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archived-and-moving · 2 years

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cut sokeefitz roadtrip content :)

a/n: this is my first draft style writing and i'm aware that the pace is too slow (which is why it was cut) so uh. please don't think this is my writing at its peak i'm begging you- also don't worry to anybody else who thinks having san diego in the section title twice is weird because i'm right there with you lmao. not my fault geographical names are weird though

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Day 1: 6:22am - University of California San Diego, La Jolla, San Diego, California

“Get up already, sleepyhead,” Fitz yanked on Keefe’s wrist again with both hands, even going as far as to dig his heels in as he leaned back.

Keefe groaned into his - well, Fitz’s - pillow. “Fuck off, it’s spring break, let me sleeeeeeep,”

To Keefe’s credit, he really did look like all he wanted to do was sleep. His hair was always messy, but usually it was in an artful way that took an extra hour of him hogging the bathroom to achieve. Right now, it was messy because of bed head. Part of Fitz suspected that Keefe had also twisted around in a way that cocooned himself in the sheets on purpose. And normally, he didn’t show this much resistance to Fitz insisting that they had to get up and get ready for the day.

Did Fitz have a hunch as to why Keefe was being extra stubborn today? Yes. Was he going to blurt it outright? Hell no. Reminding him out loud would be cruel, Fitz thought.

“Yeah, but do you remember what nice thing we have planned for this morning?” It was a genuine question. He couldn’t tell if Keefe’s memories were swamped by foggy fatigue or not.

Keefe rolled over, his back sinking a bit into the mattress. The corner of his lips had a bit of shine to it; drool he hadn’t wiped off his face yet, Fitz presumed. Ice blue eyes glossy with the remains of deep sleep struggled to maintain eye contact. The eyelashes framing them drifted lower again, eyes halfway open, staring somewhere lower on Fitz’s body - his mouth or neck, probably. Keefe had a habit of staring at those, even when he wasn’t only half awake. “No?” Keefe mumbled.

Fitz’s lips twitched into a halfway-suppressed smile. God, Keefe was so cute when he was tired. “Hiking with Sophie, remember?”

Fitz watched the memories come rolling back to Keefe. Watched his eyebrows shoot up and his eyes widen and clear, watched him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, watched him barely manage to bolt out of bed without tripping over the blankets tangled between his legs. It was a bit like watching him come to life, in all honesty.

“Right! Right right right, how did I forget,” Keefe’s bubbliness trailed off into murmurings to himself. His hands absentmindedly fluttered up to his hair, pulling the blond strands into something that sort of resembled his usual style. “What time is it?”

“The first alarm I set went off at 6:00,” Fitz raised his left wrist up to his line of sight. Dim light peaking through the blinds lit up his watch just enough to read the time. Real gold rimmed the protective glass and clock face below it, with two thin black hands pointing towards different numbers - the big hand towards 6, and the little hand somewhere between the 32nd and 33rd tick mark. “So I could get ready for the day before 6:25, which is when I set the second alarm, since I was originally planning on giving you five minutes to eat and stuff before I told you to go take a quick shower and at least try to be fast about doing your hair. But you looked really peaceful and I felt bad about waking you up so soon, so I gave you an extra five minutes. And then it took about 2 minutes to get you out of bed. And now we’re here, having this conversation, and the time’s approaching 6:33am.”

Fitz waited for Keefe to nitpick him for dragging him out of bed so early - early enough that the shadows were shades of grayish blue, muting the color palette of everything in the room. Early enough that the sun hadn’t even risen up into the sky to taint the light from outside shades of marigold.

Rolling his eyes, Keefe raised his arms above his head and clasped his fingers together, leaning back and popping his spine once or twice. “Gotcha. You don’t have to specify am, it’s easy to tell it’s morning.” He let one arm drop back to his side, and waved the other at their surroundings.

Fitz glanced around their dorm just to indulge him.

Neon painter’s tape stuck firmly to the floor divided Fitz’s half of the room from Keefe’s, the line only deviating from its straightness to outline a path to the bathroom. They didn’t really need it anymore - its original purpose was to make sure Keefe’s messiness didn’t leak into Fitz’s space, since it’d drove his neat-freak tendencies insane in the first month or so of being roommates. But then they’d started stealing each other’s clothes and borrowing each other’s things and the lines between what was his and what was Keefe’s mostly blended into this is ours.

Ours being the sticky notes and highlighters and ballpoint pens and Tichronda #2 pencils and protein bars stuffed in the door organizer; the gray bean bags Fitz had bought that Keefe had scribbled zendoodles into with sharpie and some of Keefe’s shower products that Fitz used too every now and then; the dark hardwood floors and pale neutral walls decorated with Keefe’s paintings and photos of everything from Sophie holding her hamster Iggy to Fitz’s family grinning around a campfire; the consistently comforting atmosphere neither of them had ever really gotten in their own expansive rooms at home. Ours.

The only exceptions to this broad ours were few and in-between. Personal devices, obviously. Mr. Snuggles, a sparkly red dragon stuffie, was Fitz’s and Fitz’s alone, no doubts about it. Fitz probably would’ve had more things that were solely his if he weren’t more on the minimalist side, but that wasn’t the case. Keefe had a bit more in terms of personal belongings: a so-ugly-it’s-cute green anteater plush named Mrs. Stinkbottom with a pink and white polka dot bowtie around her neck, so many art supplies that Fitz couldn’t even name them all, hair gel and other hair products Fitz didn’t use, and, of course, a collection of random things he insisted were pranking supplies.

The entirety of it all, of this room they called home, was tidier than usual. A lot of Keefe’s side of the room had been packed away into the spots they were actually supposed to go, or into a roller suitcase. At least the fabric pattern is based on paint splatters. All the paint stains that got cleaned off Keefe’s desk last night can be here in spirit. Most of Fitz’s stuff was also packed away into a roller suitcase, but his was just a deep teal with gold accents. Not nearly as fun as Keefe’s. The rest was still hung up on the walls.

“Earth to Fitzy!” Keefe snapped his fingers repeatedly by his ear.

Fitz jolted back to reality. “Sorry, what?”

Keefe flashed him a relieved smile. “Good, you stopped getting all quietly sentimental. Anyways. You mentioned food - are we eating breakfast before we go, and if we are, can you please please pleeeeeease make pancakes?” Keefe clapped his hands together in front of his chin, uplaying his pout enough that it was kind of comical.

Luckily for Keefe, comical was part of his charm, and Fitz was very weak in the face of puppy eyes from either of his partners. Or his sister.

Fitz sighed. “Fine, but if you’re not out of the shower and done with your hair by the time I get back, all you’re getting is a protein bar or two.”

Their dorm room didn’t have a kitchen, but there were some twins about ten minutes away that had turned the kitchen in their apartment into a “community kitchen”. Everybody should be able to make their comfort foods, was what Tam - the brother of the pair - had said when Fitz had asked, Why’d you two do this? Fitz had partly been wondering for the sake of their safety. Tam quickly added that they’d installed a key-lock door between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment, so the rest of their place was off limits, and that he’d installed home security cameras all over. And all of it is staff-approved, my sister Linh checked. He’d probably meant it as a threat to behave, but it’d soothed Fitz’s worries.

Keefe’s facial expression turned playfully serious as he nodded. With a cheesy salute, and an even cheesier “Yessir!”, Keefe dashed off to the bathroom.

Fitz shook his head fondly as he walked out the door.

Right before he shut it, he heard footsteps scramble out their bathroom accompanied by a shout of, “Shit, I forgot my clothes!”

Fitz couldn’t help but laugh.

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Bestie my soul has left my body and ascended above the atmosphere. This Keefitz content has absolutely killed me in the best way possible. I have sooooo many thoughts and all of them are so so good about this. Like argh!!!

Fitz's exact planning on waking up and setting alarms, then being soft for Keefe and letting him sleep longer? Adorable. Keefe and Fitz are at the exact ends of the organization spectrum and you did such a good job showing it here. Literally all these details are canon to me. Keefe and Fitz being roommates in the Elite Levels and doing this? Yeah. It happened. It's happening.

"...early enough that the shadows were shades of grayish blue, muting the color palette of everything in the room. Early enough that the sun hadn’t even risen up into the sky to taint the light from outside shades of marigold."

I really didn't want to paste a whole paragraph but I couldn't help myself. This description is too incredible. Like I understand where you're coming from with the pacing but dude. I cannot articulate how marvelous the description of the lighting is in this paragraph alone. Like the whole excerpt is like this and it brings my brain so much joy. The comparisons of gray blues and marigolds paints your picture so well, 11/10.

"But then they’d started stealing each other’s clothes and borrowing each other’s things and the lines between what was his and what was Keefe’s mostly blended into this is ours."

Screaming crying throwing up. I simply think that they are a special flavor of gay your honor, and I love them so very much for that. Like yes!!!! Keefe and Fitz are totally sharing each others' clothing and other stuff!!!!! They deserve it!!!!

"Ours being the sticky notes and highlighters and ballpoint pens and Tichronda #2 pencils and protein bars stuffed in the door organizer..."

omg....they were roommates. This has been established but argh!!!! argh they're roommates and boyfriends and they love each other and share each others' things!!!!!

"a so-ugly-it’s-cute green anteater plush named Mrs. Stinkbottom with a pink and white polka dot bowtie around her neck..."

😳😳😳😳😳 (/pos)

I just!!!! This is so so so amazing dude. So incredible. I love this so much. All of the details about keefitz sharing a room, Tam and Linh with the community kitchen, Fitz being a softy because Sophie, Keefe, and Biana all have them wrapped around their fingers. All of it. Every single part of this is incredible and I love this more than anything.

#submission #kotlc #sokeefitz week #izzy tag!!!

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 3 years

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Portrait of a Dangerous Man🎨4

Warnings: (series) non-consent sex and rape; slow creep; cucking; (this chapter) only plot hehe

This is dark!mob!Clark Kent x reader and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: Your dream of having your work hung in an art show comes true but your first buyer is not all he seems to be.

Note: I’m at my tipping point, I swear. I’m dealing with everything in our household, new bed (delayed delivery yay!), cleaning, cooking, dog walking, and working. My only escape are my fics and this weekend I’m telling everyone to fuck off so I can do the writeathon... but sorry for the rant, enjoy more Clark.

Thanks to everyone for reading and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 As usual, I’d appreciate if you let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Wednesday trickled by like sand in a glass. You could hardly keep your eyes open as you typed away and a double espresso shot was the only thing that saw you through your hours at the gallery. Vanessa was excited for her next event and already asking after some new pieces from you. You promised her some from your storage unit to stave her off as you held in your yawns.

You collapsed into bed that night beside Marcus. He complained about his day until he drifted off and you followed suit shortly after. You awoke with a decision, the echoes of your boyfriend’s gripes in your head and heart. You hated how miserable his job made him, how dull your own was. It felt like there was nothing else but the almighty dollar.

You called Clark after an email to Jim, your nerves alight in anticipation of the disgruntled reply. It didn’t matter. You were done. You didn’t need to worry about the all caps messages and curt zoom calls.

“Hey,” Clark picked up, he sounded out of breath.

“Oh, hey, sorry, it’s me,” you swiveled in your chair, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Nope, just getting in a work out,” he grunted, “you’re not bugging me if you have good news for me.”

“I think… I do,” you forced out, “I just sent in my resignation.”

“Mmm, you don’t sound… happy,” he hummed.

“I am, I think I’m just processing it,” you replied, “I said I’d let you know today so I’m letting you know.”

“Well, how soon can you be here?” he asked.

“Today?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I guess, I could leave as soon as you want me,” you said.

“I’ll send a car,” he intoned, “I’ll give the driver your number, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah,” your voice almost squeaked, “I can do that.”

“Alright, sweetheart, see ya soon.”

The line cut out and you lowered your phone slowly. You stared at Outlook and the new email icon along the taskbar. You closed the laptop and stood. You could worry about the fallout later, right now, you had to get ready for another day of painting.

🎨

It was starting to feel like deja vu every time you arrived at Clark’s house. You got out and thanked the drive, Jeremy, before he drove off. The doors opened before you got to the top of the steps and your host was already dressed in the same outfit he wore for each session. His hair was neat but his beard was even thicker than before.

“I think you can tell I’m a little antsy to start,” he chuckled, “how are you, sweetheart?”

That pet name caught in your mind again. It might just be a habit of his. Nothing more than an absent-minded word.

“Me too, honestly,” you smiled, “but I have a weird question for you.”

“Ask away,” he said as he walked with you through the foyer.

“The beard… you want that in the portrait or--”

“Oh, ha, yeah,” he ran his fingers along his jawline, “I guess I wasn’t thinking. You’re the artist, what do you think?”

“Well, erm, either way is fine,” you said, “I was just… wondering. I’m not even close to starting on, uh, you yet. I mean, right now I’m just working on the background and basic shapes.”

“I’ll let you make the call when you get there,” he said, “say the word and it’s gone.”

“Alright,” you came to the top of the stairs and he pointed you ahead of him.

He followed you as you entered and you went about filling the jar with water and resituating the set up. He sat as you mixed and chose your brush. You climbed the ladder and peered around the canvas at him. He took on the same pose as usual and you dipped the bristles into the pigment. You could make a happy life of this.

🎨

Clark shifted and cleared his throat. You rolled your wrist and glanced back over at him as you drew your hand back from the canvas. He braced the chair and pushed himself up.

“How about a break?” he asked as he shook out his arms, “back’s a bit stiff.”

“Sure,” you said, “I think I could sit down for a moment.”

You took a step down the rung of the ladder but your toe slipped and suddenly your palette was against your chest. You slid down backwards as Clark rushed over and barely kept you from toppling the entire thing over. You laughed at yourself as he righted you and looked down at your paint-streaked shirt.

“Jesus,” you muttered.

“You okay?” he asked as he kept his hand on your upper arm, “be careful.”

“Yeah, I’m-- clumsy, is all,” you carefully pulled away and set down your brush and palette.

“Come on, sit,” he pulled up the stool and planted it before you, “take a minute.”

As you sat, he stretched his arms over his head and then out to the sides. He paced around the other side of the table, long strides as he worked the cramps from his long legs. He stopped and came up to play with a brush as you leaned an elbow on the table.

“Well, I did have another offer for you,” he said, “I was thinking of waiting but might as well ask now.”

“Oh?” you raised your brows curiously.

He swished a slender brush in the air then lowered it and picked at the tip.

“I’m having a get together on Saturday, some business friends and the like,” he said as he set the brush back with the rest, “it won’t be work. You’ve earned some time off. You can even bring the boyfriend.”

“Saturday?” you pondered, “I’m usually at the gallery on Saturdays.”

“It would be great networking,” he said, “and I already told all my friends about you. They’re excited to see your work. It will almost be like a viewing and it’s only right the artist is there.”

“I could make it work,” you mulled, “Marcus would love to come back.” You snickered, “he loves this place.”

“It’s a nice house,” he said casually, “a bit big for one person… hence, the party.”

“I’ll put it in my calendar,” you stood and slid your palette closer and cleaned it off to remix the mess of paints.

“Great,” he said as he rounded the table and brushed close to you, “it’ll be nice to look at a mug besides mine, huh?”

You laughed as you squeezed out the dark paint and nodded, “ha, sure.”

🎨

The rest of your week was spent much the same. Jeremy drove you to Clark’s and you went up to the studio to continue your work between small talk and silences that grew so thick you had to break them with mindless comments. It wasn’t enough to focus on the path of your brush as the man tugged at your attention.

Marcus was excited when you told him about the party. He raved about how he needed to let loose, about how much expensive alcohol he was going to drink, and the awesome backflip he was gonna do into the pool. You reminded him, he hadn’t done anything like that since college but he swore he could still do it.

You didn’t share the sentiment. You were anxious. You were flattered to be invited but despite what Clark said, it still felt like work. His friends were going to be there and he apparently was trying to sell them on your art.

You didn’t realise until after you hit send on your email, but you put your livelihood in this man’s hands. A man, you reminded yourself, who was little more than a stranger.

On Friday, a day you were thankfully not called to the mansion to teeter on the ladder and paint, the buzzer rang and drew you off the couch from amid your YouTube binge. The man on the speaker called back that he had a delivery and you let him up. You took the box from him, the thick silver ribbon giving away the sender even before you could read the tag.

Inside you found a black dress with little gemstones set into the fabric like stars in the sky. It was nicer than anything you’d ever owned before and a pair of silver shoes were tucked in beneath the outfit. You took the shoes from the tissue paper and something else shifted in the bottom.

You reached in and revealed a velvet box from the depths of overzealous stuffing. You opened the lid and found a simple chain of diamonds. You gaped in disbelief. They were real. The fake ones didn’t look so nice.

You phone chimed before you could even think to call Clark. It was as if he could see you. You answered and your voice warbled pathetically.

“Hi, I was just gonna call,” you touched your throat as it constricted.

“Yeah? I got the notification that it was delivered,” he said, “you like it?”

“It’s too much,” you gulped out, “really, I can’t--”

“I want you to look nice. I want you to feel good and have a good time,” he said, “I feel like you’ve been working so hard. You need a chance to just let it all go.”

“Look, I…” you were uncertain how to handle it. It was more than generosity but you felt wrong denying it as much as you did accepting it, “I’ve never had a boss buy me diamonds. At least let me give those back.”

“Boss?” he mused on the word, “I suppose, but you gotta dress the part now, sweetheart. You’re gonna rub shoulders with a lot of rich dicks like me. Pardon my language.”

“I didn’t realise it was such an upscale thing,” you put the velvet box down and turned to sit on the couch beside the large box. You played with the silver ribbon and chewed your lip.

“Sweetheart, it’s nothing, you got this,” he said, “trust me, if you can win me over, my friends will be child’s play.”

“Mhmmm,” you stared at the tv mindlessly, “Clark?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you doing all this?”

There was silence and you heard him sigh then a subtle metallic click.

“Because I can. And you’re a talented artist. Didn’t all the big painters used to have patrons back in the day? You know, Da Vinci and all that.”

“Sure, I guess--”

“Look, sweetheart, I’m glad you like the dress, I gotta go.”

He hung up abruptly and you turned your phone to stare at it in confusion. You were starting to get a bad feeling and that little voice in that back of your head, that little sabotaging bitch, whispered in your ear. No, you wouldn’t let your self-doubt get the best of you this time. You either grabbed this chance or you spent the rest of your life doing menial work and painting the world as it passed you by.

🎨

Friday night, Marcus couldn’t stop rambling about the party the next day. You just couldn’t get over the tickle in your chest, the same one you got before job interviews and doctor’s appointments. You were on edge, even as you spent your stress on him, your body writhing against his as you panted and pouted. It had been a while since you fucked. All the work and the stress had just let things slip past you. Maybe with your new gig, you could get back to those early days when it was all you wanted to do.

You slept soundly. You blamed the sex and the momentous week. You got up, had a lazy brunch time meal, and beat Marcus at MarioKart several times over before he convinced you it was time to get ready.

You pulled on the gifted outfit after fighting with your make-up and hair. You gave a little tada spin to Marcus and he lifted his brow as he tried to figure out his tie.

“Wow, where’d you get that?” he purred, “fuck, let’s be late.”

He ran his hands over your hips as you neared him and fixed his tie for him. You giggled and planted a kiss on his lips.

“Jeremy’s on his way,” you warned, “I don't wanna bite the hand that feeds.”

“Oh, and it feeds you well,” Marcus chirped, “you think he’ll let me have a spin in the McClaren?”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t. I don’t need to scrape you off the side of the road,” you took your phone as the screen lit up, “come on, he’s here.”

“Fuck, babe, really, you’re gonna make me follow you out of here with your ass looking like that?”

“Stop,” you tittered, “you know, there might be more sellers tonight?”

“Oh yeah? I guess you’ll be paying a mortgage soon enough.”

“Me?” you scoffed.

“Sure, I’ll be your sugar baby,” he kidded.

“Well, baby is accurate,” you teased as you stepped onto the elevator, “please, just behave.”

🎨

You were surprised to see Vanessa at the party but reassured to see a familiar face. Clark had been distracted by his other guests and you did your best to mingle, letting Marcus take the lead until he was distracted by another guest’s Rolex and started asking too many questions. If you did start selling art to these kinds, you suspected you’d be paying for a lot of overpriced brands. That was a worry for another time.

You stood with Vanessa and a man she introduced you to. Bruce Wayne was tall and his dark-hair was combed back neatly as he spoke over the glass of wine in his hand. You were bored of the Monet-Manet argument, one you’d heard a million times from the stubborn gallery owner, and you were at your limit of socialisation.

You excused yourself and put down your unfinished drink on a table. You looked around but couldn’t see Marcus anywhere. The last you saw him, he was with Clark but you couldn’t find him either. You frowned and wandered between the pairs and trios gabbing around the room.

Just past the bar, you looked back and still no sign of either man. You huffed and your heels clicked into the foyer and to the stairs. You’d go to the studio and sit for a moment and collect yourself. You just needed to take a breath.

You climbed the stairs slowly, the din of the party floating up behind you. You came to the top but stopped as your eyes were drawn to a pair of open doors opposite the studio. You neared and stayed against the wall as you peeked inside. Marcus admired an old-six shooter and spun the barrel.

“You got everything, man, I swear,” you hid behind the door frame and listened.

“Eh, it’s all just things,” Clark replied, “I bought that from an auctioneer down in Texas. A verified antique but it just hangs here. Not good for much but looking at it.”

“Dude, what I wouldn’t do to live here? Have cool guns and even cooler cars? Shit, you know how fucked it is that my lady is making bank and I’m over here with my dick in my hands? I mean, I’m proud of her but… I mean, if I could get paid thousands for drawing, I would’ve tried to learn.”

“She’s good. Dedicated,” Clark remarked, “she’s special. Worth more than money.”

Marcus hummed and you heard the barrel click back into the place. Neither of the men spoke as you heard something shift and Clark cleared his throat. Subtle footsteps moved around the room and you pressed yourself to the wall. You should leave and let them talk but you couldn’t help but be curious.

“Isn’t she?” Clark prodded.

“Y-yeah, but… I don’t know. I just wish I had more,” Marcus said, “I probably sound like a chump, huh?”

“You can’t have it all,” Clark replied.

“Says the guy who can buy anything and everything,” Marcus moped.

“Oh?” Clark intoned, “so… how about it then? Fifty thousand.”

“For what?” Marcus chuckled nervously.

“Her,” Clark answered.

“Her-- I… my girlfriend?” he sputtered.

“If money can buy me anything, that’s what I want,” Clark said firmly, “it’s a one time offer… whether or not you agree to it, I’m gonna fuck her.”

You skin crawled at his words and you covered your mouth in disgust and shock. You inched closer to the door to hear better as you waited for the response.

“One hundred,” Marcus said.

“Seventy-five,” Clark countered.

“That’s my girlfriend, dude,” Marcus hissed.

“And yet you’re haggling with me over her. Eighty.”

You tore yourself from the wall before you could hear anymore. You felt hollow and heavy all at once. Your eyes were glossy as you scurried over to the studio doors and pushed the left one open. You unhooked the diamond necklace and tossed it onto the paint-stained palette and rolled up your brushes.

You stormed over blindly to the easel and pushed it over. It clattered to the floor loudly but you were already out the door and halfway down the stairs. You gripped your clutch and the bundle of paintbrushes tightly as you continued on outside and the blurred outlines of luxury cars passed you by.

You stomped up the long drive in your heels as you flicked away tears and pulled out your phone. You knew it was too good to be true. Any of it; your art, Clark, Marcus. You weren’t good for anyone unless they could get something out of you.

#clark kent #dark clark kent #dark!clark kent #clark kent x reader #fic #series #dark fic #dark!fic #superman #portrait of a dangerous man #dc #dcu #mob au #au #mob!au

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haikyuuu-r-us · 4 years

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Erm okay so I don't usually do asks fr like that but may I please ask Alpha waka and omega reader. I saw you did omegaverse idk but yeah. Maybe fluff it not idk whatever works with you 🥺🥺👉🏽👈🏽🥺😳

Pt.2: https://haikyuuu-r-us.tumblr.com/post/625551637967175680/unofficial-game-alpha-ushijima-wakatoshi-x

Hell yeah, I do omegaverse, girl that's my JAAAM thanks for asking! <3

Edit: This is now titled- 'Unofficial Game' and this is pt. 1 ❤️

- Its no surprise that Ushijima Wakatoshi of Shiratorizawa was an incredible alpha. He was agile and strong. He was the Ace and also the Captain of his team.

- He was an Alpha.

- His team was highly regarded and respected. His team respected him highly. By some, he was considered a prodigy.

- Every move he made was calculated to bring him closer to his goal, no distractions allowed.

- He had a goal and he was hell-bent on reaching it.

-It's no surprise to your fellow students to find that you were an omega. You were rather meek and shy. You kept to yourself on the best of days and purposefully isolated yourself on worse ones.

- You were an omega.

- You had few friends though none went to school here. You were accepted into the school due to exceptional grades and recommendations. The school was seeking to expand into the arts, and in that aspect, you were an excellent starting point.

- You won medals in competitions. Never landing below third. You never cared for your medals. In your eyes, it was all subjective. Not to mention you had never been extremely competitive anyhow.

- you only desired to see your skills grow and to inspire others to follow their own dreams.

Essentially, the two of you never should have met, be in any sort of friendship let alone a relationship. The differences were too large, the first years would say. If only they were privy to how you met.

"Wah?? So you're the new transfer student?" You glanced up from the hallways tiled flooring to search for the voice. When he waved at you and began to jog towards you with a lazy grin marking his features, you slunk back into your oversized school jacket.

"Yeah...uhm, haha, that's me." You tucked your hair behind your ear nervously. 'He's an alpha.' Although his scent was a weird one, you found his constant seeking you out every morning just to say hi rather endearing. It'd be lying to say you didn't form an itty bitty crush on him at the beginning of your friendship.

