#[[ he's been super laconic with the comments but ]]
Text
@mcltiples sent: Ⓐ { Evil Rick from Weird Rick !! }
Send me Ⓐ and my muse will rate yours || No longer accepting
Attractiveness:
repulsive || hideous || ugly || not attractive || unappealing || not unattractive || meh || no preference || ok || mildly attractive || nice looking || cute || adorable || attractive || pleasant on the eyes || good looking || hot || sexy || beautiful || gorgeous || hot damn || would tap that || perfect || godlike || holy fuck there are no words
"P-Physically appearances don't really matter to me, but it would be a lie to say that Rick isn't a pleasant vision to stare at. He is objectively handsome and I'm quite captivated by the contrast between all my scars and his flawless skin."
Personality:
grating || irritating || frustrating || boring || confusing at best || awkward || unreasonable || psychotic || disturbing || interesting || engaging || affectionate || aggressive || ambitious || anxious || artistic || bad tempered || bossy || charismatic || appealing || unappealing || creative || courageous || dependable || unreliable || unpredictable || predictable || devious || dim || extroverted || introverted || egotistical || gregarious || fabulous || impulsive || intelligent || sympathetic || talkative || up beat || peaceful || calming || badass || flexible
"R-Rick is a complex individual, with many qualities and many flaws, all of them quite outstanding. I wouldn't have him any other way. He is my One, he's perfect. Even when he's throwing toddler tantrums."
How likely they would have sex with them:
not if they were the last person on earth and the world was ending || fuck no! || never || no way || not likely || not sure || indifferent || I’m asexual || maybe || probably || it depends || fairly likely || likely || yeah sure || yes || would tap that || hell yes || fuck yes! || wishing that could happen right now || as many times as possible || we are already having sex
"I couldn't care less about sex. It's...almost repulsive to. Yet, Rick has show me that it can be a pleasant experience. I still don't care for the act in itself. It's the intimacy that connect us that matters."
Level of Friendship:
never in a million years || worst of enemies || enemies || rivals || indifferent || neutral || acquaintance || friendly toward each other || casual friends || friends || good friends || best friends || fuck buddies || bosom buddies || practically the same person || would die for them || true friends || my only friend
"C-Connecting with other beings has always been...almost impossible for me. Friendship was a foreign concept, until Rick and I got closer."
First impression of them:
I hate them so much || I don’t like them || I don’t trust them || they annoy me || they’re weird || I’m indifferent || meh || they seem alright || they’re growing on me || truce || I think I like them || I like them || I’m not sure if I trust them || I trust them || they’re cool || they’re genuine || I think we’re going to get along || I really like them || I think I’m in love he is the One || oh fuck they’re hot || I love them
"I-I felt it in the very same moment I landed my eyes on him. That he could be what my Morty wasn't despite all my efforts. That was enough for me to bear through the annoying parts and the extreme good complex."
Current impression of them:
I hate them so much || I don’t like them || I don’t trust them || they annoy me || they’re weird || I’m indifferent || meh || they seem alright || they’re growing on me || truce || I think I like them || I like them || I’m not sure if I trust them || I trust them || they’re cool || they’re genuine || I think we’re going to get along || I really like them || I think I’m in love || oh fuck they’re hot || I love them He is the One
"Rick is my partner, in everything, and my one true connection. There's nothing else to say."
How good of a kisser:
worst kisser ever || terrible || bad || awkward || just okay || alright || pretty good || good || makes me moan || excellent || exciting || oh god they’re good || I dream about it || fucking amazing || absolute perfection || we haven’t kissed
"I-I never cared for kissing. I never saw the appeal. Rick changer my mind on this too. At least when it comes to kissing him."
#[ ic :: Evil Rick ]#[ You're my obsession. I'm your possession :: Evil Rick & Weird Rick ]#[ v. Are you sick like me? ; canon div :: Evil Rick ]#mcltiples#[[ he's been super laconic with the comments but ]]#[[ but it's Evil Rick we're talking about xD ]]#[[ still I think that his picks speak for themselves ]]#[[ even if he didn't shy away from pointing out Weird Rick's flaws either xDD ]]
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
WIP Sunday Monday
Well since AO3 has been down all night, I decided to work on the next chapter of Seeds which I've been poking at off and on all week in between editing and then dealing with my family being in town. So this is technically cheating in that I didn't write it all today but it's also Monday we are already cheating. Jaster and a certain spoiler character have a very frank discussion with one another regarding the future. Know that by clicking the cut you are potentially going into spoiler territory for Seeds etc. It is super rough and not edited as always.
Hopefully, AO3 will be up tomorrow and I can work on posting the next chapter of a AWBST. But for now I"m going to put my devices away and maybe watch another episode of Strange New Worlds until bed time. And try to resist the overwhelming urge to rewatch Nimona at midnight. It's been a constant brainrot ever since Thursday when I watched it. I miiiiiiiiiiight have bought the graphic novel today because A03 was down and I couldn't explore fanfics for the fandom. >.>
“Welcome to my office.” Arla drawled laconically and accepted the bottle of ale from Jaster without comment.
If he was being honest with himself, he’d half expected her to reject it and he wouldn’t have blamed her in the least considering the treatment she’d faced at Death Watch’s hands.
Though he noted she hadn’t opened it just yet to prove that it wasn’t doctored in any way, he twisted the cap off his bottle and moved to sit on one of the benches near the edge of the terrace where he could look out over the city.
“Pretty daring of you to sit there. Aren’t you worried I might try and solve all of Tor Vizsla’s problems by shoving you off the top of this building?” Arla asked with cloying poison in her voice as she approached on silent feet. “You’re not wearing a jetpack or much in the way of armor.”
“I rarely wear one if I can avoid it. Not a big fan of them if I’m being honest.” Jaster murmured and took a measured sip from his ale. “As for my being worried about you tossing me off this rooftop, assuming you could overpower me, the defensive shields are built to prevent objects from penetrating it from both the inside and outside. I don’t think the Senate wants their guests to get tipsy and have unfortunate falls off the edge of their diplomatic quarters.”
That garnered a soft huff of laughter from the woman as she twisted the cap off of her bottle and tossed it at the edge of the terrace. Predictably, it bounced off the shield and clattered to the deck harmlessly.
“A girl can dream, I suppose.”
“See, those kinds of comments are enough to make a man nervous.”
“Good, you should be.” She arched one brow at him in a challenging manner and this time it was Jaster’s turn to bite back a snort of amusement.
“As fun as verbal sparring with you may be, Arla, I would like to have a real and honest conversation with you. So can we lay down our swords and talk like two adults?”
She narrowed her eyes at him and finally settled onto a nearby chaise lounge. “I’m listening.”
“I know you chaff under the restrictions put upon you here. So I would like to offer you a compromise. I am willing to write up a pardon as soon as the Jedi Healer declares you are fit to be released from their treatment and I will put you on the first ship back to Mandalore where my people will assist you in trying to transition into a new life wherever you want. You’ll be set up with a stipend until you can get your feet underneath you and settle into your new life. I don’t want to toss you out into the cold with no help or assistance, and I don’t want you to be left vulnerable to Death Watch tracking you down.”
“You aren’t worried about my voluntarily going back to them?”
“You may be a really good actress, but I think you’re being genuine with your anger and rejection of Vizsla’s zealotry. You’re also an incredibly strong woman, and I cannot see you volunteering to go back to such an abusive situation.”
Arla fought to keep her expression neutral but Jaster’s words…the offer he made, it actually touched her on a genuine level, and she felt emotion choke in her chest briefly. The temptation to take the out that he was offering…was almost overpowering.
She could…walk away from all of this.
But then, the anger and seething hatred that curled around her heart as a black chain tightened at the thought that Tor Vizsla still drew breath in this universe, which was unacceptable.
She took a long pull from the bottle to give herself a few moments. The spicy and sweet flavors of genuine Mandalorian ne'tra gal flooded her mouth, a comforting taste of home.
“What’s your price for this amnesty?” Arla finally asked with a jaded-looking smile.
“Nothing; I’m not going to make you trade for your future like it’s coin to be exchanged. Yes, it would be helpful if you were willing to give us intel into Death Watch, but I’m not going to hold this over your head as a bribe or as a threat.” Jaster stated with a matching cynical twist of his lips.
“And no, that’s not because I’m trying to impress you or make some high-handed gesture. You’re a child of Mandalore that was stolen away from your home and forced into a life you had zero say in. As Mand’alor it is my duty to see to it that you are returned back home and the debt that I owe your parents would demand I at least try and give you a proper headstart on the beginning of the next phase of your life.”
“Those are all very pretty words and noble proclamations but I learned a long time ago not to believe in people’s empty promises.” The blonde woman stated coolly
“Then let me have the chance to prove your worst assumptions about me and mine is incorrect. What does it cost you but a little time and potentially misplaced faith? If I disappoint your expectations, are you truly any worse off than where you started?” Jaster asked, making an expansive gesture with his free hand.
“Unless, of course, I was foolish and trusting enough to give you the intel you seek only for you to go back on your word.” Arla pointed out before taking another measured sip from her ale.
“You strike me as many things, Arla, but a fool isn’t one of them. If you decide to play ball with us but wish to wait to see if I am a man of my word first, so be it. That can wait until after the peace talks have finished and we return home.” He shrugged one shoulder and tilted his bottle in the direction of the city that glowed beyond the edges of the terrace’s lofty heights.
“I doubt Death Watch is going to uproot its entire operation in the next few weeks. I can be patient if that’s what you wish. Vizsla and I have been fighting this war almost as long as you have been alive. Right now, I want to try and focus on building a better future for our people and this place is the first step in that plan.”
“Aren’t you worried about Tor Vizsla putting a spanner in that plan?”
“Of course but I’ve done everything I can to try and minimize the ways he can impact the peace talks. All parties are aware Death Watch is here on the planet. Our people aren’t going about alone and presenting potential kidnapping targets for Vizsla and his thugs.”
“Inaction will only get you so far, eventually, he’s going to force your hand.”
“I know, which is why I’m hoping we can bait his impatience enough that he will force his hand first. I doubt he has the credits or support to sustain a prolonged war so far away from his home base. The CSF have cracked down on the local bounty hunter guilds and strongly advised them to not hand out any new bounties to Mandalorians for the near future. Apparently they didn’t appreciate the way we conducted our last hunt in Coruscanti space.” Jaster mused, voice as mild as a summer breeze which had Arla’s shoulders drawing up tense once again.
“Because you blatantly skirted the line of what is an allowable hunt when you murdered my friends.”
