#Jolie's shitty writing
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An Untitled Original Work, Part 10
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trigger warnings: none, ask to tag
word count: 1358
It wasn’t uncommon for Leo to be confused, but this was a whole new level of confusion. Girls were...complicated, at least for him. Even though two of his best friends were girls, he’d never been able to figure them out like Andre had been able to. He always seemed one step ahead of Leo. It might have something to do with the fact that Andre had two older sisters, while Leo had no sisters or even female cousins. Either way, it was a bit embarrassing for Leo, not that he cared at this point. If his friends didn’t know of his struggles with reading between the lines by now, they had bigger problems than Leo’s constant state of confusion.
At least he’d always been able to understand guys. Or at least, he had. Physical education that morning had been strange. Leo had tried to talk to Andre, but he’d been distant and dismissive. Instead of waiting for Leo in the locker room, he’d rushed and made his way to the far side of the gym, opposite of where the two usually stood and waited for class to start. The whole class had been like that.
Leo wasn’t sure what was going on, but he attributed it to Andre being preoccupied by his speech for Public Speaking the following class, or maybe distracted thinking about how his older sister had gotten engaged over the weekend, or something, anything, that could possibly explain his sudden distance.
However, Leo wasn’t the only person who noticed Andre’s strange mood.
Benji Pittman was someone Leo had known his whole life, but hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to since they were partners on a project in sixth grade. That is, until Benji came up behind Leo in the hallway and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Leo, can I talk to you for a hot sec?” he asked when Leo turned around.
Leo wasn’t sure what to say. His friend group had stopped talking to the Pittman twins when Logan and Benji started dating. He knew if Gina was here, he wouldn’t have stopped walking, but something had made him stop. Plus, he was curious as to what Benji had to say that was so urgent it needed to be said now, between classes. “Uh, sure.”
“Cool. You and Andre are friends, right? I noticed he wasn’t hanging out with you in gym, and I know one time doesn’t mean much, but, well, that’s kinda happening with me too. Logan’s flaked on me twice this week and she doesn’t stop texting during lunch, which is out of the ordinary for her, and I think I know why.”
Leo nodded, but before he could open his mouth to say anything, Benji continued.
“You’re friends with Sammie Mckinney, yeah? She and I are in the same chem, with Logan and Gina. Of course, tensions between those two have always been high, but it’s worse than it’s ever been, and it’s only been since Sammie came here.”
The bell for the start of next class rang, and Leo started walking away from Benji.
“Look, I don’t know what me or Andre have to do with any of that, but we’re late for class now, so I should probably-”
“Dude, you don’t get it. Come on, I promise this makes sense. You just gotta listen. Please.” Benji seemed almost upset, or maybe just desperate. Either way, Leo knew that he should at least hear him out. If nothing else, it gave him more to talk to Mally about later.
“Fine,” he sighed. “Let’s go to the library and you can finish telling me.”
Benji agreed, and the two boys turned and started heading for the library, careful to avoid walking past the Economics class they were skipping. Once they got there, they headed to a table in a quiet corner.
Luckily for Leo, he didn’t see anyone he knew well enough to question why he wasn’t in class. When they sat down, he pulled out his laptop and a notebook to at least give the illusion he was doing something productive.
“Okay, so let me recap,” he said as Benji opened his laptop. “You think there’s a reason that Andre’s being weird, and it has to do with Sammie, which is why Logan is also being weird?”
“Yeah. So back to the chem stuff, tensions are super high, and I know that Logan and Gina don’t talk anymore, and by extension your friend group and me and Ellison don’t talk. I thought that meant Sammie too, because I kinda assumed you guys filled her in on all the drama, but she keeps coming over to our lab table to talk to Logan and vice versa, and Logan keeps texting Sammie. I know for a fact, because I’ve seen her notifications, plus she’s mentioned that she’s talking to Sammie a couple times.”
Leo listened intently as Benji explained all of this. “But what does this have to do with Andre? And what’s the issue with Sammie making friends?”
“It’s more than that,” Benji said in a more serious tone. “Logan hasn’t been calling me babe as much recently, which I’m not really complaining about, because I never liked that too much anyways, but it’s out of character for her. I asked Ellison what she was doing this weekend, ‘cause we were thinking about going hiking or something, and she said that Logan and Sammie were gonna hang out on Saturday and she might meet up with them. Don’t you see? El has always said that Logan says stuff that’s out of the ordinary for her. She’s suspected for a long time that Logan might be gay. Of course we don’t know for sure, and I kinda selfishly hope she’s not, because I really do like her, but my personal feelings are besides the point. The point is, I’m pretty sure they like each other, and we know how that ended last time.”
Leo nodded. The last time that had happened was over Benji, and it had set in motion the events that caused the rift between the former friends. At least, that was the story they’d all come to acknowledge, even though it certainly wasn’t the whole story. Leo barely knew what the real story was, not that he cared. He’d made up his mind about the situation long ago.
“So you’re saying that Gina likes Sammie, and Logan likes Sammie, and Sammie likes both of them, maybe, but Logan still has a boyfriend” – Leo gestured to Benji– “and it’s starting to play out just like last time?” he clarified.
“Basically, yeah. If we don’t do something, poor Sammie’s gonna get trapped in the middle of the biggest girl fight we’ve ever seen.”
“Still don’t know what any of this has to do with Andre.”
Benji hesitated. “Andre is just trying to follow along with this whole mess, same as us.”
Leo could tell there was more to it than that. “No, what’s actually going on?”
“He’s friends with Gina and Sammie too, isn’t he? That’s all there is to it,” Benji insisted.
Leo may have been the most oblivious of his friend group, but he wasn’t totally stupid. He knew there was something Benji wasn’t telling him. He also knew that he couldn’t push his luck. Benji had already said a lot, more than he’d expected. If this was to be some sort of partnership, he couldn’t push the issue too much now.
“Okay,” he conceded. “But why are you telling me?”
“I don’t want anything to go down between Gina and Logan, and don't think you want that either. The thing is, Gina and I still aren’t on speaking terms, and I don’t know Andre that well, so I can’t do anything without you and Mally. I need your help, and if you don’t want shit to go down, you need me.”
Benji stared at Leo, almost daring him to accept. He hadn’t said anything wrong, per se, but it was still a lot to process.
The boys sat in silence for a long minute before Leo said, “Okay. What do we do first?”
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ditty and estie greet the world || eo31 scenario
dad!esteban ocon x mom!ofc (british royal!ofc) ft. ocon!baby
POTENTIAL EXTENSION TO THE ROYAL RESEMBLANCE (SMAU)
Summary: Diana ‘Ditty’ Ocon made her presence known to the formula one world as a two year old during the FIA prize giving ceremony. Her sweetness, however, was what encouraged her parents Albertine and Esteban to show the world her capabilities as a shy toddler.
Content warning: dad!Esteban content 😚, fluff, based on an idea I brought up to a moot, shitty French translation, Lissie Mackintosh segment, shy toddler being cheered on, OFC and baby resembles Princess Diana
Note: Having an Oscar Piastri brain rot atm but I need to get wholesome dad!F1 driver out of my system. I’m currently restraining my brain from writing more smut rn.
My friend would’ve gotten twenty dollars from me if Ferrari won this race but noooo they didn’t soooo. Enjoy xx
a - n masterlist
o - z masterlist
“Tu es très jolie, Ditty ! Maman t'a-t-elle habillée?” You look very pretty, Ditty! Did Mummy dress you up?
“Mummy m'habille!” Mummy dress me! The little girl who sat on the Alpine driver’s lap grinned toothily at her father, babbling at her parents as she continued to speak, “Papa, rentre bientôt chez toi?” Go home soon?
“Darling,” Albie laughed heartily, “Nous venons de quitter l'hôtel!” We just left the hotel.
“But go home soon?” Diana Marie-François Elisabeth Ocon-Khelfane, or Ditty to most, was a delightful little girl. Her great uncle Charles Spencer recalled his eldest sister’s childhood photos and how much resemblance did Ditty have to Princess Diana. Everyone in Esteban and Albertine’s family knew that, much like Albie, Ditty was a carbon copy of Diana Spencer.
Though if you were to ask anyone, Ditty was more like Diana than Albie was. Ditty was more reserved and shy— she had gotten her personality from Esteban, who often took a while to get used to new people before warming up to them. It was no wonder why Estie and Ditty made the bestest of friends— they liked to attach themselves to each other AND to Albie.
“We’re not going home soon, pretty,” Albie told Ditty gently, fixing her daughter’s bow as the girl continued to look up with the brightest blue eyes to have ever existed. Her eyes, no matter how bright, were shaped like her father’s— so no one could really oppose and say that she wasn’t her father’s daughter. “Papa’s going to get his award soon, no? We’ll be there for Papa, Ditty.”
“A- ‘wawd?” Ditty’s brows furrowed a little as she looked up at Estie with a puzzled look. “What is ‘ward?”
“C'est quand vous avez fait quelque chose de vraiment, vraiment bien et que vous en obtenez quelque chose de bon,” It’s when you do something really really good that you get something good out of it. Esteban explained to Ditty with a grin.
“Like you eating your veggies,” Estie continued. “What does Mummy give you?”
“Pain au choc’lat?”
“Oui, mon bebe,” Estie nodded. “Except Papa’s getting something else. Not pain au chocolat!”
Apparently, it was going to be a struggle— getting Ditty to socialize with everyone around them. It took Albie a while to unattach the toddler in her arms.
Only for the girl to cling to Esteban as she hid her face away from the press and other people. She kept her hands wrapped around Estie’s neck as her blonde hair appeared in the pictures, journalists and photographers asking Estie and Albie to pose for the cameras. They didn’t relent, allowing Ditty to hide her little cherub face away for a brief moment as the couple waved and smiled.
Albie, realizing that she had the little mouse plush on her hand (one that Ditty called ‘Cheese’), put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder gently and caught the toddler’s attention. “Want your friend Cheese, Dit?”
Ditty lifted her face off her dad’s shoulder for a brief moment and nodded, “Mewci, Mummy,” before hiding away again.
Estie and Albie exchanged looks and chuckled, amused at their daughter’s demeanour.
“Ditty, bebe,” Estie told the girl, “Cheese wants to say hi to everyone. You want to wave too?”
“Oh, I want to say hi, indeed, Papa!” Albie mimicked a different voice, as if she was pretending to be Cheese. “Pouvons-nous dire bonjour ensemble, Ditty?” Can we please say hi together, Ditty?