As time went on he became your guide, and a strong brother-like figure to you, showing you parts of the school you had been too nervous to explore by yourself and encouraging you to take pictures when you asked if it was allowed. You were inspired by what you were seeing, you absolutely had to have a reference for later. He continued to guide you, most definitely spinning false and grandeur stories about how each place came to be. He didn't need to be right, it made you laugh and it kept you interested; You stayed interested even when you got to how the gym was built by angels who deemed volleyball a holy sport above all others.

"Liar." You giggled, covering your mouth with your hand as tears sprang to your eyes at his overdramatic antics. "WHAT? Omega-chaaan! I would never, E V E R! Lie to you!" He shook his head furiously and wagged a finger in your face. He was about to start again but a calm voice interrupted.

"Oh, there you are. Coach wants to start early with practice." The beta had blonde hair and a bored look on his face.

"Aw, what? That’s bull- wah! Omega-chan come watch me practice!" He cried waving his arms frantically as you thought it over.

"I dunno," you eyed the beta male wearily.

"It's perfect yeah? See, you can practice the Anatoly of us while we play!"

"I think you mean anatomy-"

"Yeah, same thing!"

"I don't even know what that other thing is- stop pushing I'm going, 'Tori!"

He ushered you in and motioned towards the bleachers. He was right you supposed. This would be a good way to practice.

At you were good at being a wallflower and despite the beta male who ignored your presence, you found yourself comfortable knowing that Tendou would step in should someone give you any issues.

Wakatoshi stretched quietly in the changing room. Nodding silently at Tendou when he entered and quickly, as though someone was going to give him a medal, stripped himself of his school uniform and into slightly more comfortable training clothes. He was being sloppy and nearly tripping when he pulled his shorts up.

His brow quirked down but he said nothing, figuring it was more nonsense from the Guess Monster.

He left the changing room and just as he began to walk over to the storage closet to grab the volleyballs, a new scent filled his senses. Though unnoticed to himself and the other Alpha and betas around him, his pupils dilated ever so slightly.

His head turned from the handle of the closet to assess the gym. There was an omega here. He could smell her. Somewhere, he raked his gaze across the room and a slight shift of fingers was all it took to have his gaze latch onto you like a magnet to a fridge.

Your form was small. Knees up to your chest with a book resting on top of them. A pencil clenched in between your fingers. You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. Your chosen seat was high up in the bleachers, hidden ever so slightly behind support that jutted out of the wall.

He breathed in your scent slowly, allowing the warm sweet scent to roll over his palette. His pupils dilated and adjusted, connecting the sight of you to your soothing scent.

Omega.

He didn't realize he was making his way closer to you until his body was faced with the prospect of climbing up the bleachers. This time when his gaze landed on you, wide, doe-like orbs stared back. Quickly almost fearfully, your body tensed and you looked away.

Knows her place.

He narrowed his gaze in a challenging way. Who let you into the gym? Omegas were most definitely not allowed at any other time than official games. They potentially could be major distractions at the very least. You shifted nervously, and your fingers flipped through a few pages.

Her fingers were shaking.

"Ne~Omega-chan you have to watch!"

Of course, it had been Tendou. Of course, he would let in an omega.

He turned away, ignoring your presence, for now, Tendou would cause mayhem otherwise, especially if he thought you'd be forced to leave.

The game went well. In fact, Tendou was most definitely showing off the entire time, calling out for your praise and attention.

Though he didn't find himself drowning in curiosity, he still listened closely when Semi asked Tendou about the shy omega.

"That your omega, 'Tori?" That was a new nickname.

"Nah, she’s my friend! She's shy and stuff so I don't think she had anyone else. She looked lonely so ' voila '!"

"You're supposed to form friendships through common interests and tastes-"

Tendou stared in confusion. Semi sighed and rubbed his temples. Reon and Goshiki piped up out of curiosity helping to explain exactly what Semi meant.

Lakatos didn't bother to hear the rest. Instead, he went to join the first years in the gym, supervising them to ensure they didn’t fool around instead of cleaning. While they scrambled to gather everything up he searched for the omega, despite her lingering scent, he saw nothing. Then again, before he could complete his scan, a volleyball rolled and bumped into his ankle.

He kneeled and picked it up, testing the pressure in his hands. He was about to toss the ball back to the first year who dropped it, but he caught sight of you from his peripheral, and before he even fully realized why his inner alpha commanded him to do it, he found himself lining up to set.

Throw. Run. Jump. Slam the ball. Hard. Harder than needed. Put force into it. Strongest Alpha. The strongest.

His knees bent when he landed. The echo of the ball landing was still reverberating throughout the gym, the air was thick with unknown tension and no first-year dared to speak. The ball slowly rolled back towards him, and once more he picked it up. Except for this time he turned and handed the ball to the kid that dropped it. Instinctually his gaze searched for your face among the first years who know were shutting everything down.

You were looking at him too. The moment he locked eyes with your own, you shot your gaze downwards to stare at your feet.

She's respectful.

Slowly and shakily staring at the other third years locking up, you gave a weak chuckle and muttered softly, "uhm, so I'm assuming you're the captain?"

The moment you shifted your gaze back his spine straightened further and his chest puffed out slightly. Unnoticeable to anyone but himself. You were... Affecting him.

"Indeed." His eyes drifted across your form. He was never one to really notice omegas despite being an Alpha male himself and having plenty of fangirls, he never really, truly noticed any of them. He especially never bothered to assess their form like he was currently doing to you. His eyes slid to your face again, watching as your lips moved as you spoke, the words barely processing.

Her scent.

After receiving no answer to Tendou's whereabouts you glanced at his face again, though with more caution this time.

Her eyes.

Little did you know, the way your eyes peeked at him beneath your lashes, the way your brows pinched together and especially the way your lips parted in concern, all were sending his Alpha into a tailspin. His heart began to steadily beat faster, the same tempo would beat before a good matchup.

It was only the snicker from his right-hand side that brought him out of it.

Tendou.

"Don't worry about him omega-chan! He's just dense." You laughed nervously attempted to shift the attention back to Tendou instead of yourself.

That's right, you were there for Tendou.

He realized late that night, before he went to bed, that the real reason his Alpha demanded that one spike, the real reason his adrenaline couldn't seem to leave him be, even hours later, that his Alpha was proving to you, convincing you really, he, Waktoshi Ushijima, was the strongest. He was the captain. The Ace. His breaths picked up slightly when he recalled the way your lips formed the word 'captain'.

All he knew now was that he wanted you to call him 'alpha' next.

(Looks like I got a bit carried away with this one lol)

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!!#ushiwaka #ushijima x reader #ushijima x you #ushijima wakatoshi #ushijima hcs #xreader #haikyuuxreader #omegaverse #haikyuu omegaverse #Alpha/beta/omega dynamics #alphawakatoshi #omega reader #alpha/beta/omega dynamics x reader #alpha/beta/omega verse #alpha/omega #alpha/beta/omega au #alpha/beta/omega dynamics

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baeklooming-day · 3 years

Text

Meet me at the game arcade | Baekhyun

𓍢 Summary: There is this boy at the game arcade who is determined to win not only the plushie, but you together with it.

Masterlist

𓍢 Mini-playlist 💖 Moodboard by @kjikaila

𓍢 Genre: 90s!AU, Fluff, Cheeky Baek is back (you know the thing!!)

𓍢 Word Count: 6.6k

𓍢 A/N: Big credit to my beloved Tokyo, because I used to hang out at game arcades after school and often cute boys could be found there. 😇

Purple-ish, violet-ish, even blue-ish looking twinkling beams were soaking through the two lonely, candy floss bearing resemblance to fluffish clouds which appeared to cover the city beneath for a little while.

It wasn’t even summer anymore, but the sun seemed to be in a mood to let the light spill on everything beneath, letting little sparkles of vitamin D play on the walls of buildings, shining through the glass in windows, gleaming on all these colorful advertisements plastered around the district and making it seem as if the city was floating in the glinting sensation, warm light reflecting all possible kinds and shades of beautiful lilac color palettes.

Usually, you wouldn’t be the one to appreciate a similar weather very much, but given that the last two weeks had been nothing but wholly rainy and generally anything but pleasant in terms of weather outside, you found yourself being happy to be able to welcome the prickling sunlight on your skin.

You rested your chin on your knuckles, slowly closing your eyes and letting a lazy smile fall onto your scarlet tinted lips. You considered yourself lucky enough that you usually managed to arrive in class before all of your classmates, given that in that manner you could always pick the best seat without having to rush through the hallways to reach the classroom and dash to your desired desk.

And today, after all those gloomy days soaked in cold raindrops and weighing dust grey clouds, you found your seat to be even more than perfect.

The classroom wasn’t big, it was actually way smaller than you would like it to be, but as if to recompense that it had really large windows. And large windows meant a lot of sunlight to pour into the room through them, an obvious fact of which you couldn’t be more content about as you sat comfortably in the penultimate seat right beside one of those windows.

You had stopped paying attention to the lesson for what already felt like a whole thirty minutes ago, the dancing sunbeams only making you feel lazier and also kind of sleepy, completely switching off your usual concentration. You continued letting your face bathe in the pleasant sun rays which, now playfully peeking through the glass were gracing the monotonous classroom in cheerful gold shimmers. Your thoughts in the back of your mind started to slowly mix together with your teacher’s soft voice speaking about the last pages of your Japanese lecture in the background of which, right in that moment, you couldn’t really bring yourself to care about.

Your classmates were surprisingly quiet today, and in that current state you would probably soon drift away into your own personal dreamland even further, if not the little vibration coming from your phone placed under your hand on your desk.

For a split second you almost got a mini heart attack as the sudden text message made your pastel purple Nokia 3310 let out some rattling sounds as it moved ever so slightly on the wooden surface of your desk. You looked around a little bit startled, hoping that nobody noticed the brief faint noise.

Pulled back into reality, you quickly slid the device behind your equally purple colored pencil case, unblocking the screen with a click of one button and checking the received SMS. You felt a wide smile spreading on your lips as you read the text, it being from your friend announcing to you that her classes ended earlier today, and that she would be waiting for you to join her outside by the school entrance.

As you threw a quick glance at both the clocks on your screen and on the wall above the door, you found yourself seriously envying your friend, because it looked just as if she was always getting the cooler and chiller teachers who were actually able to understand that on the last lesson on Friday the kids weren’t the most likely to sit still and obediently follow the lesson anymore. Also given that today’s schedule, just like every other Friday which was simply laughable in your honest opinion, was absurdly long. Your lessons extended from eight in the morning until past three in the afternoon, which compared to the earlier weekdays you just refused to acknowledge.

You let out a deep sigh as another long minute had passed on the clock, mentally begging the time or whoever or whatever might be in charge of time management in the universe to quicken it up a bit.

Almost fifteen minutes left until the long awaited, two days freedom, also commonly known as the weekend. Just like everybody else, you were always impatiently waiting for the last lesson to be finally over and to let you hang out with some friends, and do other longed for fun activities for which you unfortunately didn’t have any time during the normal school week.

Until just now, you had always been included in the casual hangouts at the mall with your wide group of school friends, in going to the theater to check out the latest movie releases, or meeting up at your, by now beloved, cute small diner to eat some cherry cakes which quickly became popular around the area. But as of recently, the loud ringing sound on Fridays which announced the end of the lessons and beginning of the weekend, totally changed its meaning for you.

You weren’t as thrilled as you saw the large advertisement for the opening of a brand new game arcade for the first time on your way home one day, but as soon as you and your friend Miko decided to quickly see what it was all about and peeked inside on the big opening day, you already knew that you would visit and spend your coins at that place much more often than anyone could even imagine.

It was one of the branches belonging to SEGA group, it wasn’t any super large game arcade but at the same time it also wasn’t the smallest you had ever been in.

It was just ideal, and managed to balance perfectly the two things which you used to be crazy about the most when you were a little younger.

With that being said, the new game arcade was divided into more or less two sections, one being filled with all kinds of games starting with The Legend Of Zelda and ending on Pokémon, Super Mario, and many, many more in between. The second section was a little bit different, but not less interesting, perhaps only overlooking the fact that most of the time it tended to be a lot more nerve-wracking than you could ever expect from its harmless and pretty appearance.

The free space was filled with all kinds of plushie and toy automats, the whole room being so eye-catching and colorful that it was almost impossible to just pass by without giving it a proper look. It had literally everything you could ever dream of, soft and lovely teddy bears in every possible color, dolls, game characters, manga figures, even little charms which you could attach to your keys or your bag.

Truly a magical place flowing with milk and honey, if not the one unnerving fact that very often it was literally impossible to get the doll you wanted out of the automat at first try. Of course, it wasn’t such a big deal given that one turn costed exactly one hundred yen which wasn’t a handful of money after all. But if you calculated all your losses and all your future, probably failed as well, attempts together, you were very likely bound to leave at least around one thousand yen at the game arcade for literally nothing in return.

Sometimes you couldn’t hold yourself back from wondering that maybe that was the secret of the success of game arcades, and that the companies designed the automats like that on purpose to always drop the toy before it could even reach the hole and land safely in your hands.

There were times where you would loose even more than a thousand yen in an attempt to win the plushie you wanted, almost throwing your wallet against the glass as it became always much lighter and lighter with passing of each failed round.

There were times like this at the very beginning of that arcade fever, but after a while you found yourself becoming always better and better at fishing out all those dolls and bears. As the time flew by, you also found your bedroom nearly starting to drown in all those soft joys of every childhood.

But you didn’t really care.

And as soon as you got a notice that there was a new plushie automat to be about to be installed in the game arcade, you just knew that you needed to try it out immediately with the first better opportunity.

Which just came perfectly today.

You almost let out a squeak of joy as the bell finally rang, announcing the long awaited end of the last Friday’s lesson.

You quickly collected all your belongings from your desk and your seat, swinging your lilac bag over your shoulder and rushing out of the classroom in the direction of the stairs.

Luckily enough, you managed to dash through the corridor and down the stairs before the crowds of other students could block you.

As you reached the exit of the school building, you saw Miko standing right in front of it, her back turned at you. She was lightly swinging to the left and to the right, probably listening to some music on her brand new MP3 player she’d been talking about lately.

A little mischievous smile fell on your soft lips as a marvelous idea popped up in your head.

You took a few steps forward, careful to be quiet but, considering the fact that the music in her earphones was probably blasting, you didn’t exactly need to. You slowly pushed the glass door open, sneaking up on her and swiftly throwing your hands before her eyes to cover them.

„Holy freak!” Miko let out a startled scream, gaining a muffled laugh from you. „Who’s this? Y/N?” She started to turn her head to one side and to another, making you chuckle even more at the sight.

„It’s me. Mario.” You said, still covering her eyes and trying not to laugh out loud, seeing that you were visibly in a great mood today.

„And I’m Luigi. Can I get my vision back now, please?” She said, placing her hands on yours and pulling them away.

„Do you have enough ready money for the afternoon?” You asked, moving to stand in front of her.

„No duh, I’ve got exactly ten of one hundred yen coins just for the occasion.” She held up her blue wallet for you to see, the sound of loose coins bumping into each other audible as she gently shook it. „And I’m not going to spend a single yen more today, last weekend was fly but I became poorer of a whole six thousand.”

You sent her a scrutinizing look. „And you really think that it will be enough? You know, I’ve already told you before that they have a new automat and stuff.”

„Yes, you have, but still. If I don’t get the doll I want after two tries, I’m bouncing. And I will play Super Mario for the rest of the evening.”

„As if! I know you Miko, you will get just as addicted as every other time.” You let out a laugh, grabbing your friend’s hand and pulling her forward together with you.

„No, I’m telling you!”

The two of you continued to chatter along as you walked in the direction of the game arcade. It wasn’t that much of a long walk, knowing that it was located just a few streets away from your school.

The sun had yet quite an amount of time to start setting, but as you walked between the buildings decorated with bright and colorful advertisements of all possible kinds, it started to throw even more beams which reflected all those purple, blue, and yellow colors, surrounding you with a fairy like atmosphere in the afternoon hours.

„You know, last time as I was in the arcade I asked which dolls will the new automat have, and they told me that it would be supposed to have teddy bears, and-” You talked, being completely caught up in your own bubbling excitement about the new gain in the game arcade.

„Teddy bears?” Miko interrupted your flowing thoughts. „Y/N, you’ve already got like, a whole room of teddy bears. Not mentioning that last time you won not one, but TWO identical Totoro plushies and a Sailor Moon doll, too.” She rolled her eyes, giving you a questioning look. „You own a whole load of them. A whole storage! I’m actually asking myself if there is anything in the entire arcade what you haven’t got at home yet.”

„Well, I mean, that new automat is supposed to have a panda bear plushie and a plain white teddy bear, so, you know, I need to enrich my collection with these two.” You said, reaching your hand to your bag to pull out your phone.

You failed to notice the small group of boys, more or less around your age, walking past you and directing themselves straight into the game arcade building which finally came into your view.

You were just about to answer a text message from one of your other friends, when you were rapidly pulled back into reality with a not so gentle nudge to your side.

„What-” You turned your head to your left to look at Miko, question marks visible in your eyes as you were met with your friend’s amazed expression. „What? Why did you stop all of a sudden?”

„Y/N, I think you don’t see what I’m seeing. Look.” She pointed her finger at some point in the distance, a little blush coloring her cheeks.

You followed where she was pointing, finally noticing the group of boys from earlier which you failed to see.

There were four of them altogether, standing before the open arcade entrance and talking eagerly. Two of them were really tall, whilst the other two were rather short in their height, but all of them were wearing plain white tees. Your eye caught one of the shorter boys, who as the only one among them was wearing a blue bomber jacket with white prints. He had what you would call a baby face, his features were soft, or at least you could observe that much standing a few meters away from him. His hair was of a chocolate brown color, and as his voice reached your ears, you had to admit that it sounded truly so smooth like velvet.

You felt your own two cheeks warming up a little, a sensation which you didn’t like even a bit, as the boy locked eyes with you, his wide smile immediately disappearing from his lips only to be replaced by an expression of awe.

You stood there completely frozen in your spot, clenching your purple Nokia in your hand and feeling slightly flabbergasted by the whole sudden situation, not really knowing what was going on.

The last thing you saw before you were harshly pulled back into reality once again, was the other three boys looking questioningly at their friend who’s eyes were fixed on you, soon the entire group looking right at you.

And then you heard it, the loud ‘ooooooh’, ‘damn’, and ‘oh my god’ followed by the three of them lightly hitting the shoulders of their friend, starting to shake him and becoming even louder when he didn’t react, instead still looking at you.

When you finally snapped out of the weird trance, you quickly turned to your side to Miko who was now covering her mouth to prevent the invasive giggles from escaping.

„Oh snap.” You only said.

„Y/N, THIS, this is exactly what I’ve been talking about.” She said. „You are always so immersed in the games that you totally fail to notice all those cute boys being around!” She almost exclaimed the last words, stomping her both feet on the ground repeatedly, for some reason visibly excited.

„Well that was hella weird.” You said, still trying to process what had just happened. „Do you know them?”

„Um, well, I mean-” She started, now her being the one to grab your hand and pull you forward. „I keep my eyes always wide open, you know. And I just happened to see them at the game arcade the last time we were there. That hottie in a blue jacket seemed to have taken an instant liking to you back then already, but we bounced out too quickly for them to approach us.” She blabbered, instantly becoming a thousand times more cheerful than before.

The two of you were coming always nearer to the entrance of the arcade, and what followed always nearer to the group of boys who, now noticeably quieter, were still standing in their spot.

With your left hand still being held by Miko and your right hand still holding onto your phone, you tried your best to avoid the gaze of the said boy in a blue jacket as the two of you continued moving closer to the entrance.

What was his deal anyway?

„You know what Miko, did you take a good look at them when you said that you saw them before?” You asked your friend, feeling your cheeks heating up once again as you accidentally locked eyes with the boy one more time. „I mean, maybe from a close up they’ll be total monets.” You added, not even knowing what you were trying to convince yourself about, because as you came always closer you had to admit that the said group were even better looking from up close.

„Awe, Y/N, always the negatory. I’m sure they’re not some scrubs too, though. Besides, just look at them now.” She said, an ounce above a whisper. „They could totally be in a boy group with those looks.”

And unfortunately, you couldn’t deny, as with every following step you were getting a more detailed view, as well as you were feeling more and more being practically eaten by those two dazzling eyes which didn’t leave you even for a brief moment.

You just wanted to get inside the arcade and concentrate yourself on the new plushie automat, not on dealing with some random group of boys who apparently enjoyed staring at girls way too much for your liking.

That was right, as said it was too much for YOUR liking, but Miko didn’t seem to mind at all.

Even the whole opposite, she seemed to be having the time of her life, particularly when the other shorter boy with big cat-like eyes sent her a dazzling smile.

„Oh snap, oh snap, oh snap, did you see that, Y/N, I think I forgot how to breathe.” A scarlet blush spread on her cheeks, whilst she nervously squeezed your hand. „That guy is literally so handsome.”

„Girl, Miko-” You started gently, but as you looked at her frozen in her spot with literal hearts in her eyes, you knew she was already gone to make some lovey-dovey unthinkable scenarios in her head.

You talking wasn’t probably going to do much anyway, but you needed to snap her out of it.

You tried to gently pull her with you and finally enter the arcade. „Miko.”

Nothing.

„Miko-”

Still nothing, and as you threw a quick glance at the boys, you saw that the one with big eyes was continuing to unceremoniously smile at your friend, meanwhile she was returning all those candy smiles.

What was it, a smiling contest?

No, you thought, that was completely stupid.

„Miko, I swear-” You snapped your whole arm into the direction of the entrance to bring her attention back to the arcade a little too harshly, forgetting that you were still holding your phone in that hand.

In the result, your phone was sent flying out of your hand all the way across the sidewalk which separated the two of you from the group of boys, before you could do anything to stop it.

You watched in terror as it ended its small flight right in front of the boy in blue jacket, landing with a loud thud on the ground by his feet.

„MY NOKIAAAA!!” You yelled, not caring at all about the other people around who were now giving you weird or startled looks.

„Y/N-” Miko seemed to finally notice what was going on when you let go of her hand, and started to take large steps closer to the boy to collect your phone.

You could clearly see it as his face immediately lit up and his eyes rapidly fell on your purple Nokia laying on the ground, apparently an idea coming to his mind.

„For the love of-” You mumbled through your teeth, as you watched him bend over to pick up your item. „... all the snaps given.”

You let out a low sigh as you ruffled your silky hair with your hand, starting to finally walk into the direction of the boy, being extra careful not to accidentally lock eyes with him once more.

You had always been that exact type of person who wanted to avoid any unnecessary interaction with other people, in particular if you had other, significantly more important plans ahead of you and didn’t want to lose your time.

That could be an issue right now, you thought to yourself as with every step closer to him his smile grew wider, not even trying to conceal it.

„Um-” You started, as you stood right in front of his frolic face. „That would be mine.” You said, raising your finger up to point at your phone.

Your eyes quickly fell on the purple surface and the screen, trying to thoroughly inspect if any possible damages had been done by the fall.

The boy seemed to notice the visible concern im your eyes, letting out a soft, melodic chuckle whilst handing your Nokia to you. „I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” He said. „This model is practically indestructible. Lasts longer than most relationships.”

His remark made you raise one eyebrow at him, squinting your eyes ever so slightly whilst you retrieved your phone. „What a nice comparison. And you’ll be speaking out of experience, I assume?”

You were absolutely sure that your unpleasant comeback would make him immediately not wanting to continue to talk to you, but to your surprise you couldn’t be more wrong. Instead of a sign of dislike, you could make out a sparkle of fondness shining even brighter in his brown eyes.

Weird, you thought.

“No, I’m not.” The boy replied, smiling contentedly. “I was actually quietly hoping that mine would outlive any model of Nokia 3310.” He added, giving you a smile sweeter than the previous one.

In response, you merely granted him a brief look before taking a step away, intending to finally enter the arcade. “Good luck with that.”

Trying to completely conceal the awareness of his glowing presence still behind you, you quickened your pace, basically dashing through the open doors to the inside of the colorful arcade and not even bothering to wait for Miko anymore.

As soon as you went inside you were met with a lot of frolicsome lights and sparkles, the small alleyways between all sorts of games being flooded with light coming from the screens of game automats, each one of them showing the start menu of a different popular game on the lambent display.

It didn’t take you too long to find the longed for, newest, totally polished and even more so inviting plushie automat which has been continuously on your mind this whole time, basically calling out your name to you as soon as you finally came to a view of it.

It was lovely, appearing even more so enthralling to you in real life than as it did on the mere advertisements plastered around the arcade.

Without losing a single minute, you took your wallet out of your bag and took a large step closer to the automat, your eyes stopping on every plushie trying to decide which one to go for.

Finally, they stopped on a cute small panda bear which instead of being just plainly black and white, was purple and white.

That was the one.

You opened your wallet, taking one shining coin of one hundred yen worth.

Just as you were about to throw it into the automat, you were startled by a sudden familiar voice coming from right behind you.

“Hey home skillet, why did you run off like that?” Miko materialized herself next to your ducked down figure, leaning on the glass of the plushie automat.

You looked up at your friend, feeling a little guilty for doing so. “My bad? But I really didn’t want to talk to that dude in a blue jacket.” You murmured, bringing your attention back to the purple panda.

Miko scrunched her nose, letting out a loud sigh. “Why are you always rejecting all the sweet boys? He even picked up your phone for you, come on.” She said, before startling you again with a sudden squeak. “BUUUUT! Y/N-” She started, covering her mouth to prevent the next invasion of uncontrollable giggles from escaping, jumping up and down in her spot and causing her black soft locks to slide on her forehead. “ That hottie with those big eyes. Oh my god Y/N. I actually talked to him just now, and guess what he told me.” She paused for a brief moment, only to let out another squeak. “His favorite game is also Super Mario! And he asked me if I wanted to play it with him today, oh my god, Y/N.” Miko was breathing so quickly, that as you looked up at her once again, you started to become honestly worried if soon she would start to hyperventilate.

