#I knew the 30 drafts I made and then never posted would catch up to me someday | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

calamitykaty · 3 years

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A Twist of Fate

Charlie x Fem! Reader

Word count:7670

Warnings: Slight Swearing, I think that’s it?

Requested: Sorta? It’s a multi writer topic by @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic revolving around the idea of y/n finding an ad to rent a date for Thanksgiving. *You can find the first writers fic HERE

A/N: HUGE thank you to @dream-a-little-bigger-x for reading every rough draft of this that I sent her, along with bouncing ideas with me! Also a huge thank you to @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic for supporting me when I got stuck and reading my super rough draft!

I wasn’t gonna post this until tomorrow but now I have a Christmas Reggie fic that I want to post tomorrow so...Happy Reading.

Y/N wrapped the buffalo plaid scarf around her neck and pulled her favorite slouchy red beanie over her thick mop of curls. Her cellphone was pressed between her right shoulder and ear as she buttoned up her navy peacoat and half-listened to her mom rattle off the preparations she needed to make for Thanksgiving.

“Mom, I really need to…” Y/N attempted to interject only to be cut off by her mother. She placed the phone on speaker and set it down on the counter while she slipped her feet into a pair of black boots. She had stopped listening to her mother’s droning voice nearly a half-hour beforehand, but her ears perked up when her mother asked the dreaded question.

“Are you bringing Noah this year honey? I know you guys like to alternate holidays with his family, but your Aunt Martha is going to make it this year and she is just tickled to finally get to meet him.”

Y/N pursed her lips and ran a hand over her face, she hadn’t told anyone that Noah broke things off with her two months prior. She hadn’t meant to keep it a secret for so long, but her mom loved Noah and she just knew she would blame her for ruining a good thing. She had been dating Noah for three years and it was perfect until Noah started talking about marriage and Y/N began to realize that she couldn’t picture her entire life with him. Noah felt like a moment in time to her, not an eternity.

“I’ll have to check, Mom, I don’t know what Noah is doing yet.” Y/N settled on a half-truth to buy herself some time. She placed her elbows on the edge of the counter and rested her head in her hands.

“Honey, I need to know by the end of the week, okay?”

She could hear the irritation in her mother's voice at the non-answer that Y/N had given to her. Her mother was a meticulous planner and she could not stand curve balls making a mess of her perfect holiday plans. Her mother treated every holiday as if the editors of Better Homes & Gardens were going to drop in at any moment and do a two-page spread on her decor and perfect meal.

“Got it, mom! I have to go!” Y/N quickly ended the phone call and shoved her phone into her pocket. She huffed out a heavy sigh and made her way to her front door, grabbing her keys from the catch-all bowl on the table next to the door. She quickly locked up her apartment and rushed down the two flights of stairs to the small community lobby. She adjusted the scarf around her neck and reached for the door but stopped as a new flyer on the community board caught her eye. She took a step back and ripped the paper from the thumbtack that held it to the cork board and shoved it into her coat pocket before pulling the door open.

Her hair whipped around her face as she stepped outside and was met with the cool autumn breeze that had settled in over the last month. Y/N looked both ways before stepping off of the sidewalk and hurrying across the street where her best friend, Leigha, was already waiting for her inside the small corner cafe.

“How is it that I have to drive from the other side of town and can make it on time but you literally live across the street and can’t?” Leigha teased as Y/N unraveled her scarf and took her coat off, draping both over the back of her chair before sitting down.

“Sorry! Sorry! My mother…” Y/N rolled her eyes as she recalled the phone call.

“Enough said!” Leigha laughed, she had one of those laughs that turned heads. Her laugh was always a little too loud and sometimes she would snort, it always caused Y/N to break into a fit of giggles. Leigha had been Y/N’s roommate all the way through college and they had been inseparable since the very first day they had met.

“So,” Leigha crossed her arms on top of the table,” did you work up the courage to tell her about Noah?”

Y/N shifted her gaze across the cafe and bit her lip “not exactly…”

“You are unbelievable, y/n ” Leigha sighed, exasperated.

Y/N snapped her eyes back to Leigha and held her hands up in defense “I tried! Well...I mean…I tried to try…”

“You know if you show up stag and your mother already has a place setting for a plus one, you might as well just go ahead and bury yourself, honestly” Leigha tutted.

“That’s why I have a plan!” Y/N turned around and rustled through the pockets of her peacoat before placing the crumpled flyer on the table. She smoothed her hands over the paper and pushed it towards the middle of the table.

Leigha snatched the paper up as the waitress came over and took their orders, Leigha ordered a blueberry scone with a chai tea while Y/N ordered a croissant with a side of strawberry preserves and a coffee.

“I mean…” Leigha read over the paper before sliding it back over to Y/N, “you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Y/N bit her lip and stared down at the flyer, re-reading it for the fourth time before she pulled out her phone and scanned the QR code to bring up the app.

“I can’t believe I am actually this desperate to try to literally purchase a date a week before Thanksgiving.” She muttered as she began to fill out her profile.

“Wait! Thanksgiving is next week? As in a week from today? I haven’t even made my Thanksgiving Pinterest board yet!” Leigha panicked and grabbed her face.

Y/N looked up from her phone and shook her head at Leigha’s antics “why do you need a Pinterest board? You literally do the same thing every single year.”

“Yeah…” Leigha jutted her bottom lip out in a pout, “but I want people to think that I am making all of these intricate and super cute appetizers and stuff. It’s the illusion that I care about!”

Y/N looked up and thanked the waitress as she set the food and coffee down in front of her before turning her attention back to Leigha who was eagerly biting into her scone.

“Help me answer these?” She passed her phone over to the girl and picked up the knife, spreading the strawberry preserves onto her croissant.

“Beach or Mountains?” Leigha readout with her mouth half full.

“Mountains!” Both girls yelled out at the same time and burst into giggles. They continued down the row of questions, passing the phone back and forth until Y/N finally hit the submit button. Leigha practically yanked the phone from Y/N’s hand as the algorithm began to shoot out potential matches. Her thumb scrolled through the pictures at lighting speed before she stopped and slowly scrolled back up before thrusting the phone in Y/N’s face.

“This one! Oh my god, this one! And if you don’t select the platinum package so that boy can say he loves you then I will literally never speak to you again!”

Y/N wiped the jam from her chin and grabbed the phone from Leigha. He was cute, there was no doubt about that but unlike Leigha, she cared about what his profile said about him. She scrolled through his pictures, one of him playing guitar, one hiking, one surrounded by friends around a campfire. Lover of nature, endless adventure, campfire songs, and sharing the love with my friends. I’ll jump if you jump, let’s take this plunge together?

She felt her lips curl up into a soft smile as she whispered his name to herself, liking the way that it rolled so easily off of her tongue.

“I told yooouuuu!” Leigha sang out and crossed her arms over her chest, a smug look on her face.

Y/N placed the phone on the table and tried to control the blush that she could fill rising to her cheeks, “calm down,” she rolled her eyes, “I’m paying for a Thanksgiving date, not falling in love.” She selected the platinum option and typed in her credit card number before clicking the purchase open without a second hesitation.

“I better be your maid of honor!” Leigha teased as the two girls dropped the appropriate amount of money onto the table and began to layer their coats and scarves back on. Y/N pulled the girl into a hug and placed a kiss on her cheek before heading back across the street towards her apartment.

She had just placed the keys back into her catch-all bowl by the door when her phone began to ding. She felt her heart begin to race as she saw the approval message on her screen that Charlie had accepted her request to rent him as her Thanksgiving date.

“Oh my god...okay...okay, this is fine...everything is fine.” She muttered to herself as she received another notification that Charlie had messaged her. She set her phone down on the counter and peeled her coat and scarf off before slipping her feet out of her boots. She wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans and grabbed her phone, refusing to look at it until she had settled in on her couch. She crossed her feet under her and pulled a throw pillow to her chest before finally sliding up on the notification and reading the message that he sent.

Let's get to know each other? Lunch tomorrow?

Y/N hesitated for a moment before her fingertips began to slide across the keyboard on her screen.

Sounds good! How do you feel about chicken & waffles? I know a place!

She read over what she had sent several times, worried that she sounded too eager. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears as she waited for his response, watching as several dots appeared and disappeared several times on her screen before he finally sent his response.

A girl after my own heart! How is 12:30? Send me the address?

She felt her cheeks grow warm at his response and mentally reminded herself that he was just being kind and that she was quite literally paying for him.

500 Rue Kennedy Dieppe, NB. and 12:30 is perfect! I’ll see you then!

Y/N took a deep breath and closed the app before her thumb hovered over her mother’s contact. She quickly clicked on her number and quietly whispered to herself “please don’t answer, please don’t answer, please don’t answer.”

“Thank god!” she exclaimed as the phone sent her to voicemail. She rolled her eyes at her mother’s elaborate message before finally being told to leave her message at the sound of the beep.

“Hi, mom...it’s me...I just wanted to let you know that you will need to make sure to set an extra place setting for thanksgiving. Love you.” She rattled off, keeping the message vague but to the point.

The following day Y/N stood inside of her closet staring at her assortment of clothes trying to decide what said “I'm cool and definitely not desperate even though I paid for a date for Thanksgiving because my family is insane.”

She pulled a mustard yellow cable knit sweater from a hanger and laid it out on her bed before heading back to her closet. Her fingers sorted through the variety of skirts before settling on a silky, pleated navy skirt that was cinched at the waist. She laid the skirt out next to the sweater before moving over to her vanity.

She sat on the poof chair and stared at her reflection for a brief moment before pulling the small drawer to the left open and lining up her primers, eye palette, eyeliner, mascara, and her signature red lipstick. She grabbed the mason jar that sat on the right tableside of the vanity and grabbed the appropriate brushes, lining those up as well.

She used her middle finger of her right hand to gently swipe the eyeshadow primer onto her eyelids before dusting the brush across a shimmery gold eyeshadow. She used a maroon eyeshadow on her crease and slowly blended the colors until she achieved a golden and subtle smokey eye.Y/N shook her hands out to steady her nerves before slowly pulling the liquid eyeliner across her eyelids and flicking it softly at the end for a subtle cat-eye before she carefully built volume on her eyelashes with the mascara. Finally, she grabbed the matte red lipstick and carefully swiped it across her lips before blotting them with a tissue.

Y/N jumped at the sound of her phone vibrating on her nightstand. She moved across the room and grabbed the phone from the charger.

See you soon!

She felt the nerves settle back into her stomach and wiped her clammy hands on her pajama pants before quickly undressing. She pulled the yellow cable knit sweater over her head, careful not to let it touch her face. She followed that by pulling on the pleated navy skirt, the fabric falling just above her knee. She pulled on the fabric of the sweater at her waist so that it slightly hung over the waistband of the skirt before she slipped her feet into a pair of black pointed flats. She took one last look at herself in the mirror and pulled her curls over her shoulders before grabbing her purse and slinging it across her body.

Y/N entered the bustling restaurant and let her eyes wander across the tables trying to find Charlie. She wrung her hands together and pulled her lips into a thin line when she didn’t see him, her heart dropping at the thought that she had been stood up or even worse, that she had really fallen for a scam. She turned on her left foot and reached for the door, barely pulling it open before she felt a hand on her shoulder. She let go of the door, resulting in a soft thud as it closed.

“Y/N? You weren’t about to bail on me were you?” The soft voice teased as she turned around.

“I thought you had stood me up, actually.” She could feel the blush that dusted across her cheeks at the accusation. Her left hand fell to her right wrist, her fingers loosely wrapping around it as she looked up at Charlie through her eyelashes and offered an apologetic smile.

Charlie’s green eyes crinkled at the edges and his nose scrunched up as he laughed “take the money and run, I wish I would have thought of that!”

“Oh..” Y/N looked back at the door and then back towards Charlie, “if you don’t want to do this, it’s fi--”

Charlie smiled softly at her “I was just teasing, I didn’t want to sit at the table by myself in case you didn’t show and have to do the walk of shame, so I was at the bar.”

Charlie placed his right hand on the small of her back and guided her to a table in the middle of the bustling restaurant. He pulled her chair out for her before taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. Y/N tucked her hair behind her ears and glanced at the menu, though she already knew what she was going to order. The waiter, a young kid, probably seventeen stopped by their table and quickly took their order.

Y/N finally looked up to find Charlie staring at her, his face cradled in his hands with his elbows propped up on the table.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just trying to figure out why a very beautiful girl would need to rent a date for a Holiday.”

Y/N felt herself blush at his compliment and shrugged her left shoulder “I got dumped.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry”

She smiled and waved him off “It’s no big deal, we wanted different things out of life. He wanted marriage and I,” she hesitated, she hadn’t talked about this with anyone other than Leigha.

“You what?”

“I want adventure and I know that sounds silly. Like, of course, you can have adventure and marriage but Noah,” she paused, “that’s my ex.”

Charlie nodded and gestured for her to continue, “Noah works in the financial district and he wanted marriage and kids and stability….and I barely know what I want to eat for breakfast let alone what I want for eternity.”

“You’re a free spirit, nothing wrong with that!” Charlie interjected and Y/N felt her first genuine smile of the night spread across her face.

“You get it.”

“I do get it.”

Y/N thanked the waiter as he sat down two beers along with their orders of chicken and waffles, before turning back to Charlie.

“So, tell me about your family. What should I prepare myself for?” Charlie lifted the pint glass to his lips and took a sip of the amber-colored beer.

‘Well,” Y/N blew air into her cheeks and sighed, “my mother thinks she’s Martha Stewart. So be sure to compliment the decor as soon as you see her. You’ll win her over for sure...and maybe don’t mention the whole free spirit thing or you will definitely end up on her list of terrible suitors that I have brought home.”

“Noted.” Charlie nodded before adding, “and your dad?”

“My dad is easy going, just talk about beer and hockey and you'll be fine.”

Charlie threw his head back in laughter and Y/N couldn’t help but smile at the way his whole face lit up when he laughed. She felt a flutter in her stomach as Charlie leaned forward so that his forearms rested on the table and his fingers lightly brushed across hers before he pulled back. Y/n pulled her hands off of the table and dropped them into her lap, her fingers lightly traced over the silky fabric of her skirt.

“Is everything okay?”

Y/N inhaled a sharp breath and rolled her bottom lip into her mouth before exhaling, “yeah, but I should probably tell you something,” she looked up at Charlie through her eyelashes.

“Well, c’mon then..” Charlie teased after several seconds of silence.

“My folks don’t exactly know that Noah and I are….done...and I know there’s going to be a big event made of it when they find out.”

“Oof…” Charlie sighed and took a swig from his beer and a bite of his food.

Y/N felt her heart beating in her ears, “I understand if you, I mean if this is too much and you want to back out.”

Charlie looked at her with a playful smirk, “are you actually going to eat that or?” He pointed at her untouched plate of food with his fork.

“W-what?” Y/N looked down at her food and back up at Charlie before letting a smile slip onto her face. She didn’t understand how someone she had just met could put her nerves at ease without even trying.

Charlie let his fork clatter on his plate before leaning forward on his elbows. Y/N watched with furrowed brows as he grabbed the maple syrup and poured it in a circle over her chicken before he leaned back into his seat and met her eyes with a soft smile on his face.

Y/N picked up her fork and knife and cut into her maple drenched chicken before popping a small bite into her mouth, “are you happy now?” she teased Charlie before putting her fork back down.

Charlie tried to hold back the smile that threatened to take over his face as he nodded his head.

“So, what’s our story going to be? It’s gonna have to be a good one if I have to upstage Noah to win over your folks.”

The two spent the next hour concocting a believable, but very romantic story of how they met. They talked about their likes and dislikes, their quirks and habits, and all of the little things that couples are supposed to know about each other,

Y/N felt butterflies erupt in her stomach as Charlie walked her to her car, his left hand just barely brushing against hers. She mentally scolded herself for feeling jittery over a guy that was simply fulfilling his job, but she also couldn’t help but hope that maybe he was feeling their connection too.

“I’ll pick you up next Wednesday at 4 pm, yeah?” Charlie asked as they arrived at her car. Y/n tucked her hair behind her right ear and nodded.

She felt her breath hitch as Charlie leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her cheek before walking backward and sending her a wave.

A week later and Y/N found herself pulling on a green sequined, long sleeve dress, the hem set just above her knees. It was her go-to holiday dress, classic but not too formal. She painted her face with gold eyeshadow, a sharp winged eyeliner, and her classic red lips. Her hair hung over her shoulders in cascading curls. She sat on her bed, fastening a pair of strappy black heels when her phone dinged. She fastened the buckles of her heels and grabbed her phone, a smile instantly sliding onto her face at Charlie letting her know he’d be at her place in five minutes.

She stood up and checked her appearance one final time before grabbing her gold clutch handbag and shoving her phone into it, just as Charlie knocked on her door. She quickly made her way to the front door and turned the lock before pulling the door open.

“Wow…” Charlie breathed out as she came into full view.

Y/N shyly smiled back at the boy, thankful that the blush she had on her cheeks already would mask the red glow that she could feel heating up her face.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” she teased, her eyes trailing from his brown wing toed shoes up to his pristine white button-up and finally to his slightly coiffed hair.

“Shall we?” Charlie extended his arm out to Y/N after she locked her door. She looped her right arm through his left, her hand resting lightly on his forearm as they made their way through the corridor and outside to Charlie’s car.

He opened the passenger side door for her and waited for her to get situated before closing the door and running around to the other side of the car. Their forty-minute drive was mostly silent as Y/N worked to calm her nerves down. She knew that she was going to have a lot of explaining to do when she showed up with Charlie in place of Noah and she was trying to memorize all of the details that they had agreed on a week prior.

“Are you okay?” Charlie glanced over at her for a brief moment before returning his eyes to the road, his left hand took hold of the steering wheel as his right hand settled on her bare knee.

His hand was warm against her cold skin and Y/N wasn’t sure why but she found her left hand moving to settle on top of his hand. Without hesitation, Charlie flipped his hand over and let her palm fall into his before his fingers slid between hers and gently curled.

“Just nervous…”

Charlie lightly squeezed her hand before letting out a small chuckle “if I didn’t know any better, I would think that you’re the one about to meet my family.”

“Oh, I’m not nervous about them meeting you, they’ll love you,” Y/N clarified,” I’m nervous about the terrible things that I know my mother is going to say to me about ending things with Noah.”

Charlie licked his lips as he pulled into her parents’ driveway. He pulled his right hand free from hers and put the car in park before turning slightly in his seat to face her.

“You know that nothing she says is going to be true, right? You don’t have to live by someone else's timeline for your life.”

Y/N pushed down the warming feeling in her heart and nodded her head at his words.

“Yeah, I know...are you ready?”

Charlie smiled brightly at her and pulled the keys from the ignition before getting out of the car. He double-stepped around the car to the passenger door and pulled it open for her, waiting for her to get out before closing the door.

He slid his left palm into her right hand and tangled their fingers together before placing a soft kiss on her hairline and whispered “let’s put on a show.”

Y/N could feel the nervous energy erupting in her stomach as they stood outside of her childhood home. She took a deep breath before twisting the doorknob and pushing the red front door open. They were met with the warm heat of the home and the smell of cinnamon as soon as they stepped inside. Charlie let his eyes wander across the walls of the entryway, scanning the line of pictures before tugging Y/N over to one.

“This is you, yeah?” The question was rhetorical as it had been obvious that it was her in the picture. She stood on a cliffside, at the top of a mountain with a bright smile on her face, her childhood dog, Rex, beside her and the ocean behind her.

“Yeah, I was seventeen and went backpacking by myself for the first time. My mom was so mad. This family that was passing by was kind enough to capture the moment for me and my dad insisted that it be hung on the wall of accomplishments…” Y/N rambled off the story before letting her eyes move from the picture and up to Charlie.

Charlie smiled down at her and laughed, “this is gonna sound insane, but I think that was my family that stopped and took the picture.”

Y/N pulled her brows forward so that her forehead was pinched in the middle “shut up! No it wasn’t!” she finally exclaimed.

“Rex….the dog’s name was Rex. I remember because I thought you were pretty and I got flustered and I said something dumb about Rex from Toy Story.”

Y/N’s eyes grew wide as Charlie recounted the story and she felt her cheeks growing red at the revelation “well, this is a weird twist in fate--”

She was cut off by the sound of her dad’s deep voice bellowing her name as he turned the corner. Charlie pulled her into his side and let his right-hand rest on her hip, while her right hand rested on his chest.

“Well, this certainly isn’t Noah!” Her father exclaimed a large smile on his face and his eyes soft. He had never been the biggest fan of Noah’s to begin with.

Charlie dropped his hand from her waist and stepped forward with it stretched out towards her dad, “Charlie Gillespie, sir.” He was taken aback when her dad threw his head back in laughter and pulled him in for a full bear hug.

“Nice to meet you, son”

Y/N giggled at her dad’s antics, he had always been the type to do things like that. He was a stout man with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He had graying hair and a well-kept beard and he radiated kindness.

“And you, little missy, are going to have a lot of explaining to do to your mother.” Y/N pulled back from her dad's embrace and blew the air out of her cheeks.

“Yeah, I know…”

Her dad gently squeezed her arm and gave her a reassuring smile before leaving the two to grab a beer from the kitchen.

“Why do I have the overwhelming feeling to call your dad pops and ask him over to mine to watch hockey?” Charlie joked.

Y/N shrugged and tangled her fingers with his, “I told you he was the easy one. Are you ready for the rest?”

“Lead the way, beautiful.”

Y/N tugged on Charlie’s hand and he followed behind her as they made their way to the den where her brothers were corralled around and a card table, intense looks on each of their faces as they held their cards close to their bodies. Their wives were set on the opposite side of the room. Y/N could feel the three women’s eyes on her as she entered the room with Charlie and she knew their hushed whispers were aimed at her and the fact that Charlie was very much not Noah.

Her youngest brother, Josh, was the first of the three boys to look up and notice her. He dropped his cards on the table, face down, and scooted his chair back against the hardwood floors.

“Junebug!” He yelled as he practically launched himself towards her. Y/N exploded into a fit of giggles as her feet left the floor and he twirled her around in circles. Josh was three years younger than her, sitting at nineteen but she had always been the closest with him. Her giggles quieted down as he sat her back down and turned to Charlie.

“Well, you’re not Noah.” Josh quipped with a playful smirk on his face.

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck and laughed “I have a feeling I am going to be getting that a lot today.”

“You play poker?” Josh eyeballed him.

“I know my way around a deck of cards, yeah.” Charlie shrugged.

Josh turned to Y/N and lightly punched her shoulder, “looks like you got yourself an upgrade, Junebug!”

Y/N rolled her eyes at her brother and wished Charlie luck as he was pulled over to the table and introduced to her two older brothers, Samuel and Michael. She felt her shoulders relax for a moment as the table erupted with laughter from something Charlie had said. He looked up from his cards and shot her a wink before turning his attention back to the game at hand.

Y/N glanced back at Charlie one last time before making her way over to the prying eyes of Amy and Melissa, the wives of Samuel and Michael. The two women each held a mug of her mother’s homemade cider in their manicured hands.

“Who’s the cutie?” Amy was the first to speak, her left eyebrow raised as she asked the question.

Y/N looked over her shoulder for a moment with a smile before turning back around “Charlie…”

“Oh! Well, you’ve certainly never said Noah’s name like that before!” Melissa looked at Y/N with wide eyes.

Y/N shook her head at the two gossipy women “like what?’

Amy and Melissa both shot knowing looks to each other before Amy quipped, “sweetie, that boy’s name left your lips like honey falling from a spoon.”

“It did not!’

“You can deny it all you want, but we both heard it!” Melissa declared and brought her mug up to her lips, taking a sip of the warm cider.

“Looks like I’m out boys!” Y/N heard from the other side of the room. She glanced over her shoulder to find Charlie laying his cards down on the table before he slid out of his chair. She smiled at him as he made his way over to her. He stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist and tugged her back into his chest, his head resting on her shoulder.

“Charlie, these are my sister-in-laws, Amy, and Melissa.”

“Very nice to meet both of you.” Charlie beamed at the two women.

Melissa and Amy stood up at the sound of heels clicking against the tile floor of the kitchen. Melissa made her way around Y/N and she gently squeezed Charlies’s bicep, “good luck honey.”

Charlie pressed a kiss to Y/N’s cheek and tightened his arms around her waist as he felt her body tense in his arms.

“You’ve got this,” Charlie reassured before loosening his grip on her and letting her grab his hand.

Y/N sucked in a deep breath and gently pulled Charlie behind her as she navigated through the formal dining room and towards the kitchen where her mother was sure to be found.

She stopped just inside the doorway to the kitchen and turned to face Charlie, “you can still get out of this, ya know?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Charlie placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around, nudging her into the kitchen while he followed.

Y/N stood silently for a minute as she watched her mother pull the green bean casserole from the oven and wipe her hands across her floral apron. Her mother was a thin woman with auburn hair that was almost always pulled into a chignon.

“Mom? Can I talk to you?” Y/N hesitantly asked, suddenly feeling less like a twenty-two year old woman and more like a twelve-year old child.

“What do you want to talk about, dear? Because if it’s about Noah,” her mother grabbed a wooden spoon and stirred the brown gravy that was simmering on the stove, “then I frankly don’t have time to listen to your childish reasons for ending the only good thing you had.”

“You know?” Y/N choked out

Her mother grabbed the pepper grinder and began to twist the top over another pot of food, “I called Noah after we spoke last week since you couldn’t give me a straight answer when I called you.”

“Oh…” Y/N placed her hands on Charlie’s chest and gently pushed him backward. Her eyes pleading with him to give her a minute. She didn’t want him to bear witness to the reprimanding she knew was about to come. Charlie hesitantly left her side and waited on the other side of the door.

Her mother finally turned around to face Y/N. She placed her hands on the edge of the counter, her knuckles white from the tight grip.

“Honestly, y/n. I don’t know why you can’t get your life together. You graduated college just to throw away your education for this silly photography hobby of yours and now you threw away a perfectly acceptable relationship because you want to travel and have adventures? You’re not a child, anymore, y/n. When is this going to stop? When are you going to grow up?”

Y/N stood silently as the words washed over her. She could feel the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

“I…”

“What? You what, Y/N? What explanation could you possibly have this time?” Her mother cut her off.

Charlie pushed himself off of the wall he had been leaning on from the other side of the door and quickly made his way back into the kitchen. He felt her mother’s eyes on him as he quickly pressed a kiss to Y/N’s cheek, his hand sliding across the middle of her back before he put on his best smile and made his way over to her mother.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Y/L/N. My mother would be insanely envious of the spread you’ve created, it’s magazine worthy!”

“Thank you, dear. You are much too kind! I am so sorry, but I don’t believe I caught your name?”

Y/N looked down at the floor and smiled to herself at the charm that Charlie exuded as he introduced himself to her mother and offered to help her bring the endless amounts of food to the formal dining room for her.

“I’ll go gather everyone.” Y/N shot an appreciative smile to Charlie before she made her way back to the den to gather the rest of the family into the dining room.

Y/N made her way over to the empty chair next to Charlie, the latter getting out of his own chair to pull her chair out for her before sitting back down. He placed his hand on the inside of her thigh and let his thumb rub circles on the top of her leg.

Her dad stood at the top of the table and carved the turkey while small talk was exchanged between her brothers and their wives and suddenly the question finally came from her mother.

“So, how did you two meet?”

Y/N glanced over at Charlie not sure if he was going to take the lead or not and was surprised when he started spitting out a story that was definitely not the one they had agreed on during their lunch meeting,

“I met your daughter several years ago on a hiking trip with my family,” Charlie paused and looked over at her before continuing, “my older brother, Patrick actually took that photo that you have on your wall in the entryway!”

