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kingdaddydaichi · 1 year

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random hcs: k. akaashi (birthday) edition

mostly sfw. teensy weensy bit of nsfw utc (mdni!). even though i'm dedicating the whole month of december to my beloved daichi, i made sure to carve out some time for my kin and dec. 5th birthday boy, keiji akaashi.

Night Owl™️

Has anxiety and is lowkey depressed, but both are well-managed.

The sarcasm is strong with this one.

More of a reader, but fancies himself a writer from time to time (and he’s good at it).

Has written 2 or 3 long ass smut with angsty plot fics on AO3; angst/comfort and mutual pining are his most-used tags.

Writes poetry, but has never told anyone.

Narrows his eyes at you sometimes when you're talking, which makes you think he’s suspicious of you or that he doesn’t like you, but in reality he’s intrigued and fascinated by you. That’s why he keeps asking you hard questions.

Doesn’t use emojis.

Shamelessly pedantic; says "well actually" a lot.

Stares out of windows at rain; looks like he's daydreaming but is actually having hypothetical philosophical debates in his head or world-building an entire novel he'll probably never write.

A regular at Onigiri Miya (may or may not have a crush on Osamu 👀).

Listens to classical music while reading/editing; it helps him focus.

Took piano lessons as a kid but says he's horrible at it now (he really is); still, he can't help but tickle a few ivories every time he gets near a piano; likes the way the keys feel under his graceful fingers.

Hooks you the fuck up with manga. You know about shit that happens before it's even published. And you're sworn to secrecy, which you honor. It's way more fun to see people's reactions after keeping spoilers to yourself for weeks or longer.

Drinks his body weight in coffee every week an inordinate amount of coffee.

Owns an old ass typewriter and a floral silk writing robe.

HATES Grammarly; thinks people should just learn proper grammar, damn it.

Falls asleep with his glasses on sometimes. Lying together, you notice his breathing has evened out. His heart rate steadies you. And you look up at him to find his chin resting above your head with a book lying beneath his limp hand on his chest, rising and falling with grace.

Speaking of, something about him glows when he sleeps? like he has this angelic aura about him, i feel like? Idk. Subtle and so finely tuned that you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s like an exquisite detail. Understated. Graceful, even, in that whatever it is doesn’t jump out at you; without moving, he holds sway without you knowing it. And you can’t quite figure out why you can’t seem to stay away from him for very long.

He is hard to describe. What you see is not what you get with keiji. There are worlds - universes even - inside of him that no one else will ever see or comprehend, but you will feel them. They’ll have you falling, rapt by his gravity. And, like gravity, he silently holds things together, pulling you in with his emerald eyes every time he narrows them.

You smile lovingly and reach for his readers, easing them off the tip of his nose where they’ve fallen in his sleep. He’d probably blush if he knew how かわいすぎ (super cute) he looks with his black, rectangle frames lying nearly sideways on his pretty face. But you don’t tell him about it. It’s a secret about him that even he doesn’t know that you keep all to yourself. He’d probably stop falling asleep with his glasses on if he knew and, well, you want him to fall asleep with his glasses on just so you can carefully pull them away from his face. You fold them and place them neatly on your nightstand because you don’t want to risk waking him up by climbing over him to set them on his side.

He, on the other hand, will gladly lean over you to reach for his glasses, put them on, then kiss you on your cheek before burying his nose against your neck and breathing you in. He’ll shamelessly snake an arm around you, his nimble fingers brushing your bare nipple. He knows what he’s doing. His hands are grifters. Copping feels and ghosting over you while his gravelly, naked chuckle vibrates against your bare back when you squirm and moan. Your body resonates, your skin sings with the touch of his fingertips like a tightly wound and pitch-perfect string.

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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 3 years

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Inked

Still on hiatus. But I found an old piece of writing and I revamped it just a smidge! It was originally published in 2018 on calumh-excess. Which is now deactivated. Hooray for finding pieces!

Calum's been watching Jay for a while. She's cute, talented, but a bit of mystery. Should he really give into her? What will it take for him to admit he has a crush?

Enjoy my masterlist (on hiatus)

______________

He watched her sometimes for far too long. The way her tongue stuck out as she pulled the skin and her hand worked steadily with the needle made it hard for him to resist. Her face always seemed to catch the harsh fluorescent lights and reflect it back so that it twinkled against her skin. A slight sheen, but nothing just of ethereal. He wasn’t even interested in any new ink, not seriously anyway. He had slowed on the ink train, but the shop his tattoo artist owned was a nice place to hang out sometimes. When he wanted to get out of his house but didn’t want to actually go somewhere, he could hang out here, listening to the buzz of the tattoo gun, poke his hand at trying a design here or there. They weren't great. He hadn't considered him this kind of artist, but the shop felt like a second home.

Besides, having her around was a more than welcomed bonus.

He wasn’t even sure what it was about her. She showed up about a year and a half ago, under an apprenticeship. Calum’s artist was unsure of her, much like everyone else that asked to work under him. A hazard of the job, according to the job, according to Calum's artist. However, her drawings spoke volumes; the colors and line work were impeccable. She had talent and knew it without being cocky about it. Well, sometimes she wasn’t. Calum watched her run into the occasional asshole that tried to belittle her; she always put her foot down in those situations. He didn’t fault her.

Today’s no different. When Calum walks in, he greets the guy at the front desk, eyes searching for her. He spots her in the back with her oversized frames creating a small glare over her brown eyes. He never quite got the appeal of the grandma-shaped glasses trend, but on her, they worked. She looked wise but soft. The glass pulled him in, felt like she was seeing into his soul. Maybe she was; maybe the pain made people more vulnerable than they anticipated--entrusting someone, a stranger in some ways, to permanently mark you and not fuck it up. Whatever the reason, looking at her felt timeless. Like she had seen it all, and you are just waiting for you to spill all the secrets.

“You finally going to get some new ink?” Calum’s artist teases.

Calum shakes his head, turning his attention away from her. “You finally took her training wheels off?”

“Your girlfriend’s got mad skills. I couldn’t baby her forever. Jay works hard on each piece, learned fast. Got a steady ass hand and pretty gentle for handling a needle.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, because you haven’t hardly even talked to her. Go for it, you wuss. What’s the worst she says? No?”

Calum exhales a chuckle. "I mean, the worst she stabs me with the tattoo gun. But considering the ink I'm already sporting, I doubt that's really all that bad.”

“Jay would not do that unless you asked for it, ff course. But really, go on, ask her out.”

Calum glances back at Jay. It’s a nickname. No one in the shop calls her by her full name. The only reason Calum heard it was when a client came asking for her. Jay was quick to correct them.

She wipes, clearing excess ink, before dipping back into the small cup. Jay smiles up at her client. Calum's sure they appreciate the reprise. Getting tattoos weren't always fun, but bearable enough to forget about it and get more.

Calum turns his gaze away. “I recommended you to a friend,” he says, hoping that he’ll escape the teasing. It’s not likely to happen. But at least he tries to minimize the ridicule.

"I appreciate it. Are they a first-timer?"

"A second-timer, but they're visiting town and want some new ink. I figured best not to fuck them over."

The two men laugh before Calum's escorted back to look through some new designs. Just in case something sparks his interest. Calum's visit is supposed to be short, but there's not much else on his to-do list for the day. He could kill a few hours here.

When Calum comes out from the back, after spending too much time pretending art was ever a talent of his, he looks for Jay again. She’s not in her corner, nor is she at the front. Calum shrugs, figuring she might have gone for lunch, or home depending.

As Calum walks to his car, he checks his phone. Nothing major's happened.

“Leaving so soon?” A voice states. Calum knows that voice, a little gravelly, mostly sweet. He’s dreamt of it every so often. He prays to hear it when he visits the shop.

He turns to Jay, who leans against the bricks. A vape is wrapped in her fingers. “Gotta get some dinner, maybe make a run to the grocery store," Calum returns. "I've gotten lazy."

She nods. “This reminds me that I can't survive off BLTs forever," she laughs.

"You could try, but I think you'd need other vegetables and some fruit in that mix too."

She pushes up on her glass with a nod. "Ah, yes, gotta get the whole food pyramid." It goes silent between them and Calum gives another nod, raising a few fingers to signal his departure while still keeping his phone in a secure enough grip.

"Hey, wait!" Jay calls out again, taking a half step forward. Calum turns to her. "Can I give you something before you leave?”

Calum nods, not trusting his voice. What would she give him? She nods back to the front door, taking back that initial half-step. “It's inside. Give me like two minutes.”

She disappears inside and Calum stands, his phone still in his hands, staring at the spot she once stood. Just as quickly as she disappeared, Jay reappears. In hand is her portfolio. She flips through before stopping and slides the heavy-duty drawing paper out.

Calum stares down at the green and black drawing. It’s his face, for the most part, that stares back at him. It’s distorted by a crystal ball that glows green. Inside are some instruments and something else, but right now he can’t really put it all together. His eyes keep moving over the lightning bolt, the crystal ball, the uncanniness of his face on a piece of paper, his three-dimensional face somehow translated perfectly into a 2-D space.

“Holy shit, this is amazing,” he breathes. “Thank you,” he says looking back up to her.

She shrugs with a smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Seriously, this is so fucking awesome. I’m going to frame it,” he gushes. He’s too excited to be nervous, or be embarrassed. "What are the dimensions?"

“I'm just really glad you don’t find it too creepy. I was watching you a couple weeks ago when you stopped by. It just sort hit me, the image of the crystal ball and lightning bolt; I had to draw it,” Jay elaborates. "And it's 8.5 by 11--standard printer paper size."

Calum shakes his head, staring over the drawing again. It feels so delicate suddenly in his hands. It’s almost like Jay recognizes the change in his handling. She shuffles her load in her hands and pulls out an empty plastic over. “Here,” she laughs handing it over. “So it doesn’t smudge or anything if you're worried."

Calum slides it in. “Thank you. Again. Seriously.”

“You’re welcome, Calum. Good luck with your grocery store trip and dinner,” Jay nods and then heads back inside. Calum watches the way the denim stretches across her hips, the way her hair billows just a little in the breeze of her strut.

For a moment, Calum can't move. The weight of the paper in his hand is hardly ounces, but it holds him--traps him to the point of the sidewalk. Jay thought enough of him to draw him. What did it all mean? Should he have found the courage to ask her out? He could walk back inside. But what if she didn't like him like that? Would it be too weird?

Calum blinks up into the hardly settling sun and thinks to himself, the second he can come back here, it better be with a bit more courage and possibly a gift certificate. No one can be made about free food, right?

It’s months before Calum can visit the shop again. The tour is a whirlwind and he only gets a few days off between legs. Not long enough to get back home or feel like he had any energy to drive out to the shop. But now that he's settled back in at home, he knows exactly where he's going.

It’s not his typical practice to just walk in and ask for a tattoo. But given the ink already on him, worse things could happen. When he pulls open the door, he notices it's kind of slow. Jay greets him at the front desk. “Hey, stranger,” she grins.

“Hey, how are you?” he asks in return.

“Pretty good. How was it? The tour? See any cool places?”

He nods. “Yeah, got to explore a few cities.” He taps his fingers against the wooden desk. “Do you have an appointment anytime soon?”

Jay shakes her head. “My 2 o’clock had to reschedule. I’m here until 4 before I see anyone. Why? What's tickling your fancy?”

“I was wondering if you could do a tat for me? I know this is very last minute and if you need me to come in another day this week, I totally can.” His words run into each other; his palms start to sweat. He wipes them on his jeans.

Jay laughs, holding up a hand. “Whoa, pump the brakes. One, what are you looking for?”

“You know that drawing you did for me?” She nods. “I was kind of hoping you could create something with just the crystal ball and lightning bolt. I know the drawing itself is kind of big.”

A grin lifts her cheeks; Calum’s heart settles for a second. “I think I can do that. Where are you thinking to put it?”

“Inner bicep.” He watches her gaze land on his arm. The t-shirt is baggy, he at least thought about that with enough advance.

“Give me 30 minutes to come up with some sketches.” Jay pushes away from the front desk and heads to the back, but not for calling to the shop to watch the front desk.

Calum slides into the seat at the front, leg bouncing as he settles down. This isn’t even his first tattoo, but the nerves flood his body. His scalp tingles. The thirty minutes move by too fast, but also too slow simultaneously. The seconds feel like hours but move by milliseconds.

Eventually, Jay resurfaces, waving him over to her. He walks back and looks at the sketches she places out in front of him. There are two different ones. One’s a bit more minimalistic, which is her style, with the lightning bolt in the background and a simple crystal ball at the point. The other is a bit bolder, the ball has a slightly warped edge where it connects to the bolt. It looks like the bolt is melting the glass ball.

“I can whip up more if neither one of them are quite right. But I wasn’t sure if it wanted something a bit more crisp and sharp or not,” Jay explains.

Calum admits that most of his tattoos are more cleaned up and sharp. He likes the idea of playing with a new style. “I like the second one,” he says, tapping it.

“You sure?” He nods, he’s never been more sure of something in his life. “Which bicep? Let me line it up and make sure it’ll fit.”

Calum lifts his left arm up for her. Laying the stencil over his skin, Jay notes she has to make a couple small tweaks. But after that, she’ll be ready. They discuss full color, or just outline, or shading, price, and a few other details before Jay concludes with, “Hop in my seat. I’ll be there soon.”

Calum nods and walks over to her station. Her stuff is already laid out, probably for her canceled 2 o’clock. It’s about five more minutes before Jay returns with the final stencil. Calum rolls up the sleeve of his shirt before she places the stencil. Happy with the placement, he stretches out on the table.

Jay gets herself ready before she brings the needle over his skin. The first puncture always makes him jolt a little, the first jab of pain causes his heart to race. “Do you plan on relaxing now that you're back home?"

"Yeah, for a little bit. I might go see my family, but I know we'll be back in the studio soon. Anything exciting happen while I was gone?"

"I mean exciting things happen every day at this place. But it's not like I could recall them all now."

Calum hums, acknowledging her statement, but not quite sure what to say next. Luckily, Jay's faster to fill in the silence. "You do realize you didn’t have to get a tattoo to have a real conversation with me?” Jay teases, pushing up her glasses.

Calum’s cheeks heat. “It’s not like that,” he chuckles.

“Well, that’s how it seems.”

“You were always busy when I stopped by. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Not always,” she laughs. “But it’s alright. You’re going to have plenty of time while I’m stabbing you to say all those things you didn’t.”

A chuckle escapes him; of course, Jay would have this sense of humor. “Wow, I can’t believe I’m paying so much for people just to stab me and act as a therapy. Maybe I am a masochist.”

“So are a lot of people. Sometimes you just take the emotional pain out in the physical realm.”

“I always imagined people that worked in a tattoo shop to be more heavily tatted,” Calum hums, taking in scattered ink across her arms and one pokes out from the V in her t-shirt.

“I focused it more on my back and legs and not so much my arms. I’m getting there. So, why this one today?”

Calum goes to shrug, but stops himself as he hears the gun nearing his skin again. “Not really sure. It looked cool. I guess it also serves to remind me that fate isn’t linear. There’s going to be twists and turns, maybe some trouble. And that’s okay. Don’t be afraid of the journey. Also, it's really fucking cool art.”

Jay hums her laugh, “Why thank you. Wise brain you got there. Besides, it seems like you also have people you keep close to you.” She eyes the initials and the name under the bird. “Whoever they are to you, I hope you all stay close.”

“Those are my parents' initials,” he explains. “And my sister’s name. They’ve been with me through it all--I love them dearly.”

“So sweet. I wish my parents and I were closer. I tattooed my brother’s jersey number on me. It was my first tattoo.”

“What did he play?”

“Soccer, or for your kind, football.”

“Hey now, it’s played with the feet, it makes much more sense.”

Jay laughs, wiping off excess ink. She cocks her head to the side a little, then goes back in for the black ink. “I’m only teasing. Us Americans are so dumb sometimes. Like why is our football not called something else? Literally, the only thing that happens with the feet is the running. We carry the fucking ball.”

“I’ve wondered that as well!” he laughs. "Does your brother still play?"

“Yeah, the whole knucklehead still plays for his college.”

“What position?”

Jay laughs. “I'll have you know my job as the older sister is to show up and cheer him on. Something defensive? I don’t remember off the top my head.”

“I’ll give you credit for that. I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“He does until he sees with me in face paint on and then he’s acting like he doesn’t know me. Oh, oh wait, I think remember what he does. It’s defensive,” she pauses, lips pursed together, “something fielder.”

“Defensive midfielder?” he asks.

“Yeah, that. But like I said, I show up when I can and scream. That’s it. When he’s old enough, I’ll buy him a beer after his games too.”

“How old is he?”

“Nineteen, we’re three years apart.”

“The only sibling you have?”

“Nah, got a baby sister too. She’s fifteen. If you’re impressed by my eyeshadow thank her. Because she’s the one that taught me how to do it.”

Calum finds himself staring at the red and gold coloring her eyelids. “It looks really nice,” he breathes.

“Why thank you.” She pauses to bats her eyelashes. “I even managed to get those godforsaken falsies on right too. They look good, but the raise hell.”

“I think you’re the first woman I’ve met in LA that’s not obsessed with makeup,” he notes.

“Oh, you were doing so well. There are a lot of people of who aren’t huge in the makeup scene.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he tries to backtrack. “I’m sorry. In my experience, it’s not like that. They’re hiding the fact they aren’t wearing makeup--embarrassed by it or something.”

Jay nods, pushing up her glasses yet again. “Yeah, it’s not easy. We’re told to be perfect, but in reality, we’re just like everyone. We’re human, imperfect and flaw-full and beautiful.”

“Not in spite of, but because of.”

“Exactly,” she chuckles. Silences settles in around them. Calum wonders why she said she was closer to her family, but the way she talks about her siblings doesn’t match. She’s cheering her brother on at his game; she’s sitting down to learn makeup with and from her sister.

“Can I ask a bit of a personal question?” he asks.

“What kind of personal? Do I get a lifeline?”

Cal exhales a laugh. “You can always say no.”

“Hit me with it.”

“Why say that you’re family isn’t close but you clearly take a lot of pride in your siblings?”

“An observant one on my table, I see. It’s my parents. They don’t like that I’m pansexual, say I’m going to hell. My siblings don’t fucking care. I’m still the crazy-ass sister that loves and supports them.”

With a hum of acknowledgment from Calum, it goes quiet again around them for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He knows it doesn’t really fix anything for her; it doesn’t take away the potential years of her suffering. It’s the only thing he can offer her though. It feels right to say.

“Oh, no need for you to be sorry. It’s not like you threw me out of the house.”

“Ouch. You’re making it though right?”

“Yeah, now that I work here, things are on the up and up.”

“That’s good; I’m glad.”

“Thanks.”

“Favorite tattoo you’ve done?” he asks, wanting to hear her voice again.

“This one,” she laughs. “Though I had someone ask for a pin-up witch, which was also pretty fucking cool to do.”

Calum remembers seeing that on her Instagram. “That one was amazing! Her lips looked so good; I know that’s a strange thing to admit.”

“Don’t worry. I am quite proud of that myself.”

“Do you have a favorite tattoo on you?”

“The blue jay on my shoulder. My parents would take me on walks when I was still an infant. According to the legend, while they were sitting on a park bench a blue jay landed on me. I didn’t cry; it didn’t hurt me. It just landed for a second and then flew off. They called me Blue Jay ever since. I just shortened the nickname as I got older.” She gives one more wipe. “Finished. Check it out.”