“See? He wants to wave— show him, like this—“ Estie smiled at the cameras and waved. Albie followed along, cameras flashing as they smiled.
Slowly but surely, Ditty’s hand began to wave. She hadn’t realized that Cheese was on her hand, but she was doing what her Mummy and Papa were doing. That was enough for her.
And when they reached the F1 host for the red carpet, Ditty went back to hiding. This time, she clutched Cheese in her hand as Esteban got interviewed by Lissie Mackintosh.
“This is actually amazing— seeing you in P3 in the championship’s. I’m quite happy to see you become successful this season,” Lissie complimented Esteban. “Are you looking forward to the next one? Do you know what your next steps are?”
“I— I’m actually really excited for the next season,” Esteban grinned, not even aware that he’s carrying her daughter in his arms as he continued to answer. “With how things went with the car and successful communication between my team and I, I thought that it gave me more confidence to move on with the next season. And even if there will be a struggle, I know that we’ll be able to sort it out.”
“I like that,” Lissie nodded before she noticed the girl hiding away in Esteban’s arms. The host continued to ask regardless, “But for now you’re just here to celebrate your successes and you’ll be getting your prize for the P3. And I can tell that you’re here with your family too! How amazing is that!”
“—Mrs. Albertine Ocon, it’s very nice to see you,” Lissie continued as the royal princess smiled and greeted back. “It’s been quite a handful this season, huh? I’m very glad to see you back in the Formula One celebrations and events— we’ve missed your presence in the paddock.”
“Ah yes,” the British princess chuckled, “just because I was gone for a while it didn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything.”
“We all know that,” Lissie rolled her eyes playfully. “You probably had been working harder than your husband in here!”
“Hey!” Esteban laughed alongside the two women before he nodded in agreement, “Well, I can’t really deny that! This little darling right here was a hard work made by Albie and me but… Albie’s done more to help her grow, you know?”
Speaking of the devil…
Ditty Ocon finally grew tired of hiding away as she lifted her head and looked in front of her, cowering under the watchful eyes and camera pointed at her and her family before she hid again.
Esteban chuckled and reassured, “No, no, it’s okay, bebe! Just wave! Like we did!”
Ditty, feeling a bit hesitant, waved lightly and continued to clutch Cheese the mouse in her hand.
“You look absolutely beautiful!” Lissie complimented the girl with a grin, trying to be as chill to allow the girl to grow comfortable with her. “Can you tell us what your name is?”
Ditty looked at her parents as she hid her face from everyone, earning soft chuckles and a series of ‘awww’ from her surroundings.
Everyone already knew that she was Princess Diana in the making with the shyness that she showed everyone.
But Esteban and Albertine Ocon weren’t about to let her meekness get in the way of her opportunity to be friendly to others.
Esteban started, “It’s okay if you want to speak French, mon ange.”
He looked back at Lissie, “She prefers talking to people in French first before English.”
“Ah,” Lissie nodded.
“It’s okay, darling,” Albie cooed quietly, tucking the girl’s hair behind her ears as the princess continued, “they're nice people. We talk to them.”
“Can you say… ‘je’…” Esteban instructed his daughter.
Ditty, with all her capabilities at the moment, had mumbled to the microphone, “Je…”
“Suis…”
“Su’…”
“…Ditty.”
“…D—tty,” the girl mumbled with lack of confidence.
“Je suis Ditty!” Esteban repeated with a grin, his smile infecting the girl as she enthusiastically repeated this time with, “Je suis Di-tty!” I am Ditty!
Rounds of applause were heard and given as they applauded the girl’s words. Estie and Albie both grinned as they praised Ditty.
“Good job, my girl!” Albie exclaimed with a wide, supportive smile.
“Très bon, bébé!” Very good, baby! Estie hyped up Ditty as he clapped his hands.
Ditty looked around her and grinned, her little hands now clapping as she clapped for herself.
Yeah… she could get used to this. Maybe her meekness will grow and she’ll become a confident girl like her mother and grandmother were.
All she needed was to be provided with endless support. This was what Esteban and Albertine Ocon were here for.
#formula one dad#formula one fluff#f1 fluff#f1 imagine#formula one x oc#f1 fic#formula one imagine#esteban ocon imagine#esteban ocon#esteban ocon fanfiction#esteban ocon fluff#esteban ocon fic#esteban ocon x reader#formula one au#f1 fanfic#formula one smau#formula one#formula 1
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Thinking about how Jolie would have reacted to the events in the Holiday Special and laughing 😂
so sorry for my delay holiday-nonnie but the truth is i was planning on writing a non-window one-shot about the holiday special and when i got this ask it kinda fucked me up. so i may not do that but what i will do is tell you this:
⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ Winter Across the Galaxy * ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆ [new 12/5]
rocket x f!oc | casual minific | word count: ??
fluffy fluff. smut implied at the end but not explicit. casually written (headcanon-style) && not edited at all so probably riddled with bad autocorrects.
i suspect that in her younger years, the holidays were a very weird time for jo. i imagine that she and her sister each received one very nice, very serviceable gift every christmas, like a new wool coat or a maybe — if their parents were feeling particularly indulgent — some kind of educational game. if there was anything else — a special meal, a small tree or some lights — the girls would be expected to “help,” and not in a fun way.
it wasn’t that jo & gem’s parents didn’t have means. no. everything was very intentional — calculated. they always seemed to believe that their children had been born into the world already spoiled shitty, and it was their job to teach jo & gem not to ever believe they deserved anything.
but jo’s always been a sucker for wonder, for the kind of romance that a person can find in frost-flowers on a window pane, the tender curl of steam on a cup of warm tea, the glow of a million little multicolored lights — whether they’re studding a nighttime neighborhood street under snow, or a far-off planet. at some point early on, she learned that the other kids whose families celebrated christmas had all this excitement and glee around the holidays. she learned about christmas cookies and big family get-togethers and various holiday movies and stockings and santa.
my mom says some kids don’t celebrate Christmas but if you do and you’re good, santa comes, one classmate had confided. he only doesn’t come if you don’t do christmas.
or if you’re bad.
and jo had wanted that. wanted christmas. wanted magic and wonder and closeness.
for gemma.
because even if jolie knew she herself wasn’t always very good, she knew more certainly than anything else in the world that gemma was. and that gemma deserved magic.
so jo got some cheap felt and made like, the saddest ugliest most barely-functional little stocking in the world for her sister, and explained what it was, and they hid it under gemma’s bed. and since the girls shared a room, it was very easy for jo to keep herself awake and sneak out of bed and fill her sister’s stocking with whatever she could afford or make (which wasn’t much, but it was still magic, and the look on gemma’s face every christmas morning was worth jo selling off portions of her home-packed lunches to her classmates or drawing little comics of them for a dollar or two). making magic for her sister made the holidays magic for jo.
after gemma, christmas was never again anything close to merry.
but when kraglin brings it up — and mantis gets the idea to celebrate for pete and the people of knowhere — jolie is more in than she has been on anything since rocket first told her he wanted to fuck her. after all, she has a family now, and what’s more magical than giving magic to her family?
in some ways, it’s the only christmas tradition jolie’s ever had.
although, she promises herself, next time — when there’s more opportunity to prepare — she’s going to make sure they all have stockings.
in the meantime, she’s so fuckin excited to help rocket and cosmo and groot and nebula string up the lights. to prep the snow. she probably coordinates a fuckin last-minute knowhere neighborhood potluck. she listens to bzermikitokolok’s christmas song and she tells him not to change a goddamn thing because it’s perfect. privately, she revels in the fact that she’s pretty sure she can pinpoint exactly which parts were influenced by kraglin, cosmo, and her cranky boyfriend. she loves every word of it and she can’t stop singing it.
there’s really only one line she thinks needs to be clarified before the night’s over.
she also keeps asking where mantis and drax are because it was their idea and she knows mantis is worried about telling pete (i know it must be scary for you, mant, jo had told her, but for what it’s worth, i promise pete will be thrilled; there’s nothing more precious than a sister, i promise) but either nobody knows where they went, or nobody’s telling.
when kevin fucken bacon pops out of that box though, Jo’s like …oh. this fuckin’ makes sense. later she’ll ask them all, why the fuck did no-one ask me — the other resident terran — if this was a good idea?? and the other guardians will shuffle shame-facedly.
but for now, jo and kraglin eventually corner kevin and calm him down. and the truth is, jo knows that later tonight — after some boozy hot chocolate — she’s going to find it all hysterical.
and she does. she and rocket are in their apartment (they have a much more comfortable bed because there’s no way either of them are letting each other sleep on whatever-the-fuck bachelor-rocket has going on in volume three) and she’s lying on her tummy on the comforter, drunkenly giggling and kicking her feet while she watches cosmo and rocket convince a long-suffering groot to stand in as a christmas tree. the shadows are blue and purple velvet, and the multicolored lights are warm and shimmery. everything feels like champagne bubbles, but sweeter and brighter and better. all four of them are wrapped in a golden coziness for the moment, and she’s sure she couldn’t be more happy.
once their friend and their son leave for the night, rocket and jo lay on their back and stare up at the lights that he’s strung through the apartment rafters, because it’s true that rocket has always had a soft spot for pretty things, even if he doesn’t believe he deserves them. they’re lazy and languid and rosy and buttery and content: two little sugar cookies, still half-drunk on whatever was in that cocoa (plus the flask rocket kept swigging from throughout the night).
favorite part? she asks him.
he snickers. your face when kevin bacon happened.
a buzzy giggle escapes her.
yours? he asks.
she hums her data-processing noise. the lights, she says decisively. no, the snow. no, everybody just being together, giving gifts, having fun, sharing food. i’ll make you all stockings for next year, she tells him, and he’s clearly baffled by what she means.
which reminds her.
there’s only one thing she’d change, she tells rocket. one line in bzer’s song she feels the need to clarify.
what? he asks curiously. we got somethin’ wrong?
just one thing, she assures him, lying through her fucking teeth and totally at peace with it. she can’t stop the snorting laughter riding in her throat. you think santa’s gonna shoot missiles at your toes?
rocket shrugs. maybe he’s got some very precise firepower. bet mine’s still better.
it better be, she says dryly, because mistletoe is just a kind of terran plant. like, with berries.
you eat it? rocket asks curiously.
absolutely not, she tells him. you just decorate with it. it’s poisonous.
what the fuck, he deadpans. why the fuck would you decorate with a poisonous—
it’s an old tradition, she cuts in. old folklore and myths. but when two people are standing under it, they’re supposed to kiss.
that’s stupider than santa shooting missiles at your toes, he says flatly. you’re s’posed to make out under poison? how frickin’ romantic.
but jo’s already rolling over on top of him, her chest pressed against his thighs and her forearms planted on either side of his hips.
i’d take any chance i got to kiss you, she tells him. even under threat of poison.
he goes still beneath her, but she doesn’t stop.
i’d hang it all over this apartment.
his eyes get bigger, rounder, christmas-light-red in the dim, warm glow of twinkling colors.
i’d wear it in my hair.
she drops a kiss on his abdomen.
you wouldn’t be able to walk more than a step without me tackling you, she promises, her voice smoky with too much laughter and singing through the night, too much booze and happiness and lust right now. she presses another kiss against him, just a little further south than the first.
i’d kiss you all over —
he reaches out and laces his fingers into a fistful of her hair, letting his claws scrape delicately over her scalp, and tugs her upward.
i lied, he says. santa shooting missiles is way more stupid. you want mistletoe, sugardrop? i’ll get quill to send krags and cosmo to terra and we’ll get you so much fuckin’ mistletoe —
she smiles giddily.
maybe next time, she says. for now, let me just give you a merry christmas.