Y/N’s heart was beating erratically as Charlie squeezed her knee before turning his focus back to her mother “your daughter took my breath away that day and I kicked myself for weeks for not getting her number and just having this missed connection. I guess you could call it a twist of fate, really, that I found her again.”

Y/N’s mother smiled at the two of them and Y/N felt her body tense for just a moment before relief rushed over her at her mother’s words “that may be the most romantic thing I have ever heard in my life.”

“Can we eat now or?” Josh hesitantly asked as he grabbed the plate of yams and began piling a portion onto his plate.

Y/N felt at ease for the rest of the evening as their shared meal went off without a hitch. Her family shared embarrassing stories of her with Charlie and she sipped glasses of wine as he endlessly complimented her. Her heart felt full as the night drew to a close and her dad pulled out the last Thanksgiving tradition. The wishbone was passed around the table until it landed in her hands. She turned to Charlie and gestured for him to grab the other end of the bone. They both tugged on the bone with their eyes closed until it snapped.

Y/N opened her eyes and looked down at the fractured bone in her hand and then over to Charlie who was holding the larger side.

“Make a wish,” she whispered to him with a soft smile on her face. Charlie shook his head and kissed her forehead.

“I don’t have to, I’ve got everything I want right here.”

Y/N dropped her eyes to the table and reminded herself that as much as she felt the connection between her and Charlie, that he was just playing a role.

She looked up as the sound of chairs sliding against the floor filled the room. She followed suit and slowly stood up from her chair.

“Do you need help, mom?”

“You go ahead and head out honey, I know you have a long drive.”

Y/N made her rounds of goodbye to her family before looking back at Charlie and grabbing his hand. They silently walked to his car and he opened the car door for her. Y/N hummed along to the songs that played on the radio during the drive back to her place. She tried to ignore the heat that she felt in her stomach as Charlie’s thumb ran across her knuckles every now and then. She watched the cars that passed by them, red tail lights lighting up her face as they drove on the highway. Before she knew it they were parked outside of her apartment.

“I guess this is it then…” Charlie looked over at Y/N as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“I guess so.” Y/N agreed, her right hand rested on the door handle as she looked at Charlie, her eyes searching for any indication that he didn’t want her to leave. She let her hand pull on the door handle when Charlie didn’t respond.

She swung the car door open and stepped out into the street before making her way to the sidewalk. She turned around at the sound of another car door shutting and was taken aback by Charlie running over to her side

“I should walk you to your door,” Charlie answered the silent question

Y/N smiled and led the way through the apartment corridor until they stood outside of her door, her keys dangling in her left hand. She looked up at Charlie and smiled, “you didn’t have to see me inside, ya know?”

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand and shrugged, “all part of the job.”

Y/N felt her smile falter and turned around to place the key into the lock of her apartment door. She quickly turned the key and opened the door before stepping inside. She turned to look at Charlie one last time, “well, thank you for giving me my money’s worth,” she let her eyes fall from his.

“Goodbye, Charlie.” She closed the door and dropped her keys into the catch-all bowl before kicking her heels off and making her way over to the couch. She let her body slump into the soft cushions and pulled her phone out to call the only person that was going to understand.

“Tell me everything!” Leigha demanded as soon as her face appeared on the phone.

‘Well,” Y/N sighed, “I think I accidentally started to fall in love with him.”

Leigha couldn’t stop the giddy laughter that erupted from her small frame “I knew this was going to happen! I so called this!”

Y/N rolled her eyes at her best friend and poked her bottom lip out in a pout “it’s not funny Lee...I’m never gonna see him again and now I have all of these feelings to deal with.”

“You don’t know that!” Leigha argued

“I appreciate that you’re a hopeless romantic, Lee, but I was nothing but a paying customer to him...he basically said so himself.” Y/N frowned, thinking back to Charlie’s words as he walked her to her door.

“Oh...hun, I’m so sorry.”

Y/N let a sad smile slip onto her face, “I’m gonna go to bed, coffee tomorrow morning?”

Y/N hung her phone up and pulled herself up from the couch. She shuffled through the apartment until she reached her room and slowly peeled the sequined dress from her body. She made her way to the vanity and grabbed a makeup wipe and slowly removed the makeup from her face before she crawled into bed and pulled the covers tight around her body.

It was 8 am when Y/N was pulled from her slumber by her phone blaring the ringtone that Leigha insisted she set for herself. She rolled over with her eyes still closed and fumbled around for her phone before slowly cracking her eyes to hit the green button.

“What?” Y/N grumpily answered

“Don’t what me!” Leigha chastised, “there’s a cute boy at the cafe and he just ordered your order! Like to the T!”

Y/N set up in her bed and pressed her fingers into her eyes, rubbing the sleep away in small circles.

“Ok? And?”

“AND?! AND!!! His name is Charlie! I swear to god if you don’t get out of bed and make yourself look decent, I will literally kill you!”

Y/N dropped her phone onto her bed and pulled the covers back. She quickly made her way to her bathroom and brushed her teeth. She stared at herself in the mirror and ran her fingers through her messy bed head, her curls tangling together between her fingers.

“Shit..okay….okay…” She muttered to herself and opted to twist her hair up into a top knot. She secured it with a hair tie and ran back to her room where she threw on a pair of black leggings and an oversized jumper. Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest when she heard a knock on her door.

She wiped her hands on her leggings and quickly made her way to her front door. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves before reaching forward to unlock the door. Her hand shook as she turned the doorknob and slowly pulled the door open. Stood on the other side was Charlie with a small brown bag and a hot coffee extended out to her.

Y/N stepped to the side and opened the door wider, allowing Charlie to come in.

“What are you doing here?” She asked as she took the bag and coffee from his hands. She sat the bag on the counter and pulled the cup to her lips, taking a small sip. She hummed to herself as the warm liquid slid down her throat.

Charlie stepped forward and hesitantly took the drink from her hands, setting it on the counter behind her. Y/N watched anxiously as Charlie’s eyes moved across her face, flickering between her eyes and lips several times before he lifted his hands and placed one on her right cheek while the other cradled her neck.

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Charlie whispered into the space between them before catching her lips with his. Charlie pulled away before Y/N had a chance to react, his face glowing red as he held his bottom teeth between his top two teeth.

“Is this free of charge?” Y/N joked as she placed her hands on Charlie’s chest and leaned forward, bringing her lips back to his.

@straywonpil @siennanoelle01 @choppedhoundsludgeclod @cool-ultra-nerd @hxney-bunches-x @crybabyddl @sorryyoureoutofmyleague @dream-a-little-bigger-x @kcd15 @all-in-fangirl @ifilwtmfc @onlygetaway @iainttakingshitfromnobody @angryknightstatesmantrash @jazzyhales @bathtimejish @lanasfandoms @miranda0102 @emotionalbruv @aliandthephantoms @multifandombabies @kinda-really-lost @5sosmukefan @alexpjoyner @mo-d3ans @hannahhistorian92 @sunsetcurvenotsunsetswerve @i-should-be-writing-my-own-fic @sunflowerbecca @n0wornever @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic

#charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie #luke patterson #charlie gillespie one shot #charlie gillespie fanfic #jatp #julie and the phantoms #julie and the fat ones #julie and the himbos #julie and the phantoms fanfic #luke patterson fanfic

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kippykasey · 3 years

Text

Grace - Chapter 5: Hydra

Pairing: Howard Stark x F!Reader , Bucky x Reader [Eventually]

Word Count: 3522

Series Summary: A young nurse is recruited by Dr. Abraham Erskine to join the SSR to assist on Project Rebirth. Following her work with the SSR she is drafted into the US Army Nurse Corps in the war against the Nazis...and HYDRA.

Chapter Warnings: violence, torture, bad things because Hydra

Author's Note: Surprise?! I wasn't even expecting to get this done but I literally just finished and thought, eh why not. So here it is! Also I hate hurting my characters so this was a bit eh to write but I hope all is well!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the gifs they are either found on google or under the gif tag provided by tumblr. Any language other than English was translated using Google Translator, and translations will be posted in bolden italics after. I am not a nurse or in the medical field although I may do some research medical treatment written may not be correct.

Grace Masterlist | Snowdrop Masterlist | Masterlist

Pain. A throbbing, harsh pain echoed through my head from the temple. The throbbing beat opposite that of my heart. The second thing I noticed was how cold and damp it was. After battling with my body to force open my eyes I squint through the dimly lit room. A deep voice spoke in another language… German it was German but my head hurt too much for me to understand it. Seconds passed before I realized that I was sitting on the ground in a cell. The door opened and two men walked in flanked by four additional soldiers than the one that had been watching me.

“Ah Fräulein (L/n) glad you have finally woken up.” Miss.

“Who are you?” I cursed how weak my voice sounded at that moment. Though the man didn’t seem to find me a threat of escape as he spoke. “Johann Schmidt. You see we have a common acquaintance… or, well, had.” The grin he wore made my stomach drop and he didn’t need to verbally admit it for me to realize this is the man behind Abraham’s death.

I raised my head in defiance and although it made the pounding in my head worsen I pushed myself from the ground and stood within the cell. “You’re after the serum.”

“Ah, clever girl. You were Abraham’s assistant when he made the serum.” The second, much shorter man spoke. “Fault in your plans. I don’t know how to make the serum.” Schmidt smiled at me and it took all my self control not to shiver from his intense look. “I was hoping you would say that,” His eyes turned off me to the soldiers. “Bring sie zum Stuhl. Probiere es an ihr aus. Vielleicht wird ein kleiner Elektroschock Ihr Gedächtnis auffrischen.” Take her to the chair. Try it out on her. Perhaps a bit of electroshock will refresh your memory. As Schmidt talked his head also turned towards the shorter man.

I could feel the blood drain from my face as I moved back against the wall. Three soldiers stepped towards the cell. One man opened the cell door before the other two stepped inside to detain me. I managed to elbow one in the face in my struggle but it was useless. The two soldiers dragged me from the cell, out of the room into a brighter lit hall. We were in some kind of warehouse. My eyes zeroed in on a chair that looked right out of a nightmare. Stronger hands forced me into the hard chair and held me down while I was struggling against someone’s attempts to strap me in. My struggling did nothing but get me a slap to the face. The strength of the slap disoriented me long enough for them to strap me in.

The shorter man who followed us now stood next to my head. I could see the reflection of myself in his glasses. “This is only going to hurt a lot, try to hold still.” He instructs lowering two plates down around my face. It was only a few short moments before the electricity forced its way into my head. I had no control over my body as it thrashed in the confines of the chair. An agonizing scream of pain carrying throughout the building went ignored.

That wasn’t my first time in the chair but it was the only time I had passed out in the chair. Spent 30 minutes in the chair 3 times a day, sometimes longer. After a week I had to start muttering things to myself in my cell so I didn’t forget who I was. The Nazi soldiers gave me the bare minimum to survive as far as water and nutrients goes. I cracked halfway through October. I gave the short scientist, Armin Zola, the list of what I would need before I was taken back to my cell after yet another time in the cell. I was given parchment and a pencil to write things down with but it kept coming in flashes.

Nights were the worst. Mouth dry from lack of water, eyes trained on an iron grate in the ceiling. I realized two weeks into my daily chair visits that I had forgotten my brother’s name. When I noticed it caused me to cry to sleep that night. So whenever I could I would mutter to myself facts I could remember starting with my name, rank, and where I was from. The list of facts got shorter every day. Somedays I remembered more than others. There were times all I could bring myself to do was hum Amazing Grace to myself to deal with the pain.

The first time I was in the lab I tried to escape. I was left with just one guard and I thought I could take him. I smashed a beaker using a shard like a knife. I ended up knocked unconscious, my hand bleeding from the self inflicted cuts caused by the makeshift weapon. From then on I was chained to the lab table and three soldiers kept watch. I wasn’t given anything to test the serum on. So I never tested unless I thought it would work because I used myself as a test subject.

I was unconscious for two days once from a failed serum. Others cause excruciating pain. Days came and went and I lost count of days but I knew it was still October. Yet a month was close to passing as November began to be discussed amongst soldiers around me. Pressure was placed on me to recreate the serum. Each day if I didn’t recreate the serum I was sent to the chair for the torturous electroshock. That is how I figured out I had been successful in a recreation. The serum, when tested, did nothing but make me drop to the lab floor in pain. I wasn’t even given time to recollect myself before being dragged off to the chair. I lasted longer in the chair than usual. I heard the instruction to increase the power. I don’t remember what happened after that.

It took me nearly half a day to recover, then as soon as I had I was back working in the lab. Suddenly I was pulled away from my work and escorted quickly back to my cell. “Neue Soldaten wurden gefangen genommen.” New soldiers have been captured. I pressed myself up against the bars for a chance, a glimpse at the soldiers being brought in.

It was silent as the Nazi Hydra soldiers dealt with the new poisoners. Suddenly two soldiers appeared with smiles on their faces. “Komm Mädchen. Zola und Schmidt wollen dich sehen.” Come girl. Zola and Schmidt want to see you. The soldiers yanked me up and practically dragged me to the room where the chair was. My body trembled involuntarily at the sight of the chair. It wasn’t me going in the chair, given someone was strapped in but given the uniform he was American. “Ah, here iz our lovely nurse. You’ve been asking for a test subject. Here you go.” Schmidt waved at the man strapped into the chair. The man lifted his head just barely and my heart went out to him. As soon as the hands left my arms I moved to the soldier in the chair. “What’s your name, soldier?”

“S’rg’nt Jam’s Barn’s,” His voice wasn’t clear but it was clear enough for me to understand what he said. The nurse turned to Zola and Schmidt. “I wasn’t done recreating the serum when you had me pulled from the lab. I will need time to work and he needs time to rest or the serum will kill him.” I tried to give him whatever comfort I could in those brief moments before we were pulled apart. His head rose just slightly and I caught a glimpse of stormy blue eyes as he was dragged out of the room.

I never got to return to my cell that night. As my eyes zoned in on the blue chemical mixture in front of me I felt a haze cloud my mind, it wasn’t abnormal to experience but I also felt like I was losing myself when it happened. Following my own written instructions I was able to continue my work. The only other thing I forced my mind to remember were two things.

I am First Lieutenant (Y/n) (L/n) of the US Army Nurse Corps. Soldier boy is Sergeant James Barnes.

The words became a mantra in the blank canvas my mind was currently in as I blindly worked by instructions of my very own that I don’t even remember writing. My body moved on auto pilot as I was taken to a crude looking examination room. In the center was soldier boy Sergeant James Barnes strapped to the table. As my mind raced to catch up with me, flashes of memories clouded my mind from when Steve Rogers got the serum, the explosion that followed, Dr. Erskine being shot. My body tensed at a passing memory of being in the chair passed through being replaced by the pain I felt giving myself the serum.

A hand pressed firmly in between my shoulder blades pushing me forward. I stumbled to the table catching myself with a hand on his arm. Wasn’t he wearing an army jacket before? My eyes landed on the serum filled syringe in my hands reminding me of what I was about to do. “First lieutenant (Y/n) (F/n) of the US Army Nurse Corps.. You are Sergeant James Barnes.. I’m sorry for what I am about to do. You’ll be okay. I’ve used it on myself. It will hurt.” My voice sounded so… robotic and monotone as I spoke to him. My hands pushing up his sleeve.

My hands worked from memory and out of second nature my mouth moved and the hymn fell from my lips. The melody of the song was the only comfort I could offer as I injected the poor man with the serum that would change his life forever. His eyes looked up at mine until the pain of the serum changing his body caused them to shut tightly. The leather restraints holding him in began to rip as he pulled against them. Discarding the empty syringe I tried to soothe him more but the second my hand touched his head I was shot with a sedative.

【☆】★【☆】★【☆】★【☆】★【☆】

Steve Rogers has dressed up performing on stage like a dancing monkey to sell war bonds since he was given the serum. His first time on foreign grounds and he was performing for soldiers he should have been fighting alongside of. All to be booed off the stage by disgruntled men who just wanted to see a pretty dame.

Steve finally looked away from the rain but not quite at Peggy, “At least he’s got me doing this. Phillips would have had me stuck in a lab.” Blue eyes finally met the face of Agent Carter. “And these are your only two options? A lab rat or a dancing monkey? You were meant for more than this, you know.” Her wording might have been a bit rude but the point got across. There was a moment of silence between the two but Steve had this look to him. “What?” Peggy inquired.

The man was drawing in the rain when a familiar face popped up. “Hello, Steve.” Peggy Carter approached him from behind, making him turn from his drawing to greet her, “Hi.” She mimed his ‘hi’ back before laying her jacket down to sit on while Steve asked, “What are you doing here?” Peggy looked at Rogers and let out a small sigh, “Officially, I’m not here at all. That was quite a performance.”

Rogers looked away disappointed that she had caught the horrible show that happened earlier. “Yeah. I uh, I had to improvise a little bit. The crowds I’m used to are usually more, uh, twelve.” Steve explained looking out at the drenched ground and falling rain. “I understand you’re ‘America’s New Hope’.” Peggy states watching him. “Bond sales take a 10% bump in every state I visit.” Steve comments like a robot. “Is that Senator Brandt I hear?”

“You know for the longest time, I dreamed about coming overseas and being on the front lines, serving my country. I finally got everything I wanted and I’m wearing tights.” Steve kept looking down at his journal then squinting out through the rain. A horn alarmed behind them as a medical vehicle slid to a stop in the mud. Medics ran from the infirmary tent to help unloaded soldiers on gurneys. “They look like they’ve been through hell.” Peggy turned back towards Rogers. “These men more than most.” Steve looked up at Peggy knowing she had more details. “Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano. Two hundred men were there to back up an already injured fleet, they went up against him and less than 75 returned. Your audience contained what was left of the 107th and 34th.” Steve slowly turned his head feeling bad for the men who were lost but his attention snapped to Peggy at the mention of the divisions involved as she finished, “The rest were killed or captured.”

“The 107th?” The confirmation had him darting out into the rain, Peggy following holding her jacket over her head for coverage from the rain. The two ran all the way to the tent Colonel Phillips was sitting in signing condolence letters. “Colonel Phillips.” Steve called for the man’s attention as he approached. “Well, if it isn’t the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan. What is your plan today?” The colonel responded looking up at the pair now standing in front of him. “I need the casualty list from Azzano.” The tone he used was definitely fitting for the role he plays on stage. Phillips however did not appreciate it. “You don’t get to give me orders, son.”

“I just need one name, Sergeant James Barnes from the 107th.” Rogers responded un phased. Phillips pointed his pen at Peggy, “You and I are gonna have a conversation later that you won’t enjoy.” Steve was insistent though and again requested the information he wanted, “Please tell me if he’s alive, sir. B-A-R..” “I can spell.” Phillips cut him off before muttering, “First Stark and now this.” He stood from the table and paged through the letters he just finished signing. “I have signed more of these condolence letters today that I would care to count. But the name does sound familiar. I’m sorry. To the both of you.” Phillips looks from Rogers to Peggy and the woman knew he was referring to her friend from the 34th.”

“What about the others? Are you planning a rescue mission?” Rogers was something else, optimistic maybe. “Yeah, it’s called winning the war.” The look of disbelief that Steve sent the colonel as he spoke might have been the first red flag for Peggy Carter. “But if you know where they are, why not at least..” Phillips once again cut the man off, “They’re 30 miles behind the lines through some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe.” Phillips was eyeing the spot on the map as he talked about it, even pointing the place out directly. “We’d lose more men than we’d save. But I don’t expect you to understand that because you’re a chorus girl.”

The colonels' dig at Roger’s lack of status didn’t seem to phase the man but it did fuel the plan he was formulating in his head while staring at the map, memorizing it. “I think I understand just fine.”

“Well, then understand it somewhere else. If I read the posters correctly, you got someplace to be in 30 minutes.” The colonel walked past him giving Rogers a very clear view of the map marking out exactly where he needed to go, and where he was. “Yes, sir. I do.” Perhaps the time staring at the map was the second red flag that Peggy noticed. As her eyes flickered between him and the map as he left the tent it all clicked into place and she hurried after the taller man.

“What do you plan to do, walk to Austria?” Peg asked as she entered the tent used as the changing room. “If that’s what it takes.” Steve answered not looking up from where he was struggling with boots. “You heard the Colonel. Your friend, and mine, are most likely dead.”

“You don’t know that.” Steve disagreed as he continued to get ready. “Even so, he’s devising a strategy. If he detects..” Steve cut her off as he put on a brown leather jacket, “By the time he’s done that, it could be too late.” He snatched up his bag and shield and headed for the exit. “Steve!” Peggy called following him to the vehicle he tossed his things into. The rain had stopped leaving the sun to rapidly evaporate the water leaving puffs of smoke in the air. Steve looked at the brunette in front of him. “You told me you thought I was meant for more than this. Did you mean that?”

“Every word.”

“Then you got to let me go.” Steve turned to get into the jeep and started the engine before Peggy was at the side. “I can do more than that.” She told him.

【☆】★【☆】★【☆】★【☆】★【☆】

Peggy hadn’t lied. She got them a method of transport much faster than the jeep. Howard Stark sat in the pilot seat flying a plane with the slight chance his fiancée may still be alive. Stark was devastated when he first found out that the 34th was attacked and that only doubled when the attack at Azzano took out the 107th as well.

“The Hydra camp is in Krausberg, tucked between these two mountain ranges.” Peggy infomed Rogers as she pointed to the map she was holding. “It’s a factory of some kind.” She gave him as much information as she could. “We should be able to drop you right on the doorstep.” Howard called over his shoulder.

“Just get me as close as you can.” Steve called back up to the pilot. He looked back over at the woman in front of him. “You know.. You two are gonna be in a lot of trouble when you land.” He was worried about her getting into trouble for him but she looked at him just as worried. “And you won’t?” Steve dismissed her worries, turning his head. “Where I’m going, if anyone yells at me, I can just shoot them.” There was a small click of a loaded gun.

“They will undoubtedly shoot back.” Peggy surmised. Steve turned to the shield he had been using on stage giving it a knock, “Well let's hope it’s good for something.” Steve turned back to her just as Howard called back, “Agent Carter? If we’re not in too much of a hurry, I thought we could stop off in Lucerne for a late-night fondue.” Howard was teasing the agent, the smile on his face hidden from those being him. Peggy shifted in her seat choosing to ignore him and keep conversation going with Rogers. “Stark is the best civilian pilot I’ve ever seen. He’s mad enough to brave this airspace. We’re lucky to have him.”

Steve however was still not fully over the comment Stark made. “So, are you two… do you…” There was an awkward pause as Steve thought of the proper way to ask if they were seeing each other by reusing Stark’s words, “..Fondue?” Stark tried not to laugh from the pilot’s seat as Peggy simply shook her head and handed him a device. “This is your transponder. Activate it when you’re ready and the signal will lead us straight to you.” Steve took a moment to look at the device now in his hand before calling up to Howard, “Are you sure this thing works?”

“It’s been tested more than you, pal.” Howard defended seconds before gunfire hit the side of the plane. The plane shook as bullets pelted the sides, shaking the aircraft from the force. Steve stood grabbing his shield and heading towards the door. That he opened. “Get back here! We’re taking you all the way in!” Peggy ordered yelling over the wind rushing into the plane. “As soon as I’m clear, you turn this thing around and get the hell out of here!” Steve ordered back over the noise of the wind, gunfire, and the pinging of bullets on the plane.

“You can’t give me orders!” Peggy disagreed.

“The hell I can’t! I’m a Captain!” Steve looked over at her, giving her a smile that made her weak in the knees. He grabbed the goggles from his helmet, lowered them over his eyes and launched himself out of the plane. Peggy watched him fall towards the ground before the red fabric of his parachute was visible in the night sky from the flying bullets. Howard turned back as instructed by the Captain. Now all they could do was wait.

#grace #howard x reader #bucky x reader #catfa #bucky barnes #steve rogers #peggy carter #howard stark #female reader

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mochikeiji · 4 years

Text

Rockabye, My Love

↠ Pairing: Akaashi Keiji x Reader

↠ Warning: slight fluff, soft father/daughter moments, angst. Trigger Warning: mentions of death, depression.

↬ Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: Every lyrics had a deeper meaning in them than just words that'll fit a song. Yours was heavier than anyone could think of, and Akaashi was singing it to his beloved baby girl.

↣ a/n: ohayo world! I'm sorry for late posts, expect the upcoming ones soon. School was giving too much works again. Thank you all for loving my Day 2 fic in Akaashi Week!! Also, the lullaby in this lyrics is the same tune as Isabella's Lullaby from The Promised Neverland.

⇢ Day 3: Single Parent AU

"Love, don't you worry too much,

You're doing fine.

You are the most precious thing I have loved.

I will never allow the cruel world to take you— away nor hurt you any more.

I will sing you this song when the world, caves on.

You'll be fine, I will never leave you.

You are the most beautiful thing that has came.

I will protect you forever, my love."

Life is difficult in many ways. It's either we were born different, have lost someone dear or have lost ourselves. It's no wonder how millions of people from all around the world, evert second, minute, hour— someone gives up on everything. It was cruel, disturbing, most of all heart breaking.

Akaashi never understood your true intentions. He was one hundred percent sure he had kept an eye on you at all cost. He's made you smile brighter, he's understood you more than anyone. He made you feel alive.

Yet now you ended up being dead to your own inner demons.

He remembers coming home after receiving good news from his company. He had received a promotion and a week off just for you. That was when the hospital had contacted him. He can recall his ragged breathing when he was allowed to place a foot in your room. Your monitor beating in an ever agonizingly slow rhythm, he knew it wasn't normal and immediately ran to your side.

He wanted to yell, scream, ask you why, why did you do this to yourself but he couldn't, not when you looked at him so scared and weak. The doctors had told him that he had only a few minutes with his wife, the drugs you've intake was too much, not everything was removed nor pumped out of your system. Akaashi never felt so depressed in all his life after that situation as he buried himself into your chest, listening to your lullabies that soon died down along with the light in your eyes.

That was the only reminisces he's had with you,the lullaby you would sing to yourself as a teen who strived to survive the world, a lullaby for his anxieties and own demons to be tamed, and the last thing you ever said. He was happy that over the years before your death, you had given him a customized music box that had the right notes of your song, only this time no one was singing it.

Fingers tapping anxiously on his work table, Akaashi started to fiddle with his thumb and then his index, losing his focus despite looking at the same drafted page lit up on his computer screen. He kept eyeing the pack of cigarettes that was just on the edge of his window— he needed one right now. Cigarettes were the last options he has for when he couldn't calm his beating heart or let his emotions out. But he knows how wrong it was to be damaging his health, and he knows he's going to get an earful from Bokuto since he visits his apartment every weekend. Even if Akaashi tries to hide his dirty deeds, Bokuto wasn't stupid to read through his eyes like before.

Foot was starting to bounce, his eyebrows were beginning to furrow, as if he was irritated, in trouble, or something. It wss getting harder for him, who wouldn't after losing their wife? The person he's loved since his teen years, the one he's vowed to never make her feel like how she did in the past. He failed you. He blames himself for all that matter, if he's added more precautions, maybe you'd still be here.

He bites his lips and whimpers, hands ruffling through his tossled hair and holding his head as his elbows were supporting him on the table. Everything was closing in once more, the walls to his workspace became suffocating, how he wishes one of his friends or yours would come knocking at his door even though it was already 2:30 am knowing how reckless he's getting. He swore he wasn't going to die sooner as you did. He promised to himself to let you and his memories live on, because once he dies, no one will ever remember the battles you've fought for, the good things you've done to many, and the love you've shared with him throughout the years.

"It's so hard without you, love.."

