not that paying attention during class was a bad thing. Their eyes were glued to the front, all of them sitting still— unmoving. Another thing, dark liquid spilled onto the floor and the tumbler that contained said liquid fell onto the floor with a clang. No one flinched in shock or even noticed that there was pitch black liquid seeping into the floor cracks. The owner of the tumbler was a girl with bleached blonde hair that sat at the very front. She didn’t pick it up.

The liquid kept inching closer to him, and his brain screamed “RUN” but his body stayed frozen. At first glance, it looks relatively harmless. Anyone would assume that it was either soda, juice, or some weird drink like BLK Water.

What’s even more strange and unsettling about his current situation is the fact that the shadows of everything in the room started creeping slowly towards him, approaching him with a speed that was simply unacceptable in his books. If you wanna scare him, do it fast so he doesn’t have time to experience the fear and anxiety that sets in when he realizes what’s going to happen.

Virgil carefully placed his things back in his backpack. He kept a close eye on everything that was moving in his direction, just in case. He zipped his bag unhurriedly at a pace that could compete with the shadows. Noise might make them move faster, so he limited the noise he created as best he can.

Movement was another thing he limited. The slower the movement, the higher the chance he’d be safe. He wasn’t sure if that was going to help his chances to get out, but better to be safe than sorry. His pace mimicked the shadows, but they were getting too close to him. He had to act fast and he had to do it now.

His feet avoided any dark spots on the floor, only stepping on what he was sure was floor. He dashed out of the room and tried his best not to look back. Keyword: tried. He looked back and saw that the shadows were now chasing him. He ran as far as his feet could take him, retracing his steps.

Virgil stopped to breathe. He was outside now. Back to where he stood when the bell rang. His thoughts were going wild and his heart was racing. There were no shadows following him. Only silence and the weight of his backpack pulling down on his right shoulder.

Why was he so ready to accept that there were shadows literally coming for him? He must’ve imagined all that there’s no way—

RIIINNNGG

“Oh come on,” Virgil kicked a pebble that was conveniently in front of his feet. “Stop ringing the stupid bell!”

Students hurried to get to first period. He wasn’t as determined as they were, and he sure as hell won’t step any closer inside the building. What was going on?

He checked the time on his watch. It was a digital watch, so he didn’t have to count the tiny lines to get the accurate time.

6:50 am.

If he’s not imagining all this, he might as well be dreaming. Jokes on them, 6:50 am was already done and it was forever ago. It should be like, maybe past 7:30 or something.

Virgil stood still, his eyes focused on his watch. Someone stepped into his personal space. He could see their shoes. He looked up to meet the eyes of his seatmate. The guy in class who he didn’t talk to, the total stranger he never met before. He was standing before him, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Virgil.” He said, testing out how the name sounded. “What an odd name. I like it.”

The stranger walked off, leaving Virgil to ponder on what the hell just happened and what he should do. He had his head down, his eyes staring at his shoes. Pitch black liquid crept towards his direction. He furrowed his brows, wondering if that shit was going to happen again. He turned around, ready to run for his life again.

He was met with darkness.

So he did another 180° turn and was yet again, met with nothing but the dark void. Something was choking him. He could feel hands on his neck, pressing hardly. Virgil reached out in front of him to push off whoever was choking him but there was nothing. There were no hands on his neck. Breathing became difficult. His ears were ringing, and there was no one there to help him.

His eyes flew wide open. Pain shot throughout his entire body. The hands on his neck faded out of existence and he slowly regained his breathing. There was the feeling of wetness on his cheeks. He touched it and felt tear tracks. Was he crying just now?

Light peered through the curtains. It was almost blinding. He shielded his eyes from the light until they adjusted to the brightness. Everything felt warmer. He felt at ease.

The year is 2030.

May 24, 2030.

A new social networking site had been on the rise. It’s fairly new, existing for barely a month, and yet it had gotten people of all ages signing up to create an account. Logan was scrolling through his feed to pass the time, clearly aware of how many rumors there are on his feed alone, but it was entertaining to see people take them as fact. His good friend, Dmitri, had been the one to introduce him to the site. Dmitri was one of the more popular users. At first he refused to make an account, saying that gossip was not something he would ever partake in. His friend got him to sign up by telling him that his brother had a lot of blackmail material on his account. Everyone was right. It was addictive.

“Logan.” Virgil called out, his voice sounding hoarse.

He directed his attention to his friend. “You’re awake.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Virgil grumbled and got off of the bed. He often got… unpleasant dreams, so he didn’t bother to look into it.

The layout of the room nearly threw him off. Perhaps he wasn’t as awake as he should be. His only friend, Logan, would invite him over from time to time. That’s where he’s currently at. He can’t recall falling asleep on Logan’s bed, nor can he remember anything that had happened before he fell asleep. All he knew was that he had a raging headache and a weird feeling that someone or something was watching him.

For some reason, his phone was charging on the other end of the room. He removed it from the charger and sat down on the bed with his legs crossed, slightly curious as to what the hell Logan’s looking at on his phone. All of his attention was on the screen before him. That wasn’t very Logan-like.

Out of all the people he knew, Logan is the sole person who could leave the house without his phone. Not that he knew many people.

Virgil yawned. His eyelids still felt heavy, so he decided that maybe a quick splash of water onto his face would help. Logan’s room was connected to the bathroom, which was a good thing since he really did not feel like walking up and down the stairs.

He let the faucet run, staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering why he was feeling so weird. Also, his hair was a mess, but that was quickly fixed with a comb. There were still splotches of makeup on his face, which was a sign that he must not have wiped it all off before falling asleep. He washed his face, getting rid of the unwanted makeup, but unable to shake off the feeling that there were eyes trained on him.

Going back into Logan’s room, he spotted his friend still scrolling through his phone. His hands were still wet so he sprinkled Logan with some water. No reaction. He did it again, but this time earned a glare then was ignored again. Third time’s the charm, right? He did it once more and received a grumble in response.

Virgil pushed Logan to the side and sat down on one half of the beanbag, looking over his friend’s shoulder to see what was so interesting that he couldn’t pay attention to him. He was on… Spillr? That’s new. Instead of asking him a million questions about what he was doing on that app, he simply let Logan do his thing.

Minutes passed and Virgil got bored of sitting there, doing nothing. He could go get his phone, but he felt too lazy to get up. Plus, Logan still hasn’t acknowledged him. For a moment, Logan stopped scrolling and had a look of confusion plastered on his face. Virgil would’ve asked him what was wrong, but he caught a glimpse of Logan’s screen. That’s not right.

“I thought you said that you won’t ever make a Spillr account?” Logan questioned, showing his friend the profile page that couldn’t be anyone else’s but Virgil’s.

Virgil Armati @iinfernhoee

bio :: pls don’t try to talk to me

📍 bed

58 following || 12 followers

Joined May 24, 2030

“I didn’t.” Virgil managed to say. He wasn’t sure how to react, but he knew for sure he was panicking internally. Why would anyone make him an account?

Out of curiosity, he dashed to his phone and went through his apps.

There it was. An app with an eye icon that was unmistakably Spillr. He didn’t download that. He was a hundred percent sure that he did not download that app. He opened it to see if he did have an account, and unfortunately enough, he did.

That was probably the biggest plot twist of 2030 so far. He saw that he had 21 notifications. 12 followers, 6 messages, and 3 mentions. He would’ve said that the creepiest part about the app was that the home button had an eye icon instead of the typical house icon that any normal social networking site would have, but the fact that he even has notifications creeped him out more.

He went through the messages. The first one was from the app itself, which he didn’t bother to read. There were two that had nothing but links, so he deleted those. The last three were from Roman, Logan’s brother.

romano @thegayprince

| HI VIIRGIILLL

| IK WE DON’T TALK BUT BC UR LOGAN’S FRIEND YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW ME

| :DDD

Read 6:10 pm

There’s no point in replying. He moved on to his mentions, and those were basically people from school posting about how he finally made an account. No point in replying to those either. He checked the settings. His real name was used, real phone number, real birthdate, and real email. He figured that it was best to delete the account and the app, just in case.

Well, he made the right decision.

Perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him or his phone was broken ‘cause once he deleted the app, his phone glitched and for a split second, he swore he saw that all of his apps turned into Spillr. Nothing a bit more sleep can fix.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

taglist :: @anon-e-has-a-tmblr @baddeceit-ohsorrydeceit @but-jesuschrist-im-never-good @captainlilithrouge @cats-fandom-universe-room @cryptidcherrry @deceit-is-a-lil-bitch @effortiswhatmatters @human-being-kinda @insanetentacles @keeshy-ekho @lemon-towns @lesbian-aesthics-are-my-aesthic @lokisuggests @lopaviro @lucifer-just-needs-a-hug @mychemicalpanicattheemo @prplzorua @roanoaks @rosepyxeltumbls @starrycari @strickenwithclairvoyance @suyun-doo @therealmoshar @theultimatemomfriend @unicornlogansanders @what-even-is-thiss @why-should-i-tell-youu2

thanks for reading ❤ sorry if there are mistakes lmao

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #ts fic #platonic analogical #familial logince #human au #horror fic #sanders sides fic #SPILLR

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goodticklebrain · 5 years

Photo

Q&A August: Christy Burgess of the Robinson Shakespeare Company

It’s the final week of Q&A August! Let me take you back to 2016, to my first ever Shakespeare Theatre Association conference, hosted by Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. It was the last day, and the morning’s warm-up session was being conducted by Christy Burgess and the Robinson Shakespeare Company, a community Shakespeare program for school-aged kids. After several rounds of fun theatre games, Christy asked her students if any of them wanted to perform some Shakespeare for this objectively intimidating roomful of seasoned, experienced, and elite Shakespeare practitioners and educators.

Every single hand flew up into the air.

After some negotiation, a tiny girl in a pink dress, probably not more than nine or ten years old, stood up. Awww, this is so cute. Is she going to do Puck’s “If we shadows have offended” epil— NOPE. She narrowed her eyes and spat out Cloten’s “meanest garment” speech from Cymbeline with all the vitriol of a rejected privileged white man. My jaw literally dropped. HOW was this possible?

The answer was Christy Burgess. I’d actually met Christy the year before, when I drove down to South Bend to see a couple shows at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, and she immediately overwhelmed me (in a good way) with her energy, enthusiasm, and passion not just for teaching kids Shakespeare, but for giving them ownership of Shakespeare. Every single one of her students believes that Shakespeare is theirs. I’ll never forget Christy telling me what her students’ reaction was upon meeting a professional Shakespeare company: “Oh, you do Shakespeare too? That’s cute... WE do Shakespeare.”

On a more personal level, Christy helped shepherd me through the impostor syndrome I suffered from while attending my first conference, giving me the confidence to find my place in the Shakespeare community without constantly apologizing for being “just someone who draws stupid stick figures”. Christy builds people up, and the world is better for it.

1. Who are you? Why Shakespeare?

My name is Christy Burgess and I am the director of the Robinson Shakespeare Company. I am a teacher, director, and have most recently been christened “Shakespeare Maven” by my friend Julia.

Why Shakespeare? There are so many reasons for “why Shakespeare”. The Robinson Shakespeare Company starts in 3rd grade and the first day of our 3rd-6th grade class is one of my favorite all year. Many of our young actors have waited since kindergarten watching their older siblings or young adults they admire go through the program. The anticipation and excitement on that first day of class is palpable, because they finally get to do Shakespeare. It’s also become something that is a little subversive. There are times when our kids are told “you don’t really like Shakespeare” or “shouldn’t you be playing sports?”, which has the effect of “don’t tell me what I’m supposed to like!”

In a meeting, someone asked one of my students “Why Shakespeare?” She told a story I hadn’t heard before. It was right after her father passed, before she went back to school. She was walking around the track at her high school and passed an elderly white couple. The woman said to her “shouldn’t you be in school?” to which her husband responded “Mary, don’t you know that’s how people get shot?”

This young woman said “when people walk by me, they might think I’m a hood or a thug, but Shakespeare is mine, something no one can take away from me.”

When we study plays from Eugene O’Neil or Arthur Miller, it’s the world through their eyes, but when we play Shakespeare, it’s the world through OUR eyes.

2. What moment(s) in Shakespeare always make you laugh?

Scene 3.4 in Twelfth Night always cracks me up! There’s something about the most non-threatening duel letter from Sir Andrew to Cesario/Olivia and the forced fight that is always funny.

Mya interjects: “Is’t so saucy?” is one of my favorite lines in Shakespeare. It’s such a stupid joke. I don’t care. I love it.

3. What's a favorite Shakespearean performance anecdote?

Every now and then there’s Shakespeare magic.

When I was teaching and directing in Alaska with the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre, I had made a comment to my young actors about performing in the rain. I’m pretty sure they prayed for rain, because our last performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor, it POURED. The audience ran for cover, but nothing could erase the looks of glee on the actor’s faces. Falstaff’s line, “let the sky rain potatoes”, pretty much said it all!

In 2017, the Robinson Shakespeare Company (RSC*) was invited, and traveled, to England to perform in Stratford-upon-Avon the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Shakespeare Garden. The New Place recently opened and we discovered that we were the first group to perform there….if the weather held out. There were numerous sunshine dances (involving jazz hands), prayers, and wishes. The day of the performance, there was a storm coming right for us. It was the closest thing to magic I’ve seen. It was as if the storm was around us. In videos, you can see the wind whipping the costume and the slightest drizzle of rain, but we made it!

*I know, I know, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Reduced Shakespeare Company, etc. I like to think of us as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s distant (many times removed), scrappy cousins that will be revealed if we do a deep dive on our genealogy chart.

This memory might be tinged with jet lag, because during the same trip I sat in-between two 12 year olds, who only fell asleep 30 minutes before landing. When we arrived in Stratford, we were met by the incredible Cait Fannin-Peel (my Shakespeare wife and hero). Our bed and breakfasts weren’t ready yet, so she took us on a tour of Shakespeare’s Birthplace. They have an amazing little stage in-between the house and the giftshop where actors were performing bits of Shakespeare. Cait asked if we would like to perform something. Jet lagged, sleep deprived, and thrilled, it took about 30 seconds to plan out the opening to Cymbeline and start performing it. Tourists surrounded us with their cameras and applauded when the scene was done. It felt amazing as a director of young people to see them confident on stage in a setting that was incredibly different from what they were used to. We have video evidence!

youtube

4. What's one of the more unusual Shakespearean interpretations you've either seen or would like to see?

Bart Sher’s Cymbeline at Intiman changed me. The set was simple; a red raked stage, but by being so, it didn’t need massive set changes, we were with the story the entire time. The production was funny, moving, and stunning.

I’m frustrated by Shakespeare that tries to distract you from thinking it is Shakespeare. I’ve been in, or seen productions, where it’s like “look at these live animals” or “explosions” or “a fake ice rink that isn’t integral to the plot and is really slick in the rain, but look, people are ice skating for 30 seconds” that are unnecessary. I believe you should be able to wear black clothes on a blank stage and get the story across; everything else is just icing. If not, it’s not good Shakespeare.

Mya interjects: I am broadly in agreement with Christy here, except that I desperately want MORE live animals on stage. Dogs. Goats. Rabbits. Gerbils. I don’t care if they’re not textually supported.

5. What's one of your favorite Shakespearean "hidden gems"?

I don’t know if it’s a hidden gem, but I love Henry IV, Part 1 and 2. I think it’s such a loss when they’re combined, because they are both stellar plays for different reasons. Yes, Henry IV, Part 1 has all the action, but Henry IV, Part 2 has phenomenal speeches and you get to see just how devious Falstaff is. Food for powder, anyone?

6. What passages from Shakespeare have stayed with you?

This quote from Romeo and Juliet is how I feel about teaching. During the school week, I am in 24 classes in the South Bend community, mostly in Title 1 schools. Last year, Tuesdays were long days. I would teach six classes at a middle school, plus an after-school program, then direct the RSC. That was approximately 190 kids and the day lasted from 9 am-9 pm. It wasn’t, however, so bad, because I work with really great kids. I feel what I give to them, they give back and the days don’t feel long.

“the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”

Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2

Also “bless you fair shrew” which I say to my dog all the time when she sneezes.

Mya interjects: BLESS YOU FAIR SHREW THAT’S THE BEST I LOVE IT

7. What Shakespeare plays have changed for you?

The first time I saw Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, I was twelve and locked myself in the bathroom and cried. Seriously though, who didn’t? Do you have a heart of stone???

Mya interjects: Yes. :P

During our 2017 trip, we took our RSC to see the REAL RSC’s Titus Andronicus. Blanche McIntyre is a badass director. It’s easy to dismiss, Titus, but she found depth, and urgency. The show made our company better.

My actors still refer to the performance when we talk about high stakes and urgency.

8. What Shakespearean character or characters do you identify the most with?

I love Viola. She goes on such a journey and her “make me a willow cabin at your gate” speech moves me every time. We don’t get to pick who we love. I’m really lucky that I have a sweetheart who loves me, Shakespeare nerdiness and all.

If I could be a character? Henry V.

9. Where can we find out more about you? Are there any projects/events you would like us to check out?

You can find more about us on our Facebook page, Instagram, and our website.

Notre Dame Magazine put together a gorgeous website that chronicled the six months they had a reporter with us as well as our adventures to England!

(Back to Mya) Thanks so much to Christy for answering my questions, but, even more importantly, for raising the next generation of Shakespeareans. I, for one, welcome our new Shakespearean overlords.