“As I have said, I am sorry for the deaths of your friends and had I known what Tor Vizsla’s recruitment tactics entailed, I would have approached the situation differently. But I’m not going to apologize for my people defending themselves. Your friends did have the option to lay down their weapons.”
“Like any self-respecting Mandalorian would lay down their weapons in such a situation.” This was said with a thinly veiled sneer.
“You may be right, I cannot say we would not have done the same thing had our situations been reversed. But that would have been our choice at the end of the day and you are ultimately responsible only for the choices you make. Hindsight is, as they say, twenty-twenty and we all must live with the consequences of our actions. Be they good or bad.”
#wip sunday#except it's monday#el writes#fanfic snippets#seeds for the future fic#jaster mereel#and mystery guest
1 note
·
View note
Text
WandaVision Ep 4 SPOILERS
Yes, spoilers,
Wherein I watch and say stuff that might or might not be worth reading.
After a little bit of a lackluster start, there was good story progress last week. An escalation of weird, which I appreciated. I'll probably have to relive it, because Disney doesn't want to let me skip the previously. Ever. Why are you the way you are, Disney?
Geraldine/Monica is made of whispery voices and swirling dust and such. Weird. She's sitting in a chair, sleeping, and apparently being reconstituted. She wakes to a hospital room but outside is chaos. Lots of yelling and people running about. There's like swirling dust or human confetti everywhere, and other people are being reconstituted left and right. Seems unusual. Not the sort of thing that normally happens in hospitals. Oh, are they being un-snapped? The great un-snappening. The un-snapapalooza. The fall of the snappocalypse. I'll stop. I guess we're in a flashback of sorts.
Dudes, Monica just like full on hip checked some dude into the boards. She didn't mean it, but, damn, that guy went flying. Nobody knows what's going on, it's madness. A doctor recognizes her and asks where she went and Monica's all "uh, what? I took a nap?" Napping and then snapping and then popping back into existence. Ain't that just the way? Oh, sad, her mom died while she was missing for five years. :(
Sentient Weapon Observation Response Division — please nobody expect me to remember that. They have a Cape Canaveral looking compound with multiple launch pads and a very large hanger smack in the middle. Gee how neat for them that they get to operate out in the open, Phil Coulson says (in my head) with a whole lot of sarcasm.
Oh, right, they called it the Blip. The Great Un-Blippening. That doesn't sound as good. What on earth with the massive monitors in the main lobby. Nobody likes watching the news that much. Monica is trying to brazenly walk through the front doors with a badge that doesn't work and wow, security guy is kind of a dick. Oh, she belongs there. Captain Monica Rambeau. Captain, good for her.
And now security dick is revealed to be even more dickish, since this is just after the Blip and she's trying to go back to work. Like, SWORD couldn't put out a memo "Be on the lookout for recently unblipped personnel. Don't be massive dicks to them when their security badges don't work, because of how they got blipped and all"? Also maybe a reorientation packet, or like a desk out front "Back from the Blip? Talk to Lt. Mandy Smith in HR about your reactivation options today!" I'm just spitballing here. I get it was chaotic, but that's no reason to let the unblipped get a rude welcome. It wasn't their fault Thanos was critically dumb.
Blip no longer sounds like a word.
Anyway, the acting director is fortunately there to meet her before she could drop her gloves and punch the security dick in the dick. Aww, Maria Rambeau is on the Wall of Valor, or whatever they call it at SWORD.
Things aren't going well at SWORD. The Blip put the hurt on the division. Their remaining astronaut trainees have chickened out. Oh, what if there was like crew up in orbit that got blipped and then when they unblipped five years later … yikes. Well, I'll allow the 'lost their nerve' may have a solid basis in horribleness that probably occurred around the Blip. I retract the 'chickened out' comment.
This is a very long walk-and-talk. Maria Rambeau built SWORD "from the ground up". Bless.
The Director has grounded Monica. Well, actually, her mom grounded her, making protocols in case vanished personnel one day returned. Lol. Though, I mean, I'd guess she'd know, what with Carol and all. "I know it's a raw deal, but there is one positive takeaway. She believed you'd come back." Awww
So, she's off to deal with some sort of missing persons case in New Jersey overseeing the loan of one of their drones for the FBI. I guess Wanda will be the missing person. Yep, she's off to Westview. Which has seen better days.
Hey! It's Agent Woo! I like you Agent Woo! Did I know he was in this? I don't remember. Randall Park's great. A happy surprise.
Hmm, he has a missing witness. So, not Wanda, then. Hmm again. Agent Woo contacted known associates, family, friends — none of them have ever heard of the witness. A mystery!
Oh and there's another wrinkle.
"Pardon me Sheriff, would you mind repeating your claim about Westview to my colleague here?"
"No such place," he says, standing next to the 'Welcome to Westview" sign.
Hmmm, puzzling. Jimmy Woo can't reach anybody listed as living in town. So, wait, the town doesn't exist, except it does, but, nobody thinks it does, so where did he get the phone records for residents? The phone company was just like "here's your records for the imaginary city of Westview, all 3,000+ residents that never existed, and yet we have the numbers and we're just not going to question that". Weird.
"So you can't reach anyone inside and everyone on the outside has some sort of selective amnesia?" That does seem to be the case, Monica. Super odd. Agent Woo is very sanguine about the whole thing. He dealt with Scott Lang, I guess after that everything else is like, 'meh'.
"Why haven't' you gone inside to investigate?" A fine question, Captain.
"Because it doesn't want me to." That's just creepy, Agent Woo. "You can feel it, too, can't you? Nobody's supposed to go in." I guess this is where the drone will come in handy. Oh, it's the little helicopter that Wanda found in the bushes in the second episode. I'm going to pretend that super advanced SWORD drones would totally look like cheap RC toy helicopters. I guess that's a disguise?
Monica wants to know why she and Agent Woo are aware that Westview exists and nobody else is. Does that mean the Sheriff was standing next to the Welcome to Westview sign and just did not see it at all? He was just hanging out in the middle of nowhere with a weirdly laconic FBI agent who kept asking about the town that very clearly wasn't just right behind them? That's a little more than amnesia.
Also, Agent Woo's hero was Elliot Ness. Of course it was.
Oh no, the drone vanished as it crossed the town line! There's an energy field around the town that looks like what happens when you push your fingers against an old monitor and get the weird pixelly rainbow. Agent Woo's all "please no touch" and Monica's all "yes, I think I'll stick my whole hand in there." And she got sucked in. Agent Woo's gotta be like "WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY EVER LISTEN TO ME?"
24 hours later. Darcy! Some sort of transport van. A trio of other suits in the back, plus Darcy. She tries to talk to one of the dudes and he's all "we're not supposed to talk to each other!" "Boy Scout leader, got it." Relax, uptight guy. Pfft, what sort of team is that? The rest give up their specialty. Aww, bless, she went into astrophysics. "We've got the full clown car." heh.
Boy Scout leader finally caving to peer pressure: "I'm a chemical engineer."
Darcy: "No one cares." lol. Missed you, girlfriend!
And in 24 hours SWORD/FBI whoever have set up a little military camp. Oh a "response base". How banally euphemistic. There's like a whole bunch of agencies there, as well as Army and Air Force.
Dr. Lewis. Oh, I'm so proud. I bet Jane was over the moon. Saved from poli-sci!
Elsewhere another drone vanishes. Darcy darcys a lot at an uptight uniform who is breathing down her neck "make your assessment" and it's delightful. Darcy notices some high levels of cosmic background radiation and also something weird layered over the top of that. Hmm, she needs a tv. "An old one, like not flat." One with vacuum tubes, perhaps?
In another part of the camp, they send in a guy in a hazmat suit, down into the sewers, looking for Monica. I guess he'll be the beekeper Wanda tosses in ep 2. Jimmy Woo is not optimistic about that plan. He tells the SWORD Director all about it.
"Someone must really miss you back at Quantico."
"No, sir, softball season is over." Lol.
All their high tech scanning is turning up nothing.
Uhoh, screaming. Oh, nevermind, it's the laughtrack. While everybody else was dicking around with the LIDAR, Darcy has tracked down the last tube tv in New Jersey and has tuned into the Wanda Dimension. Episode one is playing.
Darcy is understandably particularly baffled by Vision. "Look, I know it's been a crazy few years on this planet, but he's dead right? Not blipped. Dead." Poor Vision. Alas.
Director wants to know if the broadcast is realtime or a recording. Or what? Darcy's like "how tf should I know?"
Jimmy asks the good question "So you're saying the universe created a sitcom staring two Avengers?" "It's a working theory."
Now SWORD fans out! And collects every ye olde TV on the eastern seaboard. Who doesn't love a good sitcom, amiright? (Me. Me do not love sitcoms). The Director storms off to wherever for whatever reason. I don't know, don't care. Jimmy and Darcy are on the case.
Darcy is IDing the other "characters" in the sitcom, who appear to be real people with NJ driver's liscenses, while Jimmy is wondering why the force field is hexagonal. You've got me there. And now we're montaging.
Jimmy ponders the big board of 'characters' and Darcy drops her cup o' noodles when she spots Monica in the second episode. He and Darcy discuss and he's like "is it an alternate reality, time travel, some cockamamie social experiment?" Darcy's all "it's a sitcom." A pure mystery.
Darcy comes up with the idea to reach out to Wanda via the radio in her kitchen. "Next time she's washing dishes — which by my count happens about once an episode, barf." heh. She tech babbles some and I'm very proud.
A minion agent runs up with the latest intel from the most recent episode, it's a picture of the SWORD drone that looks more retro (frankly it looks better than the 'real world' one.) Hmmm, such a puzzler. Why did it change, they wonder.
Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo are a partnership I can totally get behind. Jimmy was the voice trying to reach Wanda. Darcy's watching the show while Jimmy's trying the radio thing. It's the second episode where Wanda's talking to Emma Caulfield and things go weird. Good. I'm glad they jumped us to the outside world by ep four. While I thought the first two eps were slow, I think maybe they'll work better once we can watch the whole thing at a go.
Dude is still crawling through the sewers. I completely forgot he was down there. And the field extends below ground and he just crawled through it and became a beekeeper, and his safety rope snapped and … became a jumprope?
And then Wanda wishes him to the cornfield. (I guess? We don't see what happens to him.)
SWORD is watching episode three.
"1950s, 1960s, and now 70s. Why does it keep switching time periods. It can't be purely for my enjoyment can it?" Guys, it's so good to see Darcy.
"I can't believe Wanda and Vision are having a baby." No really, Jimmy and Darcy, BFFS 4EVAH! They're eating chips and watching the episode. Delightful. Just delightful.