#rfh asks#window across the galaxy#gotg holiday special#rocket raccoon fanfiction#rocket x jolie#rfh fluff
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whats ur favorite fandom?
oh my goshhhhhh
this is hard for me to answer tbh because there is the fandom-at-large and then there is the personal experience i have had within the fandom, which usually consists of obsessing w one or two close friends, being ambiently excited with whoever's on tumblr at the time, reading some really high quality fic from top-notch authors, and getting a good beta or two for a fic of my own. i am pretty aggressive about filtering out things that would impede my experience. i would say across the board that every fandom i've significantly interacted in, i personally have had a great time.
like, i know from vague rumblings that fucked up things have happened in the Our Flag Means Death fandom, racism and whatever else shitty stuff, but my lived experience of said fandom has been more or less great, with the caveat that i sit in a place of relative privilege, and fucked up shit might be happening that i am incapable of picking up on.
Stranger Things has honestly been super super fun, in that i co-wrote a seven-song album with a super talented total internet stranger based on someone else's brilliant fanfic and that is exactly the level of weird and wonderful that i crave in a fandom experience.
allll of that said, i think my first loyalty will always be to Les Mis. that was the first fandom where i ever significantly de-lurked, and everyone has been just so lovely, from the very beginning before i had the courage to post fics, back when i was just writing weird little songs about joly and bossuet's friendship or whatever. i think on some level it will probably always feel like home.
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I have to rewrite the entire damn intro of this megafic again for two reasons: 1. it sucks, 2. I need to more explicitly show Thranduil being a shitty dad
I've learned in this process that my playlist for this fic has progressed hilariously. in the beginning it's like:
Counting Crows - If I Could Give All My Love
Elton John - I Guess That's Why They Called It The Blues
Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
Rod Stewart - Rhythm Of My Heart
Abba - Mama Mia
Keane - On The Road
the two bolded ones are because I absolutely could not have written this fic without them (I don't know! don't ask me! it is what it is!)
then we transition into just a shitload of sea shanties & folk music, like I was not kidding when I said my Legolas character playlist is just sea shanties, featuring these standouts:
Cape Cod Girls (multiple versions)
Santiana (multiple versions)
Here's a Health to the Company (multiple versions)
The Longest Johns - Oak & Ash & Thorn, Bonny Ship the Diamond
The Dreadnoughts - Joli Rouge
Pandas & People - Out to Sea
also around this time we get into the section that carried the romance part of this fic, aka without Orville Peck & The Amazing Devil I would be nothing, here are the two songs that carried the fic:
Orville Peck - Drive Me, Crazy
The Amazing Devil - Inkpot Gods
sorry but these two songs invented romance
sea shanties & these absolute legends carried me through Return of the King / You Shall Come With Me, but now we're in the "it's time to go home" part and I never would have predicted this but the song of the journey home?
........
you're going to laugh your ass off at me
John Denver - Country Roads
OKAY LISTEN SHUT UP
the playlist also looks like this:
The Parting Glass (6 versions) (shut UP)
The Langer's Ball - Fields of Athenry
Peter Hollens - Shenandoah (only one version of this song because I can't listen to it without crying)
John Denver - Wild Montana Skies
if you would've asked me, I would've said my fic doesn't include any of the "Legolas is a redneck" headcanons that I absolutely adore but apparently my subconscious fucking disagrees
anyway if anyone wants me to eventually turn this into the most batshit writing playlist ever, I'll do it, I'll expose myself, I don't care
#adventures in writing#adventures in text posts#about me#music#look I'm broken inside#I never claimed otherwise
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Random oc things no one asked for:
•Cweepy's ink being colorful is a rare genetic mutation, its supposed to be black lol- Cweepy's also a part of the small wrist gang and her hands easily slip out of things
•Cho-Hee still sometimes has nightmares about the dog attack and will be noticeably nervous around dog/wolf-like characters (YES IK WOLVES AND DOGS ARE DIFFERENT but they're similar in some aspects). I also originally wrote him to be more violent and vengeful, but I decided I didnt like that version too well and just made him more soft and squish
•Dallas would rather die than share his more personal interests, which include dressing in women's clothes. In fact, if you look close enough, you'll see him scratch at his uniform and seem to be almost in discomfort
•Salvatore has issues with leaving Vin by himself due to ✨abuse✨
•Vinny is also scared of the dark due to said ✨abuse✨ they both had a shitty home life tbh-
•Momo subconsciously hums to herself while doing things, he also sleeps with a whale shark plushie in their room (they're her favorite animal!)
•Dell has the ability to "possess" android/robot students if they're strong enough, but they don't know that yet (and even if they did, they IN CANON wouldn't). Dell also has notes made of every student they've ever interacted with, every word they've ever said to them and every interest they have
•Faust's dragon form is actually more similar to a wyvern, but I just say dragon bcs its easier lol- He also has a big sweet tooth
•Hextian showers every day so the strong stench doesnt bother other students, if he skipped a day, everyone would definitely notice. You'll sometimes hear him talk about how "The filth follows him" and how he cant help it/its not his fault, but he'll never really provide context for it
•Despite Benibara's grudge with beast-people, complete animals are fine, in fact, she prefers them.
•Kenzo is a fake name, no one knows his real one. He also made his mechanical parts himself!
•Venus used to be chubby as a kid, she's also far sighted
•As much as Marinus would fist-fight his mom, he wouldn't do it to his dad bcs he knows he's gonna be turned past-tense if he did. Marinus is capable of holding a human shape by himself, but prefers potions since they can make it last longer
•Kumo can also purr, meow, trill and chirp (Amos and Kendall can too). Kumo has canonically fought against Marinus, stood a fighting chance, but the fight was stopped by staff
•Some of Aotome's features include things like being able to use her eyes as projectors, turning her arms into weapons, a removable face and head (do you really want to know whats under there?), among other things. Despite her cold nature, she also has a soft spot for children and animals and wouldnt ever lift a hand at them
•Banji will absolutely bite you if you touch his tail.
•Kamïk's girlfriend goes to RSA (Her name is Yoliztli)! They occasionally sneak to each other's schools to visit each other!
•Clover holding her tail when she's scared/sad has been with her ever since childhood, she still does it to this day! Clover also likes people brushing her tail and scratching her ears but would only ever trust Avery and Jolie with it
•Avery doesnt like reading because she prefers to write her own books. Sometimes she might write a character based on students she enjoys
•Jolie sometimes bullies/teases Clover for not being able to handle horror media despite having canonically beat people's asses before. Jolie being an ass is 50/50 depending on if Avery or Clover is present
•Roan doesnt currently remember how they got to twist, but anytime they try to their head and hands start to hurt. Roan also hates his birthday since he got the "This is for Christmas AND your birthday! :D" treatment
•The Accident™️ that traumatized Pepper was genuinely not their fault, but they refuse to believe it. They spend a good chunk of the time in their dorm room unless its absolutely essential to go in-person
•Wolfo taught himself how to cook since he was young bcs no one else would. He prefers people dont do things for him because he feels like he has to return the favor
•Creek's first doll came from Wolfo! He got it for her on one of her earliest birthdays! She's also on the very skinny side but usually wears long sleeves to cover it up (she's lowkey a big fan of wearing frilly stuff though!)
•Coffee, tea or warm drinks in general make Poppet sleepy- Poppet's also a late bloomer! Thats why their horns are very tiny compared to their siblings (Wolfo and Creek)
•Amos' parents are the type to lie to him for his money (they left when he was around 7-8 years old). He looks NOTHING like his parents so his mom would regularly dye his hair to convince his dad to stay, HOWEVER, his hair had a negative reaction to it (His hair is much better now though!).
•Despite Enid looking intimidating so some, she also has a soft spot for kids, animals and shy students, she's basically like a mom friend and always comes prepared with snacks and other things in her bag. She'd also 100% fall for a squeaky toy/ball/frisbee (the Festus twins would too)
•Lorien will sometimes make their own clothes if they see clothes they'd like but are WAY too big to fit them. He's also extremely terrified of cats (including cat people/cat-beast people)
•Jessica has body issues which is why she pays attention to other people's physical appearance the most. She's also the type that considers "traditionally feminine things" (dresses, makeup, jewelery, etc) to be something thats weak
•It is very difficult to make Oceana mad, purely because she can't hold a grudge for more than a day (forgets all about what happened by tomorrow, unless its something more serious). She's also accidently broken countless things due to her giant size, so preferebly DONT trust her with sentimental items that are fragile
•Yoliztli and Kamïk are freaking giants together- but she's still just a smidge shorter than him. Out of both of them, SHE mostly buys things for them
•Jaiden was once shamed of his fear of the dark by someone so bad he just burst into tears at that very minute. He's also allergic to polyester and wears cotton clothes
•Mindel doesnt trust anyone else to make his coffee since he likes it in a very specific way, he doesn't even trust Jaiden with it. He also has asthma
•Frey mostly prefers to plant plants that produce fruits/vegetables over flowers (they still enjoy them though!) Frey also has 23 plants total, all with their own names!