Eyes finally cracking with tears behind his glasses, he lets them stream down his face with his body shaking on his chair. Soon enough he was bound to get another headache from extreme emotion and will probably lay the whole day about it. But none of that mattered to him anymore.

He just wanted you back.

But his cries weren't the only ones that can be heard in his apartment.

Jolting up to realization, he carelessly wipes away his tears with his sleeves and tumbles our of his chair straight to his room. His heart was beating fast in worry and adrenaline, he thought the source of the crying in his room had been taken away or worse.

But it turns out, it was just his little baby girl crying in lonliness.

As he got closer, her cries were getting deafening, but he didn't mind. Not when his heart was swooning with guilt when he thought of giving up and caving to his own needs when he's forgotten he has a reason to continue on.

With the night lamp on at the side of her crib and his bed, he cooes at the sobbing baby with sweet nothings to catch her attention. Th cries immediately died down and replaced with sniffles and the baby looking up hazily at the dark figure above her.

Smiling, Akaashi carefully picks her up from the crib to cradle her on his chest. Giving her small pats on her back with hush whispers when he feels her stretch on his body.

"Shhh, I'm sorry, were you lonely?"

Grabbing on the string of his lamp shade on the nightstand, he pulls the string, allowing more light to glow in his room, and for his little girl to finally see that she wasn't alone anymore. Akaashi swayed gently as he remained in eye contact with the baby, smiling ever so slightly at the unreadable expression his daughter was possessing and played with her fingers.

"Maybe I should work with you around, you never really like it in the dark, do you, baby?"

His little girl cooes at him, curious of what language he was speaking to her and hopes he understood what she was saying as well. Akaashi's heart swelled at the adorable sound and nuzzled his face softly on her stomach, the baby still confused as ever but just clenches her hands in wonder.

His anxieties and thoughts disappearing in the air whilst he sat down on his bed and held his baby near to where his hesrt was beating. The same day you died, was the same day you had given birth. It was a miracle for the baby to be healthy despite what you had intake. He remembers after your announced death, the nurses had to usher him out, but only to drag him into another room where lies a bassinet and a couple of IV's attached and treatments.

When he got closer, his world was shaken that day. The sight of you and his baby alive and now existing after 9 months of waiting was there right before his eyes. But his heart broke at the thought of him being the only one to raise her, and her not having to meet her beloved mother. He was so emotional that day that he almost lost it when he realizes why she was kept in there and why there were so much stuff in this room. He didn't want to think thag he was losing another one when he had just met her.

The nurses explained that there was nothing wrong with the baby, just taking further check ups and to ensure she was absolutely healthy. He was already been forced outside your room that no longer held light, he wasn't going to leave the room where his daughter was until he holds her in his arms where he knows she'll be at the safest.

As time went by to now, Akaashi feared her growing up in the future. She resembled mostly to you. She was a dead carbon copy of you and he was terrified she'd experience what you have as history might repeat itself. The very thought of his daughter having something inside her little head without telling him scares him, Akaashi knew how cruel the world can be and hoe each second in life matters because we are unaware of the deaths happening at those time.

He prayed his baby girl wouldn't go through what you did as a child and carry it until she grows up. He hopes and believed in his own strength that he wasn't going to fail her this time— that there will be no person by her side and will lovd and protect her other than her daddy.

His tears blocking his vision of her as he held her tightly. He whimpers at remembering his thoughts earlier. He wanted to curse himself from thinking of leaving his daughter to fend for herself in this world and to find a way to be back to you. But he knows he was still with you, your daughter was the last love you could ever give him and he was going to love her more than anything.

The trembling of his body stops when his baby started to cry and squirm in his hold. Her whimpers breaking his heart when he couldn't solve her distress, it seemed like she was in pain and he knew this situation like in the past.

"Shh, shh, I'm here. I'm always here. I'm sorry."

Reciting out the same line he's used when he held you against his body that night. You cried and held a hand to your heart that day as he hugged you tighter. The demons inside you he had curse to go away and leave you alone. But they didn't.

An idea popped in his head and reached out inside his nightstand drawer. The little music box you have crafted for him still looked the same as it was before since it was taken with good care. He proceeded to wind it gently to let the soft tune play as he stood up once more to cradle his crying baby.

"Love, don't you worry too much,

You're doing fine."

He sings the first verse of the long memorized lullaby you sang for him. Using his thumb to wipe away the little tears that had escaped his daughters eyes. Her cries were stopped momentarily and were replaced by sniffles. Her dazed eyes making eye contact with her father's.

"You are the most precious thing I have loved."

Akaashi would be cringing thinking his voice was terrible, but the little girl in his arms seemed to be intrigued and loving the harmonized voice of her daddy and an unknown tune from the background.

His voice was smooth and soft. Completely out of character from his monotone one, but enough to capture the attention of someone.

"I will never allow the cruel world to take you— away nor hurt you any more."

He couldn't tell if he was singing the lullaby to her or he was making a silent vow to her. The lullaby you sang to him for the first time he tried searching for in the internet what the lyrics meant and who wrote it. Sadly, there were no results that came up that day.

And you never really told him how you got that song and who it was referring to in the lyrics.

But nevertheless, the lyrics could never be at the right time as it was now. It felt like he was reminding himself of what his role was from now on and what his daughter should always remember as she grows up.

No one was going to hurt her on her watch.

"I will sing you this song when the world, caves on.

You'll be fine, I will never leave you."

At the end of that line his voice cracks as he held back his own tears. He can hear only now your voice and hoe you would thread his hair during nights of distress. How he missed so many cracks of your voice from being too intrigued with the song. How he missed the fact that you needed him the most those nights of terror, yet you chose to make him feel secure and loved without leaving anything for yourself.

Slowly, his mind was connecting all the lyrics and your actions in his head. You were a self reliant person.

You sang this song in reminder that you were loved, beautiful and was protected by the few people that truly loved you. This song was meant to keep you alive.

To keep him going.

And now

It was a vow from him to his daughter.

"You are the most beautiful thing that has came."

Smiling sadly down to his baby now calmed down and listening intently to her daddy, Akaashi leans down to press kisses on her face with his tears sliding down.

He should've sang this to you when you needed it the most. A reminder of what you truly were to him. He hopes deep inside, somewhere up there or in his room you were listening. Listening to him remind you and his daughter— his world and universe, that he was going to be stronger and fulfill his own promises.

One day he was going to meet you in another life he believed, where he'd make you stay, where you and him will raise your little girl once again and he'll wake up next to you. Where he'll be the one singing this lullaby tune as he hold you both in his arms.

But for now, it was just going to be him and his baby girl.

"I will, protect you. Forever, my love."

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kurodachimagic · 3 years

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Chocolate and Cherries - Chapter 1

Summary: When Adachi falls into the arms of a kind stranger his life changes for the better.

Rating: Pg 13

Tags/warnings: Fluff, getting together, au, Writer Adachi, Chef Kurosawa.

Word count: 6.2k

A/n: This story was written for the cherry magic mini bang! Thank you @hiwatari-art for inviting me to join! Had a lovely time working with you as always. Thank you to my other artist over on twitter guacagabs. The entire story is being posted right now. Thank you to @schnaf for being a great friend and beta!

Read on ao3

Adachi dragged his feet on the pavement as he made his way home from work. He was already too exhausted to start his writing day with the best mindset but it would have to do. He’d already skipped four days this week and if he didn’t actually sit down to work on his book, it would never be published. He let out a deep sigh and shook his head slightly.

The situation was not ideal by any means, he was not great at cooking and it was already too late to start dinner, but he definitely needed to eat something or his mind would absolutely quit on him, he knew that much.

Adachi knew he should probably get something healthier but he refused to waste even more time walking to the store, so he decided to stop by the food cart near his flat for his usual emergency menu: two tuna onigiris with mayo - along with a can of soda in the hopes that the caffeine would boost his creativity. He was not too happy about it, but he didn’t have much time to contemplate his choice because as soon as he had paid, the first few droplets of water hit his shoulders. Looking up, he felt the next few drops hit his nose and his forehead. He cursed inwardly and simply took off awkwardly running the last few blocks home, trying his best not to slip and fall, his dress shoes nothing but a hazard in this particular situation.

The building door was so close, he could see it through the pouring rain; just a few meters and he would be home. Adachi rushed, his hand extended already to grab at the door handle when his body collided with something - someone - and fell backwards. It was as if time had slowed down; he could see the face of the person he ran into frozen in shock, his eyes widening as he saw Adachi falling, while Adachi could only think about the pain this would cause him, physical, yes, but mostly emotional. He always managed to get himself in embarrassing situations and now -

His neighbour extended his hand just in time to catch Adachi’s and pulled him upright effortlessly, his expression switching from shock to a relieved smile. “Are you ok? I’m so sorry, I hadn’t seen you.”

“Thank you! I’m so sorry,” Adachi said, feeling the heat rise to his face, partly because of his clumsiness and partly because his neighbour had not let go of him yet. In fact, Adachi could have sworn that the guy was rubbing his thumb on the back of his hand. He didn’t know what to do, so he tried again. “Uh, sorry. I should’ve been more careful.”

“It’s ok, I’m glad that you didn’t get hurt.” The man seemed to suddenly remember they were standing in the pouring rain and pulled Adachi to the door. “Come, you’ll catch a cold in this weather.”

No matter how hard he thought, Adachi couldn't remember ever catching his name but he had seen this man before in the elevator and in some of the common areas. He seemed to be a bit of a recluse, much like himself.

The man opened the door and finally let go of his hand before ushering him in. “After you, Adachi.”

Adachi’s eyes widened; he didn't know how the man knew his name, but he didn’t mention it. He walked inside and called the elevator, followed closely by his saviour. Once the doors opened, he stepped in and turned around, pressing the button for the fifth floor and finally facing the man. "Thank you, again…" he trailed off.

"Kurosawa. My name is Kurosawa." He pressed the fourth-floor button.

Adachi smiled and bowed to him. "It was nice seeing you, Kurosawa. Have a good night."

The elevator dinged and Kurosawa bowed with a smile before exiting. “Good night, Adachi,” he waved.

Adachi hesitantly waved back as the elevator doors closed. Before he knew it he was one floor up, opening the door to his flat, throwing his work bag on the sofa and taking his wet clothes off with a groan before going to the bathroom.

What a day. Not only had he stayed late to finish on that project Urabe had handed to him but he also made himself look like a fool in front of his very cool neighbour, and to add insult to injury now he needed a hot shower to hopefully avoid catching a cold. He shook his head and hopped under the stream, washing himself thoroughly and letting the hot stream relax his muscles.

Feeling in a bit of a better mood, Adachi got out of the shower, wrapped himself in a towel and went about getting into a comfy set of pyjamas. He finally sat at his desk and opened the white doc of doom, checking the time and cursing as he realized it was 9 pm already. He slouched in his chair, throwing his head back with a groan. This book was going to take a million years at this rate, he really needed to prioritize his schedule, put on some good hours into it each day, especially during the weekend, he needed to -

Adachi’s stomach growled loudly, reminding him that his emergency dinner laid abandoned in its bag. He got up and stomped over to the sofa, unwrapping the onigiris and eating them without so much as a thought before returning to his spot. He promptly sat down to continue with the daily task of staring at the document while he begged his brain to type something - anything - out. But his mind had other plans though, Kurosawa’s face and gentle smile kept popping in his mind. Maybe it was because of the way he moved, how he had kept him from falling with his sharp reflexes, or maybe it was how elegant he looked even when he was soaking wet, how well his suit fitted him. Kurosawa was like some sort of superhero, or… no, he was more like a Prince Charming from an epic battle world. That was a start - it was not the murder mystery he had thought about, but it was definitely a start.

The sound of Adachi’s footsteps worked like a metronome, helping his mind settle into a rhythm. He was starting to see things in more detail: The brave prince paced in his castle, his sword close by his side, the problems his kingdom was facing were almost too much to bear and with his father on the brink of death, it was all on him. A shadow appeared above the citadel - the… the… ‘kingdom x’ was being attacked by a three-headed dragon. How would he fix this and save his people? Had someone sent the dragon or did it act with free will? Did the soon-to-be king have secret magic powers? Maybe they were a secret even to himself!

With renewed energy and excitement, Adachi sat down to work. This new world just wanted to be written, to become a reality, and he was not going to stop it. Aided by the occasional sip of soda and a few “stretching breaks” that were more like actual pacing, he managed to draft four thousand words by 5 am, effectively breaking his 3 thousand word record from just a few months ago. If he could keep up the pace he could finish the book within the next month and send it to Tsuge for editing and review. He sent a quick text to his friend to tell him the good news and got into bed; he would probably regret staying up so late tomorrow, but now he didn’t have it in him to care. Writing was definitely his call - even if he was very close to missing his goal of being a published author by 30.

---

The commute to work was nothing short of hell. The morning started with Adachi missing his usual train and having to take the next one during rush hour - not that he ever managed to avoid rush hour, but he usually took the first train during it so it wasn’t as crazy as later in the morning. This resulted in him having a very unpleasant ride, squeezed half to death between the sea of people, feeling like a canned sardine with a bad case of insomnia. That was the other issue, the previous writing night ended up being a success but even though he’d been exhausted by the time he was done, it had been impossible to fall asleep. Now he was on his way to a long workday with a pounding headache and a sour mood. If given the opportunity, Adachi would’ve chosen to take the day off to sleep and feel refreshed enough by sundown to continue writing.

His job was definitely a necessary evil, but sometimes he couldn’t help but resent it. On the verge of thirty, Adachi spent most of his day at the office, writing his reports, Urabe’s reports, and occasionally picking up the slack of some of his colleagues. There was barely any time for hobbies or relaxing and least of all to be an aspiring writer. To be completely honest, Adachi had started viewing his day job as his second career in the past year. His heart and soul were focused on his new goal, what he really wanted. In the end, if writing didn’t become his main income, it wouldn’t matter, he was passionate enough about it to continue no matter what. After all, living in the fantasy worlds he created was more than enough for him.

Adachi made it to his desk just on time, but running those last few blocks only served to make his mood even sourer. He pulled at the collar of his shirt with a small huff, still thinking about his writing and leaned back in his chair until it touched Urabe’s shoulder, startling him.

He turned around swiftly, blush already rising to his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Senpai.”

Urabe nodded and waved him off. Then, he cocked his head and looked at Adachi in more detail. “What is going on with you, Adachi? You look tired.”

“I just had trouble sleeping last night, that’s all,” Adachi said with a heavy sigh. He could picture so many things he would rather do than give explanations about his personal life, but he would feel too guilty if he was rude to Urabe when he was only worried about him.

“Hmm, are you sure that’s all?”

“Yes. I’m ok.” He attempted his best smile. “Thank you for asking.”

“Adachi,” Urabe pouted, his brows burrowed into a childish frown, just like every time he would ask Adachi to take on more work, any semblance of concern already gone out the window. “Can you finish this report for tomorrow? The boss is really piling stuff on my shoulders and I already had other plans for today.”

Sometimes Adachi wished he was a bad person, or a bad colleague even, but he couldn’t help taking on the extra work when it was needed, after all, he didn’t have much of a life. He rolled his eyes but nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Oh, wait. Is your birthday today or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And you’re turning 30, right?”

Adachi nodded once again, hoping to end the conversation as soon as possible; he didn’t want to be reminded of the passage of time or how much he hadn’t achieved by now.

Urabe rolled his chair closer and elbowed him. “Aaah, you sly weasel. Do you have a date?”

“Of course not. I’m just looking forward to getting home and sleeping.” That was literally his birthday plan.

Urabe frowned and gave him a quizzical look. “But you have... ‘dated’ before, right?” He winked.

Adachi shook his head slightly and saw the same look many people gave him, a mix of pity and judgement.

“You should ask one of the girls out. I’ve heard Yui is single and she’s very pretty!”

Adachi slowly turned his chair towards the copy machine and saw Yui across the room. She was, in fact, very pretty, but… she didn’t spark anything in him. She looked like a work of art, pleasant to look at, but not for him. “No, I don’t think that would work.”

“Adachi, if you don’t date someone by the time you turn 30, you will turn into a wizard!” He whispered.

“What? That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s true, you’ll see!”

Adachi rolled his eyes and turned back to his desk, finally starting on the reports needed. The sooner he was done with that, the sooner he could return to his writing.

The elevator opened its doors for Adachi and the ding that followed made his muscles relax instantly. Only a few more minutes and he would be up in his flat, taking his shoes off and cooking something quick before sitting down to write. He felt inspired by the beginning of this new story and he wasn’t about to let a bad day at work ruin that for him.

Just as the doors started to close, someone put a bag between them to keep them open. The first thing Adachi saw was a girl with a cute and gentle look, a black wispy fringe framing her face and a sweet smile. She nodded at Adachi and he smiled and nodded back. He wondered if he would ever date a girl like her, if sharing his life with a partner and doing things together would be so different than what he did now. The answer was probably not, since he assumed nobody would be supportive of him working all day and writing all night; if he was honest with himself, he didn’t really have time for a relationship, even if he sometimes yearned for a bit of company - theoretically. Adachi blinked repeatedly, suddenly crashing back into reality when he saw the looming presence of Kurosawa behind her, giving him a weird look he couldn’t quite place as he ushered the girl into the elevator.

Out of sheer awkwardness, Adachi nodded and mumbled a quiet hello at him, looking away as a blush crept onto his cheeks. Was that Kurosawa’s girlfriend? He groaned and let his head fall back against the elevator wall. He’d been caught staring at his neighbour’s girlfriend like a creep. He ventured a sideways glance and realized Kurosawa was still looking at him with a weird expression.

Thankfully, the ride was short and only a minute later, Adachi was home, barely paying any attention to his basic needs as per usual. He made some instant ramen and added a bit of egg to it before eating it mindlessly, daydreaming of his new story and the magic system involved.

Perhaps it was quickly becoming a much more ambitious project than he had anticipated but as long as the writing flowed, everything would be ok. What was supposed to be a long writing session soon turned into an early night after Adachi’s brain decided to shut down mid-sentence, putting him to sleep sitting at his desk, his head hanging down and his spine hunched over.

#cherry magic #cherry magic fic #mine

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maylovexhs · 4 years

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everytime - DELICATE (Chp. 32)

Author’s Note: Sorry I postponed this a few days. I had it all written and tumblr gave me problems about posting it. (Thank god I didn’t delete the Google drafts). Anyways this is the last chapter of everytime for September. I’ll be back with more chapters a week before Halloween. See you soon and hope you enjoy - May

Catch up on everytime here

NYC. October 30, 2019. 1 PM.

How can you trust someone? How can you trust someone with your heart when they can walk out the door any second? How can you fall in love with someone when it could fall apart so easily?

I wasn’t afraid of all that. At least, I used not to be. I used to be so excited in a new relationship. Spending almost everyday together. Listening to your favorite music together. Showing them your favorite hidden places. Introducing them to your friends. Them being there for you on all your hard days. Getting to share your life with someone else. . . Who wouldn’t be excited by that?

I guess over the years with each relationship I had, I lost more and more of that excitement until I learned to expect disappointment. And now I felt that way with Ashton.

I like Ashton, a little more than I should but I do. He makes me feel like no one else. He makes me happy -too happy. I shouldn’t feel this happy. At least, not yet. It’s been less than a month I’ve been dating Ashton. It’s too early to be feeling this happy, or too attached. It was still new. I shouldn’t get attached so easily to things that could break, especially to people who can easily leave.

BRINGGG. BRINGGG.

I walked over to the little chair in my closet. I picked it up, seeing it was Harry calling. I pressed the side button of my phone, silencing his call.

I didn’t mean to avoid him. I just been too busy and I had a lot on my mind. I didn’t have the energy to talk to him. The last time I talked to him was last week, the day after my date with Ashton. Ever since then, I’ve been too busy catching up with family and friends to answer his calls. He knew that. He knew I would never avoid him on purpose. Well, he knew I don’t do that anymore.

I looked at my shelf of hats. I picked my black baker boy hat from the shelf and walked over to the mirror in my closet. I adjusted the hat on my head. It tied my blue jacket with my black jeans and boots.

Anyways, I was too busy getting ready to go out with Ashton to answer Harry’s call. I asked Ashton to go out to a museum with me yesterday. Of course, he said yes. I felt as I should confront my fear of being too attached by spending a day with Ashton. I didn’t know why I was so nervous around him but maybe today will shake that feeling out of me. Besides, Ashton was Ashton. He wasn’t like any of my exes. I had good reasons to trust him. I shouldn’t have to worry about him . . . but I did.

DING!

My heart stopped for a second hearing the elevator bell chime through my apartment. Ashton was here.

I looked in the mirror, shaking my head.

I have nothing to worry about. Completely nothing. I was nervous for no reason. It was all in my head.

“Y/N?” I heard Ashton call out for me.

“Coming!” I yelled out to him.

It’s all in my head. It had to be.

2:30 PM.

We were at the MOMA. The Museum of Modern Art. I’ve been countless of times here but each time was different than before. First time I came here was when I was seventeen with Ali, Jie Lin and Jessie. Next time I came, I was on a date with my first boyfriend, Lev. He was nice to be with him until he cheated on me. So much for first loves . . . A few times and a few boyfriends later, I’m standing here with Ashton in front of Louise Bourgeois’s spider sculpture.

“Okay, I get that the spider is protecting the cell. . .” Ashton spoke. “But did it have to be a spider?”

I looked to him. One of my exes said the same thing.

“What?” I asked him. “Are you afraid of spiders?”

“Well, if they’re that big . . .” Ashton said, looking up at the sculpture. “Yes”

I smiled, shaking my head.

“Spiders are a symbol of protection” I said. “Feminine protection. It’s a mother protecting her home and children”

Ashton squinted at the sculpture.

“Still didn’t have to be so creepy” Ashton said.

I rolled my eyes at him.

“I actually looked into her work after the first time I came” I told Ashton. “She draws from her trauma to make art. She didn’t have a good relationship with her mom. She was scared of her but her mother always protected her”

“Hence the spider” Ashton said.

I nodded at him.

“The spider” I said. “Intimidating yet protective”

I walked away from the sculpture, exploring more the museum. Ashton closely followed behind. I walked past a few artworks, stopping in front of one of my favorites in the museum. On the wall, there was a series of black and white photos, showing a woman wearing a dress made from only gloves.

“Lorraine O’ Grady. Untitled” Ashton said, reading the title work on the wall.

Ashton squinted his eyes, looking at the photos.

“So, Lorraine took these photos of her?” Ashton asked.

“Not quite” I said, shaking my head. “The woman in the glove dress is Lorraine”

“She made the dress out of gloves on purpose” I said, pointing at Lorraine in the photo. “She was a beauty pageant queen before she became an artist. The gloves represented class, acceptance. But since she was Black, she didn’t have that. Her work is mocking that”

Ashton looked to me.

“You told me you majored in business in college” Ashton said. “Did minor in art?”

“Actually, music” I said. “But I do still have a great memory of an art class I took sophomore year”

Ashton shook his head.

“Okay, I don’t buy that” Ashton disagreed.

“You don’t?” I asked him.

“No” Ashton said. “I can’t even remember my senior English class. There’s no way you saw this in an art class and remember it ten years later.”

“I didn’t say I saw it in my art class” I told him.

Ashton looked at me, staying silent. He bit his lip.

“I just come here a lot” I admitted.

Ashton crosses his arms.

“How many times?” He asked me.

“A few” I said.

Ashton didn’t drop his gaze from me.

“Fine, more than a few” I said. “But definitely under ten”

“So, who do you usually come with?” Ashton asked me. “There has to be someone who is willing to come here ten times with you”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly only one person” I said. “But Ali only came with me three times . . .”

“So, you came with other friends?” Ashton asked me. “Did you come here for dates?”

I looked up to Ashton, afraid to answer him. I could tell him I’ve been with almost every boyfriend of mine here. I could tell him it’s my favorite place on Earth and I wanted to show my exes it. I could tell him and he would understand that I wanted to share my favorite place with him now. Or I could tell him and he wouldn’t understand. He could think I was stupid for making my exes come here. He could think he wasn’t special enough for me since I took him somewhere I’ve been before. He could think that and want to break up with me.

“Y/N” Ashton said my name.

I blinked at him a few times, snapping out of my thoughts. I let out a little sigh.

“Would you hate me if I told you I brought some of my exes here?” I asked him.

A little smile formed on Ashton’s lips. I didn’t know if it was the museum’s lights reflected in Ashton’s eyes but there was a certain glisten in them. A familiar one I’ve been lucky to see before.

“You had dates here” Ashton said. “It’s a museum. Why wouldn’t you?”

“You’re not mad?” I asked him. “That I’ve been here before? With my exes?”

“Of course not” Ashton said. “You wouldn’t be mad if I told you you’re not the first girl I played my guitar for?”

I smiled at him, feeling a little better.

“No, no” I said. “It’s just this place is special to me and I wanted to share it with you because . . .”

Should I say it? Should I tell him I love him? Wasn’t it too early to tell him those three words? What we had was delicate and I didn’t want to risk it that soon. But maybe . . . he felt the same way. From the look in his eyes, he had to. He did fly to Paris to see me after all. What did I have to lose?

“I think I love you” I said. “I don’t know if it’s too early to say that but . . . I felt that way for a while. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t feel it. The last thing I want is to make you feel weird”

Ashton’s smile grew bigger.

“But I love you” I said. “Enough to care what you think love”

Ashton looked at me for a moment, his smile not flinching a bit. Suddenly, Ashton leaned into me, pressing his lips to mine. I closed my eyes, feeling taken back by him. I felt Ashton’s arms around my waist. I titled my head to the side, cupping Ashton’s cheeks. Ashton pulled me closer to him. I would have began to take off his jacket if I didn’t remember we were in a museum. I slowly pulled away from him, still keep my hands on his face. I opened my eyes to see Ashton smiling down on me.

“I love you too” Ashton said.

I blushed, letting out a little sigh. Ashton removed his hands off me. I let go of his cheeks.

“Umm . . .” I began to speak, catching my breath still. “Do you want to go to a party with me tomorrow?”

“A Halloween party?” Ashton asked me.

“Yeah” I said. “I’m going with my friends and maybe you would like to meet them. You don’t need to get dressed up if you want.”

“Really?” Ashton asked me with slight sarcasm in his voice. “Because I was planning to go as a character from a show. Miraculous Ladybug, you heard of it?”

I raised my eyebrow at him.

“Just say yes” I told him.

“Yes” Ashton said. “I would love to meet your friends and see you in a costume”

I smiled at him.

“Should we continue to look around?” I asked him.

“Lead the way” Ashton said. “You’ve been here before”

I took his hand in mine, dragging him along as I walked.

“Off to the escalators”

October 31st, 2019. 8 PM.

The elevator doors opened in front of me. I walked out and into the hallway. I walked down the hall, stopping at the door to Ashton’s apartment. I knocked hard on the door a few times. I stroke a pose in my costume, waiting for Ashton to open the door. Instead, Brayden, Ashton’s roommate, did.

I flashed a smile at him.

“Hi” I said to him. “Is Ashton ready?”

“Yeah, he’s taking a last minute piss” Brayden said.

Brayden looked up and down at my costume.

“Nice costume” Brayden said. “What are you?”

“Oh, I’m a superhero from a tv show” I said. “Probably don’t know of it but I’m Ladybug from Miraculous Ladybug”

Brayden looked as he lost interest the second I said superhero.

“What?” I asked him. “Don’t like superheroes?”

“Oh, I do” Brayden said. “Comics version at least-“

“I’m here” We heard Ashton say.

Brayden turned around looking at Ashton behind him. I smiled seeing who Ashton dressed up as.

“Oh my god” I said. “You’re not-“

“Luka” Ashton said. “Coincidently, we have the same hair color”

“You didn’t have to dress up” I told him. “And not from someone from a show I watch and you don’t”

“Who says I don’t watch Miraculous Ladybug?” Ashton said.