"Twins. What a twist." Jimmy gives Darcy a look. "I'm invested!"
Monica mentions Ultron and Jimmy and Darcy are like "Whoa!".
They notice the screen sort of glitches and then Monica is gone and it's the end credits. Like when Bee guy vanished. Darcy and Jimmy are confused. "Someone is censoring the broadcast." Yeah, Wanda. She's gone to the scary place, friends.
Alarms go off and they run off. But, we go into Wanda World the aspect ratio changes from 4:3 to 16:9 and it's a new angle on when Wanda went all scary at Monica, demanding to know who she is. And then, of course, she gets kicked out of Wanda World.
"Wanda, I'm just your neighbor."
"Then how could you know about Ultron?"
Wanda brings up the glowy hands of scary. "You are a stranger and an outsider and right now you are trespassing here. And I want you to leave." And then she zooms Monica out through the walls and fences and fields and that looked like it probably hurt.
Oh gross. Wanda turns around and sees Dead Vision. The big hole in his head and his face all, you know, dead looking. She looks away and then he's normal when she looks back. Well, now this has turned all sad, you guys. "We can go wherever we want." "No, we can't." Sad. Poor Wanda. The aspect ratio goes back to 4:3. I’m sure Editorial was like “oh god, again?”
"Don't worry darling, I have everything under control."
I don't think so, Wanda.
Good ep! My only real takeaway is that none of this is going to end particularly happily.
So … Darcy and Jimmy, BFFS 4EVAH!
36 notes
·
View notes
Text
LuXY/Lukadrien/Lukadrienette: Welcome to La-La Land: Chapter One
@luxyweek
Welcome to La-La Land: Chapter One: Eye Contact
Going to the party had been Penny’s idea.
(“You need to get out more. I know you don’t like socializing, Luka, but networking is key in this field.”)
Luka hadn’t even gotten in the door, and he was already wanting to flee.
Reporters lined the walkway to the entrance, shouting his name, blinding him with the flashes of their cameras, yelling their questions over one another.
Luka did his best to smile and act like he was comfortable in this crazy environment. (He was not.) He drew heavily on techniques honed through years of meditation practice in order to stay calm and serene.
“Luka!” one of the reporters called. “Are the rumors about you and Adrien Agreste-Dupain-Cheng true?!”
Luka blinked, step faltering.
His heart sank.
The other bloodhounds caught the scent and took up the cry.
“Luka! Are you and Monsieur Agreste-Dupain-Cheng having an affair?”
“Is it true that you’ve been seeing one another for years behind his wife’s back?”
Two weeks prior, a paparazzo had seen Luka and Adrien meeting up at the Brasserie Lipp for dinner and gotten a shot of them saying goodbye. With Adrien’s arms around Luka’s neck and the looks on their faces as they smiled and laughed…the optics weren’t good.
Things died down a bit after Marinette made a statement that Luka was a very old and dear friend to the both of them and that her husband was in no way cheating on her.
Luka thought the whole thing had blown over. Apparently, he was wrong.
The light and the noise and the crush of the crowd was overwhelming.
With a mutter of, “no comment” to the ravenous newshounds, Luka picked up the pace, practically running for cover inside of Le Grand Paris.
It’s not like they’d understand if he tried to explain how he had been casually dating a married couple for several years now, so “cheating” and “affair” were not an accurate representation of the situation.
Luka being bi was something Paris could handle for the most part, even if they didn’t always like it. Luka being in a polyamorous, off-again-on-again relationship would break Paris’s brain. It was easier for them if Luka were a homewrecker.
He made his way to the ballroom where Bob Roth was hosting the get together for the dozens of stars currently signed to his record label as well as influential members of Parisian society.
After greeting the requisite people and being led around by Bob Roth to be introduced as the producer’s latest “find”, Luka retreated to the far side of the room where he could be a wallflower in peace.
Parties were definitely not his scene.
He eyed the open bar hard, considering.
Normally, Luka was careful with his alcohol consumption. Drowning problems in booze was, unfortunately, a bit of an issue at times in his family, and he was always mindful of not falling down that rabbit hole.
Tonight, however, social anxiety was definitely a thing on top of the dull ache in his chest dredged up by the paparazzi reminding him of his messy relationship with Marinette and Adrien, and Luka really felt like he needed a drink to take a bit of the edge off.
A server came by with a tray of champagne, and Luka decided that that was a good compromise. Enough to numb himself a little but nothing too extreme like downing vodka shots.
He sipped on his glass as he watched the antics of the other partygoers. Jagged had brought Fang, and Clara Rossignol looked like she was having the time of her life throwing a stick for him. (Though, she always looked like she was having the time of her life.)
Most everyone else was trying to stay out of the way as the crocodile bounded after his quarry.
As the night stretched on, one glass of champagne became three, and with two more hours to go on the party before it would be acceptable for Luka to escape, Luka was starting to think he wasn’t going to make it.
He felt uneasy, like people were watching him.
People were watching him. That was the whole point of the evening: to be seen. A handful of respectable members of the press had been let into the party, and Luka wouldn’t be surprised if there had been tens of hundreds of pictures taken either of him or with him in the background.
Still.
It made his whole body itch.
Suddenly, the “being watched” sensation was far more acute. Someone was behind him.
Luka turned to find Xavier-Yves Roth staring at Luka’s waist.
Several thoughts raced through Luka’s slightly alcohol-addled mind, but chief among them was that XY had been ogling Luka’s butt.
He knew it looked good in the leather pants he was wearing, but the fact that it was XY checking it out…that just made Luka uncomfortable. He was tempted to dig out the old, “my eyes are up here” line, but that sounded too coy.
“Can I help you?” Luka asked tersely.
“Nah. I’m good,” XY assured without sarcasm and continued to give Luka the once over. “Nice outfit.”
“Uh…thanks,” Luka replied awkwardly, beginning to squirm. “It’s a Marinette original. I’m a friend of the designer.”
XY frowned, cocking an eyebrow as he finally met Luka’s gaze. “The wife of the guy you’re sleeping with?”
Luka pursed his lips.
This conversation was going remarkably well. Back in the old days, it would have been the kind of evening that rated as a success if no one got akumatized. Luka kind of missed akumas. They were really useful for breaking up mortifying encounters such as this one.
“Allegedly,” Luka returned laconically. “Listen, I have to—”
“—Didn’t you used to have blue hair?” XY cut him off.
Luka frowned. Did XY remember who he was? The man had always struck Luka as completely oblivious to everything that did not immediately serve some use to the blonde, so Luka hadn’t expected to register in XY’s long-term memory.
“Uh…yeah.” Luka self-consciously reached up to touch his hair. He’d dyed it back to pure black a couple years ago.
XY nodded, a dopey grin on his face. “It’s super dope. I like it better this way.”
Luka guessed that that was supposed to be a compliment. “…Thanks? …I…I like what you’ve done with yours too.”
XY’s hair was still spiked up on top, but it was shorter and actually looked more like a normal person’s hair now instead of the half-meter cornstalk growing out of his head that it used to resemble.
“Your hair looks better short,” Luka added civilly.
Why was he making small talk with Xavier-Yves Roth? What dimension of hell had he stumbled into?
XY seemed to puff up in pride at Luka’s remark. “Yeah,” he preened. “It’s super sick, yeah? The tall hair thing got old. It was time for an update, you know?”
Luka nodded agreeably, waiting for an opportunity to slip away.
“So, what are you doing lately?” The small talk continued, much to Luka’s horror. “What kind of music are you making recently?”
Luka frowned as XY hit a sore spot. “Why? Looking for something to steal—sorry. I meant inspire you?”
XY’s eyebrows slowly pinched together, and his mouth formed a duck-lipped pout. “Dude. That was, like, ten years ago, and it was only the one time. I was just doing what my dad said. He’s the expert, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. I didn’t know I was doing something wrong, and I apologized and haven’t done it again,” he informed sulkily.
Suddenly, Luka felt like a very petty person. He hadn’t spoken to XY in a decade, but he’d just gone into the interaction assuming that nothing had changed, that the man was still the dumb, spoiled brat Luka had encountered when he was sixteen.
He visibly wilted, ashamed of his rash accusation. “Sorry. That was…that was really rude of me. Could we maybe start over? I’m Luka Couffaine. It’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand, hoping to smooth things over.
Seemingly, it worked. XY’s pout instantly transformed into a wide grin, and he took Luka’s hand, shaking it enthusiastically. “XY. Your music is really ballin’. Totes dope. I’ve been following you since you were the lead guitarist in Kitty Section, and I was really excited when you went solo.”
This was the Twilight Zone. How had Luka fallen into an alternate universe where XY not only knew who he was but actually enjoyed Luka’s music? This conversation had officially become bizarre.
“Uh…Wow. You…You like my work?” Luka replied eruditely.
XY nodded, hair bobbing along. “Yeah. Typically, I don’t like that punk stuff, but—I don’t know—your music has always been different.”
“Thank you,” Luka responded, suddenly feeling off balance not just because of the alcohol he’d consumed. He genuinely didn’t know what to do with this version of XY so different from the young man he’d met once ten years before.
“You probably haven’t heard much of my stuff, have you?” XY continued with their conversation.
“I can’t say that I have,” Luka sheepishly admitted. “Maybe snatches on the radio, but I haven’t really sat down and listened to it.”
XY waved Luka’s words away. “You’d like it. It’s really good stuff nowadays. I come up with my own beats. Yeah, Dad and the mixing department clean it up before it goes out the door, but I make my own stuff. I, like, go out and listen to other people’s stuff and sit in parks and look at trees, and I get inspired. I get ideas now,” he boasted.
Luka nodded supportively, sensing that this was important to XY, though, Luka had no idea why having ideas was such an achievement.
“My dad doesn’t call me an idiot even half as much as he used to,” XY confided proudly. “I’m not an imbecile anymore.”
Luka waited for XY to explain the joke, but the punchline never came, and Luka realized with horror that XY was serious. “Your father said that to you?”
XY nodded matter-of-factly. “Yeah. I used to be really stupid, and Dad never thought my work was good, but now I have more talent since I started going out and trying to make my own ideas.”
Suddenly XY’s expression became thoughtful. “I never got to thank you.”
Luka blinked, completely lost. “For what?”
“What you said to me at the TV studio that day after you and Kitty Section performed with me. …Out in the hallway by the dressing rooms?” XY reminded, looking at Luka expectantly.
Maybe it was because it had been a stressful day with the plagiarism and the akumatization and everything, but Luka was completely blanking.
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure,” he bluffed, hoping not to get found out. What the heck had he said to XY ten years ago that the guy was now thanking him for?