Calum sits up, walking over to the mirror. He grins seeing the melting ball sitting against his skin. He grins over to Jay. “It looks amazing. Thank you.”

“No problem.” They head back over to her station. Jay cleans it and wraps the fresh ink. Calum carefully gets his sleeve back down with a little help from Jay. He pays their agreed price with his card, but slides two fifties over to her. “You do know that’s more than double a twenty percent tip right?”

Calum shrugs. “Is it? I’m bad at math,” he grins. “Treat your sister to a new palette or something. Treat yourself to something.”

“Thank you. Now next time, you come by, I hope we don’t talk while I’m stabbing you repeatedly.”

Calum shakes his head, a grin still on his face. Of course. He had forgotten to get the gift certificate. But possibly asking Jay to dinner wouldn't be such a bad idea. “Give me your number and I can promise the next time we talk, it won’t in your chair.”

She holds out her hand, waiting. He hands her his phone, after unlocking it. She puts her number in. She goes to hand the phone back but just before his fingers touch it, she draws it back. "I mean it--actually text me. I adore memes, dogs, TikToks, your favorite songs."

"I'll actually talk to you. I promise."

Jay hands over his phone with a smile. Calum steps outside the glass doors. Why should he wait? He could do it now. For fuck sake, the last hour had been the groundwork for a clear sign a date was absolutely an option. His fingers hovering over her name. He taps it, and then presses for a call. Holding the phone to his ear, he listens to it ring for a second.

“I can still see you, you know?” Jay laughs.

Calum turns around, catching her leaning against the front desk. “I told you the next time we talked you wouldn’t be inking me.”

“What can I help you with, Calum?”

“Dinner, tonight-- I may have ordered too many appetizers for just little old me."

Her laugh trickles in over the speaker. She drops her head, giving it a shake before looking back up to him in the afternoon sun. “I think I can help you with that. Give me the time and place."

Calum rattles off the name of a restaurant that he had been wanting to try. Nothing too upscale, but not something that would be too casual. "How does 8 sound?"

"I love it there. I'll see you at 8."

“Bye, Jay.”

“Bye, Calum.” As he walks to his car, his phone buzzes yet again. This time a text from his artist, I’m being fucking replaced, I see. I can’t be too mad since it’s Jay. Calum laughs as he slides into his car. Maybe he is getting replaced; maybe he’s not. Calum’s not sure. He is sure that he needs to figure out if he can make reservations and what to wear for tonight.

#calum hood #calum hood fanfic #calum hood blurb #calum hood imagine #calum hood 5sos #calum 5sos #5sos fanfic #5sos imagine #5sos fic #calum hood fic #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fanfic #5 seconds of summer fic #5 seconds of summer imagine #h writes

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wherethingscomebackx · 4 years

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Top 25 Larry fics of 2019

It’s that time again!

You may be familiar with these lists:

Top 25 Larry fics of 2016

Top 25 Larry fics of 2017

Top 25 Larry fics of 2018

As always, I read a lot of fic and the majority of it is Larry. I like making lists and I like Larry so I thought I’d do some minimal research of the top 25 larry fics published/completed in 2019 in order of least to most kudos (with links). All of these fics are top notch so you should all check them out!

25.) Foolishy Laying Our Hearts on the Table by @runaway-train-works (11k)

“You think Harry wants that?”

“Dunno. Maybe. Wanna make him happy.” Harry takes advantage of the red light he’s pulled up to turn and look properly at Louis’ face. He’s not even looking in Harry’s direction though, focused instead on something out of his side window, head drooped, mindlessly playing with the string of his hoodie between his fingers, lost in his own world somewhere. For some reason, it makes Harry’s spine straighten.

“Because he’s your best mate?” Harry questions carefully.

“He’s my boyfriend.”

He couldn’t have heard him right. “What?”

Louis releases a deep breath, still not turning around. Harry wonders who he thinks he’s talking to right now. “He’s so pretty. Want to kiss him all day long. And buy him a big house and give him presents and marry him.”

The one where Harry is in love with his best friend Louis but doesn't think he stands a chance until some wisdom teeth and a rather unusual confession might just change his mind.

24.) Tainted Saints And Velvet Vices by @toomanydreamers (126k)

A self-fulfilling Hogwarts AU in which Louis is new to seventh year and Harry is the resident devil-may-care Slytherin set to make his entire experience a living misery. Due to less than favourable circumstances they're forced to forge an unwilling, tentative relationship for their own survival. Repressed emotions, decidedly unromantic ballroom dancing, Triwizard Tournament tasks, creative jinxes and twilight flying above the Forbidden Forest ensue.

23.) all we can do is keep breathing by @avocadolouie (310k)

“Harry, I-I’m so sorry…” Louis stutters out, trying to keep his voice level and even, to portray a depiction of strength, but with the way Harry is looking at him, staring at him like he has a personal passage way straight to Louis’ soul, it’s so hard, nearly impossible.

That simple opening phrase, that short introductory acknowledgement that is often rushed out so easily, painlessly, at a safe distance. Giving a doctor the ability to portray empathy without true emotion, without feeling the full brunt and sheer force of the underlying pain itself.

But Louis feels it, he feels the crushing agony laced behind the phrase, he feels the weight of the painful words slipping from his lips, the cause and effect that the three-word expression holds. The distantly empty “I’m so sorry” that doctors throw out in self-preservation, isn’t at all empty for him. Louis recognizes it, he understands it, he feels it.

a fated story of two broken and battered boys who barely survived the unimaginable and how the love of one little brave girl defies all the odds and somehow puts them back together.

22.) Raise a Glass to the Four of Us by @2tiedships2 (25k)

Louis stared at his luggage.

Well. Apparently not his luggage, because the clothing he was looking at currently was a: worth more than everything he currently possessed, b: not his size at all, and c: more suited for a fancy ass lawyer than a holiday in NYC with his best mates.

“Ooh, nice loafers,” Niall said as he pulled one out of the suitcase. “I love the rainbows.”

“Okay,” Liam began. “What do you want to do first? Eat, shop for new clothes, or spend hours on the phone with the airline?”

Louis continued to stare at the luggage.

21.) You Have to Retreat to Advance by @2tiedships2 (18k)

“What am I going to do, Perrie? I can’t go on this retreat by myself. My boss literally said he wants to meet my omega.” Harry paused. “Okay, not literally but he definitely expects me to be bringing him.”

“Don’t people go on these things by themselves?” Perrie asked.

Harry shrugged. “Of course but that’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“My boss is expecting to meet my omega! I don’t have an omega!”

“Is this a paying gig?” Perrie asked.

“You mean paying an omega to spend the weekend with me? I’m sure the resort has nice amenities. Does that count?”

“I take that as a no,” Perrie said with an eye roll. “It’s okay, Louis might be willing to do it for free.”

“Who’s Louis?”

Or the one where Harry is expected to bring his longterm omega to the company's mountain retreat. Since he hadn't told anyone that they'd broken up months ago, he now has to find someone willing to play the part.

20.) A Darker Shade of Love by LittleSpoonStyles94 (750k)

Louis is a 30 year old multi-billionaire with a very dark past. He is violent and is a sadist with a taste for pain. Harry Styles is a 19 year old student who sets out to London after being kicked out by his homophobic father to follow his dreams. He wants to go to the best University to study but he needs a lot of money so he starts to work as a part time stripper at a gay club to support his studies and his life. The club he works at, Garland's, is part owned by Louis Tomlinson. When they meet, its life changing for the both of them.

19.) You Still Make Sense to Me by @amories (37k)

Harry, Louis, and their family navigate life together through the years.

18.) Like Water Over Fire (Like Water On Fire) by @mcssymon (119k)

“I’m sorry your highness, I think I misheard you, did you really say that you are hoping to meet your husband?” Oh god, Louis panicked. Was Prince Harry gay? Was he even allowed to be gay? Surely he wouldn’t be allowed to have a selection from a group of men, right?

Prince Harry looked partly like he wanted to laugh, but also very, very nervous about what he had just admitted, “Yes, sir, you heard correctly”

Or Prince Harry has 46 men and 13 weeks to find the husband of his dreams, Louis has a limited amount to time to live out a royal fantasy. They might just be exactly what the other needs.

17.) waiting for the tides to meet by @nauticalleeds (59k)

Louis lets out a deep breath, thinking about Harry’s soulmate. Thinking about how Harry’s soulmate is probably as beautiful as Harry, some person that Louis cannot compare to, and how the universe has chosen them to be Harry’s. Fuck the universe. “Fuck you,” he calls out to the universe. He’s aware of how crazy he sounds.

Maybe he is crazy, with how he’s falling for Harry. And fuck that, too.

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

Featuring a lovely cup of OT5, a road trip down the coast, and a scene where Harry eats a whole head of lettuce. Don't ask why.

16.) Call Answered by @vondrostes (249k)

The day after his 27th birthday, Harry Styles attempts suicide. Louis is flown to his bedside to unravel the mystery of why he did it after a flash drive is found with a note attached, addressed to Louis. On it are a collection of 78 songs, all written for different dates from their past.

15.) Counterbalance by @louandhazaf (44k)

Harry Styles loves two things: teaching ballet and racing motorcycles. Those two worlds collide when his greatest rival on the track, Louis “Tommo” Tomlinson brings his tiny siblings to Harry’s class.

14.) Everywhere and Nowhere by @2tiedships2 (16k)

Niall took a seat and said, "Apparently Louis' downstairs neighbor is a fan of giving Louis creepy gifts. Maybe I should go introduce myself and tell him that Louis actually prefers food."

"What has he given you?" Liam asked.

Louis shrugged as it were no big deal. "There was a rabbit's foot keychain on the door a little after he left from introducing himself and there was a small teddy bear sitting by my door tonight. Obviously I can't prove it's from him, but they seem to have his scent. I could be wrong though."

"Wow," Liam said, looking deep in thought. "That's old school."

"What's old school?" Niall asked. "Giving creepy gifts?"

"I've never known an alpha to do it, to be honest, but he's courting you."

Louis couldn't contain his look of disbelief directed at Liam. "He's courting me. Like some sort of romantic shit they'd do in the 1800s or something?"

13.) Swallow The Knife by whoknows (76k)

“You came,” Louis says, still breathless, clinging to Harry, uncaring that his sweat is getting all over Harry’s presumably clean dad shirt, or that he’s making Harry hold up all of his weight.

“Of course I came,” Harry says. He shifts, one arm curled underneath Louis’ arse, the other spreading wide in the middle of Louis’ back. “If I ignored you every time you pissed me off we would have stopped being friends a long time ago.”

Louis already knows that, of course. It doesn’t do anything to stop the pleased squirm in his belly every time Harry proves it, though. They fight like nobody’s business, both of them too stubborn to pull their punches when they’re arguing, and it used to get them in trouble, but they always make up.

Adrenaline makes Louis loose-lipped, and they both know it. He tightens his arms around Harry’s neck, buries his face in his hair. “I missed you,” he confesses, quiet. “Doesn’t feel the same up there by myself.”

12.) and oh, all of your saturdays could end up in woe by ihavetoomuchfreetime (70k)

a fic in which louis' in a long-term relationship with an abusive asshole, niall, zayn and liam are so far but not really, and harry is that all too friendly guy who works in sainsbury's.

11.) thinking about the t-shirt you slept in by @absoloutenonsense (52k)

Harry's alpha fraternity donates to a local thrift shop (because of Liam's latent crush on a cute beta in his lecture). Louis' financial situation (and confusing omega instincts) lead him to make some interesting fashion purchases. Lots of pizza, feelings, and not-really-lying.

10.) Consequences by @allwaswell16 (78k)

Two years ago Harry let his powerful family come between him and the love of his life, something he deeply regrets. Louis has tried to move on from their devastating break up. Sometimes, he even thinks he has. It only takes one moment to freeze them back in time.

An amnesia au

9.) Strawberries & Cigarettes by @dimpled-halo (76k)

Harry looks up and immediately freezes. Next to Ms. Archie stands the boy from just the other day. The boy with the leather jacket and chipped black nails, that might or might not be sketched in the very book Harry has just placed on the table in front of him. The leather jacket is missing today, probably because they aren’t allowed as part of their required uniform attire, but Harry can still see the fading black nail polish on his nails, and eyeliner around his eyes. Harry’s mouth goes a little dry. This boy is so intriguing to him.

“Ye-yes, Ms. Archie?” Harry tries to play it cool, but he’s almost positive that his cheeks are burning red, and he’s relieved neither of them can tell how fast his heart is beating in his chest.

The boy seems to also recognize Harry, because his lips curve into a knowing smirk.

“Harry is at the top of his class. He’s your best bet at getting familiar with things around here.” She explains.

Louis nods, his smirk still very prominent on his face. “Thank you Ms. Archie. I’ll be sure to take advantage of young Harold here.”

Summary: Two stories, eleven years, and the two boys that never stopped loving each other.

8.) Pain makes people change by Deidei (113k)

An organization called Canis Lupus existed solely for changing humans imprisoned in their wolf form back to their human form. Some people after experiencing some traumatic event can only ‘’protect’’ themselves from the pain by forgetting everything. To do that, to feel safe, they shift into their wolf form.

Which they'll be stuck in forever should no one intervene.

Louis Tomlison went through a traumatic experience at the age of twelve in which he lost his mother, to make the pain go away he shifted into a wolf and fled. He survived in the wild as a wolf for five years until Canis Lupis caught him... Though he wasn't alone, he had a pup at his side.

7.) Pretty Please (With Sugar On Top) by @angelichl (113k)

Harry is a sugar baby omega who cons rich alphas for a living. Louis is a rich alpha with too much self-control.

6.) Enemies with benefits by ssii8 (267k)

Where Harry is captain of basketball team and Louis is captain of football team and they hate each other. But somehow this doesn't stop them from having sex.

And everything is perfect until they start to feel something more.

5.) Ready To Fall by whoknows (21k)

“Ninety and rising,” Nick says triumphantly, as though making Harry’s heartbeat pick up by thrusting an obscenely attractive person in front of his face is any kind of success. “Louis Tomlinson has just walked into our control room and suddenly our dear Harry Styles has lost all ability to speak. Could this be some kind of strange coincidence?”

“I hate you,” Harry hisses, forcing his eyes back into Nick’s direction, uncaring that the mic must have picked it up. “I thought we agreed that you were going to play fair.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nick denies, except he’s holding up a picture of Louis’ face now, sharp cheekbones prominent, soft lashes nearly sweeping against his cheeks as he looks down, and his fucking mouth –

“A hundred and two!” Nick crows, all but clapping his hands together in glee. “The highest it’s ever been!”

“To be fair, I did bend over the desk on purpose,” Louis’ voice comes crackling in the headphones. Harry practically breaks his neck whipping his head around at the sound of it, gaping at him through the glass panel. “You can’t really blame him for getting a little excited about that, can you?”

4.) Close to Nowhere by @angelichl (34k)

“I will kill you in your sleep,” Louis threatened as he quickly stepped out of his jeans.

“I don’t think that would work very well baby, seeing as you talk to dead people all the time.”

“I’ll kill you in your sleep and ignore your ghost. And don’t call me that.”

Louis and Harry are psychics who kind of hate each other. They go to Tennessee to investigate a haunting.

3.) Play Pretend, Find a Friend? by @angelichl (40k)

They had to pull back for air. Louis surveyed the guy’s face, in awe of his blown pupils and sharp jawline, the way their shared spit glistened on his lips.

“Hi,” he breathed. He blinked, and came back to himself a little bit, blushing at his own boldness. “Sorry. Is this okay?”

The stranger removed his right hand from the curve of Louis’ waist in order to cup his jaw, tilting it up to the angle he desired. He pressed their lips together, murmuring, “Definitely.” And then he kissed harder.

When Louis sees his ex-boyfriend kissing a random girl at a party, he acts out of blind jealousy. He kisses the first guy he can find. It turns into a thing.

INSPIRED BY CLOUDS.

2.) Let Me Feel Your Heartbeat by @angelichl (34k)

Harry is 98% sure Louis hates him. So he feels like his bewilderment is justified when the omega offers to help him through his rut.

1.) All My Colours by IceQueenRia (267k)

Green… yellow… red. Red! RED!!!

Some people were born Dominant and others submissive. Sixteen year old Louis Tomlinson was a submissive and was proud to be so… until he was forced to his knees for the first time. The man before him was every subs nightmare, an abusive Dom, the kind who didn’t believe in the colour ‘red’ unless it was in the form of blood.

There were others, but Louis was the ‘favourite’ and he was the one the Dom liked to ‘play with’ the most. In fact, when the rescue team arrived, Louis was the one currently providing ‘service’ to the Dom.

Louis, Zayn and Niall are abused subs. Liam Payne is their devoted new Guidance Counsellor who just wants to make Niall smile and hear Zayn speak. As for Louis, he knows his guidance won’t be enough to help the boy heal. No, Louis Tomlinson needs something very special and very specific. He needs Harry Styles.

#larry #larry stylinson #harry styles #louis tomlinson #fic rec #larry fic rec #one direction #1d #one direction fan fiction #larry fan fiction #larry is real #larry fic #dom/sub fic #alpha/beta/omega verse #1d fan fiction

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benhardypout-archive · 3 years

Photo

004. thank you, alex

a/n: so this is one of my Wonty "comfort fics" - so it's far from canon or never followed the original plot - which i would probably never publish (unless there's one i would like to share), but this time in this fic which i titled "Dirty Little Secret", I'm just going to post some chapters which I enjoyed writing. So the number is the chapter of this fic, and this is the chapter 4, hence, 004. Enjoy reading! 🙈

Perhaps, my crush on Monty was getting out of hand.

I flipped through the Liberty yearbook which Tyler lent me only to feast my eyes over the photos of the guy in Jersey no. 32 through the weekend, as I sat on the floor with my back against the bed.

Montgomery de la Cruz, I chanted in my head, reading his name printed in bold letters.

I stopped by a certain picture of his, running my fingers over the glossy paper, tracing his face. Tyler was lucky to have taken this rare shot of him smiling beautifully like this; those white teeth showing. He was leaning back and wearing a blue tank top. For once, he looked really happy…

I should probably ask Tyler the story behind this shot.

My phone rang a message.

I, mindlessly, searched for it, not keeping my eyes away from the image. I could feel my heart expanding by this simple picture of him.

Bringing my phone to my face, there’s a message from Alex: U free this afternoon?

Basically, I'm free for the whole day.

I typed a quick reply: Yes.

And not long after, Alex texted back asking us to meet up at this mall, only a five minute drive.

I wonder if this hang out thing meant anything or just platonic. Anyway, Alex seemed nice. I would love to get to know him more and perhaps get acquainted.

Looking back to the yearbook, I'm so tempted to cut the picture. Or maybe I could just ask Tyler just give me this specific yearbook, like a gift.

* * *

Alex took me bowling. And I'm not so good with the game but so far I'm having fun.

"You're so good at this," I said as Alex hit another strike.

He smiled. "Nah."

"Now, don't be modest on me," I chuckled lightly and took a bowling ball from the rack and positioned it on my hand, adjusting to its weight. Walking by the lane, I put on a stance and ran my tongue over my lower lip, aiming for a strike. Not that I'm expecting to hit one, which of course didn't happen. I looked at Alex, throwing my hands in defeat. "No, not good at this."

Alex went to hit next and of course, another strike. He raises both his arms dramatically and spun around facing me, smiling victoriously, cocking a brow.