“You got into it?” I asked him.

“Adrien is seriously blind to Marinette’s feelings” Ashton said. “Luckily, Luka isn’t”

I smiled at Ashton. Brayden rolled his eyes at us.

“Are you two leaving or staying for a drink?” Brayden asked us.

Ashton looked to me.

“You’re in charge, Ladybug” Ashton said. “You choose”

I looked to Brayden. I think he suffered enough from our Halloween’s costumes.

“My friends are waiting for us” I said to Ashton. “We should get going”

Ashton walked out of his apartment. Brayden closed the door as Ashton and I started to walk to the elevator. Ashton pressed the button for the elevator. A DING was immediately heard the second he did. The doors opened for us.

“You really should know,” I said, walking into the elevator with Ashton. “I really ship Marinette with Cat Noir”

“Aw,” Ashton said, pretending to sound hurt. “I should have dressed up as him then”

“Oh, don’t worry” I said. “I feel like Luka will be fine for tonight”

Ashton pressed the lobby button on the side of the elevator. The doors closed in front of us. I felt the elevator began to move. I looked to Ashton, smiling at him.

He loves me. Enough to even dress in a stupid costume for me.

“What’s that look for?” Ashton asked me.

I looked away from him.

“Oh, nothing” I said. “Nothing at all”

London. November 1st, 2019. 6 PM.

*HARRY’S POV*

“Guess who finally learned to play Falling on the piano” I said into my phone.

I sent my voice message to Tom, sending a video of me playing the piano too. I looked at my phone, waiting for Tom to text back. After a minute of nothing, I set my phone down on the piano.

He was probably busy with Jenny or his family. They were a cute little family. Tom would always bring his son into the studio while we were writing. I smiled to myself, remembering one day when Tom’s son wouldn’t leave me alone. I wished to have a family - someday. I liked the fact that I got to build and share a life with someone. Having a family meant I got to share my life with more than one person. I couldn’t wait for that day.

I picked up my phone again, unlocking it. I went to my messages, feeling as I should call someone. I scrolled down, stopping at Y/N. I didn’t talk to her in a few days. From when we last spoke, she was excited to see her friends back home.

I tapped on her name. I held my phone to my ear, waiting for Y/N to pick up. She didn’t.

She was probably busy. Probably with Ashton too . . . Was she?

I looked down at my phone, tempted. I stared at the Twitter app on my phone. I tapped on it, giving in. I immediately searched Y/N. Pictures of her and Ashton were the top tweets.

STOP Y/N AND ASHTON MATCHED I CAN’T

OKAY BUT THE FACT THAT THEY WENT AS Y/N’S FAVORITE SHOW IF THIS ISNT LOVE IDK WHAT IS

LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE THEYRE LITERALLY TWO DORKS TOGETHER

I scrolled more down, seeing more photos and videos of Ashton and Y/N. They were pictured out at a Halloween party together, both in costumes. One photo was of them leaving the party, holding hands. Y/N was smiling at Ashton. One video showed them talking at the party. Another picture showed Y/N, Ashton, Ali and Ezra.

I locked my phone, setting it back down on the piano.

He met her friends. Of course, he would meet them. He is her boyfriend after all but . . . isn’t is too soon?

I shook my head.

What am I talking about? Y/N’s relationships were none of my business just as mine weren’t hers. Besides, I introduced Camille to my friends soon after I dated her. I shouldn’t even care that Ashton met her friends quicker than I did.

I looked down the piano keys.

He met her friends before I did. It took six years for Y/N to introduce her friends to me. It only took him a month. I don’t understand it. What does Y/N see in him? What does she see in him and not in me? She trusts him so easily when I have been here for six years. I’ve always been there for Y/N and still, she couldn’t trust me enough around her friends.

Granted, there was reasons. Y/N and I always were too busy with our careers. We never could spend more than a few days together without the other having to leave. And I remember what Y/N said that night on her balcony a few months ago. She said so herself she had a hard time trusting people when we met but what about after? We’ve been friends for six years. She could have introduced me to her friends sooner than she did. She could have.

I sighed, feeling frustrated.

What did she see in Ashton but not me? She knows how much I’ve been there for her. She knows how much she means to me. I’ve shown it over and over again. I was there for her when Ashton wasn’t. Did she tell Ashton about her terrible parents? Did she tell him how she almost got married by mistake? Did she tell him about her miscarriage? She could tell me all that but won’t see what I have to offer?

I stared at the piano keys. I gently pressed on one key.

Maybe I was jealous. But I had the right to be. I’ve known Y/N for longer. I’ve been there for her. She knows that but refuses to accept it.

I pressed on the same piano key again. And again. And again.

I had the right to be jealous. I had the right to be angry. I felt used and lonely. I had the right to be.

I pressed down on the key once more.

“I know that you don’t. . .” I said. “But if I asked you if you loved me, I hope you lie to me”

#harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #hs imagine #hs imagines #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #everytime chapters #everytime HS

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

Text

Michael Rosenstein 2020: Seeking Sojourn

What was I doing in 2010? What was I listening to? Honestly, without doing some digging, nothing springs immediately to mind. I’m guessing that ten years from now, thinking back on 2020, that won’t be the case. In mid-March, my wife and I took off on our annual winter/early spring sojourn to Provincetown, Cape Cod. When we headed out, the state of the world was tenuous. But over the course of four days, we split our time between idyllic, cold walks on the Outer Cape beaches and tracking the pandemic slide into lockdown and mayhem. We came back home to an entirely different world which has continued to spiral and swirl. This was a year where I spent far more time walking in a woods near my house, searching out a pair of barred owls and their four fledglings than I did listening to music. Focus for listening has waxed and waned and online video streams just haven’t resonated with me. But still, music has brought me some sense of solace over the course of the last year.

AMPLIFY 2020: quarantine

Without a doubt, most of my listening over the year was spent following the AMPLIFY 2020: quarantine festival. Organized by Jon Abbey, who runs the Erstwhile record label along with musicians Vanessa Rossetto and Matthew Revert, the online festival kicked off on March 20 and ran through September 20, presenting 240 newly-recorded pieces and 80 hours of music by musicians from across the globe. Most were solo contributions, with seven “blind overdubs” where two musicians with established working relationships chose track lengths in advance and submitted their recordings which were superimposed with some light mixing by Taku Unami. While the pieces are all available as free downloads on Bandcamp, that only reveals part of the story. Over the course of six months, the Facebook group grew to 3000 members, acting as a virtual gathering place for online conversations and musings with countless posts a day. Additionally, Abbey tirelessly posted an ongoing playlist which he dubbed “atmosphere” with cuts that ran the gamut from Albert Ayler to Funkadelic to Keith Hudson to Al Green with an extra-heavy helping of DJ Screw. Just tuning in to those choices and jumping on conversations was enough to save some days.

While anyone following the Erstwhile label caught some memorable submissions by expected participants, the organizers and some guest curators had more in mind than that and sub-threads developed early on. Yan Jun recruited fantastic submissions from little-known musicians from China while also contributing two pieces of his own. In addition to delivering three strong pieces, Revert brought in an Australian contingent. Rossetto delivered a festival highlight with her piece “perhaps at some time you have acted in a play, even if it was when you were a child” while also inviting a wide network of sound explorers constructing intimate sonic investigations. Abbey himself cast a wide net, probing for both established and little known musicians who had caught his attention over the years. (I’ve known Jon for a long time and was honored to be amongst those invited, contributing a piece assembled from field recordings from my Cape Cod trip.)

A number of musicians who hadn’t put out solo recordings in years, some who hadn’t had any recent releases at all, were lured back, with highlights by Greg Kelley, David Kirby, Joe Panzner, Annette Krebs and Sean Meehan. There was also a somber thread of homages to musicians who died over the last year, starting with a dedication of the entire festival to Australian percussionist Sean Baxter as well as a stirring tribute to bassist Simon H. Fell by Rhodri Davies, a dedication to Keith Tippett by Mark Wastell, and pieces commemorating Cor Fuhler by Dale Gorfinkel, Marcus Schmickler, Jim Denley, Nick Ashwood (recorded with Fuhler shortly before his death), Clare Cooper and Reinier van Houdt (whose six monthly missives delivered throughout the duration of the festival are all well worth spending time with.)

I find myself still catching up on the overwhelming array of contributions but here are a small sampling that caught my ear, though if I were to assemble this list a week from now, the choices would certainly be different.

Zhao Cong – “Homework”

homework by Zhao Cong

Yan Jun’s choice of musicians from China was uniformly superb and all are worth checking out. But Beijing-based Zhao Cong’s entry, in particular, has continued to hang with me. Her piece, constructed from two bass guitars and objects with its scrabbled detail of electronic hum, grit and glitch shot through with ringing bass strings popped out on first listen and continues to deliver.

Rie Nakajima – “carpet”

carpet by Rie Nakajima

Nakajima’s approach to sound-making, utilizing motors, mechanical devices and found objects proved the perfect tonic for pandemic listening. Her piece for AMPLIFY was recorded in her home in London “with all familiar objects I have been using at home.” The percussive piece is shot through with timbral depth, clattering along with a barely-contained momentum. Her release Karu Karu for Café Oto’s digital Takuroku lockdown series is also well worth checking out. And while I tended not to connect with online video over the course of the year, I found myself returning to Nakajima’s seven days bird songs which unfolded over the course of a week, multiple times.

Ivan Palacký – “Sanctuary”

Sanctuary by Ivan Palacký

Czech-based Ivan Palacký’s “Sanctuary” hit early on in the fest and remained a favorite. Palacký spent the first day of quarantine exploring his flat with an electromagnetic sensor, capturing the buzzes and tremors of everyday electronic devices. A few weeks later, he pulled out three knitting machines which he contact mic’d and used to improvise with the electromagnetic recordings. Palacký deftly interleaved percussive patter with wafts of static, grit and crackles, creaks and sputters and resonant thrums into an immersive piece.

Martin Kay – “Bath Time (2nd Edit)

Bath Time (2nd Edit) by Martin Kay

Through the festival, a thread developed of the pieces constructed as sonic response to the physical surroundings of isolation. Moniek Darge's gutting “Quarantine Child,” assembled from interior recordings and the desperate wail of a child, Mark Vernon's “The Dominion of Din,” woven together from field recordings from outside his Glasgow flat, cataloging exterior sounds that have annoyed him over the years and Kate Carr’s haunting “on every stair another stairway is set in negative” recorded using an old reel to reel tape and instrument recordings captured in her bathroom are three. Martin Kay’s four-part “Bath Time” delves in to that personal, interior realm, composed from recordings made in and around his bathroom during the routine that developed with his daughter’s nightly bath. The use of shifting focus, natural resonances of the room, the tub and underwater recordings transform the private, domestic activity into an increasingly abstracted aural study.

Distant Duos

The Distant Duos project that Mary Staubitz and Russ Waterhouse embarked on was also instigated by a sense of lost community. But here, the strategies employed were markedly different. The two are immersed in the DIY noise/improv New England community, spearheading shows in basements, bars, galleries and ad hoc venues and collaborating with musicians from New Haven to Portland, Maine, with all stops in between. They’ve also been instrumental in developing a network of like-minded musicians and bringing travelers through, some who have become frequent visitors. Unlike the duos in AMPLIFY, Staubitz and Waterhouse curated the 78 sessions, inviting pairs of musicians with a simple strategy. “Two remote artists record five minutes of sound while thinking about the other artist, unable to hear each other. The two tracks are combined into one.”

Released in sets of five on Bandcamp, the first on April 30 and the last on December 9, these bursts served as vital postcards. For those of us based in New England, these were both bittersweet reminders of the pre-COVID world we frequented and exultant celebrations. As someone who organized shows with the two and often played on the same bills, these really connected. (I was asked to participate, paired with Worcester-based Abdul Sherzai.) Some of the duos were longstanding partnerships (Greg Kelley and Vic Rawlings have been working together for over a decade). Some were pairings of musicians who knew each other but had likely never played together. Some participants were drawn from the deep field of regional musicians while others were recruited from across the US and Europe. With only five minutes at play, these served as sketches, vignettes or rough drafts. But keen curation and Waterhouse’s astute mixing and mastering made these hold together. Like AMPLIFY, these periodic missives kept me going through the last year.

Flip through any of the contributions and you’ll find plenty to encourage further listening. This batch, culled from the October 28th releases, provides a glimpse into the broad crew of musicians pulled in and the diverse strategies they came up with.

Adam Kohl and Mickey O’Hara

Adam Kohl and Mickey O'Hara by Distant Duos

Western Massachusetts-based Kohl (better known musically as Arkm Foam) and Worcester-based O’Hara have been performing together for a while now, and experiencing their mix of low-fi cassette manipulation and laptop generated deconstructed clatter and glitch inhabit a performance space is enthralling. This brief snapshot serves as a succinct snapshot of one of their sets.

J.P.A. Falzone and Hali Palombo

J.P.A. Falzone and Hali Palombo by Distant Duos

This mashup between J.P.A. Falzone (part of the ensemble Ordinary Affects) and composer and visual artist Hali Palombo comes across as quavering pulsations dialed in from some ethereal transmission. Listening feels like one is tuning in to an hours-long broadcast of hovering tones and fluttering waves which fuse together into shuddering oscillations.

Henry Birdsey and Mary Staubitz

Henry Birdsey and Mary Staubitz by Distant Duos

Birdsey has been developing his micro-tonal musings as part of the duo Tongue Depressor as well as his solo releases under his own name and as S.T.L.A. while Staubitz jumps from the solo sonic onslaughts of Donna Parker to a wide-ranging array of ongoing and one-off collaborations. Here field recordings of rippling water and electric pops and crackles mix with shuddering overtones of bowed metal for an engulfing sonic snapshot.

Lexie Mountain and Angela Sawyer

Lexie Mountain and Angela Sawyer by Distant Duos

Baltimore’s Lexie Mountain and Boston’s Angela Sawyer have known each other for years, so it’s no surprise that their distant connection of broken electronics and found objects clicks so well. Here, everyday detritus is elevated to a compact improvisation imbued with skittering percussive tumult, whirrs and clatter.

New Releases

When I did carve out time to listen, here’s a few that stuck with me through the year.

Toshiya Tsunoda & Taku Unami – Wovenland 2 (Erstwhile)

Wovenland 2 by Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami

Working from basic field recordings, Tsunoda and Unami use the studio as an alchemical laboratory, delving into mixing and mastering tools to explore, process and transform environmental sound. In their hands, the digital artifacts of that process are as intrinsic to the results as the source material they have deconstructed. They sum it up succinctly. “Our goal is to focus on acoustic experiments. No more and no less.”

Here are some more that stuck with me in no particular order:

Rhodri Davies – Telyn Rawn (Amgen Records)

Judith Wegmann – Le Souffle Du Temps II - Reflexion (ezz-thetics)

Clara de Asís & Mara Winter – Repetition of the same dream (Another Timbre)

Takuji Naka/Tim Olive – Minouragatake (Notice Recordings)

Magnus Granberg – Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth –Revised version for sho, koto, prepared piano and electronics (Ftarri)

Tasting Menu – Mueller Tunnel (Full Spectrum Records)

Simon H. Fell & Mark Wastell – Virtual Company (Confront)

Xavier Charles & Bertrand Gauguet – Spectre (akousis)

Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, Seymour Wright, Jean-Luc Guionnet – Solos (Remote Resonator)

Archival Releases and Reissues

Reissues continued to pour out from record labels. Some applied studio wizardry to revive and restore previously issued material and others dug out material from the vaults that rightfully deserves to be heard. But with touring opportunities gone, the ability to collaborate in person evaporated and the monthly boon of Bandcamp Fridays, many artists also took the opportunity to dig in to their personal vaults.

Gentle Fire – Explorations (1970-1973) (Paradigm Discs)

Explorations (1970 - 1973) by Gentle Fire

This one just hit in December but quickly shot to the top of my listening pile. Working in London in the early 70s, this little-known quintet of electro-acoustic pioneers worked at the edges of composition and improvisation, putting out a single, now impossible-to-find, LP performing graphic scores of by John Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff (which, in itself deserves a reissue.) If they hit listeners’ radar at all, it was due to the fact that Hugh Davies was part of the group. This 3-CD box of previously unissued material is comprised of one disc of works by Wolff, Stockhausen, Brown, Cage and Ichiyanagi, another of their own compositions and a final disc capturing an extended improvisation. Five decades later, this stuff is still essential listening.

Rhodri Davies – Archif Series (self-released)

Archif #13: BMIC 17/09/1997 by IST

Currently at number 28 and counting, Davies dug in to his archives and unearthed a passel of gems, documenting live performances and studio experiments from 1995 through 2000. From solos to various group sessions, this is all music well worth spending time with. Particularly welcome are two releases by IST (Davies, Mark Wastell, and Simon H. Fell) and one by Assumed Possibilities (Davies, Wastell, Chris Burn and Phil Durrant). One hopes there is more to be unearthed.

Cor Fuhler Conundrom label

SLEE by Cor Fuhler

The sudden passing of Cor Fuhler was a tough one in a tough year. Whether as a pianist, instrument inventor or ensemble leader, Fuhler was always bristling with ideas. As part of a group effort, the discography of his Conundrom label is now available on Bandcamp with proceeds going to his estate.

Here are some others of note in no particular order:

Albert Ayler reissue series (ezz-thetics)

Phillip Wachsmann – Writing In Water (Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Charles Mingus – @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside)

Voice Crack – Glasgow 20/11/1999 (scatter)

John Butcher – On Being Observed (Weight of Wax)

Derek Bailey and Mototeru Takagi – Live at FarOut, Atsugi 1987 (NoBusiness Records)

Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley – Birdland, Neuburg 2011 (Fundacja Słuchaj)

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luvjoong · 4 years

Note

Can I please have 1 and 48 with joong

hello and thank you for requesting! i’m so so so genuinely sorry for the delay, i’m gonna be honest,, the only reason why it wasn’t up sooner was because i thought i posted it ): i obviously thought wrong because it was still in my drafts lol... but i am extremely happy with the outcome and i hope you i didn’t disappoint for such a long wait!!

butterflies and red cheeks.

✦ 1 & 48 ; fluff ; kim hongjoong

you turned your head slightly to read the time on the clock, about 1:30 in the morning, meaning you had been tossing and turning for the past two hours. your eyes were heavy, but you weren’t restless enough to sleep. the darkness swallowed every little object in your room, but it wasn’t enough to help you close your eyes and drift off into the nothingness of the night.

your eyes were wide open staring at the ceiling above you, getting lost in your thoughts. your ears were open to any little sound they heard: from an owl outside to the small, tired footsteps of your apartment neighbor’s son running to his mother and father’s room to cuddle because of a bad dream. there was an ambulance car faint in the distance, its noise getting lower and lower the farther it drove.

it was one of those nights where the hardest thing to do was to close your eyes and fall asleep.

your lips parted and you groaned, turning onto your side and began to stare at your phone wondering if you should call him. him. kim hongjoong. the kim hongjoong who made your stomach turn at any given moment with just a single smile. the kim hongjoong who always made your cheeks turn the slightest shade of red (of course, he notices and continues to make you flustered). the kim hongjoong whose laugh was contagious, making you fall even harder for him. the kim hongjoong who is extremely gentle to anyone who starts a conversation with him but still knows the right time to crack a small joke. you could talk about him forever, especially after what happened just a few hours ago.

hongjoong had asked you to keep him company while he was home alone working on his lyrics for his new song. you gladly said yes. except the night went in a different direction than planned after cracking a few light jokes to make him smile. after an hour he ended up play fighting with you multiple times, putting his note pad and computer down to squish your body into the couch with his own while you laughed and hit at him to stop. it was endless joke after joke, smile after smile, breathless laugh after laugh.

there was one minute when hongjoong and you finally calmed down, you caught him looking at you so lovingly, his eyes scanning your face with such admiration that it made your heart swell with joy. he was too stuck in his thoughts to process the fact that you were staring back at him that he didn’t realize it until minutes later. that was when hongjoong gave up on his lyrics and you both had a fun rest of the night together until you parted ways and said goodbye.

everyone knew about your heavy feelings for this boy, hongjoong himself was skeptical as well. he flirted with you once or twice, taking note of your reaction.

just thinking about him made your heart jump, and you have had enough of it. you shot up in your bed, hands bunching the sheets. i’m gonna do it. i’m gonna call him.

you stood up quickly, and turned on the lights. yielding your eyes because of the sudden bright light, you begun to pace around the foot of your bed. i’m calling him! no i’m not, what if he’s sleeping or—oh, you shitface, just do it! just call him!

you quickly picked up your phone from the side table next to your messy bed, putting in the password quickly and pressing the green icon to open your most recent calls. your heart began to race with the same questions as before, but you pushed them away and pressed hongjoong’s contact before you could decide not to.

ring

your heart stopped. the ringing disappeared and was replaced with the sound of him.

“hey, y/n, why are you up so late?” he sounded wide awake, making your heart jump. you smiled to yourself, not realizing you hadn’t answered. “y/n?”

“oh, hi sorry. i just wanted to call you because i had a really fun time tonight with you!” you said way too ecstatic.

he chuckled at your enthusiasm. “me too. i don’t think i’ve ever laughed that hard with someone before.”

you giggled and then followed silence.

“hey, you do know that it’s almost 2 in the morning, right? didn’t you say you have work early tomorrow? you should get some sleep, dummy.” your heart jumped at the sincerity in his voice.

“look, you aren’t busy right now are you?” you blurted out, scared of his response. “i know it’s kind of really late, but i really need to talk to you. plus, you know how much i love my nightly walks.”

hongjoong chuckled to himself and flipped through his notebook for a few seconds in silence, thinking of what to say. “i’m still working on these damn lyrics, but—” you smiled “—it can wait. i love being with you, even if it is...” he paused, “1:57 am. i’ll be outside of your building in 15.”

the call ended without a proper goodbye and you threw your phone on the bed, quietly squealing, knowing there were sleeping families near you.

you left your quiet apartment building to be greeted with a wide eyed, innocent smirk from hongjoong in the dark. his nose and cheeks were painted a soft red and his hair perfectly messy. his clothes were the same as when you messed around with him earlier, gray sweatpants and a white long sleeve t-shirt.

he rustled his hands through his hair, remaining eye contact with you, the slight smile still painted on his lips. your heart skipped a beat, seeing him so perfectly comfortable.

“oh my god, i’m so sorry! how long were you waiting out here?” you asked as he cleared his throat, scanning the building behind you.

“no worries, i just got here as soon as you walked out,” he slowly put his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips. “so, uh,” he tensed his shoulders and turned his gaze back to your eyes and was met with them staring back at him. “shall we walk, m’lady?” he moved his arm, motioning with his head for you to put your arm through his.

“that was disgusting, please don’t ever say that again,” you laughed and connected your arms together.

you hadn’t brought up what you planned to tell him, nor did he ask. knowing him, he probably had forgotten by now because of the corny jokes you’ve shared in the past ten minutes. there were few street lamps lit up, yet it wasn’t dark enough to be scared. the only sounds were stray cat’s footsteps and your own. a light began to flicker, causing you to jump. hongjoong laughed at you and the comfortable silence of the night continued on.

you walked through your small town for a while with little conversation and just enjoying each other’s company. you admired closed shops and listened to the sound of your footsteps in unison with your friend’s, glancing over at him only to lock eyes his that must have already have been looking you.

a small car drove quickly by, lighting up the area and catching hongjoong’s attention. he made a questionable noise, “is that some of the boys? why are they out this late?” you slapped his arm, trying to get his attention before he could call them over— “mingi! wooyoung!” you slapped his arm again, this time earning his attention.

one of the tall, lanky figures turned to your side of the street giving death stares at the both of you. he held a lit cigarette in his hand, inhaling the smoke and passing it off to one of the men next to him. “what did you say to me?” the three others near him turned around to face you two, your heart beginning to race. you had never seen them in this quiet, peaceful neighborhood before. they all looked tall but boney with angry expression. hongjoong obviously upset them, especially the strange man with the up-to-no-good voice.

you told hongjoong to not respond, getting worried that they would kill you both right then and there. you had never experienced anything like this, not even any conversations during the night with strangers. everyone minded their own business. hongjoong agreed and you both started walking again, but you turned your head and the same four men started to walk across the street towards you. you tugged onto hongjoong’s sleeve for him to get the hint that you both should leave.

“y/n, i’m so sorry! i never meant to—”

“it’s okay, but we need to run. now.” you grabbed his hand and took off, hongjoong following close behind you and you both heard the men’s footsteps increase in speed. shit, they’re following you now.

you ran in every possible turn you saw, hoping to lose them but one of them always found you out in the open side walk. they hollered and growled for the both of you to just give up and let them talk to you. your knees were getting extremely weak, hongjoong was panting heavily behind you, and your heart was terrified. that’s when you sped up. something must help you out soon right

just as you turned another corner and they weren’t as close anymore, a small alleyway caught your eye through the darkness because of the glimpse of a cat’s eye sitting right. you hurriedly shooed the cat away quickly, took of your shoe and threw it in a random direction so the men would go chasing after it once they heard the slight sound.

“over there!” you heard one of them groan, and hongjoong pulled you in the small alley with him, chest up against your chest. his eyes grew wide as he looked down at you. they quickly scanned every part of your face once more, eventually returning to meet your gaze. his stare fluttered between your lips and your sparkling eyes as he swallowed and panted. you rested your head on his chest for a brief second, feeling relieved before hearing footsteps again. the way you looked up at him made his knees weak, his eyes softened the longer he looked at you and ignored the current situation you were in.

“no one’s down there, go the other way!” one of them called out dangerously close, hongjoong put his hand over your mouth and you did the same to him. you both remained eye contact, still feeling his chest rise and fall.

once the footsteps died down, he let his hand down slowly, the both of you still slightly gasping for air, neither you or him moving from your current position (not that you could move very much). his eyes stared at your lips this time, not caring that you’ve surely noticed by now.

“so... uh, what did you need to tell me?” his eyes stayed wide, hands pinning yours next to your waist at the brick wall behind you. something in his eyes changed so slightly and you were close enough to see it. he stared at your red nose and puffy cheeks, gulping as he kept fixed his gaze to your slightly parted lips once more. you were pressed against him so tight that he could smell the faint fragrance of your freshly bought perfume that you had sprayed on yourself earlier that day, unfamiliar with the scent. you made his heart flutter all too much.

“fuck it,” he said quietly yo himself yet loud enough for you to hear. you tilted in your head in confusion, but before you could question there were a pair of lips on yours. you immediately recognized the situation and his thought process as he said those words, feeling your heart swell up with love. it happened in slow motion, as if your whole chest swelled up right then and there. you have kissed past lovers before, familiar with the feeling of lips on lips, but this was different and, frankly, confusing.

hongjoong’s lips were heavenly. he tasted of mint and so softly moved his mouth against your patient lips. time felt like it stopped as he wrapped one arm around your waist to pull you even closer than you already were, his other warm hand going to the back of your neck. you felt genuine love run through your every vein and you hoped it wouldn’t leave any time soon. you broke apart to breathe, missing the feeling of his lips on yours.

“you wanted that too, right?” he mumbled while barely parting away from your lips, your foreheads pressed together. you left a soft and short kiss on his lips and nodded instead of responding verbally, earning a shy smile from him. “fuck, you’re gorgeous.”

he laughed against your lips at the sight of how red you had become, you laughing in return and keeping the eye contact you’ve held. he pulled away and ran his small hands through his messy pink hair. “this is not the way i’d hoped to tell you that i have feelings for you,” he chuckled and you smiled at his effort to stop smiling.

you only got two hours of sleep that night, but it was all worth it.