XY’s face lit up in a smile. “What you said really got me thinking. It made a big difference, made me want to change, so…it’s thanks to you that my music’s so dope nowadays and that my dad’s taking me seriously as a musician. So, thanks.”
Luka could feel his cheeks heating up under XY’s intense gaze. He wished he could remember what he’d said. Obviously, the moment had been far more important to XY than it had been to Luka. That made Luka feel kind of bad.
“You’re welcome,” he replied earnestly. “I’m really glad that I could help.”
XY nodded enthusiastically. “And you keep helping. I was listening to your second solo album a year or two ago, the one with all the electric violin, and I came across this interview you did when it came out where you were talking about how you drew inspiration from all kinds of musical genres, and you were talking about Classical and Romantic music. I actually looked up some of the stuff you mentioned and found a lot of stuff I liked.”
If Luka had less control over himself, his mouth would have dropped open.
The image of pop idol XY listening to anything Luka had ever mentioned in an interview (where he regularly talked about music theory and Mahler and The Beatles and Javanese gamelan music) just seemed so farfetched.
“Like that Beaux Arts guy,” XY prattled on. “I listened to his Inclined Knot Music, and I thought the beat was really sick.”
XY proceeded to hum the theme from the first movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
“I learned that it’s not stealing if the guy you borrow from is super dead, so I took the theme and mixed it up and turned it into my own thing, and people really liked it!” XY informed excitedly. “If you want to hear my version, it’s called ‘XY’s Got Mad Ups’.”
Luka was definitely looking that up on YouTube later that night. He couldn’t help his morbid sense of curiosity. He’d clearly created a monster in inspiring XY to look into Mozart’s music, and now he felt kind of responsible for the result.
“Yeah. I’d be really interested in giving it a listen,” Luka replied honestly.
XY perked up like a puppy who had just heard his owner get out the dog food. “Really? Killer! You know, I was also really inspired by Beat-oven. You mentioned that the Fifth Symphony was your favourite?”
Luka nodded, genuinely surprised.
“Well, I found his piano concertos—”
“—concerti—” Luka’s mind automatically corrected.
“—and the first movement of his Third Piano Concerto was absolutely trippin’. I’ve got some tracks inspired by Beat-oven pieces too that did really well, so I’m super glad you got me to look into classical music.”
“You’re welcome,” Luka repeated, unsure of what else to say. This was more like interacting with a fan than an old rival, and Luka found himself getting tripped up over and over again with every new sentence out of XY’s mouth. “I’m really glad that you got so much out of it.”
XY flashed Luka some kind of hipster hand sign. “Hey, so, I know you haven’t heard much of my work, but if you do listen to it and you think it’s good, I was thinking we should collaborate sometime.”
Luka’s eyes went wide as XY fished out a business card and a pen, writing an additional phone number on the backside, opposite his official contact information.
“Here. My personal number.”
Luka took the card and stared at it for a minute before pulling out his wallet and tucking the card inside carefully.
“I really like your chord progressions, especially your use of deceptive cadence.”
Luka’s brain wrecked and caused a ten-car pileup.
Since when did XY know what a deceptive cadence was? Maybe he’d heard Luka talk about it in an interview? Penny had had Luka do a lot of interviews to get his name out. Penny had had Luka do a lot of tweeting and blogging and Instagraming. Maybe XY kept tabs on Luka’s social media?
“I was thinking we could do a mix with, like, some Berber drumming and you on electric violin? I could get a really sick beat going. I’ve got some ideas, if you’re interested.” The amount of hope shining tentatively in XY’s eyes made Luka’s stomach feel funny. The guy really, really wanted to collaborate with Luka. It seriously meant that much to him. What the hell?
“Yeah. Okay,” he agreed before he could stop to think that maybe he should listen to this guy’s music first before getting XY’s hopes up. “I’ll give your stuff a listen, and maybe we can talk to your father about doing something together sometime.”
XY gave a little hop as he punched the air in his excitement. “Sweet! Aw, man. That is so tight! Yeah. Definitely call me, and we can work something out.”
Luka opened his mouth to respond that he would, but he was cut off by Bob Roth shouting from several yards away. “Xavier-Yves!”
XY winced, turning to watch his father storm towards them.
“What are you doing, you imbecile?” the producer hissed quietly, grabbing his son’s arm and tugging him away from Luka.
All Luka could do was gape.
“Didn’t I tell you to make small talk and keep circulating? I haven’t seen you talk to the mayor yet. And make sure you flirt with his daughter. She’s a fan, and their money’s important. Talk to that pop princess girl too. Make sure people get pictures of you two together,” Roth instructed. “What’s her name. Poppenella? Pimpernel? Pumpernickel? You know who I’m talking about. We’re thinking of arranging a publicity stunt making it look like you two are dating. It should help boost your ratings.”
“Okay,” XY agreed docilely, even though he looked thoroughly put out by the prospect. “In a minute, Dad. Luka and I were just talking about doing a collab. I’ll go schmooze some more after we finish.”
Bob Roth’s eyes widened, and he looked back at Luka in surprise. “Oh! I’m sorry, Luka. I thought my son was just bothering you, but if you were discussing business, that’s all right,” he laughed, voice full of false cheer. “You see, Xavier-Yves is just such a fan of yours.”
“He’s not bothering me,” Luka assured, doing his best to keep his voice calm and neutral.
He had never liked Bob Roth. He had never gotten over the man’s cruelty and cut-throat attitude. He’d only signed with Bob Roth because Jagged had gotten him the deal. Luka liked Bob Roth even less now that he’d seen firsthand how the producer treated his son.
In the back of Luka’s mind, he wondered if he had a thing for blonde boys with daddy issues because he was getting the kind of protective feelings for XY that he normally only experienced with Adrien when Gabriel Agreste needed his face punched in.
Bob Roth nodded, letting go of his grip on XY’s arm. “All right, then. I’ll leave you boys to your business.” He looked pointedly at his son. “But then back to working the floor.”
“Yeah, Dad,” XY assured, shrugging the whole event off easily and turning back to Luka as Bob Roth sauntered off. “So…you’ll really give my music a listen and think about a collab?”
“Uh…Yeah,” Luka replied a little slowly, mind still occupied with the scene he’d just witnessed. “Yeah. I’ll definitely get back to you…. Is your Dad always like that?”
XY shrugged indifferently. “Sometimes he’s better. Sometimes he’s worse. He’s a smart man. He knows what he’s doing, how the business works, what the people want. He’s just doing his job, so don’t worry about it.”
Luka wanted to ask if that was really okay, doing one’s job at the expense of one’s child’s wellbeing and self-esteem. He wondered if XY was just numb to the abusive treatment at this point, nearly thirty years in or if he saw how other people were with their parents and wanted more from his relationship with his father.
Again, Luka couldn’t help but think of Adrien. He wondered if XY had cried alone in his room growing up too…if he still cried sometimes.
Maybe Luka was projecting. Adrien and Xavier-Yves were two vastly different people.
“Are you close with your mom?” Luka tentatively inquired.
XY shook his head. “Mom and Dad got divorced when I was little. I live with Dad most of the time and really only see Mom from time to time or on holidays, so we really haven’t gotten the chance to grow too close.”
He didn’t sound sad about this. He didn’t sound like he had any feelings at all on the matter. Maybe XY was incredibly well-adjusted and good at accepting things the way they were…. Maybe he had some serious baggage he’d been stuffing down for two decades.
“Well,” XY sighed. “I’ve got to go visit with other people, but it was nice talking to you.”
“Yeah,” Luka echoed, surprised to find that he meant it. “Thanks for coming to talk to me. I’ll get back to you about a collab soon.”
“Rad!” XY cheered, turning to go, waving over his shoulder at Luka as he did.
Luka chuckled and waved back.
XY stopped and, as if making a decision, turned back around. “You know. I really am glad you stopped dying your hair. Black is a really good color for you.”
“Oh. Yeah?” Luka self-consciously reached up to touch his hair once more.
XY nodded. “Mmhm. It really brings out the blue of your eyes. You have insanely beautiful eyes, you know?”
Luka had not known this.
“They’re kind of scary at times,” XY confessed, “but really gorgeous. Your eyes give me goosebumps. Your eyes kind of got lost in all the blue, so I like how the black hair really sets off how pretty your eyes are. See you later!”
And with double finger guns, XY was off to do his father’s bidding, leaving Luka completely gobsmacked because 1) XY was such a Luka fanboy, 2) XY had definitely been flirting with Luka, and 3) …Luka kind of liked it?
Or maybe he was slightly drunk and projecting his feelings for Adrien onto another blonde guy because things with Marinette and Adrien were not at all what Luka wanted them to be lately, and it was kind of driving Luka insane. Maybe it was just the frustration getting to him.
This party had definitely taken a turn for the bizarre.
#LuXY#luxyweek2k20#Miraculous Ladybug#Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction#Luka Couffaine/XY Roth#Luka Couffaine#XY#Xavier-Yves Roth#Lukadrien#Lukadrienette#Mikau's Writings#Welcome to La-La Land
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
FIC: Pillars of Creation ch. 3 (baon)
Summary: It’s not a date, thank you. Edge only agreed to take Stretch to the planetarium, that was all. That doesn’t make it a date.
Prequel to the series, set after “Seeing Stars Through Clouds’
If you were ever curious how these two got together, well, here you go, their first date outing together! It’s super!
Note: Everyone’s been enjoying the fluff, right? Excellent! Hold that thought, read the tags! It’s not THAT bad but I don’t like to surprise people.
Tags: Spicyhoney, First Time, Pre-Relationship, Some Angst Regarding Past Memories, Implications of Depression, Brothers Can Be Pains, Underfell Was Not a Nice Place, Neither was Underswap Really, They Were Both In a Not Good Place, But Never Fear, Good Ending!
part of the ‘by any other name’ series.
Read it on AO3
or
Read it here!
~~*~~
The trip back to New New Home seemed to be much shorter with Stretch chattering next to him. The pause at the security gate only took as long as swiping their ID’s and in no time, he was pulling up to the Swap brother’s house again.
There was a light on downstairs, Blue was probably downstairs watching the new Mettaton special. It was a little too early yet to say he was waiting up for his brother, even if there was likely some truth to it.
Stretch didn’t open his door immediately when they came to a stop. He fiddled with the strap of his bag and his smile was hesitant, “hope you didn't have too awful a time. deb’s a sales shark, but it’s worth it, they have damn good coffee and—"
“Why do you do that?" Edge broke in. He kept his voice low, even, using the same care that worked on his group at the Y.
Stretch only blinked in startled confusion, “do what?"