•Sylvester's more chill about his snek form and doesn't really care what others think. He takes a lot of inspo from his older cousin! His cousins designs are upcoming, but they're based on Arbok and Ekans! (Although it'd take a lot of convincing for Arbok OC cousin to join HSA since he's a dropout looking after his MUCH younger brother (Ekans OC))
•Mao is sometimes so quiet they unintentionally sneak up on other students. Mao would be terrified of Santa if its not properly explained-
•Cherokee does have more destructive magic within them, but prefers to not use it since he hates hurting people, also cause he just likes magicians lol
•Shiloh's parents are divorced, he lives with his dad and his girlfriend (dad's girlfriend doesnt like him though and considers him "weird" and even threatened to get rid of some of his stuff). Both of them get very annoyed/mad when Shiloh happens to bring animal friends to their house.
•Midge got shamed out of his monster form since he was bullied in school for it and even his parents think its hideous (neither parents are monsters... I think that says enough-)
•Kendall absolutely loves attention and praise! Also, just cause they prefer to work on cute projects, doesnt mean he cant do others too! Its just preference-
•"Speckles" loves to knot things for people she enjoys! Her ears and tail are also very sensitive, she prefers you not touch them (unless she really trusts you!)
#the chaos gang's all here!#twisted wonderland#twist#twist oc#twisted wonderland oc#twst oc#twisted oc#twst
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4/14/2024
9:00 PM
I had a really good Sunday. I didn't get much done at all, but I got to refresh my head. I went down to the river's edge and hiked to the bridge and back, about four miles all together. The woods are really waking up now that it seems spring is officially here. I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, we probably hit seventy degrees today. There's a tradeoff though, because now my room seems unreasonably hot. I won't open my window, because my screen has holes in it, and I really do not like bats in the house. I love to see them outside, but I do not like them flying around my house. They freak me out, and for some reason or other, rabies scares the absolute hell out of me. I don't mess with wild animals that can bite me and kill me with a disease that looks like something extremely horrible to go through.
I got my first negative "you suck" comments on one of my poems, and, maybe this is weird, but that makes me beyond happy. Sure, getting likes and reblogs, and nice comments are fun and all, but I was waiting until someone thinks I am so awful at what I love to do, that they need to tell me. If it's constructive, I'm all for it, and I will take those opinions with deep consideration, but to those who just tell me I suck, without really knowing anything about what I do, or more importantly WHY i do what i do, I feel sad for. Art critics. The idea of being a critic in any form of art fields is a laugh. Art is subjective. What I write means something different for someone else. What I see in my head is a totally different painting then the one hanging up on the wall. What I hear in music is far off from what someone else's ears hear. And that should be respected. I can't stand Taylor Swift, but I respect her place in the music world. I don't think Van Gogh paintings aren't all the beautiful, but I still consider him one of the masters but I'd put Robert S. Connet on that hill too. Memento dragged on, but Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors. And if you see something, and your thought is "wow, this sucks" and not "Let's try to make it better" maybe it's best you just shut the fuck up and let people have their thing. I will always love "You suck" comments, on the simple fact I've pissed one more stranger off.
But now, I'm sitting here, writing this and I'll write a few other lines while watching Melancholia for who knows how many times. I love me some Lars Von Trier films. The guy is a master at his craft. I need a break from Futurama anyway. As much as I love the show, after a bit some of the characters just irritate me and I can't do the show. I'm at a good spot to take a break anyway. The very beginning of the "movie" season.
Hopefully my brother turns up soon. They were headed into town so I sent them with some money to pack me up some soda and pop tarts. Yes, I know. I eat like a twelve year old. I don't care. I don't eat much, and when a strawberry poptart and a coke is all I can get down, it's healthier than not eating anything at all, right? Kind of ironic isn't it? A chef with no appetite. I can't remember the last time I ate something from where I work.
I did forget to take about Jolie yesterday. I've known her for years, as she used to run the kitchen in the American Legion at the same time I first took over the bowling alley kitchen. And we have always gotten along extremely well. It's always a good time when she's around. Just that kind of person.
So she left the legion and hasn't done anything in the business since, but her and her husband are looking to buy a restaurant, and she offered me the job to come on has an actual head chef. I mean, I'd get to do menus again, and work with distributors and come up with stuff and have the actual fun parts of the job handed back. Of course, that means I'd also have to do the shitty parts too, budgets, scheduling, budgets, most maintence, did I mention budgets? Still, maybe it's a sign? I've been talking about how badly I want out of the alley, that maybe this is the universe giving me an option to do that, and maybe even re-light the fire and the passion for food to burn bright again?
#journal#my blog#blog#life#my journal#my stuff#my post#my writing#personal#personal blog#slice of life#writing#nonfiction#inner thoughts#personal thoughts#daily#word vomit#mylife#ramblings#notebook pages#diary#unfiltered#words words word
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so what if je poste mes photos de moi
#c’est dire je suis très jolie#mais je ne suis pas#je ne sais pas#hehe#shut up vee#i should write fics in my shitty french
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Hi! Do you have any hc's on how Les Mis characters would dress in modern times?
hi ! i absolutely do, my mental images of les amis are very particular lol
a lot of them i imagine living in sweats. they’re college kids for the most part, can you blame them?
courfeyrac wears a lot of comfy pants and crewnecks or hoodies. he has the ability to be stylish but at the moment he Doesn’t Care because school sucks so hard. when he actually WANTS to try, he has really good style. he has a lot of platform shoes and chunky sneakers bc i hc courf to be like 5’4 on a good day and he regularly tries to pass as 5’6. he also doesn’t mind feminine clothing, courfeyrac has this way of being confident no matter what he wears that’s really attractive to a lot of people. he also has pierced ears and at the moment is thinking about piercing his tongue !
combeferre has good style… but only when it’s cold. in the summer he wears like the same 4 tshirts and these awkward cargo shorts that go down to his knees and it’s… interesting. in the fall and winter, though? he has a lot of nice trousers and chunky sweaters and he looks SO good. ferre wears a lot of neutral colours, most of his sweaters and crewnecks are white, beige, brown, and so on.
enjolras is like a cartoon character in the sense that he wears nearly the same thing every day. he isnt literally wearing the same clothes, but his sense of style is very particular and he doesn’t dress outside the box. every day is his nice trousers, a button-up, a sweater thrown on top, and his puffer coat. he’d be easy to animate since he essentially is never seen jn public wearing anything else. at home he lounges around in sweats all day and likes to Stay Comf, but only a select few have ever witnessed enjolras in his Chill State. he also wears glasses! they’re huge, clear, square frames and they are pretty damn thick. he has some shitty ass eyes but he also loses his glasses at least once a week
feuilly dresses kinda like jesse pinkman on his off days. otherwise he’s in his work clothes bc to me in modern times he works construction and is usually very dusty and dirty and in orange. but on his own he wears very big and baggy clothes. he doesnt care about having a style he’s just a Dude
jehan is. hm. jehan dresses… okay. do you remember like 2017-2018? the hypebeast supreme era of style? that’s jehan. jehan is a hypebeast in the most derogatory sense. he wears a lot of gucci and supreme, because he can afford it but also because he’s delusional enough to believe that it’s actually high fashion. he has like the fanny pack, the sweats, the shoes, everything. jehan loves brands and he cant put them together well at all
grantaire is a fucking mess this dude only wears sweatpants that he refuses to wash and the same 3 hoodies. to me, modern grantaire is an animator and he does not have enough time in his day to think about clothing and looking presentable. he’s looked presentable maybe three times in his life: at his sister’s wedding, at the interview for a job at his current animation company, and at a fundraiser gala les amis held that… he was outrageously drunk at and genuinely ruined (im writing a ficlet about this so hey!). but yeah. you can take his ratty sweats out of his cold dead hands
bossuet is stylish. bossuet is SO STYLISH omg. bossuet loves actually fashion (full shade to jehan) and loves to dress both masculinely and femininely. he loves accessories and has a nose ring and wears lots of bracelets and dresses in vvv bright colours all the time. he likes skirts and he likes dressed and he likes trousers and corsets and platform boots and normal sneakers and man. if you ever need any article of clothing, bossuet probably has it. but he also liked to bum around and wear sweats on comfy days too. im tellin yall, these guys just love their sweats
joly dresses like every ftm trans youtuber in 2017. lots of button ups and flannels and such. courfeyrac made that joke one day and bossuet laughed until he cried
bahorel is a character. he comes from a bg of loving punk rock and during high school-uni, he was full blown 2007 emo. the weird vests, the button ups, the skinny black jeans, everything. now, he’s pretty comfy with what he wears. he still loves spiked bracelets and such and he has an “emo’s not dead” hoodie he wears religiously. he dresses mildly like a butch lesbian, according to éponine
#let me just say again#trans op#thanks#ALSO TY FOR THE ASK!! i love these kinds of questions#i think i hust want everyone to dress like jesse pinkman bc i dress like jesse pinkman#les mis#les miserables#les amis de l'abc#les amis#les mis headcanons#modern les mis
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new work on ao3 go read it
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@aromantic-enjolras, @p-trichor
*awkward wave* hiiiiiiii:))))
okay so i know i said i would write this last week, but tbh, last week was a w e e k (fuckyouanxiety)
anyways, i have written down my headcanons for the werewolf au! it is a bit of a mess, and it probably doesn't make much sense but! i did it!:))
i honestly wasn't planning on writing this much tho, it kinda got away from me lol, but i would have written more tbh, if it wasn't already so long
(also now that i have written this i really want to draw this whole thing, somebody please s t o p m e)
(also if anyone wants to take this shitty au idea and actually write a fic, i would be absolutely delighted! and! i would love to do art for it!:))))
enjoy this mess i guess:))))
General:
This is a fantasy au, set in a slightly ambiguous time period (I'm thinking anywhere from the middle ages, to today, mixed together and thrown in a blender:)))
Werewolves and other monsters live side by side with humans, but often have to hide their identity for fear of discrimination and unjust prosecution
Les Amis de l'ABC Is an activist group, fighting against the discrimination of werewolves and other monsters
The group consists of both humans and non-humans
Grantaire:
He was born with lycanthropy, as the result of a curse placed upon his parents before he was born
His parents didn't want a wolf child, so they abandoned him in the woods as a newborn, where he was found by an old woman who took him in
The old woman had been raised by witches, and though not skilled in the art of magic herself, had quite the talent for medecine, and remedies, and was well equipped to take care of a young werewolf
And so, for most of his childhood, Grantaire and the old woman lived peacefully and happily in a small cottage in the woods
The old woman taught him to read and write, and gifted him with books on mythology, art, and magic, and on full moon nights, he would be allowed to roam the woods
When he was eight he met Enjolras for the first time
They never knew each other by name, they were just two children playing together in the woods, referring to each other as 'friend'
A year later Grantaire tells Enjolras about his lycanthropy, and the following week, Enjolras stops coming to the woods
Grantaire learned to keep his lycanthropy to himself after that
When he was seventeen, Grantaire left the safety of the small cottage behind, wanting to explore more of the world than the woods he had been raised in. He left the old woman with the promise that he would write home with tales of his adventures, and would visit whenever he was in the area.