"I give up!" I chuckled and sat down by the bench.

"You're named Winston for a reason," Alex commented, sitting beside me.

"What does that mean?"

"Winston, like Winner. Root word, win."

I laughed, throwing my head back a little. "Damn. I think I'm not doing my name justice, then."

"Practice makes perfect."

"Let's just eat. I'm starving."

"Sure."

We walked aimlessly along the mall in silence, with a few side comments about the boutiques or the shops we passed on. Then we saw and spotted some familiar faces. Well, Alex introduced me to some of them, simply pointing from afar and telling their names, since I barely knew anyone from Liberty yet, who also worked here.

Then my stomach decided to embarrass me and did a growl as we reached the food court.

“Someone’s whining,” Alex retorted.

“I know right.”

Since it’s the afternoon, there’s a lot of tables to choose from, not to mention, stalls without queues. A lot of options for us. But we just settled on some corn dogs.

"We should see some movie some time," Alex suggested. "How about tomorrow?"

"Oh, okay." I thought back if I had plans. Is looking at pictures of Monty in the yearbook counted as one?

He smiled and told me the time and rendezvous. And then added, "I-it's a date,"

I blinked. "A d-date?"

"I meant friendly date," he quickly clarified, faking a smile. I could see dejection in his eyes.

I wanted to apologize but perhaps I’m just overthinking the situation and putting meaning on how Alex was acting the past days. I may try to brush it off and act like I’m not noticing anything, but it’s there. Yet, he said so himself ‘friendly date’, maybe he really just meant us to be friendly.

"So you like someone else?" Alex asked after a moment which of course caught me off guard. I should’ve expected that question to come. I almost coughed my Coke out. Good thing, I had swallowed it down. My heart began to skip.

Should I tell him?

I avoided his gaze, and took another sip on my drink. "Uhm… yes," I said in a low voice.

"Oh…. right. Of course."

"Alex-"

"I-I'm just asking," Alex cut me off. Though, I’m afraid I’m already ruining this budding friendship and it’s the last thing I wanted. But, if he ever decides and calls off our little friendly movie date, I'd understand.

"I… Maybe I just need some company," he went on, resting his arms on the table as if for comfort. "And I… I actually like Zach," he glanced at me.

Zach. Oh. I know him.

"I kissed him," he murmured so low I almost didn’t catch it. Then he snorted, lightly. "But… of course he said he's straight."

"I'm sorry," I said in empathy. I wanted to reach for his hands but then decided against it. Then a scenario flashed in my head where I kissed Monty and then he said the same thing-- Ouch!

"It's all right. Thanks for going out with me, and listening." Alex interrupted, saving me from my disastrous thoughts.

I nodded. But then... he asked the question I’m shit scared to answer.

"May I ask who you like?"

Fuck...

I shifted on my seat. "Oh… uhm…It's..." I looked at him, warily. He was indifferent… yet. Wait till you hear this.

With a deep shaky breath I say, "Monty."

* * *

No words had been spoken since, besides the sensational "What the… fuck?" reaction from Alex who wavered before saying the word. And an awkward "Yep" from me, popping the 'p'.

We just went to our own cars and left after.

I'm sure Alex hated me now, or worse, despised me.

I knew it.

Maybe liking Monty would make you lose some friends-- lose some potential friends, rather. We're not even friends.

Was that what Monty meant when he said I got no friends here, as his own experience? Because people didn't like him?

I received a text from Alex later that night, apologizing from how he reacted. Which relieved me a hundred fold. And then he added…

Alex: But… Monty? I just can't believe it! And I think he's as straight as a ruler.

Winston: It's all right. Still a plastic ruler can be bent.

Alex: Correction. Wooden ruler. It just breaks in half, and he'll just break you.

Okay, I couldn't argue with that.

Winston: I guess. But could you keep a promise not to tell anyone?

Alex: Ok

Winston: Thanks.

Alex: So tomorrow. Same time. Same place. And move on from Monty. There's far better guys than that asshole.

Hope it's that easy…

* * *

I'm glad that Alex didn't change towards me. He still smiled and spoke to me as if I didn't tell him something, which he found horrible.

After buying two movie tickets, we went to the snack bar to buy some popcorn.

"Oh you gotta be kidding me." I heard Alex mutter under his breath, causing me to turn and follow his gaze, only for my world to stop, seeing Monty by the entrance.

I forgot the ability to move until Alex nudged me. I blinked and turned to him. He has this amused smile.

"Seriously, Winston, close your fucking mouth. Some fly would literally rent in there."

I blushed, and sneaked another glance at Monty, longer than necessary, then to the other jocks he’s with. They’re standing by the ticket booth. I shifted closer to Alex and poked his side. "Zach's among them."

"I know. I hate it." Alex then stepped forward as it's our turn. "Two medium-sized popcorn please. Plain... And two cokes?" He told the guy behind the counter and turned to me.

"Coke," I confirmed.

And he went on ordering. But half of my attention was on the noise from the jocks. God… I couldn't believe I would see Monty here.

Oh, fuck.

I desperately searched for any mirror or any surface where I could see my reflection and fixed my hair as I saw them making their way towards us!!!

"Hi, Alex." Zach said beside me. I, discreetly, give Alex another nudge.

Alex barely glanced. "Hi."

"Zachy, I'm gonna have these Hot Tamales," Monty announced, tapping his fingers on the glass display counters, pointing over the Hot Tamales candy bars wrapped in red.

He caught my gaze and it was too late to retrieve my eyes back. So, I threw a soft smile at him, hoping I wasn’t too obvious about my loud attraction.

"Hey, Winston. You and Alex on a date?" he asked instead, and I swore I felt blood rush through my cheeks.

"N-no," I shook my head at once.

"What about you and Zach, Monty? You guys on a date?" Alex cuts in.

"Yeah. Actually it's the four of us, Scott and Charlie."

Scott and Charlie smiled and waved, making Alex roll his eyes.

Zach cleared his throat and looked at Alex. I guessed that maybe he wanted to speak to him… alone, so being a good friend as I am, I stepped aside and took the chance to stand beside Monty. But I made sure to be discreet and just tapped my fingers against the counter, my eyes fixated at the menu posted in front.

Zach whispered something to Alex and I could only catch a few words like 'mad' and 'me', giving me enough hint of what he's saying.

I tensed feeling Monty moved closer to me. "Never thought I'd see you here."

I blushed and glanced at him. "Yeah. Small world."

Then he asked me if we’re going to watch the same movie. A horror one.

“I think we should just sit together, then." Monty suggested, glancing over to Zach and Alex. "Especially, it looks like Zach and Alex have something to talk about."

I chuckled, "Sure." Would love to sit next to you.

"Winston," I heard Alex called and saw that our popcorn was ready. I took one last glance at Monty and uttered a "See you later," before making my way back to Alex.

"What did Zach tell you?" I whispered as we made our way inside the cinema.

"He wants to talk. I said yes."

I just hummed.

"Dammit, Winston. I still like him and I hate it," Alex whined a moment later, making me smile.

We took the seat in the middle section, since it's not too far and not too close, and we could watch properly. Different trailers were being shown and I noticed that there were only a few cinema-goers or maybe only few wanted to see this movie.

Later, I spotted Monty and the group inside looking for a seat, so I gave a secret wave at them, specifically, at Monty. He called his friends after he saw me. Then they made their way to us. I hid a smile. My heart wouldn't shut up about it, and it literally wanted to jump off my chest when Monty took the seat next to me.

Calm down, Winston. I’m afraid he could hear it from here, screaming his name.

Zach tried and asked Alex if he could sit beside him, only receiving a nod from Alex. But I could practically read his mind regretting taking the middle seats, when we could just take the space on either right or left wing, and have all the spaces on our own.

"Are you following me?" I heard Alex mumble to Zach.

"No. I… Monty pointed us here and…maybe I did, by deciding to sit next to you," Zach admitted.

I decided and just diverted my attention to Monty and his Hot Tamales. "Does that taste good?"

"You wanna taste?" He gestured one to my direction. I swallowed, not expecting his sudden offer. Or maybe it's because his shoulder brushed against mine.

"N-no. Thanks."

"Come on," Monty began tearing one package open and handed it to me, "Have some."

I glanced at him and reluctantly reached, staring intently at his hand, tempting to hold it.

"No, don't taste that." One of the jocks interrupted. I stopped. "You will get addicted," he added, grinning.

"Oh, fuck off, Charlie," Monty waved. "Come on. Gimme your hand."

"You're not trying to poison me, are you?" I tried to joke.

And I blushed seeing his boyish smile. "Oh no. It's a love potion," he winked.

Now that sent me. If I happen to be an ice, I've melted by now.

You don't need to give me any love potion, Monty. I wanted to say.

With a trembling hand, I held my palm out and he poured some on it. I uttered a thanks and put everything in my mouth, letting it melt in my tongue.

Charlie was right, it's kind of addicting.

"So?"

"I think I'm in love," I blurted, not breaking eye contact.

He looked away.

Oh no! Wrong move, Winston.

"I mean your friend's right. It's addicting."

He turned back to me and smiled. "I know right." He, then, handed me the Hot Tamales. “Here, have it.”

It would be a shame to take his offer down, so I just took it, our fingers brushing; enough to send electricity down my body. I wondered if he felt it too.

Wishful thinking, Winston.

"Why are you taking Monty's food? It might be contaminated," Alex whispered.

I shrugged him off and offered it to him. "You should try."

"No thanks."

I couldn't help but find Alex's distaste towards Monty, funny. Even though I shouldn't. But I'm afraid I might continue teasing him about it.

The movie finally started. And it's supposed to be scary as it's a horror film. But I'm not a bit scared. However, I'm tempted to hold Monty's hand that was on the armrest between us. But more tempted to pull the armrest up and just lean onto him. Maybe act scared?

As he took his hand away to get some popcorn - since I decided to share my popcorn with him and his friends, who I now know the names of: Charlie and Scott - I, sneakily, placed my hand on the armrest in hopes to be held by him.

Sadly, after he took a handful of popcorn he didn't put his hand back, but my hand stayed where it was. And I just forgot all my attempts on flirting.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed.

And I tensed not because the scene was scary but because his hand, finally, landed on mine. I hid a smile. And when I thought he would notice and take it away, he didn't, and just stayed there. Though, I wasn't sure if he was ever aware of our hands, or he's too focused on the movie to even notice.

My heart pounded so loud, I could barely hear the show, and could hardly concentrate on it, blocking everything around me but only his presence. I’m only aware of the warmth and the weight of his hand on mine, making my throat dry. I just dreamt of kissing him, or simply lean on him, and embrace more of his scent.

Ugh! Shut it, Winston. Try and hold yourself together.

But how, when he’s close like this? Needless to say, his hand on mine?

The movie just ended without me really understanding everything that happened.

Monty made some comments about it, asking me some of it as soon as we got out to the lobby. I just nodded along, agreeing with everything he said. But Charlie argued with him and they went on, leaving me completely clueless, even though we all watched it together. I should've tried and focused on the show, so I could have a proper conversation with him. But until now, the heat of his hand pricked on my skin.

"Winston," Alex called, and began to walk. I hesitated and followed him outside, not giving me the chance to say goodbye to Monty and his friends.

"Are you alright on your own?" he asked

I frowned, blinking once. "Y-yeah."

"I need to go with Zach," he glanced at Zach, who’s busy chatting or probably saying parting words with his buddies, and rolled his eyes back to me. "Said he wants to talk."

"Oh. Sure."

"Again, beware of Monty. Don't be fooled by his good looks."

"So, you admit he looks good."

Alex stammered but soon gave up, sighing. "Whatever Winston. Don't say, I didn't warn you."

"Okay. Have fun with Zach." I gave his shoulder a pat. "And thanks for inviting me. I really had fun," I smiled.

Alex had to roll his eyes again. "I think I know why."

#13rwedit #13rw #wonty #winston williams #montgomery de la cruz #alex standall #zach dempsey #13 reasons why #zalex #winston x monty #zach x alex #*writings #*wonty #*wonty:dirtylittlesecret #*excerpt #otp:igotthegoodsideofyou #*2021 #hope you guyss like!!!! ♥

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sxveme-2 · 3 years

Text

blueberry pancakes // bucky barnes

MASTERLIST

Description: A single mother. Juggling being a mom, a full time pediatrician, and a difficult ex who believed now would be the best time to finally be a father. A soldier ripped out of time. Ex-assassin turned superhero. Learning how to balance a new domestic life with handling demons of his past, while facing the trials of the future. a love story began over something as simple as chocolate chip pancakes with hidden blueberries.

Disclaimer: I do not own any original Marvel characters! All canon plots and canon characters belong to Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. This is an original work. You may not publish it anywhere else

Status: Edited

Note: Takes place after endgame. I have elected to ignore Tony's death and Steve's leaving. Did not happen. Quick Reminder! My works are only published here, AO3 and on Wattpad, thank you.

Chapter Five: The One with the Burnt Pancakes

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 2516

Coming out of a divorce unscathed was more uncommon than its counterpart. Typically, a bit of baggage attaches itself to one or both parties. No matter whether or not divorce rates are through the roof in today's modern era, it still hurt more than words could describe. Especially when it's due to an affair. It creates this sense of unworthiness, and as though you weren't good enough. And when the pair has a child, it makes it ten times more difficult. Knowing that you'll have to break it to the child that their parents will no longer be together, and that they will most likely spend more time with one in comparison to the other.

But, when your child already has a bit of distaste towards your partner, it can make the blow a little softer. Sure, every mother wants their child to have a relationship with their father, other mom, etc. Whatever the situation is, parents, want that. They want to be able to see their child's face when they see their ex-spouse, but sometimes, there's nothing you can do about it. Especially when your ex never put in the effort, to begin with.

Above all, your perception of love changes. and that's exactly what happened to Lily. She lost all belief in herself and didn't believe she could ever find someone who would love her, along with the baggage that she carried alongside her. And that broken heart that she has yet to mend, and honestly, she wasn't sure if she'd ever find someone who could help. To cup warm hands around the two halves and hold them together until they combined once again.

Other things she deemed impossible, was her sitting in a kitchen with the avengers. Earth’s mightiest heroes. The people that destroyed an entire army. travelled to space. Some even having been ripped out of time and thrown into different roles and periods. These people had stories people couldn't even dream of, lived lives people only wished to be able to experience. And here sat Lily, a single mother of an 11-year-old boy, who lived in a domestic area, and worked as a pediatrician. She was minuscule in comparison to the Gods and soldiers that sat around her.

"So, is Hunter’s father around?" a soft voice asked, an accent dripping from the words. It had pulled Lily out of her thoughts of astonishment, as she tried to wrap her head around what was currently happening.

"Hm? Oh, no," Lily spoke, her voice as soft as the gentle ripple of a pond, while she sipped the coffee they had given her. Glancing up, a few of the superheroes looked at her with inquisitive eyes, wondering where he may be, or if he even was to be anymore, "We uh, we divorced four years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the girl continued. Lily had placed her as Scarlet Witch, or Wanda Maximoff. Hunter adored her. He ranted and raved about how cool her abilities were and how she could probably take down an entire army by herself if she wanted to, "He's cute. I've always wanted kids."

Lily nodded along as the conversation continued around her. She stayed as silent as a sleeping lamb, her green eyes glancing around as she tapped her fingers against her coffee mug. She wasn't sure what they wanted her to say. It had been proven time and time again that Lily was the farthest from a talker. Deep inside of her mind, the little voice of self-doubt had convinced her that no one cared about what she had to say. That the only reason people even spoke to her, to begin with, was because it was polite. But she's also been told that the world around her found that shy demeanour endearing, and mysterious. As if she held secrets behind those sealed lips when in reality, Lily was scared that if she spoke, she'd create secrets. Letting the world in on the pain she hid, that she kept locked away in a vault deep within her mind. protecting herself from being destroyed again.

"...So if you ever need a babysitter," Wanda’s voice sang again, yanking Lily away from her deeper thoughts once again, as though the two were tethered. the young blonde's attention perked up as the young girl continued speaking, "I'm your girl."

Was the Scarlet Witch, offering to babysit Lily's eleven-year-old? As in, seriously? Like to pick him up or come down from upstate New York to deliberately take care of him? If it weren't for the fact Lily rarely left the house, and if she did, it was with Hunter, she may have considered the idea. But Lily wasn't one to go out. The noise that came along with the idea of partying or going out on the town always got Lily's heart beating at a much too fast pace. If she was going out, it was to gen's cafe, or with three glasses of wine down and a whole bottle to go. The world was loud and intimidating, and could easily crush Lily's fragile heart and mind with a simple touch. And where would that lead her? Nowhere good, that's where.

"Oh that's sweet, but I don't typically go out, and when I do, he comes with," Lily stated, lips forming a tight smile as she ran her finger along the circular hole atop her mug.

"Really? A girl that's as beautiful as you must get tons of guys and go out on dates. and I see no ring on that finger," the infamous Tony Stark teased while shifting his weight to look at the blonde, "unless there's already a lucky fella."

A laugh of almost disbelief escaped through Lily's full lips as if the idea of Tony Stark calling her beautiful was too good to be true, "Oh no. my best friend tries but I don't date. Already have my hands full with work and Hunter."

"Where do you work?" Steve's voice now chimed in, pushing off the counter he leaned on as Bucky worked away, staying silent. He hadn't spoken a word to Lily since Steve walked her through the threshold of the kitchen, merely a gruff hi before returning to the feverish work he was doing on the pancakes. It was as though he was trying to make them perfect.

"I'm a pediatrician at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital down in Manhattan," Lily answered, her eyes averting from looking at any of the intimidating people around her. Why were they so interested in her? Why did they seriously care so much about her personal life? She just brought Hunter here for a tour, not an interrogation...was this what people did? Like...they wanted to learn more about her? It didn't make sense, she was pretty basic. There was nothing special to her, Lily thought.

"Oh, that's awesome. I have a few-"

"SHIT!"

The large outburst caused everybody to immediately turn their attention to where it came from. Behind the counter, Bucky was waving smoke away from his face that seemed to be billowing from the pan on the stove. He burnt the pancakes. Lily felt a small smile tug at the corners of her lips as she watched him throw a towel at the counter, his face turning a crisp shade of red, like a cherry. The moment his eyes landed on her though, his entire body lit up in a hue of pink it seemed. He grew flustered, biting down on this ever so soft lips he had. Lily was only human, she couldn't help but avert her eyes down to the thin layer of skin. And as if on cue, Wanda let her voice ring through the kitchen.

"Damn it, Barnes! I told you not to cook, and you decide to challenge your abilities in front of our guest?" The ginger exclaimed while standing from her chair, going to help the built man clean his mess.

A few of the others in the room whined, and Lily guessed they had been waiting for a bit to eat. She felt a twang of guilt deep within her, as though it was her fault. But it really wasn't, she wasn't the one making the pancakes. no, she was merely answering the personal questions they all seemed to have for her, as well as constantly glancing at the hall or behind her to see if Hunter was on his way back. Instead, he was now outside with Sam, looking at all of the different artifacts and things that weren't able to be kept inside of the compound.

"You much of a chef, Lily?" James Rhodes (Warmachine, she reminded herself), asked. No matter the amount of mental effort it took, Lily couldn't help but allow the tinge of rose to decorate her full cheeks. They seemed to want to get to know her, and she felt almost...accepted? No, maybe more so welcomed, by these beings of immense power and ability. She allowed her shoulders to relax, and her grip on her mug lessened.