“And I assume you said yes?” You asked, but you already knew the answer anyway.

“Of course! I mean, did you see him? A model!” She answered.

“So you plan on leaving me all alone here?” You asked. “Are his friends still here?” You added, carefully peeking from behind the plushie automat you were still ducked down by.

Your eyes widened in terror as you sneaked a look and spotted the group walking down the aisle.

“I won’t leave you! But just let me have this one? You know how much I would love to get a proper date!” She replied, throwing longing looks in the direction of the boys. “And Y/N, if that blue hottie comes to talk to you, please be nice.” She added quickly.

“Miko, do you perhaps know something that I don’t know?”

“What? Noooooo, not at all, what makes you think that?”

You let out a small sigh, rolling your eyes at your friend. “Whatever.”

You brought your attention back to the display with all the plushies inside, finally inserting the coin into the automat and starting to try to fish out the purple panda bear.

You were still sensing a presence next to you, so thinking it was just Miko who hasn’t left yet, unbothered and completely oblivious, you continued to give all your concentration to the little plush bear you already almost had clasped.

Just as the bear was nearing to fall into the designed hole and right into your hands, the metal claws let it go in a trice, in effect the bear bouncing back, away from the hole.

Unbelievable.

A soft snicker reached your ear, so without even caring to turn your head you just rolled your eyes again. “Very funny Miko, you know that it usually never works at the first try very well yourself.” You said, taking out another one hundred yen coin to insert and try again.

“Sometimes it does.” Said a velvet like voice.

You immediately snapped your head to the left, your eyes widening one more time as you realized that it wasn’t Miko standing next to you, but the boy in a blue jacket.

You involuntarily squinted your eyes at him, looking up. “You again.”

He seemed to be completely immune to you not being the nicest, instead jumping straight into any normal conversation you would usually have with a friend.

Out of all people, and out of all days, why you and why today?

Guess you would never know.

“Your name is Y/N, right?” The boy asked. “Your friend with the black hair told me when we were still outside.” He continued, his melodic voice filling the space between the two of you, for some unexplainable reason making you kind of distracted and causing you to drop the purple panda once again, failing at the second attempt to win it.

You sent the boy a heavy glare. “And your name is...?”

“I’m Baekhyun.” He replied with a sweet smile.

You decided to ignore him, taking the already third coin out of your wallet and inserting it again.

“What are you about to get?” Came yet another soft question.

“The purple panda.” You replied briefly.

Baekhyun’s eyes left your figure for a transient while, to fall on the plushies inside the automat. “Well, guess what I would be about to get?” He said.

“On my nerves.” You murmured quietly, but loudly enough for him to hear.

You weren’t looking at him anymore so you obviously couldn’t have noticed it, but even when he received nothing but snarky replies from you, the boy was all smiles with little dazzles dancing in his brown eyes. “I actually hoped that I would get on your calendar.” He said, giving you a winsome smile as soon as you graced him with your attention again. “On a weekend when you’d be free... Or after school...” The cheekiness audible in his soft voice just seconds ago wasn’t as strong as it was anymore as he said these words.

In the result to his question, you scrunched your nose, looking up at him. “You don’t even know me. You’ve literally seen me one single time.” You said.

The moment you said that, you observed as the cheeky look fell back on his soft features. “Dante wrote forty two chapters of a whole opera for Beatrice after he saw her one time on the street, so I think I would be reasonably justified to ask you out like that.” He smiled at you in the most candy smile anyone could probably ever master.

What in the world?

“You know Dante? Are you into literature?” You asked, a little flabbergasted and surprised, knowing that most of the boys your age weren’t particularly interested in the art of similar old literary works.

That was definitely new.

“I like art in general.” Baekhyun said.

“So, how do you feel about art?” You asked, genuinely curious.

Baekhyun’s eyes seemed to have a whole million of sparkles dancing in them as he replied. “Well, I think you are really cool to talk to.”

Wait-

“What the freak man.” Was the only thing which you managed to say after you connected the dots of what he was really referring to.

This boy surely was having the time of his life right now.

You brought your attention back to the plushies, trying to suppress a muffled quiet scream which threatened to leave your lips because, even at the third try, the purple panda was dropped back into the soft pile of other plushies as if totally mocking you and your efforts to win it.

You aggressively grabbed the ziplock of your wallet, practically snatching a new one hundred yen coin and slamming it into the automat, determined to win it this time.

In that moment, it was a serious matter of life and death for you, and being completely focused on that one thing before you, you were also still completely oblivious to your surroundings.

If only you knew how your small act of chagrin to the automat and throwing the coin inside in a total state of fury made Baekhyun’s heart melt even more for you, thoughts of how cute you were flowing through his mind.

“How many more times are you going to try this?” He asked.

“You know, I’m actually really good at this. Today just doesn’t seem to be my best day.” You replied, without giving him one look.

The claws clasped around the purple panda once again, lifting it up and sliding slowly to the direction of the hole, through which you really hoped it would finally fall out this time.

“I already own a whole room of plushies and dolls I won in the arcade, so this should be no sweat.” You added.

“Well that’s phat.” Baekhyun said, his voice always sounding like a smooth velvet which, for some reason was becoming always more difficult to ignore for you.

“I know.” You said. “But I’m totally buggin’ right now.”

You watched the purple panda hanging just above the destined hole, being completely sure that you would finally win. You threw a content look at Baekhyun next to you, resting your elbows on the automat. “It’s already falling, you see? I’m da bomb. All that and a bag of chips-” You interrupted mid sentence, when to your downright disbelief the panda was let loose into the hole, only to somehow bounce out of it right back into the pile of other plushies, leaving you at the fourth failed attempt of winning. “You sick piece of-” You said through your clenched teeth, clutching your wallet in your hand and trying to stay calm.

You threw a murderous look at the automat, then glanced back at the wallet held in your hand before opening it again and taking out the fifth coin, throwing it into the automat without thinking twice.

You quickly guided the claws to grab the purple panda, but then again, as if to totally make fun of you, it was let dropped back into the pile. “Son of a SCONE.” You said, very lightly hitting your small fist on the glass.

You were brought back to reality by the same velvet voice which was distracting you just moments ago. “Y/N.”

“What.”

“You haven’t given me an answer yet.” Baekhyun said softly. “Will you go on a date with me?”

“No.” You replied.

“You are being so mean today.”

“I’m mean everyday.” You added, standing up from the position you were in this whole time. “You have a really unusual way of approaching, you know?”

“Well, everyone has their own ways. And everyone has their own idea of perfection.” Baekhyun said, looking right into your eyes. “Mine just happens to be you.”

You shot him a tired look. “What the freak.” You said. “Listen, um-”

“Do you know what bees make?” He suddenly interrupted you with this random question.

Without even thinking too much, you simply replied. “Honey?”

You watched as his eyes lit up again. “Yes, dear?”

You were left there completely done with the world as it was and speechless, just standing before him and looking at his smiling, glowing face, visibly happy with his own lines.

Why wouldn’t he just give up?

You didn’t even know anymore what to say to him, seeing that apparently he had a comeback line ready for each and every of your attempts to shove him away.

“You are impossible.” You said.

You observed as Baekhyun’s eyes quickly wandered to the plushie automat and as he bit his lip, another idea visibly coming to his mind. “Will you please say yes if I win that purple panda for you?” He asked, his brown eyes full of glinting hope.

“I would like to see you try. If I couldn’t win this, you won’t be able to either.” You replied.

“If you’re so sure about it, then just agree?” He said, a little smile still visible on his lips.

You crossed your arms on your chest, him instantly mirroring your gesture. “Fine. And if you fail, you will stop asking me out.” You said. “Three attempts.” You held up three fingers.

“Fine.” He said, holding up a shining one hundred yen coin before putting it into the automat.

He ducked down in the spot in which you were previously, laying his left arm on the free surface and lazily resting his chin on it, his right hand managing the little controller on the automat, effortlessly.

In complete and utter terror, you watched as the purple panda bear successfully fell into the hole right away, soon swiftly falling out of the automat straight into Baekhyun’s hands.

You couldn’t help it but let out a gasp of shock.

“No.” You whispered shaking your head, not believing that he just got it at the first try, because how probable could it even be?

“Yes.” Baekhyun held up the purple panda, flashing you the brightest, happiest smile you have seen on him that day. “I told you, sometimes it does work at the first try.”

You just stood there, not able to say a word, still looking at him in a complete disbelief.

Again, how probable could it be?

“I, um-” You really tried to say a full normal sentence, but it seemed like even the language decided to sabotage you today.

Before Baekhyun said anything else, he gently placed the panda in your hands, in the result his fingers softly brushing yours, may it be on purpose or just accidentally. “Please just say yes?”

As much as you despised this whole thing, you were a girl of your word, and you made a deal.

Which you obviously lost, now that you were holding the purple panda bear in your hands.

Even so, looking at Baekhyun’s dazzling brown eyes, you still wanted to give him the benefit of doubt, even though you were perfectly aware that it was pointless at this stage.

You opened your mouth to say something, but he quickly interrupted you before you could say even one word. “You won’t regret it.” He added, a little faint plea visible in his eyes as they looked at you.

You felt one corner of your mouth slightly lifting in a half smile. “What if I will?” You asked, meeting his chocolate gaze.

“You won’t.” He quickly said. “Just give me a chance to win you over.”

He asked you for a chance, but deep down you started to feel that he already was winning you over with his impossible sweetness and persistence.

But that was something which he didn’t need to know right now, was it?

You held the panda plushie closer to yourself, burying your face in it for a brief moment to hide the bubblegum blush which was shamelessly spreading on your dewy cheeks totally against your own will.

“I like onigiri with umeboshi filling.” You said. “And dark mocha.”

A honey-dripping smile fell on Baekhyun’s lips as his chocolate eyes traveled across every feature on your face. “What an unusual pair.” He said, the smile never leaving his lips and eyes.

“If you want to date me, you need to be prepared for weird combos like that.” You said, facing away as you felt the blush becoming stronger, your entire cold barrier finally giving in into the charm of his smile.

“I’m thrilled to know more.” He grinned winsomely.

And who would think that when you left the game arcade, you would have gotten your plushie and a cute boy together with it?

Undisputedly not you.

But sometimes, sometimes the universe put things on your way, things which you would least expect to cherish the most.

Author’s End Note: Thank you for reading! Remember to REBLOG if you liked it! Also, I tried to build in some classic ‘90s phrases into dialogues, so let me know if I did well or not!! 💖 Maybe it won’t be the end of the ‘90s AU. 💜

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unjourjeseraideretourpresdetoi · 3 years

Text

9/10 Chapter 1 - Malt

I started writing a bit of a Harry/Kim fanfic??? Because why the hell not. Anyway, here’s the first part of it. I’m kind of just making it up as I go with a few specific ideas scattered in my head. Spoilers for various plot points. Here’s a sample before the cut. Feel free to send any suggestions or critique, since it’s been ages since I have done much writing. Still working on getting a feel for Harry’s skill voices.

YOU — After a little while, your voice finally returns. “Why are you so nice to me?” KIM KITSURAGI — He takes a long pause and leans back in his chair. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just stubborn too.” PERCEPTION — You turn to look at him as you finally untangle yourself from your chrysalis of arms, and he looks different somehow. You don’t know if it’s your eyes being sore as hell, or the dull ambiance of the hazy bar lights. Somehow, he looks so light. His bomber jacket is slightly pulled up by his folded arms behind his head, seeming to break the bulky illusion it usually projects over his slim torso. Like suddenly seeing a gap in a suit of armor. SUGGESTION — You should tickle him. ESPRIT DE CORPS — He will kill you in mere seconds if you do that.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — Hello again, Harry boy. The midnight train to Fuck-All-Borough is boarding once again, and you’ve pre-paid your seat. YOU — Okay. ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — Yes, that’s right. Let’s drive right into the sweet, succulent sopor of oblivion. Let no feelings come to pass, no sensations, just the pure bliss of the radiating void. YOU — But aren’t you here? ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN — That’s just it, Harry. I’m nothing. I am the pale of the mind, I am the deafening silence, I am the black canvas that stretches taut when you close your eyes. I am the swaddle that cradles the mind and the ocean you will drown in. I am born of you and someday, you will die in me. LIMBIC SYSTEM — But not yet—something still stirs in this weighted sack. Something heavy, and sore, and full of noise that steadily rises into a crescendo.

PERCEPTION — And then you open your eyes. And it fucking hurts. PAIN THRESHOLD — Dear god, it’s like a jackhammer on a pogo stick on another jackhammer. PERCEPTION — You realize there’s a smell you haven’t smelled in a few weeks now that’s uncomfortably emanating from your form. Al Gul. COMPOSURE — Oh. You finally did it again. You fucked up.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — So we got a little smashed. Who cares. You know what’s a great way to stop feeling sorry about it? Getting smashed again. AUTHORITY — No. YOU — Why am I always fucking things up? HALF LIGHT — Because life is terrifying. LOGIC — He’s right about that one.

YOU — What was I doing last night? ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Like I said, getting smashed. CONCEPTUALIZATION — Painting the world with a palette of sugary booze and sad, old rock and roll for sad, old rockstars.

YOU — Who did I hurt this time? DRAMA — Mostly, just yourself. VOLITION — A small miracle, if so. You’re used to self-immolation. YOU — But why? Why now? We were doing better. ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Speak for yourself. LOGIC — You do know that you can’t just ride out two decades of practiced chemical drowning on a workhorse of piety and guilt, right?

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — This ceaseless dependency on cocktails of narcotics and spirits has weakened you shamefully. PERCEPTION — You look around your dimly lit bedroom, eyes half-closed anyway to quiet the searing pain in your cerebral cortex, slowly putting the pieces back together as the rest of your body wakes up.

YOU — I was having a shitty day. I was stuck on a case and my mind just kept drifting into half-remembered past mistakes. After work, I decided to do it. I called her again, like an idiot. I thought to myself, I can do this, I can let her go, and I’ll tell her I’m finally over it (almost). INLAND EMPIRE — But that is not how it went. She had prepared for the next time you would call. The last time was terrifying enough, torn awake at 3 in the morning, listening to your desperate lies, digging through past trauma.

YOU — “Hey, uh, Dora. It’s Harry. I’m sorry—“ PERCEPTION — A sharp sigh breaks your concentration. DORA — “Let me stop you there, Harry. Because I’m tired of this. You’ve been doing this six years now but it feels at least twice as long. So since you can’t put an end to it, I am. Don’t call again. You won’t be reaching me at this number anymore.” PERCEPTION — Before you can react, there’s silence. And a dial tone. YOU — Fuck. Fuck shit fuck.

COMPOSURE — You stumble through dialing the number again, fingers slipping the first time from nerves and connecting the second, with no answer. You try again. And again. And then you stop trying. It takes everything in you not to smash the phone where it sits. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — You need to smash something. If we can’t smash the phone, we HAVE to smash something. REACTION SPEED — Your feet are already taking you away from the pay phone, one thought ahead of the rest of you. You barely round the corner into the alley before you plant your fist full force into the nearest brick wall. PAIN THRESHOLD — Your hand spirals into a fractal of pain, blood dripping down your busted knuckles, slowly running down the dirtied wall. You can feel the cracking of your knuckles, like a brittle lacework of glass strapped down only by the leather of your worn-out hands. HALF-LIGHT — Get out of here. ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Now that you’re done smashing your fist, it’s time to get the rest of you smashed. YOU — “Fuck it. I’m getting a drink.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION — From there, it was a blaze of sweet, hot fire down your throat and back up again, run ragged from shitty karaoke and mild alcohol poisoning. But the film reel is running thin, and you’re struggling to get anything else from your memory bank.

YOU — How did I get back? I don’t remember walking home. ESPRIT DE CORPS — You asked for help.

HAND-EYE COORDINATION — You pat at your pockets, searching for the right one, not quite remembering what you’re doing but knowing the answer you thought of for a fraction of a second is somewhere in there. After a moment, you find it, carefully tucked away but nevertheless damp with sweat from your slacks.

“If you need to talk— 005-93-88-651 Lt. Kitsuragi”

INTERFACING — Your hands are a bit shaky, but you dial out the number on the slip of paper in your hands. PERCEPTION — It rings once. Twice. A third time. And then you hear the receiver click. KIM KITSURAGI — “Hello?”

SHIVERS — In a small apartment in Central Jamrock, not too far from Precinct 41, and not too far from the Jamrock Public Library, Lieutenant Kitsuragi sits on his bed, some light reading in hand, winding down for the night. His new apartment is still filled with cardboard boxes here and there, in no particular hurry to be unpacked. The lights of the city pierce through like little pinpricks in the glare of his bedside window, still insistent on their presence even in the quiet of a cool spring night.

YOU — “Hi, Kim, I uh…” Your voice shakes and you lose your words for a moment, because some part of you really didn’t expect him to pick up. KIM KITSURAGI — “Detective? It’s after midnight.” DRAMA — It’s already that late? You must’ve woken him up. A bad start. YOU — “Uhh… sorry, I uh. Wasn’t looking at the clock. We can just talk tomorrow—“ KIM KITSURAGI — “You’re drunk.” COMPOSURE — Fuck. There’s nothing coming out of your mouth anymore. Another bad phone call. It takes everything in you not to cry. You do anyway.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Where are you?” YOU — You manage to croak out enough to say “Sunshine’s Hideaway. Bar on 12th street.” KIM KITSURAGI — He pauses a moment, thinking. “...I’ll be there in a few minutes.” ESPRIT DE CORPS — He’s thinking about the best route there. LOGIC — He doesn’t have his motor carriage right now. He’s going to have to walk it, and it’s cold out. YOU — “I… you don’t have to do that, I’ll just—“ KIM KITSURAGI — “Harrier, just shut up and park your ass somewhere warm until I get there.” AUTHORITY — He’s doing it! He’s doing the eyebrow thing but on the phone! I didn’t know he could do that! YOU — “Yessir.”

It probably takes about 15 minutes for him to arrive, though each minute feels like five. You feel like a child waiting for their parents to come pick them up at school. You’re pretty sure everyone is staring at you. You can’t really see through the blurry bokeh of your stupid tears. But you can just barely make out the door of the bar opening, followed by a silhouette marked by orange slipping through. Lieutenant Kitsuragi spots you after a moment, and you quickly try to wipe your eyes like you haven’t just been crying the whole time as he approaches. KIM KITSURAGI — You can hear him pull at the chair next to yours, calmly settling into place. “Hello, detective.”

YOU — You try to pull up some words, but you just find yourself nodding appreciatively as you try not to grimace. COMPOSURE — Somehow, the moment his eyes fall on you, you feel like someone just ripped the rug right out from under your feet. You slide down on your elbows, face pressing down onto the table in humiliation, locking your hands together on the back of your neck, like you’re trying to hide in a little tomb of your own arms.

KIM KITSURAGI — You hear the lieutenant take a deep breath and sigh. He unzips his jacket, stifling him in the warm interior of the bar. “That rough, huh?”

YOU — You don’t want to say anything, but your mouth opens before you can stop it. “I’m such an asshole, Kim. I keep fucking everything up, over and over, no matter how hard I try. I just. Keep falling back into my bullshit.” Your voice shakes as you get the words out. “Is this just as good as it’s gonna get at this point? Have I fucked up entirely too much, entirely too long, am I just… this constant trainwreck now and forever? How much of myself have I wasted away into nothing, doing this shit? Acting like a child. Acting like an animal. It feels sometimes like all I have is more downturns. More hurting people. More hurting myself. And I’m so, so fucking tired… and I don’t wanna do this anymore. If this is how it is, I don’t want to… be.” Your voice stops making any noise by the time you reach the end of that.

HALF-LIGHT — And then there’s silence. You know this silence. It’s the sound of someone deciding they’re sick of your shit. This is the moment he realizes he really, truly does not know you and you don’t know him. And he knows he has to get out of here, before you take him down with you, like you’ve done to so many others. EMPATHY — But then there’s a hard pat on your back. Thumping against a hollow drum, ringing through your electrified lungs. KIM KITSURAGI — “It’s okay, detective.” PERCEPTION — His voice is soft and careful.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Honestly, it’s astonishing you’ve held out this long. It’s barely been two months since Martinaise. Since the Whirling. Throughout my time in the RCM, I have seen many good officers break over less. I didn’t know you before March. I don’t really know what kind of officer you might’ve been before that. But who I am familiar with is the Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor Harrier Du Bois, the officer I met two months ago, who is probably the strangest man I’ve ever met, but he is also the most relentless, the most stubborn, the most annoying, and honestly, the most sincere man I’ve ever known to grace the RCM. He is a man who cares enough to find the time in his busy workload to help people he just met, whose troubles he sniffs out like a bloodhound, offering them the help that no one else would. No matter how trivial, or how complicated. I don’t know if this selflessness is something you picked up because you don’t know how to help yourself, but I do know there’s a real effort in there. There’s a real, true love for the people of Revachol. And I know how much this job takes out of people. You can’t turn every mistake around in just a few months. Probably not even a few years. But I think what matters is that you are trying, and I can see how much it hurts you to feel like you’ve failed in that. Please don’t think that tonight is a sign that you can’t do better. Tonight is a dam breaking in the expectations you’ve built up for yourself after staring down your own potential.”

PERCEPTION — Are you laughing? Or is that crying? INLAND EMPIRE — It feels like there are ghosts escaping your every breath. Like parts of you are desperately rushing to the surface, tearing through flesh and bone, clawing at a chance for freedom. The lieutenant’s arm still rests heavily on your back, the only anchor your spirit has left as it dissipates into vapor and rushes through the night.

VOLITION — You cry until there’s nothing left in you anymore.

KIM KITSURAGI — After a moment, he realizes you’re staring at him, then adjusts in his seat, leaning forward and settling his arms in front of him. “How are you feeling? Do you think you can walk?” YOU — “I uhh... probably. My leg doesn’t hurt as much right now.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Mm.” He mutters, getting up from his seat. “At least there is that small grace. How far is your place?” PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — You’re pretty sure he’s offering to walk you back. You’re not a child, you can get home perfectly fine on your own, thank you. YOU — “Ten blocks.” COMPOSURE — You quickly try to rise to your feet, but it becomes immediately apparent that the floor has been replaced with a rickety old carousel, and you promptly lose your footing. REACTION SPEED — Before you can even attempt to figure out what is happening, you realize that Lieutenant Kitsuragi has wrapped one of his arms around your back. PERCEPTION — His grip is tight and you can feel the muscles tensing in his forearm against your back. Once again, its presence stabilizes you, a beacon for your twisting senses to converge upon. It takes a few moments for everything to slot back into the correct place. KIM KITSURAGI — “Are you sure you’re alright, detective?” DRAMA — His concern is quite sincere. YOU — “I just gotta sleep this off.” You say as you steady yourself back upright.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Let’s get going, then.” He nods to you as he zips up his jacket again, then stretches his right arm out behind your back. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — No, dude, fuck that shit, you’re sick of people propping you up because of your stupid leg, we can do this shit on our own! YOU — “Thanks.” You steady yourself against his arm and extend your left against his back as well. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — Hey, what! DRAMA — By now, the lieutenant knows when you’re just trying to bullshit and act like a tough guy. It’s time to drop the act, for now. He knows you need the help. You wouldn’t have called him if you didn’t.

CONCEPTUALIZATION — That’s all I got. The rest is just black. YOU — Ugghhhhhh damn it. Like Kim hasn’t seen enough of me making an ass of myself by now. EMPATHY — On the bright side, his mental image of you can probably only improve. Hopefully. Maybe. YOU — Whatever. What time is it? PERCEPTION — You look around for your alarm clock, and find it knocked onto the floor beside your bed. It says 9:53. YOU — Shit. Did I have work today? ESPRIT DE CORPS — No. Your hours have been temporarily reduced during your recovery period. YOU — Right. Okay. I should probably get up and do something about this headache.

You throw the blanket off of your body and gradually roll yourself out of bed, bones creaking with aches and pains, limping across the room and dodging various discarded clothes and shoes that litter the floor. You twist the doorknob and open your bedroom door, making your way across the living room, towards the bathroom.

REACTION SPEED — Wait! There’s someone… on the couch? PERCEPTION — A figure of a man lies on the couch, covered with an ugly patchwork blanket, still sleeping. Next to the couch, an orange bomber jacket rests. Wait… is that Kim? HALF-LIGHT — OH MY GOD, you’re half-naked, GET BACK IN YOUR ROOM AND PUT YOUR PANTS ON BEFORE YOU HUMILIATE YOURSELF. SAVOIR FAIRE — You quickly backpedal, trying not to make any noise, and press your door shut firmly, hoping that you weren’t noticed. YOU — Why is he here??? I thought he just walked me home? HALF-LIGHT — Stop thinking and get your damn armor on! VOLITION — Armor? We didn’t find any armor pants in Martinaise. DRAMA — He’s being metaphorical. You hurriedly stuff your legs into the closest pair of semi-clean trousers before peeking out the door again.

PERCEPTION — The lieutenant is still asleep on the couch. SAVOIR FAIRE — Alright, go time. You sneak through the living room and into the bathroom, carefully trying not to creak the medicine cabinet as you get yourself some painkillers. ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Down the whole bottle! Party time! VOLITION — No. We are not doing that.

After taking the recommended dose of painkillers, you peek out into the living room again. PERCEPTION — Lieutenant Kitsuragi is still resting quietly on your couch, lying on his back, tightly wrapped in the ugly spare blanket from your linen closet. You suddenly realize there’s something different about the living room… such as, there’s less garbage everywhere. EMPATHY — Did he clean the room up for you? Or maybe for himself?