A werewolf is not, as you might have heard, some kind of vicious, mindless beast. If you stay out of it's path and treat it with respect, it should pose no particular danger, to anyone but the fools stupid enough to threaten it.
Unfortunately most people do not know this fact, and Grantaire quickly learned to hide everything that about himself that tied him to the wolf.
He was nineteen, when the old woman he had lived with his whole childhood, sent him a letter telling him not to come visit anymore. A while later he found out that she had been arrested and executed for alleged crimes against the country. And he realized, that her letter had not been her rejecting him, but a warning, and that her only crime had been housing a werewolf.
Around the same time, he started drinking. He started sleeping around with anyone who would take him. And he fell into cynicism and depression
The boy who had been raised with love and care, and had gone out into the world, hopeful, and eager to create his own path, had now seen just how cruel the world could be to anyone it deemed a threat, or viewed as different. He was done fighting.
When he was twenty five he met Les Amis de l'ABC, and he fell in love. For the first time in six years, he felt hope again.
Enjolras:
Ejolras was born with a tail. No one knew exactly how or why, except maybe his parents, but to them the fact that their only child had a tail, was their greatest shame, and as far as they were concerned, it had to stay hidden at all times
In every other aspect, Enjolras was perfect. Having been born with beautiful golden locks, and radiant blue eyes, and being rather mild marrered, his parnents would recieve many compliments on their child's good looks and behaviour
Enjolras might have been a soft spoken child, but his favourite thing was playing outside in the woods, much to his parents frustration. Enjolras also did not like his parents very much
Enjolras' parents were very conservative, very outspoken against anything they didn't agree with, and most of all, not very good people. Not that anyone but Enjolras seemed to notice this, they were wealthy after all, and were respected members of the community.
When Enjolras was six, he met Grantaire and he made his first friend
Grantaire doesn't care that Enjolras has a tail. Grantaire doesn't care that Enjolras likes to play outside, and gets dirty sometimes. Grantaire doesn't care that he doesn't wear the dresses his mother buys him, or that he isn't really a girl.
Grantaire is weird, and he is Enjolras' favourite person
When Grantaire tells him that he is a werewolf, Enjolras knows his parents are wrong
He gets in a fight with them.the following week, and the next day his parents hire a surgeon to remove his tail, and he is shipped off to boarding school
Enjolras cries for weeks after that
At school he meets Combeferre and Courfeyrac, and they quickly become his most trusted friends
It's not until years later that he realizes that neither of them are completely human, and he accepts them fully , just as they have always accepted him
When he is thirteen, his two best friends are sent away, and for the first time in seven years he feels entirely alone
At sixteen he runs away from home, and from school, and from everything he has ever known.
The first of the amis he meets is Bahorel. They meet after he gets into a fight with three people twice his size, and Bahorel saves him. He proceeds to call Enjolras an idiot, and takes him under his wing.
Bahorel is seven years older than him, and a werewolf, and he introduces him to Feuilly and Jehan (a human and a wood nymph)
He meets Joly and Bossuet next
Joly is dabbling in witchcraft next to his medical studies, an Bossuet is his boyfriend who has been cursed from an early age with bad luck
Enjolras takes to his new friends instantly and together they form Les Amis de l'ABC
Enjolras is twenty and he is the leader of an activist group fighting for the rights of every creature and human alike
Two years later Combeferre and Courfeyrac finds him again
They find him by accident, having heard of the group and decided to attend a meeting. The moment Enjolras sees them, his eyes light up, and he embraces them both in a crushing hug. The rest of the group warms up to them immediately
A year later Grantaire joins them, and Enjolras doesn't recognize him
#long post#sorry! i don't know how to do that line break thing so you don't get the whole thing on your dash:((#les mis#les miserables#les amis#les amis de l'abc#enjolras#grantaire#enjoltaire#exr#combeferre#courfeyrac#bahorel#feuilly#jehan#joly#bossuet#werewolf au#monster au#werewolf#tw death mention#headcanons#au
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oh my god! so i kept on telling myself that i’ll read window across the galaxy whenever i find time (haven’t really done that yet T_T it feels like i have all the time in the world and yet not enough) and i come to do my daily check of raccoonfallsharder to find out IT’S FINISHING SOON?! you work at the SPEED OF LIGHT (which is a compliment ❤️🩹 i am a snail and i wish i wasn’t.) but hopefully i can start binge reading WATG soon, the excerpts i’ve seen look amazing (which isn’t shocking coming from you. everything you write is a masterpiece!)
all of this to be said, i hope you’re doing okay. i know you write the Rocket Reminders for others but i hope you apply them to yourself as well. you deserve amazing things And More!
okay first of all you do a DAILY CHECK of my blog?? ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡ i mean that has to be an exaggeration but it’s still the sweetest fucken thing ive ever heard?? this seriously has made my whole shitty week better (hello tuesday morning, ive peaked). this whole ask is just so sweet and caring and kind. i might be tearing up in my office. thank you. i am carrying your words with me everywhere i go today, like armor ♡
secondly window will be here waiting for you whenever you’re ready babydoll. it’s not going anywhere (also you don’t gotta binge it! it’s perfectly fine to take bitesized chomps)
thirdly snails are incredibly important. they’re recyclers and pollinators and they are very cute when drinking water. there is nothing wrong with taking time, and fanfic writing should be enjoyable — not something to punish or pressure yourself about. 6 out of 10 experts agree that in all likelihood, trying to rush something like this is just a result of capitalism convincing you of the lie that “productivity” (whatever that is) is the most important thing. the other 4/10 say that you would have more time to create if it weren’t for capitalism in the first place, so it’s still not your fault. anyway the point is please keep being a lovely perfect snail going at your own lovely perfect pace and don’t be too hard on yourself
finally here’s an extra window excerpt (the very beginning) just for you ♡♡♡ may your day be full of soft and happy moments, you gorgeous winter sunrise, and may you feel loved & cared for every second
☆✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
The Eclector is dark and, despite the raucous laughter and fighting of the crew, every footfall on the gridded catwalks seems to echo. It smells like rust and oil and old metal, and sometimes sweat, and there’s generally very little that is pleasant about it.
But Kraglin Obfonteri had sent word that the Yondu clan had recently overtaken a Xandaran luxury liner. Among its treasures, there had been a pretty vast art collection, and Jolie is a reliable assessor and - for some of the more common mediums, as well as a few blindingly unique ones - a restorer. It’s not the first time she’s contracted her services out to a Ravager crew. Hell, it’s not even the first time she’s worked with the Yondu Clan. She crosses paths with them at least once every fifteen cycles or so.
So here she is, following some hulking brute named Taserface and dodging when pirates on the catwalk above decide to spit over the side.
What a way to spend my morning, she thinks. There better be something worthwhile in this pile of junk.
They finally leave the belly of the ship and Taserface leads her through a network of cargo holds and corridors, trying to make very awkward conversation and occasionally leering at her. Jolie is a consummate professional, though, and she’s dealt with a lot of creeps. She keeps a polite smile on her lips and a dead look in her eyes. She’d been hoping today’s escort would be the aforementioned Kraglin, or maybe fellow-Terran Peter Quill. Pete’s been family since Jolie met him - almost seven years ago - even if they don’t usually see each other more than once every few cycles at most. He’s a handful of years older than her, but his relative optimism still makes her feel like he’s a sweet, annoying little brother. Frankly, it pulls some heartstrings, because Jolie has baggage where younger siblings are concerned.
Kraglin, on the other hand, is a remarkably endearing moron, and Jolie kind of adores him, the same way she adores particularly stupid cats.
Unfortunately, Jolie gathers that Pete has apparently disappeared in his M-Ship without a word - much to the irritation of the rest of the Yondu clan - and Obfonteri is offsite on orders from the captain, engaging in some kind of criminal activity or another. So here she is, stuck with a guy who could’ve picked any name in the galaxy and settled on Taserface.
Each chamber the pirate guides her through is packed with stolen goods, and she keeps her eyes open in case there’s some incredible artistic masterpiece that has somehow escaped the haul he’s currently taking her to examine. No luck so far, and Taserface is pulling ahead of her, trying to impress her by droning on about some recent brawl he’s been in. She zones out of the conversation, only smiling placidly and nodding vacantly when he glances back at her.
They pass another corridor, this one even more abandoned, and enter yet another chamber. More goods are stacked all around, a disorganized horde of stolen treasures: casks of silverwine from Vanaheim, crates of shimmering pearls from Morag, pleasure-bots from Contraxia. At the far end, she sees what looks like the corner of a cage.
Her eyes narrow, and her head tilts.
That’s unusual.
Normally, bounties are housed in the caged cells lining the main corridors just off the belly of the ship - not hidden, and not mixed in with the loot. As they draw closer, Jolie can just make out a shadow shifting inside - something the size of a kid.
Her blood runs cold.
She’d heard Yondu and his crew had already been exiled from the loose coalition of Ravager clans due to trafficking children, but she’d thought they’d stopped doing that years ago, when Pete had come on board. Is that why this cage is hidden way out here?
They draw closer, and she catches a glimpse of fur moving behind the rusted bars. Out here in space, that doesn’t mean anything in particular: it could still be a child. Her stomach becomes a stone in her gut, and she knows she's not leaving this stupid fucking ship without knowing what's going on, and making sure everything is okay. She’s got enough units on her that she can probably afford one or two kids, maybe a few if she needs to - a bribe more than a purchase, she thinks, and a mean fucking talking-to for Yondu Udonta. But if he's making some kind of a habit out of this, she’s going to need a lot more resources than she currently has available to her.
And maybe he’s not. She's trying very hard not to jump to conclusions, because to be honest - despite his reputation - Yondu really doesn’t seem like the type to continue engaging in this shit. And she kind of likes him, like the grumpy old uncle she's never had.