"Nothing impressive, but I do know my way around a kitchen," she responded, tilting her head to the side, causing her blonde locks to dance across her shoulder, "Most nights, I try to make homemade meals for Hunt and I. It's important for a child's development." she finished but noticed how all of their eyes were glued to her. Raising her left eyebrow ever so gently, she let a giggle escape from her throat, "but sometimes I give in and order pizza."

"You should help Bucky out, he's never been the best cook. Got used to boiling everything in the forties, so he makes a mean hot dog," Steve teased, sauntering over in all of his Captain America excellence, "Anything else? Completely lost on him."

"It's a good skill to have. But difficult to master, I suppose." Lily shrugged, crossing her legs over one another as she rested her elbow on the glass table, cupping her chin as she sipped the hot liquid in her cup. She couldn't seem, however, to take her eyes off of the culprit of the burnt pancake smell. The way the muscles in his neck rippled whenever he clenched his jaw. How his metal arm glinted as a small stream of light entered through a window, creating a bright reflection. How his scruff along his chiselled chin seemed to be a bit overgrown underneath.

Her mind began to wander momentarily, a gentle and soft vision dancing itself into her brain. Him sitting on a chair in her bathroom, Lily sitting comfortably on his lap, facing him. His eyes sleepy and his hair unkempt. Her skilled and nimble hand resting on the side of his face as she trimmed underneath his jaw, getting those areas he seemed to miss. His lips parted as he seemed to slowly drift off again, as though Lily's gentle hands were willing him to...

A hand waving in front of her face snatched Lily out of her odd fantasy land. She cleared her throat and looked around her, eyebrows knitting together in confusion, as though she had been paying attention to the whole conversation she just missed. Holding her lips inside of her mouth, Lily shifted once again in her seat, attempting to play it cool as the blush that had formed on her cheeks seemed to grow rapidly.

"Sorry, could you repeat what you said?" she asked, her voice weak as her eyes shifted to look at the man behind the counter once again. She couldn't help it...he was beautiful.

"I said you should help Buck out making the pancakes. Most of us haven't eaten, and if you're as good as you say, maybe you can help." Steve grinned, a knowing glint in his sky blue eyes. The way he looked at Lily, as though he could see inside of her head, sent a shiver down her spine. The idea of anyone knowing where her mind just wandered was basically mortifying for her. Being such a conservative person, the idea of that getting out? Yeah, no.

"Oh no I shouldn't...I'm positive he's capable of making pancakes." Lily chuckled, her voice cracking halfway through. This caught everyone's interest, and Lily had to hide her face with her mug as the dark liquid slid its way down her throat.

"He isn't. We don't normally let him in the kitchen. C'mon Lily, show us whatcha got." Steve continued to pry, leaning back in his chair as the others encouraged the entire idea.

Lily's head turned back to where Bucky stood, an almost pleading yet bashful look gracing his perfectly sculpted features. Just the way his eyes seemed to call out for her, was enough to allow the eldest Osborne to give in to the peer pressure of her new acquaintances. That was something Lily believed to be impossible, being friends with these heroes. These people that laid their life on the ground multiple times, saving her and her son by protecting the world around them. She was in debt to this group, everybody was. They've kept them protected for countless years. But how would one even begin to thank them?

"Okay okay, I'll do it," Lily mumbled, finishing her drink before pushing herself out of the chair that probably cost the same amount as her dog. She pulled a hair tie from her wrist and securing the blonde locks at the nape of her neck as she gracefully floated towards the kitchen. Glancing around, she couldn't help but let out a laugh at how expensive the items around her were. Sure, she didn't live in a house with run-down appliances, but these were top-of-the-line, high-end, see-on Food Channel things. A far reach from Lily's budget, "Well, first of all, Bucky, you need to turn on the fan."

After preparing everything to ensure not only safety but also to optimize space and time, Lily turned towards the man she had just moments ago daydreamed of. For a moment, she found herself lost in those steel-blue eyes he had. As though he had captured the moon and made them his own, adding a tinge of the blue from the sky above. How with every flicker across her face, a story was told. The pain and suffering he had endured etched into the dips and creases of his face, especially around those beautiful orbs. A part of her wished that the other members of the group were gone and that she could grip the sides of his face and kiss those lips he kept licking. His tongue darting out to wet them, creating a slight chapped ring around the pink layer of skin.

"Hey if you two are done gazing into the eyes of each other and looking like Hollister models, the rest of us are hungry." Starks’s voice rang, snapping Lily out of the trance the ex-soldier had put her under for a few seconds.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, coke can," Bucky muttered while turning his gaze away from Lily's and focused on washing the blueberries, "I'm just cleaning fruit."

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lambourngb · 4 years

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Nailing that Dynamic- Recs - Day 1

Day 1 for Creator’s Week, and I gotta say, this is my favorite fan event, mainly because it was the first one I participated last year. This little rec set is devoted to dynamics, divided into friendship, found family, and finally romantic (and yes, that’s Malex with me.)

We’ve had two seasons of this show, and while I can’t really relate to aliens or even the immigrant story, I do relate strongly to the stories behind friendship. I can say my appetite for fic with a good friendship dynamic will always be there.

Will You Be My Friend- Circle Yes or No (recs)

Finding You by @myrmidryad (122,000) - If by chance the canon from high school bums you out, this is the story to read. Gin writing malex is always a ‘no-brainer I’m gonna read it story’ for me, but what really set this epic apart was how beautifully Gin writes the friendship dynamics between Michael & Liz, and Michael & Max. It’s a canon-divergent story with no-murder of Rosa or the shed scene, where in order to avoid enlistment, Alex disappears from Roswell and joins the Max & Liz road trip with Michael in tow. They just need to fill that gap between high school and the opening of the dorms at UNM so they can start a life together. And fill it they do with this road trip. There were moments where I sobbed with how badly Michael needed this in canon and didn’t get it. It also made me like Max, so, yeah. Great writing and characterizations here.

Hit the Road by @bestillmyslashyheart - (7,100) - One of the brightest spots for me in season two was Rosa Ortecho, and one of the most frustrating parts of season two was the fact we didn’t get any interaction between her and Alex. *screams* At least I had a few crumbs of Rosa & Maria (not nearly enough!) but still. Where there’s a glaring gap in canon, thank god there’s fanfic. Marlo treats us to a delightful story written post season 1, but had some surprisingly psychic lines about Malex, number one how they don’t think they are good for one another. I really enjoyed what this story says about leaving- and honestly, the town of Roswell has so much pain tied to these characters, they should all take long road trips away from it.

a few drinks and some conversation by @christchex / @michaels-blackhat (5,600 ) - this one is set post-season 2, with all the complications of Michael deciding now wasn’t the right time for him and Alex, while also working on giving Maria the right space after their breakup. I think it’s pretty clear that Michael needs a friend he’s not related to and someone he hasn’t slept with - to provide him so low-stakes genuine company outside of the alien bullshit and love triangle dynamics. Christi does this beautifully through the eyes of an OC and the number of times I’ve read this story is like 10, and also, it’s inspired my current story about Michael going on dates.

and headin’ out singing our song by @stars-and-sunshine (4,100) post season 2, Alex and Michael head off on a road trip (okay, this is a trope I apparently like since I’ve recced three stories now, hahaha) after Alex’s car breaks down. There’s a careful space in this story, of two men building a friendship again. The roadtrip details are beautiful, but what stayed with me is a scene in the museum. That summer of 2008 had some ghosts to address.

If I Follow You Home, Will You Keep Me? found-family dynamics

When You’re Gone by @bestillmyslashyheart (8,200) - Before I tell you why I love this story, I want everyone to follow the next link and read this story about email and messages and grief in the digital age [trigger for cancer death] chat history by Rebecca Armendariz. (She also wrote a follow up called Timelines published by the Hairpin that talks about the memory function on facebook.) So back to the story, this is Rosa, opening her email 10 years after her death and reading the messages people sent her, thinking they were speaking into the void. Liz, Maria, Alex, Mimi and Arturo, all of them sending her notes, sometimes time passes without an email, then an event triggers that memory of Rosa not being there- and yeah, I found this whole thing to be so moving.

Never Ever Getting Rid of Me by @spaceskam - (4,400) this probably could have gone in the friendship side, but I feel like when you work in a high stakes place like a hospital, friends is a term that ends up being too light, and with the level of competition and stress it grows a bond like family... anyway, this is an AU where Michael and Kyle end up at the same hospital as competing interns but some elements of canon are still there.

still fixing all the cracks by @emma-arthur - (3,400) this is a pre-canon story, set when Alex is 14. He’s still a soft child, being tortured by his dad, and soaking up the attention from Liz, Rosa and Arturo when he breaks a glass and spirals. Heavy discussion of child abuse and homophobic abuse, but a really good exploration of the canon-neglected Liz & Alex friendship, plus with that paternal Arturo Ortecho in the mix...

Ophiuchus by @planetsam - (11,600) the other bright side of season 2 was the reveal of Walt Sanders as being not only Michael’s boss, but someone who knew his mother, knew what he was, and silently looked out for him...now of course I wish he had been more overt in doing this, but fanfic once again has fixed this canon-oversight. This is an incredible look through Walt’s eyes as he gets in over his head adopting an alien child, especially one who already had issues from previous foster placements. I could read a million words in this verse.

The Michael Sanders AU by @prouvaireafterdark (17,000 ) And speaking of great AUs where Michael is raised by Walt, I would be really amiss in not mentioning this one. It’s got hot high school Malex moments, emotional/hurt comfort for both Michael’s past foster placements but also the shit Alex is living with at home. I have to say “Honey if You Stay” is my favorite, just because of how badly I wanted to hug teen Alex...

and finally, no found family rec list could be complete without mentioning the epic series To Raise a Child (117,000 in progress) by @haloud and @maeglinthebold - season 2 put some hits on my headspace and emotional reserves, not to mention 2020 nonsense, so I’m dreadfully behind in commenting on this story. It’s just a huge emotional bandaid for me right now- it takes the idea of “what if the adults in Roswell actually looked out for their children (and other peoples children) and protected them from shit” and what would that change. Michael was found at 7 and then runs away to Roswell at 10, so yeah, humans have already done their best to convince him the world sucks and only finding his siblings matters... Jim Valenti steps in, knowing what he is, and finds him a place in Roswell with Arturo Ortecho. Anyway, everyone gets a turn- Jim, Mimi, the kids, etc in the story, it’s well rounded and fleshed out. Obviously being a malex person my favorite parts are the kid-friendship/this-is-just-a-crush moments in second story, where if you hadn’t lost your heart to Michael Ortecho by then, well, you’re a goner after that story.

I Could Build Your Heart A Home (malex recs)

time will lie down and be still by @islndgurl777 (29,600) the Practical Magic AU - which I loved but I have never seen the movie it’s based on lol... anyway, this story almost belonged up with my found family dynamic recs, because the story opens with Isobel and Michael being 7 and 8 years old alien siblings and left with Mimi Deluca to raise with her daughter Maria, because with their father recently dead, their mother would soon follow as a species level soulmate bond. Michael vows never to fall in love. Then there’s a beautiful friendship between Maria, Liz, Isobel and Michael as they grow up together that I just wanted to roll around in forever... However this is a Malex rec, so once Alex enters the story in high school and things go down similarly with Jesse, Michael is heartbroken, his soulmate (he thinks) is gone, vanished into the Air Force, and he spends the next 10 years helping Maria, going to school with Liz, and keeping in touch with Isobel. Until 2018 when Isobel finds out her perfect man was like them, an alien, and bad, and they are forced to cover up his murder. Then Alex comes to town. But the soulmate storyline is the winner here and I just re-read it again.

here everyone knows (you’re the way to my heart) by @adamsparirsh (19,700) So this story tackles a dynamic that think will be the death-knell to the Alex/Forrest relationship- the weight of the alien secret and Alex’s responsibility gland and what that looks like to someone who wants to be in a relationship with him. The exclusion. But outside of that- there’s this part of Alex that isn’t willing to let anyone in that isn’t already there, and that’s Michael. I’m fucking weak for stories where these two assholes can’t connect with anyone but each other, and this one hits it. There’s also so many lovely friendship dynamics between everyone showing up for Alex- like Rosa, Isobel, Max, Maria. Obviously this is a Malex-is-endgame story, even though it starts Alex/Forrest.

it’s a long road back to you by @magsthemagical (17,000) This was an interesting, now AU take on what if Maria/Michael dated at the same time as Alex/Forrest, and honestly, I thought basted on the season two spoilers that was where we were heading. I was gobsmacked by 2x13. Anyway, here’s a story that discusses the tension that would happen if there had been simultaneous dating going on…the parts where Michael sees Alex being open with someone other than him were very raw and true to how I would think he would feel. For 10 years he wanted that and didn’t get it, and so of course the problem was probably him?? Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot, and again felt robbed that we are heading into a new triangle for season 3.

untouched by @prouvaireafterdark (5,200) - okay, you know when you have an alien soulmate idea in your head and you want it to appear on the page, and then it does and it’s everything you wanted? That’s what happened to me when ‘Untouched’ appeared. Obviously it’s AU, but my reptile brain just loves the idea that Michael and Alex can’t get off with anyone else, and then that frustration builds into a sexy explosion... there’s also some communcation happening with these clowns. But seriously for 5,000 words, A LOT HAPPENS here and I loved every word.

Would you come home by @caitlesshea (1000) How great would have it been if season 2 had ended with Michael and Alex found a baby in a stasis pod instead of Beardy Jones? Like seriously, this short little fic healed so many of my wounds from season 2 that I couldn’t help but include it here. I would take 50,000 more words in this sadly AU take.

Hoarding you by @foramomentonly (1200) okay, so the rain smell, like 2x04 was low key my favorite episode of RNM ever, especially with Alex throwing that flirty line “It’s smells like rain, that’s what you smell like under the grease and bourbon’ and this author takes that line, and fucking murders me with the idea that Alex can’t move on because of that smell. And Michael is now his, and finds out about it. This is my head canon, okay? No one can talk me out of it.

If you like any of these recs, please leave a comment on the story- a ‘this was awesome’ is enough to propell an author into the stratosphere with happiness, so don’t worry about coming up with a unique, never before shared insight- sometimes a keyboard smash and emogi makes all the difference!

#rnmcreate2020 #malex fic #malex fic recs #roswell new mexico #worship our great authors in this fandom #michael guerin #alex manes #fandom positivity #I love everyone in this bar #i love this fandom

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trad-masculine · 3 years

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I'm dating again.

Which brings a very weird feeling to it, admiting this anonymously to people who follow me for doing a Masculine style thing on a blog. Speaking of I appreciate all of you for being interested in what amounts to one person's thoughts on being a man in the 21st century.

It might be palpable that I'm in an emotionally vulnerable headspace as I write this. Which, yeah, breakup, taking some time to myself to recalibrate, back to dating after over a year in a committed thing; it's emotionally heavy.

A bias to near prejudice, or at least strong dislike approaching disgust of mine is this; I do not like weakness in men. This is a feeling, & the idea of weakness is a felt thing, it's not born of an extensive philosophy, as most of what I think & feel tends to emerge from. This is visceral, the philosophy that it has is post hoc. I'm not sure, then, if this is the truest of beliefs I have, or the most distorted.

Weakness is not emotionality. This is a profound truth for me. As, the men I most respect, I have seen almost to a man, cry & bring forth tears to their eyes over depth of feeling, either of joy, of sorrow, or of compassion. I consider an absence of emotion a form of cowardice. Perhaps the central nature of it. As by my introspection, fear of emotion is what represses all the other emotions. Rolling off of this, I respect people who Know Fear. Being scared is an honorable place to be, if the emotion is appropriate. Cowardice isn't the act of being afraid, but of being only afraid. Having nothing meaningful within you to temper your fear.

I bring this up, because I want to talk about what the social process of dating does to men.

When on a dating app, nearly every guy is a player. Those that aren't are either very confused & naive, or are working something very specific. Player to me isn't a skill or approach, but an innate psychological state, let's call it Player Mode. There is also a psychological state which we can call Commitment Mode.

Spread your seed, or tend it, so to speak.

There is all sorts of powerful brain chemistry involved & the psychological states are deeply embedded in our psyche.

There are two very distinct ways to be a player, however. A Manipulator or a Lover. Possibly a third, I'll call a Sniper.

Before we get deep into that, let's walk through what happens when when you use a dating app, although playing the field at a bar or in the wild works somewhat the same, psychologically.

You start by swiping, liking & messaging girls. Some reply back. Let's say you come across a profile & immediately start crushing on the girl. You get nervous, so your message is shit, she doesn't reply. That's brutal if you think it through, breaking a crush hurts. You have to like/message about say, 50 girls to get a date. Breaking 50 crushes isn't a viable emotional strategy to get to step one of a relationship.

*Thus the emotional train is off the tracks, & for a deep relationship to happen the feeling must be rekindled, after you start to get to know the girl. >She needs to talk you into crushing on her.*

*This* is the central problem of dating. Because of the social process we have currently, men aren't chasing crushes, & so aren't entering a first date in the headspace that builds to true commitment.

The Manipulator is afraid of commitment, & of his own emotions controlling him, so he tells himself that the number of women he can lie to & talk into sleeping with him is the measure of his Masculinity. This is hard to argue with, man to man. The moral analysis isn't worth much. But the analysis that recognizes him & outs him as a coward, that has a better chance of productive impact.

The Lover can be powerfully passionate because his emotions are brought to the fore & made active as he goes into a relationship, as he wants to feel the love, but to balance himself, he lives in the moment. Generally, he doesn't lie or promise commitment. Regardless of the intensity of his feelings, he is still very embedded in the headspace of Player Mode. Since is isn't repressing or managing himself, after a time in a relationship, that player mode returns to the forefront as the honeymoon period ends & he finds himself drawn to a new & exciting Lover.

The Sniper can be of either type as default, but he is also looking for "the one." So he's judging women very directly between what he wants to lay short term, & who might be worth more effort & is worthy of commitment. I think I'd accurately describe myself as a Lover-Sniper.

I tried to not emotionality weight these, or apply judgement to the ideas. I simply want to be concise & analytical so there is clear understanding.

A pure Sniper is rare. The emotional insecurity of not having some form of a relationship is a powerful form of anxiety. There are plenty of guys who are "snipers" because they can't get a relationship. So they are mentally in commitment mode. This is, I think, the source of porn addiction & or simping. I know of guys who are on a high level & who had the self control to turn down offers of sex & relationships until they found someone they considered worthy. I wanted to be this, intuitively as a teen, but gave up the fantasy that I could win the girl of my dreams without having the confidence that comes from experience in realationships & in bed. This can get to a very disturbed & obsessive mindset. Stalkers are pure snipers. But there are other kinds.

My advice to someone in that kinda spot, to my past self. It's easy to get good at sex, it's easy to get good at being in a relationship with someone who sees the potential within you. Figuring out how to get girls to the point of willing & then to turn down those girls is useful. If purity of purpose & being is important to you, don't take the first girl who throws herself at you. The regret bites for a long time. But if porn takes you to a place where you aren't getting out & talking to girls, tossing the v card is easily worth it to get your headspace fixed.

There isn't a psychological dynamic that is in itself correctly healthy for men regarding approach sexuality, at least in the current dating environment. Chasing Crushes isn't scalable, & that is the root problem.