Edge turned off the car and the quiet was stark. Coupled with the darkness, it was an illusion of privacy even with the top down. “Belittle things like that. I didn't have an awful time, at all, so why would you suggest I did?"
Had he always done that, disparaged himself? Edge couldn’t remember.
"i...uh…" Stretch shrugged. His lighter was in his bag, along with his cigarettes, but that strap was wound haphazardly around his fingers, clenched briefly tight. "better to get it out there before anyone else does, right? cast the first bone and all that.”
Edge sighed. “Stop.”
“sorry, sorry,” Stretch chuckled, “had to get it out of my system.”
He still didn’t get out of car and Edge…found that he didn’t want to ask. He hadn’t wanted to admit it the whole night but now—
“Is this supposed to be a date?” Edge asked aloud. It sounded strange, not wrong exactly, but almost forbidden, nothing he’d ever expected to say.
Stretch’s eye lights went wide, and a flood of color filled his cheekbones, tinting them ruddy orange. There were no cracks or divots in his skull, no visible injuries. Much like Papyrus and perhaps they’d all shared a name once but to Edge’s gaze, they didn’t really look that much alike.
The curves of Stretch’s skull were slightly softer, less angular and a touch slimmer, and he was—
“hey, you asked me out,” Stretch said lightly. And before Edge could revert to the childish retort of ‘you did it first’, Stretch added with hesitant care. “but. only if you want it to be? if not, it’s only two guys who could maybe be friends. i could do friends. what do you want this to be?”
Part of him wanted to push back against that, protest the unfairness of putting that choice on him.
But.
Friends. None of their previous interactions could ever be called ‘friendly’.
It brought to mind an argument they’d had some months ago. Everyone had been there, all of the skeletons in their group; Edge no longer remembered the context, but he recalled that much. They had only just arrived at the surface, everything was still in turmoil, yet Papyrus and Blue were determined to build relationships between them, and Edge agreed. Allies were necessary in this new world and he would do what needed to be done to get them.
Red and Sans were simply uncaring; they followed where their brothers led without protest, offering laconic comments and puns and little else. Stretch often did the same, but somehow, he always grated in a way that the Sanses did not. Any pointed comments about laziness beaded off Red and Sans like water from a particularly lethargic duck.
Stretch would return any insult with one of his own and his retribution was swift. He and Edge been sniping at each other all day despite Blue and Papyrus’s increasingly exhausted and pleading attempts to interfere, and the tension between them was poised to snap when Stretch waited until the others were out of earshot to murmur.
“tell you what, why don’t you wash the dust from your hands before you get back to me on what a piece of shit i am. better scrub hard, killer.”
They could joke about idiocy all they wanted but in truth Stretch was exceptionally clever; no warrior but he knew how to make words a weapon, finding chinks in armor and using them with brutal efficiency.
The others never made references to Edge’s LV; they knew, of course they knew, and past any fumbling attempts at consolation, they let it be. To have it so pointedly dragged out, a reminder of something he didn’t, couldn’t, forget, but he tried—
Crimson had washed over his vision, coupled with something very close to hate, and Stretch knew, he knew. He’d smiled lazily, not even glancing at where their brothers had yet to notice them, a lit cigarette dangling from his fingers. “go ahead,” he said, softly, singsong sweet. “what’s a little murder between friends?”
He’d thought at the time Stretch knew he wouldn’t hurt him. Looking back, he wondered if Stretch hadn’t cared if he did.
In the end, Edge walked away from him and never had he been more grateful for his iron control. They hadn’t spoken much after that, not really, certainly never alone, nothing past a little sneering at movie nights and dinners, but even that had dulled, their insults eventually losing their sharpened points, and Edge never questioned why. They simply stayed away from each other and Edge hadn’t thought anything of it.
Until Stretch walked into his office last week. Tonight was the longest they’d ever been alone together, much less managed to be civil to each other and Edge was having a difficult time reconciling how this Stretch fit on top of the one he’d known before, trying to line up those edges and failing.
But he also remembered a few children from his group at the Y, the way they sometimes snarled and slapped away any kindness offered them at the beginning. Their jibes had been less unerringly accurate, but they’d been meant to wound in the same fashion.
And Edge had sent more than his share of verbal barbs back then as well.
i wasn't exactly at my best when we first got here. i'm kind of hoping people don't hold me to that first impression for the rest of my life.
Stretch was looking at him, waiting patiently, and only the way he was clutching his bag gave away any of his anxiety.
“I don’t know,” Edge said finally, the words coming slowly. The Stretch he’d seen tonight was far different than his previous experiences, but it didn’t nullify them.
Stretch nodded. “that’s fair. think about it and let me know what you decide?” He finally opened the door and slid out, and he was waving even as it swung shut, “‘night.”
He was gone in a flash and pop of teleportation.
Edge sat a moment longer, waiting. The upstairs window opened and there was a brief flicker of flame from a lighter, the tiny glow of a cigarette. Convenient to be able to bypass the questions his brother would surely have.
Blue had been less than amused when he’d discovered Edge managed to get around him to talk to Stretch by sneaking into his room. It was disconcerting how much he could suddenly appreciate Stretch’s exasperation with the way his brother tried to interfere with his life; he’d never given it a thought before, always thought Blue was in the right when he dealt with his brother—
He couldn’t tell if Stretch was looking at him and he turned the car back on, backing out of the driveway to head home.
His headlights flashed over the porch as he pulled into the drive of his own house, giving him a glimpse of Red sitting on the steps, like a sudden prophecy come true concerning controlling brothers.
Edge sighed. It was still early but he was tired, and this night out left plenty for him to think about. Dealing with Red could be exhausting when he was at his best.
There was nothing for it. Edge climbed out of the car and walked up to where Red was sprawling against the stairs. He was smoking one of the foul little cigars he’d discovered on the surface; the smell was reminiscent of a burning trash dump and Edge wondered at times if he’d chosen them specifically for that trait. Smoking had been an unaffordable luxury in Underfell, but here he could happily annoy others with passive revulsion if he wanted to.
“What do you want?” Edge asked in resignation, stepping past him to open the door.
"nothin’.” Red crushed the cigar out on the cement step, leaving a mark that Edge would be scrubbing away tomorrow.
“I don’t understand why you won’t simply move in if you’re only going to stop by to harass me daily.” Edge held open the door to allow Red inside, waiting with exaggerated patience as he shuffled through the door.
“nah,” Red said lazily. He must have been in a decent enough mood, toeing off his shoes on the front mat without being reminded. “we’re all grown up now, ain’t we, boss, we need our space. and like i want to end up like those other codependent fuckers?” Red shook his head as he wandered into the kitchen. “papyrus and his shitheel brother have that covered. you should be grateful you have me as a bro and not that piece of shit.”
Edge never quite understood the problem his brother had with Sans, but watching his brother paw through his refrigerator didn’t give him confidence in that assessment.
“bet you like having your own place.” Red took out a container and held it to the light, studying the contents.
“I might if it was ever simply mine.” Edge took the container away, pulling out a plate and dumping the contents on it, sticking it in the microwave. His brother was the only reason he even owned one and Edge leaned back against the counter to watch the plate turning within it.
Since they’d come to the surface, Edge was slowly experimenting more with cooking, moving past the simple pasta meals he’d made in Underfell, utilizing the wonder that was YouTube with mixed results. At least with his brother constantly devouring the leftovers he didn’t have to worry about his cooking attempts going to waste.
Red climbed up on a stool, propping his chin on a hand, and his grin was too wide to be comforting. “heard about your date with the honey bun, came by to see how it went."
"It wasn't…" Edge started automatically, then hesitated and shook his head.
A mistake. Red’s grin widened into something vicious. "well, come on, do we have to hide a pile of dust or not?"
"That isn't funny." The microwave beeped and Edge yanked open the door, dropping the plate in front of his brother hard enough that a little spilled off onto the counter.
Red only wiped it up with his fingers, licking them clean. "oh, it ain’t, that right? you had a good time.” It sounded like an accusation.
"He managed to not be completely unbearable for a handful of hours." Edge pointedly set a fork next to the plate.
"you had a good time!" Red crowed, plate and fork rattling as he pounded on the counter. "i knew it! why the fuck do you think i gave him that flyer?"
Thinking of that soured some of Edge’s already tumultuous mood. “Yes, I’m sure you only had my best interests at heart.”
“not very friendly, bro,” Red sighed, shaking his head sadly even as he finally gave up trying to eat curry with his bare hands and picked up the fork. “i raised you, clothed you—“
“Left me alone for days at a time. Beat me when I disobeyed you.”
That got him a hint of a glare, tainted with sardonic amusement. “i slapped you one time and you were about to get your ass in a dustpan sassing off to a guard. you call that a beating?”
“When it was the best you could have mustered, yes. And I never said I didn’t deserve it.”
“bet I could mustard something a little better now.”
Edge closed his sockets, pained. "Enough. What do you mean you ‘knew it’? Knew what?"
"oh, come on, bro, no one hates on someone the way you two do without wanting to fuck them." Red leered at him. With his mouth full, the effect was more grotesque than normal. "did you nail him in the back seat of that cockmobile of yours, or did he invite you in like a ‘civilized person’." His fork trailed sauce on the counter as he made finger quotes.
"We went to the planetarium and had coffee," Edge snapped. "There was no fucking, in the car or otherwise. I dropped him off at his own house and came home after an acceptable evening. That’s all."
"uh huh," Red studied him. "when you going out again?"
"We aren’t."
"you mean you haven't asked him yet?"
"No, I mean we aren't.” Edge wet a cloth, wiping up some of his brother’s mess. “I have enough to do without spending my time babysitting an emotional toddler."
Red snorted loudly. “you’re one to talk.”
That gave him a pause. He gave his brother a narrow look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“nothin’ i want to explain. look.” There were few things quite as unnerving as Red looking at him seriously. "he'd be a liability, you know that. but he'd be a pretty one. you think you can protect what's yours? then i say go for it. or what's the fucking point of being up here?" That seriousness faded and his brother licked his teeth, winking, “ever seen him without that sweatshirt?”
“And he asks me these things as if I could possibly be interested,” Edge said to no one in particular. He took away his brother’s empty plate and turned on the hot water, scrubbing it harder than necessary.
“paps.”
That was enough to make him still, leaning against the side of the sink, the running water a low gurgle. Red had readily set aside their previous names when they’d come to this universe and these days, they used them only rarely.
Behind him, Red sighed. "never thought i'd get the chance to say this, bro, but you're allowed to be happy, if you want. otherwise, why the fuck am i even doing all this?"