Taserface keeps heading straight across the chamber to the other door, boasting and blathering, but Jolie’s drawn to the cage. Smoothly - never breaking stride - she veers to the left, and her tour guide doesn't even notice.
The metal box is about three feet tall, sitting on top of a knee-high crate scrawled with the words “sovereign porn” in Kree - lovely, Jolie thinks drily - and there’s definitely a lifeform inside. She leans in just a bit, and catches a flash of bright eyes and teeth and - she thinks that’s a ringed tail, and a mask.
That can’t be right.
Her eyes scan him again, and yeah: the caged creature looks almost like a raccoon from back home, but he’s standing upright on his hindlegs and…yep, he is most certainly wearing pants.
The lifeform rears back: teeth bared in a vicious, silent snarl, ears flat against his skull. In this position, she can see some kind of metal has been embedded in his chest. The fur around it - and in a few other places - has long since stopped growing due to scarring, and the flesh around the metal itself looks painfully inflamed. Her heart slams into her sternum and her stomach drops.
“Oh, love,” she breathes out, unthinking. “What did they do to you?”
The raccoon tilts his head to one side, eyes bright with biting intelligence, and she could swear he’s practically sneering. He opens his mouth and for all the world, she almost thinks he’s going to answer her.
Taserface interrupts any miraculous revelations with his too-loud, too-boastful voice, suddenly behind her, leaning too close. “T’was the High Evolutionary Hisself what cut the critter up and stitched it back together. Replaced some of its bones with new ones and made it walk like it’s tryin’ to be a man.”
She straightens and stares up at him, and the asshole chuckles, like it’s funny.
Jolie makes a noise in her throat before she can stop it. “Nope. Don’t like that.”
She turns back, still eyeballing the creature on the other side of the rusty bars. It’s shadowy in there, but she’d guess he’s maybe three-feet tall with change. And if he is a raccoon - and he sure does look like one - he’s probably already plotting his escape.
She gnaws on her lower lip. “And where are you all taking him now?”
Taserface looks at her like she’s an idiot. Maybe she is.
“Back t’ HalfWorld an’ the High Evolutionary, a’course.”
Her head snaps around to face him so quickly that something in her neck audibly cracks, sending a hot flare of pain up the back of her skull. She ignores it. “So they can torture him some more?”
Taserface shrugs and glowers and spits dismissively. “It'll be two hunnert-thousand units.”
Jolie sucks in a breath through her teeth. That’s more than…well, that’s more than a few children.
She looks at the rusted bars, and back to her brute of a tour guide, and sighs heavily. Slowly, she turns back to the cage, swaying toward the bars so she can peer in at eye-level. She’s immediately face-to-face with the creature. His ears are still pressed flat against his head, fur bristling, and he’s gazing back, clearly suspicious and probably - justifiably - feeling more than a little bit mean. She’s suddenly certain that if she got close enough, he’d take out her eyes.
There’s no helping herself, is there? Goddamn, she’s an idiot. One corner of her mouth twists up in exhausted resignation and she sighs.
“Welp,” she says solemnly to the raccoon with a polite nod, “fuck me, my dude.”
Swiftly, she stands back up, turning to Taserface and flattening her palms together in front of her with a soft clap. Her fingers lace together and she presses her knuckles to her lips in half a prayer. She’s not going to think about the consequences too much. Not till later, anyway. She’s going to move through these next moments in a flurry, a manufactured whirlwind: partly so she doesn’t second-guess herself, and partly to keep Taserface from applying too much critical thinking to anything she’s about to say.
She imagines that second part should be easy.
“It looks like it’s Udonta’s lucky day, because I happen to have two-hundred-and-thirty thousand units on hand, and I’ve always wanted a raccoon.”
#rfh asks#window across the galaxy#uniquetaste#snail appreciation post#rocket raccoon#rocket raccoon fanfiction#guardians of the galaxy
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Joly/Combeferre for the platonic ask, and the prompt I request is “asking one another how their day was”
Here you go! Again, I seem to be unable to write anything shorter than 1K words, so this is going to Ao3. I'm pretty sleep-deprived at the moment, so I hope it's good!
Summary: Joly sighed, laying his head on the breakroom table and fighting a stress headache. He then probably nodded off there and then, because next thing he knew, a coffee cup was being placed in front of him; and not even a cup from the shitty hospital machine, but a reusable cup with a Lord of the Rings pun that he recognized as the one Combeferre always carried around when he was on shift.
"You looked like you needed it more than I"
----
Joly has had a really long day at the hospital, and Combeferre comes to help and comfort him.
Word count: 1190.
Warnings: Sleep-deprivation, slight talk about injured people coming to ER.
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Les Amis Modern AU: What They Wish Others Believed About Them (Part 5)
[I kind of wrote this in response to some general trends in characterising the Amis. There are some stereotypes which I'm not quite comfortable with.]
[Hey, y'all! I'm so sorry for not posting this series for a long time, I was flattened for the past 12 days by COVID-19. We have Cosette and Marius today, and I'm so glad that I am feeling better enough to write about them. Cheerio!]
Cosette:
• Is fed up of being considered dainty, fragile, weak and excessively nice, a bit of a pushover. She is anything but. Living with crappy foster parents don't really let you do that. She can stand up against bullshit with biting sarcasm if necessary. It's just that Cosette doesn't rise to the bait very easily, because she has trained herself to ignore battles which don't need her attention. But that doesn't mean that she needs to be protected all the time.
• Is sick of having to relate her childhood traumas in order to not be judged as being a privileged airhead. Cosette likes buying nice things. She likes fashion, and she has some habits from Catholic school, still. She spends a lot of money on her friends and loved ones. She is sunshiney and injects bougie humour and fun into meetings. That doesn't mean that she knows nothing about the shitty world, and that she doesn't actively try to make ethical choices in her consumer behaviour and social commitments. She really dislikes the "Ohhhhh" moment coming from someone judging her for her privilege when someone tells her story to them. Why presume that people are shitty for no reason, damnit?
• Is sick of being mistaken as straight. On one memorable Pride, she was called "straight passing". She dislikes the term immensely. She thinks that people do not have the liberty to immediately assume that she is heterosexual because Marius is her partner. Similarly, people do not get to assume her sexuality because she presents stereotypically femme.
• She feels insecure and uncomfortable when people fix too much attention on her in relation to someone else, as if to scrutinize her. It happened twice amongst the Amis, once when Marius introduced her as his crush for the first time, and once when they came to know that she and Eponine knew each other since childhood, and that Eponine's parents were her abusive foster parents. She likes it better if she were befriended for being herself.
• She feels a little frustrated that people didn't get her conflicting feelings towards Eponine. People immediately assumed that she forgave and forgot everything Eponine had done or said when they were children, in her "characteristically sweet way". Actually, the first time she saw Eponine, her fear reared its ugly head again and she almost ran out of the Musain. There was much dancing around Eponine (who seemed worn out and super uncomfortable as well) and it is only with Marius and Courfeyrac's help that Cosette could start a conversion with Eponine. She did it not be particularly forgiving (though she eventually forgave her anyway), but because she needed to leave her emotional baggage behind and move on.
• A large part of Cosette's forgiveness towards Eponine was fuelled by the knowledge of Eponine's own abuse at her parents' hands. As someone who had faced quite a bit of the same abuse, she needed to put her foot down. Cosette was extremely angry about it, and her anger made sure that Eponine could separate from her parents faster, and eventually get custody of her siblings.
• She hates, hates, hates it when people remind her that she's lucky to get an adoptive father like Valjean particularly after she has a row with him. Just because her foster parents were shitty doesn't mean that she cannot speak against some of Valjeans imperfections! And children often disagree with their parents. She doesn't need to be dampened with the idea that she should basically think Valjean to be perfect because of her past. She is fiercely loyal to Valjean, and doesn't need anyone to test that.
• Cosette is protective of Marius. No one gets to mow Marius over with judgements and snide comments. In fact, Marius found himself being not so much the butt of jokes anymore after Cosette teaches him to stand up for himself. At the same time, Cosette does not helicopter parent Marius. She does tease him within limits, and does not usually interfere when he has disagreements with the Amis. It is a fine balance which does exhaust her sometimes.
• Cosette can be mischievous, even impish. She can land punches (whether they hurt or not doesn't matter), ace paintball/mudslinging matches, play the best pranks on April Fool's Day and curse like a sailor if needed. She is especially proud of the wide-eyed look she still gets from some of the Amis at her antics. She can also get people out of trouble faster than you can say "bail".
Marius:
• Marius feels scared of being judged. It is really, really difficult to understand your own privilege when you come from a super rich, super bigoted family (read grandfather). He has taken lots of embarrassing knocks and call-outs every day till now, but he is learning, and learning fast. The Amis know, and for them he isn't some peripheral person anymore, but an integral part. But sometimes he wakes up with nightmares of being kicked out as a wokeboi and a fraud by the whole group. He often stumbles over his words because he panics that maybe what he is trying to say is problematic. It takes him months to take any initiative in the Amis because he suffers from imposter syndrome all the time.
• Marius hid all information about his favourites (he loves strawberry rosé macarons and silver needle tea, for instance) because he thought that he would be judged as a rich brat. Funnily, it was Ferre who had figured these out and was the first Amis to give him a small tea chest and a box of macarons as a birthday gift (followed closely by Courf and Jehan with a huge birthday party). It took time for Marius to understand that just because he got a bit panned for his political opinions the first time, it doesn't mean that the Amis hate him.
• Quite unlike popular belief, Marius and Ferre do get along very well. They share a lot of niche interests (poring over etymology dictionaries and having a love of museums and trivia nights). They did discuss that first "to be free" moment, and Marius had placed his request to be given more chances to undo his problematic stances. (There was also another "to be free" moment that had left Ferre stunned, but it's a them thing). It hurts Marius when people immediately think that he's probably annoying Ferre when they hang out.
• Marius is not stupid. Please. The whole idea people have that he is stupid because of his awkwardness and shyness is plain mean at times. No, he doesn't need to be talked to slowly, like talking to a child. Whenever he has the courage, he brings up a lot of valid points in Musain meetings. He is extremely resourceful in handling money and talks with boring rich people, and fundraisers have never been better without him. He is juggling a double Masters degree with internships and volunteer services, and picks up languages at the drop of a hat (including Elvish).