You exit the bathroom and slowly cross the living room, stopping halfway through, looking at the lieutenant again. PERCEPTION — He looks peaceful, and his face relaxed and still. With his glasses off, you notice more of the shape of his brow and his tired eyes. His breathing is slow and measured, with quiet sighs. One of his arms dangles out from under the blanket, his hand just barely off the floor. His fingers are thin, bony, weathered from work, with little scars and blemishes that have mostly faded away.

SUGGESTION — Hold it.

YOU — What?

No one replies. You stare for a moment, feeling a tension in your chest. Curiosity snakes through your skin. You step closer towards the couch, then slowly crouch down, meeting the lieutenant’s eye level.

SUGGESTION — Hold it. Please.

You reach forward, and the lieutenant suddenly stirs.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Mmnh…” His eyes flutter open. “Oh, good morning detective.” YOU — “Uh, yeah. Good morning.” You casually withdraw your hand and rest it on your leg. “Why are you here…?” KIM KITSURAGI — “You don’t remember?” He asks with a hint of concern. YOU — “Well, mostly. I remember you helped me walk home, but after that, it’s fuzzy.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Ah, so just the normal amount of alcohol-induced forgetfulness.” The lieutenant nods at you, then sits up on the couch. He reaches for his glasses on the side table, then folds them open. “I decided to stay here on the couch, just in case...” He trails off. EMPATHY — To keep an eye on you. In case you started doing worse.

YOU — “...Thanks. I’m sorry for interrupting your night.” KIM KITSURAGI — “No need to apologize,” he says with a slight smile. “Honesty, I’m… glad you asked for help instead of isolating yourself. That would have been…” He pauses, looking for the correct words. “Not ideal. What time is it, anyway?” YOU — “Bit after 10.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Already that late? Good thing I’m not working today.”

YOU — “Sorry to make you clean up after me.” You say, glancing across the room. KIM KITSURAGI — “Well, no, it’s not your fault or anything. You didn’t expect company.” He seems a bit self-conscious suddenly, looking away. “I suppose it’s more like I don’t know how to leave a mess alone.” SUGGESTION — You’re not sure which mess he means—the apartment, or you. EMPATHY — It’s both. You feel a slight embarrassment tingling across the surface of your skin and decide to change the topic.

YOU — “You said you have the day off?” KIM KITSURAGI — “Yes, I have a few errands to run, part of some loose ends to clean up for my transfer to 41. But I can get those done any time during the day.” SUGGESTION — You should— YOU — “Do you wanna go get breakfast? I know a good place down the street.” You say it before you can even finish thinking. KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant sits quietly for a moment, adjusting his glasses. “Hmmm… sure, why the hell not. I’ve got some time to spare.” SUGGESTION — Jackpot! YOU — “I’m gonna go get dressed, you’re welcome to the bathroom if you need it.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Sounds good.”

You walk into your bedroom and shut the door behind you.

CONCEPTUALIZATION — Time to get stylish! LOGIC — Not that stylish, it’s just breakfast. Don’t make it weird. INLAND EMPIRE — Hey, weird is our thing! YOU — I think I’m just gonna wear whatever’s clean and doesn’t smell repulsive. CONCEPTUALIZATION — Oh, sorry, didn’t know we were Boring Cop today.

After taking a quick glance at what’s available, you decide to just go with a simple, pastel gingham button-up and a fresh pair of jeans. Glancing at your coats, you grab a blue blazer with a checkered lining.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — Oh my god you look like a nerd. RHETORIC — No, he looks smart. Ready to have a battle of the wits. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — Yeah, like I said, A NERD!

You quietly ignore the high school bullying going on inside your head as you exit the room. Lieutenant Kitsuragi glances at you from next to the couch, in the middle of putting on his jacket.

KIM KITSURAGI — “No disco today?” He says with a slight smile. YOU — “All my disco’s due for the wash.” KIM KITSURAGI — He tugs at his collar and settles his jacket into place. “It’s almost odd to see you in something so… tame.” YOU — “I mean, I still got the jackets from Fuck the World and Piss F****t if you change your mind.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Somehow I doubt the waitstaff would be understanding of the artist’s statements at breakfast.” He lets out a small chuckle. EMPATHY — There’s a surprising softness in his response. KIM KITSURAGI — “I’m all set to go if you are.”

The two of you head out of your apartment and set out down the road, your destination just two blocks away. The streets of Jamrock are already lively with pedestrians and motor carriages milling about. Before long, you arrive at a staircase with a weathered, striped canopy hanging above, quietly announcing its presence with simple text saying “The Lazy Daisy”. You and the lieutenant head down the stairs and enter the little eatery, pushing past the door and being met with the sweet and salty smells of this morning’s meals. You wave to the waitress and take a seat at a little table in the corner.

KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant takes his seat across from you, his eyes studying the surroundings. “You know, I never noticed this place before.” YOU — “Yeah, it’s easy to miss amongst all the other businesses on this road.” KIM KITSURAGI — “But you remembered it?” YOU — “I think my feet did.”

WAITRESS — A cheerful, pudgy woman in her forties wearing a striped apron walks over to the table, little menu books in hand. “Good morning officers! Thanks for stopping by the Lazy Daisy today. Can I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?”

YOU — “You wanna get a pot of coffee, Kim?” KIM KITSURAGI — “Sure, that sounds fine.” WAITRESS — “Alright, I’ll give you a moment to look over the menu!”

You already know what you’re going to order: skillet hash with a side of toast. You watch the lieutenant look the menu over and find yourself wondering what he’ll order. YOU — “You seem like an Eggs Benedict kind of guy to me.” KIM KITSURAGI — “I was thinking about trying this malted waffle actually. It’s been a while since I had a good waffle.” He replies, not looking up from the menu. “But you are correct, I do enjoy a good Eggs Benedict.”

YOU — “Can’t go wrong with either one.” WAITRESS — The waitress returns, a full pot of coffee in one hand and two mugs in the other. She gently places the pot of coffee at the center of the little table and places the mugs down on either side. “Alright, so what can I get for you boys?” YOU — “I’ll go for the skillet hash with a side of dry toast. And the lieutenant here…” KIM KITSURAGI — “I’ll take a malted waffle with a side of bacon.” WAITRESS — “Sounds great! I’ll bring it out when it’s ready.”

You turn your attention to the coffee and partially fill both of the mugs, absent-mindedly adding a sugar cube and a little cup of half-and-half to yours and stirring, watching the color spread and blend. You look up and notice the lieutenant surveying the restaurant again.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Hmmm… yes, this place certainly seems your style.” YOU — “What, sad and old?” KIM KITSURAGI — He smiles slightly, but his brow betrays his discomfort. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of… eclectic, stubborn, lively.” He glances at the walls covered in various posters, art, and rock and roll memorabilia. YOU — “Disco.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Disco.” He nods affirmatively.

You absently stir your coffee and lift it to your mouth to take a sip, mulling over topics of conversation. RHETORIC — Go for a standard sort of icebreaker, what’s the latest with him, that sort of thing. ESPRIT DE CORPS — Let’s talk work. Trade some gritty case stories with him! INTERFACING — Maybe you could talk torque dork to torque dork? EMPATHY — Neither of you have motor carriages right now. That would just be a bummer. INLAND EMPIRE — Ask him to tell you a secret! AUTHORITY — That one never works.

YOU — “You just moved into your new place, right Kim? How is it?” KIM KITSURAGI — “Hmm, it’s not bad. I had to make a few concessions but… there’s a bit more floor space than my last place. I finally have a good space for a proper desk.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Now the only trouble is getting a desk up three flights of stairs.”

YOU — “I can lend you a hand with that if you want. I have reason to suspect I may be a former gym teacher.” PERCEPTION — You can’t really hear it, but judging by the steam rolling away from the mug at his lips, you can tell the lieutenant let a light chuckle out through his nose before taking another sip of coffee.

KIM KITSURAGI — “Maybe I’ll take you up on that when I find something suitable.” RHETORIC — Great job! Look at you! You’re so good at talking like a normal person!

KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant casually withdraws his notebook from his jacket and starts perusing it while he slowly sips his coffee. YOU — “Hey, no working until we’ve had breakfast.” KIM KITSURAGI — He barely moves, glancing upwards at you and cocking an eyebrow. AUTHORITY — It’s fine, that brow is only operating at about 25% capacity. You got this. YOU — “Take a break, lieutenant.” You place your hand on top of his, gently encouraging him to lower the notebook onto the table. He nonchalantly relents, quickly withdrawing his hand and tucking it under his other arm, which rests casually on the table. His glance wanders away from you and out towards the windows. EMPATHY — It’s hard to tell if he’s annoyed or just playing up indifference. Perhaps you shouldn’t have grabbed his hand like that.

You take a moment to look around the restaurant, passively taking in the surroundings that feel intensely familiar to your instincts, but strangely recent to the rest of you. It’s a weird feeling, one you’ve been experiencing just about everywhere you go in Jamrock. Places that you know but have never seen. Drifting shadows of the person you once were, and still are, half-buried in a haze. Your head fluctuates in the pressure, a mix of pristine images just out of reach and faint illusions gripped tightly in your palm.

KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant’s low voice suddenly pulls you back to reality. “Everything alright, detective?” INLAND EMPIRE — There is a hole in my brain. YOU — “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about the usual.” You pause, contemplating your next words. “Grinding the bourgeoisie into sausage for the proletariat and whatnot,” you lie. KIM KITSURAGI — “Ah, so nice of you to join us, Comrade Mazov.” YOU — You quickly bust out your trusty finger guns and fire off two shots, clicking your tongue as you snap your fingers. KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant is unphased by your reckless discharge of live rounds that undoubtedly rain chaos upon the once peaceful restaurant. DRAMA — C’mon, he probably thinks it’s at least a little cool. EMPATHY — It’s not, man.

RHETORIC — Let’s get back to the list. What else can we talk about? YOU — “Tell me a secret about yourself.” KIM KITSURAGI — He sighs. “This again?” YOU — “You know it.” KIM KITSURAGI — He pauses for a moment. “No.” YOU — “Aww, come on.” KIM KITSURAGI — He raises one eyebrow. AUTHORITY — Oh god, we have full capacity brow-raising. I repeat, full capacity!

KIM KITSURAGI — His brow lowers slightly, offering a challenge. “You’re terrible at keeping secrets. Maybe if you can think of a single piece of personal trivia you haven’t already divulged entirely unprompted to any random passerby, we can come back to this topic.” ESPRIT DE CORPS — He does not believe that his terms can be met. He is secure in that. SUGGESTION — Challenge accepted! YOU — “Deal.” DRAMA — You’re gonna need to work on this for like, at least 8 hours probably. Maybe more like 20.

WAITRESS — The same woman reappears with a tray in hand, radiating the unmistakable smell of hot, fresh breakfast. “Here you are, sirs!” She gently slides the plates in front of each of you. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need! Enjoy your food!” PERCEPTION — You notice the name on her apron: Denice. YOU — “Thanks, Denice.” WAITRESS — She offers a polite smile before leaving.

You immediately start digging in, shoveling the mixed bits of potato, egg, bacon, and cheese into your mouth, savoring the salt and fat of a hearty breakfast. It’s your favorite meal, but you don’t always have the time or energy to get anything decent most mornings.

SUGGESTION — Hey, I just had a great idea! Offer Kim some of this shit. YOU — You finish the bite you have in your mouth quickly. “Hey, Kim, you wanna try some of mine?” KIM KITSURAGI — He blinks. “No, thank you. I’ve got plenty here.” He looks down at the colossal waffle on his plate, barely dented. YOU — “Yeah but this is like, stupid good. I’ll even let you have some egg yolk.” KIM KITSURAGI — “Very generous of you.” He smirks, then studies your plate for a moment. “Hm… sure, why not.”

You slide your plate a bit closer to him. He holds his fork up, surveying for the ideal sample size. Then, he strikes, claiming an entire egg for himself.

YOU — “Woooow.” You feign offence. KIM KITSURAGI — “Sorry, detective. I’ll need to confiscate this. I believe it may be connected to a case I’m working on.” He tries to keep a straight face but the corner of his mouth is slightly turned upwards. In seconds, he files the evidence into his mouth and promptly destroys it.

YOU — “Can’t believe the corruption I am witnessing here.” In a counter-attack, you jab your fork into one of the untouched corners of the lieutenant’s waffle. KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant stabs his knife down across from your fork, as if ready to engage in combat. He stares you down, brows furrowed with the illusion of authority. “Detective, I would tread carefully if I were you. You have entered enemy territory, and I have the high ground.”

PERCEPTION — You can feel your face turning red in the heat of the incredibly stupid breakfast battle you have entered. AUTHORITY — Do it! Let loose the dogs of war! Get that fucking waffle! KIM KITSURAGI — The lieutenant narrows his eyes at you, his concentration unwavering. The authority levels are building in his brow. They are charged to 50% capacity. DRAMA — I have an idea, sire.

YOU — You relax back in your seat, looking behind Kim. “Oh, hey Captain Pryce, here to enjoy the best breakfast in Central Jamrock?” KIM KITSURAGI — He quickly turns his head to look behind him. SAVOIR FAIRE — In an instant, you slice a corner of the waffle free from Kim’s plate, casually sliding it onto yours. KIM KITSURAGI — Realizing the feint, he snaps his attention back to you, glaring.

YOU — You pull your plate back, then pick up your mug, gesturing towards the lieutenant with a slight smirk. “Truce?” KIM KITSURAGI — Studying you for a moment, he reluctantly picks up his mug and clinks it against yours. “For now.”

#disco elysium #de spoilers #disco elysium spoilers #fanfic #koko fic #de fanfic

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 3 years

Text

Stars

Dannymay, 12,021 Human Era

Danny floated lazily on his back, a bag full of white and grey rocks orbiting him while he admired the lunar surface. It was going to be hard for anything short of crafting the rocks into something to top Wulf’s teachings letting him portal up to the moon whenever he wanted, barely tethered by its weak gravity and able to traverse it without disturbing the dust unless he picked up a rock. From his vantage point, the stars above and about were uncountable, and if he didn’t know better he’d say there was no end to them. His appearance had changed, even, from the silk-lined, spike studded, leather jacket that Sam and Tuck all but shoved onto him when it became clear that he’d be fighting ghosts regularly to a suit resembling the uniforms of NASA astronauts, black, white, green, and covered in silver stars.

Grinning to himself, Danny took off toward the Oceanus Procellarum, a camera he and Tuck had built recording the longest video he’d ever taken when a chill that dwarfed the cold of space ran down his spine and rose from his lungs and throat to his lips, blue vapor drifting in front of his face. There was a ghost, on the moon, and the idea of a hostile ghost following him up to space was so beyond aggravating that Danny’s hair ignited, his fangs sharp, the knuckles of his gloves sharpening into hardpoints, and his aura flaring up like a beacon of green and blue. Opening a portal to deposit his bag of moon rocks in his closet, Danny launched himself where he felt the other ghost’s presence, the logic that a ghost whose aura he couldn’t see but still feel on the moon’s surface, in one of her craters even, abandoned at the moment. That thought process is, of course, slammed into him the moment Danny sees exactly what it is that he’s sensed.

Their body was a slowly slithering mass of the purest darkness that could not be called something so bright as black, with violets and blues and colors that could not be seen, only experienced, dancing within them like ink within water, blue and red and green stars twinkling between the stretches of void, moving fast enough for Danny to know there even was movement of them, but slow enough to be mesmerized by the sight of it. Their face was a theatrical mask, bone white with red behind the eyes and a curve of a smile to mark the mouth, and from the void behind the mask curled horns of dark and beautiful amethyst and sapphire and onyx, somehow occupying the same space and curving in every which way. It was, frankly, impossible to make out all the details or to measure quite how massive the form of Nocturne was as he relaxed upon the surface of the moon’s ocean of storms. In all his conflicts, no ghost had ever made him feel quite so small simply by laying back, impossibly huge.

“My, my, ” he said, voice coming from the back of Danny’s head rather than the lack of air around him, even if their lips still moved to shape the words. “ Is that Danny Phantom in the flesh, not simply dreaming so big that you’ve learned to astral project without my guidance? Have you decided to make your fantasy reality and join me here?” They lifted part of their body and when Danny focused he saw the silhouette of a hand.

Danny had many questions, but the first one that came out of his gawking mouth as he rose to meet the giant’s face was, ”How did you get so big? Been munching on the muses of artists? Oh stars, are artistic muses actual spirits? Can you eat them?” While Danny usually appreciated a good laugh, that was when he said something as a joke, not asked a very good question. Nocturne’s laughter swept over him like a tidal wave of endearment and amusement.

“Ah, that’s right, you met me through a smaller emanation, didn’t you? I assure you, child, I’ve been this size for ages. Also, I do not consume muses, though whether that is because they do not exist in such a form that I could or because that would be an unsustainable form of sustenance, I shall leave you to consider. While the dreams of artists like you are rather vivid, the occasional idealist and average joe is good for diversity in palette. After all, each mind has such capacity for imaginative dreams.”

“Emanation?”

“A thin slice of myself sent down to help you sleep at my brother’s request. ” Danny scratched his head at that and Nocturne laughed again. “ The little game of hero and villain was delightful fun, though… you didn’t think that the ghost Master of Dreams needed helmets and machinery to harvest the energy of good dreams, did you?” Danny folded his arms with a pout that Nocturne couldn’t possibly have been able to make out when he was so small comparatively, and yet they chuckled anyway, shifting into what Danny was going to call a sitting position.

“So you aren’t going to leave everyone asleep forever?”

They frowned. “Of course not, you can’t dream forever. It isn’t healthy and leads to stagnation and, eugh, nightmares. Those the Fright Knight can have, whensoever he gets himself free from his imprisonment. ” Danny sighed, relaxing all over, and did his best not to flinch when Nocturne scooped him up in a claw talon tendril wing fin hand. “ Come to listen?”

Danny looked around and spread his arms slowly. “In the silent vacuum of space? To what?”

“My dear boy, can you not hear the star song? ” Nocturne tilted his head and their eyes locked for a long, headache inducing minute. “ No one has taught you how to percieve the spaces that layer upon themselves to form the world you know, have they?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but I do have a headcahe now, so that’s great. What, the world is like origami and everything is singing underneath the top layer?”

“An apt comparison, yes, ” Nocturne said. “ Your liminal state of being considered, perhaps it would be simpler to show you, than to make you work your way through new senses. After all, what’s a dream without a bit of fantastical ease?”

Danny flew back a few paces, though he was still in Nocturne’s palm. “Is it safe for you to do that? I don’t wanna go forgetting how to be a living human being just to hear a song.” Nocturne huffed, puffing up like a bird in mild offense.

“Child, the mind is my domain, I know perfectly well what I am doing. You are not the first liminal whose mind I have touched, nor I imagine shall you be the last. But, if you do not care to hear the song that the earth, the moon and the stars sing…”

“I never said I don’t! I just, wanted to be sure.” Danny rubbed the back of his head before floating a bit higher. “Alright, alright what do I do?”

“Relax, little one. Imagine a door, it can be any door you like, between your mind and those minds around you. ” Danny closed his eyes, taking a superfluous breath that came up empty, his body relaxing slowly with each breath. He pictured a door, a hexagonal door to a space station. “ Very good, ” Nocturne said, and Danny felt his chest puff up with something like pride before he felt and heard a knock knock on the door in his mind. “ Now all you have to do is let me in.”

There was a moment where in Danny considered simply not letting Nocturne into his mind. After all, Danny would probably figure this out himself if he tried. It was a tempting idea, probably even the smartest idea when dealing with a being who had attacked him, even if they claimed it was a game. Still, the opportunity to experience space in a way that no one else could was a far bigger temptation, and so Danny turned the knob on the door to his mind and opened it up slowly.

There is the brush of Nocturne against the door and Danny both has himself drawn out and the universe slipped in and when he opens his eyes and his ears he cannot help but to let his mouth fall open as well. He can hear the voices of the endless universe singing under his feet. The hearts of stars singing deep beneath the lunar soil. Lost to the blooming nebulas staining the dark sky with color, miles upon miles of light and rivers of fire and the promise of something new. Danny can almost hear the words and language they speak; something so close, so distant, something he has never known -- but they ring with such magnificent, terrible truth that he thinks, maybe he has always known them. Maybe they have always lived inside him, alongside the bones. These melodies, these words, that burn with such ferocious clarity that if he just spoke them aloud then the far would become near and he could reach out and pluck the stars from the sky and cradle them in his hands or be cradled in their stellar flares.

The heavy elements known to those dull terrestrial creatures he began life as could only enter the universe with the death of a star, a fact that Danny knew very well, but it was one thing to know something on an academic level, and another to see and hear the voices of the ghosts left behind by those ancient stars, their magnificent fire shining from within every atom of the earth and the moon and the planets around him, harmonizing and rising into something yet more in the song of the Earth and her seas and forests and sky. Danny listens to the moon, and he knows that if he were to sing that song he could reach out to any body of water on Earth and pull it to him and him to it, and his call would be answered. That if he simply moved his lips and sang the words of the stars, he could call upon their fire, their gravity, could reach out to them and leave the chains of gravity rooting him to the Earth. It would be so easy to explore the universe, to leave and join the chorus of the stars and see all that one with an eternity at their hands could see.

Yet there was another song, this one smaller, softer, but no less wonderful song that wove around and within him, and listening to it brought to his mind yet more little songs, faint as the step of an ant against the dirt but still beautiful in all their own ways. He couldn’t go, not yet. Not without them. And so, Danny turned back to Nocturne and beamed up at him. “Thank you.”

“Of course, child. We may stop whenever you wish.” Danny nodded and rose up to circle around Nocturne, drinking in the sight of the universe, so that he could attempt - and fail and attempt again and again - to show his friends what he now experienced with paint and brush and pen. He had to return to Earth, but for now, he had the stars.

#Danny Phantom #Dannymay 2021 #Danny Fenton #Nocturne #Stars #Rexy Writes #fanfiction #fanfic

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yandere-daydreams · 4 years

Note

Vampire haikyuu boys. No,listen me out. Like they love volleyball,but they can't play due to the lack of blood. Then their darling ever so lovingly offers them some. Or reverse Darling is vampire and then the boys go absolutely feral for their shoulders to be pierced right through. They would absolutely starve darling,locking them up,just so their blood,and only their blood would ever pass through their lips.

I decided to go with the latter opition, if only to make this into a sort-of Monster Hunting AU. It’s just like the canon Haikyuu, except everyone has a darker color palette, comes equipped with a broadsword, and volleyball is replaced with generalized slaying, save for our lovely vampire Darling, of course. They’re allowed to pick favorites.

Title: Captivity.

TW: Imprisonment, Blood, Graphic Violence and Cannibalism.

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been so hungry.

You weren’t a stranger to starvation. Creatures like you were gifted with an inhumane lifespan and all the skills you need to hunt down at least one unwilling donor every month or so, but every so often, you’d find yourself wandering the streets blindly and searching for a meal after half a year of famine. You were acquainted with the salivating, the sleeplessness, the pangs of hot, pure desperation, you’d even had a fair amount of encounters with the inescapable numbness that came after the rest of it faded away. You were used to all of that. You could live that.

You weren’t used to not being able to do anything to change that, though.

That was the part you didn’t care for - your own undeniable, unfiltered helplessness.

You made a half-hearted attempt to pull against your restraints as the metal-plated door swung open, letting a fresh stream of warm summer air flow in with the night’s darkness. Your hands were bound behind your back, silver cuffs biting into your wrists and keeping you tethered to an unforgiving stone wall, the chain barely long enough to allow you to lay down, let alone explore your current prison. Still, you did your best to growl and glare and make your unhappiness known as a group of your captors entered, their names’ known and their faces’ familiar. You’d been here far too long not to know exactly kept you imprisoned.

You knew them, and yet, you refuse to acknowledge your jailors as individuals. Instead, you bowed your head and made sure your tone was resentful as possible, your loathing generalized and impersonal. Indifferent was the worst thing you could be, to them. “Let me go, humans.”

If they felt any compilation to obey, they didn’t bother indulging it. Rather, the tallest of the four scoffed, crossing his arms and stopping about halfway across the room. A good distance, a wary distance, one that emphasized caution over curiosity. “And to think, we come to do something nice for you,” Tsukishima said, watching as his companions continued to approach. “I don’t know why we bother to keep this thing alive. It’s not like it does anything to pull its weight.”

Yamaguchi paused, frowning softly as he threw his elbow into Tsukishima’s side. “That’s awfully heartless, for someone who practically dragged us through away from camp,” He countered, his stern tone melting into a laugh as his companion rolls his eyes. “Don’t pretend you aren’t excited to see (Y/n). It’s not fair, considering the rest of us have to deal with your whining.”

“Hinata whines, I point out inequity,” Tsukishima mumbled, the rebuttal quiet but impassioned. You were sure he went on, but your attention was quickly drawn away by a much braver boy, the shortest of the group, whose smile was hardly obscured by his thick, fur-lined cloak. He had no reservations when it came to approaching you, kneeling less than an arm’s length away and staring you down as he pulled off one of his gloves, his intent becoming obvious with the modest show of skin. You’d love to say something so meager had no effect on you, but you could already feel your fangs begin to emerge, prodding at your lower lip and only making you more aware of your own light-headedness, of how full he was.

Of just how long it’d been since your last meal.

He was the first to address you directly, his grin broadening with every word. You couldn’t bring yourself to mind, not when his pulse was suddenly drumming in your ears, growing louder with each passing second. “We waited a little too long this time, didn’t we?” He asked, his tone akin to that of an owner talking to their loyal pet. “I’m sorry - it’s so hard to keep track of time when we’re traveling. Sawamura wants to start leaving a few of us nearby while the other’s hunt, but I think it’d be easier to take you with us. Then, you’d get to see how cool we are when we’re not…” His gaze dropped to your restraints, quickly flickering away. “You’d like that, right? Traveling together will be so fun, when the others’ trust you as much as I do.”