"I am perfectly happy,” Edge said, calmly. He returned to washing the dish, cleaning away any lingering sauce. “I have a job I enjoy, I no longer live with you, and I have my volunteer work. I don't need anything else."
"you probably don't. but it's okay to want something else,” he hopped down from the chair, his grubby socks scuffling against the floor. Deliberately, Edge knew, Red was only heard when he wanted to be. “now if you’ll excuse me, i'm gonna go puke. a little tip? make up your mind over the honey bun. stretch is an okay guy, but he's got issues, don't jerk him around. besides, he might not kill you over it, but i wouldn't put bets on blue."
There didn’t seem to be anything he could say to that, no protest that his brother would hear. Instead, Edge asked, “Are you staying to watch Mettaton or not?”
That got him a snort and a truly amused one at that. “you still watching that shit? c’mon, i’ll add my netflix account to your tv. they’ve got some real cooking shows.”
The door swung on its hinges as Red walked out and left Edge alone. Slowly, he set the plate into the drainer, not really meaning to think of Stretch. But he couldn’t stop remembered his hands, those slim, delicate fingers, the way he gestured when he was excited, describing the heavenly bodies above them. The soft flush in his cheekbones, the sparkle in his eye lights while he watched Edge sampling coffee, and that strange warmth rose in his soul again with the memory, lingering in his chest.
It was late after a long day. Stretch was probably asleep. One thing he’d learned since coming to the surface was that low HP Monsters weren’t necessarily lazy, they needed their sleep, although he wasn’t completely convinced where his brother was concerned.
A liability, Red called him. But a pretty one.
The Stretch of tonight was not the same as the one he’d first met. Which one was the truth?
There was only one way to find out.
Before he could think too much about it, Edge took out his phone, pulling up a contact that was only there in case of an emergency, and sent a text.
Would you like to go out again?
Almost immediately a smileyface emoticon came back in reply, followed with, yeah, i'd like that. where we going?
Edge hesitated, then sent back. I'll let you know
sounds good, i like a surprise!
He probably would like a surprise. Edge needed to think about it. Someplace else that would draw out that excitement, bring the sparkle back to those eye lights. Let him see all that bright enthusiasm again, to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.
For now, he shook that thought away and went to join his brother, reluctantly curious about these cooking shows. He supposed they couldn’t be too terrible, and it was possible he’d learn something new.
It was worth a try.
~~*~~
Read Chapter Two
Read Chapter Four
#spicyhoney#papcest#keelywolfe#underfell#underswap#underfell papyrus#underswap papyrus#underfell sans#by any other name
47 notes
·
View notes
Text
Jack Turns Himself Into a Cat (1/?) - Zimbits Magic AU
CW: mentions of injury, mentions of feelings of inadequacy, getting stranded
“I’m sorry, you what?”
The cat on Bitty’s counter glared at him. “Isn’t it obvious? Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“No, no, I understand that you turned yourself into a cat,” Bitty sighed. “I’m just...how?”
In lieu of being able to shrug, the cat paced nervously. “I don’t know. I was trying to brew a potion and there must’ve been cat hair in the cauldron and now I’m...like this.”
Bitty pressed a few fingers to his lips to stifle laughter. “And you’re certain you’re not always...like this?”
“Yes, I’m certain I’m not usually a fucking cat,” it hissed, hackles raised for a second. “I’m a man.”
“The manliest, I’m sure,” Bitty said easily. “Well, I know I’m the only witch in the area, but as you are not a pie nor a plant, I’m afraid this is out of my wheelhouse. We’ll have to go to Samwell.”
“Samwell?” The cat asked, tail twitching with irritation.
“The closest town,” Bitty explained, grabbing at his essentials—money, phone, granola bar—and shoving them into his satchel. “I have a friend who’s real great with animals, she can probably help.”
“‘Great with animals’ is what you say about a babysitter, not a witch,” the cat snapped.
“It’s like you don’t want to be cured,” Bitty mused, shooting off a quick text to Lardo. “She’s in my coven, so don’t be rude. Bun?”
His familiar, a bunny named Bun, hopped into the room, nose twitching adorably. The cat looked put-out by the familiar’s appearance.
“Honey, I need you to watch the place while I’m gone.” Bun twitched his ears in an affirmative, then hopped off to tend to one of the bubbling cauldrons.
“Is that wise?” The cat asked, his deep voice hilarious on such a small, cute creature. Bitty flashed him a saccharine smile.
“You must not have a familiar, huh?”
The cat’s silence was telling. Bitty slipped on his bag and snatched his car keys from the ceramic bowl Lardo had made him for his birthday.
“What’s your name?” He asked the cat, suddenly startled that he was helping out a cat—man—whose name he didn’t even know.
“Jack,” the cat—man—said.
“Well, Jack,” Bitty said. “I think it’s time for a road trip.”
As always, Betsy coughed and wheezed her way down the highway. Jack looked startled by the age and poor health of the pickup truck, but Bitty was confident his (and Dex’s) charms would keep her together until Samwell.
“That’s...an interesting shade of yellow,” Jack had commented upon seeing Betsy parked in the patch of dirt and dead grass Bitty called a driveway.
“My friend Chowder calls it ‘sunshine yellow,’” Bitty said as he opened the passenger door for Jack. Jack sprang up into the seat easily, a blur of black and white. “And my friend Nursey, who’s a poet, calls it ‘Putrid Papaya Puke.’” He paused to shut the door and climb into the driver’s seat. “I prefer Chowder’s version, clearly.”
“I like the sound of Nursey,” Jack said drily. “Tells it like it is.”
“Don’t all poets?” Bitty pulled out of the driveway, waving at Bun who sat in the kitchen window, watching them head out. The dirt road from Bitty’s house to the main road was rocky and unpaved; in the summer, dust would waft in through open windows and coat everything it could. Bitty’s cleaning spells never quite managed to get it out from between the cracks of the seats or from between his teeth.
“So...Samwell,” Jack said awkwardly, clearly trying to keep the conversation going. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, you’ll love it,” Bitty said, rolling down his window to feel the cool, autumn breeze. “It’s so quaint it’s almost gross. Pretty large witch population, and the rest of the town is just as weird and wacky. My friend, Lardo, who’s gonna help you, she runs a small-scale menagerie on the edge of town — mostly potential familiars and witch-friendly pets, like cats and and reptiles and birds of prey.”
Jack purred unexpectedly. “I’m a Falconer,” he said, stretching up to look out the window as the trees of the woods blurred past. “I love working with falcons and owls and...you know. Animals are...easier than people.”
Bitty smiled softly. “Less pressure, simpler affection, I get it.” When Jack didn’t comment, Bitty continued. “So Shitty, Lardo’s boyfriend-type-person, he works at the menagerie full-time, kind of a zookeeper of sorts. He swears that if he gets stoned enough, he can talk to the animals.” Bitty paused. “He’s gonna get a kick outta you, for sure.”
“Sounds like an interesting guy,” Jack said, voice tinged with amusement. Bitty wondered if Jack was this quiet in human form, or if it was a side effect of being turned into a cat.
“Now, on the main strip in town I’m friends with about half the shop owners: Nursey runs the bookshop; Jenny and Mandy run the best little watering hole, The Haus; Ransom owns the clinic, so he’s basically in charge of all of the injuries and accidents that come out of Holster’s classroom across the street—he teaches basic spells and potions to real young kids, it’s more of a zoo than Lardo’s menagerie; Dex and his brother run the hardware store; Chowder and Farms own the apothecary; and Alice Atley, the greatest and most wonderful lady in the world, runs the charm shop where I sell my wares.”
By the end of his spiel, Jack looked half-overwhelmed, half-entertained. “Wow,” he said after a moment. “You have a lot of friends.”
Bitty shrugged. “I’m chatty, friendships just tend to happen. I’m not super close with any of them yet, but we’re getting there.”
“I admit, I’m a bit jealous,” Jack said softly. “I’m...not chatty.”
“Well, that isn’t a crime,” Bitty said, ignoring the disturbing groaning noise coming from Betsy. “You don’t talk and I talk too much; we’ll balance each other out nicely, don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” Jack said. “I’ve been living by myself for so long, I just- I feel like that’s the reason I turned into a cat. I’ve forgotten how to be a person.”
And that tugged at Bitty’s heartstrings in the most painful way. “Oh, sugar, that’s a nice metaphor and all but I really do think you were right when you said you got cat hair in your cauldron. And you seem perfectly human to me, fur aside.”
“Thanks,” Jack murmured.
Bitty grinned, finally feeling like he was getting somewhere with his new, laconic friend-
And then Betsy rumbled to a stop in the slow lane of the highway, a death rattle emanating from her engine.
“Oh, shoot,” Bitty whispered. He knew this stretch of highway, the bit that sometimes faded in and out of reality. The cell service was terrible. And the sun was starting to set beyond the trees.
Outside the truck, wolves howled in the not-so-far distance.
“Well, Jack,” Bitty said, trying to keep his voice light and upbeat. “Looks like our road trip’s turned into a full-blown adventure. Good thing I packed some supplies, huh?”
Jack turned the full force of his cat glare on Bitty and Bitty sighed. It was going to be a long night.
[My incomplete writing masterpost]
[My online novel]
#anna writes things#check please!#zimbits#zimbits fanfiction#magic au#don't know if i'll continue but this was fun
122 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Graylu Fluff Fest 2017 ~ Fanfiction ~ Chapter 2
Prompt: Winter
by @impracticaldemon
Words: ~ 3300 | Cover Art by @miss-zei by commission
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 [here]
Read on: ff.net HERE | AO3 HERE
Summary:
Gray and Lucy finally decided to go out, but they quickly discover that being lovers is more than just declaring that they’re in a relationship. [Chap.2: Gray has a surprising idea for getting away from all the people, but needs Lucy to trust him.]
[I] - Too Many People
"You guys are doing a lot better now, aren't you?" asked Mirajane rather smugly, the morning after Gray and Lucy's play date at the park.
Gray's cheeks reddened a little, and he ignored Mira in favour of his breakfast, leaving Lucy to grin at Fairy Tail's hostess, bartender and demon-mage.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about, Mira, but yes." Lucy composed her face into a suitably puzzled face, while Mirajane rolled her eyes at Lucy's nonsensical—but telling—response.
"So—"
"Mira," said Lucy gravely, "you're my friend and you give great advice, but—"
"Okay, okay! Just let me know if either of you need any more food—or a room…"
"Mira!"
The lovely, white-haired mage sauntered away snickering, and Lucy turned back to Gray a little anxiously. She knew he wasn't really one for big scenes. He surprised her with a crooked smile.