COMING THURSDAY: It’s two-for-one day with the bard bros behind one of my favorite Shakespeare podcasts!

#shakespeare #Q&A august

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virgilmydarkstrangeson · 6 years

Text

Trying to Survive: Chapter 30

A/N: Thirty parts and we’re so close to the end now! Also, this is the longest chapter and I mean can you really blame me when you read this?

Summary: Virgil just wants to live as himself. There are bumps in the road, but hey, life isn’t easy. Pairing: Analogical Trigger Warnings: Anxiety, panic attacks, transphobia, a lot of blushing, some happy crying, this is like pure fluff w h o o p s, if you see anything else tell me! Word Count: 1,763

~~~

Virgil awoke to silence, which was uncommon but not out of the ordinary for him, as he had several soothing music radios that he cycled through for sleeping and they would occasionally stop during the middle of the night. After a minute of revelling in the warmth of his bed, equipped with a new, thicker sheet and softer pillows, he forced himself to sit up and properly wake up, blinking for a moment at the bright sunlight filtering in through the window.

It was at this moment that Virgil’s phone began to ring, and with a groan, he picked his phone up and answered the call, not checking who was calling before doing so.

“Happy birthday, bud!” It was Virgil’s dad, and Virgil couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed at being called this early in the morning.

“Thanks, dad,” Virgil replied as he slowly climbed out of bed to make some coffee, feeling the chill of his apartment as he walked to his kitchen.

“Your present should be arriving today, I found something online I knew you’d like so I had it sent straight to your apartment.” Virgil nearly groaned as he clicked the button on his coffee maker, which was an early Christmas present from Patton.

“Dad, you know you didn’t have to do that…” Virgil’s dad simply chuckled.

“I know, but I want to spoil my son once in a while, even if you’re an adult now.”

“Thanks.”

“You know I’ll do anything for you, son. Now, you enjoy the rest of your birthday, okay?”

“I will dad. I love you.”

“Love you too, Virg.” Virgil then hung up the phone and, coffee mug in hand, settled down on his couch to scroll through the various notifications on his phone. He had a few arbitrary happy birthday messages from old friends on Facebook, and some new tweets from the multiple band Twitters he followed, but nothing too special. He hadn’t even received a text from Logan or Patton, which he thought to be slightly odd, as with it being nearly 11:30 am both of them would no doubt be awake. Virgil decided to send a simple ‘you busy?’ text to Logan anyway, not really upset at the thought of his birthday being forgotten, and downed the rest of his coffee to get ready in case Logan was okay with him coming round. It was almost strange, how much Virgil liked just hanging around Logan’s apartment.

Virgil was brushing his teeth when his phone buzzed again, this time with a reply text from Logan. [I’m grading a few papers, but you are more than welcome to come over.] Virgil smiled to himself and replied to say he’d be there in around ten minutes, before finishing up his morning routine with this new skin cream his dad had sent over - just because he was a guy didn’t mean he couldn’t look after his skin, after all - and then, Virgil was out the door and at Logan’s apartment within five minutes. He was early, oh well. Luckily, he was used to just walking into Logan’s apartment at this point, so he opened the door and walked straight in.

“Happy birthday!!!” was the shout that caused Virgil to jump back several feet, back hitting the door he had just closed. Standing in front of him was a grinning Patton holding a large, purple cake, an equally smiling Roman who was holding a stack of presents, and after a second, Logan came into view, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Patton I thought I told you to wait so we don’t scare him?” Logan chastised, giving Virgil a sympathetic glance.

“Sorry, I’m just so excited!” Patton’s grin turned slightly sheepish before he put down the cake and looked at Virgil again. “We didn’t mean to scare you, kiddo, we just wanted to give you an awesome birthday party!” Virgil took a deep breath, recovering from the shock before he spoke.

“You guys actually set something up for me? I thought you’d forgotten.” Virgil admitted, to which Patton let out an almost horrified gasp.

“We would never forget your birthday, Virg! We just didn’t want you to figure out the surprise because we wanted it to be special!” Patton then pulled Virgil into a hug, while Roman spoke.

“We knew you’d be sceptical if we told you to go to some random location, so Specs here thought it would be less conspicuous if you came to us of your own free will, so we’re celebrating here instead of a bigger place!” Virgil caught a glimpse of Logan’s face turning red from the corner of his eye before Patton pulled him into the living room and sat him down on the couch.

“Okay, present time! You’ve gotta open mine first!” Patton grabbed the first present off of the pile Roman was holding and nearly thrust it into Virgil’s arms, bouncing on his feet as if he was the one receiving a gift. Virgil carefully opened the black and silver wrapping paper that was surprisingly not Christmas themed, to reveal a black lump of fabric, which, when Virgil pulled it fully out of the wrapping, was, in fact, a pullover hoodie. And, on further inspection, the hood had a pair of stuffed cat ears sewn on.

“Do you like it? Now we can really be hoodie buddies! And you’re totally welcome to put patches on it like your other one!” Patton seemed to almost be bursting at the seams from excitement and anticipation for what Virgil’s reaction would be, and Virgil smiled, both from the present itself and by how happy Patton was, before slipping off his hoodie and pulling the new one over his head. It was large, large enough to sink into, and incredibly soft. The sleeves were even a very comfortable length to have sweater paws, so Virgil’s smile grew without him even realising it.

“I love it, Pat, thanks.” Patton squealed in delight before hugging Virgil again, even tighter than before, before pulling away and going to the kitchen, presumably to grab the cake.

“Me next!” Roman exclaimed, dropping himself next to Virgil and handing him a smaller, neatly wrapped present in the same wrapping paper. Virgil took it and, again carefully, unwrapped it, uncovering a shiny, silver-covered notebook. “I noticed that you tend to doodle when you’re stressed, so I thought you could do with something to keep them all in one place. I know it’s not much, but-”

“It’s great,” Virgil cut Roman off, flicking through the pages to find a mix of lined and blank paper throughout the book. “Thanks, Princey.” Roman smiled and patted Virgil’s shoulder.

“No problem, Storm Cloud. And now it’s Logan’s turn!” Roman picked up the last two presents, both of them small, and gave them to Virgil, while Logan spoke.

“I knew you wouldn’t care for anything ridiculously expensive, so I,” Logan cleared his throat, and his face was turning a light shade of pink again. “I went for something more personal.” Virgil opened the smaller present first, revealing a long silver chain at the end of which was a very familiar looking design.

“This looks just like my lucky pin,” Virgil breathed out, examining the thundercloud design and noticing that it was even engraved with his name, exactly like his pin, which his dad had gotten him back when they had started their life away from Virgil’s mother, and Virgil started living as a boy. It was one of Virgil’s fondest memories from that long ago, and it caused his eyes to water ever so slightly before he blinked it away and moved onto the next present. It had a fair amount of weight to it and was a similar shape as the notebook, only slightly larger, and when he opened it he felt his face burn a bright red.

“What is it?” Patton spoke, moving from where he was setting up the candles on the cake when he noticed how red Virgil’s face had gotten. Virgil, however, quickly manoeuvred the gift so neither Patton nor Roman, who was still sat at his side, could see what it was. Not that it was anything particularly bad or embarrassing; the present was a solid, oak wood photo frame with the selfie Virgil and Logan had taken together on one of their earlier dates together, and if Virgil didn’t have a surge of emotion hit him when he saw the photo, then he was soulless and also lying.

“Just a picture, Pat,” Virgil finally spoke, hoping his slightly shaking voice and glassy eyes didn’t give away just how much the presents meant to him. “Now, you’re not going to sing happy birthday before I blow out those candles, are you?”

They did, in fact, sing for him, led mainly by Roman, whose voice carried the loudest out of the three, before digging into the cake Patton had made, which was a multilayer consisting of coffee and chocolate sponge and some of the best almond icing Virgil had ever tasted, before spending the rest of day just talking among themselves. At one point, Flora came over and sat squarely in Virgil’s lap, refusing to move until Roman and Patton had left to avoid travelling in the dark, and she finally got up when Logan got out the cat food. After a few more hours of a lot more mellow conversation, Virgil went to sleep, using Logan’s spare room as he couldn’t bring himself to trudge back up to his apartment.

It was after Virgil went to sleep that Logan began cleaning up his apartment, storing the leftover cake in a few airtight containers to stop it from going stale and to keep it safe from Flora. Then, while collecting the wrapping paper, Logan noticed Virgil’s patchwork hoodie was still on the couch, he had gone to sleep still wearing the one Patton had gifted him. Curious, Logan picked up the garment, and sure enough, there was a pair of pins attached to the jacket, the storm cloud and the black cat. Carefully, Logan removed the cat pin, making a note of where it was positioned before turning it over. Neither Roman nor Virgil had ever revealed what was so special about the other side, and Logan figured there would be no harm in taking a look, so long as he didn’t break it. Logan paused, looking at the silvery back of the pin, and then his cheeks were warm once again. Staring back at him was an engraving of his own name in an elegant font.