There's a type of girl who is only looking for "A Long Term Relationship Only." She isn't however, inticing. She doesn't know how to be wanted & desirable. She doesn't offer anything that brings out the crush which a man will need to be in in order to shift into a healthy commitment mode with her. I'm not certain what happens there, but I have to imagine everyone involved feels they are settling, & will hurt for the entirety of the relationship.

I'm writing this up as I'm trying to really think through how to solve the dating situation so that it works for more people. So relationships are successful & men & women are happy in them. It's not the most elegant or beautiful or composed thought I've had or published here, but this is deeply important to me.

Love shouldn't suck. We need to collectively figure out how to Make Love Lovely Again.

So, I have an idea I want to pitch, which has been difficult to get across to people I've talked to about this, such that the idea made sense to them. But I really think I'm close to right on this.

Women need game. Men have game. Fuck hookup PUA's but the actual technique tools of how to appeal to women are spectacularly useful. Women need to figure out how to appeal to men, not as sexual objects, but as potential relationships. Game for men is about getting laid. Game for women should be about getting men to fall for them & only them.

"Men are responsible for making the relationship, women for keeping it."

There's an ancient form of girlgame passed down generations mother to daughter. Just as there was an ancient form of guygame passed down from men to boys. We need to rekindle the dance between the Masculine & feminine in the realm of sexual relationship, dating & play. This fight thing we're all doing sucks.

Like most guys I want to find someone good enough to catch my heart, but I don't want to pretend for lifetime I've found the one when I haven't.

The love of men that isnt born of a crush is slow. The path of a crush is easy to explain, but deep love is a slow thing. I've seen love at first sight, or at least very close to it. But it's from a level of deep being that's so rarely reached mutually by two people who meet such that such a lightning connection can form. But I've also seen a relationship start from a small kernel & grow into a forest.

I firmly believe there's a lot of possible paths to True Love, I've seen several myself, but normative paths of how we find each other as sexual humans make us start in places within ourselves that make reaching True Love impossible, at least without a deep course correction at some latter point.

Those of us looking for that Sacred kind of love in fairy tales, that which we burn for, need to figure out how to survive with outselves long enough to find each other & get there together. Maybe this means breaking the rules of what we thing is "proper" dating.

Honestly, whatever we do, we need to figure this bitch out & work together to get back there. I'm tired of the men VS women game, tired of the fight being the normal way of things.

Hmu if you have some thoughts on how to do this love thing better together, I'll be listening to Hozier & watching Princess Bride. ✌️

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thepursuitofunderstanding · 3 years

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January 31/2021

Well, hello new journal! I look forward to our explorations together. Now, what shall we begin discussing this morning? Nothing feels important enough to mark your first pages [this is from before I switched from paper to digital journaling]. I guess that I could say that I’m starting to catch a glimpse of what I might like my life to be like once I graduate Uni. That’s long been a giant question mark for/with me. Due in large part, I’m sure, to the fact that the conventional path seems to be a sort of settling down. That is, graduates go out and find a job; make a home in some place or other; date/get married; essentially people seem to settle onto one path--at the expense of all other paths. Which is fine--for them. I think that there shall be no settling for me. I must keep moving. This seems to be a condition of my existence. Whether this movement is within or without seems to be irrelevant. Or, rather, I do seem to to particularly prize/regard the internal movement, but I have found external movement to be a great stimulator of internal movement. And, alas, as long as I have books and you [that is, my journal] I seem to never stop moving within. So that helps that.

Most of all though, I don’t want to chain myself to some job that stymies my movement. Especially my internal movement. If I’ve learned anything about myself in these 24 years, it’s that such is a death sentence for/to me. I must keep moving. Inertia is death. Because a self-imposed death is still very much a death. Perhaps an ever deader death (if that’s possible). Now, of course, this whole ‘not letting a job chain me down’ does get rather complicated by the fact that I do need money to maintain my survival. It’s not like everyone in the world enters into the contract (or bondage, depending on how you look at it) of a job because they’re just total masochists. No, I recognize that for the most part people consent to have a job for the simple fact that it is required for their continual survival. As it is for my continual survival. Plus I’ll have some student loans to pay off (I try not to stress too much about that one. Uni is absolutely imperative for/to my development. I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.), so it seems that I will definitely need to figure out some way of generating moneys. But, alas, I aim to keep my expenses such that I won’t have to chain myself to a full-time job. I aim to do this by living in my van when weather permits and then...figuring something out for winter. I’ll live frugally--my only indulgence being books. For it turns out that one really doesn’t need as much money to get by as one might think. You cut out all that useless shit that people buy, get back to just the basics and suddenly things become much more manageable.

This, I hope, will be what the outward appearance of my life will look like after graduation. And inwardly, well, I can’t even imagine that--I’ll be moving, that’s all I know. Working towards Greatness, looking at perhaps getting myself published; learning, always learning. This is how I’ll fill my life. It makes me so full and content to consider that I could cry. Oh what a feeling it is to actually want; to crave to live one’s life. It’s not exactly a feeling that I’m familiar with. Usually I tend to attempt--by any means necessary--to avoid gazing too long into the/my future. For the wretched weight of it felt only like a jail cell beckoning me towards it confines. Time, at my back, preventing my retreat, the chains of life always an inevitability; I could see no way around it. Or, rather, I could imagine ways around it (my power of imagination being what it is paired with my insatiable need to read anything that I can get my hands on (that makes it sound like I’m not a discriminating reader, which is false: I might just be the most snobbish reader that I’ve ever encountered. I’m so intimately aware that I’ll never be able to read all the books that I want to, therefore I must be very careful to give my time and energy to only those books that I deem to be imperative to my development. God I sound like such a cocky asshole. But hopefully a cocky asshole that is tempered with the realization that I’m not shit yet and I never will be unless I really... strain myself. I’m not sure how this spiraled into a poop(ing) metaphor, but here we are nevertheless.)) but I never felt myself to be capable of the strength and individuality required to evade that jail cell that I’ve witnessed so many people around me imprisoned by.

Alas though, I realize now that the only thing more terrifying than attempting such an evasion is to not. For, to not attempt such an evasion is to surrender myself; to fail to become myself: of which I agree with Kierkegaard is a fate worse than death. I have discovered that I can withstand a lot of pain and discomfort in life--but not that. To lose myself, especially like that, to (how did he put it?) “pawn” myself to the world is not something that I will ever be able to withstand. I know this. Any leanings in the past towards such have led--always--to a crushing compulsion to end it all. I seem to be so constituted that such a pawning is simply not an option to/for me. Which is something that I’ve only just now grasped in its entirety. I seem to have had some hunch of it for a few years here now (thus the talk of the conditions of my existence) but only now have I managed to grasp (or begun to grasp) the full weight of all this. I can truly do no other. I have never, nor will I ever, have any choice in the matter. Or, rather, since I don’t believe in determinism, I should say that my choice is to either live “myself” or to not live at all. This is the ultimate condition of my existence. All other conditions stem from this ultimate one.

Wow, okay, so this is why I love writing--why I absolutely need to write. Just as my physical body needs food and water to sustain itself, my soul needs to write. For through/by writing I come to be/tough ‘myself.’ Perhaps f I did not write I would become a pawn to the world. And I would never realize that although I might be physically alive; conventionally regarded as a living being; I never became anything more than a living death. For that’s what it feels like to pawn oneself to the world. I feels like one’s ‘self’ and one’s life is not one’s own; that one is merely a spectator to the unfolding of a dreary and rather impersonal drama.--Gross. That is, if I had it in me to even put up with any of that. I imagine that, being who/as I am, I wouldn’t live to see too many seasons of a life like this: the cape of despair eventually suffocating me.

I wonder, what is it about me, my ‘self’ that makes it wholly impossible for me to ignore my ‘self.’I look around me and see the majority of people managing it just fine (or, rather, as fine as one can manage the pawning of oneself to the world.). Why is such a path/manner of Being one that is closed to me? I couldn’t attempt it even if I wanted to. Why/how is this??? What is it about me that makes this so? Because I realize now that my inability to do such a thing/live such a way, has defined my entire life thus far. It doesn’t seem to be something that I learned or picked up from anyone else. That is, I can think of no one who modelled anything like this in my early life. It was only later on, when the definition was making itself felt more and more that I managed to find others who also felt such a condition defining their existence. But those others didn’t birth it in me, they only (not only, for their friendship has been everything to me.) helped me recognize what was already there.

My need to be/become my’self’ seems to be an inborn requirement of my Being. The condition of my existence. But how can this be?? For this condition doesn’t seem to be present, or at least, not nearly as stressed, in the people that I observe around me. It is this condition that has made me feel different--pathological--my whole life. Even when I couldn’t grasp it, it was always there, whispering to me from the darkness. It was never not there. Thus, I though that there was something wrong with me.

It would seem that the entire trajectory of my life has been defined by the attempt to understand this whispering from the darkness. For I discovered early on that I couldn’t silence it without simultaneously doing away with myself. Because it is more me than I am... Whatever that means. And it is this whispering, this me, my ‘self’ that I am now engaged in consolidating; I am collecting from the darkness and attempting to explore and understand. This is what my life is about. Or, at least, it is the meaning of my life. My defining commitment as Hubert Dreyfus would say? And God is that which makes it all possible is what Kierkegaard what would say? God is the ground where all of this takes place; God is the sun which allows for the illumination of these dark places. It is only with/through God that the whispering can be understood? Is God that which whispers to me? That would indicate/imply that my ‘self’ is God; a fragment of God? My ‘self’ is atman? So many things to consider here...

Atman, my ‘self’, might this bear any relation to the concept of Nothingness that Sartre is acquainting me with? He does talk about how this Nothingness “haunts” Being. And I would certainly say that this whispering from the darkness of my Being has haunted me. Haunting is actually a perfect word for it. I seem to be more (profoundly?) haunted than others. Is this possible? I wonder, will Sartre ever discuss the possibility of some being more “haunted” or possessing more Nothingness than others?

It has become apparent to me recently that this is my work. It is my play too actually, all woven into one. That is, when I sit here with you, when I lose myself in books, when I wander around and think/imagine, I am working. It may seem like such a minor distinction to focus on--such a trivial thing to notice and distinguish. But to/for me it is everything. I have always craved to be one of those people who is consumed by their work. I has always thought that there was something to important and noble about it. I bestows one’s life with an importance that isn’t there otherwise. That is, a life without this emphasis on one’s work is a life without a defining commitment. This seems to be an awareness that I apprehended before I was ever able to understand or articulate it. All I knew was that I was missing an importance/meaning to my life. I could see that others (though few) had it. But I never really believed that I would come to experience it myself. I had resigned myself to merely watching those others from the sidelines. Always to be aware of the game that I so desperately yearned to be a part of, yet never being chosen to participate. For, alas, it does seem to be a game that one must be chosen for. You can want to participate with your whole Being, but that means nothing unless one is animated from within. Otherwise one will simply be going through the movements; it will be purely mechanical. A true experience of/participation in the game requires that one lose oneself in/to it. And to lose oneself to something is never a choice made by oneself. That is, one can offer oneself up to this losing, but one can never control whether/if one will get swallowed up. I so wanted to be swallowed up by the game--by my work--and now it seems to be happening. I wonder, if one consistently offers oneself up to such a swallowing, is it inevitable that one will eventually get swallowed up? So many questions. And I’ve gotten so abstract and... mystical(?) in my thoughts now that I can hardly ask anyone else these questions. For, even the formulation of these questions requires such a lengthy and convoluted explanation that I’m unsure if I could even construct them, let alone hope that anyone might be able to follow my train of thought well enough for anything close to a satisfactory answer. It seems that I must wander the path of my questioning alone. And my writing is my mapping of the territory that I come across. This is my contribution to the literary community: to add my mappings to the mass of mappings that have been done before me. Because, after all, aren’t we all just trying to make sense of this crazy thing we call life? And isn’t life continuously evading our attempts to do so?

The closer I get to Greatness the deeper I’ll be able to penetrate into (the mystery of) life. And, thus, the more precise/profound/meaningful my mapping will become.

It seems to me that the only way for me to draw closer to this Greatness (my Greatness?) is by following the whispers of my ‘self.’ That is, I may learn from those around me, but I can never rely on them too fully lest I imitate them and lose the thread/path of my ’self.’ For Greatness seems to be... wholly individual, in a certain regard. By that I mean that... what do I mean? Every artist has their own particular flavor of Greatness. And it is only through/by this particular flavoring that Greatness appears. Because Greatness is... well, it’s not black and white; it’s vibrant and lively, it dances and lives. It is transcendent. It cannot be created/pursued mechanically. Sure it requires discipline and control, but it also requires personality and deviation. It requires that one break rules and forge new paths. These things can only be done by the individual. For it requires that one step outside the boundaries/limitations that had previously been set. This is a task that can only be done by the individual. It is not a collective activity, not something that any machine (mechanized something) might be able to do/engage in. The mechanized something is unable to do such because, as I understand it, these things necessarily require boundaries in order to operate in the first place. Or else these get swallowed up by possibility and are unable to function at all. Thus limitations must be set and can only be sidestepped by direction from some external tinkering/director. And, in the case of the collective... there seems to be a sort of inertia in the collective. As is a certain level of inertia is one of its defining features. For it is only by standing still that things (people) can collect after all. Yes, that seems right. Thus, only the individual, through their individuality, may pursue/tough Greatness. Although, of course, in saying that I also recognize that the individual is an amalgamation of everyone and everything that said individual has ever encountered (or will ever encounter?). So, in a sense, the individual is, in the individual self, a collection of Being. But, alas, a different sort of collective than what one conventionally thinks of when they consider a collective.

Damn, I gotta say, I really covered some ground today. So odd too, I really had no idea that all of this was welling up within me. When I first sat down with you this morning I had absolutely no idea what we would be exploring together. Alas though, is it time to move onto some Being and Nothingness now? I’ve got to tell you, if I keep going at this pace, finishing it and The Second Sex by the end of the semester will be a piece of cake. I maybe should have set my aim even higher and also included Being and Time. But then, is it too late to make a change? Let’s just think about this for a minute... I’m at such a point in Being and Nothingness that I could reasonably leave it aside for a moment and return to it without too much confusion (I think). Being and Time only has 415 pages. And Dreyfus’ commentary on it is only 281 pages. Do I dare raise my aim? Doing so would mean adding another 700 pages to my goal, making it 2300 pages of dense philosophical treatise to complete in 3 months while simultaneously juggling 5 classes. Do I dare attempt it? I ask but I already know the answer. Now, the only question is, do I start Being and Time first or ought I take a bit of a wander through Dreyfus’ commentary first?

#january #journal entry

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antiadvil · 4 years

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Roses are Red

summary: Dan wants to buy his best friend Phil an anonymous rose, and also maybe confess his feelings. The problem? Phil is the one selling the anonymous roses.

Luckily, PJ has a plan.

rating: PG13

word count: 3.7k

a/n: this is for @flymetomanchester as part of a valentine’s day fic exhange! additional thanks to @itsmyusualphannie and @sudden-sky for betaing and hyping me up throughout the writing process.

read more or on ao3

Buying his crush a rose for Valentine’s Day really shouldn’t have been so hard. Dan didn’t even need to put his name on it, for God’s sake. The roses sold by his high school’s student council were distributed anonymously. He just had to pay for it, put Phil’s name on it, and write him a note.

The only problem was that Phil was not only the student council president, he was also Dan’s best friend. So Dan was left awkwardly standing near the table, hoping Phil would leave for a few minutes so he could buy Phil a rose from the student council vice president, who was sitting next to Phil, instead.

“Do you want to buy a rose?” Phil asked.

“What?” Dan snorted. “Why would I want to buy a rose?”

Phil shrugged. “Just wondering. You’re kind of hovering.”

Dan snorted again. “I am not.”

The bored-looking girl sitting next to Phil handed Dan a tissue.

“I was, uh, just wondering if you needed any help.”

“We’re good,” Phil said. “Kate and I have got everything covered.”

Dan shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”

“Thanks,” Phil said. “I really appreciate it. But I think you’re scaring away the customers. See you in English?”

Dan nodded, giving up and slipping back to the lunchroom.

“Did it work?” his friend PJ asked when Dan joined him at their lunch table.

“No,” Dan said, scowling. “He wouldn’t leave the table.”

PJ took a long drink from his water bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Damn,” he said. “That sucks.”

Dan nodded glumly. “He’s never going to leave the table.”

PJ shrugged. “I mean, it’s just a rose. You can get roses just about anywhere.”

Dan glared. “But can I get special, anonymously sent roses with an attached note just about anywhere?”

PJ rolled his eyes.

Dan sat back. “That’s what I thought.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

Dan had been cast as the lead in their school play three years running. “Me? Dramatic?”

PJ rolled his eyes again. “If you’re so attached to these roses, you’re going to need a better plan.”

“What, do you have one?” Dan asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Okay,” Dan said. “I’m listening.”

PJ smirked. “Meet me outside the cafeteria tomorrow.”

“To do what?” Dan asked.

“You’ll see,” PJ said mysteriously.

“You’re so fucking annoying,” Dan said. “I’m going to kill you.”

“You’ve been saying that for the past ten years and it hasn’t happened yet.”

“It will,” Dan promised. “Just wait.”

“Sure,” PJ snickered. The bell rang. “See you after school, nerd.”

“Not if I kill you first, dork,” Dan responded.

Dan’s next class was English. He slid into his seat next to Phil. “How are sales going?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” Phil said. “We’ve made a ton of money so far. Decorations for turnabout might not be that bad.”

“Decorations for turnabout are always bad.” The rose sale was the only source of funding for their spring dance other than ticket sales. Student Council did their best, but Dan and Phil’s high school was not known for its beautiful and well-run school dances.

Phil shrugged. “Well, hopefully they’ll be less bad.”

Dan gave up. He knew this dance was important to Phil, and supporting his friend was more important to him than making fun of their school. “Of course they will be,” he said. “You’re doing them.”

Phil smiled. “Thanks, Dan.”

Right on cue, their English teacher entered the room, disturbingly cheery for someone teaching Hamlet to a bunch of second semester high school seniors.

“How was last night’s reading?” he chirped.

The classroom was dead silent. Dan highly doubted anyone in the entire room had read more than the sparknotes, if that.

“What did you think of Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia?” More silence. “Come on, guys, don’t make me start picking volunteers.”

Someone sitting in the front hesitantly raised their hand.

“Yes! Jamie?” their teacher asked.

“I didn’t like it,” they said.

Their teacher sighed. Dan took that as his cue to zone out. He zoned out in the rest of his classes as well before finally stumbling out of school to meet PJ by his car.

“You’re late,” PJ said.

Dan rolled his eyes. “You’re late.”

“Whatever. Get in the back.” Since Phil had gotten there first, he got the passenger’s seat, and since PJ was driving, that left Dan to sit in the back. Normally, he would be annoyed, but today he didn’t mind being a little more alone with his thoughts than usual. He leaned back and stared out the window, letting Phil and PJ do most of the talking.

“Do we really have to go to Hot Topic today?” PJ asked, interrupting Dan’s thoughts. “You never even buy anything, and if someone sees me there in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty, I’ll lose all my street cred.”

“What street cred?” Dan asked. “And if Phil is dragging us to Lush - ”

“Phil buys things at Lush!” PJ protested.

“I’m just saying, your street cred - ”

“Dan’s right,” Phil said. “You don’t have any street cred.”

Dan smirked. “And neither of us complain about Barnes and Noble, so shut up.”

“Yeah you do,” PJ mumbled under his breath.