"It's okay, Luce. Thanks for getting Mirajane to lay off a bit, but I don't mind as much as it probably looks. I mean, at least she thinks we're good together, right?"
Lucy released an anxious breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It was comforting to know that Gray was making a sincere effort to cope with the extra attention—and that he could even see an upside to it.
"Yeah. I shouldn't get so worried, I guess."
Gray's dark eyes met hers and he reached across the table to take her hand.
"I wish you wouldn't get so worried about how I'm going to react. I'm not going to suddenly change my mind about us you know—definitely not for a bit of embarrassment here or there."
"Right. Right, of course." Lucy didn't feel up to explaining that old reflexes—in this case from a long-past relationship—tended to die hard.
Just then, Erza came in with Natsu, who appeared to be trying to explain something to her.
"But I've been training super hard, I swear! I can help!"
"It's an S-class mission and you're not qualified." Erza's voice had the edge of somebody who had been saying the same thing for the past ten or fifteen minutes.
"I'll bet I am! It's not my fault that—"
Erza spun around suddenly and straight-armed Natsu in the chest. He staggered, but didn't go flying as he might have once.
"Okay, Natsu—"
"I can come!" Ever optimistic, Natsu rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
"No. But you can meet me outside in an hour, and if you can beat me then you can come."
"Yusssss!" Natsu had absolutely no fault to find with this, and seemed fully prepared to start something right away.
"I want my breakfast," said Erza firmly.
"Right, right. So I'll see you after break—"
"In an hour. Outisde. Behind the guildhall."
Giving up, Natsu looked around, saw his friends, and sat down with them.
"You should see this quest! I mean, we can totally do it—just a volcano that's acting up, and some kind of weird cult and a city in danger. We've handled that kind of thing tons of times."
"Once," commented Gray laconically. He had unobtrusively given Lucy's hand a last squeeze before letting go of it. Lucy had a feeling that he was actually least comfortable behaving as a couple around their own teammate. "And Erza had to save our butts."
"Okay, yeah, but that was ages ago!"
"Why not just pick a different quest?"
"All I have to do is beat Erza in an hour."
"Okay. Lucy and I will just look at the regular job board—you know the not-S-class-job-board —while you're getting ready for Erza to trash you again."
Natsu scowled.
"Look, Ice Princess—"
"Yeah, Charcoal Brain? You want to tell me how your one-hundred-and-seventeenth time is going to be different from all the others?"
"Well, it will!"
Gray opened his mouth for the obvious rejoinder, saw Lucy's look of chagrin, snapped his teeth shut and drained his coffee. She knew that they'd play the "yes it will—no it won't" game for a couple of minutes and then brawl. But he was supposed to be having breakfast with her, not fighting with Natsu.
"Would you like anything more, Luce?" He did his best to ask casually, as if he wasn't breaking years of Natsu-pummeling tradition.
"No, I'm good. But thanks, Gray." Her smile was like gold, he thought. To hell with fighting Natsu, maybe it was time to grow up.
"Natsu?"
The pink-haired mage looked surprised. "You offering to get me something?"
"Yep. Once-in-a-lifetime offer."
"Oh…. Well, if that's the case…"
Looking at Gray as if he'd suddenly turned into a frog or something, Natsu asked for food—of course—and Gray went to the bar to order. He wondered just how much his life was going to turn upside-down for Lucy. He watched Natsu and Lucy chat while he waited for the food. They were comfortable together, he thought. Would he ever be able to see them laughing and talking like that without getting that painful, internal dialogue about how he wasn't optimistic enough, cheerful enough, exciting enough? With a shake of his head, he carried the food back to the table, making a point of sitting next to Lucy, instead of across from her with Natsu.
"So you're planning to do some writing today?" he asked Lucy.
Natsu gave him another strange look and dove into his food.
"Yeah, I'm really hoping to get somewhere with it. The weather's kind of nasty, and we hadn't planned on going on a job—had we?"
"Only if we go without Erza, it looks like. Which is fine by me—might be good for us to stretch ourselves a bit, you know? Especially if"—he caught himself in time, and mentally subtracted "flame-brain" from the sentence—"Natsu figures we can do it."
The Fire Slayer was now staring at him open-mouthed, and Gray had to resist a strong desire to use his fist to make Natsu's jaws close. He was just trying to be mature. He felt his flush deepen as Lucy put a hand over her mouth as though to repress—or conceal—a laugh.
Natsu swallowed whatever he'd been chewing rather convulsively: "Uh, ice—uh, Gray—you feeling okay? 'Cause I can't remember the last time you called me Natsu and that's twice in ten minutes now."
"Do you prefer "flame-brain"? I don't mind using it, as long as we don't fight over it."
"What? No! I mean, no, of course I wouldn't prefer it! Geez Gray, what has gotten into you?" Natsu's face suddenly lightened and he set down his fork and sniffed the air. "Hey, wait a minute, are you two going out now or something?"
Lucy uttered a muffled cry of exasperation, and that helped Gray not to lunge at Natsu.
"Of course we are, you dork. We've been going out together for almost three weeks!"
"Huh, I hadn't noticed before."
Great. Just what I needed to hear. Gray tried to look around surreptitiously, but he shouldn't have bothered being careful. Everyone who was actually in the hall at this time of the morning—about half the guild, it seemed—was either staring openly or snickering quietly.
"Enjoy the food, I'm going to walk Lucy back to her place and then I'll be back to watch how badly Erza hurts you this time."
Natsu's mouth was full, but he rolled his eyes expressively. Gray helped Lucy up—not that she needed it, but since everyone was so interested he might as well get to hold her hand for a moment. On a more conciliatory note, he told Natsu:
"On the off-chance you win, I'll be standing by to go with you, how's that?"
"Okay. You'll come too, Lucy?"
Lucy nodded, still repressing a strong desire to giggle at Gray's attempts to deal with Natsu otherwise than with his fists and magic. It was honestly very sweet him; the truth was that her giggles were at least partly on account of nerves, because Natsu's comments together with Gray's behaviour had thrown her a bit. After spending so long thinking about going out together, had it really taken them almost three weeks to start to gel as a couple? And what exactly was it that Natsu had noticed? On second thought, she didn't want to think about that.
Gray and Lucy made their way out of the hall without looking at each other, but once they were outside in the crisp February air their joint sighs of relief caused them to exchange rather rueful smiles. Gray ran a hand through his hair in typical fashion for him when he was thinking or embarrassed, making half of it stand up on end.
"Er… I'm not quite sure what to say…"
"Oh well," Lucy said practically, rubbing gloved hands together, "nothing we can do about it now, right?"
"Yeah. So, you good with me coming back to see Natsu get smacked down again?"
"Yes, of course. I don't think everything has to change between us and our friends, you know."
"I know, it's just that I feel like you ought to have more of my attention than that pink-haired dork."
They started walking toward Lucy's place, and Lucy had to admit that it was nice to have somebody to walk with who was special in a different way than a friend. If nothing else, Gray made a point of blocking the wind, and steered her away from the canal and the worst patches of ice. They trudged up the stairs to Lucy's apartment, and Lucy let herself in.
Gray ran his hand through his hair again. Yesterday evening had been different—the afternoon out had felt special, and the sunset had been beautiful… Now it was just a grey late winter morning, with a few tiny snowflakes falling and a rather chilling wind—chilling for Lucy, anyway. Lucy looked up at him, hesitated, and then pulled him inside, so that the door latched behind him. It was a tremendous relief when she reached her arms up around his neck and kissed him, so that he could stop worrying about what to do. He had no hesitation at all in kissing her back; it was just knowing where to start that he still found tricky.
Surprisingly, to Gray at least, they had no difficulty in rekindling the feeling of the evening before, which had led to some very serious making out on Lucy's couch after dinner. Just thinking about it now, with his fingers in her hair, was making his body heat up … a lot. He finally caught his breath, trying to remember that he had to leave. Maybe it was just as well that the wind outside was so cold.
Instead of leaving, though, he heard himself voicing some of the thoughts he'd had the night before when he was walking home from Lucy's.
"I was wondering if you'd be willing to go on a vacation with me—out of town, I mean. It's totally okay if you're not comfortable with the idea or too busy here, or think we should get a couple of jobs done or whatever, but I wanted to ask."
Lucy was silent for a moment, still recovering from the last nerve-tingling kiss, which she could have sworn she'd felt right down her toes and in all the important places in between. Then she registered surprise.
"You mean—just the two of us?" Her deep brown eyes, which always showed everything she felt—laughter, anger, sadness, joy—reflected how taken aback she was by the suggestion. A vacation alone together, overnight or over a few nights, implied certain possibilities.
Gray knew that his cheeks were red, but he bit back the words of apology that had formed on his tongue the moment Lucy had hesitated. He didn't want to pressure her—at all—but he did want her to know what he wanted, which was mostly a chance to get away from the guild, from their teammates, from everyone who knew them and wanted to poke their noses into stuff that should be just between Lucy and him. He thought he'd better make that clear though.
"Yeah, just the two of us. We don't have to share a room, if you don't want to. We can take things totally slowly, that's not a problem. It's mostly to have some time to ourselves. Honestly, I can afford it right now, and I think you're caught up on your rent for once"—he smirked slightly at Lucy, trying to break the tension a little—"so you don't absolutely need a job in the next week or so, right?"
"That's true," Lucy agreed, her eyes now fixed on his face. He could hear a trace of doubt in her voice, but also interest. To his great relief, she didn't seem to be angry or think that he was being a complete jerk.
"I mean, I love being outside, I love the winter—and it's a lot shorter here than where I'm from—but I also think I could be happy just hanging out inside with you, too. It's dumb, but I like working on stuff while you write. It's comfortable. I know we just started going out, practically, but we've known each other for over two years now, right? I think—I hope you know—you can trust me."
He could see that Lucy was beginning to look more and more sold on the idea. He wasn't sure what had tipped the scales; she'd probably just needed to think about it a bit.
"So where would we go?" Lucy asked. She was still wearing her coat, but she'd unbuttoned it and taken off her gloves, and Gray was getting distracted again by her curves.
"There's a place about four or five hours northwest. We'd be able to take a carriage west along the main road to Crocus for most of it, and then it's just a short distance into the central mountains." Gray looked down. "Maybe it's a dumb idea. It's just a small town in a deep valley in the foothills but it's pretty. It's safer than the wild area north of Mount Hakobe and less expensive than the resorts closer to the rail line."
"And fewer people?" suggested Lucy with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Yeah…" admitted Gray. "Plus it backs right up against the mountains. But thinking about it—I don't know if you'd like it." Then he shrugged. "They've got a couple of nice chalets though, and I think the rooms are pretty cosy. Fireplaces, reading nooks, that kind of thing."