“I’d rip out your throat at the first opportunity.” Your voice was flat, purposefully so, your speech only slightly distorted by your protruding canines. “The only thing I want is to get away from you and the rest of your butchers.”

“Have I ever told you how much I love your spirit?” He let out a sigh, and without further delay, he rolled up his sleeve, pale skin making itself apparent in the darkness. He was tentative, at first, moving slowly as he bent his hand back, taking care to angle his wrist so a string of thin, blue veins were merely a breath away from your lips. “Be gentle, alright? It’s been a while since my last turn, so I don’t want--”

He didn’t get a chance to finish, his words morphing into a stifled, pained moan. You didn’t try to be graceful or respectful or gentle, simply driving your fangs into his skin and biting, ripping away everything between you and the sustenance lying just below his flesh. In less than a second, it was flooding over your tongue, filling your mind with cotton and your body with euphoria and canceling out your restraints and your surroundings and your captors. For a moment, your hunger faded, and you were content. For a moment, you were no longer suffocating.

And then, someone grabbed your source by the collar, dragging him back until your fangs could no longer reach him, and the hunger was free to plague you as it wished.

“I told you not to get so close,” Kageyama spat, the sentiment frustrated, venomous. Hinata pursed his lips, glancing over his shoulder as his sense of self-preservation fought against his dissatisfaction, but Kageyama was quick to shake his head, sighing as he released the smaller boy. “Look at yourself,” He explained, gesturing vaguely towards Hinata’s wrist, now a bloody mess of tattered skin and gauged veins Yamaguchi was rushing to bandage. “It’s still a monster. You can’t forget that just because everyone’s treating it like a pet.”

“You’re so mean, Tobio,” Hinata drawled, from the blood loss or the effect your bites usually had on your victims, you couldn’t tell. “You’re just jealous that you didn’t get to feed ‘em, this time. You always get moody when it’s someone else’s turn.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, moron.” The sentiment was blunt and vague, but it didn’t take long for his focus to shift, his eyes coming to center on you. Unceremoniously, he dropped Hinata, the boy scrambling to regain his balance as Kageyama stepped towards you, his hand drifting towards the knife strapped to his belt.

The barest hint of a smile finding its way onto his expression.

“We still have to teach the mutt not to bite the hand that feeds it, don’t we?”

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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

Text

First-Line Defensive Pairing

Of all the things they’d done in the last few months, spending the afternoon at the Museum of Ice Cream was one of the more ridiculous. Mostly because of the wooden spoons they gave out on the tour. Partially because it seemed Will Scarlet could not stop casting furtive glances at Belle French. Or the heels that always matched her dresses. Maybe because she kept answering his hypothetical questions. And maybe even because he was willing to drift far closer to genuine these days. At least when it came to his feelings for her.

————

Word Count: 3.7K AN: Take two! Ok, so apparently yesterday when I posted this Tumblr thought it’d be a really cool idea to just...reformat the entire story. With whole graphs in totally wrong spots. Anyway, here it is again. Just as ridiculous as yesterday. With just as many Will and Belle emotions. Because that’s a thing I’m doing now, apparently. Writing Blue Line-era Will and Belle. If you’d like more of these flirt-prone idiots, here is their first date and Belle getting annoyed that Will fought someone on the ice. Technically, this was part of the kiss prompts and was “height difference kisses.” I hope the five of you who are interested in this enjoy it. That includes @shireness-says and @eleveneitherway who are mostly to blame for this.

————

“I’m going to ask you a hypothetical question.”

Belle lifted her eyebrows. Let some of that light creep back in her gaze, a flash of amusement that regularly made Will’s stomach leap dangerously close to the base of his ribs. That’s why he did it. Maybe not the rib thing, partially because he wasn’t even sure that was the correct technical term. The rest of it, though. The eye thing. Sure. Definitely. One-hundred percent. Why he’d also made sure the little wooden spoon they’d been given at the start of this tour was still in the corner of his mouth; to guarantee absolute absurdity, and he figured that started when they decided to spend their afternoon at the Museum of Ice Cream, but he was willing to take it all a step further.

In the absurdity factor, at least.

Other things were—

Well, it wasn’t as if they explicitly decided to keep the relationship a secret. Not on purpose. Not really. Or come to any sort of legitimate agreement regarding the use of the word relationship. It never seemed...important, honestly. And that was a potentially problematic and lackadaisical approach to someone who made Will smile with an almost alarming consistency in the last few months, but she’d also sort of snuck up on him, and Ariel was going to be so annoying.

About the whole goddamn thing.

She’d never shut up about it, he knew.

So he didn’t push. Belle didn’t, either. An unspoken agreement, that’s what it was. He had other things to do, anyway. Like get ready for a playoff run and ignore the lingering ache in his calves after the echo of Arthur’s whistle stopped ringing in his ears, and, ok, his apartment was starting to feel a little bit larger than it had in a long time, maybe since Killian had moved out, but that was fine. Cup runs did not come because someone was in a relationship. Will had seen that first hand. With Cap, of all people.

Watched the way his whole life had fallen apart around his ankles, little shards of hope and possibility that, Will knew, still threatened the structural integrity of Kilian’s internal organs and all four ventricles of his heart, and he did not understand enough basic biology to be making those sorts of sweeping observations, but Robin had lost someone too and that had been horrible and tragic and—

If Will simply did not want to jinx things, then that was neither here nor there.

Relationship’y speaking.

It was good. They were good. He hated the wooden spoon they gave them to taste test half a dozen ice cream flavors.

He was legitimately worried about getting splinters in his tongue.

No excuses could possibly reason away that problem pre-game.

Belle’s eyebrows were still in the same spot. “You going to follow up on that, or…” “Would you burn a Gutenberg Bible? To stave off the apocalypse and or potential frostbite?” “Those two things go together, do they?” He shrugged. “In this instance, yeah, because—” “—Well, it wouldn’t matter,” Belle said, eyes flitting towards the overly enthusiastic tour guide and the seemingly never-ending history of ice cream, “because I wouldn’t allow myself to be in that position. And I don’t live anywhere near the Public Library. What would I be doing there when the freeze-wave came?” His stomach. Did that thing. Jumped and twisted, got a ten from the Russian judge on its floor routine. He was cautiously optimistic he’d be able to pull off a flawless beam performance too. It was an exceedingly convoluted metaphor. Wrong Olympics, too.

“Does salt air give you mind-reading powers?” “You’re not nearly as subtle as you think you are,” Belle grinned. Moving her hand faster than he was entirely prepared for ensured that he nearly dropped his small plastic cup of churro churro ice cream. He made noise. Without trying. A hiss and a grunt in the back of his throat that then led to a sound escaping between Belle’s half-hearted scowl, and that sound was closer to a giggle than either of them would ever admit and just enough to mess with his mental faculties a little and the tour guide stopped talking. To stare straight at them.

Color lifted on Belle’s cheeks, ice cream-covered spoon held awkwardly between them.

“As you were, ma’am,” Will said, all false bravado, and that was something of a trend. In several different capacities. It was far too depressing a thought to have while eating cinnamon-flavored ice cream.

Belle elbowed him.

And the tour guide got back to her to spiel. Without a reprimand.

“Say freeze-wave again without laughing.”

Her eyelashes were more of a problem, honestly. Than the eyebrows. Or the specific jut of her chin Will had rather quickly learned meant she was ready to challenge him on some ridiculous topic, fully prepared to argue a position she might not have otherwise agreed with. Only because it wasn’t what he was arguing, and it was easy to understand why she won that Model UN award.

Plus, her eyelashes were just stupid long, and he thought she was really pretty.

Like in a fundamental sort of way.

“Freeze-wave,” Belle enunciated, pausing between syllables for maximum effect, “are you asking me Day After Tomorrow questions because of the ice cream, because I’m a librarian or because you’re the strangest man alive?” She finally ate the rest of the ice cream. It was starting to melt, that was why. This was very melt-prone ice cream. “Oh, shit,” she mumbled, “this is really good. Better than mine.” Something popped in his shoulder when he reached towards her plastic cup. He wouldn’t tell Ariel about that, either.

“Which kind is—” Fighting off the objections of a small librarian who resolutely refused to wear anything except heels, no matter what the weather was like, was not usually as difficult as it was in that moment. Will assumed it had something to do with sugar. Or the force of his smile. Robbing the rest of him of energy and the ability to fend off either one of Belle’s fists. “Why are you like this?” “You didn��t want to try peanut and pretzel. With peanut butter swirl.” “Swallowed the flyer for this place while I wasn’t looking, huh?” Sticking her tongue out was distracting. Almost enough that he didn’t notice the absolutely atrocious attempt at impersonating his voice. “Oh, no, no, babe, I don’t want that; you can get peanut butter anywhere. That’s not special.” “Well, it’s not.” “I’m a big fancy hockey player, and I know everything there is to know about ice cream flavors and the potential life-changing palette moment that comes from the sublime combination of salty and sweet.” “Oh, now you’re just taunting me.” Her eyes narrowed, that time. His smile was going to permanently stretch out his cheeks. “You have a disgusting mind.” “You can’t get churro ice cream everywhere, babe.” “I’m going back to get honey later.” Will hummed. Stuck his lower lip out. Noticed that flash return. And hoarded it. Like a relationship—

Ah, fuck.

“Would you burn the Gutenberg Bible?” Her laugh was quickly becoming his favorite sound. Which wasn’t bad, per se. Was just kind of passably concerning. God damn. It was the heels. All of them kept matching the dresses she wore. She kept wearing dresses.

Of course, that was going to mess with Will’s head.

Belle shook her head. “No.” “Historical significance?” “Well, once again, I would not be in that position, would have listened to science and fled to warmer climates, so as not to make myself prey for escaped...what were they? Tigers?” “I honestly can’t remember,” Will admitted.

“This was your hypothetical!”

Heads snapped their direction. Frustration creased the tour guide’s forehead, and they’d paid extra to learn about the history of ice cream. Will had already known about the origins of the ice cream cone, though. So, the whole thing felt almost like a raw deal, and he was far more interested in preserving the color in Belle’s cheeks. He saluted. Who he was saluting was anyone’s guess, but it very likely was the otherwise unengaged teenage kid trudging behind his family who absolutely recognized Will.

“That’s going to end up on sixteen different social media sites,” Belle warned, not quite able to get her voice to an appropriate whispering level.

“So long as he got my good side, you won’t hear me complaining.” “Do you have a good side?”

“Sweetheart, the self-confidence. God.” She squeezed her eyes shut. While practically beaming at him, and Will had to bend his knees to reach, something else creaking in the process, but that was fine, and good, and pretty goddamn fantastic because her lips tasted a bit like chocolate.

“‘S’not your best work,” Belle mumbled, almost entirely into his mouth.

“Brain freeze.” “I would burn no books. That’s my final hypothetical answer.” Her eyelashes must have existed purely to torment him. Leaning back made it clear when they fluttered back open, and he swore there were flecks of gold in her eyes. Maybe he was melting, too. With the ice cream. That was almost poetic. “None at all? What if you were going to die?” “Maudlin.” “I don’t know what that means.” “Liar,” she challenged, another smile tugging at her mouth, and Will was clearly staring at her mouth. Stained slightly with chocolate, as it was. “I stand by it, though. The book stuff, not the commentary on your burgeoning intelligence.” “You want to find a corner to go and make out in?” Different laugh. The kind that came with her head thrown back, hair tickling Will’s forearm because at some point his arm had found its way around her, and touching Belle was becoming something almost close to second nature. “I could keep complimenting you if you want,” Belle said, “or I could give you my reason for not burning books.” “You’re a giant nerd, that’s why.” She clicked her tongue. “Very, very cute nerd, though.” “Betcha say that to all the girls.”

His stomach stilled. Dropped a few inches, for good measure. Below where it was supposed to be, and inching dangerously close to his feet, and what Will could not imagine was a very sanitary floor. The Museum of Ice Cream had a giant sprinkle pit. Nothing about that seemed very sanitary.

“I think stories have a purpose,” Belle said, still not quite whispering but definitely getting there, and he knew. Knew she knew. What he was thinking and feeling and unspoken understanding was quickly becoming the name of this particular game. With them.

Where it wasn’t a game at all.

Damn.

Ariel was going to be so annoying.

“No matter what they are. Shitty as they can be, all those ups and downs, and ridiculous, often unnecessary melodrama. It’s going to matter to somebody. Someone, somewhere, will be living their life and read those words or see those letters, and they’ll think, wow, whoever wrote this, gets me, and it will change everything for them. They’ll go back to it. Find solace and safety in it. Themselves, maybe. They’ll believe everything will be ok. Even if they only think that while they’re reading.” “Don’t forget audiobooks,” Will muttered, voice strangled and tinged with emotion. In the ice cream museum. Figured, honestly.

Belle pinched the side of his wrist.

“Ow. Avoid the bruise further up, please.” “Did you get hit?” Nodding took more energy than it should have, too. She hadn’t been to a game. He hadn’t asked her. What an idiot. “Not bad though, that’s just—” “—Par for the course.” “Mixing idioms, mon trésor.” “Oh, I got that one, actually.” “Slow pitch softball, that’s why,” Will reasoned, some of the tension he wasn’t especially pleased by loosening.

“I think we’re on a roll now.” He hummed. Nodded, again. Curled his fingers into the back of Belle’s dress. Blue, that afternoon. With matching heels. “It all matters,” she added, soft and earnest, and his eyes snapped. To her and with her and that second one didn’t make sense, not really, but he was and wanted to be and that absolutely terrified him.

Of it all falling apart again. Of it not being enough.

He wasn’t enough.

A story no one was ever all that interested in finishing.

“You think?” Belle nodded. “Why’d you start playing hockey?” “Quite a transition.” “Tit for tat, or—no, no, c’mon don’t look at me like that.” Red stained her cheeks, now. Making it difficult to concentrate on anything else, although the desire to kiss her again was a fairly strong second, and that kid was taking more pictures. “That’s not fair.” “You’ve brought this on yourself, babe,” Will argued, and he hoped Lucas didn’t yell. At him. He’d never really listened to the social media rules. “It’s a very long, occasionally depressing story about a kid and his single mom, the second of whom often worked her ass off and her fingers to the bone, and all those other delightfully visual clichés. But then! Who would guess, she got a job picking up extra shifts cleaning at the rink in town. Home to the world’s shittiest ice and loudest Zamboni, it instantly drew the attention of our kid-like hero.

“He was...infatuated, let’s say. With the sounds, especially. Nothing sounds like that first scrape of skates on fresh ice. Full of possibility, you know?” Belle didn’t answer. Will kept talking. “Best noise in the world. And then he learned there were other noises. Pucks hitting the back of nets. Sticks clanging together. Grunts and groans and the game itself, how loud it was. Helped silence some of his thoughts, none of which were ever very good. Lots of worries, some about his very dead sister, then a few more about that mother and her predilection toward clichés.”

“Good word,” Belle murmured. He kissed the top of her hair. The kid was openly staring at them, now.

“Anyway, the crux of the story is that the guy who owned the rink agreed to let the kid play on the rink. Knew the mother, understood her situation, and hockey is expensive. Like, well, we spout all that bullshit about hockey is for everyone, and I’ve got to stand up there and smile and nod and agree, and it’s fucked up because it’s not really true. Hockey’s for rich kids and families with regularly functioning alternators in their car.”

He shook his head. Had to. To chase away the memories and the cobwebs, and Cap knew this, too. Understood it, even. Remembered a life before the Vanklads, and not every kid got the Vankalds, and sometimes Will let himself wonder what would have happened if he’d found the Vanklads. Or their upstate New York equivalent.

Gotten better shin pads, probably.

“Hockey’s an exclusive sorta club,” Will continued, “gotta know someone who’s related to someone else, and they know someone who played, and it’s six degrees of increasingly desperate separation. By some lucky twist of fate, though, Jimmy Newell knew some bastard who knew somebody else, who saw me play, and you don’t say no to USA Developmental. Spent two years in Minnesota, way before Cap did, so he doesn’t get to claim that state as his own.” Belle’s lips twitched. “Good to know, for argument’s sake.” His stomach was becoming a problem.

Heart, too.

Sputtering and slamming, uneven beats that were going to leave another bruise. Will licked his lips.

“I went to Developmental, declared for the draft, got picked by New York, went to college, stayed in college, and the rest is history. As they say.” “They do say that, yeah.” “What’s the next question, then?” “How do you know there’s another question?” “Shot in the dark,” Will shrugged, but that was a lie, and it was getting increasingly easier to read that pinch between her eyebrows. “So, hit me.” “Literally?” “Please do not literally hit me. Locksley’s been feeling the forecheck the last couple’a practices.” “I know what that means!” Someone shushed them. Will couldn’t imagine the color will ever leave Belle’s cheeks.

He kissed the bridge of her nose.

“Who’d you get to teach you French?” “Who said I didn’t just learn French on my own?” “Babe,” she chided, and, well, that was the tipping point. As they say. To his heart and his stomach and—

“You wanna come to a game this series?” Belle blinked. Once, twice. Leaned back. Tilted her head. Likely waited for the camera crew that was inevitably lurking in the corner he was cautiously optimistic they’d make out in eventually. Didn’t happen, though. There was no camera crew.

Just Will Scarlet, professional hockey player, and part-time sap. Standing in one of the more nonsensical museums they’d been to in the last two months. Although they did go to the transit museum on three separate occasions, and he could honestly say he didn’t expect that.

So, maybe this was all just—

Par for the course.

He’d have to make some sort of deal with Eric. To make sure Ariel didn’t proclaim her relationship-plotting victories from a variety of rooftops. Someone in front office had to know someone else with Empire State Building connections.

Zelena probably did.

Ariel would use that.

“Where would I sit?”

He pulled her. Up. With an almost violent amount of force, threatening the safety of both of Belle’s shoulders in the process. But she’d asked the one question he hadn’t totally considered in his half-plotted plan, and getting his mouth back on hers was an acceptable diversion. Plus, she looped her arms around his neck pretty quickly.

Which had to count for something, he figured.

One hand cupped the back of his head, pulling him closer. Like he had any intention of being anywhere else, swiping his tongue against Belle’s lip and swallowing her sigh. They were still in public, technically. Her feet trailed the multi-color carpet beneath them, Will’s arms tightening and his palm flat against her back and her spine, and if she kept rocking up like that, he was going to do something drastic.

Something in the same realm as melting, probably.

Strands of hair tickled his skin, making him tilt his head and alter the angle, and that was entirely appropriate, but getting kicked out of the Museum of Ice Cream would probably make an absolutely fantastic story. Once they told people they were—

Doing whatever it was they were doing.

They’d get there eventually.

“Cap’s sister-in-law is coming,” Will said, not entirely able to catch his breath, “wants to see Kris and—” “—Should I know who that is?” “Works in equipment, and that’s not really the point.” “What is?” “That Little Vankald isn’t super interested in listening to Cap be full older brother on her and, far as I know, is fully capable of getting tickets wherever she wants. Can sweet talk the gold out of anyone’s pockets, and—” “—Wait, wait, are you equating hockey tickets to gold?” “When I’m playing, ma choupette.” “Is that cabbage?” He hummed. Nearly tripped over his own feet trying to hold onto Belle and the mostly melted cup of ice cream and paying for more churro ice cream made perfect sense. At the moment. “One of the kids at school was French Canadian,” Will explained, “used to swear all the time on the ice, and then he’d use stuff like that.” “You’re sharing endearments with a trash talker.” “More or less, yeah. Used to infuriate other guys.” “Who wants to be called a cabbage?” “I think you’re super cute.” Belle scowled. Didn’t argue, though. And Will refused to linger on the beat of his pulse. “I’d really like it if you were there,” he added, “Little Vanklad’ll be cool about it. She owes me. I fed her for a very long time.” “Did you just?” “I make incredible garlic bread; ask anyone.” “Wow,” Belle drawled, “just like people on the street, or…also, do you call her Little Vanklad all the time?” “To her face and behind her back with startling regularity. Not everyone gets my French endearments, babe. Consider yourself lucky.”

She scrunched her nose.

Stayed silent. All Will could hear was the soft explanations of the tour guide, and the questions from tourists who probably also thought going to the Museum of Sex made them edgy. After they bought a STRAND tote bag. God, maybe he was a dick. A judgmental dick, who still had too many thoughts and used an occasionally violent game to silence them by making sure he was the one dictating the noises and the trash talk and—

“Hey, uh, Will...Mr., uh—Mr. Scarlet? Do you think we could get a picture?”

Belle’s lips disappeared. Behind her teeth, and that didn’t do anything to temper the sound of what might have actually been joy. At the prospect of the staring teenager and his photo request.

In the goddamn Museum of Ice Cream.

Giving a jerky nod, Will quickly scanned the kid for any team-branded, but it didn’t look like he was wearing merch and that was a rather small miracle. Far as those things went.

Still, he had been in the middle of a pretty intense internal dialogue and potential freakout, and there was going to be ice cream on his hand if he didn’t throw this cup away.

Belle took the phone.

The kid’s phone.

“Smile,” she instructed, and Will tried. Really. He hoped he didn’t end up looking like a murderer on Twitter or Instagram or whatever kids used, and he had no idea when he got that old. When things started to freak him out, and he let the nerves claw back in, and the worry take root and—

“Hey,” he said before the kid could walk back to his parents and their matching STRAND tote bags. “You think you could take a picture of us, real quick?”

No one had ever moved faster.

In, like, the history of photography.

Circling an arm around Belle’s waist, Will’s smile came a bit easier and that was good because he was totally unprepared for what happened after that. Another instruction and flick of someone’s thumb, but then Belle was on her toes, even with the heels, and her lips were pressed against his cheek and it was like some sort of really exceptional sugar high.

Without the threat of inevitable crash.

Will didn’t think so, at least. He was also pretty positive it wasn’t tigers in The Day After Tomorrow. Wolves, maybe.

“Tell Little Vankald to save me a seat.” “I mean, I don’t think you should call her that.”

Her teeth grazed his jaw. Both of them were laughing in the picture, the kid’s eyes going impossibly wide as Will thanked him. “How hard you think it is to set up an Instagram account?”

#scarlet beauty #scarlet beauty ff #scarlet beauty fic #will x belle #blue line one shots #what did i use yesterday as my tag for this?#so as not to also confuse it with the au of the au staring will scarlet?#defensive!blue line #that wasn't it but it is now #anyway these have been real fun to write #because as we all know i am certified trash for alternate stories in the same 'verse #also giving belle a personality finally is a delight #seriously i hope the five people interested in this enjoy it

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technicallyblakebelladonna · 4 years

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part of me wants to scrap this chapter entirely and start fresh, but there’s a lot of stuff that i love in the current WIP. so i’m just gonna share some of that with y’all rn instead while i work through this slump

---

“See something you like?” she asked.

Blake was quiet for a long moment, shifting closer in her chair and leaning her elbows on the table, taking up the space between them. She lifted the ice pack to Yang’s bruised cheek and pressed it there gently. “Yeah,” she said, with the barest whisper, “I do.”

“You shouldn’t,” Yang muttered, fully aware of the turn that the conversation had taken and she leaned back away from Blake’s touch once again. How long would it be this way, this war of desire and past regrets?

“Yang-” Blake started, leaving the ice pack in the no-man’s land between them as she retreated.

“You are… undeniable,” Yang shuddered, dropping her hand to the towel as if to catch a remnant of Blake’s touch. It was crazy. But Yang was beginning not to care - whether it was cosmic or collision that brought them together, she knew that Blake belonged in her soul. “And I would like to think that, well…,” she sucked in a breath nervously, before finishing in a rush, “That I mean something to you, too.”

“You do,” Blake replied earnestly, and it took everything in her not to reach out and hold her again. Ever since they’d first met, that’s all Blake seemed to want to do - like she was one hairline fracture short of shattering and spilling forth. “You could’ve ignored me that night, you should’ve - all anyone ever sees when they look at me is a failure, a criminal-”

“Let’s start there,” Yang said firm, but gentle. She lifted up the ice pack to her face once again, wincing slightly at the cold. “If I’m going to help you, Blake - and I want to, okay? I’m going to help you however I can, but... I have to know you. Not just how I feel like I know you whenever we’re close, or these dreams that I have that feel like memories… I mean right now, I need to know who you are.”

A frown twisted at the corner of Blake’s lips, and she glanced away, fighting tears. In a voice so small, “You won't like me when I’m done talking, Yang.”

“You let me be the judge of that,” she replied, just as soft - though her kindness filled in the cracks of Blake’s hopeless despair. “You came back to me tonight, that has to count for something, right?”

“I don’t have anyone else,” Blake admitted quietly. “Anyone I’ve gotten close to, anyone I care about, he… he’ll hurt them if he ever finds out that I’ve gone to see them. And he always finds out. So I can’t.”

---

“I can’t remember the last time I had a proper meal like this,” Blake said, words slipping out unchecked as she watched Yang move about the kitchen to set the table. “Adam usually had me eat alone in my room. Unless he had other gang members over - then I wasn’t allowed to leave his side.”

A fork fell from Yang’s grasp at Blake’s words, her momentary frozen shock immediately undone by the sound of it clattering to the floor. She made no move to pick it up. “I, um… Blake, I didn’t mean to-”

“Oh, no, Yang I - shit, I wasn’t saying that to make you feel bad or anything!” Blake scrambled off her chair to pick up the fork, to do something useful - something other than seeming to continually let Yang down. “I was just saying - what I really meant to say is just... thank you,” she said, offering the fork back to her.