Phil shook his head. “We love Barnes and Noble,” he said, with sincerity so sweet Dan nearly believed him.

PJ rolled his eyes. “You two are so lucky I still drive you places.”

Dan let the conversation fade out again. Phil and PJ bickered some more, Dan’s stomach twisted itself into knots, and in just a few more minutes, PJ pulled into the mall parking lot.

“Last one out is gay,” PJ announced, hopping out of the car. Phil, who had been out since middle school, rolled his eyes.

Dan, who had been out for a significantly smaller amount of time, also rolled his eyes and climbed out of the car. “Shut up, token het,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Dan and Phil behaved in Barnes and Noble for approximately five seconds before their shenanigans began. They followed PJ dutifully through the stacks before Phil beckoned Dan the other way and held up a book.

“How does this shit get published?” Phil said, giggling at the summary on the back.

PJ glanced back at Phil, annoyed. Phil ignored him, plucking another book from the shelf.

This was their usual Barnes and Noble routine: Phil dramatically read the backs of romance novels to Dan, Dan and Phil fell over giggling at the overly dramatic, flowery language, and PJ pretended not to know who they were.

“You guys are so embarrassing,” PJ said.

“Don’t tell me you’re capable of taking this seriously,” Dan said, while Phil leafed through another novel, looking for the cringiest romantic dialogue he could make Dan act out with him.

PJ just rolled his eyes in response and drifted away. Dan felt slightly bad for a moment - he and Phil had been a unit since grade school, and it usually wasn’t very fun to hang out with them with no one else around. PJ had put up with the third wheeling for a lot longer than most.

His guilt quickly dissipated when Phil thrust his latest find out at him. “You be the girl,” he said.

Dan raised his eyebrows. “That’s what he sa - ”

“Shut up,” Phil whined, but he was also giggling. “You know what I meant.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Fine, but only because my falsetto is incredible.”

“That’s the spirit,” Phil said, but before they could start reading, PJ appeared from around the corner.

“I got the book I needed,” he announced.

Phil let the romance novel in his hand drop limply to his side.

“I’m ready to go,” Dan said. “Unless you needed anything?” he asked Phil.

Phil shook his head, putting the book back on the shelf. “I’m ready.”

“Race you to Hot Topic,” Dan said.

“We’re not going to Hot Topic until after we finish at Lush,” Phil insisted.

PJ rolled his eyes. “You have until I get to the cash register to sort this out. Just, like, fight to the death or something over it.”

Dan and Phil lingered behind to play rock, paper, scissors. Phil won. Dan sulked.

He really didn’t mind going to Lush as much as he pretended to. The soaps all smelled really nice, and the free samples were definitely a bonus. If it wasn’t for the heavy weight of societal judgement he could feel hanging over his head whenever he walked into his house, he would probably buy a bath bomb or two for himself.

He couldn’t help but watch a bit enviously as Phil and PJ picked out products to buy. Their parents didn’t think boys had to constantly act a certain way, had to only use certain products. Dan’s parents were reluctantly accepting of his sexuality, but they still had expectations for him. Expectations he’d never meet.

Dan contented himself with looking at and smelling everything Phil handed him. God, everything here smelled amazing.

After Phil and PJ were done buying their things, the group lingered in the entrance before moving on to the next store.

Phil poured a generous helping of his new rose-scented lotion into his hands, gesturing for Dan’s hand and wiping off the excess.

Dan ran his extremely dry hands together, rubbing the lotion in. “Smells nice,” he said.

Phil smiled. “And now maybe your hands will stop bleeding all the time.”

Dan looked at the cracked skin on the back of his hands. “Sure,” he said.

Phil sighed. “It’s actually concerning how dry your skin is.”

Dan was slightly touched by Phil’s concern, but he’d never admit it. “Are you my mom or something?”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“Both of you shut up,” PJ said. “And hurry up, I have a paper due tomorrow.”

Knowing PJ, his paper was probably completely finished and just waiting for him to make one last glance over it for typos before submitting it several hours before the deadline and going to bed at precisely ten o’clock.

Sometimes Dan resented the guy, but honestly, under his harsh exterior, he was too sweet and helpful to hate. Dan couldn’t even count the number of times he’d called PJ late at night, panicking about an assignment he’d forgotten about, only to have PJ calm him down and walk him through the entire process, no matter how tired he would be the next day. Dan hoped that someday PJ wouldn’t feel the need to hide behind his sharp remarks. That he’d feel okay sharing the softer side of him.

For now, he let PJ pretend to be mad that he and Phil were taking too long and rush them along to Hot Topic.

It was true that Dan never bought anything at Hot Topic, but he loved going there anyway. Something about the atmosphere reminded him of his full on emo years. Not that that was a good time to be reminded of, per se, but it was definitely a simpler time.

Also, My Chemical Romance would always be good, no matter what year it was, and Dan was not about to apologize for that.

Phil and PJ definitely didn’t understand his obsession, but they were trying, even if they mocked him endlessly for it. PJ stifled his yawns, and Phil stared determinedly past the glaze in his eyes as Dan tried an endless number of outfits on.

“I like that one,” Phil announced for the seventeenth time, when Dan came out of the dressing room in a band T-shirt and jeans that were much more tight than anything his parents would ever let him wear.

Dan wasn’t sure whether or not Phil’s eyes were trailing up and down Dan’s body more than usual, but it made him feel warm and heavy and slightly self-conscious.

PJ nodded in determined agreement. “You should get it.”

“Maybe,” Dan said, the same way he did every time. This time he almost meant it. He hesitated. “My parents would never let me wear them.”

“My dude,” PJ said. “You are eighteen. What are they going to do?”

Phil shot him a look, but Dan just threw a T-shirt at PJ’s head. “Yell at me?”

“Fine,” PJ said, untangling the shirt from his head. “Don’t get it. I don’t care.”

“Get it,” Phil said.

Dan hesitated. His parents wouldn’t like the jeans, but the shirt they might not mind that much, and if they did, he could just wear it under a sweatshirt until he left the house.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll get the shirt.”

“Thank god,” PJ said. “Does that mean we can leave? I want to leave.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “We can leave.”

PJ pumped his fist.

Phil offered Dan the passenger’s seat on their way home, but he declined. He still had things to think about. The T-shirt he had tucked inside the shopping bag under his arm and how he would get it to his room without his parents noticing. The rose he hadn’t put Phil’s name on yet. Whether or not PJ really had a plan, or if he was just bullshitting. How tired Dan was, all the damn time.

He let his head fall back. Dan hadn’t fallen asleep in the car in years, but he let the quiet murmur of PJ and Phil in the front seats and the soft noises of the car’s engine and tires lull him to sleep.

He woke up to Phil shaking his shoulder. “I’m not strong enough to carry you to your room,” he said.

Dan blinked. “Yeah,” he said groggily, looking for his shopping bag.

“Here,” Phil said, handing it to him. “Don’t forget your backpack.”

Dan grabbed it. “Thanks,” he said. He was out of the car before he remembered PJ’s plan. He turned back, but PJ was already putting his car in reverse.

“See you tomorrow at lunch,” PJ called.

“Wait!” Dan ran after the car, leaning towards the driver’s window.

PJ rolled his window down. “Yes?”

“You’re still not going to tell me your plan?” Dan whispered to PJ.

“Nope.” PJ smirked.

“I don’t want to leave this to chance,” Dan whispered.

“Don’t worry about it,” PJ said. “I’ve got it all under control.”

“I’m worried about it.”

“Well, don’t.” PJ rolled the window back up and drove away.

Dan worried. He worried as he went home and did his homework, he worried as he went to bed, he had dreams about worrying, and when he woke up for school the next morning, he worried all through breakfast and his ride. He worried until just before lunch time, when he saw PJ waiting for him in the hallway where Phil and Kate were selling flowers.

PJ noticed Dan and waved. “Hey, Dan!” he said, way too loudly, walking over to Dan with alarming speed.

“Hey, PJ,” Dan said, moving towards PJ.

Before they could get too close, PJ tripped and fell. Hard.

A gasp rippled through the crowd. Phil immediately leapt to his feet and pushed through the crowd to reach PJ. “Are you okay?” he asked.

PJ lifted his head up. “I don’t know. My leg feels funny. I think I need to go to the nurse.”

Dan smiled and slipped through the crowd to the table where Kate was still sitting, looking anxiously at PJ.

“Can I get a rose for Phil?” Dan asked.

Kate gasped. “That’s why you’ve been hanging out near the table so much!”

“Yes,” Dan said, glancing over his shoulder. “Can you hurry up?”

“That’s so cute,” Kate said, slipping Dan the piece of paper to write his message down on. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him.”

“Thanks,” Dan said, scribbling a message onto the paper. Keep being amazing. He handed the paper to Kate and quickly went to find PJ.

He spotted them headed down the hallway towards the nurse’s office, and ran to catch up, ignoring that one teacher who always glared at him for running in the halls.

“PJ, are you okay?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Dan sighed. “I’ll take him to the nurse, Phil. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Phil hesitated, glancing back at Kate and the table. “Fine,” he said. “See you later?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Dan said absently. “Come on, PJ.”

PJ hobbled along. Once Phil was far enough behind them, Dan turned around to talk to PJ. “You know, you don’t need to pretend to be hurt anymore.”

“Not pretending,” PJ admitted.

Dan groaned. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” PJ said, limping furiously. “Don’t tell me I’m a dumbass, I already know.”

“You’re a dumbass, but you’re my dumbass.”

“Save the pickup lines for Phil. Don’t make my sacrifice in vain.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Your sacrifice?”

“They might have to amputate.”

“They won’t have to amputate.”

“You don’t know that.” PJ pouted.

The school nurse ultimately decided not to amputate, to PJ’s shock and concern. She handed him an ice pack and sent him on his way.

PJ complained the whole way back to the cafeteria, but Dan’s mind couldn’t be further away. He couldn’t wait until the flowers were delivered and he got to see the expression on Phil’s face.

The day after Valentine’s Day, Dan got a rose delivered to him in his third period class. He hadn’t expected to get anything, but it was a pleasant surprise all the same. He looked to see if there was a note attached, but couldn’t find anything. He searched the wrapping it came in, but when he couldn’t find anything, he just put it in the side pocket of his backpack.

Phil also arrived at lunch clutching a red rose.

“It’s pretty,” Dan said, smiling.

“Yeah,” Phil said, staring at it.

The expression on Phil’s face was even better than Dan had expected: the most perfect mixture of confusion, happiness, and wonder.

“Who’d you get it from?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know,” Phil said, placing it carefully next to his lunch tray. PJ had gone to eat with a different group of friends that day, citing “gross flirting and unbearable sexual tension” as his reason not to sit with Dan and Phil until Dan “got his damn act together and asked Phil out already.”

Dan was nervous, but he tried not to show it. All he needed to do was ask a few questions about the rose, confess that it was him, and then have an open and honest conversation with Phil about their feelings (ugh).

“It’s so weird, though,” Phil said, touching his rose again with an expression almost of awe. “I was watching the table the whole time. I would have known if someone wanted to send one to me.”

Dan smiled. “They must have been really sneaky.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, running his hand down the petals. “The weirdest thing, though - ” he broke off.

“The weirdest thing?” Dan prompted.

Phil blushed. “You’ll think it’s dumb.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dan said. “Have you ever told me something that I thought was dumb?”

Phil shrugged. “Probably.”

“Okay, yeah,” Dan said. “But I didn’t say I thought it was dumb, did I?”

“I guess not.”

“Well,” Phil said, his entire face turning red. “I’ve been working on a youtube channel.”

Dan’s eyebrows shot up. “A youtube channel?”

“Yes. And, um, the note referenced it.”

Dan blinked. This was the first he’d ever heard of Phil having a youtube channel, so unless Phil was talking about a different note from a secret admirer, he was pretty sure the note didn’t actually reference anything.

“How?” Dan asked.

Phil shoved the note at him. Dan’s own scribbled handwriting stared back, the same note he had written a few days earlier. Keep being amazing.

Dan stared at Phil. “I don’t get it,” he said. “It just seems like a generic compliment.”

Phil’s face was still determinedly red. “My channel name is AmazingPhil.”

Dan made a note to look that up when he got home. “It could be a coincidence,” he said, but Phil didn’t notice.

“Do you think it’s one of my fans? Oh my god, do you think I have a stalker?”

Phil’s genuine concern made Dan hesitate. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” Dan said. “There aren’t that many words you can use to compliment people. How many subscribers do you have, anyway? He probably - ”

“Almost a hundred thousand,” Phil said.

Dan choked on his sandwich. Phil pounded his back until Dan was able to speak again. “Sorry,” Dan said, “A hundred thousand? When were you going to tell people?”

“Shh,” Phil said, glancing around. “Keep your voice down. I don’t know, okay? Mostly it just never really came up. But I guess someone who follows me must go here or something, because - ”

“Maybe, but they didn’t send you the rose,” Dan said.

“How would you know?” Phil asked.

Dan felt his heart start to pound. “It was me,” he said.

Phil started. “What?”

“The note and the rose. They’re from me.”

Phil blinked. “Why?”

Dan was startled by how clear the world suddenly seemed, like everything had jumped into sharp, eye-watering focus for a moment. “Because I like you, Phil.”

Phil placed his sandwich back on his lunch tray. “Dan - I - ”

“I mean, it’s totally fine if you don’t feel the same way,” Dan babbled. “I know we’ve been friends for a really long time, and I’d never want to do anything to lose that. But it’s gotten to a point I can’t ignore and I need to know how you feel if I want to ever move forward-”

“I sent you a rose,” Phil said.

It was Dan’s turn to blink, confused. “What?”

“I signed the note. Did you not get it?”

“There wasn’t a note with it,” Dan said.

“Well, I put a note in it,” Phil said, “Basically saying all the things you just said.”

“Oh,” Dan said, pleasantly surprised.

“Did it not - ”

“I guess not.”

“Fuck,” Phil said. “But, um, if you want to go out sometime-”

“That’d be great,” Dan said, smiling so hard his cheeks started to hurt.

“Cool,” Phil said, also smiling.

The lunch bell rang.

“See you in English,” Dan said.

Phil smiled. “See you.”

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #phan fluff #phan au #my writing

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recentanimenews · 4 years

Text

Bookshelf Briefs 9/30/20

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, Vol. 6 | By Reai and Suki Umemiya | Seven Seas – Another series down to “once a year” release—I had to jog my memory at the start to recall what had been happening. Many things are going wrong for our heroine, who is trying to be strong and tough but is also starting to break down, and I felt that the scenes with her and Dean struck just the right balance of comforting and letting the heroine cry without making her seem weaker. This sets the stage for her comeback, which is extraordinary. (And also has a corrupt Church, a constant in Japanese light novels, though at least here there are also honest and good religious people in it.) That said, eventually Dean’s identity will come out, and I do wonder how this very good “villainess” isekai will handle it. – Sean Gaffney

The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files, Vol. 1 | By Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, and Kore Yamazaki | Seven Seas – A faerie switched at birth for a human child, Jack never fit in in either world. Only in the mortal realm could she earn money for anime collectibles, however, so she decided to make herself into a tough, capable woman like her literary heroes and set up shop as a detective. Together with her fellow changeling, Larry the werewolf, Jack takes on supernatural cases in New York City. In this volume, Lindel tasks them with tracking down a missing dragon egg. I liked the resources Jack uses to obtain information, which include a dapper theatre ghost and a spell with components of rat whiskers and taxi tires because “Nobody out there knows this city better than them.” I still found this a bit hard to get into, though, especially the parts involving a perpetually tearful off-off-off-off-Broadway actress and her pickpocket boyfriend. Still, I will check out volume two! – Michelle Smith

Black Clover, Vol. 22 | By Yuki Tabata | Viz Media – At long last, this interminable arc comes to an end. I enjoyed a lot of it, but I cannot deny it should have been about two volumes shorter. Most of the book is taken up by shonen battles, with the villain being nigh unkillable, the heroes almost breaking themselves to stop him, etc. Fortunately, the day is saved, and even the Wizard King turns out to be… sort of alive again? Shota fans should be happy. Asta fans perhaps less so—the sheer amount of damage done to the kingdom in this arc means someone has to be blamed, and give Asta has the “dark evil magic” it’s gonna be him, especially when he takes the incredibly obvious bait they use to get him to fight. Oh well, if Asta were smart, this wouldn’t be Black Clover. – Sean Gaffney

Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Vol. 3 | By Nanashi | Vertical Comics – Part of the problem with titles like this and the other teasing works (Takagi-san less so as Nishikata doesn’t fall into the category) is that they are, at heart, the classic “extroverted girl acts overtly extroverted to bring introverted guy out of their shell,” and that’s not really a plot that feels comfortable in the Gen Z days, where you’re more likely to say “why doesn’t she just let him be in his quiet, safe space?” And by she I mean they, as Nagatoro’s two friends appear far more often here, which offers some good two-way teasing action, as they clearly see her crush on him, if not why. It’s still sort of hard to read, but if you pretend he’s more OK with it than he actually is, this is cute. – Sean Gaffney

Failed Princesses, Vol. 1 | By Ajiichi | Seven Seas – The concept of “popular girl meets unpopular girl” is a common one in yuri manga, and we do indeed hit several of its tropes in this first volume. The amusing thing is that Kanade, the shy outcast girl, is perfectly aware of how things are supposed to go, and keeps pulling back a bit to try to save Nanaki from, well, making herself an outcast by associating with the wrong people. The best part of the volume is that Nanaki really doesn’t give two shits about any of that, and seems set on making Kanade her best friend… and also making her over, which backfires a bit as Kanade cleans up nicely. I hear this gets a bit dramatic later, but for the moment it’s a cute and fluffy proto-yuri story. – Sean Gaffney

In/Spectre, Vol. 12 | By Kyo Shirodaira and Chashiba Katase | Kodansha Comics – The first story in this volume is another “Rikka tries to make people understand Kotoko is an evil Machiavellian schemer,” this time with one of her ex-classmates, but again the response seems to be “we know she’s a manipulative bitch, but she’s a good person anyway.” The larger story, which will continue into the next book, seems to be a chance to write Kuro and Kotoko as an actual romance, as the man we meet here and his relationship with a yuki-onna… as well as his penchant for attracting misfortune… very much parallel them. That said, they’re very cute together, which is why I hope he avoids the murder charge he’s now being investigated for. Still a favorite. – Sean Gaffney

Interviews with Monster Girls, Vol. 8 | By Petos | Kodansha Comics – The author knows what people want to see, but also knows that the best way to get readers is to drive them crazy by not showing it. We finally get what we’ve been begging for here, as Tetsuo asks Sakie out on a date. (This is after rejecting Kyouko’s love confession, both because she’s his student and also, as he is forced to admit, as he likes Sakie.) The stage is set for the date… and the rest of the book is thus spent with the three main student girls going to Kyouko’s for a fireworks viewing and meeting her family. They’re good chapters, and I really liked showing how difficult Kyouko has it as a dullahan in terms of everyday life, but GOD, please get back to the teachers, I beg you! – Sean Gaffney

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 16 | By Aka Akasaka | Viz Media – The series has gotten to the point where the more rewarding chapters are the ones as part of a larger arc. Not that the one-shot chapters are bad—though Maki’s journey to India may be the most pointless thing in this entire series to date, we do get Chika’s iconic “shut up or I’ll kill you” here. But the larger arcs, featuring Miyuki and Kaguya attempting to date without interruptions, and setting up Ishigami and Iino for a romance—though given the number of limbs broken in this book, and Iino’s own horrible lack of self-awareness, it may be a ways out—are better. This series is still hilarious, but we’ve come to read it more for the heartwarming moments. Heck, there’s even some serious drama here. Very good. – Sean Gaffney