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takingcourage · 4 years

Text

The Best of the Best

Pairing: M!Cassian x MC

Word Count: 2,950

Summary: Kellen decides it’s high time to treat Cassian to some of the finer things in life.

Note: This is one of those fics that’s no longer relevant to the plot, but has been taking up space in my drafts for ages and needs to be booted out for the sake of my sanity. I guess it’s set somewhere before chapter 12? Regardless, it features some backstory and a more gradual recognition of feelings than the one we got in canon.

Craning his neck, Cassian tried to catch a glimpse his of collar in the bathroom mirror. Still brushing his teeth with his right hand, he snaked his left behind him to smooth the wrinkle that bent the structured band. His hair would likely disguise any such imperfections, but that didn’t matter. It was the principle of the thing.

This was the first evening he and Kellen had gone out since their arrival in Nantucket, and he wasn’t going to do it halfway.

He completed a final lap across his teeth and spit into the sink. Once finished, he rinsed off the brush and laid it in his toiletry bag. Drawing back his hand, his eyes rolled toward the ceiling. The footsteps coming from the bedroom had become sharper -- more pronounced.

Kellen had put on her shoes.

It won’t be long now, he reasoned, taking one last look at his appearance in the bathroom mirror. His hair still looked a little windblown from the hours he’d spent working on the outside of the cottage, but the helmet would soon negate any efforts he made to improve it. He made a note to double-check his teeth, then realized his mouth was already open from smiling.

It wasn’t the first time something similar had happened over the last few weeks. Living with Kellen had been more enjoyable than even his wildest expectations might have predicted.

Cassian heard the click of heels on the stairs seconds before she appeared in the open doorway.

“Please ignore the fact that you’ve already seen me in this dress. If we were back in Boston, I’d have a whole closet of them to pick from, but, you know...”

He couldn’t help laughing at her nonchalant shrug. “This one suits you. You could wear it every day and you’d never hear me complain. You look gorgeous.”

It had been over a month since they’d locked eyes on that rooftop in Boston, but he still had to do a double take every once in a while. Tonight, with her dark berry lipstick and her hair styled into a low bun, Kellen was positively enchanting.

She dressed up for me.

He knew it wasn’t quite true, but that didn’t stop the pleasure from swelling his chest at the notion. For the thousandth time in the last five weeks, he tried to censure himself -- an increasingly difficult task where she was concerned.

“You're making me feel underdressed, if I’m honest,” he continued, hoping his mind would accompany the words instead of remaining stuck on her appearance. “What is this about, anyway?”

“You look perfect.” She pinched the point of his collar between her fingers and gave him an appreciative once over. “And I’m taking you out to dinner: that’s all you need to know,” she challenged, sapphire eyes blazing.

Cassian’s mouth went dry as she released her hold. “Have you forgotten that I’ll be the one driving us to this surprise? I’ll need to know eventually.”

“I’ll give you directions as we go. It’ll be more fun.”

Forehead against the doorjamb, he let out a groan of apprehension. “I thought we decided you weren’t going to do that again.” Her methods of giving directions from the back of a Vespa were very...creative.

“I’ll keep my hands to myself this time.”

A quiet cough was enough to call her bluff.

“Mostly.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She answered the accusation with a cheeky smile before her eyes fell on the stovetop clock. “Our reservation is for 6:30. We’d better get moving.”

Slipping the keys from his pocket, he motioned toward the door. “I’ll follow you,” he promised, resigning himself to a very long ride into town.

_____

“What is this really about?” He asked a second time, some half-hour later. Leaning back in his chair, he tried to perform a scan of the restaurant’s other occupants, but his eyes kept landing back on Kellen.

Candlelight danced on her skin as she pondered his question. If he hadn’t been so intent on hearing her response, he could have easily become lost in the sight of her. The beauty mark on her collarbone, the way the light caught on the dainty line of her chin, the flush of pink still on her cheeks from the ride over... He watched the shadow cross her perfect lips as they parted to answer.

“Breaking up the monotony. Testing some of Nantucket’s best food. Showing you the finer things in life.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure the answer had told him any more than he’d already known.

Whatever her intentions, this definitely wasn’t a date -- even if instinct kept trying to tell him otherwise. The lines between his conduct were so blurred that even he couldn’t guess his true motivations. Holding open doors, pulling out chairs -- they were things he’d done for the sake of courtesy since he was a child. But here with Kellen, he knew that more than politeness was driving his actions.

But Cassian wasn’t going to bring that up in conversation. Instead, he inclined a brow. “No fish ’n’ chips, then?”

“Have you looked at the menu?”

He had, but he made a show of perusing it a second time. There were dishes he’d only vaguely heard of, most of them paired with prices that seemed anything but reasonable.

“It’s restaurant week,” she reminded. “That means the food is affordable and there are a lot of people for us to blend in with,” she told him in undertones, as though sensing his worry.

“You could never blend in, Kellen.”

The woman demurred, taking a sip of her wine to hide her smile. When she replaced the glass, she crooked a finger to draw him close. “The low light helps. It’s one of the reasons I picked this restaurant,” she confided in a half-whisper.

Cassian pulled away with a proud grin. Kellen was getting savvier all the time. It should have come as little surprise, given how she’d excelled at anything else she put her mind to. But for whatever reason, it had taken far longer for caution to become second nature.

She caught his eye and flashed a subtle wink.”Told you I’d thought this through.”

“I’m sure not going to complain. You know how I feel about candles.”

Her gaze narrowed before darting back down to the menu. Clearing his throat, Cassian let his own eyes pause on her for a moment longer. From the gentle motion of her jaw, he could tell that she was rolling her tongue between her teeth -- something she only did on the rare occasions when she held back her words.

Did I say something wrong? he wondered, reaching for a sip from his water glass. After weeks of living together, they were well accustomed to each other’s teasing. She knew his tendency to turn things more serious, and he knew her default to deflect. He usually tried to tread lightly, but she was smart enough to tell that there was more to his comment than flirtation.

As she batted her lashes and met his eyes again, the telltale spark had returned. “Anything look good?” she inquired, tracing the edge of her booklet. From the coquettish incline of her brow, it was clear she was referring to more than just the food.

“All of it,” he answered truthfully, biting back an oath when the words came out sounding more sincere than playful.

Tonight isn’t a date. And whatever this is with Kellen isn’t serious. She’s not interested.

Although she said nothing in return, the sensation of her dainty foot coming to rest at his ankle was almost enough to make Cassian lose his composure. Her touch, that act of reaching toward him without flirtation, called his certainty into question.

Maybe she was more interested than he’d given her credit for.

“Kellen,” he whispered, one hand slipping under the table in a vain attempt to find her skin. If he touched her back, perhaps the moment would become real.

“Can I answer any questions about the menu?”

The waiter reappeared just as Cassian’s finger brushed the inside of her thigh. Swallowing back his disappointment, he pasted a grin and relaxed against the splat of the chair.

Kellen straightened in her seat and began listing her order. From all Cassian could tell, she was unfazed -- as comfortable and self-assured as he’d ever seen her.

Surely he’d been imagining things after all.

_____

The sun had just started to set by the time they finished dining, and the balmy breeze from the water was all the encouragement Kellen needed to suggest a post-dinner stroll.

“So, what’d you think?”

Cassian cut his steps short to match her stride. He was so used to her power walking that this leisurely pace took a bit of adjustment. “It was all very tasty.”

“Good. It was so nice to be able to go out. I’ve missed it, you know?”

“Thanks again for bringing me along.”

“We go everywhere together, remember? Besides, who else would I bring all the way out here?”

She was still a couple of steps behind him, but his ears picked up on the catch in the laughter that followed her words. For someone who usually exuded confidence, the slip was noticeable. Is she nervous? He mulled over the question for a moment before dismissing it as nostalgia for her old way of life.

Coming to the edge of the railing, Kellen cocked her head toward him before casting her eyes on the water below. There was an almost imperceptible pause between the release of her breath and the moment she started speaking. “So...I might have lied earlier.”

“About the risotto being better than the gnocchi?” He caught up to her, propping his forearms on top of the well-worn wood.

She nudged him with an elbow. “No, I don’t lie about food--especially when mushrooms are involved. That risotto was amazing. But I wasn’t completely honest about why I brought you out here.”

Eyes locked on the rolling tide, she explained further. “I know I haven’t been the easiest person to live with over the last several weeks. There have been a lot of times that I’ve made your life harder than it needs to be, and I’m sorry for that.”

Cassian opened his mouth to insist that the confession was unnecessary, but her fingers curled around his wrist. “Don’t argue. I know I have. And I don’t apologize very often, so you’d better not mess this up for me.”

Realizing the sincerity of her threat, his breath stumbled out over a half-serious laugh. He gently pulled his arm from her grasp and turned his hand to clutch her fingers. “I won’t.”

“Thanks.” Though she inched nearer, her eyes stared far ahead. “Clearly, you deserve a lot more than one fancy dinner as an apology, but I’m working with limited resources right now and it’s the best I can do. Will you forgive me?”

His forehead lifted slightly with his initial surprise, though further consideration left him feeling foolish. It was true that the woman he’d met on the rooftop a month before would never have apologized for anything, but this woman? She’d changed significantly over the past few weeks.

This Kellen was willing to admit when she was wrong.

This Kellen was choosing to make herself vulnerable. With him.

As his pulse beat a deafening tattoo, he wondered how she’d respond if he hoisted her onto the railing and kissed her senseless. Whether she knew it or not, it would hardly be the first time he’d kissed her with more affection than lust. Still, taking that kind of action meant he risked disrupting this moment.

Feeling the gentle course her thumb was charting over the back of his hand, he realized he’d been too distracted to answer her question. “All’s forgiven,” he assured quickly. “Besides, I’ve had a better time with you this last month than I’ve had with anyone in ages.”

“Of course you have. I’m excellent company.”

Her confidence was coming back, and it spurred his own bravery: potent and perhaps a little foolhardy. “While we’re on the subject...” he began, forging ahead before he could think better of it. “Would you let me take you out once we’re back in Boston? There’s a pub in Allston that I used to go to at least once a week. I know it’s not exactly what you’re used to, but everyone says their fried mushrooms are to die for.”

“I’d love that.”

Cassian hoped she couldn’t feel the goosebumps that sprouted across his skin at her immediate response.

She didn’t even have to hesitate.

“I’m not making any assumptions,” he continued, trying not to get ahead of himself. Just because she was willing to let him return the favor of buying her dinner didn’t mean that they’d remain a regular part of each other’s lives. “I understand if I’m not what you’re looking for in...”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. Kellen met his eyes briefly, but soon glanced away. “I haven’t been looking for anything,” she admitted. “Not really, anyway. Just some fun.”

”You’re a whole lot of things beside fun, Kellen.” Pulling her hand to his lips, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Cassian was almost certain he imagined the quiet hum as she sighed out her next breath.

“I know. But most men aren’t like you.” The statement was matter of fact, and the low timbre of her voice was enough to tell him that experience had been her teacher.

His dark brows plummeted. “How do you mean?”

“Responsible. Genuine. Interested in taking care of others.”

“You’ve been hurt in the past.” His skin heated at the thought, erasing the chill bumps on his arms. Thinking of anyone taking advantage of Kellen was enough to boil his blood.

“Who hasn’t?”

“But hurt enough that it’s put you off love completely.”

“Between that and the crazy work hours, yeah. Relationships haven’t been a priority.” She picked at a splinter in the wood grain before rubbing it smooth with the pad of her thumb. “Guess that’s what happens when you waste two years of your life being used by someone who doesn’t even love you back.”

He didn’t want to pry, but he was happy to listen for as long as she wanted to talk. Avoiding any additional leading statements, he ultimately settled on a neutral apology. “That’s awful, Kellen. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“It’s not like it’s your fault.” She took her hand from his loosened grip, but she didn’t move away. Still close beside him, the fine hairs of her arm tickled his skin. “Blame my boyfriend from undergrad. He was more interested in getting a position in my dad’s company than he was in being with me. Once he had the job he wanted, he didn’t need me anymore.”

“And your dad?”

Kellen tensed. “He told me it was “just business” and that I needed to stop taking it personally. I haven’t wanted anything to do with either of them since.”

“It’s their loss -- truly.” Though he sought her eyes, they were obstinately trained on the pattern of wood beneath her fingertips. Cassian linked a pinky with hers instead, hoping that she’d take the motion as proof of his convictions. “You’re one of the most amazing--”

"Sorry!” She gasped out in apology, pulling her hand away and cutting him short. “Tonight was supposed to be about treating you to something nice -- not using you for therapy. It’s just really easy to talk to you, and tonight has got me thinking about a lot of things.”

Kellen wove her hand through the crook of his elbow, pulling close enough to rest her cheek on his shoulder. “And I’m glad you said what you did about the pub. After everything we’ve been through, I can’t imagine not seeing you once we’re back in Boston. You’re the best of the best, Cassian.”

Her words were quiet, spoken more to the bay than to him, but they were still enough to make his heart sputter. Whether or not Kellen remembered, she’d used a similar phrase on the night they’d met. Did the compliment mean what he hoped?

He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to ask. “I’d miss ya far too much,” he told her truthfully, quashing down the disappointment he felt at his own cowardice.

“We can’t have that, can we?”

“No, we can’t.”

Her scent wove together with the salt of the sea and the earthy must coming from the wood beneath them. The soothing combination was a perfect blend of all the things he’d soon exchange for the teeming streets of Boston.

But certain as Cassian was that he could live without the endless whisper of the waves or the tang that lingered on his tongue with every breath, he was beginning to doubt that he could go on without her. Taking full advantage of Kellen’s nearness, he brushed his lips over the shell of her ear.

“Once we’re back in Boston, you can see me as often as you want.”

At his arm, her cheek tightened with the curve of her smile. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

_____

Later, as he drove them home with the stars overhead and Kellen’s arms wrapped tightly around his waist, he took stock of the night’s events.

Tonight hadn’t been a date.

It hadn’t answered all of the questions he had about their future.

The evening certainly hadn’t ended with a confession of feelings, but the confirmation that she wanted him in her life once they’d left Nantucket behind? That was enough for now.

#playchoices #playchoices fanfiction #witness: a bodyguard romance #cassian keane #cassian x mc

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rhinoswriting · 3 years

Text

A Life On The Road - Part 4 (A Luke Hemmings FanFic)

Overview: Elizabeth and Calum have been best friends since they were 15/14 respectively. Elizabeth is from and lives in the UK, but her family lived in Sydney for a brief 2 year period which is how the two met.

With 5SOS embarking on their biggest and most ambitious world tour to date, Cal has invited Elizabeth along to work as a photographer/content creator for their social media. This is in the hopes that travelling with them will help Elizabeth achieve her dream of becoming a full-time travel writer.

Elizabeth is acquainted with the rest of 5SOS but doesn’t know them tremendously well. Obviously that changes as they are all forced to be in one another’s company for the duration of the tour. As the tour progresses and new friendships blossom, Elizabeth feels the connection between her and Luke grow more and more.

A/N: Picking up in Paris. There’s drinking and swearing in this one.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

******************************************

“That was genuinely one of the best meals I’ve ever had.” Michael announced as we exited the restaurant.

“It was incredible! I’m still so jealous of your main though, Mikey. Like, mine was good but I should have got the same as you.” I replied.

“So where to next? The night is still young and we have no obligations before tomorrow’s soundcheck.” Ashton asked the group.

A bar was obviously the unanimous decision. But I did convince them to walk aimlessly until we found a bar. That way we could see some of the landmarks lit up and I could get some content both for the band insta and to go alongside any Paris articles of mine that got picked up.

“I’m going to have my work cut out topping these,” I told the guys as I reviewed the short series of photos I had just taken of them by The Louvre, “So I think that counts as me done for the night. Time to find the nearest baaarrrr!”

It didn’t take long to find a bar. It also didn’t take long for us to all have a cocktail glass held in each hand. While the meal was excellent, it was quite a posh place, something none of us were exactly used to. This bar felt much more like our kind of place. It was time to really relax and have fun as nothing more than a group of friends.

In terms of music it was a bit hit and miss as to whether or not we knew the song playing. While that stopped us singing, it never stopped us from dancing. Also, not being familiar with a song was an excellent opportunity to get the next round of drinks in.

“Hurry up! I don’t have a good grip on these! Quick! Take your fucking drinks!” I yelled as I returned from the bar doing my very best to carry five glasses.

“Thanks, EP!” Cal shouted back as he took two glasses from me, passing one on to Michael.

“TO EP FOR ADDING MORE FUN, AND RIGHT NOW DRINKS, TO TOUR AND BEING A STEP CLOSER TO ACHEIVING HER DREAMS!” Ashton called as he raised his glass into the air for a toast.

“TO EP!” The four of them shouted as they clinked their glasses together.

“You guys are too much at times,” I laughed, “But thank you very much none the less.”

With that slightly embarrassing moment of attention out the way we got back to dancing and sipping on our drinks. After a few songs Cal excused himself to the smoking area. Not long after he’d gone Michael went up to the bar as it was his turn to buy the round, leaving just me, Luke and Ash dancing in a little triangle of space. That was until Live In The Moment by Portugal. The Man started playing.

As soon as we recognised the song Luke gave me a knowing look as I exclaimed ‘As if!’ because only hours ago in that random little coffee shop had we bonded over our mutual current obsession with the song. From that point until the song faded into the next Luke and I were solely focussed on one another as we passionately sang the lyrics at each other and let the beat draw our drunk, dancing bodies closer together in the already small space.

Without even realising it we became only inches apart, loudly singing into each other’s faces with our drink-free hands moving between air punches, waves and resting on each other (his hand on my waist, mine on his shoulder). And then far too soon the song was over.

“That’s officially made my night,” I declared as I took a step back and downed what remained of my drink, “That was the best coincidence ever.”

“I think that just became our song.” Luke smiled down at me while pushing a few curls back out of his face.

“Are you fucks going to take your drinks now? Because I’m 30 seconds away from drinking them.” Michael somewhat playfully asked, pulling the two of us out of our bubble.

It wasn’t long after taking our drinks from Michael that Mr. Brightside came on and the five of us went mad for it on the dancefloor. And it turned out that, just like a multitude of other clubs I’d been to, Mr Brightside was a subtle signal that closing time was fast approaching. After the two songs that followed, the music stopped and the house lights came on.

“Boooo!” We all declared, clearly not ready for the night to be over just yet.

We collected our jackets from the cloakroom as we were ushered out into the cold Parisian night air with the rest of the crowd. Once out on the street we checked the time for the first time in hours. Realising it was 3:05am and nowhere else was likely to still be open we began our walk back to the tour bus.

It may seem strange to say, but drunk walks home at the end of a night out are one of my favourite things in the world. I get such a feeling of togetherness when I’m laughing and slightly staggering down the street with friends. It always makes me feel like I belong. And semi-lost under the streetlights of Paris I had that feeling of belonging wash its warmth over me. I took two large steps to catch up with Cal and looped my arm through his,

“I so fucking glad I’m here. Thank you so much for being my best friend. And thank you for having bandmates that are so easy to get along with.” I told Cal as I placed my drunk, sleepy head against his arm as I wasn’t quite tall enough to reach his shoulder.

As Cal and I continued our drunk heart-to-heart we absentmindedly followed the other three in what we hoped was the direction of the tour bus. Seeing as we hadn’t been paying much attention to them and their antics, it was a bit of a surprise to hear Ash shout “Smile!” at us. Thankfully we were quick enough to pose.

The result was a pretty cool photo of us, arms still linked, pulling tongue-out faces while flipping the camera off. I asked Ash to send it to me, edited it a bit and kept it in my Insta drafts for review and posting in the morning. By the time I’d done this, we’d managed to find our way back to the bus. Once we all piled in we promptly collapsed in our bunks for what remained of the night.

The next day was actually quite a relaxed one for me by touring standards.

I was woken up by Michael repeatedly prodding my upper arm. Once I stirred and opened one eye to find him there, he let me know that Ashton had gone and done a coffee run and mine was waiting for me in the kitchen area. Begrudgingly I got up, because I knew the caffeine would do me good, and I also really needed painkillers for my head. As I padded into the bus’ kitchen area in my XXL tee I saw that the guys were looking just as rough as I felt and probably looked too.

“Thanks for the coffee, Ash.” I said as I picked up the cup with my name on, “I don’t suppose there’s any painkillers on this bus?”

“Got some on my coffee run. Here you go.” Ash responded handing me the small rectangular box.

“You lifesaver.” I said taking the box and settling down on the small sofa next to Luke who was barely awake.

As everyone was pretty hungover we didn’t talk much. We just sat in a comfortable silence while we waited for the caffeine to kick in.

The silence was finally broken by Lou getting onto the bus and letting the four guys know it was soundcheck in 30 minutes. This prompted them to go and change out of their joggers and freshen up a bit. As they did so I dug out my laptop, charger and notebook from my bunk in order to set up a temporary desk at the kitchen booth’s table and get some work done.

After two hours I’d managed to finish, proof read and send off my article on Glasgow to ELLE; as well as flesh out two article ideas for Paris. Pleased with what I had achieved in that time, despite my headache only being dulled slightly by the painkillers, I took a break.

Predictably, after making some instant mug ramen, I ended up on Instagram; which was when I remembered the photo in my drafts from last night. I clicked onto it and saw drunk me had gone a bit too far when altering the brightness and warmth of the photo. Once I had edited them down and was pleased with how it looked, I tapped out the caption “Two of a kind!” with the emoji of the two dancing girls at the end, tagged Cal and hit ‘Post’. Not quite ready to go back to work, I decided to get dressed and head into the venue to see what the guys were up to.

The guys were just finishing up the meet and greet, so I hopped round to the front of the venue and gave some of the roadies a hand with prepping the t-shirts and hoodies into piles by size at the merch booth. In between pile sorting, Lou appeared to let us know the boys were in Dressing Room 4 doing radio interviews over the phone and to avoid that area of the venue until they were done. Not knowing when exactly that would be, I headed back to the bus once the merch had been sorted and video called Drew.

“Work is so shit without you. Your replacement sucks too.” Drew complained.

“Aww I’m sorry, Drew! Have you heard back from the other firm you applied to?”

“No, not yet. But I should hopefully within the next week. I can’t survive much longer with these people. How’re you surviving on the road?”

“Really well actually! Not to rub it in or anything.” I laughed.

As I was divulging into some of the details and anecdotes I heard someone slapping their hands along the length of the bus as they approached the door.

“Oh. It sounds like I’m going to have to go.” I managed to say before the door opened and Luke stepped onto the bus, “Adios. I’ll call you again soon.”

“Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t realise you were on the phone.” Luke apologised as he caught the tail-end of my conversation, “We’re all just chilling in the main dressing room now, so I said I’d come and find you.”

“Let me grab my camera gear and I’ll be right with you.” I told him while shimmying out of the booth at the front of the bus.

After a few wrong turns backstage, which resulted in a game of Marco Polo between Luke and Michael as a way to guide us the right place, we were back into our comfortable evening routine. They got prepped and hyped up and I documented it with my camera. That evening I took each of them down the hall to a really cool, cobalt blue door I’d spotted for some solo shots. Luke, taking the longest to decide on his stage outfit for the night, was the last of the four I photographed.

“That red silk shirt was such a good choice.” I complemented him as I held my eye up to the viewfinder, “It contrasts this cobalt door so well. And the two together really bring out your eyes.”

“He doesn’t need a bigger head than he’s already got!” Cal called playfully down the corridor.

Luke let out his infectious giggle and I seized the opportunity to grab another photo while chuckling myself. It was a great photo. Such a pure moment captured. I almost didn’t want to share it on their social media, but I knew that was a foolish, and not to mention selfish, thought.

Not long after that the guys were called to the stage. I took my place side of stage and ritualistically fist bumped each of them as they took to the stage for another amazing show. I felt I had already got enough content while in Paris, so I chose to just enjoy the performance instead of worrying about shots and footage. It was the first time I had let myself do so on this tour and I had a blast.

“It looked like you were having a good time tonight.” Cal later remarked when we were all back on the bus and on the road to Brussels.

“Don’t tell Lou, but I sort of let myself take tonight off shooting to enjoy the gig as I already have so much Paris content.” I confessed as I reclined on the sofa in the lounge at the back of the tour bus.

“Your secret is safe with us.” Cal reassured with a wink, before taking the final swig that remained in his beer bottle, “Right you fucks, I’m off to bed. See you in Brussels.”

Not long after, Mike and Ash made their way to their bunks as well. This left just Luke and I chilling in the back lounge. As he was scrolling through Netflix looking for a film to put on, I asked him,

“Are you not shattered too?”

“Eh,” He shrugged, “A bit, yeah. But I always have trouble sleeping. Plus after our drunk chat the other night I’d like to hang out with you more, and I seem to only really get the chance at night.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.” I responded while draping a blanket over my shoulders as the opening credits to Groundhog Day began. After a pause I continued, “We can hang out during the day you know. Like take a break and grab lunch or something. Hey, why don’t we do the coffee run together tomorrow? That’ll be an opportunity to hang out.”

“I’d like that,” He smiled, and then tugged a little at the blanket, “Don’t go hogging all the blanket.”

I released my grip on the blanket, allowing Luke to drape it over himself as well. The added warmth of his body next to mine made me feel even cosier and it wasn’t long before I nodded off to sleep.

The tour bus abruptly coming to a stop a few hours later managed to rouse me from my slumber. As my eyes fluttered open, the rest of my body registered that I wasn’t in my bunk, or even laying down, and that the warm thing my head was on smelt very good. Once my eyes were open and no longer fuzzy with sleep I realised that I had fallen asleep during the film, as I was still sat on the lounge’s U-shaped sofa. Luke must have fallen asleep at some point during the film too, as the nice smelling thing my head was resting on was his shoulder, and I could feel his head resting gently on top of mine as he snored softly.

“Wake up. Hey, Luke. Wake up, “I prompted as I gently shook his thigh, “I think we’re in Brussels.”

#luke hemmings x ofc #luke hemmings fanfiction #luke hemmings fanfic #luke 5sos #luke hemmings #5sos fanfiction #5sos fanfic

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years

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Paper Mouth, Opera Game, Beautiful Place | Writing Update

Hey People of Earth!

This is December 5th Rachel here to tell you this has been sitting in my drafts since the prehistoric era and we boutta update on three chapters of Moth Work *cracks knuckles*.

First, let’s start with chapter seven of the book, AKA Paper Mouth.

I wrote Paper Mouth back in August, and while I drafted it (over a few writing sprints), I was happy with it, but eventually realized I actually... didn’t like her, lol. Though objectively this chapter ain’t my fave, it does establish a very! important! thing! And that’s my shiny new gal, Eliza.

So, if anyone remembers from previous updates, I conceptualized most of MOTH WORK back in January when I was *stressed* at the end of a semester and needed a *break*. During this period of brainstorming where the whole photograph plot formed, I characterized a woman (the woman in the picture) who I knew would be central to the book. I knew I wanted to name her Eliza, I knew what she looked like, and had a loose backstory outlined for her, buuuuut… I started drifting from the photograph plot (it was only meant to be a booster) and without the photograph plot, I didn't have a reason to include her. So I thought I’d actually cut her involvement in the book way down from about 30-50% to 2%.

This changed however, when I added Lonan’s POV to the book (what I’m writing at the moment). Because I was in his head, I quickly realized how important finding this woman (someone who had a previous affair with his father [TEA]) would be to him.

This is how we end up at Paper Mouth!

The chapter is almost a direct continuation of the last, and starts out as follows:

Scene A:

Lonan makes a phone call to Eliza from a phone booth. They’ve never met, she like new phone who dis, but after an off-screen explanation, we jump into scene two.