Yang took the utensil from Blake’s grasp, fingertips brushing against one another, and went to the sink to rinse it off. “I should be thanking you really,” she tried for a joke, turning back to see that Blake had followed her. “Fish isn’t really our thing, but Weiss had brought it over for us because she insisted that Ruby and I,” she straightened her posture and stuck her nose up in the air in a fairly spot-on imitation, “need to expand and broaden our taste palettes. Or whatever.”

Blake’s gaze drifted from Yang’s snooty posture with a small smile, her eyes landing on a picture on the fridge of Yang and the two girls that Blake had seen outside the clinic earlier that evening. “You all sound really close,” Blake murmured, studying the way that Yang had her arms wrapped around them both, to different degrees of annoyance.

“Yeah,” Yang sighed fondly, coming over to look at the picture over Blake’s shoulder. It was unsettling, her sudden proximity, her presence - all too familiar of the way that Adam had often loomed over her. But then Yang’s gentle voice continued, and the anxiety at the base of her spine disappeared. She wasn’t him. “Weiss was the one who helped me get a job at the clinic, actually. She vouched for me with Winter - not an easy task, as Weiss constantly likes to remind me. But I haven’t let her down yet, so, two years later, here I am.”

Something niggled at the back of Blake’s memories at the sight of the disgruntled snow-haired girl, but she shook it off, turning her attention to the other girl that photograph-Yang had in a headlock. “And… Ruby?” she said,

“My sister. She…,” Yang started, then abruptly stopped as words seemed to fail her. She reached out to trace the outline of the picture, tapping at the fridge thoughtfully. “She’s my rock, you know? People always ask us why we don’t look anything alike, and it’s because we’re actually half-sisters, but… she’s been closer to me than any real familial relationship I’ve ever had.”

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” Blake said quietly, thinking about the way that Adam would always say those words. She fought back a frown, taking solace instead by sliding her arm along the small of Yang’s back, hand coming to rest just above the plane of her hip and pulling her close. “You love them a lot, don’t you?”

“I can’t even begin to describe it,” Yang said with a heavy kind of love - the kind of love that was tangible and real and so often put into practice. Blake started to see the way that Yang always gave and gave and gave of herself, how she barely seemed to stop - and found herself wondering if Yang had ever received even a fraction of that love in return.

Something deep inside herself, some unconscious soul, started to suggest that she would be the one to give some of that love back to her.

---

“You ever think about it?” Yang said, loosely braiding a section of hair over her shoulder. Blake watched the twining strands of gold, mesmerized.

“What?”

If Yang noticed that Blake was breathless, she didn’t comment. “The paths we take,” she said, her eyes flickering up to meet Blake’s. “The choices we make, where we end up because of them…”

Blake remembered Adam’s then-honest eyes, the way that his passion for forward momentum had been something that she had held aloft, something she had sought to strive towards for herself. “All the time,” she murmured, frowning.

“I thought I could fill the hole in my life after Summer died, you know?” Yang said, quiet, hands falling from her braid to rest on the table. As she continued, her thumb found the inside of her right wrist and began stroking over skin that bore the small design of a rose that Blake hadn’t noticed before. “I never touched alcohol or drugs or anything like that - not after seeing what that stuff did to my dad. But I still destroyed myself in other ways. Like, I thought that if I threw myself into my studies, then I could distract myself from the pain I was feeling.”

“Do you regret any of it?” Blake asked, solemn.

“I…,” Yang fought, thinking about Pyrrha, about Ruby. Maybe some of the pain in their lives could’ve been avoided if she hadn’t been so reckless, if she hadn’t chosen the path she was on now. But she looked at Blake, this beautifully broken woman who sat across from her, and thought about the universe. Thought about home - and another four letters flitted through her mind. “Some of it. But not you.”

#rwby #bumbleby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #ray writes #massage au #rmtau #mend your soul au #anyway you might be able to tell that i can't pick a direction for this chapter and stick to it XP

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baekberrie · 4 years

Text

💐puppy love - bbh💐

Genre: Bestfriends!au, romance, fluff.

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

💐💐💐

And they called it puppy love Just because we're in our teens Tell them all, please tell them it isn't fair To take away my only dream

The teacher's soft voice succumbed slowly into the background of your deep thoughts as you contently watched how the cloud-like curtains fluttered with the wind coming from the open window. Clear blue, the sky was spotless, making it look even more immense than it already did, flowers' petals and trees rustled with the soft breeze, you inhaled deeply with a smile extending on your lips. It smelled like summer.

Your gaze wandered around the classroom, enjoying the warm palette in which the room was painted in as it had such a loving effect when the walls would be kissed by the sun rays. Everything seemed to be, as usual, almost everything. Without being to help it your eyes had already landed on a certain person, admiring the way that his shoulders had grown to be so steady and broad, and how they were looking from where you were watching him, admiring the unnatural silver shade that his hair was dyed into, how it shone like a million diamonds in the sun. But your favorite part was the way his delicate and milky fingers tapped absentmindedly on the desk, his back hunched over the desk as if he'd fall asleep at any moment.

Baekhyun was starting to change.

In class, everything was the same as always, while he was the one who was truly changing, the fact made your heart do a tiny but painful squeeze in your chest. You didn't know why you were feeling like that, so... so anxious about it. It was something for you completely inexplicable. Somehow you feared that Baekhyun would grow on his own and drift away from you, he was a dear friend and you'd hate to have him become someone else, someone that wasn't Baekhyun. Baekhyun was always surrounded by many people, so loved and yet, he always found time to be with you. It would be a lie if you said that it didn't make you feel reassured from your worries, but yet, a part of you was still afraid that what the two of you had would disappear.

As if he felt your stare burn on his skin, Baekhyun faced back, having his eyes meet with yours at first glance. Caught off guard, you flinched the slightest while trying your best to control the blood from reaching your cheeks. However, your efforts were to be wasted when his eyes formed into two glistening crystal moons, his lips stretching into a smile that even though you couldn't make out his reasons behind it, it shone brightly so that you for a second considered Baekhyun being an actual sun. His perfect pearl teeth showed and you feared that he would see you actually melting into your seat, leaving behind your furiously beating heart.

Flustered, you looked away, not really knowing what to name the reason to why your heart was like a sea in a storm inside of your chest. It worried you.

On the other side, you could hear Baekhyun still a laugh and in a second you had forgotten about anything you had been thinking about as you were quick to send him a scowl, but the harsh expression didn't last long on your features because the view of Baekhyun's back shaking in silent laughter delighted your heart so much that you oh so clearly could feel it swell with happiness in your chest. While you absentmindedly leaned your cheek into your palm, a sigh escaped your lips and you let your eyes fix on Baekhyun's figure once again, but this time with no intention of looking away. When your eyes met again, you could feel the waves crash violently against your ribs and yet you didn't look away, as if your gaze had been glued onto his, letting his eyes find whatever they were searching for inside of yours.

His eyes whom in the sun were like jewels but once you'd stare into them, they'd turn into deep, deep oceans with no bottom, making whoever who'd stare into them feel lost and adrift, his gaze was something to you almost dazing as it took all of your will power to look away from his treasures, almost as if his eyes alone could put you under an inescapable spell.

Just when the class felt like it would never end, the bell ringed freedom. However, Baekhyun's eyes continued staring into yours, making you stay rock still in your seat, not daring to look away from the precious view that was his orbs. His silver hair was tousled into messy, wild locks, and yet he looked as perfect as he could, with his clear skin where his cheekbones would catch the rays of the sun, highlighting so brightly his face. People were quick to gather around him, wanting to hang out with the amazing guy who was currently giving you the most affectionate stare. Teeth dug into your lips when for a second you wished that these people would disappear and let you be with him alone. Alone. As if the two of you had never shared such a long gaze, he gave you another of his radiant smiles.

That smile that within a second enlightened the whole classroom, that smile that held an incredibly joyful warmth, you didn't know what happened, but you felt a part of yourself slip like sand through the cracks of your fingers when your heart skipped a beat that felt so different from the usual, at the same time it felt as if you had been renewed, as if there were wines and roots intertwining around your heart, flowers, roses, and plants growing on its edges, ornating it with their colorful petals, filling you with their delightful essence. You blamed his pearly white smile and those plump lips, for making your eyes draw to them like magnets, it was its fault that you couldn't help but wonder how it would feel to have his lips curl into such a smile against yours. A hand that squeezed on your shoulder broke the eye contact with the boy a few seats away as you faced the person, only to be met with another rather beautiful smile and a pair of wide chocolate orbs that couldn't wait to look into yours.

"Kyungsoo, hi." Your lips curled while you pronounced his name and his beam brightened at your attention, his delicate hand slid down your arm absentmindedly before leaving you.

"Hey, I brought your notes back, thank you so much for lending them to me." The sincere words were said in his usual dark yet soft voice as he ever so gently placed the notes you took back on your desk, he bit his lips shyly as if there was something more he wanted to say, so you waited for him to gather his courage with a kind smile. Kyungsoo was always so delicate and calm and that never failed to rub off on you, in fact, you rather liked it. With his plump lips caught in his teeth, he swung slowly on the ball of his feet, occasionally looking at you from under his long lashes.

"I was wondering if you, sometime when you're free, perhaps we could go to study together?" His voice had barely been a light whisper when he finally brought himself to utter the words. You were surprised and for some reason, your heartbeat became more agitated. This was the first time a guy asked you out and for that matter, you had no idea what to say or if you ever wanted to. Kyungsoo was with no doubt an amazing and sweet person. But you could see from the rosy blush on his cheeks and the way he couldn't look at you in the eyes, that he felt something stronger in your regards than just simple friendship, you couldn't bring yourself to try and feel the same.

A nervous smile twitched on the corner of your lips while the tiniest bit of cold sweat started forming on your forehead.

"Uhm, let's see..."

As if someone had heard your silent call for help, a warm chest brushed against your back and a strong arm wrapped around your shoulders, pressing you against his side.

"Y/n! I've been looking for you, can we talk for a second?" Baekhyun's voice resounded in your ears, sending happy chills down your spine as his arm unwrapped from your body and casually held your hand instead. Kyungsoo's sweet eyes turned within a second hard and stony when his gaze fell on your holding hands, eyeing the way that Baekhyun's fingers were so lightly holding yours. Completely ignoring the fact that he had interrupted you from answering, Baekhyun gave the other guy a radiant smile: "I'm so sorry, it's really urgent." With that being said, he dragged you wordlessly outside. You gave Kyungsoo an apologizing glance from behind your shoulder, while a tiny part of you was feeling guilty for not giving a proper answer, the rest of you couldn't help but wonder why you felt so delighted by the simple skin contact with your best friend. Teeth dug hard into your peachy lips to suppress the smile that was to spread on your by now rosy, warm cheeks.

"What did he need?" Baekhyun questioned, genuine curiosity in his honey-sweet voice that you recently found yourself wanting to hear more and more, especially when he wasn't there with you. It would happen in the most un awaited moments, mostly in your sleepless nights, an intense urge to hear Baekhyun's voice- to have him tell things he wouldn't let anyone besides you know, to have him sing for you, because it was a talent of his that only you had the privilege of acknowledging. But the fact that you couldn't just have that, it pushed you into dark loneliness that would leave you with a twisting pain in your chest.

"Just brought back something I lent him," You spoke through the smile that you hadn't been able to push away, Baekhyun's brows met each other into a frown on his forehead.

"You lent him stuff?" He seemed confused, almost as if it would be strange for you to do that. You shrugged your shoulders since you didn't consider it a big thing.

"Yeah, notes I took during English class." You explained shortly, Baekhyun nodded although there was something in his expression that told you he wasn't completely satisfied with the vague answer. Hesitation made its way on his face- as if there was something that he wanted to say- though wasn't sure if he should.

"Do...Do you like him?" Baekhyun eventually murmured, your eyes widened inevitably at the unexpected question, you wondered, why had your heart skipped such a strong beat? Why was it stuttering so in your chest? Perhaps... Would it bother Baekhyun if you did like Kyungsoo? Why did the thought make butterflies flutter your heart?

Biting your lip and pushing a stray strand of hair behind your ear, you shook your head hesitantly. "No- well- I'm, I don't know." It wasn't a lie, you knew Kyungsoo liked you and although you had established that you wouldn't try to invest yourself in him, there was no denying in the fact that you might actually like him if you were to open your heart for him. However, what really mattered at the moment was the slightly pained expression that Baekhyun hadn't been able to hide from his face.

"Oh," He trailed off, eyebrows meeting each other on his face, creasing the little spot on his forehead, and you had to curl your fingers into fists to not reach up to push your index finger to his brows and ease the tensed spot on his milky and beautiful skin. All you did was send him a soft smile, one that gave away none of the things that were rushing through your head. A smile that left nothing but curiosity and confusion, though, to Baekhyun, the little smile didn't do only that, but also set his heart on fire, a feeling that he felt greatly bothered by. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the conversation had left him absolutely upset as you left to your next class without another word. A shy yet mischevious smile on your lips.

💐💐💐

You opened the slidable door to Baekhyun's homeroom classroom, only to find it completely empty and painted by the strong yet incredibly warm colors of the sunset. It was nearing five pm and you were supposed to meet up with the said boy on your way home, however, as you well knew, he wasn't done with classes yet and waiting in the library had gotten extremely boring. Knowing that he'd be coming by his classroom before he reached you, you decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to have him find you there right away. It wasn't difficult to find Baekhyun's desk, really, the boy was known for leaving his backpack hanging on the back of his chair. As your trailing eyes fell on the desired desk you smiled to yourself, remembering how Baekhyun would sometimes be late for school and therefore not having time to stop by his lockers made him run to the classroom right away. Small giggles threatened to leave your lips as you sat down at his desk, feeling like a silly character from a shoujo manga. This wasn't supposed to make you feel this happy- so...How to explain it? Why was it that the mere thought of Baekhyun made your heart squirm? Heat gathered on your cheeks as a possible, very obvious answer, made its way to your head, but you quickly shook the idea away. It couldn't be...Or...?

Sudden clatters and noises of shoes tapping against the ground outside the classroom sent your heart almost flying out of your throat and the first thing you did was throwing your arms over the table and your head upon them, feigning sleep. You had no idea why you had felt the need to faking sleep, why you suddenly felt embarassed. If it wasn't Baekhyun who was about to enter, it would seem rather strange and questioning if they a girl randomly blushing while sitting at a male's seat, no? Maybe it had been the direction that your thoughts had been wandering to that would have made you feel extremely embarassed if you had to meet Baekhyun's eyes after almost admitting that you liked hi-

The door slid open rather harshly and closed just as quickly. Whoever had stepped inside was breathing as if they had run all the way here and that made you press your eyes tightly shut as you tried to keep your breathing steady enough to trick whoever had entered that you were in fact sleeping. The urge to peek was unbearable, it tingled into every part of your body- into your fingertips and the tension in your body made your toes curl unknowingly inside your shoes. The person made their way into the classroom, you were glad it was only one and not a group of people. It almost didn't occur to you how they had stopped in front of you until you finally sensed their presence. Oh God, help, please-

You had no idea whether you were doing a great job in looking asleep, but perhaps the fact that this person was supposedly inspecting you meant you were probably not as convincing as you were hoping to be. Nonetheless, you kept going because although a strong part of you wanted to see who it was, your heart was beating in a way that resembled fear therefore you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Especially not when a certain sent reached your senses, the fragrance of a familiar faded cologne of musk and berries that would usually set your heart under a calm spell- but that by now was making your already frantic heart feel as if it was about to explode inside of your chest, destroy your ribs and eventually make you disappear. Your breath was by now gone somewhere far, maybe you were crazy but you felt their presence much closer than it had been a few moments ago and the fact made you almost freak out. Little did you know who it was.

Your thoughts were by now an untamable mess that you didn't really know how to sort out, hence, you didn't even know why you were trying to in a situation like this one. But none of that mattered anymore, because your train of thoughts was suddenly crushed by the feather-light yet extremely definite soft pressure against your lips, a warm and sticky texture attaching to your lips like scotch and the warmth they emanated almost burned you. Your body was trembling crazily, cold shivers covering your body, the familiar feeling of something blooming inside of your chest numbed the frantic beating of your heart, the picture of blooming roots and growing vines intertwining around your heart flashed in front of your eyes as you felt the pressure shift the slightest- deepening a little but just as soon the pressure slowly detached from your mouth, and from your lips tumbled a huge yet quiet gasp. You could feel how the backpack was picked from the behind of your chair- and as your eyes fluttered open- what you saw was the same broad back that you had been staring at the whole morning. The beautiful silver hair bouncing softly with ever step he took. Your heart was stuttering- Baekhyun was leaving- no, please don't leave-

"Baekhyun!" You called, standing abruptly up from your seat- the chair almost tumbled down but somehow gained its balance before it could fall. The boy turned immediately to see you standing there, perfectly awake, his eyes grew the size of two saucers and it was almost unnoticeable, but on his cheeks caressed a light hue of pink heating up his skin. His shocked expression soon morphed into something you couldn't decipher, there was fear in your chest as you strode to the opposite of where he was standing, the big window facing your back.

Tattered pants were leaving your lips. Suddenly feeling as if your breath had been taken away, and yet you found it in yourself to beg at the ethereal person in front of you; "Do it again," You murmured under your breath, barely giving in to the urge to avert your gaze. But the fear of Baekhyun leaving you behind was too heavy, seeing him there, enhanced by the shades of the sun, so beautiful, and yet so far. Could you ever stay by his side forever? He wouldn't leave you behind, would he? Why were these questions filling your head? They made no sense, Baekhyun had never even mentioned leaving you. You liked him so much it overwhelmed you, you wanted him all to yourself- how- how could you have come to feel such strong emotions?

Baekhyun's expression was completely void of any emotions as he started with slow steps coming closer to you, you didn't know what it meant that he was looking at you like that, but you didn't want to care. He was coming closer, that meant he'd stay with you, right? Once he was in front of you, his movements were so extremely slow, so frustratingly slow as he brought his hands to rest ever so lightly at the curves of your hips, pushing you gently to walk backward until your back hit the thin texture of the curtain separating you from the contact of the window, the white veil effulging both of you in its flow with the breeze. His eyes were so serious but just as always, you found yourself getting lost in the infinite ocean that they were.

You barely realized when Baekhyun's hands disappeared from your waist, only to appear on the side of your neck, his long and silky fingers reaching up to your jaw and fingertips kissing the tip of your earlobe. You shivered at the touch. Two fingers clasped gently around your chin, tilting your head up the slightest for a good angle and you found yourself gasping for breath as Baekhyun titled his own, eyes hooding sleepily over his hazel orbs the closer he came to your lips. They came crashing down on yours, making you grip tightly the material of his shirt into your fists. His lips were the softest as they captured yours in the slowest ways possible, tugging at your single lip towards him, eventually tasting it with his graceful tongue and capturing it in his mouth all over again.

Why had you tried to deny it? It was futile, your heart belonged to Baekhyun, and by the way he had claimed your lips, he knew it did too. As you parted from the breathtaking kiss- you threw your arms around his neck and hid your face near his collarbone.

"This means you'll never leave me behind right?" You heard yourself begging, almost desperately. "You... You love me right?" You murmured hesitantly, although the kiss he had just given you should have been enough for you to know the answer to that question, but the fear inside of you was still shaking your feelings. Though, Baekhyun tightened his arms around you, bringing you closer, as if it had been possible, his lips traced the shell of your ear as he spoke:

"How could I ever?"

"How could I ever leave you behind? I like you so much I don't know what to do."

💐💐💐

It's very spontaneous, perhaps even a lil crappy one shot, but I suddenly felt like I had enough inspiration to finish this and I truly hope you like it! It's very simple and short but please don't hesitate to tell me what you think! Sorry for the weird sentences and mistakes!

All the love, P💖💕💞🌸💐

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pluto-fics · 4 years

Text

Inspiration is Motivation － Prologue

Fanfiction | Artist!Taehyung x SingleMom!Reader

Genres: Fluff, Romance, Humor, Smut

Rating: G (for this chapter)

Word Count: 2.385 words

Chapter Warnings: none

Your brows furrow at the earlier statement of your best friend, Hanna.

"Believe me, it'll help you to relax for a few hours and I'll take good care of Ty."

You have no doubt about the latter. Hanna might be that stereotype single woman who likes to go out for a couple drinks every so often, but she is a reliable caretaker and one ridiculously good cook. Based on this, she was an absolute blessing the last two times she watched over your son. However, you still feel a little uneasy about her suggestion.

"I don't know... Tyler is kind of stubborn and moody lately, how could I leave you both alone for nearly four full hours? Not to mention that I can paint at home if I want to, I don't need to go to some weird art course..." you try to defy yourself. The idea of entrusting Hanna with your five year old son for so long worries you. Just the thought of it causes a bad feeling to spread throughout your body. Hanna just rolls her eyes, however. "Listen. I already signed you up for that course this Saturday. It's supposed to start at eleven, won't go past three in the afternoon and you can calmly come back home to Tyler and me having a great time without setting your apartment on fire."

You can't fight down the amused giggle at her statement before you sigh. "Hanna, I really don't-..." you begin, only to be interrupted mid-sentence. "Yes, you do want to try it. I'll be here at 10 this Saturday and you can either go to that course or stay here with us and bathe in my judgment."

And here you are, two days later and sat on a chair in front of an empty canvas and an A3 sized sketchpad, surrounded by strangers who, just like you, are waiting for the course to begin.

You take this time to inspect the equipment provided to you. Brushes and pencils of rather good quality, however accompanied by a cheap, fizzy eraser. The watercolor paint seems decent enough. But the big bottles of acrylics and oils on the desk in the middle of the room, accessible for everyone in it, clearly are not top-notch quality. That of course does not mean it is bad per se, you just might have expected something fancier in the art department of the local Community College.

Your train of thoughts comes to an abrupt stop when you hear someone opening the big wooden door and entering the room, a deep but smooth voice wishing you and your fellow course participants a good morning. The slender figure who just stepped into the room makes your eyes grow wide the second you lay your eyes on him. He is tall, with model like features, facial as well as bodywise. His fashion sense clearly is a little extravagant, for he wears a way too oversized dress shirt with a pair of what almost seemed to be pajama pants of some sort, and a matching beige colored beret topping his head. The big round glasses topping his nose make you curious. Does he need them to see? Or were they simply added to this retro outfit because they fit the vibe?

"I'm glad you all made it here on time, unlike myself" he then speaks while rummaging in the bag he has just placed on top of the desk in the front of the room. You hear quiet giggles erupting from two slightly older women in the back. His lips curve into a handsome smile, not even needing to show the whites of his teeth to make you doubt the existence of a man with such impressive visuals. Yet, you feel kind of stupid for the way you swoon over his looks like a teenager, despite being a grown woman with a child waiting for her to return home.

The young man claps his hands together as if to catch everyone's attention, even though he already possesses the full concentration of everyone in this room. "Now, I'd like to start by introducing myself, if that's alright by you."

He swiftly turns to the chalkboard behind himself and writes down what you assume to be his name.

"My name is Kim Taehyung and I teach traditional art at the local University. But as you can tell, I'm also hosting art courses like this one once a week, while also working as a hobby freelance artist. So I guess you could say that art is my passion."

There it is again. That charming smile of his as he tends to the attentive group of people in front of him. "But enough of me, I think we're all here to improve our skills, so how about we start with some easy warm ups to get creative first?" You notice everyone responding by nodding or already flipping over the cover of the massive sketchpad in front of them to reveal a blank page. Imitating your 'classmates', you flip open your sketchpad and face Mr. Kim again.

He begins by instructing everyone to warm up their wrists by drawing circular shapes of several sizes and shading them to your heart's content to make yourself familiar with the medium you're using. Another hint of his is to try the different art materials provided to each one of the participants and see which one you'd preferably work with today.

A couple minutes later, you can tell Mr. Kim valued his participants' individuality. Only giving a rough theme for the artwork you are supposed to create, he left everything else to you. "Warm Autumn" was the theme he came up with and your mind immediately drifts off into what you would like to call your ‘creative mode’. Images of brown leaves, soft breezes of air and fluffy fabrics of knitwear come to your mind. Thus, you begin by settling on a color palette in warm brown, red and yellow tones and soon start by sketching an idea.

Mr. Kim does no longer talk to the whole course. Instead, he begins to slowly walk around the classroom and take a look at everyone's approaches on the topic. Usually, you'd get so engulfed in your works that you would blend out most of your surroundings. However, Mr. Kim's presence makes it hard for you to fully concentrate on the sketch before you like you usually would. You don't even need to look up to know where Mr. Kim currently stood at, while he gradually comes closer to where you are seated at.

The sound of his steps approaching you slowly sends shivers down your spine, just like the feeling of him standing right beside you, wordlessly examining your sketch. You can't keep from glancing up at his face as his gaze remains locked on the paper before you, an approving look surfacing on his face. He then glances at your face, his eyes meeting yours immediately as he leans down a bit to speak to you with a quieter, low voice. "Nice choice of motives. Do you have an idea for the final composition already?"

You feel your cheeks heating up as you mumble out a shy "Um, kind of", unsure of how to feel about the genuine interest Mr. Kim shows. It's been a while since someone other than your son Tyler had commented on one of your works. The young artist next to you smiles. "You're a fast one, huh? I like that. But let me know if you need anything, alright?" His voice is just as unique as his appearance. And the more you get to hear of it, the more you come to like the sound of it. Nodding your head with a smile, you thank him before he smiles back and moves on to the next participant of his course.

By the end of the course, you have created a piece you are rather proud of - the motives assembled in a harmonic way, adding to the calm and welcoming atmosphere of your painting. Throughout the creation process of it, Mr. Kim came around every once in a while to praise you for your ideas or help you improve parts of your piece in ways you wouldn't have been able to think of yourself. You have actually truly enjoyed today. At the end of the course, Mr. Kim gives his final speech in which he thanks everyone for participating and gives some last advice before sending everyone home with their final artworks. You had just put the materials you had used back to where you got them from, ready to pack your things to leave, when Mr. Kim approaches you with a gentle smile. "(Y/N), am I right?" He addresses you, your heart seemingly skipping a beat at the way your name sounds when spoken with his smooth voice. "Yes, that would be me" you say, turning to him with faked confidence. In reality, something about this Kim Taehyung makes you feel like a shy teenager again. He smiles apologetically as he asks "Do you perhaps have a minute or two to talk? If you're not in a hurry to be somewhere, that is."