~~~

TtS Taglist: @exquisitestardust @romanamongthestars @darknightvirgil @coffee-spice @faacethefacts @ten-cent-thoughts @a-whole-lot-of-screaming @roboticpenmanship @samuelcwboslyn @sylveon-lover-crazyfangirl1415 @louvrejpeg @allycat31415 @aquilacalvitium @midnightalex12 @sinful-stars @princeanxious @randomperson0055 @snowcherri @individual-charlie @certifiedfangirlluna @lowkeyvirgilobsessed @cdragontogacotar @enderperson43 @your-username-is-unavailable @awkward-avocado-of-death @lesliealiceinwonderland @mewmewmika @whatcanisay-imafan-der @dorkanddrearykay @kingalexdreaming @queerly-anxious @logically-emotional @illogical-anxieties @hamster-corn @canadian-crofters @astraastro @ab-artist @raygelkitty @featuredfander @confinesofpersonalknowledge @kameraishere @starry-eyed-haiku-dreamer @secretlyanxiouspersona @cjcipher234 @booksandpages @thestoryofme13 @kri-marie-b-the-nb @hissesssss @they-call-me-anxiety @the-literal-fae @ravenclawunicorn1 @crownswriter123 @avvkvvardmermaid @never-the-maknae @dannerism @nightmareelmst @infinitysgrace @strongindependentcheesecake @caffeinated-casper @lucifer-in-my-head @theresneverenoughfandoms @pixiedylan @no-life-no-problem @periwinklewinter @edgykatdoesthething @aleicim @soft-boy-patton @jazensnothuman456 @band-be-boss-blog @sanders-s1des-blog @quietwords-loudthoughts @potassium-over-dose @derp-a-la-sheep @imbasicallypunklogan @theitalianalchemist @meep-meep-motherfucker @emily-in-wonderland @a-little-bit-of-ace @pastelprinceofthestars @hemooryctolagus @kiwisandsprinkles @unikornavenger @shadowsfromthesun @lotusthatexists-festivestyle @echomist13 @sopi-montezzz @noahlovescoffee @a-fander-named-skittles @kitthepan @podcastsandcoffee @sherlock-lives-on-bakerstreet @everyday-emo-stuff @jadekitten1 @singingjo @anxiouslogan24 @thecripplingloneliness @youridisfake @squishyturtle44 @luckybanana948 @peanut0303 @fuck-spock @sombraplayslazertag @justasadchildwithablog @a-heartbroken-patton @theunoriginaldaisy @onesmolegg @euphoni-um-no @flamingfawkes @lunalikesgamesandstuff @hitsmetheultimatetrash @why-would-i-tell-youu2 @anxiousvirgilsanderss @grey-lysander @megamysticmermaid @introverted-happiness

#thomas sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #trans!virgil #Analogical

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panda-noosh · 6 years

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Keeping an Eye {House of Voltron #1}

A series of fics documenting what it’s like having Team Voltron as your housemates.

Words: 5k

Summary: Shiro has a secret. You all know it, and you’re all determined to figure out what it is.

Genre: humour - fluff - platonic!au - housemate!au

Warning: none

Notes: series masterlist - surprise :):):)

----

Today, you were on a mission.

In fact, the entire house was on a mission – the entire house, excluding Shiro.

This was usually a recipe for disaster. Although the five of you were not that much younger than Shiro, he was still the most mature out of you all by a long way. Doing anything without his consent first often led you all into a great deal of trouble.

A great deal of trouble which you could see already taking form as the five of you sat around the kitchen table at three am, the room lit up only by a single candle placed in the centre. Lance had insisted on keeping the lights off in fear of the glow waking Shiro from his usually very light slumbers – Pidge had insisted that it wouldn't matter, but Lance had been persistent, which was why the five of you now sat in the dark, eyes hurting against the strain of a single flame.

“I think his name's Adam,” said Hunk.

“It is,” Pidge said. “I've already searched him up on social media – it's definitely the same guy.”

“You're sure?” You leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the iPad Pidge currently had set up in the middle of the table, right beside the flickering candle flame.

Pulled up on screen was no other than Adam, the infamous man who Shiro had been sneaking out to spend his nights with – you had only caught him sneaking out once, but it had been one too many times. Having lived with Shiro for nearly two years now, you were well aware of his routine, and leaving the house past seven o clock was most certainly not on his agenda – ever.

Until he had met Adam.

The bloke seemed nice enough from what little you knew of him; he was a professor at the Garrison, meaning he was intelligent – definitely Shiro's type. He was organised from what you could see of his Facebook page, though it was clear he didn't post often, a sign that he was busy. Yet another characteristic he shared with your housemate.

“That's definitely him,” Keith grunted. The man had been silent up until now, having been forcefully dragged out of bed by the hair by both you and Lance in your attempts to get him to join in on the meeting currently being held.

“So what now?” Lance asked. “We track him down, question him? Give him the ol' tough love thing?”

“And say what?” Keith scoffed.

“We see if he's good enough for Shiro,” said Hunk, as if it were obvious.

You raised a brow, casting a glance over at the larger man who was seated behind the candle; he had already set his sleeve on fire twice, and had since made the wise decision to sit with his arms folded over his chest to stop such a thing from happening again.

“We're not gonna threaten the poor guy. We're just . . . doing a background check.”

“We literally have nothing on his background,” Pidge said. You frowned. “We know he works at the Garrison and that him and Shiro might have known each other from there – but that's it. We need to dig deeper. We need to catch them together to see if they're actually a couple or not.”

“I think the sneaking out is enough to tell us they're a couple,” said Keith. “If they were just friends, Shiro wouldn't bother hiding it.”

You scoffed, pointing an accusing finger at Lance. “Actually, he would. Lance told him he wasn't allowed friends other than us.”

Lance gasped, shooting up in his chair defensively. “Listen, we're a team! Shiro knows I didn't mean it . . . Well, not – I mean, he can have friends, but we've gotta be the most important, you know?” Lance shot you a glare. You grinned, turning back to Pidge.

“So we just try and catch them together?” you questioned.

She hollowed out her cheeks, absently flicking through Adam's Facebook page. “I think that's all we can do until Shiro tells us himself.”

“And if he never does?”

“He will,” Lance insisted. “Shiro isn't stupid enough to think that he can hide a relationship from his housemates. It's not impossible.”

---

Apparently, such a task wasn't impossible.

Weeks had passed since the seance-like meeting you had had with your housemates, and Shiro had not once stepped out of line during that time. There had been no accidental slip-ups, no sudden change in his demeanour, no more days where he was out past seven o clock. He was home on time every night, and he still had the attitude of a man twice his age that you knew and loved so dearly.

Except now, it was beginning to get frustrating.

He needed to give you something! Anything at all. Anything to signal to the fact that perhaps he was feeling a little bit happier, perhaps he had found someone special, perhaps he was going out and spending his time having a good time with someone else.

But no. Shiro was, as per usual, punctual and sticking to his routine.

You couldn't help but glare at the door when he walked through it on this particular day. Glancing at the clock, you saw it tick straight to seven o clock on the dot, as if he had somehow figured out the perfect timing to line up with the moment he walked in the door.

“You're home late,” you said, even though he wasn't.

Shiro looked up at you, raising a brow. You had been sat on the sofa awaiting his arrival for nearly an hour now, your laptop balanced on your lap with Adam's Facebook page hidden safely away in your browser.

“If you say so,” was all Shiro replied as he made his way into the kitchen. “Where's the others? I bought takeout.”

“So I saw. What did you get?”

“I ate at work. I got you and Hunk those special noodles you like, though, so-”

You leaped off of the sofa, very nearly tripping over the wire of your laptop in the process. “What do you mean you ate at work? With who? What did you have?”

Shiro's eyes widened at your eagerness, but you couldn't hold back – this was the opening. It was small, and you wouldn't have been able to see it unless you were paying very close attention, but you had grasped onto it at the last minute. You'd be damned if you were going to let it slip from your fingers now.

Shiro placed his hands on your shoulders to keep you from running directly into his chest. “Are you okay? Did Hunk make you that coffee again? I told him not to-”

“Who were you eating with?”

“What makes you think I was eating with somebody?”

You blanked. Ah. Right. You probably should have thought this little bit through a bit more thoroughly.

You took a large step back from Shiro and folded your arms over your chest, trying to make it seem as if you hadn't just launched yourself at him, screaming for answers to a question that, now that you thought about it, was terribly abrupt and must have made very little sense to the oblivious man in front of you.

“No reason,” you mumbled. “Nobody likes eating alone. Eating alone sucks, doesn't it? It's boring and it's lonely and – ah, anyway!” You grabbed onto the takeout bag, buried your hand inside of it. “What did you get?”