Scene B:

This scene covers the two meeting for the first time outside of a diner. Lonan got dat brooding hoodie energy, and Eliza has tattoo-artist but also your mom friend energy, and we love the dynamic already! From here, she offers to buy Lonan a milkshake as an incentive to speak with him. Me too sis, me too.

Scene C:

They chat, until Lonan moves the conversation to his father. Things go downhill lol, Lonan gets overwhelmed and heads outside to leave, despite having no way home, but is followed by Eliza. They have a convo that gets heated about his father, tho this sort of veers off abruptly my bad.

I honestly don’t love anything enough to share from this chapter, so let’s move on to the next!

EDIT: y’all this is the second edit I’ve made in this post because guess who forgot chapter 8 existed.

Opera Game took me so long to write, I forgot it existed! I either started it at the end of August, or the beginning of September--it took so long I’m pretty sure I only finished it in November, lol.

Scene A:

We get more Lonan + Eliza time as Eliza pulls a Fostered book three and stitches up Lonan’s busted face

This goes wrong very quickly when Lonan keeps bringing up the fact that he thinks she’s spooked because he has his dead father’s (AKA her ex’s) eyes.

Scene B:

We have din din with Eliza + Lonan and she gifts him back his mother’s ring (at last, the OG plot) that she may or may not have had wrapped for months to give back to his dad (yikers). << this causes some minor problems lol

Scene C:

Lonan and Eliza share a cigarette on her apartment’s balcony. They’re supposed to be just friends but let’s just say apparently I cannot write those (see Darren and Reeve lmfaooo).

The end of this chapter was so fun to write. Take with that what you will! I put Nothing But Thieves’ cover of Love You Should’ve Come Over on repeat to write scene C. Take with that! What! You! Will! ;)

And now for excerpts! Sharing this because of the word guileless:

Eliza looks like a girl. She’s a girl with too many tattoos bartered for free in college, convenience store lipstick she bought from the clearance section, a haircut she found in her mother’s mail-order catalogue, rings hand-bent from an age 12+ kit. She cries like a girl, and sits like a girl and wipes her face like a girl, and he sees the same thing in her that he sees in himself—something guileless, something see-through.

I don’t usually share dialogue, but here is some dialogue from scene B:

“Should I have gotten something different?”

“This is fine.”

“They had chili chicken too. General Tso’s. I should’ve followed my gut.”

“This is fine.”

“There’s even an Italian place just a block over. I forgot about the Italian place.”

“This is fine, Eliza.”

And now, a very on brand excerpt ft. dead bodies:

He can’t remember why his mother died, or when, or why she’s more of a mother than his own mother. He only wants to visit her. Slip the ring back on her finger. She would smell like peaches, hibiscus, almost chlorinated, embalmed, absently pretty, not because she wasn’t beautiful, but because her body would be empty.

EDIT (again): hi y’all it’s been a month since I drafted this, and so here we go with yet another chapter update because I refuse to do schoolwork!

Beautiful Place is chapter nine of Moth Work, and is chock full of all the tea you’ve ever wanted! Watch Rachel take a pure friendship and make it *not* because that’s her #1 talent! Pure friendship? lol you THOUGHT.

I wrote this chapter over the course of my reading break. @sarahkelsiwrites and I went out to a coffee shop and did a few writing sprints, where a majority of this chapter was birthed.

After Opera Game, I was a bit stuck with this book. I needed a chapter that shoved Eliza and Lonan closer together, but couldn’t figure out exactly how to go about this. I’d semi established a semi friendship between Lonan and Eliza, but wasn’t fully understanding how they’d go from “lol ur my dad’s ex” to “buds? hi!” to “lol ur my ex” and I toyed around with a lot of ideas in my head before I accidentally stumbled into the scene that defines the entire chapter.

Scene A:

All you need to know is Lonan is chillin’ on Eliza’s couch, she’s making some good ol’ french toast, and then tells him she wants to take him to a “good place” and he’s like ok)

Scene B:

Eliza’s place is a cove she found a while back with someone I cannot name because of spoilers (just know that this definitely changes Lonan’s opinion of being there)

When he asks her about the person who she found the place with, she gets *shady*, he gets *extra*, there is *tea*

Here is an excerpt ft. my most overused verb: starbursting (why)!

“You like the beach?” Eliza turns off the car engine, checks her lipstick in the rear-view.

“Just the water.”

“But not the beach?”

“I like the water.”

They get out of the car together, and Eliza’s sundress catches in the rain. The cotton is patterned with palm leaves, birds the size of his pinkie, and it whirls around her in the wind. He doesn’t ask why the good place is the beachfront, or what’s so good about it. He doesn’t shake her hand off when she takes it and leads him toward the sand. Eliza moves around amber driftwood and rubbery kelp like this isn’t an obstacle course but a regular commute. Her hair blows out of her face, starbursting like a halo. She says something about coming here when the Vegas lights blocked the stars. That it’s magical at night, it’s intoxicating, it’s spellbinding, and all of these words remind him more of his sister than sand, than waves.

Here’s a description of the beautiful place ooooh:

The first thing he notices is the light. It’s only the sun reflecting off the stone, but he sees constellations, jittering like they’re both submerged in water. Bits of gold catch in Eliza’s hair and the peaks of the waves, and it’s the cove he notices next. They stand in the centre of it, the stone arched over a spread of water, lapping inches from their feet. It’s like being enclosed in a snowglobe, a private hemisphere of light, water, stone, sand. A resurrection.

And here lies tea:

Eliza is spreading out a picnic blanket while Lonan kneels toward the water. He punctures the current, and lets it stream between his fingers. Even in his hands, the water is gold.

“A friend and I found it,” she says, as water drips into his palm, down his wrist. “I said it was magical.”

“Was it my father?” he picks up a clump of sand, lets it disintegrate back down.

When Eliza says nothing, he turns back to look at her. She’s rummaging through the picnic basket, humming something under her breath, fixing the corner of the blanket.

“Eliza?”

She looks at him, and then back down, glasses clinking. She pulls out two jars—one orange, one pink. “Which do you prefer—marmalade or strawberry?” She digs through the basket, pulls out another jar, olive coloured, speckled with reds, yellows. “Or tapenade?”

“Eliza,” he says, wringing out his hand as he rises. “Was it my father?”

“I brought red wine, too. Do you drink?”

Lonan approaches, and crouches at the edge of the picnic basket. He plays with the hem, smooths his fingers over the metallic underbelly, the fleecy plaid pattern on the good side.

When she pulls out the wine bottle, he reaches over and places his hand on the neck. Their fingers brush when he secures his palm around it. When she doesn’t look at him, he moves his hand over until it covers hers.

“The friend you found this place with,” he says. “Was that my father?”

Eliza tightens her grip around the wine bottle and pulls it back, placing it into the picnic basket. Her sigh trembles, vibrato like a flute, an opera singer. She smooths her hair back, once, twice. “It’s shiraz. My mother sent it from Italy.”

And at last, I call this: Kind of A Wild Thing to Do But Pop Off I Guess:

On her pulse sits a tattoo of a single crow’s eye, and Lonan traces it with the tip of his fingernail. He touches down, to the dagger following the vein on her forearm, and when he reaches the golden cherub an inch from her elbow, leans down and kisses its head.

Aaaand, what a fun way to end this update!

I’m not sure if I’ll get another update up before the new year, but let’s cross our fingers! If not, here’s to 2020! Let’s finish these books y’all.

--Rachel

#writing #amwriting #writeblr #writerblr #mothwork #writingupdates #fostered

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kaoarika · 4 years

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I rarely do written posts in Tumblr anymore because I am still figuring out how this new UI works in general (and there might be still be some bugs about writing posts + leaving them on drafts + publishing them accidentally as well), and tbh, between the past two months have been sorta chaotic and very mentally draining (besides some work I have been doing) and me attempting to think around some of my few active fandoms... well, haven’t had an eureka moment where I sit and write what I think about stuff.

So, let’s talk about some “stuff”.

Some days ago, I accidentally noticed by PURE CHANCE that some of the completed webtoons I was going to “eventually read” in LINE were going to get “locked”/converted for Daily Pass. I mean, tbf, I knew that they were going to stick to this plan since past October, but it seems they really went full force this month (they only “locked” like a couple of series back then). And it’s exactly how I thought they would do so - popular series that have been already completed, old and recent.

I’m not going to complain about “Daily Pass” because I do have some thoughts about that and the fact they could use another model than just readers farming/buying coins, but, what do you do, especially since lots of these series are PRETTY long (140+ chapters long)?

My complaint does come from that, as a web user, I found this by pure chance, despite them saying they would announce what series would be locked in a 30-day advance notice. Because there’s no apparent indicator in the main page about THIS (The only Notice/News detail you see down below the page is about Canvas creators). Heck, I don’t think they even tell you about it in their mail newsletter, which kinda suck :))).

So, anyway.

I checked and, yes, a couple of VERY old series I was interested in reading were/are going to get locked. Problem, like I mentioned? THEY are pretty long! I know I can binge read as much as I want, but I cannot make miracles like reading over 100 chapters (if one series, try thinking about 2 or 3 - I WAS NOT GOING TO DO THIS) in less than 12 hours! ESPECIALLY if those series were going to get locked THIS WEEK.

FML.

...anyway crisis was averted when I had to let go some interesting series that I may would get my way to read them (if there is a new buying/rental model they would apply) in the future... BUT I did read stuff I was curious or wanted to read... and mainly old stuff that I was willing to eventually finish one day.

Opinions on those series?

Okay, as brief and spoiler free as possible:

Untouchable: A story about modern-day vampires that instead of drinking blood, they have evolved to absorb the energy of their preys. This one is a romantic series about Sia, a vampire model and this human guy who has a very deep microphobia, and she puts her eyes on him when she realizes that his energy is like none she has tasted before. But, again, dude has microphobia (that is more or less controlled as time goes on).

I stopped reading this one for a while because I was sorta smelling love triangle from a jealous friend of hers that OBVIOUSLY didn’t want to be looked as “just a friend”, lol. Like “how would this get solved”, kind of thing in your typical romance stuff. But then, last week I retook it... and it wasn’t as bad... but it leaks typical shoujo stuff/problems that become a newer obstacle as time goes on and on (misscomunication, lack of trust, overprotective family ANNOYINGLY hurting their own offspring, sudden deux ex machina...?). So, I think it finished fine... But man, I was so pissed off in how some stuff was managed at the end, lmao. Especially the way a “villain” was redeemed? I know that they say “karma is a b*tch”, but, DUDE KILLED PEOPLE BEFORE!? and you redeem him in a “lol, you will find out how love will make you feel” LIKe, DUDE, WHAT THE HELL. DON’T REDEEM HIM LIKE THAT.

Ghost Wife: I started reading this series in an unofficial manner a long while ago, but I supposed that the first chapters are pretty slow and it didn’t catch me on in the first place. It’s about a girl that starts seeing ghosts/spirits, and there’s this one that becomes WAY too attached to her, that offers her two options: either been eaten/killed or agreeing to be his wife. Given the title of thise series, you might wonder she accepted the second one

My lesson? Should have kept reading. The story picks up when other ghostly creatures are introduced and they start interacting with the main female character and her “ghost husband”, especially since this ghost cannot really imitate human interaction and his solution is “hypnotizing” everyone so he can “normally” fit. And the interaction between those two becomes more gracious and natural. You can feel that she likes being with him, despite the dangers of attracting ghosts that might kill her and all that. Heh.

Other lesson I had is that: the artist isn’t EXACTLY well into action scenes and some other details (but their ghostly creatures’ designs are TERRIFYING), so, I thought “well, I know there are other artists like this in the webcomic/webtoon environment, I shouldnt be too worried about my art once I get done with mine, right?

Also, some details started to make sense later on. And I cried like a baby in some moments, as well. Don’t have too many complaints, though. Perhaps more obvious “falling in love” moments... but then I realized that some actions speak lots better than words.

About Death: And speaking of “crying like a baby”, this one. This is a very old work, and it’s a gem, and it’s short, to top! And HECK, the art was AMAZING. Very touchy, and it makes you think. There’s quite a lot of South Korean webtoons that have made me cry because... they really make you think a LOT about stuff... especially about life and death.

Oh! Holy: Story about a shy and lonely loveable dork that is in love of his childhood friend, and that they eventually find each other in high school. Said childhood friend is idolized in school (but she is... hmmm... a dork as, well). Oh, he sees ghosts. OH, and she dies within the first three chapters accidentally :3. Shenanigans happen.

I HAD A LOT OF FUN WITH THIS ONE. SURE, it’s another shoujo but WAY less dramatic than Untouchable, because this was comedy (so, a rom-com!). And this one made me want more and more to read it. The characters all had an amazing personality, chemistry and their interactions were FUN AS HELL. The author seems to have my my sense of (dumb) humor, and the art was too attractive and knew where it should bright.

I don’t think I have too many complaints about this one. I may have felt unsatisfied in some minor stuff, but everything else felt “okay” to me, in general.

A couple of things, though: localization and some quality stuff relating to translation in this series. I cannot judge the translation, but I do think it could have handled more quality checking on this one or proofreading, I’m not sure. I know that these (licensed and translated) series come in a weekly basis, but they REALLY need to pay more $$$ to their own staff to not let this stuff happen THAT frequent.

Localization is a bit of an issue I do HAVE though, and it is the same as in “Ghost Wife” and some other recent Korean series they have licensed in the recent past: Why using English-localized names, though? SURE, they retain their original last Korean names... but... why don’t keep their FULL NAMES, I wonder? I mean, weren’t we supposed to be over that kind of stuff already (videogames, JPN anime, manga other foregin stuff)? Is it because marketability? And/or because some names are “puns” that couldn’t easily be translateable in other languages?

If it’s the latter, I think the same is applied in other regional language localization, like, in Spanish, original English language “Axed” is called “Natacha la del Hacha” and you cannot wonder how it crawls over my skin. I know this series is BUILT ON and is full of puns (as I am following it)... but... “Axelia” is a much more cooler name than “Natacha”... :I or so I THINK? Don’t take me too seriously...

In “Ghost Wife” I get it, you have spiritual creatures... their “human” names are puns of what they really are, and these words MAYBE don’t have too much meaning in English or Spanish or whatever... but... its a bit... glaring... when the main cast has English first names... and then you have a side character called... I dunno, “Soyeon” :I. or Haetae (a creature that didn’t have a human character name...) or, heck, characters that never appear again like... there was this “Damien” dude that for some reason, his name is slipped a couple of times as “Suho” (I wonder, his original name). But, then, you have people named “Liz”, “Drake”, “Sarah”, “Nathan” ????

I suppose that in “Oh! Holy” that might be the case, too. The original Korean name of the series is “오!주예수여” that is translated as “Oh! Lord Jesus”, because Holy in Korean is named “Yesu”. And, *sigh* I think that says enough. The pun STILL works... but :’))

But at the same time, I think my thing with the English localized names in “Oh! Holy” is that they are... blatantly boring and I don’t think they fit their faces. At all. But, maybe that’s me? (I mean, the “ultimate” reaper is called Norman. NORMAN.) Like I said, they still keep their original Korean last names... but... ugh.

(this is coming from someone who gave two of her characters very not obvious Spanish names given that they are Mexican, but I do have some valid cultural and VERY obvious explanations about those...)

Also - I don’t get LINE Webtoon’s selectiveness in this localization decision. Some of the South Korean series they bring, they do KEEP their original full names (see “A Good Day to be a Dog”, “Ghost Teller”, heck, the afforementioned “Untouchable”), but then you have stuff like “Oh! Holy”, “Ghost Wife”, “Scorching Romance”, “Mom, I’m Sorry!” or “Lookism”... ?????

And, this is very blatant annoying because a) K-Pop is HUGELY global mainstream nowadays and you can hear/read fans screaming their NAMES?! And 2) K-dramas are also pretty popular these days???

??????

*LONG SIGH*

There’s a few series that I want to check out, but I still have some more days for that to happen (heck, even a bit of more than a week). But, it SURE DOES suck that most of the interesting series I had my eyes on all were going to get locked this WEEK. :))))

#kao's ramblings #kao's nonsenses #webtoons

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atamascolily · 4 years

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Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest, part six

In which EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE (and no, I do not exaggerate). Eat your heart out--oh, wait, sorry, eat someone else’s heart out. My bad.

(If you’re just joining me, check out the “Red Harvest” tag on my blog for previous posts)

We left off with Darth Scabrous waiting for Zo in the library. There's the obligatory villain monologue with some much-needed backstory.

“This library,” he said, “is the oldest part of the academy, older even than the tower itself. It was constructed over a thousand years ago by a Sith Lord named Darth Drear. He founded the academy, back when the planet itself was young. The ancient writings tell about how he used his first students as laborers. For hundreds of years, the Masters at the academy believed that a good many of those students died down in these very chambers, using the Force to move hundreds of tons of snow and ice and dig out these corridors and chambers to house Drear’s vast collection of … specimens. It was thought that Drear worked the students until they died from exhaustion.”

Blah blah blah Sith holocron blah blah blah eternal life. The usual stuff.

“Before he died, Darth Drear wrote of the final stage of the process—the step that he himself was never able to achieve. He dispatched his sentries to a nearby planet to abduct a Jedi and bring him to the secret temple underneath the library. After ingesting the elixir, in the final hours before his body gave in completely, under exactly the right circumstances and conditions, Drear planned to use a ceremonial Sith sword to cut open the Jedi’s chest while he was still alive, and eat his heart. Only then, with that final infusion of midi-cholorians still warm from the Jedi’s blood, would the decay process be held back—granting the Sith Lord his ultimate immortality.”

I TOLD YOU THEY WENT THERE.

The plant!zombies show up again - turns out they weren't really dead! They carry Zo down to the Secret Sith Basement at Scabrous's command, where the sacrifice is to take place. But don’t worry, not!Qui-gon is in hot pursuit! The tree librarian grabs not!Qui-Gon and dangles him in the air. I am LIVING for this. “No need for your weapon here,” the voice said. “Not in this place of learning. We are both learned beings, are we not? Enlightened and informed by the written word. No need for the encumbrances of physical violence.” It uttered another bulky, dusty chuckle. “Look upon me, if you like. Seek my face.”

There's a bunch of book avalanches. not!Qui-Gon goes into the tree!Librarian's head at his own urging and sees his memories

It was the librarian’s name, Trace realized, his patronymic, and somehow he knew that on his home planet it meant “lover of knowledge,” a perfect choice for—

HOW DID HE END UP ON A SITH PLANET AS THE SITH LIBRARIAN IF HE WASN'T ACTUALLY EVIL?? Sadly, we don't get answers.

Also, more relevant to the plot, not!Qui-Gon sees the secret Sith basement being built and gets caught up on all the backstory that Scabrous already revealed. Then everything catches on fire and not!Qui-Gon uses the Force to retrieve his lightsaber and create an air bubble to ward off the flames.

He looked at the lightsaber, laboring to evacuate every other thought from his mind. At the Jedi Temple, they had taught that it was never a matter of manipulating the object, but of eliminating the space that separated you from it. Yet at this moment, the object in question had never felt so far away....

The timing of what happened next was critical. Deactivating the bubble, he opened his hand, and the lightsaber flew into it. Its handle was almost too hot to hold, but the solidity of it had never felt better in his life.

I like this attention to detail in my Star Wars.

Not!Qui-gon gets pulled down to the basement via plant zombies for the final showdown as the library burns around him.Good-bye, Tree Librarian -- you may have been evil at the end, or perhaps this whole time, but you were fucking rad.

The mechanic is still alive and in hiding. He gets lured out by Kindra's pleading, only to reveal it was a trap by the zombies and she's a prisoner. The zombies rip her to pieces but the mechanic gets away. I’m so mad because even though I knew it was a trap, and I knew she was going to die, I hoped she got a more badass ending. Sigh.

Meanwhile, the bounty hunter and the newly liberated HK droid discover the zombies are hiding INSIDE the Tauntauns, a la Aliens and it's gross, and now we have zombie tauntauns, too. Turns out the HK droid hates the Sith too! But the bounty hunter got sprayed with tauntaun spit so now he's infected. Good thing droids can't get this... right?

Scabrous tries to kill Zo but not!Qui-gon makes a dramatic entrance and stops him. Not!Qui-gon gets murdered while Zo watches in horror and... I guess he really has more in common with Qui-Gon than I initially thought!

Scabrous transforms into his final form, but the orchid wakes up just in time, and Zo tells it to grow while she starts going to town on the Scabrous and slaughters him with his own sword. It doesn't take, so she switches to her brother's lightsaber, which does better, since it actually cauterizes.

She climbs out of the pit after Scabrous is dead, only to find the rest of the zombie horde waiting for her. The bounty hunter and droid rescue her, but they're attacked by the academy's perimeter cannons, so everthing gets worse fast. The droid jumps out and turns to the lasers on the tower, destroying everything - including the orchid if it's still alive? I'm a little fuzzy on the details here. Fortunately, the mechanic is flying the plane and he's okay.

Zo goes into the trophy room, only to find that the bounty hunter is now a zombie, but he locks himself in a cage before he turns and tells Zo to send him out the airlock, which she does--along with the entire grisly contents of the room, and a last zombie stowaway. FINAL GIRL VICTORY.

Zo returns to Jedi Greenhouse Planet, traumatized but alive. Turns out the guy who we thought was dead in the bounty hunter attack at the beginning of the book is actually alive, so that's good. There's a new orchid waiting for her:

You were with my seed-brother, the orchid said, arching toward her. Is that true?

Yes, I was, she told it, and thought about the voice of the first orchid, the one that she still heard in her mind. I still am, in a way. He saved my life.

Really?

Bennis smiled again, the indulgent smile of a proud parent, and gave the orchid a small pat.

D'awwww. Wait, so the original orchid isn’t really dead? She can still hear him even though it’s gone and they’re separated? Did I miss something in the tumult of the finale?? Or is Zo being metaphorical here?

Also, I’m so curious how the Jedi just... got another orchid so quickly. In our world, orchids can be clonally propagated in HUGE batches, so the AgriCorps could potentially be churning these things out at a massive rate. This raises WAY more world-building questions that this book is NOT going to answer, and it frustrates me, but I doubt the author knows much about actual orchids, so... *shrugs*

But cuteness aside, Zo decides she'd rather study on the Jedi Temple at Coruscant (the mechanic will take her) because she has too much PTSD. Also, this means that if anybody else tries to kidnap the new orchid, they won’t get Zo! I don’t know why the Jedi are even raising these orchids, given that they’re in demand on the Sith black market. Didn’t Zo explain they were the critical ingredient for an awful zombie plague?? DID NOBODY LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE??

This is supposed to be a happy/hopeful ending, and it kinda is, but Zo apparently doesn’t know / the author forgot that the Jedi Temple was destroyed when Corsucant got sacked eight years earlier (as Trace tells us in his introductory scene)... which means she's walking into ANOTHER haunted temple nightmare and doesn't realize it yet. We'll call it.. Red Harvest II: Coruscant Nights, or maybe just Blue Harvest. How about that??

Frode would be waiting for her with the ship, ready to take her back to Coruscant, and whatever might be waiting for her there. The mechanic would be good traveling company, she sensed—there was a low-key air about him that bespoke dozens of untold stories, events that had made up his life and taken him to the unlikely destination of Odacer-Faustin. She felt herself already beginning to trust him.

Wow, I was not expecting this dude to survive, but okay. Also, he got tagged in the beginning as kinda greedy (scuttling the engines of the other bounty hunters to sell) and kinda lazy/stupid/opportunistic/desperate (for ending up as the mechanic for Sith Hogwarts in the first place). But okay, whatever, I guess.

And the moral:

The future was scary, but you couldn’t avoid it, anymore than you could outrun the past.

OR A MASSIVE ZOMBIE HORDE, AM I RIGHT??

Wow, that was a trip.

I feel like this was better than I had any right to expect from the premise, but still felt like a B-grade horror movie. I like the tantalizing hints of what world-building we do get, and I think this novel is excellent fodder for future horror/Halloween fics. Otherwise, I’d skip this unless you are a “must read everything in Legends” purist, enjoy Sith shit, enjoy watching Sith die in horrific ways, and/or a diehard plant nerd like me.

RANDOM TRIVIA: Wookiepeedia says the first draft had a character named "Middish Sunblade, modeled after Holden Caulfield, but Sunblade was removed from the rewrite because he was whiny and nobody could stand him," which is just too true and too funny for words. Also, an actually-in-character Holden Caulfield expy would last approximately 30 seconds at Sith Hogwarts before being stabbed... I’m just saying.

#star wars #red harvest #space orchids #space botany #lily liveblogs

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marshmallowgoop · 4 years

Text

I write stuff, at times. I swear.

(Check it out! These are my research books and plot outline for this novel that I’ve been working on for nearly half a decade!)

So, it’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’ll probably be a little absent from this site for the rest of November ‘cause I’m trying to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days and am also the boss lady (ML) for the event in my area and have boss lady things that I should be doing.

Buuut since my novel is my Kill la Kill fairytale AU (which I even have a tag for!), posting about the project isn’t totally procrastinating, right?

Anyway, I’ve written drafts of this story for two NaNos already (2016 and 2017), and the first draft is basically getting totally flushed down the toilet, but the second draft is closer to what I wanna go for, so I’ve been revisiting it to see what I wanna do with my NaNo 2019 attempt.

And did you know? Maybe kinda relevant to all the anon hate lately, one OC I wrote for the story is a villain that exemplifies a lot of what I hate about myself. Her situation is of course different than mine—I ain’t beautiful, lol—but her jealousy, vindictiveness, egotism, etc. are all things that I despise about me.

Like, I guess maybe you could consider her my evil self-insert. Pfft.

I dunno how much of her backstory will really be in the final draft, and it’s definitely way, waaaaaaaaay too much right now ‘cause it was written for NaNo and all, lol, but tl;dr, tl;dr, I guess one big message of my entire story is that being bitter and envious isn’t fair to anyone, destroys others and yourself, and I gotta knock that crap off or be just as awful as this awful, awful woman (who arguably literally caused some of the biggest problems in the book).

If anyone’s interested in reading, I’ve included her segment under the cut! (As well as a little segment about Senketsu ‘cause that’s just where it was placed ‘cause this novel is a disaster in terms of organization, lol.) It’s super messy and unedited ‘cause it was written for NaNo, and I only lightly cleaned up some grammar and placeholder names for this upload, but eyyy, I swear I do write creatively, sometimes!!

And maybe me being so honest about the stuff I hate about myself will do something for others, I dunno. I can only hope ^^;

From Chapter 5, “About King Prasenajit’s Daughter Ugly Adamantina”

As it would happen, the curse that befell the beautiful empress’s princess was quite the complicated affair. If the man in the cave could have been there and could have known, he might have begun the story by speaking in great length of a woman from a kingdom far beyond the Kingdom of the Reed Plains.

The woman, you see, was a magnificent, wondrous healer. She knew her medicines and herbs better than anyone had ever seen, and she knew how to combine them better than anyone had ever seen, too. And so it was said, as it may be imagined, that she was a prodigy of her craft, and she was a genius, and she could only be a miracle doctor sent from the gods.

But it was not purely the healer’s knowledge that made her well known throughout her kingdom and others. The healer, much as the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains, was also extraordinarily beautiful. People would come from far and wide to set their eyes upon her, just as people would the empress, and those who were lucky enough to be her patient would say, in great sincerity, that the healer’s beauty alone was enough to cure them of all sickness and pain.

So you must imagine that when the empress sent for all the best doctors and healers in her land and lands far beyond that this miracle doctor was called for. The healer received the invitation one quiet afternoon, and she tried her very hardest to hide her displeasure as she listened to the empress’s messenger speak.