To be honest, you want to apologize and leave right now. Tyler is waiting for you at home, after all. And so is Hanna. But your head nods on it’s own accord before your mind could stop it from doing so. What are a few minutes anyway, right?

"Great! Actually, I was curious to see how your piece turned out. To be honest, I didn't really get to look at it yet," he then says as he regards your artwork which is still on the easel at your seat. Examining it interestedly, he chuckles. "You're really talented, you know? This can't have been the first time you’ve painted something like this."

Your lips curve upwards in a bashful smile. "Ah, well actually... It's kind of my hobby. It's just that I haven't had much time to pursue it recently..." you answer. A soft humming noise resonates in his throat before he faces you again. "Are you interested in modern art too?" He suddenly asks, catching you a little off guard. "Modern art?" You repeat, to which he nods. "There's an art exhibition at the City Hall next friday. The main focus of it lays on contemporary artists and most works shown there are paintings and sculptures, rather than installations or anything like that. But I have a feeling that you might like it." You aren't sure where he was aiming at with this information, but you appreciate it. Mirroring his friendly smile, you say "It does sound interesting, yes. But I'm really busy lately, I'm not sure if I'll be able to go."

Mr. Kim seems understanding as he nods. "Well, if you do make it, maybe we'll meet there." He responds, making you nod slowly as you mumble a barely audible "That'd be nice." You want to ask him if there'd also be works of his exhibited there, remembering that he introduced himself as a freelance artist earlier, but the sound of your phone vibrating in your pocket interrupts you. "Ah, sorry" you then say, quickly looking at your phone to see messages of Hanna coming in. It’s nothing serious, just questions about whether Tyler still takes naps after lunch or not, since he apparently got a little energy boost after having eaten well. But it is urgent enough for you to decide that it is time to go home now. "I better get going now. Today was really nice, thank you. And thank you for telling me about the art exhibition, too. As you said, maybe we'll meet there." You speak as you collect your belongings and art piece, Mr. Kim nodding calmly and smiling as he wishes you a nice day before you leave.

On your way home, you keep thinking about today's events. About the fun you have had while painting for the first time in months and the useful help Mr. Kim had offered. The giddy feeling you got whenever he would lean in to talk to you quietly with that soothing deep voice of his. You have really had a great day, even if you still feel a little awkward for being so affected by the male's looks and kind words. But who could blame you, if said artist looks like a piece of art himself?

Arriving at home, the first thing you notice right after opening the front door is the welcoming scent of warm pancakes coming from your kitchen. Peeking past the doorframe, you smile at the sight of your best friend and son pouring dough into a frying pan together, your little son giggling in excitement.

"Hello you two" you greet the diligently working duo and laugh when your son immediately comes running to you to hug your legs and welcome you back excitedly. Crouching down to meet his eyes, you then give him a kiss on his cheek and smile at him. "Did you have a nice time with Hanna?" You ask, your smile widening when Tyler nods eagerly. "Yes! Hanna knows so many fun games for two! We played hide and seek too!” You give Hanna a glance, relieved to see her smiling just as happily as your little son. For some reason you’re always worried that he might be a little too challenging for her sometimes, but seeing her reaction to his happy storytelling, you have no doubt that she adores your son almost as much as you do.

Getting up to greet your friend properly with a short hug, you then look at the pile of pancakes on the kitchen counter. "Someone seems to be hungry, huh" you comment, Hanna rolling her eyes as she speaks, avoiding the topic. "How was the art course?"

You can feel Tyler leaning against your legs, silently requesting your attention. Picking him up to hold him close, you then begin to tell Hanna about the building, the people there, the fun you had when painting something from start to finish for the first time in ages, and in the end you thank her for having made this possible. Yet, a very specific detail you keep to yourself for now － Kim Taehyung.

Thank you for reading the Prologue to my new series “Inspiration is Motivation”!

If you can’t wait to read the next chapter, check out my Series Masterlist and follow @pluto-fics to be notified of new updates.

Stay safe and see you soon! 💜

- Pluto 🌑

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captain-rez · 4 years

Text

The Trip You Never Went On

The pipe rested between his front teeth and his bottom lip, barely hanging on as Rezaria watched the clouds listlessly drift by his ship. His hands dangled over the railing, unable to really grasp anything at this stage of his relaxation and almost reaching unfeeling. With some effort, he pursed his lips, sealing the pipe and slowly sucked in, activating the pipe's sensors and draining the aether of the fire crystal in the bulb at the end, drawing it into him and letting it swirl around in his lungs before blowing it out, flames billowing out of his lips and nostrils as the drug bound to his own aether. Each element gave a different feeling, but he was partial to fire aether, his hair starting to take on a pink hue at the edges, replacing its usual pale grey. Rez smiled gently, sinking down to the deck as the crystal turned white, having drained all the aether from it, and it slipped out from his mouth, tinking off the wooden floorboards. His head was completely empty as he stared up into the purple sky, not a thought gracing the fringes of his mind, just the way he liked it. "Ya can't fly if ya don't try." The familiar voice comes unbidden into those fringes of his mind. "Ain't that what I told ya, all those years ago?"

Though his eyes were still open, it felt as though they were opening up again, everything around him disappearing with a purple sky taking its place and pink clouds floating around him. Nothing lied below him, the sky captain just floating in this endless expanse of colors, where only a small black speck in front of him defied the palette. The clouds all seemed to drift further away from him, with no discernable wind to blow them, just his body the only thing in the space. Feeling a hand clasp onto his shoulder, Rez's entire body inverted, his face sinking to the back of his head while the back of his head took the place of his face, and suddenly he was looking at an aging Roegadyn. "Mis'er Wilkers." Rez said in a soft voice, and looking down saw he was eight again, so much smaller than a child his age should be and looking up Wilker's stood so high up in the sky it appeared that his head was among the stars. "Wha' did I tell ya, Rez, all those years ago?" Wilkers was the only one among the crew that knew him as Rezaria, and besides Sylbgeim, the first one to call him that in secret.

"I.. I don' remember Mis'er Wilkers." The small child replied up to Wilkers, left hand scratching the back of his right hand anxiously. Though Wilkers never struck him, Rez had always hated disappointing him, looking up to the older Roegadyn. Wilkers shook his head with a soft smile, seeing the young boy getting anxious, "Ya do, li'l one. Ya just gotta think about it a moment." Rez felt himself sinking away and Wilkers growing smaller. Turning around he saw the black speck growing larger, eating the purple sky around it until it swallowed himself, plunging him into the black waters, no surface above or below him to break through. He held his breath for as long as he could, clawing around him desperately until finally he gasped. Bubbles slid from his lips, but he still drew breath, the air tinged with an odd, spicy flavor. He smacked his lips together, tasting the air, amazed to be breathing underwater until his feet touched the floor. He looked down and he was standing on the deck of a ship, but it was not the Blue Skies. Roegadyn crew moved quickly around him, bumping shoulders as they worked the sails, pulling up the hatches. "Gull, what are you standing around for?" The voice surrounded him, almost like it was coming at him from every direction and upon blinking was looking at the Quartermaster, Wiltpfef. "The ship is underwater and there's a storm on the horizon! We need to prepare!"

The cat looked around at what everyone was doing, but everything seemed contradictory. "How d'ya prepare fer a storm underwater?" Gull looked around and up at Wiltpfef.

The Roegadyn shook his head with growl, picking the cat up by the scruff of his neck, "This is the most basic of situations! This crew doesn't need some scrawny cat to fuck up preparations." The quartermaster walked over to the side of the ship and let go of the cat, leaving him to fall up away from the ship, watching it sink into the depths and Rez suddenly realized he was standing on solid ground, only everything was upside down. Above him a pair of Roegadyn were playing cards and Rez waved his hand, "Hey, why're ya on the ceiling?"

The two looked down at Rez with a bored expression, "Wha'd'ya mean? Yer the one on the ceiling." They said in one voice, and with the realization Rez fell to the ground. He got up, rubbing his shoulder and moved to sit at the table with the two Roegadyn, unsure what they were playing. The room didn't seem to have any doors and he was about to ask a question before they both held their hands up to stop him.

"Wha'd'ya got?" Asked the Roegdyn on the left.

"A pair of black lungs and one broken heart." The Lalafell on the right replied, beaming as it appeared like she was about to win, laying the cards on the table. The pictures in the center were exactly like what they described, making Rez feel a little nauseous looking at them.

"Not so fast. I've got three mementos to dead friends." The Hyur on the left slammed the cards on the table with flourish. In the space of a blink, the cards were replaced with two actual black lungs, a jumbled mess of a beating heart, and three different necklaces.

Rez reached out to grab the necklaces, "Wai', those're my necklaces!"

The Elezen slapped his hand away. "What are you speaking of? These are merely playing cards."

Rez rubbed the back of his right hand where it had been slapped and saw they were just playing cards. Reaching up with his other hand, Rez felt the various necklaces around his neck and sighed in relief. He looked back up at the two dragons, "How'm I supposed ta ge' outta here?" He asked rather insistently.

They looked back at him, quirking their eyebrows and pointed up. "You just have to fly. It's not that hard."

Rez looked up at the ceiling and saw a door there. "But I don' know how ta fly. I don' even have wings."

The two playing cards chuckled to themselves, "Why would you need wings? Just swim up there." Rez suddenly forgot he was underwater and swam up to the door, holding his breath as best he could. Tugging on the door, it didn't give easily and Rez pulled harder and harder, desperate to find air. "You have to push it, simpleton."

The miqo'te felt so dumb and waved a hand, "Thanks ya two. Take care." He pushed the door open and walked out onto a sandy beach, Wilkers standing just at the edge between the water and the sand. He beamed at the miqo'te as Rez walked closer, growing smaller with each step until he barely came up to Wilkers knees and reached out to take his hand. Wilkers hand was warm and gentle, the callouses all gone. "I remembered, Mis'er Wilkers."

"Oh, did ya now li'l one?" Wilkers said softly.

"Yeah. Ya said I can' fly if I never try." Rez smiled up at the Roegadyn, pleased with himself for remembering.

"Very good! An' lookit ya now. Flying with the greatest of ease." Rez looked and instead of a beach they were aboard the Blue Skies, flying into the sunset. "I'm proud o' ya, li'l one." Rez looked almost eye to eye with Wilkers, with the old Roegadyn's hand on his shoulder. "Ya did good."

Rez blinked his eyes, feeling his face was wet as he looked up at the sky, as it turned from purple to blue again. Rez sat back up on the deck of his ship, no one else around him, and rubbed the tears away. With a shaky hand he pulled another crystal out of the pouch, pulling the aether-less crystal from the pipe and replacing it, quickly putting it to his lips again.

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fire-toolz · 4 years

Photo

My family's beloved 16-year-old Siamese cat, Webley, died in my arms last year. He'd been a sleek fat kitty before he got ill, but he'd lost weight and lost weight till he was little more than a bedraggled shadow. At the end he could barely lift his head, and then the vet gave him the shot and he couldn't lift his head at all. I was scratching his ears as I'd so often done before, and suddenly they dropped, and whatever I was petting wasn't Webley anymore. It's one of the worst memories of my life.

I've been thinking about Webley a lot while listening to the new Fire-Toolz album, Rainbow Bridge, which comes out May 8 on local label Hausu Mountain. Angel Marcloid, a Chicago musician who records as Fire-Toolz (as well as under several other names), made Rainbow Bridge about her 16-year-old cat, Breakfast, also a Siamese, who died in December 2018. The album is an idiosyncratic collage of guttural death-metal roars, electronic bleeps, and vaporwave ambience. Bleak, sweet, and quietly unflinching, it slides back and forth between two emotional poles: one boils with rage and grief, while the other is steeped in a comforting lyricism as gentle as a cat rubbing its chin against your hand. "It's been a while, but I think about her every day," Marcloid says. "I still have moments where I feel her close and I just cry a whole bunch. I've got her ashes two feet from me right now. I have a tattoo of her on my chest. So yeah, I'm happy to honor her in my music."

From as early as she can remember, Marcloid says, music made her feel things "that are just so abstract and visceral and hard to put your finger on." She was born near Annapolis in 1984 to a music-loving family; her parents constantly played CDs of hair metal, the Beatles, and her all-time favorite band, Rush. Marcloid started making little drum sets out of pots and pans almost as soon as she could walk.

Her first public performance was when she was seven. Her parents knew a local bar band, and she sat in with them to play drums on a cover of the Black Crowes' "Hard to Handle."

"This is a smoky bar, women showing their boobs and stuff—it was not an environment for kids!" Marcloid says. "But I sat down with the drum kit and we played the songs, and they were just amazed. They were looking back at me while we were playing, like, 'Holy shit! This kid's actually keeping time!' I'll never forget walking off that stage, and all these drunk, smelly adults cheering me on, and a couple of people just gave me money. 'You're awesome, kid! Here's 20 dollars!'"

Marcloid soon taught herself to play guitar and bass too, and her musical interests expanded. As a child she had a formative late-night exposure to Morbid Angel's 1993 video for "Rapture" via MTV's Headbangers Ball, and soon she was also listening to jazz and electronica. She performed in several short-lived bands, and in the late 2000s she launched her own label, also called Rainbow Bridge. Through it Marcloid released cassettes and CDs by other musicians, as well as a blizzard of her own music under various names—including ambient acoustic music as the Human Excuse, punky dream pop with the trio Shadow Government, and electroacoustic noise as Water Bullet.

Marcloid came to Chicago in 2012 to move in with a girlfriend, who owned several cats and had just adopted Breakfast. Like most Siamese, Marcloid says, Breakfast "has always been a little strange." She was neurotic and disliked the other cats, and she never really warmed up to Marcloid's partner. In fact she only had one clear favorite. "She took to me immediately," Marcloid says, "and always wanted to be on me and just wanted to spend all her time with me." When Marcloid and her partner split up, there was no question who Breakfast would go with. The kitty ended up spending most of her life in Marcloid's bedroom to avoid other cats. "The rest of the house was just scary for her. There were too many other cat smells," Marcloid says.

"On the one hand, it may seem weird or maybe even borderline cruel to keep a cat in a single bedroom for their entire lives. But that's what she wanted; she was happy."

Marcloid has featured Breakfast in tracks throughout her oeuvre. "Spirit Spit" from the 2017 album Drip Mental (Hausu Mountain), for example, is a short wordless suite in which Marcloid imagines the usually shy Breakfast grown adventurous enough to go exploring in the house during a storm. The track opens with Breakfast engaging in some Siamese vocalizing and squawking, with thunder in the background. The rest of the narrative unfolds through auditory cues. "She comes down to the basement and turns on her ancient computer, which dials in to AOL," Marcloid explains. "Then she puts on a Telepath CD, which is a vaporwave artist that I absolutely love. You can hear the CD drive opening, you can hear the Telepath song start. And then she types some stuff and is meowing. And then she turns off the computer and goes back upstairs."

In 2018 Breakfast began to go into kidney failure. She was constantly peeing in Marcloid's room, and she wasn't eating. Eventually she was so uncomfortable and miserable Marcloid had to euthanize her. "And that was just so fucking traumatic for me, and so emotional," Marcloid says. "It really energized the search for truth and meaning that I had already begun years ago."

Marcloid began making Rainbow Bridge during Breakfast's illness. The title isn't just a callback to her record label (which she folded around five years ago) but also a reference to contemporary folk mythology about a rainbow bridge that, in Marcloid's words, "our pets either cross when they die to go to the other side, or they go there and they wait for us." The cover art, by Marcloid and Jeremy Coubrough, shows a Siamese cat sitting in a green field with her back to the viewer, looking at the prismatic steps of a bridge that leads upward into a kind of bloated growth of exploding colors.

The chaos of different hues fits the Fire-Toolz aesthetic. As Hausu Mountain cofounder Doug Kaplan puts it, "There's just nobody else that sounds like this, and there will never be another. Each track goes a billion different places but has a strong sense of oneness." Marcloid's other projects often follow particular rules or fit into particular genres; Mindspring Memories, for example, is mostly slowed-down and otherwise manipulated smooth-jazz samples. A recent album under the name Path to Lobster Believers is tape-collage improvisation. But with Fire-Toolz, Marcloid says, "Anything goes. It's a no-rules catchall; everything reports to it. It's the top of the pyramid."

The violent shifts in tone and genre on a Fire-Toolz track often feel exuberant and playful. On Rainbow Bridge, though, they create splatters of emotion: nostalgia, confusion, loss, hope. The opening track, "Gnosis .•o°Ozing," starts out as ranting death metal, with Marcloid screaming distorted, virtually indecipherable lyrics: "Arms wrapped in neon like a warning / A rainbow bridge unfurling / And now I lay listening to nothing / I feel my organs locking up."

By the second verse, she's superimposed smooth-jazz keyboard flourishes atop the noise, so that it sounds like the metal is battling easy listening, anger struggling with happier memories. "Layers in grief not unlike stages of passing / There are many / Not too many / Not so much."

The video for the song "Rainbow ∞ Bridge," created by Marcloid with Armpitrubber (aka Christine Janokowicz), provides an intense visual analogue for the music's smeared palette. This song too starts with a death-metal feel, pairing double kick drum with Marcloid's throat-tearing vocals. "Please don't be mad that I cut your cord / Fear lodged in my gums / Pressing into my face with fingerlike force / Breakfast!" she yells, as images of the kitty strobe and dissolve into colors, lights, emojis, a door opening, SpongeBob screaming. Tinkly new-age keyboard ambience plays over purple clouds and the on-screen words "Heaven! They say I can sit and soak you up." A guitar solo fit for a classic-rock ballad cuts through the shifting landscape, and then the song briefly fades into ambience as Breakfast romps across the screen and dissolves. It's a vision of a loved one disintegrating, perhaps into nothing, perhaps into memory or heaven, while pain and happiness alternate in spasms of glitches.

"Heaven has no location," Marcloid howls near the end of the track. That's a statement of spiritual hope; heaven is everywhere, Marcloid believes. "It's not any particular place. It's something that is all-encompassing," she says. "I think that it's everywhere and everything. It's the flow of life." You can hear that hope on tracks such as "⌈Mego⌉ ≜ Maitrī," which is all gentle surging keyboards and pattering electronica, encouraging you to gently drift into an ether of soft fur and purring.

A heaven without location can also simply be a heaven that doesn't exist, though, and that fear and doubt is also part of Rainbow Bridge. On the jittery "Microtubules," a throbbing beat loops around and around as Marcloid asks, "Were you afraid of crossing?" It's an unsettling question: of course she'd worry about a cat who never wanted to leave the bedroom going off on a long journey alone.

"When Breakfast was sick, anxiety was a huge, huge part of it," Marcloid says. "And even after she passed, and I knew that there was nothing to be done, there was still so much anxiety. I became frustrated because I wanted to know where she was, if she was anywhere. I just want the truth. I don't even care what it is, even if the truth is we're all just dead, and that when my body stops working, it's completely over."

Marcloid finished Rainbow Bridge months ago, and of course she didn't know it would be released at a time when anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and isolation would be so pervasive. In the context of a pandemic, the album seems even more relevant, not just because of its grief but also because of its prescient reminder of the importance of pets: during the stay-at-home order, animal adoptions have broken records as humans turn to cats and dogs to keep them company, and keep them sane, in isolation.

Marcloid adopted another cat herself after Breakfast died, and she now has three. "It's incredibly comforting to have them during a time like this," she says. "They're a solid rock for me to lean on. Especially lately, because they just don't fight with themselves. They're just such simpler creatures, and they're so much more connected to reality than any human could possibly be because of how complex our lives are. When they're in pain, they'll react—they won't like it, but they don't conceptualize and theorize about it. They don't get into this existential dread. They're just in pain, and they just want the pain to go away. That's all it is. It's that simple. We are just hopeless cases in comparison."

Marcloid's music, for all its genre shifts and chaotic oddness, can also reach for that kind of simplicity of thought and emotion. The six-minute instrumental "Angel (of Deth)" is elegiac, oceanic Muzak—a soundtrack to play while the waves roll in, or while watching a kitty sleep. At its conclusion the track breaks up into electronic blips and warbles, as though the world were coming apart and something else were wavering into existence behind the static.

"It's a mystery because we don't know," Marcloid says. "So I have to love and honor that mystery. I don't even know what God is, or if God exists, but whatever it is, that's what I love." Marcloid's tribute suggests that cats may know more about love than we do. They trust you even at the end, to help them die. Rainbow Bridge is not just a eulogy but an expression of hope that they'll lend you a paw in turn when your time comes. It's a comfort to think that when you start up those stairs, there will be a small someone to show you the way.

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serendipitous-magic · 5 years

Note

Director's Cut: Real Season 3, your take on the theater scene

(For the “give commentary on a scene you’ve written” thing)

OKAY SO I’M ACTUALLY REALLY GLAD YOU MENTIONED THAT SCENE BECAUSE THERE’S SOME VERY CLEVER FORESHADOWING IN THERE THAT I’M NOT SURE IF ANYONE CAUGHT. (Ahem.) I don’t think I’ll actually point it out, so that it can still be A Surprise, but just allow me to say that I am stupidly pleased with ~something~ in that section.

That being said, I’m interpreting “the theater scene” as like all the way through the theater scene, like from the movie starting to after Will’s episode, so (rubs hands together) here we go. Buckle up, kids. I’ll put it under a “read more” line and hope that works (Tumblr has been so weird about “read more” lines, has anyone else had that problem?)

-_-_-_-

Will ranks movies based on how easily they can make him forget the outside world. A score of one means, what movie? and a score of ten means, what real world?

This one is an eight.

Will gets swept up in the story, delighted by the clocks and the Delorean and all the old-fashioned ‘50s stuff and Doc Brown’s exaggerated facial expressions - and captivated by Marty McFly’s skateboard, turned-up collar, guitar, and handsomely rumpled hair. He’s even able to mostly forget how crisp the air conditioning is, in here. The air smells like buttered popcorn; his tongue is probably stained red with artificial strawberry; and for the first time in a long day of hiking and racing across town, he’s sitting down in a comfy chair. A good end to a good day.

It’s long been a headcanon of mine that Will gets a bit of a crush on Marty McFly when BTTF comes out in summer of 1985. I mean…

C’mon. He skateboards. He plays guitar. He’s clever (“Whoa, whoa, Biff… What’s that?”), he’s funny, he’s handsome, he’s cool and he knows it, he’s confident… Tell me Will wouldn’t be blushing in his theater seat. Go on.

His mood is dampened just a tad when he glances over and happens to see Mike’s fingers linked with El’s, as per the usual.

“Whoa. Whoa, Doc, stuck here?” Marty says from the screen. “I can’t be stuck here, I got a life in 1985! I got a girl!”

“Is she pretty?”

“Ah, she’s beautiful.”

Will looks back to the screen, because he doesn’t want to see the meaningful, affectionate glance that Mike sends his girlfriend.

I just had fun kind of using the movie to bounce back and forth with what’s going on in Will’s head - like how Marty, in the movie, says, “Ah, she’s beautiful,” and Mike gives El this meaningful look and Will has to look away. That was just so much fun to write. I actually had this scene of BTTF pulled up in a different tab while I was writing this scene, to refer to, so I could get the dialogue right.

“She’s crazy about me. Look at this. Look what she wrote here, Doc, I mean, that says it all. Doc… You’re my only hope.”

Crazy about me.

Yeah, crazy -

“Crazy,” as related to being in love, has been somewhat of a motif through Stranger Things. We’ve got, of course, “Crazy together,” but also “Only love makes you that crazy, and that damn stupid,” and, “It makes you crazy,” etc. And I do believe I’ll be using that motif a bit, myself, in the rewrite. (Hueh hueh hueh.)

“Marty, I’m sorry. But the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.”

At first Will thinks that the sudden darkness is part of the movie. And then, when the audience groans and he sees that even the exit signs above the doors have gone dark, he realizes what happened.

“Aw, c’mon,” Lucas gripes from somewhere in the darkness.

There’s a general muttering and shuffling as the packed theater protests the blackout.

Spreading.

Where his hand rests on his thigh, Will’s fingers twitch.

It’s spreading.

The blackout.

This was kind of a half-callback to S2 where Will is trying to explain to Joyce and Hopper what he’s feeling/seeing with his Now Memories, and he says something like, “It’s growing, and spreading, and… killing.”

Sweeping across Hawkins in a powerful, silent surge. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. He can feel it. Hot bulbs going dark; buzzing wires falling inert, lifeless.

Everything inside of Will drops. A horrible, sick, sinking, numb-cold swoop that starts to spiral somewhere in his gut, tingling up his spine and at the base of his skull, prickling at the back of his neck until one hand twitches up to press at the skin there.

It’s moving.

The knowledge comes to him unbidden, imparted to him with a sinuous, papery, reverberating flutter - like the sound of thousands of insect wings all beating at once, and Will wants to scream, he wants to bolt out of his chair, but he’s frozen.

His fingers are shaking. Something at the pit of his throat is shaking. His whole body feels like it’s sinking through the floor, leaving itself behind, his limbs going cold and weak as if he’s about to faint. His head swims.

I wanted to be as physical as possible with the descriptions of how the Mind Flayer feels. That little bit of dialogue we got from Will in that-one-season-that-never-happened actually gave some nice details: how it feels like dropping on a roller coaster, but cold.

Sluggishly, as if in a dream, he drags his hand off of his neck and gropes for the seat next to him. His mouth is already forming the M, voice ready to croak out one single syllable, when his fingers rake through thin, cold air.