Nineteen | By Ancco | Drawn & Quarterly – Although it was translated and released second in English, Nineteen is a precursor to Ancco’s internationally award-winning manhwa Bad Friends. The volume collects thirteen short comics originally published in Korea over a decade ago which absolutely remain relevant to today’s world. While understandably not as polished as some of Ancco’s later work—one can observe her style evolving and growing over the course of the collection (which is fascinating)—the comics still carry significant emotional weight and impact. Nineteen includes diary comics, which tend to be more lighthearted, as well as harder-hitting fictional stories, many of which also have autobiographical inspiration. As a whole, the collection explores themes of young adulthood, growing up, and complicated family relationships. In particular, there is a compelling focus on the relationships among daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. Some of the narratives can be rather bleak, but a resigned sense of humor threads through Nineteen, too. – Ash Brown

Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 8 | By Ammitsu | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Shoujo manga that has couples getting together BEFORE the end of the series is inevitably going to have an arc dealing with how far the lead couple should go now that they’re dating, and this is Ran’s turn, as she and Akira and their friends go to a beach house Ran’s family owns and have some beach fun. Unfortunately, the cast gets winnowed down one by one until it’s just the two of them… and her overprotective father, who arrives in time to provide the cliffhanger and no doubt ensure that nookie does not ensue. Not that I think it should—these two kids are even purer than the couple from Kimi ni Todoke, and I think they should mature a bit more before going further. Plus, watching them blush and kiss is wonderful. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | Viz Media – Having spent our first volume establishing that our found family can really come to love each other deep down, this volume shows off how they are also, at heart, fundamentally awkward and unable to socialize normally. This is unsurprising—hints of Loid’s life we’ve seen show him as a war orphan, Yor is a contract killer, and Anya basically grew up being experimented on by bad guys. As the school soon finds, this leads to issues. The second half of the book introduces Yor’s sister-obsessed little brother Yuri, who turns out to be a torture expert for Loid’s enemies. As always, half the fun is that everyone except Anya has no idea who their real selves are, and the cliffhanger tells us we’re in for some hilarious family fun. I love this. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | VIZ Media – After a brief spell atop the waiting list, Anya officially makes it into Eden Academy. Loid is anxious to progress to the next stage of his mission and, believing there’s not much chance in turning Anya into an elite scholar like his agency wants, focuses instead on having her befriend the younger son of his target. It does not go to plan, of course. Anya is very cute in this volume, and I also really appreciated how Loid genuinely listens to Yor and values her input. The arrival of Yor’s brother, a member of the secret police, is going to be a fun complication, and another cast member with a secret, but my favorite part of this series is probably always going to be how much love these three are already feeling for each other. So unique and good! – Michelle Smith

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Vol. 6 | By Tomo Hirokawa, based on the story by Reki Kawahara | Yen Press – The weakness of this manga is the same as always—it’s written to tie into the games, and features several characters I just don’t recognize, which can be a problem given this is the big final let’s-save-the-world ending. That said, this is still a decent SAO title. Kirito gets to be cool and badass, but because this isn’t written just by Kawahara others do as well, and it’s a nice balanced effort that focuses on heroine Premiere. I also really liked the point where all the NPCs are worried when everyone has to log out for several days for maintenance. While I’ll still remember this as the “SAO only everyone is alive” manga, I enjoyed reading it, when I wasn’t confused. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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sweetlangdon · 5 years

Text

Reckoning: Part Four (Michael Langdon x Reader)

Notes: AU of the Outpost plot of Apocalypse. A Gray accidentally finds Michael while he’s performing the ritual. Things take an interesting turn.

Warnings: Blood. So much blood. There’s blood in every part of this fic so far. Swearing. Murder. Graphic violence/gore. Blood kink. Knife play. Things get heated, but there’s no smut…yet? (There might be in the future, if I’m feeling particularly brave.)

This fic is currently in progress.

Also available on AO3.

[Repost of a previously published fic from my main blog.]

Part One Part Two Part Three

She recoiled as if the mark had scorched her fingertips, as if her skin had blistered in an open flame. It might as well have—he’d been warm all over; she’d felt that warmth through her clothes, but the mark behind his ear was blazing hot. She stumbled away from him until her back slammed into the wall near the doorway, hysterical laughter numbing the pain that jolted up her spine and knocked her teeth together. Her hands were shaking again.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” she said at last. “That’s just—no. You know what? This game has gone on long enough. I don’t know what kind of shit you’re trying to pull here, but that…I’m not…no.”

“You asked for the truth.” Langdon eyed her with slightly disheveled hair and annoyance pulling at the smirk on his lips. It was a composed sense of annoyance, which seemed like an unbelievable concept to her. She felt such a weird mix of confusion and rage and attraction toward him that she was beginning to infuriate herself, and she was sure that he could see every single bit of it.

“I gave you nothing else.” He took slow, deliberate steps to eliminate the distance she’d put between them. “When you found me, a part of you knew.” Langdon inched closer, the pointed toe of one his shoes settling between her feet. “And when you said those words back to me…you felt them, didn’t you? The power of them—of my father. Suddenly, the world became clearer…every need, every desire, no matter how dark,” he planted his hands on either side of her shoulders, “…and the very thought of it frightened you.”

What little air that had been left between them seemed to crackle, the heat that flowed from him playing across her skin. Her palms were slick with sweat again, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Langdon. She didn’t know what she hated more—him, or her inability to resist the intense, prying look he’d leveled her with.

She definitely fucking hated that he was right.

Ave Satanas. The words she’d said against his mouth, so full of rage and want, her mind hazy with it. She’d said them before she understood the full weight of them; she’d needed him to feel the words on her own lips. What the fuck was wrong with her?

“You may not be a believer—not yet,” Langdon cocked his head to the side, just a little, “but you believe in things beyond this ruined world,” he continued. “I could see it in your eyes…just as you saw it in mine.”

Lightning appeared to streak across his face and illuminate another side of him that lay hidden beneath his impeccable jawline and silky blond hair. It lasted for a moment or two; eyes shining like onyx sunken into a pale, withered face. Something hellish. A monster.

The fucking Antichrist.

She felt dizzy again. Her spine pressed into the wall, her fingers cold and tingling as panic began to race through her bloodstream. “You’re going to kill me.”

“No,” he drawled. Langdon lifted one of his hands and she felt his soft, warm fingertips wander along her cheekbone. His blood had long since dried on her skin, staining her dark red, and the scent and feeling of it seemed to leach into her soul. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have done it already. You gave me more than enough opportunities.”

She slapped his hand away without thinking about the fact that he could strangle her or probably break her goddamn neck with it. Fear made her angry, and anger made her act entirely on impulse.

“Then why the hell are you here?” she demanded. Langdon dropped his hands to his sides, one eyebrow raised at her outburst in a show of amusement. “You’re the reason we’ve all been miserable for the past eighteen months. Youstarted all of this shit.” She huffed out a shallow, anxious breath. The fucking Antichrist. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone to Sunday school, but I recall the Book of Revelation being a huge fucking deal.”

“So death would’ve been preferable to you?” Langdon goaded. “Torn apart by the blasts or the agonizing effects of radiation? Compared to the rest of the world, eighteen months of loneliness and servitude seems a far better alternative.” He folded one arm behind his back; he’d stepped away from her, taking the warmth with him. His tone regained some of its sharpness. “The only reason this outpost is standing is because I helped make it possible. And I’m here, as I said before, at the interest of The Cooperative. I haven’t lied.”

“You destroyed the world.” She scoffed, but she still missed the heat he carried. The anxiety in her veins had made her cold and her chest tight. A small fragment of her realized that she was only fighting him and asking these questions because it seemed like the right thing to do. That nagging thread of morality left from the old world; an effort that had become futile, now. “If you ask me, deceptive doesn’t even begin to cover that one, Langdon.”

“Humanity has already been doing that for centuries,” Langdon countered, side-stepping the accusation she’d hurled at him. “It was never going to last. We wiped the slate clean, and now it’s time to decide who will make this new world flourish in my father’s image.”

His father. Satan. How the shit did I get here, again?

Goddamn it, she really, really fucking hated that he was right.

She was so exhausted and bewildered by this whole situation that it took her a moment to comprehend that he’d fixed her with one rather expectant look. Her own laughter, all sarcasm and disbelief—the traces of hysteria gone as if the two of them had finally reached some strange level of understanding—echoed in the cavernous bathroom. Was it her own fatigue that made her slightly more open to the possibilities, or had she sold her soul the moment she accepted his challenge?

“I’m nobody.”

The coolness of the tile against her back made her shiver, so she pushed off it to take a few wary steps in his direction. Once she settled in front of him, Langdon dropped the arm that had been folded behind his back and peered at her with a narrowed gaze. She had to stop the contented sigh that almost worked its way from her throat when she fell back into the orbit of his warmth.

“A worker ant.” Venable’s words made her cringe, even from her own mouth. “I’m surprised you haven’t crushed me underneath your very expensive heel yet.”

That earned her a grin. Her stomach did another one of those involuntary somersaults, and without thinking too much about it, she dared one step closer. The hem of her dress brushed against his pants and the toe of her drab shoe knocked into his, but he didn’t move.

He leaned forward so that his breath skirted her hair. “That’s just what this place has turned you into.” Langdon took her hand and brought up so that it was level with his chest, running his thumb along the dark stains on her knuckles. His curious gaze dropped to the coating of dried blood on her skin, which seemed almost like a reprieve from his endless pursuit of her soul. As he traced a gentle fingertip across her knuckles, she clenched her jaw shut tight.

“At least consider that you could be more.” His thumb traveled down the inside of her wrist, following the path where the ribbons of his blood had soaked into her flesh and the sleeve of her dress. His voice turned low and dangerous. “I think you were made for this new world—you showed me that when you freed yourself from the old rules. You’re not the same person you were when you walked into that room; you and I both know that. But the question is,” he drew out the syllables, ice blue eyes flickering up to her own, “will you allow yourself to accept who you could be?”

Langdon hummed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His words dropped into an almost whisper, warm breath ghosting across the tender flesh of her wrist. His lips now hovered just above the network of veins that had been concealed under a layer of dark blood, his head dipped toward her, hair cascading gracefully down his bare shoulder. She watched him inhale the remaining scent of iron.

“Chaos becomes you.”

A shudder wracked her body, and she knew he’d felt it as her fingers curled under his touch. She waited for him to press his lips to her wrist, to maybe taste the iron on her skin, but instead he dropped her hand.

Her eyebrows pulled together. “Or, I could tell everyone your dark secret.” She flexed her fingers at her side, the ghost of his touch and the warmth of him still lingering on her skin.

Langdon’s face was suddenly bright with a sarcastic grin that she wanted to loathe, but it only made her cheeks feel flushed. “As if they would believe you.”

He circled around her until he came to rest at her back, and she leaned, just a little, into the solid presence of his bare chest. She found him staring at their reflection in the mirror above the sink—Langdon, fucking perfect as always, despite the fact that he’d been stabbed in the past half hour, and there shewas…a fucking blood-stained travesty of a human being. She didn’t even look worthy enough to polish his shoes.

Maybe that was the exhaustion talking. This night had lasted for an eternity.

“So…” His words were low and rough in her ear. Heat prickled up the back of her neck. “While I’ve enjoyed the sight of you covered in my blood,” he swept a chunk of hair over her shoulder and one of his rings grazed the side of her throat, “I’m afraid I can’t let you walk around the outpost like that.”

Langdon moved away from her, and she stared at the muscles that rippled in his back as he retreated, this time without a sense of shame or a hint of rage.

“Take all the time you need.” And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, the room so many degrees colder than she would’ve liked.

She let out a sigh. Well, shit.

In the end, she decided that taking a shower in the fucking Antichrist’s private en suite ranked very low on the list of unbelievable shit that had happened tonight. Exhaustion had made itself comfortable in her bones. And even though she thought of the blood on her as some kind of morbid trophy—she’d made the fucking Antichrist bleed and lived—all she wanted to do right now was clean herself up and sleep. Maybe for an eternity.

The cold air hit her skin, raising goosebumps as she let her dress pool around her ankles. Her bra and panties followed, and for a second she stood there in the soft yellow light of the candles, wondering what she’d do about the blood-stained clothes. Her vision went unfocused, tired and in a daze, her thoughts wandering off in too many directions. Thinking about Langdon just on the other side of that damned door and if she actually trusted him enough to make herself vulnerable with nothing but a rather thin wall between them.

And the knife.

She’d forgotten about it, honestly. It had been neglected on the floor by the shower, blood splattered on the tiles when Langdon had tossed it. The blade was more crimson than steel now. He’d been right, of course—to her deep, unwavering irritation, he always seemed to be right—she wasn’t the same. She didn’t feel the same. These past eighteen months had taken their toll, but this…it wasn’t anything she could explain. Had she always been like this? Had she always wanted to be like this? Or was it just what this strange, new world now demanded of her?

She kicked the knife under the pile of clothes.

The water ran dark red, the scent of whatever flowery soap that came standard in the outpost blossoming into the air. She watched the tendrils of red swirl in the soapy water around her feet until they vanished down the drain. The near scalding heat worked her tense, weary muscles loose.

Clouds of steam obscured the glass as she scrubbed at her skin until it was bright pink, eliminating every trace of Langdon’s blood. She melted into the warmth, eyes fluttering closed, trying to breathe after whatever the fuck had happened. When she realized she was actually falling asleep standing up, lulled into a gentle comfort by the water, she decided it was time to leave.

She shoved aside a few used towels on the floor with her foot, entirely cognizant of the fact that while she’d be one of the people washing them later, she’d used up all of Langdon’s clean towels out of spite. While towel-drying her hair, wandering around the bathroom in aimless circles, she noticed something folded over the chair in front of the vanity table. It definitely hadn’t been there before she’d hopped in the shower. Langdon’s en suite had been untouched except for the blood stains, devoid of anything personal.

Except for the coat that was now on the chair. The coat that he had somehow left in here while she’d been oblivious.

For…her?

Huh. That’s…something, all right.

She finished halfheartedly drying off her hair and then dropped the dampened towel into the pile with the rest. “Fuck it.”

After sliding her bra and panties back on, she considered the heap of blood-stained clothes and decided her shoes were the only thing worth saving. There was more identical, boring gray attire in her room; not as many as the Purples had in their wardrobes, but she could spare at least one set. She cleaned the blood off her shoes as best she could—she figured the bloodied towels were another problem for Langdon to solve—and then picked up the coat from the back of the chair.

Her stomach did another one of those obnoxious somersaults. It was an elegant coat, long and black and lined with buttons. She held it up, unfolding it to reveal the bright red lining on the inside. An equally obnoxious part of her brain remembered that Langdon had been wearing this coat when he’d first introduced himself to everyone in the outpost. She sunk into it, suddenly more alert than she’d been in the past half hour, her pulse speeding up its rhythm. It was the finest piece of clothing she’d worn in over a year, and probably the most expensive thing she’d ever worn in her life.

And it belonged to Langdon.

Was it possible that some part of him wasn’t complete hell spawn?

She pulled the coat closed and buttoned it—frustratingly aware that she was half-naked underneath it. Holy fuck, why. The fabric felt like silk against her bare skin, cool enough to provoke another round of goosebumps that broke through the lingering heat from her shower. The sleeves were too long, and her hands disappeared into them no matter how many times she pulled them back up. It smelled exquisite: rich and earthy like a rain-soaked forest with just a hint of wood smoke and something else, maybe warm spices and citrus. She breathed in deep, inhaling the intoxicating scent, recalling images of a world that hadn’t been nuked to hell. Is this what he smelled like all the time? She hadn’t had a chance to notice, what with all the blood. It was nice. Really nice.

Well. I’m fucked.

She suppressed a groan.

The knife had been left where she kicked it—there was no damn way Langdon didn’t know about it, either—and without a second thought, she wiped off the blood and stuffed it in an inside pocket. Once she gathered up her pile of stained clothes, she summoned whatever was left of her resolve in the mess of her own exhaustion and walked back into Langdon’s suite.

His attention had been pulled toward her at the sound of the bathroom door opening, half of his face caught in the pale white glow of a laptop screen. When did the outpost get WiFi? He had one elbow propped up on the desk, his hand slowly curling into a loose fist. He was once again fully clothed in black. She didn’t miss the way his bright blue gaze took in the sight of her in his fucking coat. The way his lips curved into a smirk. The way his head tilted, and his chin rose as if in appreciation. Was it genuine, or was he just fucking with her? Maybe it was just her lustful, traitorous imagination. Maybe it was smugness, or fucking delight, because he’d helped put her in this situation.

She sighed. “Don’t.”

Langdon made an indifferent sort of gesture with his hand, but his smirk deepened. “I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t have to.”

He rose from the desk and crossed the room in several long strides to open the door. “I’ll need that back.”

“Obviously.” She made sure the corridor was empty before she stepped out. “No one will know about it.”

Langdon’s chin rose again, and this time she couldn’t read his expression. “Good night.”

The door clicked shut when she was halfway down the corridor. She moved as quickly as she could through the labyrinth of hallways—now more empty than they had been before; everyone had to have gone to bed by now. Not that time existed down here anymore, but she’d never felt the effects of such a weird, virtually lawless existence than she did walking through the outpost on this artificial night. She found herself both longing for the construct of time and thrilled that it no longer held any meaning. All she knew for sure was that she just wanted to fucking sleep. Langdon had drained whatever energy she’d had left.

She stopped once in her travels to burn her clothes in one of the large fireplaces; her eyes burned with fatigue while she watched the flames consume the last evidence of her bloody interview with Langdon. When she finally arrived at her room in the Gray quarters, her roommate was blissfully asleep, tucked away under the covers.

Slipping off her shoes, she padded across the room to her armoire under the dim light of the low burning candles. With a pang of reluctance that she did notwant to acknowledge in any way at all, she took off Langdon’s coat and stowed it among her comparatively dull wardrobe. It wouldn’t be in here long enough for her roommate to find it. The girl was gossipy to a fault, but she at least kept out of her belongings. Not that any of them had much to begin with.

She dressed in a plain, off-white linen nightgown that served no purpose other than to uphold Venable’s outdated aesthetic. And finally…finally, after this endless fucking night or whatever the hell it had been, she dragged her tired body to her bed and crawled under the blankets.

And she hid the Antichrist’s knife under her pillows.