All those with the healer were left open-mouthed by the messenger’s letter. They oohed and ahed, and then they very quickly turned their attention to the woman to whom the letter had been addressed to.

The woman smiled her politest smile, bowing before the messenger as though the messenger herself was the empress

“It is a great honor that you have come all this way,” the healer said, and she hoped very heartily that her irritation did not seem apparent in her voice. “I am much humbled to be called upon by the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains herself, and I pray for the empress’s health and happiness, and for the health and happiness of her child.”

The healer rose from her bow now. “However, I cannot leave my patients, and so I must decline.” She bowed again, her dark hair falling over her shoulders and concealing the cruel smile on her lips.

Silence fell over the room. To decline a royal order was unheard of, and the poor messenger seemed at a loss for what to say to the woman’s refusal.

Everyone’s eyes had fallen upon the woman. She was no longer smiling. There was a great sense of dread building inside her, as though she had swallowed an entire snake whole.

It was a royal order, the healer realized, even if it was not a royal order from her own country.

And so, with another great bow, and knowing that there was nothing she could do, the woman said, “Please forgive my manners. I will be on my way.”

The healer did indeed travel to the empress’s kingdom. It was a long journey, quite uncomfortable if the healer could say so herself, and all the while, her human heart grew colder and colder.

To help the empress of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains! the healer thought to herself. It was the very last thing she could have ever wanted because, you see, she was quite worn of hearing of the empress’s beauty.

“They say, good healer,” she had been told, time and time again, “that she is even more beautiful than you yourself!”

The healer had to listen and listen to such sentiments and always smile so politely back at them, as though she truly liked to be compared in such a manner! It was a disgusting thing, the healer thought to herself all throughout her journey to the Kingdom of the Reed Plains. Not only did she have to go so many ri away from her homeland, but she had to use her skills to help this woman who could not possibly appreciate her own beauty!

How could she ever appreciate her beauty as I appreciate my beauty? the healer asked herself. Only small people came to tell the healer of her wondrous looks, you see, and the healer always adored every single one of her admirers, but the empress was adored by big people, and very big people came to even catch a glimpse of her, and she could not be like the healer herself, the healer knew, because she had to be very haughty and condescending and must surely not be thankful for the great gift of beauty she had received!

But I am thankful, the healer told herself, and she continued to tell herself this as she went on her way. She thought to herself that someone as high and mighty as the empress did not deserve her talents, and a woman like that also could not understand what it would be like to be born ugly, because a woman like that could never, ever appreciate what a great gift beauty truly is in the cruel, inhospitable world that they both lived in.

It is here, then, that the healer began to entertain a great, terrible idea.

She thought to herself, It would be most wonderful, if the empress’s child is born hideous!

And so the healer laughed to herself, and she thought herself quite amazing to consider such a thing, but she never did consider the thought anything more than a thought.

That is, you see, until the healer first arrived at the empress’s palace.

The story of the bitter-hearted healer is a story that the man in the cave could not tell you.

The man in the cave could also not tell you about love between humans and demons to Satsuki or anybody else. That is also a story the man does not know.

Perhaps, too, he does not want to know.

But the little red demon knows this story. It is the story that fills his blood and built his bones, and it is the story he will dedicate his life to believing.

Indeed, to the little red demon, the story that the man in the cave tells Satsuki one day—of demons and humans as mortal enemies where peace is impossible, and only one can be the victor—feels as wrong to the child as a waterfall that he has never seen flowing backwards, up a cliff.

But it is this story, you see, that the little demon heard time and time again from his mama’s setsuwa and stories.

“Why is it,” the red demon asked his mother one day, long before he catches his sister prepared to drink their mama’s blood and long before he comes across the young Ryuko collapsed in the snow, “that in all of Mama’s tales, the demons want to hurt the humans?”

He had thought at first that it was simply the case of a few villainous demons. There are surely many stories where humans play the role of the evil force that must be vanquished. But the demon soon saw that humans were allowed to be heroes and kind princesses and great shining beauties. All demons ever could be were empty-headed and ugly and horrible, ravenous beasts.

The demon saw, too, the way his mama’s face would turn red in the same manner in which his face would turn green as she told him, “Do not let these stories about the bad demons make you feel as though you are destined to be bad and nothing more. There are many good demons, too.”

But Mama could not seem to tell the little red demon a single story she had heard about a good demon.

Mother had been at the loom when the red demon asked why it is the demons must always be the villain. She was weaving, chan, chan, chan, karin, and this she continued to do as she answered the little demon’s question, her amber eyes fixed on her work.

“Those stories are very ordinary human stories, my love,” she said. “If I were to tell you demon stories—and I could not, I must say, because I am not very much good with words like your dear mama—then you would see that the demons see the humans as the humans see the demons.”

The red demon was left very confused indeed. “But why would the humans and the demons want to see each other as evil?” he asked. “Isn’t it ordinary for humans and demons to be together?”

Mother still did not look the little red demon’s way. She seemed distant, as though a thousand ri away. “No, my love,” she said. “Your Mama and I are... not very ordinary at all.” A smile was on her lips as she told him so, but she seemed almost sad at the statement, as though the admittance of being unordinary brought a sort of pain, the kind that the demon would come to feel when he looks upon the fallen girl in the snow.

“Demons and humans are not meant to mix,” Mother said. “That is what everyone will tell you, both humans and demons, and even the little birds that come to visit this home will tell you, too.”

The little red demon still did not understand. The situation became ever more puzzling to the child, as incomprehensible as the world saw the red demon’s very existence.

“But you are very happy together,” he said. He frowned, the usual chan, chan, chan, karin of his mother’s loom no longer the soothing sound of his childhood but an anxious rhythm that the demon could not free from his mind.

“No, we are very happy together,” he insisted.

Mother laughed. “Yes, my little smart one,” she said. She patted the demon’s head, careful to avoid the horns that were just growing from his scalp. “But most people, my love, human and demon alike, do not believe it is possible.” She smiled again, though it still looked strange and distant, and she took her hands from the loom where she had been weaving, finally turning her eyes upon her son.

The little demon saw that she had been crying.

“Most people,” she said, “believe it is a curse for a demon to let a human into their heart, and for a human to let a demon into theirs.”

Mother turned her wet eyes away from the little red demon. “But I would do it,” she told him, unwaveringly, as though speaking a grand declaration no matter the quiet whisper of her voice.

And the red demon felt it was more to herself than to him that his mother then said, “If she would let me, I would grant her every wish and keep a piece of her within me, always.”

A story the man in the cave does know, as it would happen, is the story of how demons hold within them the power to grant any human’s wish.

This, you see, is a story that more humans once understood, back when the Kingdom of the Reed Plains had not been cursed to be covered in an endless, inhospitable snow that would not disappear and could not disappear.

It was a story that the bitter-hearted healer who had gone to see the empress had known, and she considered this story her first evening she spent in the beautiful empress’s palace as she peered outside to the lands that were not her kingdom and not anything much like her home country.

If I would give my heart to demons to have a wish granted, she thought to herself, I would not have my wish be to make the empress’s child born hideous.

But it would be such a nice thing, she considered some more, if I could truly make such a reality with my own two hands.

Another healer interrupted her thoughts with a great curse of her own. This healer was unabashed in her complaints and did not keep them locked deeply away as the bitter-hearted healer did.

This healer said, “I am number 37, can you believe it?” She expressed a great many more curses, crossing her arms and pouting in a manner that the bitter-hearted healer could not help but find quite admirable.

“I am number 43, myself,” she said. She smiled politely, as she was so very used to doing in her practice. “I am sure I will not be able to return to my home kingdom for quite a long while yet.”

At this, the other healer offered a sympathetic look. “Oh,” she said, and she shook her head, as though ashamed of herself. “I live very near this palace, and here I have been cursing!”

“You have every right to be upset,” said the bitter-hearted healer. She tried very hard to restrain herself from clenching up her fists at the thought of the beautiful empress and how that woman had successfully called her to this wretched palace.

The other healer smiled at that. “I most certainly do have all the reason in the world to be upset!” she said. “Calling upon so many healers and doctors! You must forgive our empress.” She lowered her voice, until she was near whispering. “She is just very afraid of losing a fourth child, you see.”

This the bitter-hearted healer understood perfectly, and had the empress been another, uglier woman, perhaps the healer would have been meant it, when she said, “I wish the best for her and her child.”

“With all these healers and doctors, there won’t be any need for wishing,” answered the other healer, and then she was quite quiet for a moment before she added, “To tell the truth, I wasn’t happy with my number because I wished to return to my family as soon as possible, but also....” She paused, as though bashful. “It’s maybe a bit silly, but I’m afraid I won’t even be able to meet the beautiful empress with my late number! I was hoping to make my family very jealous for getting to be in the same room as her!”

The bitter-hearted healer’s smile slipped, just slightly. She then made her smile all the brighter as she answered, “I have heard that she is quite a sight.”

“So the talk of her beauty goes beyond even our little Kingdom of the Reed Plains!” cried the other healer. “I so wish to see for myself.”

The healer then looked very carefully at the bitter-hearted woman.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying, Miss, but I almost find it hard to imagine a woman prettier than you.”

The bitter-hearted healer’s smile became very wicked. “You flatter me!” she said. “I am sure I cannot hold even a candle to the empress’s beauty.”

“I suppose we will see about that,” said the other healer.

But the bitter-hearted healer very much did not want to see about it. She had only been in the empress’s palace a few mere hours, but already it seemed an eternity, and so there came the time when the bitter-hearted healer—surely not thinking clearly, mind you—left her room that night and walked very resolutely to the palace gates. The other doctors and healers looked at her quite oddly as she did this, and the guards of the palace questioned her quite thoroughly.

“It is unwise,” said one of the palace guards, “to walk the streets at night, when the demons are about.”

The healer considered it might almost be a blessing, if she could be eaten by demons and never have to come before the horrible empress she did not want to see!

But the healer smiled very politely, as she was so very used to doing from her practice. “My number is very far off, you see,” she said, and she showed the guard the parchment with 43 written cleanly upon it. “I have relatives not far from this palace, and I would very much like to spend the night with them, if you understand.”

The guard shifted uncomfortably. “I understand...” he said, “But you were to come here, on royal orders—“

“And I will return,” said the bitter-hearted healer. Though she had interrupted the man, the tone of her voice had become sweeter than sugared honey. Her impertinence almost seemed kind.

“Yes, I hear what you are saying,” said the guard, and once more he shifted uncomfortably, “but you must understand....”

He could not finish his words. The bitter-hearted healer ran fingers through her slick black hair. She batted her eyelashes, only a small amount. “I know it is dangerous,” she said, “but I am a healer, and I am very good at what I do—as I am sure you know because I am standing here before you right this moment!—and if any demon were to try to hurt me, I could heal myself in just an instant!”

The bitter-hearted healer bowed down very low before the guard. “Please, good man, I am begging you to let me go.”

It was with a great hesitance that the guard did exactly so.

But the truth is that the bitter-hearted healer had no family in that kingdom. She knew no one at all in the Kingdom of the Reed Plains, and she entertained the thought that she could run away to a new settlement somewhere, perhaps by the mountains, and then she could avoid ever seeing the empress and ever living with the shame from refusing a royal order from a kingdom allied with her own.

The person she was at that moment could be considered lost. She could start a new life, and she could become a healer even more renowned than she had been in her backwater hometown. The healer’s head buzzed with ideas, bun, bun. Of course she could start up a new business someplace far away! She was so beautiful that she would quickly become the talk of the town no matter where it is she went!

This thought brought the bitter-hearted healer to stop in her tracks. No, she thought, she could not become the talk of the town in a town where the only beauty anyone could speak of was an empress who did not appreciate her beauty nor deserve it!

The healer clutched the lantern she had taken with her on her journey away from the palace quite tightly. Why did all her thoughts keep returning to such a terrible woman? Even when she had been thinking of the new life she would build for herself, the healer could not help but think of the empress.

She frowned to herself, all by herself in a great kingdom with a wondrous empress, in the forest just beyond the palace, no less, and she thought to herself that she must be such a pitiful sight that even demons would take pity upon her and spare her life should they ever find her.

The bitter-hearted healer, however, did not realize that she was so stuffed full of bitterness and cold that she smelled quite terrible to the demons who were indeed wandering about the Kingdom of the Reed Plains that night.

“That atrocious stench is ruining all the wonderful ones,” the woman heard a demon complain (though she was not aware that it was a demon speaking because the healer did not truly expect to come across demons in her great escape from the palace).

Zushin, zushin, the healer heard, thud, thud, stomp, stomp.“It must be another cold heart,” said another demon (that the healer again was not aware was truly a demon at all).

But it is quite disconcerting to hear voices that you cannot see the source of in the midst of the night, and so it was then that the healer, whose heart was beating very quickly at that moment, raised her lantern and shone it all around her.

“Who is there?” she asked. The light danced all about the darkness, and when it settled upon a face, the bitter-hearted healer was rather surprised that this face was a considerably good-looking face.

She was even more surprised when she saw another face besides the first face that was equally attractive, and indeed perhaps even more so.

“Ah,” said the owner of the first face, who looked to the bitter-hearted healer to be a young woman with eyes that sparkled like bright red rubies.“So it is you who are making this horrible, ghastly stench all throughout these lands.”

Of course, it is even more disconcerting to hear a beautiful stranger in the woods describe you as smelling atrocious, and so perhaps it is not unusual that the bitter-hearted healer felt her bitterness grow and grow within her, puffing out and expanding much like her medicinal breads did in the ovens back in her home.

She said, “Well, now, how terribly rude! I will have you know that I have traveled quite a long way!Even the bath that I have been offered in this kingdom has not treated me well, it seems!”

The owner of the second beautiful face, who seemed to the bitter-hearted healer to be an older woman with great red lips that were a deeper color than even the setting sun, shook her head at the healer, her long, dark hair brushing against her shoulders and elaborate flowered kimono.

“You misunderstand, Miss,” said this second beauty.“No amount of sweet soaps or fragrances or wondrous baths could save you from this disgusting stench that falls off you much as snow falls from the sky.”

The second beauty lifted her chin up very high.“This reek feels even more endless than snow, too,” she said.

This, too, made the bitter-hearted healer even more bitter hearted than she had been before.

The two beauties coughed before the healer could even begin to speak.

“You are making it worse!” said the first woman. “It is no good to upset a human who already smells so terrible.”

These words were the first that the bitter-hearted woman could perhaps smile at. She said, “Come now, are you traveling storytellers looking for refuge by the palace? It is quite funny of you to try to include even your audience as part of your story, but I must confess that I do not have a single coin upon my person at this moment.”

The bitter-hearted healer laughed, and the sound was surely as horrible a sound as her heart was a horrible heart and her stench was a horrible stench. “I must say, though,” said the bitter-hearted healer, “that it is not quite an appealing act to begin by insulting your audience and then continue by calling them 'human' as though you are not humans yourselves!”

These words made the two demons laugh quite heartily indeed, gera, gera, ha, ha. They laughed much more heartily than the woman, and they laughed much more genuinely, and when they had finished this laughter and wiped the tears from their eyes, the younger beauty smiled in a way that the bitter-hearted healer did not find so attractive.

Indeed, she found the grin quite terrifying.

Because, you see, the bitter-hearted healer saw that this beauty had teeth that were perhaps not quite so beautiful. There were long fangs, sharp, and it seemed very much to the healer that she was looking straight at the smiling jaws of a great monster.

“As though we are not humans ourselves!” repeated the once-beauty. The strange creature laughed once more, looking less and less beautiful to the bitter-hearted healer with every second. Its form seemed to distort and mutate before the bitter-hearted healer, and the sight was to the woman very hideous and unsightly, but somehow, you see, she could not look away.

And so it was that the bitter-hearted healer watched with wide eyes as rosy skin changed to a slick blue, shiny, dark hair became as long and wild and white as snowflakes in a great storm, and the once-beauty seemed to grow several feet, towering over the bitter-hearted healer with eyes that the healer then realized to be the shining eyes of a demon.

She also realized that they were the shining eyes of a very hungry demon.

The bitter-hearted healer, in her immense fear, toppled to the ground with a great gasp, haa, haa, wheeze, pant. Her lantern shattered, and the flames jumped out, lighting the leaves scattered upon the forest floor on fire and threatening to burn the trees as well.

Here the demons’ laughter was quite diminished.

“Look what you have made the foolish human do with your silly sideshow display,” said the older beauty. She had shifted her form as well, now bearing the appearance of a massive, red-haired blue demon clad in tiger skins, with three great horns upon her head.

She stomped out the fires with her feet, zushin, zushin, thud, thud, and the younger demon only helped with what the bitter-hearted healer would have considered reluctance, if she had the mind to think clearly. Soon enough only a small bit of flames remained, and this the younger demon held in her hands as though it was a small, fluttering little heart.

“It must be strange to you to see that flames do not burn us,” said the demon, perhaps not knowing—or perhaps knowing very, very well—that the bitter-hearted healer could think nothing on how a demon would not be burned by flames.

“As it would happen, silly, stinky human,” she explained, “demons are not affected by the cold or the heat like you flimsy creatures.”

The bitter-hearted healer could not quite take another moment of this torture. Her heart was nearly threatening to jump out of her chest, beating so very quickly, baku, baku, thump, thump, because, you see, though the healer had often come face to face with death in her practice, she had never given very much thought to the idea that she could truly, actually be the one facing death one day!

She pressed her head against the singed, cold ground with her hands in front of her and said, “Oh, please, demons, please, please spare me! Once you understand my sad tale, you cannot possibly wish to eat me!”

Of course, the bitter-hearted healer did not understand the tale of the demons themselves (and this she would never understand, much as the man in the cave would never understand the love between demons and humans, but, ah, that is a story for quite another time). The bitter-hearted healer did not understand that the demons she had encountered that fateful night were demons from a smaller settlement, and she did not know that this settlement had grown very tired of hunting humans and so had pledged, with great sincerity and passion, to refrain from ever tasting the sweet flavors of human flesh and blood ever again.

It is easy to say that the bitter-hearted healer could not have understood this tale, and it would be correct to say so, because no human in all the Kingdom of the Reed Plains at the time could say that they knew of the demons within their own lands who had sworn off eating them forever. But the bitter-hearted healer would also not have understood this tale should she have ever been told it, because, you see, to the bitter-hearted healer, a demon was a demon, and demons ate people, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

However, the bitter-hearted healer did think very much that she could avoid being the human the demons chose to eat, if she were only clever enough.

And so the woman pushed her face even farther into the dirt (which she didn’t quite think possible), and she said, “You would understand my tale, too!” The woman’s voice absolutely dripped with desperation, and there was enough that the demons could scoop it up with their hands and drink and be filled. “You are very beautiful demons,” the woman cried, “and my sad tale could only be understood by those who understand the gift of great beauty, and I know very well that you understand this gift!”

Now, the demons had no desire to eat the woman or even drink her blood on account of their pledge, and truth be told, they would have no desire to eat the woman or even drink her blood had they not been bound by such a pledge. There was such a terrible, ghastly stench coming off the woman and her cold, frozen heart, and the demons were quite sure that, should they even attempt to eat her, she would taste as terrible and ghastly as she smelled.

The bitter-hearted woman could also not have known that the younger demon entertained the thought of wiping her tongue off on the bark of trees after tasting someone as disgusting as the woman who sat crouched before her, and indeed, she would not have even considered such a thing. To the bitter-hearted woman, all that mattered was her beauty, and as her thinking went, beautiful creatures must also taste quite delicious, and so she must have seemed quite the delectable treat to the two demons before her.

As the bitter-hearted woman saw her situation, she would have to try her very, very hardest to not be eaten.

The demons played along with the woman. “A tale, you say?” asked the older demon woman. “Perhaps you are the one who should be the traveling storyteller?”

In all her fear, the bitter-hearted woman thought herself at least wise enough to agree with a demon when asked such a question. “Perhaps, perhaps!” she agreed, though deep inside she could not imagine being in such a lowly, silly, worthless profession as a traveling storyteller.

The demons tried very hard to refrain from gagging at how the woman’s stench became much more terrible with her lie. They continued to play the woman’s game.

“We shall see how skilled you are,” the younger demon woman said. She still held the flames in her hands, coaxing the fire as though it were a small animal.

“Yes, yes, you shall see!” cried the bitter-hearted healer, and she then told her story in the best manner she could muster. She spoke of how the beautiful empress did not deserve her beauty and did not appreciate it, and she spoke of how all the empress deserved was a hideous child, and she said that she had half-considered running away from this horrible place and starting a brand-new life because she quite abhors ungratefulness, you see, and the beautiful empress is surely the definition of ungrateful!

The bitter-hearted healer could not have known how the demons reacted to her story. She could not have understood how the two looked at each other with great plans and ideas blooming in their minds, and she could not understand the language that they spoke to one another in quiet tones, because to the bitter-hearted healer, you see, the language of the demons sounded much the same as the go-o, go-o of the wind.

And so after the bitter-hearted healer had spoken all she had to say, she stared a great, long while at the two incredible creatures before her, knowing all too well in her frozen heart that there was nothing else she could do.

But it was such a long, painful time that the demons spoke to one another, and as you might imagine from a woman who believed very sincerely that she was at death’s door, the bitter-hearted woman became quite consumed by fear. Though there was a great bitterness inside her that would not go away, there came too to be a great terror.

How horrible and unfair is everything! the woman could not help but think, tainting her scent ever more as her heart grew ever colder. Here she had not only come to the ungrateful empress’s kingdom to do her a great deed, but on her first night in the supposedly beautiful empress’s lands, she is held hostage by demons and sentenced to death! Her great kindness to come to the empress’s aid had only resulted in her very downfall!

And so the bitter-hearted woman fumed quite thoroughly to herself, and her bitterness grew and grew, and the demons spoke more and more quickly because, you see, they were not so certain how much longer they could stand being so close to such a cold-hearted, cruel woman.

It was only once the bitter-hearted healer became very convinced that she was going to be eaten on the spot that the older demon woman said, with a hesitance that the woman did not recognize as hesitance, “You have told quite an amazing story indeed.”

The bitter-hearted woman thought immediately upon hearing these words that the demon was genuine in saying them, and she would have been correct, to an extent, because the demon woman did find her tale amazing, in a sense.

The younger demon woman said, “We like your story very much, and we would like to help you! It is true; a cruel fate has come upon you, and it is not fair that you have been sent away to this kingdom! To think that you have been sent all this way to help such an empress as the human empress that reigns in the Kingdom of the Reed Plains! It is disgusting! Despicable!”

At these words, the bitter-hearted healer could have broken out into tears, and it is only the older demon’s next words that keep her from doing just that.

“If you would come with us, just a ways, we can make it so your dreams can come true,” she said.

The bitter-hearted healer felt the great relief that had only just filled her dissipate away, tainted. Her fear came back, and this fear was a terror so great that it felt to the bitter-hearted healer to be almost as tangible as the rain that began to fall upon her at that moment, zabun, zabun, plop, plop. With dread and anxiety building deep within her, the bitter-hearted woman considered many possibilities for what the demons planned to do now.

They were discussing which of my body parts they are going to eat, she thought to herself. They are going to take me back with them to their home, and they are going to enjoy me while they drink away all the water in the river that they must live by, because of course demons must live by a river! I am going to die here, and these demons must consider me quite foolish, to think that their compliments and kind words are enough to tempt me straight into the jaws of death!

The bitter-hearted woman grew more and more bitter, but she smiled very kindly at the demons, the way she had become so accustomed to from her practice, and she knew that even in the rain, she looked very beautiful when she smiled.

“I will go with you,” she said, and she got to her feet, and the demons smiled back at her, though even the bitter-hearted woman could sense that these smiles were not fully kind.

And so the bitter-hearted healer went with the demons because there was surely nothing else she could do, and she thought to herself that when they stopped and tried to devour her whole, she could perhaps kick their teeth, or perhaps they were thinking of saving her for another day, in which case she could steal their shoes and surely run a thousand ri in just a moment.

On and on the bitter-hearted healer’s thought went in this way, and she was so very preoccupied with her illusions that she did not notice at first that the demons had stopped. The bitter-hearted woman had only the little flickering light of the demon’s fire (that had somehow not been extinguished in the rain) to use to see in the darkness, but it seemed to her that they had stopped before what the healer recognized to be an herb garden much like the one she had back in her own backwater hometown.

“It is exactly what you believe it to be,” said the younger demon. The older demon then proceeded to pick from the garden something that the healer could not recognize, even with her great skill and beauty at her craft.

The bitter-hearted woman wondered briefly if whatever it is that the demon had picked would be used to make her tastier, or perhaps it was poison, and the demons truly had been moved by her tale and wished for her to have a peaceful demise rather than be swallowed whole.

It took everything the bitter-hearted woman had to not shudder terribly at this thought.

But the older demon explained, very matter-of-fact, what it was in her hands. “We do not grow the same herbs as you humans do,” she said. “Demons are much stronger than humans, with hearts that are much lighter, and we are far more advanced in our medicines.”

The bitter-rated healer did not believe this in the slightest, but she smiled her very politest smile. “I would very much like to learn more about your herbs,” she said, though she wished to say, I want absolutely nothing to do with your cursed medicines because they would be sure to poison me and all my patients!

“Unfortunately for you, I cannot share the demons’ secrets with a human,” said the older demon. “But I can provide you with this herb, to present to the empress.”

This the bitter-hearted healer found very surprising indeed.

“An herb to present to the empress?” she repeated, a strange sensation of excitement filling her no matter the fact that she was surely just seconds away from being tricked into her own demise by demons.

“Yes,” said the younger demon. “If you present this herb to the empress, her child will be born very, very healthy, because we demons have healing magic, you know, and we have the power to cure nearly any ailment known in the world just using our own power. You must imagine that our medicines are capable of much, much more.”

The bitter-hearted healer felt her excitement wane. Her polite smile fell to nastiness, and this she did not even make the slightest attempt to hide. “Why in the world would I want to give the empress exactly what she wants?” she asked. It seemed so very horrible, and she considered herself such a very sad creature, to be in a position where even the demons sided with a disgraceful, ungrateful empress over her! Was she not beautiful enough to be given whatever it is she wanted? She, who so respected and was so very grateful for the gift of beauty that she had received from the gods?

And though the bitter-hearted woman did not take any note of it, the older demon would think that perhaps she was too harsh with her next words, but she could not help it, you see, because it is a demon’s curse to be extraordinarily honest, even if humans could not comprehend nor understand this honesty.

She said, “We would hope that even the most wicked of humans would not wish for a child to be born so sickly that they perish shortly after birth,” but then she shook her head and said to the bitter-hearted empress, who smelled even more terrible at this point and seemed very much to be fuming, “But we would like to make your dream come true, healer from a faraway kingdom.”

The bitter-hearted healer crossed her arms and surveyed the demons quite thoroughly now. “Are you saying?” she started, and she could not quite finish, even if that was quite unbecoming of a beautiful lady.

“Yes,” said the younger demon. Her face was lit up by the flame that still danced in her palm. “If you give this herb to the empress, her child will be born uglier than any human and far uglier than any demon.”

A great, horrible smile came upon the bitter-hearted healer’s face at this revelation. She very gladly took the herb from the older demon, and she even more gladly presented this herb to the beautiful empress when she returned to the palace to a very relieved guard and when it came to be her turn to come before the terrible empress who had brought such pain and misfortune upon her life.

“Take this,” the bitter-hearted healer said very confidently to the empress, smiling her very politest smile that she had grown much accustomed to smiling from her practice. “Place it in your tea, and be sure that the tea is very warm, and your child will be born very healthy and very lovely.”