"You think?"
"Well, I only saw those places in passing. I was staying a little farther into the hills, not in town. Look—I've got to get going. Will you think about it?"
Lucy took a deep breath, and then smiled.
"I'll go. I think you're right about getting away for a while. As long as we stay in town in a decent place and not in some guy-shack in the woods."
"You will? I mean, that's great! And no problem—I swear, no guy-shacks. Is that even a word?"
"Well it should be if it isn't."
"So tomorrow? The day after?"
"Whenever you want," said Lucy recklessly. She usually liked to be organized about things, but she'd had to become a lot more adaptable when she'd joined Team Natsu. "Heck, we've gone on longer trips for jobs with almost no time to pack at all."
"So, you're going to come with me on vacation, just the two of us, to a place where it's colder and there's probably more than just a dusting of snow?"
"Yep. You obviously miss having a real winter, even if you can sort of make your own. Besides, this way you'll really owe me, right?"
Gray lifted her off her feet and grinned up at her. "You are the best."
"Thanks, but you're going to be late to see Natsu fight Erza."
"Fuck Natsu."
Lucy arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Gray crushed her in a tight hug and then set her down. "You know what I mean. Fine. I'll go pick up the pieces of Natsu's sorry carcase—again—and then I'll find out about a carriage, and then I'll be back. Don't change your mind."
"I won't. Promise." Lucy made a shooing gesture.
"Trust me?"
Their eyes met and Gray found himself holding his breath. Then Lucy nodded firmly:
"Yeah."
[II] - Keep Me Warm
They were in the small town of Wisteria Hills by mid-afternoon the next day. The trip had been uneventful, if a little rough, but there was something to be said for not travelling with a motion-sick Natsu and a hyper-active Exceed. As Gray had predicted, it was a little colder and a lot snowier, but it was definitely pretty.
The chalet had offered them a choice of rooms on the second floor, and the owner had taken them around himself so that they could decide what they wanted. Gray was more than a little tense, since Lucy hadn't given him an answer on the question of one room or two, and she'd been pretty quiet on the second half of the trip down. Not unhappy, exactly, but thoughtful and less talkative than usual.
The second of the three rooms available was perfect. It had a big desk at a bow window for Lucy, a cosy bedroom area with a large four-poster bed, and a couch and two squashy chairs around a small but serviceable fireplace with split logs ready and waiting to be kindled. Lucy and Gray's eyes met behind the owner's back as he extolled the advantages of the room—really a suite, he pointed out, if you considered the extra space for the sitting area around the fireplace. Gray shrugged at Lucy: it was her call; he'd made that clear from the start.
Lucy leaned forward and tapped the owner politely on the shoulder. He turned immediately.
"Yes ma'am? Do you have any questions?"
"No. It's just what we're looking for, we'll take it."
Gray felt his heart thud against his ribs, and for close to a minute he could only hear the rushing of blood in his ears. He managed to catch the tail-end of Lucy's brief conversation with the owner:
"…well, we're not sure, but at least three days. Is there any problem?"
"None at all. Let's get your bags up here, shall we?" The hotelier had seen quite a lot after thirty years in the business, and a swift glance suggested to him that the young couple wouldn't mind a moment or two alone. "I'll go down and organize your keys and so on. I'll see you at the front desk, sir or ma'am, to arrange for the deposit?"
"Yes, I'll be right down," Gray replied, his eyes not leaving Lucy.
As soon as the door closed behind the man, Gray pulled Lucy close. "Thanks for giving me a chance," he said quietly into her ear. "I promise, you can trust me. But I'm really happy I can stay with you."
"Just make sure you keep me warm, Ice Prince."
"Not a problem, Lucy. You'll see."
[END]
Thank you for reading! If you have a moment, please leave a review or comment. Notes and reblogs are very much appreciated.
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
How Queerness, Androgyny and Gender in Music Has Evolved
With the passing of 2016 came the tragic loss of some of the most distinguished rock & pop artists to have ever graced our eyes, ears and record players.
Many of our late stellar idols had at least one thing in common. From David Bowie toPrince to George Michael, they all shared a tremendous penchant and commitment towards smashing the fragile ego of masculine stereotypes, flexing genders strict binary, and denouncing sexuality as something ever to be ashamed of. This has lead to the three remaining emblematic figures within the queer community, through life and after death.
Bowie's fame sprouted not only from his prolific musical career, but also his bravery to collapse expectations through self portrait and stage persona. Dylan Jones has described his time on TOTP's as a 'dangerous figure on British TV at a point when television didn't do danger'. Bowie was elaborate to say the least; expelling his concoction of straight, gay, masculine and feminine persona's, whirl-pooling into a state that always remained an undefinable limbo. Fans were able to titillate waves of desire, a rejuvenation of the human condition and sexual vigour. Sporting heels, glitter body suits and a full face of slap was not what the common man was admitted to model. Bowieunapologetically exampled the fortitude to dismantle the sex categorisation of clothing in the 70's, making it human. His gender bending wasn't just beneficial to men aspiring for sexual liberation: He fought hard against any easy definitions, repelling labels with remarkable result, as Gucci designer Frida Giannini comments: "[His] shameless androgyny helped women express their masculine strength without losing their feminine glamour and sensuality". His alter egos flourished in style, as he paved the way for all listeners to shed their formal code of conducts and embrace his androgynous, ostentatious presentation of gender moral; striking the mainstream with full force and razing ideologies that had ruled.
A second avant-garde in normalising queerness in music was the most recent and wistfully lost George Michael. Michael's was outed by his arrest for 'lewd acts' in a public place, seized by an undercover police officer. This was in no means a hindrance toMichael's work. He used his experiences to propel the queer image shamelessly into our living rooms; positioning sex at the forefront of his brazen sexual narratives and camp portrayed disco music video 'Outside'. Michaels caricatured the drama of the situation and its fascicle idea that he should engulf utter shame. He followed up with comments in a coming out interview with CNN: "I don't feel ashamed and I don't believe I should", continuing his brash and flippant attitude towards gay sex and its media coverage.George Michael evolved from someone who hid his sexuality due to his mother's fears, claiming "Aids was the predominant feature of being gay in the 1980's and early 90's as far as any parent was concerned", before embellishing self love and bold gratification of self worth, "I'm a dirty filthy fucker and if you can’t deal with it, you can’t deal with it”.
Likewise, a final artist whom teased heterosexuality and gender solidarity from its pedestal was Sylvester. He emerged as a cosmic disco singer who brought 'Do You Wanna Funk' and 'Dance (Disco Heat)' to the international stages, ruling dance charts for a massive 6 weeks in the late 70's. From his childhood church where he was ostracised for his homosexuality, to his record label meetings, where he was pressured to 'butch up a bit', Sylvester's bombastic and androgynous figure has been assailed in his private life and career. However, this never stopped him showing up to meetings in full drag. Despite his explicit queer bravado and gender fluidity expression, his passion and music were embraced fantastically; before entering the Dance Music Hall Of Fame in 2005. Sadly, Sylvester passed away with AIDS in 1988.
Thus, the music industry in the past was adorned by male figures stirring the pot of the conventional artwork. Whereas fresher artists of today are exploding in a more female direction. As social tolerance arguably increases, groups producing music of a queerer disposition are clawing their way out of every crevice onto the mainstream playing field. LGBT music has branched off into an almost entire genre of its own; ample in burgeoning content of complex sexual flexibility created by artists who have no desire to taint themselves for anyone. This music is consequential in reaching a wider scope audience within a colourful, growing industry.
For one of our most recent artist to be catapulted into super stardom, excessive confidence and innate zeal was not always bountiful, until the non sexualised, gender-queer alter ego, 'Christine and the Queens' was born. Named after drag artists fromSoho, Heloise Letissier was allowed to unmask a serene sense of sexual awakening, the abandonment of conformity, and most importantly, fluidity of identity, all down to the adoption of this personality. The power of the androgynous microcosm of herself, as she claims in her song 'IT'; "I wanted symbolically with this song to take the place of a guy", as well as her lyrics "Cos I won, I'm a man now" exuding an honest narrative and the dexterity she doesn't believe herself would be fulfilled alone. Despite sporadic and exotic performances that Letissier describes as 'a little boy who wants to be Beyonce', the mainstream audience has lapped it up due to its subtle integration; with international ears cascading the most admiration and her biggest headline to be set in the US. Thus,Christine and the Queens has knitted the dichotomy of these two worlds together through the addictive reverence of pop music and its subsequent culture.
A fellow artist who followed suit in producing exquisite pop music riddled with beat dribbles and hooking tastes is the once frontier of Anthony and the Johnsons, now known as ANOHNI, an open transgender woman. Her emancipating track 'Drone Bomb Me' is infested with dark beats and silky synth drops, all coated by ANOHNI's epicentre vocals. She has spoken outwardly and blatantly, generating much needed discussions surrounding trans issues, stating as laconically as possible the importance of pronouns in an interview with Flavourwire: "I think words are important to call a person by their chosen gender is to honour their spirit, their life and contribution". All of which exhibits the power of a musical platform:
Last but definitely not least, we are brought to an innovator who's ascend up the pop ladder has been consumed so earnestly by so many it's hard to keep track of her ever budding successes. Shura's bloom into the music industry came about as her record'Touch', enriched with analogue synths along with the roots of a break up embedded in its foundations was plunged onto Youtube, receiving over 27 million views to present. Her home-made video that laudably presents same sex intimacy with all the spaces in between, emboldens queer love visually, flushing out left over hate with shameless exposure. This video allowed Shura the traction she deserved, blowing up into a huge queer-pop solo artist and an idol many were able to relate to.
Therefore, this radical procedure of creating normality with androgyny, queerness and gender fluidity is continuing to make sporadic and behemoth impact within the industry. As music, questionably our most expressive outlet, is used as a platform to share pain, anxieties and liberties, and allow listeners to feel safer about sexuality, that still receives hatred from those privileged enough to face it with ignorance. Without those striding forward in the limelight, less would feel as invigorated as we do down here, and thus is why celebrities perusing these avenues is as important as it is.
#shura#christine and the queens#david bowie#BOWIE#george michael#SYLVESTER#ANHONI#MUSIC#ARTICLE#REVIEW#NEW#OLD#PAST#PRESENT#LIFE#DEATH
10 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
gotenda
today.
iconlangford
welcome
teganillustration
TEGAN MEREDITH ILLUSTRATION
kawaii-stufff-blog
Kawaii
jordaned-blog
amusement.