His first instinct is to turn to Mike. ‘Nuff said.

There’s no one in the seat beside him. There’s no one in the whole theater. The air-conditioned, popcorn-scented air has gone frigid and sour, and Will is on his feet. Turning in circles. Scanning the dilapidated space wildly, shoes fumbling and slipping over slick, fleshy vines.

No.

No, no, no, no, no no no -

His eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, but the blueish gray palette of shadows is so horribly, cruelly familiar. And the fluttering - that dry, hissing, grinding flutter seems to spike through his whole body, shooting through him from neck to fingertips to toes, making him grimace, driving his feet forwards in a panicked, instinctual stumble towards the door.

It’s not real.

He tells himself that as he shoulders open the swinging door, coughs into his hands at the sting of toxins in his lungs. The coughing is as sharp as gunshots in the dead silence, echoing harshly through the darkness as he propels himself through the theater lobby. Spores drift listlessly in the stale air, bringing back a thousand memories, a thousand deeply ingrained instincts to run and hide and -

It’s not real. I’m not here. Not really.

He’s twelve years old again. Cold and alone and scared, the soles of his sneakers skidding on sludge. Jerking away with a half-swallowed sob as a fringe of dangling vines comb over his cheek.

Okay so Will is stuck between two conflicting reactions right now: a) instinctual, trauma-driven mortal terror, and b) complete denial. At this point in the story, he’s gonna be doing everything he can to convince himself that this isn’t real, it’s not really happening, it’s just a flashback, he’s just seeing things. But at the same time, being abruptly thrown back into the UD for the first time in sixth months is triggering a whole nasty slew of panic responses.

The lobby opens up into the mall, and Will comes to a halt. Starcourt is hollow. Storefronts devoid of products, of people. A few lights waver to life here and there as he passes, faint and blue-tinted, their meager glow smothered under softly rustling tendrils. He’s acclimating to the silence, the quiet pressing in against his eardrums like a high air pressure, and now his ears are picking up on the barely-detectable whispers and chitters of the Upside Down. The sound of vines growing, moving, shifting. The sound of creatures skittering into the shadows, somewhere unseen.

Like Dart, something in the back of his mind whispers.

The back of his throat opens, a call for Mike rising instinctually, but he bites down on it before it reaches his lips. He shakes his head, hard. Like he’s trying to wake himself up after nearly nodding off in class. He’s not a little kid anymore. It’s not real. It can’t be real. The Gate is closed. Nothing has happened since November. It’s just in his head. He can snap himself out of it.

And here’s that tilt towards the denial end of the spectrum.

His eyes squeeze shut. He clenches his fists at his sides, splays out his fingers until the tendons ache, breathes five long breaths. His throat scratches with the cold, acrid air, but he forces himself to breathe smoothly. The chittering grows louder, darting past him, coming close enough that he can feel something brush past his shoelace. But it’s not real. He won’t cringe away. He won’t let these memories control him. He won’t.

When he opens his eyes, he’s still there.

His skin crawls. His eyes trace up, over the shadowy silhouettes of the food court, over the vine-choked space above, past the neon STARCOURT sign that gutters and flares in sporadic bursts. And beyond the great glass skylight, there’s a shape. Dark - dark as the void of space, like a hole cut out of the universe. Looking at him. Watching him. The numb-cold swoop drains through him again, stronger this time as the Mind Flayer’s featureless head lowers towards the skylight.

A broken whimper twists in Will’s chest. Fear takes over. His mind goes blank, body reacting on animal instinct as his feet shove him back, away -

Aaaand we’ve tilted back in the direction of panic and terror. Whoo.

No -

No, please -

Hey do y’all remember how when they started burning the tunnels in S2, if you listened closely, Will said something garbled that sounded like “No, please -!”?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Lights flare at random, strobing, flickering across the length of the mall, static popping in Will’s clothes, and oh god he sees him, he knows Will is here, he’s looking at him -

Will can feel him beckoning. Calling to him. He’s getting closer, pressing down towards the glass, and Will can hear the whooshing, rumbling roar, muffled through the roof, and he’s still backing up, back into the theater lobby, lungs pistoning behind his ribs - Go away! Go away! Go - dread and powerlessness and panic cutting through him in sharp, icy waves, and not again, please not again, it’s not real it’s not real it’s not real, please please -

An abrupt grip on his upper arm makes him sputter, his scream getting tangled up in his mouth before it can come out, and Mike’s dark eyes go even wider with worry.

Mike.

Here I was going for the effect that they do in the show when Will suddenly snaps out of his episode and is back in the real world - yanno, where it’s all blue and gray and cold looking, in the Upside Down, and then all at once bam in the next shot the color scheme shifts and there’s Mike and he’s back in the real world?

Mike’s oh-so-familiar features, lit by the warm gold-and-pink glow of the lobby displays. The smell of buttered popcorn. A curious glance or two from the people milling around, who doubtless just witnessed Will’s erratic flight.

Relief swells so abruptly in Will’s chest that it bubbles up over his lips as a watery laugh.

Not real.

His head whips up, scanning the skylights that are just visible beyond the overhang of the second level. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. He’s not there. Will’s heart is wobbling hard between his lungs, adrenaline pounding at his temples and fingertips, and his -

His shoes. They’re wet. The soles slimy with the residue of… of…

Soda. He must have stepped in some soda. Yes - yes, there. There’s a banana-yellow caution, wet floor! sign propped up a few yards away. He just stepped in something as he crossed the lobby, that’s all. He breathes hard, consciously slowing the push-pull of his diaphragm, clearing out the phantom chill from his lungs.

He registers all at once that Mike has been saying his name. Will focuses in on the face of his best friend - the tapered cheeks, nearly devoid of the baby fat that used to round them out. The smattering of freckles over his sunburnt nose. The dark half-curling waves falling over his forehead, one strand just barely brushing the eyelashes of his left eye. He’s staring down into Will’s face with an expression of alarm, and when their eyes meet, he repeats, “Are you okay?”

Hmm. Watcha lookin’ at, Will?

Deja vu is making Mike’s head spin. It’s a sick, sinking feeling, like realizing all at once that you’ve forgotten something important. Like thinking that there’s one more stair than there is, and stepping into empty space with a disorienting jolt. Because Mike has seen Will like this before.

Will is gasping for breath, his body trembling under Mike’s palm, his eyes wild. The skin of his arm is chilled from the air conditioning, peppered with goosebumps.

Itty bitty detail, but: Mike assumes that Will’s skin is cold from air conditioning, and not… you know… the Upside Down perhaps?

“Will? Are you okay?”

But Will doesn’t seem to hear him. His chin is tilted up, eyes flickering over the ceiling like he expects to find something there.

“Will?”

His breath begins to even out. His head turns, scanning the lobby of the movie theater.

“Will?”

Finally, Mike’s voice seems to filter through whatever haze is surrounding him, and hazel eyes meet Mike’s.

“Are you okay?”

Something strange happens then. As he looks over Mike’s face, Will’s eyes lower for a moment, like he’s glancing at Mike’s mouth. And for a fraction of a second, it sets off an automatic response in the back of Mike’s brain. He shuts down the impulse as soon as it rears its head, but it was there: for a split second, Mike was about to tilt forward and… Well, no, not really. Of course he didn’t really think about kissing Will. It’s just that he’s been with El all day, so he’s still in boyfriend mode. It was automatic.

Still, the impulse startles him enough that he drops his hand from Will’s arm as Will opens his mouth to answer.

And here we have some Repressed Internalized Homophobia! Because of course Mike only thought about kissing Will because he’s been with El all day, and of course he only dropped his hand because it surprised him, and not because he’s subconsciously shying away from anything too “gay.”

“Yeah,” Will mumbles. “I’m… yeah. Fine.”

Mike can’t help it. He pushes. “Are you sure?”

He’s expecting Will to be mad at him. To roll his eyes or snap a retort or turn away, because he hates when people fuss over him, and Mike knows he hates it. But instead, Will just looks back out at the mall for a moment. He’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. This must have been a bad one.

“‘f course,” Will mutters eventually. He scuffs one foot along the carpet, like he’s trying to wipe something off his shoe.

It was the blackout that must have done it. Will’s panic attacks sometimes come on with no obvious rhyme or reason, but when there is a trigger - say, for example, abrupt, total darkness - they can be twice as bad. He seems better now, though. Calmer. More grounded. Mike decides against throwing an arm around Will’s shoulders, in case he gets shoved off with an annoyed bark of, I’m fine, but he risks an elbow bump.

Again: this is the first “episode,” so I needed to establish a few background details about what’s been going on in Hawkins and in the Party, in the six months since we saw them in S2. And basically what we’re learning here is that Will has been less and less cool with people fussing over him and being worried about him. We saw that starting to happen in S2, and it must have gotten so much worse after that. Remember his speech to Jonathan? How everyone treats him like he’s gonna break, like he can’t handle things on his own? And then the Mind Flayer happened. Every time Will coughed or disappeared to the bathroom for three minutes, people would have been going nuts. And it probably drives Will up the wall. To the point where he’d start to snap at them. To the point where Mike goes to do The Arm Thing, but decides against it at the last second and aborts the movement and only kind of awkwardly bumps Will’s elbow with his, because he wants to comfort Will but doesn’t wanna get snapped at, and he knows Will hates that stuff. So there’s a little bit of a wedge between them, right now (well, another wedge, since there’s already the stuff going on with Mike ignoring the Party a bit for El).

“C’mon,” he coaxes, “They’re about to get the movie running again.”

Will turns at Mike’s nudge without complaint, and they fall into step side-by-side as they make their way back to their seats. The Party greets them with anxious stares and whispers of, “Is he okay?” and “What happened?” Will waves off their concern, putting on a mask of nonchalance, and tosses off a line about fresh air.

One of my favorite HCs (and honestly it’s basically just canon) is how Mike and Will just automatically fall into step with each other as they walk, since they’ve been attached at the hip since they were five years old. They’re so used to navigating the world at each other’s side, quite literally, that it’s a deeply ingrained habit to just sync up their steps, despite the difference of leg lengths haha.

Also: the Party being concerned makes Will’s walls come up, and he “puts on a mask of nonchalance and tosses off a line about fresh air,” so we can see that he’s plenty used to pretending that everything is fine in order to wave off people’s concerns.

Before they can question him further, the film reel sputters, and the movie kicks into gear again.

“A bolt of lightning!” Doc Brown exclaims. The audience cheers as the film resumes. Will sticks a twizzler in his mouth and Mike makes himself look at the screen. “Unfortunately, you never know when or where it’s ever gonna strike!”

Marty slaps the Save the Clock Tower! flyer and thrusts it at the mad scientist, suave and handsome in his denim jacket with its popped-up collar.

“We do now.”

Mike thinks Marty is handsome too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, can I just point out that Mike was watching Will eat a twizzler and made himself look away. Liiiitle tiny hints of Mike subconsciously repressing his attraction to Will there. ‘Cause… uh, Mike? Why are you staring at Will’s mouth?

-_-_-_-

Aaaaaand there we have it! You probably didn’t mean that whole thing, but… Sorry not sorry lol. I’ve been accused of not knowing how to make a short post, and those accusations are 100% accurate.

#asks #anon #the real season 3 #writing commentary #byeler

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boilingdroid · 5 years

Text

A Loud Canvas

Rating: G Pairing: Markus and Connor (vague pining) Summary: Markus invites Connor over to come try out painting. Things are going well, until Connor begins to lose himself in the art, and not in a good way.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18742600

Notes: hi i had this idea a few weeks ago and wouldn't stop thinking about it and if i wanna indulge in content like this i have to do it mySELF. RA9 is a bitch

Adjusting to a new way of life after the revolution isn’t easy for everyone, be they human or android. Everyone came from different walks of life, their choices shaping everything around them and the people who would love or loathe them. Some humans still had their prejudices, some androids had their own traumas to mull over. Either way, Markus had become a hero, a shining new beacon, a bastion of hope for the androids, and the future was bright and promising.

Connor was grateful for his freedom, the entire world looking so different with these new eyes. To be alive, to feel alive -- it was something he accredited fully to Markus for setting him free. The thought of it is still one Connor hasn’t been able to fully process and dissect; Markus, held at gunpoint, still made an effort to reach out to him. Markus, after witnessing the destruction of Jericho, a massacre brought on by Connor, still saw a hope in him, still trusted him, still welcomed him. Even after Amanda had nearly seized control of Connor’s program and killed Markus before hundreds of freed androids, Markus held no resentment, no fear, no worry.

Had the roles been reversed, Connor would not have hesitated to kill.

He shoves these thoughts down, focusing back on the present as he took a few breaths to cool his systems. It had been several months since all of it had happened, and he stood now beside Markus as he always has since then, returning a favor. Guarding him. Watching for him. Like a loyal guard dog. Markus seems to catch the look on his face, and he puts a comforting hand on Connor’s shoulder, smiling gently.

“You don’t have to be tense all the time, you know,” Markus says, his eyes glancing briefly at the LED at Connor’s temple. “It’s safe here.”

Connor looked around the home. Expensive, frivolous, full of so much art and books -- seeing Manfred’s home in person at last made him understand Markus so much more. But still, he remembered hearing that this was where Markus died, and he wondered how he could be so calm leading Connor to the studio when he himself could barely even look down a skyscraper after his own death. It keeps him on edge.

The doors slide open, and there are canvases filled everywhere, most unfinished, others full of so much color. Markus watches Connor carefully, smiling a little to himself as Connor’s LED shifts to a curious yellow, scanning each piece. Connor broke down each stroke, identifying which were Manfred’s art style, and the others with the flourish only Markus knew how to create. His HUD lights up, picking out every detail by the millisecond; the magazines left behind, the age of some of the canvases, dust left on some of the countertops, dried oils and acrylics. His stress rises, however, when he manages to catch just the faintest trace of thirium left in the pavement. He could tell someone made an effort to scrub it clean. A human eye wouldn’t be able to detect it, and he wagers, neither would Markus anyways; his model is far more advanced than Markus’, able to pick up the scene and deconstruct it with ease. A blessing, when on missions, but right now, only a curse.

Markus had turned his back just before seeing Connor pick up on the scene, oblivious to the detective work. He hums a song quietly as he reaches for a blank canvas, propping it on the easel and setting up a palette of paints. Connor eventually rejoins him, head tilting slightly as he watches Markus mix the colors.

“Ever since Carl taught me to paint, it’s been something I haven’t been able to stop,” Markus says as he approaches, already beginning to fill in the white spaces of the canvas. “Didn’t get to make much when I led Jericho, but now I paint whenever I get the chance. It’s… calming.”

He can’t help but be a little amused at how Connor paid so much attention to each stroke, his LED at a stable yellow as he processes it. Markus is able to create art much faster than a human -- the perks of being an android -- but the speed never took away from the artwork itself. It wasn’t long until the near surreal piece was done. A full moon overhead a sea, except it appeared to be bleeding thirium blood, and the sea appeared as though it were being held by a pair of android hands.

Markus steps back to look over the piece, turning to Connor expectantly. Connor seemed fully invested in the artwork, his gaze lingering on it for a while until the LED finally spun blue.

Markus smirks. “What do you think?”

Connor gave it another glance before meeting Markus’ eyes. “There’s a part of me tempted to comment on how the moon can’t bleed,” He says, humor in his voice. “But it’s intriguing. Very much so.”

Connor had silently stored the memory of this painting into his long-term storage. He would think on this later.

An amused huff is all Markus responds with, and he moves to replace the canvas, setting his painting to dry to the side. Then, with a bit of a flourish, he hands the palette of paint to Connor. The action was unexpected, and it stumps him for a moment, simply staring at the brush and paint as its offered to him.

“Hey, come on now,” Markus teases, holding it closer to Connor until he took it. “Aren’t you a bit curious what you can make? I know I am.”

Holding the palette and brush felt so… foreign to Connor. Seeing Markus work with it was far different than this, and he finds himself shaking his head, trying to give it back.

“This is more your thing, Markus,” Connor says, internally questioning why his thirium pump seemed to have kicked a notch. “I was designed with forensics and investigative work in mind, my software specifically intended for police and --”

“Right, and I’m a domestic android who led a revolution,” Markus teases, poking at Connor’s shoulder. “You’re not bound by your creators anymore, Connor.”

Connor nods slowly, holding up the brush the same way he had seen Markus do so. Markus steps aside so he could stand before the canvas, processing. He samples the data of the times he had watched Markus create art, trying to figure out where he would begin. None of Markus’ paintings made entire sense to him, let alone the thirium moon he had just witnessed, and Connor found it rather silly that he would stand here before this inanimate, blank canvas, and feel intimidated by it.

Markus’ gentle voice fills the silence. “I was daunted by the idea of painting too when I first started,” He reminisces, garnering Connor’s full attention. “Don’t think too hard about it. It’s about… your emotion, paint what you feel.” He stood close to Connor, and damn him, Connor’s thirium pump continues to betray him. Markus sweeps his hand out towards the canvas, as if painting with just his gesture. “Interpret the world, improve on it, show what you see.”

Connor nods at this, looking between his blue and green eyes. Markus only offers a reassuring smile, and he has to turn away else another biocomponent of his starts complaining at the sight of it. “Alright,” Connor says, dipping the brush in black paint with three taps, just as Markus usually did. “... Walk me through this?”

Markus recalls Carl’s words to him, taking an unneeded breath as he watches Connor mimic him. It was funny in a way; Connor taking up this role while Markus tries to repeat the words Carl had given. It was like singing a song off key.

“Close your eyes for me,” Markus says, watching Connor’s flutter shut. There’s a bit of excitement he finds, anticipating what he might witness, but he keeps it tampered down. “Imagine… something that doesn’t exist, or something you’ve never seen. Concentrate on how it makes you feel and just… let your hand drift across the canvas.”

Connor remains silent, standing stiff in that odd, prim way he always held himself. There’s a long moment of hesitation before Connor lets the brush make contact, sweeping strokes filling the canvas with black streaks. Several times he opens his eyes to see where he’s going, nose twitching ever so slightly when the paint gave out on him and he needed to refresh it. It takes him a while to get accustomed to this, but luckily, androids don’t get tired, and Markus is more than happy to stand there the entire duration as Connor figures it out.

The first paintings start off relatively abstract. Blacks, greys, blues and reds are streaked across with no general guidance or direction aside than to just be on the canvas. A few strokes that were intended to be straight come out horrendously wobbly, much to Connor’s dismay. He starts over several times, repainting the canvas back to black, each attempt beginning to take more form and shape as he paints. He was learning and improving right before Markus’ eyes, and it was fascinating to watch. Markus wonders if this was what it was like for Carl when he watched him paint for the first time.

One hour, and twelve minutes pass since Connor began, and Markus can finally see a solid picture beginning to form. He still stuck with the same four colors, but now, they were working for him, values becoming present as Connor tapped into something within him. Grey streaks -- buildings, skyscrapers, he realizes, frames the canvas, the eye drawn to the bright rooftop at the bottom center, as if watching the scene from a bird’s eye view. Markus’ brows furrow as he watches the art begin to take form and shape, what he assumes to be a pixelated helicopter coming to life at the top, shining a light down on a figure at the rooftop while flares and strokes of red and blue pitter and patter in muffled tones around the scene. Connor’s controlled brushstrokes slowly become harsher, more energized than before, detailing a figure on the rooftop. Markus moves closer to peer at it, painted pixels forming the RK800 standing at the edge of the roof, and suddenly, Markus is filled with a wave of unease.

Paint is flicked here and there as the brush strokes become more fervent, the art coming together quicker than he was managing before. Armed soldiers all stood facing the painted Connor as he too faced them, despair in his features, red LED glowing to a broken halo that leaked and bled to the ground. Lights shone down on him, guns pointed towards him -- he holds himself hostage, his own pistol aimed at his head. Horrifically beautiful, an art piece that he knows that, if it were to be displayed at a gallery, would have the rich humans cooing and speaking over it with their wines.

But it didn’t feel right. From where Markus stood, he could see the angular features of Connor’s face were pulled taut in stress, eyes were fully shut, and as Markus circles Connor so he stood to his right, and he catches sight of the LED at his temple glowing an alarming shade of red, pulsing with every stroke he made. Every stroke, angry, shaky, losing the control and restraint he had seen earlier.

“Connor?” He calls to him. Connor doesn’t seem to acknowledge him in the slightest, and he doesn’t react when Markus puts a hand to his shoulder. Markus didn’t need to interface with him to notice that his stress levels were rising by the second, and he gives a gentle shake. “Connor, hey, you don’t need to keep going.”

He still doesn’t stop. Whatever it was he was trying to say with this needed to be out. He was caught in a trance, still moving and swaying a beat that wasn’t his own. His teeth grit, the red paint he was adding to the color near the rendition of himself suddenly spikes out, a streak of the red cutting through the skyscrapers and smearing against the greys and blacks. His cheeks were slick with tears, and as if he were possessed, his strokes change entirely. He wasn’t painting anymore, no -- this was a font. He was writing, ruining the canvas, red text over the skyscrapers and the lights. ‘RA9’, on repeat, again, again, again--

“Connor!”

Markus took hold of Connor’s face in his hands, and his eyes fly open, taking gasping for air to cool down systems he hadn’t realized were overheating. The palette drops from his hand, and he grasps Markus instinctively, grounding himself without thinking. Strings of errors clog up his system, and he takes several slow breaths before everything returned back to normal, focusing again on what was in front of him.

And oh god, Markus was right in his face.

“There you are,” Markus says, relief clear in that gentle voice of his, hands still cupping Connor’s cheeks. “Are you alright? I… I didn’t mean for this to stress you.”

Connor is keenly aware of how Markus brushes away the tears that had run down his cheeks, and he can’t stop questioning why it happened. There was no outward trigger, no real danger, and yet his entire system was poised for combat, defensive maneuvers online and ready to act, and yet he felt so unstable in the midst of it. There was something grounding about Markus being there, however, though the closeness was not something he was accustomed to. At the very least, his stress levels were beginning to reel back enough for stability.

“I.. I don’t know why I did that…” Connor says, looking back to his canvas. RA9. He recalls his previous investigations on the deviants, and how they had all frantically wrote this script on the walls, or anywhere they could get a pen to. He can feel the scripts that ran in the background and the anomalies that became present upon deviancy repeat, a sensation that would come close to that of a headache. The code continues to echo in his head, and he’s very careful to set down the paintbrush he still held so that he didn’t end up writing it again. “I… wasted your paints. I’m sorry.”

“No no, it’s fine,” Markus reassures, backing away to give Connor some space. He stoops down to fetch the palette that fell, looking back to the painting with worry. He was relieved Connor responded at all -- he’d seen other androids in Jericho reach a state similar to what he just witnessed, and it never failed to frighten him. Connor still stared at his canvas, his LED still red and cheeks still wet.

It was so strange, he thought, to see Connor this way. Connor, who always kept himself so eerily calm, prim and proper, who never let anyone see or think they had the upper hand. Connor, who carried himself with power, who could track down and hunt enemies with ease, who knew how to preconstruct skirmishes and fights and predict an outcome that he would come victorious. Connor, who had proven he would take a bullet or twelve for anyone he cared for. Connor, who now stood in his home, looking uncharacteristically lost and confused, with an art piece that said so much yet so little about who he was. Markus didn’t know how to process it.

Connor seems to pick up on this, and he holds his head up, carrying himself as if nothing had happened at all. Only his LED betrays him. “One of my earliest memories,” He says, gesturing to the canvas. “Philips apartment, 70th story, August 15, 2038. A PL600 took a little girl hostage -- CyberLife deployed me to tackle the situation. As one of my first missions, I have a tendency to revisit the memory… deconstruct it and rerun the numbers and success probabilities.”

Connor blinks several times, a defect of his as a result of being a prototype. He gestures to the art vaguely, and though Markus still hadn’t quite figured out how to read Connor entirely, he could tell that there was something heavy weighing in on him. He listens intently as he continues.

“Ever since my deviancy, I’ve thought again about that android. Daniel. I wondered if I would have done the same. What would have become of me had I been in his stead.” Connor says aloud. He runs a thumb over the still wet paint, staring down at the red that smeared on his synthetic skin. The algorithm rings in his head again, and he backs away, resisting the urge to frantically write again. “Art… is…. interesting.”

Connor looks up at Markus, doe-eyes searching him curiously. His LED was now settling back to a yellow with glimpses of blue, and he had the need to fidget and rid himself of the excess energy he had produced. Markus reaches out, hesitating only for a moment as he ponders his actions, and simply rests a hand on his shoulder. The touch is welcomed, and for a moment they just look to the painting silently.

“I understand if you don’t want to do this again,” Markus says at last, breaking the silence. “If I had known it would upset you like this, I wouldn’t have --”

“Actually,” Connor interrupts, looking to Markus and realizing that there was paint left on him. He tries to wipe it off his shirt with a finger. “As… strange as this was, I don’t think I despised it. If anything, I feel like it… helped me.”

Markus blinks a few times, but cracks a small smile. “Humans do find art to be therapeutic in a sense.”

Connor shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe it could do without the red paint everywhere. Perhaps I should have made a bleeding sun to compliment yours.”

They both chuckle lightly at that, and Connor is quick to take hold of the canvas he ruined and sets it aside, hoping not to look at it any further. There was something to this art, he supposes, and he had a newfound respect for it. He gave the studio another scan, now looking to the artwork with a different appreciation. The abstract faces, the bleeding moon, the flowers and rivers, the portraits of neon colors -- he wouldn’t be opposed to learning more about it.

“Well, you know,” Markus says, facing him fully. “You’ll always have another chance.”

That damn smile.

#okay i wrote something #DBH Markus #DBH Connor #detroit: become human #detroit become human #rk1k #rk1000 #ish #connor dbh #markus dbh #dbh fanfic #d:bh #ra9 #Detroit: BH

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