The bitter-hearted healer, you see, was not like the honest demons. She very much relished her lie, and her very politest smile would have seemed distinctly not polite, had anyone looked closely enough.

But no one looked closely enough, because the bitter-hearted healer was simply a small healer from a faraway kingdom, and though she was a great beauty, no one could be bothered to look her way, not when in the same room as the most beautiful empress in all the world.

However, perhaps the woman’s heart was not as cold as the demons had seen it, because even this bitter-hearted healer felt within her a sting of remorse as she stood before the empress. In the woman’s mind, you see, the empress was surely not as beautiful as she was made out to be, but this silly empress held herself up as though she was the most beautiful creature on all of the Earth! The bitter-hearted healer almost felt sorry for the poor creature, left thinking that she is so amazingly lovely when she is so clearly not.

And yet, as it may be expected from a tale such as this one, the bitter-hearted healer’s small bit of remorse was not enough for her to treat the empress properly, as she would one of her own patients back in her hometown that the woman found herself missing in increasing amounts, and so she kept her smiling as the empress thanked her for her work.

The bitter-hearted healer, of course, did not know that it was not the demons who had made it so the medicine would cause the princess of the Kingdom of the Reed Plains to be born horrifically ugly. She could not know, and she could not understand, because she did not realize her own bitter-heartedness and would never understand it, not for as long as she lived (and this, you see, was not a very much time longer).

“Humans with hearts as cold as this woman,” the old demon had said to the younger demon, back when they had first heard the healer’s sobbed tale, in a language that the bitter-hearted healer did not understand and could not understand, “are capable of tainting even the strongest medicine with evil, but it is they who suffer the most from their bitterness. A human heart is not meant to be cold. Humans are not designed for the cold as we demons are, and a frozen heart can only beat for so long before it wears itself away with its darkness.”

And so, perhaps it was not odd that the bitter-hearted healer did not live to see the day that her tainted medicine had done its work, and the empress’s daughter was indeed born as hideous as a snake. The healer was a miracle doctor from the heavens and a healer who could heal all, it seemed, except herself. The bitter-hearted woman’s coldness made her incurably ill upon returning to her kingdom, and the people sighed for a moment at her passing.

“She was quite a beauty,” the people said, because it was quite sad to lose someone who looked so lovely, just as it is quite sad to lose a lovely flower to an unseasonal bout of cold weather. “It is a shame to lose her and no longer see such a lovely face.”

But as all beauty eventually fades one day, so did the memory of the healer, who, you must understand, was not truly especially skilled at her craft, and indeed, had relied heavily on the skills of her not-so-pretty assistants whose stories the world did remember far beyond their time.

And so the bitter-hearted healer’s tale was forgotten, and when the time comes that a man in a cave tells this story of the beautiful empress’s ugly daughter to the Crown Princess Satsuki, not a soul remains who remembers the bitter-hearted healer at all.

#shut up goop #goop makes a (kinda) personal post #ramblings #maybe #writing #klk fic #klk fairytale au #blood #body horror #kill la kill #ish #this au is pretty original though tbh #confetti emoji i'm on my moon sickness right now but i'm gonna write a book yeahhhhhhhhhh

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mizukiko-kun · 5 years

Text

The Untold Story of the Founding of the Detective Agency: a Detailed Summary

I hadn't been in this fandom for so long (to avoid spoilers because I was sure Dead Apple would get licensed in my country), then I came back to learn from @soukokucchi‘s post that the English-speaking side of the fandom still don't know what happened in this book. BUT LOOK:

It got translated into Thai back in January. I've read it, and I'm here to tell you everything!

Since there are so many pieces of important information in this book, I decided to forget the original order and break it into topics as follows:

Fukuzawa's background

Ranpo's background

Murder in a company president's office: how they met

Murder at the theatre: how they became a team

Fukuzawa's lies: the origin of Ranpo's (non-)ability

How the agency was founded

Bonus: that one time Kunikida tried (and failed and succeeded) to get revenge on Dazai

Disclaimer: this story came to you from Japanese to Thai to English so if you notice an error, please feel free to tell me.

Warning: very long blocks of spoilers for the whole book, under the cut!

Fukuzawa's background

At the start of the book, Fukuzawa, 30-ish, was working as a bodyguard. With excellent martial arts skills and a calm manner, he was considered the best bodyguard one could have. His only flaw was that he wouldn't team up with anyone, so he was always by himself. Remember how he’s called “Silver Wolf”? That's where it came from.

But it's not that he had been a bodyguard his whole life. In this book, Fukuzawa told Ranpo to try and see what he could deduce about him, so he did. At the teahouse, Fukuzawa's choice to sit with the wall on his right side meant he used to fight with a sword (because having the wall on his left would prevent him from quickly drawing it). At the theatre, his footsteps could barely be heard, and he closed one eye while entering a dark room so his sight could be adjusted quickly, something essential only for a surprise attack in a dark place. But he wasn't cautious with the police officers, so he couldn't have been involved with crime. Finally, Fukuzawa was definitely ashamed of his previous job because he didn't use his sword, his specialty, in his current job.

So, a job involving surprise sword attack that Fukuzawa was ashamed of despite not being related to crime, what job was it? Ranpo also made a deduction about this, and Fukuzawa himself confirmed everything later in the book, when he decided that the best way to deal with Ranpo's problem was to be honest (then proceeded to tell him the biggest lie in his life, lol).

Fukuzawa confessed that he went to a martial arts school under the government when he was young, then he became part of a group of top swordsmen who worked for the government, killing people who posed a threat to the peace of the country. He believed that his sword was meant to be used for the sake of the country, but soon enough found himself looking forward to the next mission. Afraid that he might have become thirsty for blood, Fukuzawa swore off his sword. He then changed his job and kept his past sealed away, until he met Ranpo.

Ranpo's background

As for Ranpo, his parents were apparently great detectives who recently died in an accident. His father was retired, but he used to be a highly respected police detective (even Fukuzawa recognised his name immediately), but Ranpo said that his mother, although only a housewife, always beat his father at his own job.

With both parents being geniuses, Ranpo didn't know that what he could do was special. His parents meant to keep it from him (and also keep him from the world outside) for his own safety until the right time, but they didn't live long enough, and Ranpo was left as a boy who didn't understand a thing about the world outside.

So Ranpo, 14 and already alone, started looking around for a job. He basically tried everything. His father once told him to go to the police academy in Yokohama if something happened, so he went there (and got fired because the rules were too much, and he dug out his dorm head's bad history with women after having a fight with him), then he went to the military school (got fired after uncovering a commander's misappropriation), a construction site (left because the structure of the company was too troublesome), and a post office (got fired for throwing away letters he knew were not important/wouldn't make the receivers happy). The next job he was going to get an interview for was where he met Fukuzawa.

Murder in a company president's office: how they met

Well, Fukuzawa's client was the president of the company where Ranpo was going to get a job. And she was killed. By who? Fukuzawa caught a skilled assassin at the crime scene, and that's about it.

Actually no, it was her secretary who killed her. The assassin was called there by the secretary (perhaps by saying he was going to hire him) so he could frame him and get away with the murder. Ranpo, who had nothing to do now that the president was dead, solved this.

As soon as the truth was revealed, the betrayed assassin got his revenge by killing the secretary. Fukuzawa realised that he was the rumoured red-haired assassin, said to always have an emotionless face and never miss with his guns as if he could see the future. A nightmare for a bodyguard like Fukuzawa.

You guessed it, that was Odasaku.

So the case was solved, the secretary was dead, Odasaku got sent to the police, now what? Fukuzawa was about to go his way when Ranpo reminded him that Fukuzawa promised him a meal after finishing the case, and Ranpo basically became Dazai's Atsushi to Fukuzawa. They went to a teahouse so Ranpo could have 9 bowls of zenzai (red bean soup with mochi), except Ranpo didn't eat the mochi, which deeply confused Fukuzawa.

There, Ranpo told Fukuzawa about himself and how he's now left alone. Fukuzawa realised that this boy was special yet unaware of the fact. But there was nothing a lone wolf like him could do, so he prepared to leave. Ranpo expected more, so Fukuzawa gave him his name card and offered to help for free if he got into danger, then left. Ranpo went to use a public phone in the tea house, and Fukuzawa's cell phone rang.

"Bodyguard-san, please help me. I have no job and I don't even know where to rest my head tonight. I'm about to die."

"...then I'll recommend a place to stay."

"Can't find a new job. I'm about to die."

"Then...follow me to my next client. I can't hire you, but my client is looking for new employees. I'll introduce you, alright?"

So while regretting this and drafting about 50 plans to leave Ranpo in his head, Fukuzawa took him to his next job, which is the main case in this novel.

Murder at the theatre: how they became a team

A theatre received a warning that an actor would be killed during a play, so Fukuzawa was hired to make sure it wouldn't happen. Although Fukuzawa kept an eye on everything, the lead actor, Murakami Tokio, got stabbed onstage with a sword that disappeared in a blink of an eye. A gentleman in the audience, wearing a business suit with a round hat and a cane, whom Fukuzawa noticed to have a gaze too sharp for a normal viewer, also disappeared immediately after. Ranpo, with a little help from the owner of the theatre, solved the case right on the stage with lights on and everything.

Cutting straight to the point, Murakami was his own murderer, his own fake murderer, to be exact. He set everything up so it looked like he got stabbed and died. For what? For the ultimate performance, because the guy believed that death was the only thing actors had never been able to truthfully portray. You know, an artist's spirit gone too far.

But that's not the end yet. Through the owner of the theatre, Ranpo told Fukuzawa that this case was made up of a bad crime and a great crime, which he compared to a shrimp and a tai fish: you could be satisfied with the shrimp, but in order to catch the fish, you had to use the shrimp. Ranpo went with a policeman called Mitamura, who offered to drive him to the police station, to catch the tai fish alone. Fukuzawa, having realised that Ranpo was going to become a famous detective for sure but that still wouldn't have anything to do with him, let him go, only to later find his own name card left to him with some bad handwriting on the back: Mitamura was the real culprit, and go get the cane.

Now remember the gentleman with the cane? It turned out that he was actually the main target in this case. Murakami wasn't the only one behind his own murder, there was also a scriptwriter who helped him, and this was his part of the plan that even Murakami didn’t know of. The gentleman was originally to be framed for killing Murakami then taken by Mitamura. But since Ranpo ruined that by showing the audience the gentleman unconscious and hidden on the inner part of the stage, Mitamura took Ranpo instead.

Mitamura introduced himself as part of an organisation called “V”, the same name signed on the warning that was sent to the theatre. Their goal was to annihilate all the ability users in Yokohama, even if they had to use the ability users themselves. And the gentleman, an ability user said to be extremely hard to catch, would somehow be very useful in this plan.

On the other side, Fukuzawa went to find the cane. There was a small space in the cane that could hide a document, which had already been taken by Mitamura (who later complained to Ranpo that it was a fake), but he noticed a second hiding spot. Kept in there was an electronic storage device, a special kind that was used by important ability users under the Witness Protection Program to exchange information.

Fukuzawa took it to the jail where Odasaku was held, to find out if he knew where Ranpo might have been taken. Odasaku recognised the name "V" immediately, but he didn't want to answer. His reason apparently hit Fukuzawa hard, and I think it's something worth mentioning, since this was even before Odasaku gave up killing.

"It's understandable to kill for money or because of hatred, but they kill for righteousness. I don't want to be involved, because once you use that as an excuse for killing, you'll end up being able to kill just anyone."

But Ranpo's safety came first at the moment. Fukuzawa offered to tell the police that the secretary's death was accidental, so Odasaku would only be held guilty of trespassing. Odasaku replied that he had never thought Fukuzawa would negotiate with a criminal, and Fukuzawa himself was surprised too. He also commented on how Ranpo was very lucky because Fukuzawa was willing to disregard his own policy for him. Having finally told Fukuzawa what he knew, Odasaku declined his help because honestly, he could have gotten out by himself if he wanted. His only request was for Fukuzawa to pressure the police into doing something with the terrible food there. When asked what he wanted to eat, he replied, "Curry."

So Fukuzawa went searching, and Ranpo would have been shot to death if he arrived even a slightest bit later. Fukuzawa literally slapped and shouted at Ranpo for risking his own life even though he was just a child. But after getting patted on the head because Fukuzawa couldn't think of anything else, Ranpo just clung onto him, crying and repeating over and over that he was sorry.

And the case ended there. With the scriptwriter, and then Mitamura in police custody, found killed in the same manner as Murakami’s fake murder (most likely to keep their mouths shut), all connections to V were cut. There was nothing they or the police could do, and only Murakami’s fake murder was in the newspapers the next morning.

Fukuzawa's lies: the origin of Ranpo's (non-)ability

This happened during Murakami's case, just before his fake murder. Take a look at the talk below:

"Why? I don't understand anything, I don't understand anyone! Why are adults like this, why is the society is like this?! No one has ever explained to me!"

"Enough! I'll tell you. I'll give you an answer you can accept, so just stop."

You see, Ranpo's problem was that he's a job that hadn't been finished. His parents had a careful plan to raise him up properly, but it was interrupted by their death. It's everywhere in the novel, and now he's yelling about it during the play, which was also about an ability user.

So what Fukuzawa was dealing with right here was simply a boy who didn't know what he needed in order to survive. He had to tell him something, anything that would help Ranpo acknowledge his own intelligence and understand the world. Struggling with his communication skills, Fukuzawa's glance fell on the play script Ranpo had in his hand, and he just went

"You are...an ability user."

"...what?"

Basically, Ranpo's strong belief about his ability came from a story this awkward uncle made up on the spot, and I can only tell you how hilarious this is when you're reading it.

"That ability allows you to see the truth with just one glance. It's in the play too, isn't it? There are people who possess special abilities, and those abilities don't always make them happy. The reason you have to suffer and see everyone else as monsters is because of your ability."

"...???"

"You have to control it. You are special because you have a special ability, and in order to prove that, I'll teach you how to control that ability. If you borrow power from an object, you'll be able to use your ability freely, and you'll have a way to control the ability that might make you suffer."

"...?? An object...which is...?"

"This"

"...What's that, glasses...?"

"It's an ornament I received from a descendant of a noble family in Kyoto. When you wear this, your ability will be free, and you'll see the truth in no time. On the other hand, you'll overlook everyone's ignorance when you're not wearing it. And I'll...give it to you."

"...Ah...but on matter how you look at it, it's a normal pair of glasses."

"For you who have just learned of special abilities, it's not unusual to think so."

(But that's just a pair of glasses that wouldn't sell, Fukuzawa got them from a shop near his house lol.)

Then he used some long-distance mental attack technique on Ranpo to make sure it's convincing as he was about to wear the glasses. Ranpo saw white and went unconscious for a while. When he woke up, Fukuzawa literally told him that the glasses had accepted him, like some freaking wise sage on a mountain. A bit more of "the best detective in the world" and "everyone's just stupid", and we have the genius detective Edogawa Ranpo, extremely happy and laughing, ready to solve a case.

"Since they're ignorant infants—I'll have to protect them!"

How the agency was founded

After that day (yep, everything above happened within a day), Ranpo became attached to Fukuzawa, like very attached. Fukuzawa didn't have the heart to make him leave, so he hired him to do miscellaneous work in exchange for clothes, food, and education. With Ranpo's deduction, they were able to prevent any harm that the clients needed to be protected from, and as a result, Fukuzawa came close to losing his job as a bodyguard.

But another kind of job also appeared. Ranpo started to get requests as a detective. And since Fukuzawa was the only person Ranpo ever listened to, the clients all offered to double the money for Fukuzawa to be with him. This went on for a year, and they became famous as the undefeatable duo.

And that's where the idea of the agency came from. After working with Ranpo, Fukuzawa realised that he still wanted to fight for justice in this world, and he wanted the fight to go on even after their deaths, so they needed to be more than just a duo, there needed to be more people.

So, where to start? Remember Dark Era, one needs to have the Abilities Business Permit before they can start any ability-related business, and Fukuzawa knew just who could help him get it. He took the cane to see the gentleman, now revealed to be Natsume Souseki.

Upon meeting him, Ranpo realised that Natsume had knew of the plan to capture him all along and asked why he still went with it. Natsume replied that it was because he owed Ranpo’s father a small favour, and Ranpo learned that his success was partly because of Natsume’s help.

Natsume-sensei asked Fukuzawa if he was sure about this decision, and the agency was founded.

Bonus: that one time Kunikida tried (and failed and succeeded) to get revenge on Dazai

Because honestly, any victory anyone ever has over Dazai deserves recognition.

(Like that time in 55 minutes when Atsushi managed to catch Dazai off-guard because the boy literally came from the freaking future lol.)

This story is actually the one that precedes Fukuzawa and Ranpo’s in the book, and took place just before chapter 2 in the manga (episode 2 in the anime), when Atsushi’s entrance exam was being planned out. Fed up with Dazai’s shit after working with him for 2 years, Kunikida came up with a big project to teach the trash some lesson.

The plan was to make Dazai take the biggest part in the preparation of the exam, so he could suffer what Kunikida had to all the time. Kunikida and the Tanizaki siblings, whom he had dragged into the plan, decided to achieve that by having everyone draw lots, and cheating at that.

They brought up an idea of using pieces from a newspaper from 2 months ago, each piece would show both the page numbers (there would be 2 numbers since they were on both sides) and the date (to prove that they were all from the same newspaper), and whoever got the lowest page numbers had to do the biggest part in the exam.

What everyone else didn't know was that they had also prepared a double-layered envelope. The combinations 5–6 and over would go in one layer, and the secret layer would contain 20 pre-made pieces with only the combinations 1–2 and 3–4 especially for Dazai, all from the same date as they had went out to get 11 copies of the same newspaper in advance. Tanizaki would pretend to ask for something to put the pieces in, and Naomi would suggest they use this envelope, saying she got it from her school.

Kunikida forced Dazai to draw first because he couldn't be trusted, and since Tanizaki was the one to (pretend to) make the pieces, he had to draw last. After everyone had drawn but before they started opening the pieces, Dazai proposed to use the fake time bomb he received from a woman as a prop so they could pretend there was a bomber in the office, with the least fortunate person taking the role of the bomber.

The result looked like this: Dazai got 3–4, Kunikida got 7–8, Yosano got 27–28, and Kenji got 33–34. Tanizaki, being the last one, was sure he wouldn’t lose.

But just before Tanizaki opened his piece, Dazai suggested the bomber have a hostage with him and asked Naomi to take the role. She looked over to her brother, then agreed. Tanizaki learned of his fate.

He got 1–2.

But how? Dazai got 3–4, which was according to the plan. Everyone after that got higher numbers, so anything couldn’t have gone wrong. Kunikida definitely wouldn’t ruin his own plan, and Tanizaki didn’t let it slip either. The answer was simple:

“Well, I just want to be the hostage...for big brother to tie up and threaten~.”

Tanizaki then found at the reception desk a drawing explaining where the bomber should hide. It was done by Ranpo, who had already left Yokohama and wouldn’t be back until after the day of the exam. Considering the situation, the drawing was definitely done before everyone drew lots. Tanizaki also suspected that Ranpo had already seen through everything beforehand and set his schedule this way to avoid it. He then wondered how Ranpo came to believe that his intelligence was a special ability.

Kunikida, Tanizaki, and Dazai went out to a pub later that night, with Kunikida offering to treat Tanizaki as a way make up for his suffering. They talked about the mystery of how the agency was founded (again, this topic had already been brought up earlier before the meeting).

When the waitress came to serve a dish, Dazai noted how it was unusual for the dish to be covered, then noticed a familiar face. He opened the lid to find a motion-sensor bomb with a note saying "I want you to look at only me", the same message he got with the fake time bomb from earlier.

Dazai turned to his sides for help, but Kunikida and Tanizaki were already gone.

And that’s it! That’s all that happened.

Congratulations if you have just finished the whole thing because damn, that was much longer than I expected.

If you guys still have questions about the stories in this book, you can send me an ask or leave them in the comment. I’ll be happy to answer!

And I’m once again back to the mess that is the university entrance season, urg.

#bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd #bsd spoilers #bsd novels #bsd light novels #look i did a thing

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bellamyblake · 5 years

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Headcanons for Bellarke being grandparents:

So, with much persuasion from @zavens, I decided to post this. It’s old and it’s been gathering dust in my drafts forever with about 30 or more bellarke headcanons.

!!!WARNING FOR MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH!!!

Since they’re old and all...

Madi is the first to grant them grandchildren when Clarke is still in her late forties and Bellamy is just a little over his fifties;

the delinquents make fun of him a lot, but he won’t hear a word-the twins, two beautiful girls called Hanna and Leah are the apple of his eyes; and Clarke’s of course;

they don’t get to see them all the time, but Madi often leaves them for the weekend, since her village is just an hour away from Arkadia;

the girls adore their grandparents; Hannah is in a way a lot like Clarke, she likes doing dangerous stuff, bosses her sister around, hangs with her grandmother in medbay and wants to know all about healing and how to set broken bones, but they also often catch her practicing throwing knives at the tree behind their house-she’s a menace, mildly put;

her favorite thing to do is to burst through the door of Clarke and Bellamy’s cabin and wake her grandma (who still after all these years, isn’t a morning person) by jumping on the bed while Bellamy laughs holding Leah in his arms by the door;

“Grandma, grandma, grandpa said we’re going to the river today!” /”We are what?” Clarke would snap awake and the girls would chuckle;

Leah was much quieter; she liked hanging out with Bellamy, being around his big dog Ares and listening to him telling stories;

the first time she saw Ares, she was just a baby and Bellamy has lost sight of her for a second before finding her crawling on the back porch and raising her hands to Ares’ big head; for a moment his heart had skipped a few beats but then Ares only started licking her and rolled down next to her so she can pet him;

as every grandparent ever to live on earth, Clarke and Bellamy spoiled their grandchildren; a lot; especially Bellamy, he would often buy them presents whenever he went away and he loved sewing them little stuffed toys and dresses;

Clarke would scold him for spoiling them rotten but she secretly gave them sweets and let them ride on the front seat of the rover with her; she often gave Bellamy a heart attack like that;

“Clarke, do you know Hannah’s currently climbing up the apple tree in the backyard?” he would ask, almost pulling his hairs at it and she would chuckle “Yes, Bell, I know, she wants to try and touch the sky” /”As someone who fell from it, don’t you think it’s a little....I don’t know, impossible!” he kept walking up and down while she went through her book of herbs and chuckled under her nose, explaining that she can’t go further than the first branch which is literally half a foot above the ground;

they didn’t see Hannah and Leah all the time, but the sure as hell saw their son Gus’ kid all the time since he lived in camp with them;

Jake came to the world five years after Hannah and Leah and it was one of the happiest days of Clarke and Bellamy’s lives; unfortunately, his mom, Gus’ wife died a few months after childbirth so Clarke and Bellamy helped their son as much as they could with raising his child;

you could say that Jake spent most of his day with either Clarke or Bellamy and the evenings with his dad who struggled between being in the council and leading the guards after Bellamy stepped down and was only involved in hunting and training here and there;

Jake, similarly to Hannah and Leah would burst through the door of their cabin early every morning with the words “Grandpa, are you teaching me how to shoot today?”/”I’ve got him” Clarke would say as she got up;

lately she was the first to get out of bed since Bellamy broke his leg really bad last winter and he often limped heavily, especially in the morning;

she would make him coco with milk and then some breakfast so by the time he was done, Bellamy was out of bed and Jake would jump in his arms and hug him tight;

he loved his grandpa so much, it kind of made Clarke envious, the closeness they had, the understanding; Jake resembled Bellamy more too not only on the outside but on the inside as well-he was quite stubborn but also...selfless; he would often ask Clarke how he can help his dada feel better because he’s too sad lately and it broke her heart;

the latest agenda on Jake’s list was Bellamy teaching him how to shoot and one day after three months of constant nagging, Bellamy took out the rover, his rifle a bag of provisions and of course Jake and lied to Clarke they are going near the river on the other side of the hill;

“Okay, now, what we’re about to do is to remain a secret at least until you’re 18 do you understand?” he said and Jake gave him a serious look, nodding eagerly “I’ll just teach you how to hold it and then I’ll fire a few shots, okay?” Jake was already jumping around him and Bellamy sighed, trying to hide his smile away;

needless to say, both Clarke and Gus knew what he had done just a few days later and they were both scolding the hell out of him in the kitchen “Dad, you gave him a rifle!”/ “It wasn’t loaded! I just showed him what it’s like, he’s been begging me to!”/”Bellamy, I know you only meant well, but he’s too young” Clarke was softer with it, but Gus was raging, meanwhile Jake was eavesdropping under the window;

later that night Jake finds his grandpa in the back yard, fixing their tomatoes and he tentatively looks at him; “It’s okay, son, come here” Bellamy tells him when he notices his uncertainty; Jake runs to his grandpa and buries his little head in his chest; he loved how he always smelled of grass, gunpowder and cigarettes; “I’m so sorry, pa” Jake apologizes and Bellamy tightens his grip “I didn’t mean to say but it just spilled!”/ “It’s alright, I’m not angry” he pulls him away and brushes the tears from Jake’s puffy cheeks “But grandma is.” Jake sobbed, his bottom lip trembling, his big brown eyes still full of tears “She’s not, she’s just worried. Either way, don’t worry about your grandma, I’ll deal with her” he promises and stands up from the ground, staggering a little; Jake grabs his hand and helps him steady himself;

they don’t have another lesson until ten years later; bellamy has just lost clarke the previous winter and he was not taking it all very well; neither was Jake; he loved his grandma to bits but he soon realized how much harder this is for his grandpa;

so he started going there every day this time not for himself, but for Bellamy; his grandpa refused help even though he was constantly in pain because of his stupid leg and he was half dragging himself through camp;

one morning, a little after he had learned to drive the rover and was months away from joining the guards, Bellamy greets him with the news that they’re going out of camp;

he takes Jake to the dropship which he knows is the place the 100 first landed; he’s been here a few times, never for too long; the last one mere months ago when they buried his grandma; Bellamy gives him his rifle and they practice all day shooting targets; that goes on for a month until at the end of one of their training sessions Bellamy grabs Jake’s arm and nods towards the cemetery;

“Here’s where all our friends are buried” he says even though Jake knows, he listens patiently “Your grandma and I used to come here all the time to pay our respects; at least once a month” he didn’t know that one “You see that sunny place over there next to your grandma” he nods as he leans on the fence surrounding the graveyard, because of his inability to support himself on his own anymore “Yes” Jake confirms/ “There’s where I’ll be buried.”/”Grandpa, don’t start with this again” Jake begged, lately all Bellamy talked about was his death “Uh-uh! You gotta hear this, you gotta be ready.” Bellamy insists “I’ll soon join your grandma and that’s perfectly normal, alright. I just want you to know the place where I wanna lay down in case your father is stupid enough to bury me in that new graveyard near the Ark. You gotta make sure I’m here, okay?”

“Okay, pa” Jake promises “Good man” Bellamy pats his shoulder and hands him his rifle “From now on, that’s yours.” Jake tries to protest but Bellamy won’t hear it, he just raises his hand and starts limping “Now help me get to your grandma so I can say hi and then we’re going home”;

Just two days later Jake comes by his grandpa’s cabin and bursts in like he did as a kid; he starts talking and moving stuff around, preparing some coffee until he realizes, Bellamy isn’t saying anything back;

they bury him exactly where he wanted to; Jake makes sure to visit at least once a month;

#the 100 #bellarke #bellarke fanfiction #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #bellamy and clarke as grandparents #headcanons #fluff #angst #major character death #the whole sad pack #from yours truly #aka me #lol #if it wasn't for zahraa i wouldn't have posted that one #it has been in my drafts for a year and a half #my headcanons

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