Shiro eyed you warily, clearly unsure whether or not to let the subject of your strange outburst go, but you gave him no choice when you hastily ushered the conversation on to the food he had brought – much to your relief, he had been gracious enough to buy you and Hunk the black bean noodles that you both loved so dearly, meaning the subject was dropped immediately in favour of you and Hunk getting excited over food.

All six of you sat down in front of the TV, turned on Eastenders and settled down for the night. Shiro was sat beside Pidge, a hand pressed against his cheek as he struggled to keep his eyes open – whilst he was struggling to stay awake, everybody else was struggling to keep their gaze off of him. Even Keith was throwing the odd glance in Shiro's direction, though he tried to make himself seem as carefree as he possibly could in his usual Keith fashion.

There was an unspoken tension in the room, the knowledge of your little shared secret sharp between the five of you who knew. You all wanted answers. You all wanted Shiro to just crack, because there was no reason for him to be keeping this secret as tightly sealed as he was. Already he had brought home boyfriends, introduced you to them because he had never before been ashamed of the people he loved – so why was now any different?

Perhaps it was that question that kept you on your toes, that kept the curiosity in the room piqued the entire night. Hunk coughed awkwardly every now and then, which prompted Lance to shove him in the side with his elbow to get him to be a little more subtle. Shiro was much too exhausted to notice the jostling going on, which was a relief considering Lance and Hunk were soon all but knocking each other out beside him.

It was around eleven o clock when Shiro finally gave up. His head slipped from the palm of his hand for the final time before he was standing up and stretching, his Garrison uniform slipping up his torso.

“I'm gonna head off to bed,” he announced, though he didn't need to. All five of you had been watching him the entire time, knew full well that he was ready to fall asleep.

Nonetheless, you all gave him bright smiles and cheerful “Goodnight's” before he was wandering off upstairs, and it was as soon as you heard his bedroom door slam closed that the mania started.

Lance had immediately jumped up and tucked his legs up under him with the excitement, his fists balled up in front of him and a large grin forming on his face. Even Keith peaked up a little bit, setting his plate down beside him and leaning forward to join in on the conversation.

“Final verdict – he definitely saw Adam today,” said Lance. “Did you see how tired he was? When has Shiro ever come home from work and nearly fallen asleep on the sofa?”

“It was a bit out of character,” replied Hunk, smiling. “I think this is it, guys. We just need to figure out who Adam is, and then we have our proof. We can see who's making our Shiro so happy.”

“But we gotta be subtle about it,” Keith spoke up. “We can't just wander up to the front desk of the Garrison and ask for Adam – that'll be a bit suspicious.”

“We won't,” said Pidge. “We'll try and spot them out together. Or maybe we can catch Shiro sneaking out again-”

“Shiro hasn't sneaked out in ages. His old age is catching up to him,” said Lance.

Pidge continued as if she hadn't heard him. “But we wanna make sure Shiro is completely comfortable with us knowing before we reveal that we actually know. This might still be early days. He might not want us knowing until he's certain it's something that will last.”

“Well that just seems unlikely,” you said. “Remember when he had that boyfriend that he had only went out with for a few weeks before he was bringing him over to the house? I don't think time is much of a factor right now.”

Pidge frowned, casting you a glance. “So what do you think it is?”

You flushed, your reply balancing on the end of your tongue. You were so used to making jokes with these people, so used to having a good time that now that you were ready to say something even mildly serious, it felt a little off.

Nonetheless, it was the only reply you could come up with, because it was the only one you saw as likely.

You shrugged. “I think Shiro might actually have fallen for this guy and he's nervous to introduce him to us in case we – you know – scare him off.”

Lance raised a brow quizzingly. “We're not monsters.”

“You lot can be a little overbearing at times,” Keith grunted. You all shot him a glare, to which he shrugged and stood up. “I'm just saying – Y/N has a point. Maybe this is somebody Shiro really wants to impress, and he doesn't want his five housemates ruining that for him.”

“Well that's just unfair!” Lance exclaimed, flopping back against the sofa. “We share everything with each other! I even used Hunk's toothbrush this morning!”

Hunk threw his fist in the air. “Yeah! Lance is – wait, what?”

“What I'm saying is,” Lance continued. “Shiro has absolutely no reason to keep this from us, and he knows that.”

“Maybe,” said Pidge. “But again, give him time to get comfortable in his own relationship before we start barging in. He has all the time in the world.”

Hunk scowled, still glaring at Lance as he said, “When did you get so sentimental?”

“Spending nearly twenty four hours surfing through Adam's social media accounts is making me feel like I know him.” Pidge shuddered, a sure sign that she had downed at least four cups of coffee today and was feeling the affects in her small body. “It's scary, guys. I know when his great aunt's dog died.”

You snickered. “Keep that in the archives. It might come in handy one day.” ---

Summer was . . . Summer.

All of you bar Shiro were home for the majority of it, spending most of your time together in the house you all shared, sometimes switching things up and sitting outside on the front doorstep. There were very few options laid before you, and you found yourself laying down on the grass in your front yard with Pidge, Hunk and Lance surrounding you.

Keith was up on his feet doing a workout, making sure to kick Lance in the leg every now and then and claim it was an accident.

“I'm so bored, and so sweaty, and I want to go to bed but I'm sticky!” Lance exclaimed after a failed attempt at kicking Keith back.

“Stop complaining,” said Keith. “It's better than it being cold.”

“No it isn't,” you chimed in, because it wasn't. This weather was making you very unproductive – you had not once looked through Adam's social media accounts, nor had you investigated Shiro's demeanour these past few days – you were too exhausted and much too warm to even think about concentrating on such things.

Pidge rolled over onto her stomach, letting her head fall against your knee. She let out a sigh, her breath warm against your bare thigh as you wore only a pair of shorts.

“I wonder what Shiro's doing right now.”

You all pondered on this question – summer would have been extremely special if only Shiro could get the time off work. Spending it with just the five of you left you all feeling like there was something missing – there was. Shiro wasn't there, meaning the little hexagon of friendship you had created together all them years ago was ripped apart for the sake of Shiro's work life.

“He's working really hard, I bet,” said Hunk, almost dreamily. “He might have even flew a plane today.”

“God help him,” Keith mumbled. “In this heat, he'd have suffocated in the cock pit.”

“Or maybe he's sitting around, eating an ice cream,” Pidge offered. “Lucky bastard.”

“I don't think Shiro likes ice cream,” said Lance. “I tried to get him to eat some a few months ago, and-”

Lance's voice was drowned out by the sound of an all-too-familiar laugh.

You shot upright, accidentally kneeing Pidge in the side of the head. She hissed, bolting up alongside you, rubbing her ear though her attention was not placed on you – it was placed directly on the two men currently walking past the front of the house.

You very nearly choked on the hot air. If your throat hadn't been so dry, perhaps you would have.

It was Shiro. Shiro and Adam, walking towards the house as if it was no big deal. They were laughing, Shiro with an ice lolly in his hand whilst Adam held a Mr Whippy ice cream in his.

And it definitely was Adam – you would recognise the light brown hair and the spec-covered brown eyes anywhere.

You gaped. You were fairly certain Pidge had stopped breathing. Lance and Hunk were grasping on to one another, staring at the scene in front of them with wide, sparkling eyes. Even Keith had stopped his workout, dropping his careless persona to gawk.

“I don't like ice cream,” Shiro chuckled whenever Adam tried to get him to have a bite of his Mr Whippy ice cream.

“How can you not like ice cream?” Adam groaned, throwing his head back. Shiro rolled his eyes, taking a bite clean off the top of his ice lolly. Adam winced. “You don't like ice cream, but you'll gladly take a bite out of pure ice? Tell me why I love you again.”

Shiro grinned, showing off a block of ice pressed into his cheek. “Because you do. Look, we're here.”

“We're here?” Lance repeated in a whisper-hiss. “He's bring him here?”

None of you got the chance to respond before the gate to the front path was squeaking open and Shiro and Adam were making their way towards you.

You scattered upright, grabbing onto Keith's arm to help you stand up that little bit quicker. Keith was panicked himself, tried to shove you off in his attempts to straighten up his workout clothes, until it looked like you two were having some sort of scuffle in the middle of the garden. It took Pidge stepping between you to finally get you all in order, though you were fairly certain that the five of you couldn't have looked more out of the ordinary if you had tried.

You had somehow managed to line yourselves up, shoulder-to-shoulder, almost identical broad grins plastered on your faces. Shiro raised a brow when he saw the formation you had all taken on, and even Adam seemed slightly confused, though he was polite enough not to show it.

“Hey guys....,” Shiro said slowly. “What you doing?”

“Sunbathing,” Lance said at the same time Hunk said, “We definitely weren't daydreaming about what you were doing at work.”

You winced, biting down on your bottom lip. Shiro and Adam shared confused looks before Shiro shrugged and turned back to you all, a smile forming on his face once again.