• Marius has also had that dangerous phase when, in a bid to be as radical as possible, he fell into trouble way too many times. Even the most even-tempered of them all (read Jehan) has outright cried in exasperation on finding Marius glaring at a policeman in a protest, promising to burn the place down with a flare if they didn't back off from hitting protestors. Marius has similarly taken punches and hits, and there was a time when Joly would hover around him to administer first aid as quickly as possible. It took Enj and R a whole day to explain to him the merits of self-preservation and that revolution today does not necessarily involve a militant loss of life.
• Marius has also that phase when he drove a college sophomore to tears with his radical speech. Aka attacking the heck out of the kid's problematic Facebook post. Cosette had to give him a talk. Marius is learning about how to be a zealous but kind activist every day.
#marius pontmercy#cosette#les miz#les amis#les mis#les miserables#marius and cosette are such sweethearts#marius is an underrated noodle boi#modern au#les mis as#ferret's freshly microwaved post
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exs who have to pretend that they’re still dating for [insert reason here] for e/r?
(In which, once again, I write Les Amis as some kind of Leverage-esque crime ring. Also, this got completely out of hand because my brain demanded plot.)
Six months into normal life, Grantaire expects every knock on the door to be the police catching up with him—or worse, the police asking him to identify a body, if he's still someone's alias's emergency contact. He still answers every time, since most of the time it's delivery he ordered himself and knew it was coming, and even the unexpected knocks are neighbors, or more rarely, friends with too much cheer skirting around talking about work. When there's a firm rap on his door one chilly evening when he can't even bother to get off the couch to get his usual bottle of wine, he expects Joly and Bossuet, who usually have their ways of knowing when he's having a bad spell.
Enjolras is the worst case scenario. Worse than the police, worse than the delivery guy who is weirdly insistent that Grantaire probably has weed he is declining to sell, worse than Floréal in one of her glaring moods. Arguably, when Grantaire is feeling dramatic, it's worse than being notified of a death, and he's definitely feeling dramatic now, staring at Enjolras, who's statue-still with tension and frozen in a mulish expression Grantaire knows all too well.
“I know I promised that you could be done, but I need your help,” says Enjolras, and that's the end of Grantaire's retirement.
*
Enjolras hasn't been to this apartment before, but he knows Grantaire's habits, his ways of organizing or not organizing his space. He goes to the kitchen immediately and, fuck him very much, makes Grantaire a perfect cup of tea without ever once having to check twice for something.
Grantaire sits on his own couch and hates how familiar this is. Last time Enjolras made him tea on a shitty night, it was one week before the end and Grantaire was feeling it coming and trying not to panic, trying to cling on and give space at the same time. And Enjolras had stood in their kitchen and brewed a perfect cup of tea and put it in Grantaire's hands and knelt in front of him and told him he loved him three times in a row before Grantaire shut him up with a kiss.
He never ended up drinking that tea, and when Enjolras puts this on the table next to the couch instead of into his hands Grantaire thinks seriously about being petty enough to keep up that streak, especially when Enjolras retreats to the least comfortable chair in the living room, which he only has to make any unwelcome guests sit on for the satisfaction of it.
“What do you need that someone on the team couldn't give you?” Grantaire inquires, when it becomes really clear that Enjolras isn't going to speak first.
“How have you been?” Enjolras asks instead of answering, brows all knit up like maybe he actually cares about the answer.
Grantaire shrugs. “Not risking my life every weekend, so I suppose that's fine. Got a job at the local gym just for something to do.”
“What have you been painting lately?”
“Nothing, really.” It was always too embarrassing to explain to Enjolras that before they started dating, Grantaire was more of a painter in theory than in practice, that his perfectionism kept his canvases blank more often than not. With Enjolras, there was always something bubbling up in him, and if he didn't want to say it, he had to paint it in broad sweeps on a canvas, the subjects less important than the colors and the buildup of the impasto.
“Right.”
Grantaire, after a silent second, sighs and picks up his mug of tea to blow on it and take a sip. Still scalding, but it's better than trying to deal with this without something in his hands. “Look, can we stop the attempts at painful small talk? You need my help. Okay. Tell me how.”
And Enjolras looks at him, with circles around his eyes and his lips bitten red, and says “We need to con Felix Tholomyès again.”
*
A year ago, they'd been dating for most of a year and they'd just moved in together, and when Enjolras needed a dinner date for symmetry to con a lawyer, Grantaire was the obvious choice. It was a low-stakes con, and Tholomyès was low-stakes slime, a step on their way to more important prey. All they needed was a look at his papers, and with Enjolras playing the obsequious recent law school graduate in need of a mentor, that was an inevitability. Grantaire mostly went along for fun, and spent the night talking to Tholomyès's colorless and faded wife about the art gallery where he was pretending to work.
Tholomyès had proved to be cannier with his papers than they were expecting, so they went out for three more dinners in two weeks, Grantaire choosing both of their suits and ties since Enjolras can't be trusted with nice clothes. They made a game out of how many times they could get Tholomyès to say predictably horrible things, gently kicking each other's ankles whenever they scored a point, and went home and fucked each other stupid afterwards because Enjolras hates having to pretend to be someone he's not and it was the most fun way to get him back in a good mood.
And then they had one last farewell dinner, because Enjolras never burns an identity if he can leave it for later, and Grantaire had ended up smoking a cigarette with Tholomyès's wife on the pavement in front of a fancy restaurant in near-silence.
“Don't let him do this to you,” she said, with a gesture that encompassed her whole person, and Grantaire had a dizzying, awful moment of thinking about what Tholomyès must have been like twenty years before: handsome and bright and more charming than he had any right to be. She's wrong about the deeper similarities Enjolras is pretending at, but the surface ones are devastating enough.
Both of them were discontented that night, even if they were technically having a victory fuck, and Grantaire knows it's dramatic, but he wonders sometimes if that was the beginning of the end.
*
“It's the same as before,” Enjolras says in the car on the way to his apartment. He moved out too, found somewhere new. That's not really a surprise, since they all move around a lot even in their home base of a city to shake off curious neighbors, but it's a relief, too. At least Grantaire isn't going to be confronted with the place they were so happy, for a little while. “Only this time he's not the means to an end, he's the end. He's tampering with a trial, and we need proof, fast.”
“You've got a pre-established relationship. What's the point of having me around?”
A delicate pause. “He asked after you,” Enjolras finally says. “When I said I was going to be in town again and asked if he wanted to catch up, he asked if you were going to be in town, and you have an established rapport with his wife. This will be easier with you, and it's going to add an element of complication if I have to explain … everything.”
Must be an important trial, if Enjolras is willing to do this. “Who else knows I'm on this with you?”
“Courfeyrac and Combeferre.” Expected. What comes next, though, is more of a surprise. “You can tell whoever you want to, but—they'll swarm you, and assume you're back, so I thought I would let that be your choice. You can tell them as much or as little as you want to.”
Missing them all, the ones who don't come over for awkward conversations, is an itch under his skin all the time. Almost as much as he misses the adrenaline of a job coming together. But that's going to make Enjolras feel guilty, and that's not what he wants. It's practically the whole fucking point of these past six months, not making Enjolras feel guilty. “Good to know,” he says instead of committing to anything, and then there's just the awkward silence, the sound of Enjolras's nervous tapping against the steering wheel.
Grantaire doesn't have his own car, but he always used to drive Enjolras's. Maybe Enjolras is remembering that too.
*
It's easy enough to pick up their supplies, put on something nice enough for the fancy restaurant Tholomyès has offered to pay at. Enjolras talks about what Combeferre has established for their cover identities in the past year, the increasingly shady cases Enjolras has been taking with his shady firm all the way across the country, and Grantaire's online graduate coursework in art and the contests he entered and placed respectably in.
Even after six months, the work feels normal in a way that being next to Enjolras again doesn't. They don't ever misstep or end up in each other's way while they prepare. Grantaire picks Enjolras's outfit, and while Enjolras changes, Grantaire picks a weapon that won't ruin the lines of his, and then reads the job dossier while Enjolras picks his own weapons and surveillance equipment.
When they pull up outside the restaurant, Grantaire driving this time, and send the car off to be parked, Enjolras stops, facing the street so their backs are to anyone watching through the windows, and says “I would have proposed to you by now.”
“Fuck you,” says Grantaire, the first crack he's shown and the worst possible time for it. He closes his eyes in the face of Enjolras's wounded expression. “Sorry. No. I know what you mean. You just could have sprung that on me an hour ago, is all. You have a ring, I assume?”
“In my pocket,” Enjolras admits, and produces it. It's subtle, just a silver band with a chip of an emerald in it, and if Grantaire was a woman, it would be completely inadequate for the social circles they're pretending to be in, but as it is, he's Enjolras's bohemian affectation, so it's well-chosen.
Grantaire puts it on himself, with a great show of it not being an important moment at all, and offers Enjolras his arm, and pretends he's got any hope of coming back from this.
*
They haven't changed much in a year, Felix and his wife. He's maybe a little grayer at the temples, and she's maybe somehow become even more transparent, but they all exchange kisses on the cheek, exclamations over haircuts and Grantaire's ring and Tholomyès's winning cases, like anybody would while catching up.
Grantaire, with an alias or without one, has always been better at this than Enjolras. Lying, pretending to like people he doesn't, keeping up the social niceties, is something to distract him from the weight of a ring on his finger, and to distract them from any oddness between the two of them. He chatters away about their new apartment, about the art he's so glad to have time to make, and when Mrs. Tholomyès asks about their engagement story, he tells that too, a vacation in the south and a fancy restaurant overlooking the beach and a ring over dessert.
Enjolras talks business in hushed tones with Tholomyès, mostly, but like he isn't even thinking about it, he switches to eating with his left hand so he can hold Grantaire's intermittently while they eat. Grantaire is too good at lying to freeze up or shake him off, but he tries to convince himself that he wants to.
*
He ends up smoking on the sidewalk again. It's the only vice of his he's ever been even halfway successful in overcoming, but he needs to leave Enjolras to talk business with the mark, and see if he can subtly get information out of his wife. It's a pattern he's known for a long time. Much longer than they were actually dating.
“It always happens, men like them,” she says, somewhere between bitter and sympathetic, sometime between the first cigarette and the second. “They look so bright when you first know them, you can't see what shitheads they are.”
Grantaire inhales smoke, thinking through his reply. “He's still great to me,” he says, ducking his head a little. “He doesn't … I don't know. Cheat, or anything. Just work stuff.”