He stepped forward, taking Adam's hand in his own. “Alright then... Anyway, this is Adam.”

“We know,” said Hunk, before clapping his hands over his mouth. “I mean-”

Pidge stepped forward quickly, pushing Hunk to the side with her hip. She eagerly put her hand out in greeting. “Hi Adam! I'm Pidge. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

Adam shook Pidge's hand with barely any hesitance, which you took as a good sign. Hunk's minor slip-up's hadn't scared him off just yet, though you couldn't help but think that it would only be a matter of time until Adam got a little bit uncomfortable with the crowd of overexcited people currently surrounding him.

The introductions went on, with Hunk stammering over his words and you being unable to meet Adam's eyes – there was something about meeting him in person now that made you feel like you had somehow been intrusive these past few months – you had been searching through his Facebook page for weeks now, trying to catch a glimpse of who he was before he was even aware of your existence. Having him standing in front of you now was a little bizarre.

All seven of you made your way into the kitchen, Shiro insisting that he needed to get a drink of water before he passed out. Adam had offered to stay outside, but Lance was quick to dart into the kitchen before the offer could be pondered on any further. Now, all of you sat around the kitchen table, Shiro and Adam talking away freely.

You couldn't keep your eyes off of them. Whenever it had just been Adam standing in front of you, you couldn't even look up at him in fear of saying something you weren't supposed to know – perhaps the date his great aunt's dog died – but now that it was the two of them seated in front of you, it was difficult not to stare.

You had seen Shiro with a boyfriend multiple times before. Shiro loved people with his whole heart, and he never failed to show such a thing, but there was something different about the way he looked with Adam by his side – almost as if the two had known each other for years. For all you knew, they very well could have. Though you had known Shiro for a good portion of your life, had seen him as a brother for the majority of it, it was no secret that there were a few people in his life you were unaware of – Adam included.

Adam spoke to you all about the little things – his job, his room, how tired he was, his boss. Things that kept natural conversation. Nothing special, and yet Shiro couldn't keep his eyes off of him. Even whenever Pidge spoke up to usher the conversation along, offering up her own experiences of working late into the night, Shiro didn't turn to look at her. He kept his eyes on the man beside him, up until the point that Adam noticed and his cheeks flushed a bright red colour.

You watched as Adam reached over and gently slapped the back of Shiro's arm in warning, silently telling him not to make him flustered in front of these strangers. As Hunk and Pidge tried to explain the process of the new computer coding they were working on, you watched as Shiro grinned from ear to ear and teasingly winked at Adam.

You and Keith shared a glance over the table; whilst Hunk, Pidge and Lance had been deep in conversation, thinking everybody was listening to them, you and Keith had been watching the adorable spectacle unfold.

Keith raised a brow, a silent question that you picked up on immediately: “Is this the one?”

You looked back at Adam and Shiro, lost in their own world, and you nodded, because the answer was right in front of you.

---

“Takashi Shirogane!” Lance shrilled.

You jumped at the volume of his voice, dropping the plate you had been in the process of drying. It clattered against the draining board, but you left it there to clatter against the plastic as you span on your heel to see what the hell had gone wrong for Lance to scream like that.

You should have known that it didn't take much to prompt Lance into screaming, though.

He stormed down the stairs in his fluffy dressing gown, a towel wrapped around his head. Shiro had only just gotten back after walking Adam home, and the man was clearly in no fit state of mind to be dealing with Lance's unnecessary yelling.

He was sat on the sofa, rubbed at his forehead as soon as he heard Lance.

“What have I done now?” he groaned.

Pidge and Keith looked up from the laptop they were both sharing, playing their nightly game of Sims 3. Hunk was sat on the sofa beside Shiro, still finishing off his dinner whilst you made a start on washing up the dishes.

“Don't play stupid with me, young man!” Lance continued to yell. “Do you wanna explain what the hell you think you're doing keeping your boyfriend a secret from us for so long?”

Shiro didn't even look up. “Not particularly, no.”

“Oh, no you don't.” Lance grabbed at Shiro's wrist, snatching his hand away from his face. “He's nice, too! In fact, I'd go as far as to say he's absolutely lovely, and you hid him from us!”

“I wasn't hiding him,” Shiro insisted. “I just didn't think to tell you.”

“A lie,” Lance said.

“What?”

“A. Lie.” Lance span around, pointed at you as you watched the scene unfold from the kitchen. “Y/N literally saw you sneaking out a few months ago to go and see him. Sneaking out is definitely what somebody with something to hide would do.”

Keith groaned, snatching the laptop out of Pidge's lap so he could see the screen for himself. “Would you shut up yelling? It's over with now. We've met the man. There's no need to worry about it any more.”

Shiro raised a brow, and it was only then did Keith realise his mistake. His violet eyes shot up, jaw opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“Did I say worry?” he said. “I didn't mean that. We weren't worrying. Of course we weren't! We had no idea you had a boyfriend – absolutely none!”

“Did you know that his great aunt's dog died on February 14th? Valentines day! How heartbreaking is that!” Hunk exclaimed.

You bit back your laugh, watching Shiro's face morph as he caught on to what was going on – there was no point in hiding it any more. If your reaction to seeing Adam for the first time hadn't been enough to give the secret away, then Hunk suddenly coming out with the dogs death date would most certainly do the trick.

To your surprise, Shiro didn't seem angry. Although his eyebrows had shot up into his hairline and his grey eyes were slightly widened, his wide mouth was pulled into an amused smile. Keith was still bright red, chewing nervously on the strings of his hoodie as he looked down at the laptop, trying his hardest to fade into oblivion.

“So you all knew, huh?” said Shiro.

“I wouldn't say we knew,” Pidge replied sheepishly. “But we – uh – we had an idea.”

“An idea?”

“We did our research, is what I'm saying,” she corrected, before groaning and throwing her head back in defeat – she was well aware that there was no point in trying to cover her tracks any more. “Look, it was just a little Google search, okay? We looked through his Twitter and his Facebook – I tried his Instagram, but it was private -”

“Not for the fake Specsavers account I created,” said Hunk, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Wanna see?”

“Put that away!” Pidge hissed, before turning back to Shiro. “But we promise we didn't see anything personal, and it was only to make sure he was a good guy.”

You stepped forward then, placing a hand on Shiro's shoulder. He was still grinning from ear to ear, looking back and forth between the housemates surrounding him – your family, your friends, the people you loved most in the whole world because they had kept you safe for all these years.

And Shiro the most out of all of them, him being the oldest, him being the only one capable of having a stable enough job to keep the roof over your head.

“We just wanted to make sure he would treat you right. That's all,” you said. “Plus, Keith is a nosy little fucker when he wants to be. There was no stopping-” Keith volleyed a pillow at your face, stopping your statement from going any further.

Shiro chuckled, placing a big hand on top of your own, which was still perched on his broad shoulders. “I'm not mad.”

Hunk gaped. “You're not?”

“Of course not. Whenever you guys get a boyfriend or a girlfriend, I feel the exact same way. Remember when Y/N brought that study partner home and I was questioning them the entire time-”

“We weren't even going out,” you said.

Shiro shrugged. “I didn't know that. I wanted to make sure they weren't gonna hurt you – because that would be when I lose my temper.”

Lance snickered. “Alright, Dad.”

Shiro scowled, his smile fading. “You know, I can forgive them four, but you're walking on very thin ice.”

Lance's face grew pale. Whenever Shiro said 'very thin ice,' it was usually a pretty decent signal for the person to start running in the opposite direction.

Lance did just that, scrambling over the back of the sofa and rushing back upstairs to no doubt dry his hair and perhaps cry a little bit.

Shiro's smile reappeared on his face. “We're protective of each other. I think that's a good thing.”

“But?” Pidge pushed, sensing that Shiro hadn't quite finished his sentence.

He hadn't.

“But the fact that you know when his great aunt's dog died?” He winced. “Isn't that a little creepy?”

Hunk perked up. “I know how he died, as well. It's quite tragic, really.”

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my9percent · 6 years

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This is for the anon who requested a high school scenario with Zhengting. Sorry for not updating so often but do know that requests are open for Nine Percent and all the other IP trainees!

Everything was starting to blur together. Fonts, colors, words and faces. They were all swirling together into the biggest mess of the century and you regretted the day when you accepted the role of editor of the student yearbook. It was because you were artsy and voted Most Organized of your year, but little did your teachers know, you had barely any interest in the position.

The yearbook was going to be a monster of a masterpiece. It was leather bound (the result of your endless begging and ten page proposals asking for budget from the treasurer), and you managed to make connections through your uncle to find a printing company willing to give you golden engraved letters. It was set to be one hundred pages, half of it filled with official photos of your peers, and the other filled with blank pages for messages and also picture memories that were submitted.

However, all of that meant you had to spend countless hours shifting through the photographs, trying to identify everyone and also making sure that no person appeared on the same page more than three times. That was the principle’s rule.

There was one person who seemed to be making that job difficult. He was everywhere. You sighed and flipped through the yearbook, trying to find him in your class of eight hundred. Where could he be? All the names were in alphabetical order and when you neared the end, you saw that there were two people with the same photo. You let out an internal groan.

“Zhou Yanchen, Zhu Zhengting.” You have vaguely heard of both people before but heaven help you if you knew one from the other. All your problems would be solved if you could ask someone but the teachers had asked you keep the pictures used in the yearbook secret. Instead, you would have to ask around and hope that your friends had photos of either one of them.

For a school this big, even the popular kids seemed to have flown underneath the radar. One look at the boy’s megawatt smile and you knew he must be somebody well known in the school. It was a shame the two hundred or so people on your Facebook friends list didn’t know him.

It was frustrating. Your school separated everyone by prospective majors and so it only made sense that the people you knew only knew the people in your major. It was an endless cycle and so you decided over the weekend that you would spend a good part of your break time stalking the buildings of the other subjects.

You were huffing by the time you reached the other end of the campus. Each school was separated by what seemed to be a million acres of greenery. The principals really did not want the students from the majors comingling. The dance school was more modern than the other buildings and you admired the wall to ceiling tinted glass.

“Need help?” You whirled around to see a guy looking at you. He was smiling and you immediately recognized his face.

“Finally,” you breathed before you realized that it was an odd response to his question.

The boy’s face raked over your school uniform and he raised an eyebrow. “You’re from here. Another major?” The slight change in his tone made you realize that your response earlier probably seemed a little demanding and self-entitled.

“Sorry. I’m the editor for the yearbook and I was actually looking for you.”

His face contorted in surprise. “For me?”

“Yes. What’s your name?”

At this question, the corner of his lips quirked. “You said you’re looking for me, and yet you don’t even know my name. Are you sure you found the right person?”

The long walk and the frustration through the weeks was starting to bubble up. You took a deep breath and chanted to yourself to be polite. “Are you Zhou Yanchen or Zhu Zhengting? The two of you have the same photo and now I need to correct the mistake and find out whose photo it is that I have a duplicate of.”

The boy grinned. “What if I told you I was neither?”

He was playing with you; you knew it. “Well I spent thirty hours matching all the names and yours are the only ones that are wrong. So please tell me which one you are.”

He swung his backpack playfully over his right shoulder before leaning in. “And what do I get out of it?”

You suppressed the urge to roll your eyes. “Well for starters, you actually get to have your proper name in the yearbook, and the other guy gets to have his actual photo in there because right now, there are two of you.”

The boy chuckled. “Then let it be. Yanchen can live without his face in the official photobook. He wasn’t feeling well the day the photos were being taken. Besides, he’s more than represented in the other pats, I’m sure.”

But you had long stopped listening to him ramble. The moment you heard him say Yanchen’s name, you had made the deduction that the one in front of you was Zhu Zhengting. It was now a matter of tracking down the other and getting the official photo.

“Hey, where are you going?” he called as you started down the hill to head back to your dorms.

“Thanks, Zhengting! That’s all I needed!” If you had turned back, you would have seen the dancer staring at you wistfully as you disappeared through the field.

It was the last day before publication and you were exempt from your classes Your task was to spend the entire day in the cramped office, going through every minute detail to ensure that there was nothing wrong once the expensive production was complete. It was hour seven and only two in the afternoon. Again, you reaffirmed that this would be the last time you let teachers volunteer you for something.

Your eyes were blurring. All the stiff, smiling faces were beginning to merge together and you started to wonder why all high school students all looked alike. There was a knock on your door and your head shot up.

Before you could even tell the person to come in, the intruder already did. It was Zhengting and he was holding a brown bag that smelled amazing. “Hey,” he smiled. “It’s me, Zhengting.”

You couldn’t help the sarcastic comment. “Oh so now you’re willing to tell me your name.”

He managed to look absolutely contrite. “I’m sorry. But I brought a gift. I heard from someone else in the art department that you were holed up here so I figured you needed a break. Do you mind having lunch with me?” Even though his mouth was asking the question, his hands were already unwrapping the boxes to reveal bento boxes filled with food.

“Well, I suppose. If you so insist.”

The introvert in you was panicking. What would you even say to him? What is there to say to him? Why was he doing all this? As off-putting as he had been during your first encounter, Zhengting was nothing but a gentleman now. He placed the food in front of you and waited for you to start eating before beginning his own meal. You saw his eyes dart curiously around at the space and you grinned.

“Are you looking for my staff because I’m really a one woman show.”

He let out a low whistle. “Wow, so you’re the one who is going to single-handedly put together our book of memories? That’s amazing. You’re so impressive.”

The compliments made you blush and you coughed. “Well, I had help from the student associations.”

Zhengting hovered over the sample you had been pouring over for the last few months. “May I?”

“You really shouldn’t but I guess you could if you promise not to breathe a word of the contents to anyone.”

“Oooh, a secret. I love secrets.”

His fingers etched across the embroidery and when he flipped to the page with his photo, he suddenly gave you a grave look. “Uh, I think you wrote my name wrong. That’s not me.”

The rise of panic immediately made you choke on your food and you nearly grabbed the book away from him. “What do you mean?”

It was clear that whatever joke he had been meaning to play evaporated the moment he saw you nearly die of asphyxiation. “Are you okay?” His hands patted your back and you finally caught a gasp of air.

“Yes. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“I guess I’ll have to take you out to dinner as an apology because I swear, I just wanted to make a joke.”

When your eyes narrowed at him, Zhengting quickly handed the yearbook back to you and swallowed. “Please, I promise to help you for the next however many hours, with no pranks, no jokes, all seriousness.”

Despite how annoying he has been, you were still a big softie and his earnestness had earned him points. Without dropping the glare, but now softened by amusement, you threatened, “I swear if you put another toe out of line, I’ll mark your photo out and replace it with Yanchen’s.”

#zhu zhengting #NINE PERCENT #nine percent scenarios #idol producer #zhu zhengting scenarios #nine percent imagines #idol producer scenarios #nine percent fics #idol producer imagines #idol producer fics

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sonyasongwriter · 6 years

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ON FEBRUARY 27,2017 9:44 AM THIS TROUBLED

NUCLEAR WAR IS COMING THIS WAS THE REVELATION ON FEBRUARY 27,2017 9:44 AM THIS TROUBLED ME NUCLEAR WAR IS COMING THIS WAS THE REVELATION THAT BURDENED ME! The Captcha Code image I received when logging into my Sprint Wireless account. Sprint administrations informed me that GOOGLE does their CAPTCHA CODES. This is the actual image untouched in any way

NUCLEAR WAR IS COMING TO AMERICA, THIS IS WHAT WAS REVEALED TO ME AFTER 20 DAYS OF SEEKING AN ANSWER FOR THIS STRANGE CAPTCHA! I HAVE THE ABILITY TO PRAY, RECEIVE ANSWERS AND SEE THE MYSTERIES OF GOD IN THINGS THAT OTHERS MAY NOT SEE IT IS A WARNING, YES TECHNOLOGY GOOGLE DOING TO ALL OF THOSE

Who would send this, Who else has received this, but the Revelation behind it is even more profound. I have something really strange to share with you all today, I have thought about it to myself for three weeks and prayed to God for the revelation of what occurred to me on February 27, 2017, at approximately 9:44 am. On this particular date, I was sitting at my desk at my workstation where I write songs, work on Twitter, Facebook, Emails and whatever I need to do online. I was listening to one of my songs called Everlasting Love so that I could write out scenes to a music video for this particular song. (I guess you could say I was multitasking; I’m quite good at it.) So I went over to the SPRINT WIRLES website website to login and pay my cellular phone bill which was due in 3-4 days. Then Sprint/GOOGLE sent me a captcha code which is normal for them to do for security reasons. If you have Sprint cellular services or any type of service where you log in to do any form of online business banking or things of that nature, then you know the captcha codes are normal.

Holy Christ, what in the world was I looking at! God, Heaven knows the captcha that I received was anything but normal.

In front of my eyes, on my Mac desktop was a captcha code asking me to check the boxes for street signs on it. I work really fast and move quickly around the internet – you can see my mouse the blue check mark in the image. At the moment I saw this strange captcha code, I blinked my eyes and took a double take. Father God, what was this image that I had gotten from sprint.com It was a picture of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross! I gasped and did another double take rubbing my eyes, and it was still there. I don’t know if I expected it to disappear, go away or something, but thank God, I had enough thinking ability to snap several photos of it on my iPhone6 plus. In one of the pictures, I made sure that I captured my last name that is attached to my sprint account.