She snorts. “If I cared about the cheating, I would have left him twenty years ago. I knew about that going in. Come on, what did yours do? First time I heard about, it was little stuff. Loopholes. The loopholes get larger the longer it goes on.”
“Just … a couple trial delays when there didn't have to be delays, mostly.”
“Could be worse starts.” She takes a deep inhale. “Funny, they always want artists, for the party conversation, but then they start chipping away at our idealism, and a few decades down the line, you're me.”
She's got it backwards, which makes it worse. Grantaire's cynicism wearing away at Enjolras's passion, his idealism, that was always the problem. “I didn't realize you're an artist,” he says.
Her laugh sounds a little more like she's trying not to scream. “Poet, if you'll believe it. Two chapbooks published, and then I got married. What would I write about now? Witness tampering? Bribing judges? If you want my advice, get out now.”
Grantaire glances in through the window. They'll be expected back soon, but she's close to cracking. He can recognize that better than almost anything else. “Come on,” he says. “A walk around the neighborhood. They won't miss us, and it sounds like you need to talk.”
And she does. Enjolras texts him three times, in increasing worry, but Grantaire just listens, and asks questions, and lets her tell him what she's picked up from eavesdropping, from becoming part of the furniture, from being the wife of this man who deserves everything that's coming to him. From letting herself be consumed by somebody else, so maybe the comparison isn't so backwards after all. She gives him evidence, and Grantaire pretends to be answering a text from Enjolras and sets his phone to record instead.
By the time they go inside, he has what Enjolras needs.
*
“I didn't get what I need,” Enjolras says when they're in the car. Enjolras is driving, since Grantaire is two glasses of wine deep, and he winced when Grantaire took off his ring as soon as they got in and put it in the glove compartment. “We might have to do this again. If you don't mind.”
“I sent you a pretty large audio file. Quality's shit, since I couldn't exactly hold it up to her face while she talked, but I know between Combeferre and Joly they can clean it up. It's enough to know where to dig.”
“Oh. That's … we hadn't thought of her as a significant source of information.”
“Then you can't have talked to Éponine about it.” Grantaire sighs. “She isn't implicated. Just really sick of the bastard she married. So we're done. Glad I could help.”
The rest of the ride is nearly silent, and Grantaire tells himself he's happy about it.
*
When Enjolras parks the car just down the street from Grantaire's apartment, he immediately twists in his seat to face Grantaire and pins him with one of his terrifyingly intense gazes. “I despite people who ask this question,” he finally says, “but I have to ask anyway. We were happy, weren't we? If you wanted to retire, I would never have kept you in, I would have kept it out of our relationship. Why was it so important to end it, all of it at once?”
“Tholomyès's wife hates him so much, did you know that? Not enough to divorce him and lose the lifestyle, I'm not saying she's a saint. But she hates him because she married him thinking that their differences made the relationship fun and exciting, and instead he sucked all the joy and the life out of her.”
“You think I'd do that to you?” Enjolras asks, and sounds like Grantaire might as well have shot him.
Even six months on, Grantaire can't stand for Enjolras to think anything is his fault. “No. I didn't want you to end up hating me.” And then, feeling like an idiot, because Floréal threatened to slap him when he said it like it was a justification, “You stopped fighting with me.”
“You broke up with me because we weren't fighting?”
Grantaire doesn't know how to explain what felt like a totally logical progression to him. The way, at the start of their relationship, he and Enjolras would still fight about what was worth doing and trying for and what wasn't, and then they'd apologize if it got personal instead of philosophical, and then they'd fuck, and everything would be fine. And then, as they got closer, bit by bit, Enjolras wouldn't respond to the bait Grantaire laid out when he was in the mood as much. He'd fight, but only half-heartedly, or he'd kiss Grantaire, or he'd ask him to explain his points without making any of his own. Or, devastatingly, he'd sigh a little, and put down whatever he was doing, and make Grantaire a cup of tea or coffee. Making Enjolras angry, he's always been able to live with that. Making him sad, making him tired, that he couldn't bear. “I didn't want you to not be you. And you are passionate and idealistic and you used to try to make me believe that. So either you stopped thinking I was worth convincing, or I was rubbing off on you, and I didn't want to change you.”
“Can I come up?” says Enjolras, abruptly angry. “Because I want to tell you you're wrong but I don't want to yell at you in the car.”
“Now he decides to fight with me,” says Grantaire, and they both know it's an agreement.
*
It was a mistake giving Enjolras the trip up the stairs to start planning his arguments. “Did it ever occur to you,” he says as soon as the door is shut behind them, spinning to face Grantaire, “that I didn't want to change you either? Or—I'll be more precise. I wanted to change how you were feeling. I didn't want to change who you are.”
Grantaire waves a hand, and hides behind self-deprecation like he always fucking does. “Yeah, but when one of you is objectively better than the other one—”
“No. I didn't stop disagreeing with you. Is that what you thought?”
“No, I just made it boring for you to inspire ideals in others, which you do like you breathe.”
Enjolras steps forward and takes Grantaire's hands and makes the kind of eye contact that makes Grantaire want to squirm and look away. “I figured out that when you start saying that kind of thing, especially when we're alone, you say it because you're sad, or because you hate yourself. I didn't want to be a stick for you to beat yourself with. So when you started fights, I treated you like I'd treat any of my friends who were sad. Maybe I should have said what I was doing.”
“To be fair, that probably would have resulted in a whole lot of me being an absolute asshole,” he says, because he has to say something.
“Then maybe we could have had a fight about something else,” Enjolras says, a little wry. “Also, we were living together. I was seeing the moments that prove you have more hope than you think you do, and you were seeing the ones that prove that sometimes I get tired, like anyone. I figured at that point the argument was moot.”
You didn't make me less hopeful for the future, Enjolras is telling him, clear as he dares to be. You just saw more. It's almost impossible to believe, but Enjolras is still saying it. “That's not how it felt,” Grantaire says when it's clear that's all Enjolras has to say until he gets a reply.
Enjolras keeps on holding his hands. “Apparently we needed to talk more. And more honestly. Did you actually want to retire?”
“Why would I want to stop doing the only thing I've ever regularly been good at?” If they're doing this, they're doing this. After tonight, he's almost certainly back to doing crime. That was true from the second Enjolras knocked on his door. “It just seemed … easier. Cold turkey.”
“I could throttle you. I'll have Courfeyrac call you tomorrow, he'll read you in on our jobs at the moment.” Enjolras finally releases him. “And if you'd like, after that we can have dinner.”
Grantaire stares. “I say all that, all the ways I apparently misinterpreted and fucked us up but in a totally different way than I thought I was, and you still want to keep trying? You're delusional.”
Enjolras's mouth quirks. “There's a different argument on the same theme that I'm definitely still willing to have with you. I still love you. If you didn't still love me, I doubt you'd be giving me all this self-sacrificing bullshit, because not loving me would make me go away faster. So. Do you want to go for dinner tomorrow night? Without Tholomyès this time?”
“It's not going to be any easier if we try again. Probably a whole lot harder, actually.”
“I know. I want to try anyway. Do you?”
Grantaire kisses him, which is easier than saying yes, and then says it anyway when they finally drift apart. “Yes. Okay. Let's make a terrible decision and try again.”
“We'll do better this time,” Enjolras promises, and kisses him again.
#sometimes i write stories#what was the old tag#emotionally constipated revolutionaries#they definitely deserve it this time#anonymous#answered asks
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my classmate and i were talking about kotlc in class and i wrote this in my laptop's sticky note app to show him exactly how dumb the series is
bunch of theories that im 98% sure will be correct + observations about the series' shitty character progression. this is almost word for word from what i typed in front of him. i was unloading my anger at the entire series and aslo the suddenly obvious theories that formulated after i reread 8.5. enjoy my genius
list of blaringly obvious future kotlc plot twists
- master candace is jolie (they never found jolies body, lady candace is a conjurer and member of the black swan for Some Reason, BLACK HAIR DYE IN JOLIES ROOM)
- jensi's brother is blur (the only other known phaser is some foxfire teacher from book 1. sophie's description of him partially phased in is just an older version of jensi)
- wraith is alvar (they say wraith keeps having weird things coming up in his schedule during book 7 when ALVAR'S MEMORY IS ERASED AND HE IS PUT ON HOUSE ARREST, alvar doesn't seem like the fully morally black guy he's written as, no other male vanisher option besides Councillor Velia Is Trans)
- idk trix's identity but probably marella's dad?
stuff in the series i find annoying (and plot holes)
why can't the black swan adults make a plan and tell sophie to roll with it that seems perfectly justified for me but i haven't seen them doing that since book 4
are there other schools besides foxfire and exillium? in books 1 and 8.5 it's implied that there are but in book 4 it's implied that there aren't. what the heck
why does dex have no plot relevance after book 1? cool he's a technopath. cool he makes tech. cool he almost kills fitz. cool he has a crush on sophie. that's all he does after book 1
why is everything after nightfall just FANSERVICE i swear to god. i get everyone ships keefe and sophie but Someone has been shipping sophitz since the first book and is incredibly angry that fitz has had his character trashed like this. that someone is me. i am the last standing person who remembers the first book. at no point during or after book 7 has fitz shown any sign of redemption, which drives me insane (addition: yeah i still agree after a few hours. books 7, 8, and especially 8.5 all read like fanfics where a professional author was given a detailed outline by a 11 year old kotlc superfan and then forced to write a 700 page novel following the exact provided plotline)
another thing i added later: elvin medicine is supposed to taste good but after book 1 sophie does not take a single good tasting elixir? what's with that? i get it if SOME taste bad but at least remember the TWO details given upfront about elf physicians/medicine
(then the classmate started arguing with me about the candace=jolie theory)
she didnt want anyone else to get hurt and decided to keep it a secret, instead trying to settle the fight with the neverseen without anyone getting hurt? (and failed)
or she just quit the black swan and decided to go 24/7 as lady cadence
OR she was grieving so she just became a hermit and tried to help the black swan from afar
remember, lady cadence left for ravagog diplomacy the year that jolie died (this was mentioned in the river hell scene in nightfall i think)
#kotlc#keeper of the lost cities#/ half neg#theory#op#amateur critique/review#review#i still adore the first book in this series but at some point it just starts getting a little too repetitive and fanservice-y#probably books 6 or 7#it's something that can be enjoyed by middle schoolers#(besides me) but it's hard to get engrossed in an inconsistent story that trashes characters people LOVED in the early parts#at this point it's just shannon raking in the money from the sokeefe shippers
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