Now I will have to take a pic of the original picture from iPhone6

So that it will show you the original date and time. I have to be precise like this to let you know that this is authentic. If anyone out there has gotten something like this, please come forward and share your story so I will know that this is not rare and there are others that have experienced this!

I looked around my room, and immediately I loudly said in exclamatory fashion “Who is watching me?” Then I said “God, what is going on here?” I got no answer at that time. I got up and grabbed my keys and drove 5 miles up the road to the local Sprint store. When I got there, I asked them, “Hey, do you guys make and send out your own captcha codes?” They said “We think we do.” Then I requested to speak to the manager. He walked over, and I showed him the image on my phone. I asked him “Why would Sprint sent me such a captcha like this?” I’m a Christian and don’t know what to think of this. “What is going on here at Sprint?” I asked him. He replied to me “I don’t know what to tell you. I have never seen anything like this before either in my whole life.” Then he told me that I needed to contact the CEO of Sprint company.They asked me to verify my account, and I said “Okay.” They usually ask me for my ID, and that is good enough. This day, however, they stated that they had a new technology, and so I needed to thumbprint. Not only that, but they also scanned my driver license. Feeling disappointed, I asked them “When did you, start doing all this type of things?” They said, “Oh, we just started this, for security purposes.” I took a deep sigh, shook my head, and said “You know what? I’m just going to go. Thanks for your help, I will call the CEO of Sprint company.” I WROTE AN EMAIL AND THEY RESPONDED ON APRIL18, 2017 BY EMAIL AND THEN THE COMPANY PHONED ME ON APRIL 19,2017

I came back home very troubled by this image. I said “God, I need a revelation on this matter. Is this some type of sign or is someone just messing with me?” I thought if someone was just messing with me, I have been very violated by it. You would have to be a born again holy-Ghost-filled Christian to understand what I mean by being violated spiritually. I began to pray daily about the image, and I fasted, talking to myself and asking God for revelation. One-week-time passed, I was still in prayer, still keeping this to myself. After two weeks, answers began to come. God led me to my web browser to type in “Zone 30.” That was the number and words circled on the street sign.

I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, “Scroll down the page, remember what you saw. Copy and paste it.” I had gotten nowhere in this search and with this strange captcha image that was troubling my spirit so very much, or so I was feeling. I went to the second page of the search and heard the Holy Spirit say, “Look at that again.” I listened as the voice said “Scroll down.” So I did, and I stopped on the 5th result of the first search 2nd page opened it more I looked I was so not wanting to have that Captcha Code relate to any of this, but it does very much so. And what gave me final confirmation is the image below with bares an eerie resemblance point blank.

Pictures: Chernobyl’s eerie exclusion zone 30 years on

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns-to-radioactive-wasteland-of-chernobyl/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35824880

DIRECTLY ABOVE SLAUGHTERED LITTLE ONES THE SYRAN NUCLER CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTAK. LET US HERE IN AMERICA REALIZE THAT WE TO ARE NOT EXEMPT FROM NUCLEAR ATTACKS OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS

https://youtu.be/btWBrVVJZck I WILL EXPLAIN THE REVELATION THAT I PERCEIVED FROM THE CAPTCHA IMAGE WHERE IT CAME FROM , THERE WAS SOME SORT OF KNOWLEDGE OF OF THESE ATTACKS . REMEMBER I RECEIVED THE CAPTCHA IMAGE ON FEBRUARY 27,2017 OVER 3 WEEKS AGO. I ONLY NOW PUT IT UP BECAUSE I WRESTLED WITH LOGIC AND MY THOUGHT OF WHAT IN WORLD WAS THIS THAT I HAD IN MY POSSESSION.

THE NUMBER 30 CIRCLED IN THE RED REPRESENTS AROUND THE 30TH OR SO YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF Chernobyl’s Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union.

THE WHITE SIGN ON THE CROSS READS TETELESTAI- WHICH MEANS IT IS FINISHED PAID IN FULL. THE RED CIRCLE AROUND THE NUMBER #30 ZONE SYMBOLIZES WARNING “ SO WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS SAYING ABOUT THIS IMAGE HERE BELOW. THIS IS TAHT IMAGE I CAME ACROSS THAT STARTLED ME SIMILARITIES WHERE STRIKINGLY EERI TO MUCH ALIKE TO IGNORE TP THAT CAPTCHA CODE THAT I WAS SENT. CHERNOBYL IS NOW KNOW A EXCLUSION ZONE

THIS IS THE SONG IS THE SONG I WAS LISTENING TO THAT MORNING EXACTLY WHEN THE CAPTCHA CODE WAS SENT . THE LYRICS OF THE SONG ARE (FAST FORWARD ) THE BRIDGE OF THE SONG @ TO 2MINS AND 54 SECONDS This is a song that I wrote, arranged and did the vocals I named this particular song (Everlasting Love) sitting there I was writing out the scenes for a music video and how I wanted to portray this song to visuals. That is when this That is when I took a break to pay my spring bill because a notice came in on my phone that the bill was coming up in 3 days. So I logged in to pay and that is when this Captcha popped up on the screen, it was Ironic that I was listening to a song about Christ being Crucified. Could it be that artificial intelligence computers are monitoring us so closely that they are sending us things like this Could it be that this was a nasty insult and mockery to Christ Jesus and his dying, could this be the beast system doing what it was put here to do Did I just experience the future downfall of this world and what is to come concerning technology, computers and how they terrorize us there will be nothing that we do that they are not monitored in real time by satellite and computers and phones. Sprint, NASA, Verizon wireless, the Government all working together as only a part of the Beast System. Well, my friends the answer is yes through Signs and Symbols God is speaking and we are asleep in the Church collection money building more churches and more churches. My God only if we knew what was in store for this world, America, we would do things differently and in a hurry.

The Beast System is here slowly infiltrating its way into the souls of humanity those of us that are ASLEEP I CALL THEM THE WALKING DEAD, FOR THEY CLAIM TO KNOW AND LOVE CHRIST BUT INDEED THIER HEARTS ARE FAR FROM HIM. THEY SEEK MONEY AND WELATH LUXURY AND THINGS HOMES CARS ALL OF THESE THINGS. BUT THEY CARE NOT FOR THIER SOULS NOR DO THEY CARE FOR THE SOULS OF OTHERS AS CHRIST HAS TOLD US TO WIN SOULS FOR THIS IS A WAR A SPIRITUAL WAR. AND SOON THE MANIFESTATION OF WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES OTHER REALMS WILL SHOW, ITâ€™S SELF TO THOSE WHO ARE BLIND AND ASLEEP AND THEY WILL FAINT OF FEAR AND TERROR.

BLESSING BE UPON ALL OF YOU MY FRIENDS LET US BE AWARE OF THE SIGNS AND SYMBOLS THAT ARE ALL AROUND US SO THAT WE MAY ATTEMPT TO PREPARE OR AT LEAST BE READY AT ALL TIMEES. HAVE OUR SOULS IN THE RIGHT STANDING WITH GOD THE FATHER SO THAT WHEN ALL THESE THINGS COME TO PAST THAT WE BE NOT CAUGHT UNAWARE AND THAT WE KNOW THE DAY AND HOUR SHALL NOT BE LONG BEFORE OUR LORD AND SAVIOR CHRIST JESUS SHALL APPEAR IN HE CLOUDS AND EVERY MAN SHALL SEE HIM. AND KNOW THAT GOD IS INDEED THE CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH WORLDS SEEN AND UNSEEN THE ALPHA AND OMEGA. MY MESSAGE TO US ALL (BE READY AT ALL TIMES)

They removed all links to this video so when I shared it it would show a blank page, I’m simply an ordinary person but with the revelation and wisdom

They are wicked and online they are gang stalking it is called cyber stalking

It is the new way of crime and many of us will be censored and watched

Even put on a list these are big corporations that have 3rd party access to your online profiles . The Analyst at Google did give me a personal call

And Apologize I told them this was demonic and a type of persecution

They agreed did they mean it, No, they did not, but I wanted them to know

That I was not afraid of the mess they had sent to me. Just a word to the wise when you turn on your computer your camera off and put a piece of tape over the lens, it will give you a little privacy but still you have the

Television on and through that they are watching from the satellite

The only thing we can really do in this hour is pray and draw near to GOD

BECAUSE THE WORSE IS YET TO COME.

I’AM PROPHETESS SONYA TOWNSEND AND THIS IS FOR THOSE

WHO WANT TO BE AWAKENED? I PRAY THAT IT DOES NOT FALL ON DEAF EARS. TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY EVERY BIT OF OF IT 4 EVER AND 4 EVER.

LYRICS ( THE HUNG HIM HIGH, THEY STRETCHED, HE BOWED HIS HEAD AND THEN HE DIED FOR YOU AND I HE WAS CRUCIFIED EVERLASTING LOVE, EVERLASTING LOVE YOU CAN SEARCH A LIFETIME NO GREATER LOVE WILL YOU FIND

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