@lastregasolitaria @mylippo @zeciex @lvngdvns @langdonsdemon @yourkingcodyfern @sojournmichael @gabnelson98 @rainbowrosesjas @antichristlangdxn @keavysmithxoxo @artistlunadrayne @codysfallenangels @batgirlbride @mileeyyowens @dead-witch-boy @boofy1998 @gentianea @cryptid-coalition @langdonsrapture @kinlovecody @yuriohoe04 @electricurie @marvel-rpdr-and-ahs @gallxntdean @langdonscurls @jcshadowkiss-blog @frozenhuntress67 @sebastianshoe @dixmond-taurus @bookobssesed99 @sassylangdon @queenie435 @holylangdon @weareallevilmotherfuckers-deact @langdonfern @angsty-otters-blog @denaexr @mr-langdonn @micheallangdons @lostin-fern @crazedcatcuddler @satansapostle @monsucre @ritualmichael @fernshorrorstory @queencocoakimmie @bluelancesredswords @theharvestgirloffire @punkysouls @sevenwondr @zoebensvn @kylosbabe @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26

#michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon x fem!reader #michael langdon fanfiction #michael langdon imagine #ahs fic #ahs fanfiction #ahs imagine #ahs apocalypse #ahs apocalypse imagine #ahs apocalypse fanfiction #fic: reckoning

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elegantmoonchild · 6 years

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Thoughts on writing, SweetVee, and the writing monster within while wrapping up “No Angel”…

These are some personal thoughts I wanted to share regarding “No Angel” and the difficult journey it took to finish this whopper of a story, along with other tales of writing insecurities, anxieties, and my own personal definition of what it means to be a responsible fanfic writer. I recognize there has been a lot of discord and hurt feelings from writers across the fandom, and I wanted to do my part to share my concerns and experiences, without fear of retribution or crucifixion, in the hopes it might ease the woes of someone else silently suffering from writing anxiety like myself.

I’m going to get deeply personal, so you’ve been forewarned.

First, I want to say this fic has been such a ride for me throughout its entire inception, planning, crafting, and publishing. When I created SweetVee last year, I had no idea how much the ship would affect me and my writing, how much hope it would give me to charter new territory. I can’t believe the exposure the ship has gotten and I truly am glad it’s inspiring others to write again. That’s incredible for a silly little idea to have made such an impact!

That being said, I struggled dearly with “No Angel”, and this story nearly stole the love I had for writing right out from under my feet. There were times when it felt like I had poured every last part of myself into the lines. There were nights I got two hours of sleep, missed spending time with my family during the holidays because I was so exhausted, and I lost weight simply because I had no appetite. Morgan @fangfogartys had to literally yell at me some days to go to bed. I searched deep into old wounds for this story because I so desperately wanted to give the ship I had created the BEST possible chance for survival because I thought it had so much potential. I wanted readers to believe in SweetVee. I wanted to write them so believable and realistic in their own unique world because they are unique! They literally had no shared lines and were created because I thought their personalities could mesh uniquely well. I wanted to show the world how beautiful and complicated and dark this kind of couple can be. I see in them the ability to explore the sides of themselves that are scary, terrifying, but with each other they find the strength to discover and learn and better themselves. These kind of relationships aren’t cookie cutter, because what relationship truly is?

But my anxiety got the best of me. I began to question and doubt every single word, every single line. I sought comfort from friends, time and time again, because I could not believe a simple compliment about my writing was genuine. This fic changed me. It turned me from someone who wanted to support everyone into someone I despised — something I’ve worked very hard in my 30 years of life to overcome. The ship I loved so much soon turned into something I hated. I felt guilt and anger and shame and my anxiety shot through the roof. I sought out validation from people I don’t need validation from. I counted comment count, kudos count, compared to the number of reblogs I got and the people who seemed so genuinely excited about an update but neglected to comment. It took away the FUN of fandom for me, turned it into a job where I wanted recognition for the hard work I had done. This kind of side to me is not one I exhibit in my personal life outside of this screen, and it shouldn’t be me while I am here.

Writing, for me, is a catharsis of all the pent-up energy I cannot expel through any other means but anger or dancing or tears. My anxiety is so overwhelming and crippling at times, I feel like I’m mentally pacing in a small room, the compressed force of my energy increasing the pressure of the tiny volume of the prison where I’m mentally burning holes in the floor. It takes everything in me to quiet that energy and keep the ceiling from combusting inward. Writing has helped me, and though I wish I could remember who sparked that reinterest in the hobby, I unfortunately cannot do so and cannot thank them for what they’ve given me, which essentially feels like part of my soul back. The fact others can remember, can pinpoint who and what and that it is me that did that for them just blows me away. I was able to bring that spark to someone else, and that makes all the difference in the world. That helps to quiet the anxiety, push down that nervous energy, and I can see clearly in an open space instead of a locked room.

My anxiety with SweetVee became an all-consuming monster that I just couldn’t quiet. I wanted to work my hardest to make the argument for why they worked. Because here’s the thing — creating a ship isn’t about simply saying these two people would look cute together because of height difference. I created the ship name. I created the AO3 tag. There was no evidence anyone was talking about them so in an essence, I gave them their first breath by putting them to paper and bringing their union to light. That’s a lot of pressure that nobody was putting on me but myself, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my work, so naturally I over-exerted myself until I succumbed to the burnout and had to step away.

I’m going to take you back several months here to early Fall of 2017, shortly after “Riverdale” returned for season two. I’ve been very vocal that there were many times I considered tossing “Ouroboros.” One of my best friends came to visit me and I can vividly remember us walking the neighborhood and me talking about my concerns with the story and how believable it was, and she nearly convinced me to toss it because I left open a huge hole that I questioned night and day. However, instead of giving up, I changed the story and continued on. People have told me that fic reignited the spark for writing for them, and in an instant, knowing it made a difference for even one person made the experience entirely worth it. To know it inspired someone else questioning writing into taking a leap and creating a product that turned out fantastic makes it even more worth it, beyond so.

It’s been my lot in life, it seems, to always be there for others. I’ve worked hard to not let it consume me and twist me into something angry when I feel depleted or taken advantage of, but despite my desire to change who I am, that is one facet where I just can’t. So that should show you how simple recognition really resonates with me. It tells me I’m on the right path. I’m doing the right thing. I’m making a difference because there are times I feel so small and so quiet, I know others feel this too. If I am told that my presence alone made a difference, then that proves I can help someone else who feels small feel the same sort of achievement, the same kind of strength. People have thanked me for leaving long comments on their stories. I’m here now to say I am honored to be able to leave comments the way I do because the magnitude of your support has kept me interested in the fandom, in “Riverdale” fanfiction. I would have walked away, had it not been my love for writing and the encouragement I received by people actually telling me they gave a shit about what I do. So the credit for that ultimately goes back goes to you, the readers and writers.

I’ve had people tell me they are gobsmacked that I would talk to them because they view me as a major player in the fandom, and that honestly just blows my mind. I have felt like this small speck before, and there are times I still feel that way. Unfortunately, what comes with that title is the ability to influence, and though I don’t want the pressure of that, I know I am strong enough now to utilize it to help others out. There are people I looked up to when I first joined this fandom, people I don’t view in the same particular light, because after a considerable amount of thought, I realize that these people are human, just like me, and not every human is meant to get along or agree. Instead of being disappointed and wallowing in this truth, I’ve decided to use my own influence and help shed the light on others who need it. I will never stop remembering what it feels like to be a small writer in a big space. I will never forget that, and I will do my damnedest to help others stop reliving that reality because it can be Hell. It can rob you of the very feeling you’ve said I gave back to you, the very feeling given back to me by some of the writing in this fandom – that spark to create, that will to continue and push on through that negative energy and watch it blossom into something brilliant, something you can be proud of. I hope I never turn into that person that loses your trust, loses your respect. I hope my head never gets too big to where I can’t help someone else out, can’t fan the flames of that spark in someone else. If I ever get that way, yell at me in a DM, please. I will be humble enough to accept that.

Everything writers here describe in their journey is exactly what I experience when I write. That thrill and anguish, all of it, I feel it too, and it’s both a gift and a curse. It can be soul-crushing and uplifting, all in the same stroke. However, there is that pride that shines bright at the end of the tunnel, and it outweighs all the turmoil. I will do my best so that the pride you feel does not go forgotten. I will do my best to ensure it remains intact if I have to comment on every chapter, reblog every sneak peek, and message you to tell you how much I enjoyed your work. If you ever feel like I’m not doing enough, not helping you out, not reading your work, please tell me. It is this burden I am more than happy to carry because it means something. It means something. To more than just myself.

For those of you who have told me in private that I have gifted you with the ability to write again, please know I will not squander that praise. Those words will never escape me, and I will be your biggest cheerleader and biggest coach for the rest of our time here in this fandom to make sure that gift does not go neglected.

Going back to “No Angel”, I’ve seen a lot of people encouraging to “write for you,” and at first that sentiment made no sense. If I was only writing for myself, my words would remain in a dusty word doc never to be seen by anyone else, including myself. The purpose of fanfiction is to write for a fandom. So what does “writing for oneself” truly mean? I think I found my own example, and I’ll share it with you willingly.

It took me a while to realize I had written “No Angel” for everyone else, not myself — that’s why I became so obsessed with validation. I wanted other people to believe my theory in why this ship worked. I wanted people to give me that chance because I worked so hard to make that argument compelling enough for people to read, or so I thought. An incredible fandom friend reminded me that the weight of those few choice people who chose not to read my work paled in comparison to the dozens of people who vocally told me they enjoyed what I do, have thanked me for my storytelling and for always being courteous enough to communicate my feedback to their feedback. See, in my mind, I had set expectations for people who didn’t deserve them. I expected people to at least be curious enough to want to read about the originator’s take on a ship. I thought people would be curious enough with all of the reblogs and likes to at least give me the benefit of a doubt. What I did was forget that people have freedom of choice and that’s my bad. I equated support of fandom with my own definition that doesn’t necessarily equate to someone else’s. No one’s at fault for that more than myself, and I apologize if I offended anyone along the way. I just wanted to be seen as someone who could contribute something of quality to this fandom, and my view of what that looks like can be drastically different than someone else’s.

I had to wrestle with the warring, conflicting emotions that every writer feels – pride in their work and disappointment when you see the hit count go up and up and up and the comment count stay the same. If a writer ever tells you this doesn’t get under their skin, they’re lying to you. So here’s the deal. Moving forward, I’m writing for myself in the only way I know how.

My next fic is a pregnancy AU for SweetVee that I’m really, really excited about writing. It brought back my love for this ship because I want to write this for me, no one else. And honestly, if you don’t want to read it, that’s fine. In all honesty, that’s no one’s loss but your own, and that’s not to sound snide but more as my way of saying I’m going to be proud and happy regardless because I now value my hard work and my skill and I value my ship. I will never stop writing for them because they give me inspiration – SweetVee is me and I will always be a part of SweetVee because I gave birth to them. I gave them life to the public and now that they are grown, I am sending them off into the world to be loved by others and I, in turn, will love them in my own individual way just like a mother would.

I want to thank the people who truly read “No Angel” and took the time to comment on it, or if you sent me an ask or a DM about it (I recognize not everyone has an AO3 account to comment). You guys are a great reason I’m still writing fanfiction today because I know it’s not the ship you crave, but me. My writing. My vision. You gave me a little slice of the limited time you have each day and I appreciate that, so so fucking much. I’ve seen writers walk away entirely because something they work hard on gets little exposure. Fandom can feel like a popularity contest at times, and I appreciate you taking a chance on someone with a very tiny spot in a big, wide world. I’d hate to give up something I love because I thought people hated it. Your words kept me from believing that. And now I’ve found the strength to do something I love for me.

At the end of the day, I’m so fucking proud of “No Angel,” and I don’t give a damn what the hit count looks like or if you don’t want to read it. I know I made a solid product that I can say without a doubt was one of my BEST pieces of work, and in the end that’s really the only thing that matters.

Thank you again for the love. I plan on dropping some teasers very soon for my next SweetVee and Bughead fics, but in the meantime I’m always around if you have thoughts or need help with anything writing or fandom related (or life or whatever. I’m here for you).

— Sam, elegantmoonchild

#riverdale #sweetvee #OTP: i am your creator #my precious sweetvee #my babies #proud mama #writer insecurities #anxious writer #honest thoughts #doing it for me #no angel #responsible writer #responsible fandom member

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sweet-child-of-the-paradise-city · 7 years

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Get To Know Me (Tag)

Rules: Answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people.

I was tagged by @luddlebubble - thank you :)

LAST:

1. Drink: Beer 2. Phone call: From my Mam 3. Text message: To my Mam 4. Song you listen to: This was hours ago now but I think it was maybe Fiona Coyne by Skyler Spence 5. Time you cried: A week ago maybe?

HAVE YOU:

6. Dated someone twice: I’ve never dated 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: I’ve never kissed someone, someone tried to but I punched them in the eye... 8. Been cheated on: Nope 9. Lost someone special: Most definitely 10. Been depressed: Of course 11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: I’ve gotten to the point of feeling queasy, and last weekend was the same but with added impaired vision (I can assure you all I still had my glasses on)

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS:

12-14. Red and blue

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: Kind of

16. Fallen out of love: Nope

17. Laughed until you cried: Yeah 18. Found out someone was talking about you: It was just a little over a year ago but it still counts 20. Found out who your friends are: Definitley 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: No, gosh no!

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: Every single one, though some I wish I’d never met 23. Do you have any pets: Not anymore 24. Do you want to change your name: No, I’m good 25. What did you do for your last Birthday: My friend and I went to maccies and then to the cinemas since the certain plans from months earlier did not follow through... 26. What time do you wake up: For uni it’s 6:30am, but on days off it can range from 11am to 2pm 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Reading 28. Name something you can’t wait for: My vacations! in about two weeks I’m going to Scotland for a few days and then to Blackpool the following week; say what you want but both are close to my heart 29. When was the last time you saw your mom? 10 minutes ago 30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: For my nanna to still be alive 31. What are you listening to right now: I’m binge-watching my way through Chicago P.D. so I guess that 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yeah, two to my knowledge. One was a friend in college and the other was a friend of a friend in college 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: The fact that I want to lose a little bit of weight but even the thought of getting on the exercise bike annoys the shit out of me because it is so damn boring 34. Most visited website: Gosh, tumblr maybe? 35. Mole/s: Okay, so I have plenty of little brown circles on my skin, one always in the vicinity of another but idk if they’re actually closer to freckles than moles 36. Mark/s: Strech marks and some scarring from a type of rash I had as a kid 37. Childhood dream: To be happy and at peace with what I’m doing 38. Hair colour: Light brown 39. Long or short hair: Shoulder length 40. Do you have a crush on someone: As in real life come-into-contact-frequently type then no. On famous people, sure 41. What do you like about yourself: My eyes 42. Piercings: None, but my friend is trying to talk me into getting my ears pierced so watch this space 43. Blood type: Beats me 44. Nicknames? Calla, Callarine (my cousins could never pronounce my name properly as kids and it kinda stuck with everyone else) 45. Relationship status: Very much single

46. Zodiac: Pisces 47. Pronouns: She/Her 48. Favorite TV Show: I have plenty but right now it is Band of Brothers 50. Right or left hand: Right handed 51. Surgery: Yeah, I have a small scar on the left side of my head from when I had to have a lump removed incase it was cancerous 52. Hair dyed in different colour: Once for a fancy dress party, the bright orange dye lingered for weeks even though it was a wash out spray 53. Sport: No, but badminton is about the only one I can play properly 55. Vacation: Since I was a kid it’s always been Scotland and Blackpool. I haven’t been to Scotland since 2012 since my dad lost his job in the same year. and I’ve only missed Blackpool twice because of a family death and the again because we couldn’t afford it 56. Pair of trainers: I have many Converse pairs

MORE GENERAL:

57. Eating: is good 58. Drinking: Right now, water 59. I’m about to: Answer the next question 62. Want: Get rid of the mouth sore I have because it feels weird 63. Get married: If it happens then it happens but it’s not important because my parents have been together for over 20 years and they’re not married but they’re happy 64. Career: Idk but I recently found out that you can get a job of reading books for publishing agencies so that sounds fun I just don’t know how to go about it 65. Hugs or kisses: Hugs, please 66. Lips or eyes: Always eyes 67. Shorter or taller: Taller because I myself am only 5′3″ 68. Older or younger: Older 70. Nice arms or nice stomach: Don’t care, just don’t be a cunt and we are aces 71. Sensitive or loud: Sensitive, I’ m not good around loud people 72. Hook up or relationship: Relationship. 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Hesitant, cos if you get your ass caught I am not helping you out

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. Kissed a Stranger: Never kissed 75. Drank hard liquor: I’ve tried Scotch whiskey and let me tell you, it is gross 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: Not yet but I have many years ahead of me to probably will at some point 77. Turned someone down: I have turned some people down, one of those I have turned down multiple times 78. Sex on the first date: No thanks 79. Broken someone’s heart: Idk, when I turned down the guys I didn’t ask but I’m pretty sure I didn’t 80. Had your heart broken: Nah 81. Been arrested: I’m a good person 82. Cried when someone died: Obviously 83. Fallen for a friend: Noooooooope

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84: Yourself: Not a lot of the time 85. Miracles: No 86. Love at first sight: You’ve got to get to know someone to fall in love with them because they could turn out to be a huge arsehole 87. Santa Claus: Not anymore 88. Kiss on the first date: On the cheek if things went good and you feel lie it but I wouldn’t go further

OTHER:

90. Current best friend name: Megan, we’ve only known each other for a few years but I can confide in her with everything 91. Eye color: Green 92. Favorite movie: Rudderless but I haven’t watched it in over a year because it makes me cry

I tag- @steve-rogers-best-girl @whatcha-gonna-do-about-it-huh @unaduessa ‘

#I feel like i'm missing someone so if that's you then tag yourself if you want to do it #sorry if i'm bothering any of you #caroline answers the tags

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anonymousblueberry · 7 years

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Oh my goodness PLEASE answer that who's who meme for Luke & Wedge

Oh god these got long I’m sort of sorry...

• who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunterThey both are. I mean, Luke used to be a hunter who got bit, so he goes and sulks in some out of the way cave until the locals realise that he’s a bit more than just a weirdo who only comes to town at the new moon. The find Wedge, somehow, and he mooches out there, not really believing that there’s a werewolf, they’re all dead. Only instead he finds his ex-partner (and ex occasional lover) sulking because once a month he eats meat. Wedge despairs, and invests in extra lint rollers.

• who’s the mermaid and who’s the fishermanLuke’s just curious, the fisherman who always seems to have the same four crewmen, day after day, year after year. Most of them change crews with the seasons, he’s seen, but this one, he’s always with the same four people, but he always looks sort of lonely, even when he’s laughing and joking with them.

When one of them is pulled overboard trying to haul in a caught net, Luke dives down as fast as he can to pull him back up, halfway back to the surface when he realises that there’s someone else helping him pull the dead weight body back up. When they break the surface and the lonely one starts to haul his unconscious friend over the side of the boat, Luke doesn’t think twice about helping; he’s stronger and better used to moving in the water after all. He doesn’t even realise that they’re staring at him.

“I lost my sister to one of yours,” the lonely one says, when Luke tries to smile at him. “I’ve not got time for dalliances.”

Luke is about to reply, when there’s a call, “Wedge!” and the lonely one, Wedge, turns away.

He might have said he’s not got time for dalliances, but the ship is back the next day, nets out, and even if Wedge avoids his glance, the rest of his crew are kind enough, and Luke has plenty of time.

• who’s the witch and who’s the familiarWedge is the grumpiest familiar, Luke is the most considerate witch ever. The bond goes both ways, what one feels, the other does to a degree. When Luke loses his hand, Wedge drops the mug he’s holding and folds over in agony. When Wedge, in his animal form, traps his paw in the gears of a clock tower, Luke blacks out in a panic, convinced he’s now lost both his hands.

They weren’t meant to bond, but Luke’s habit of feeding strays was going to have consequences sooner or later, and Wedge had been down on his luck for too long. The first time he shifted, they both screamed.

Luke rarely uses his power, it takes too much out of Wedge, Wedge doesn’t shift as much as other familiars, prefers to be small and inconspicuous as they go about their business.

• who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addictLuke wouldn’t really call himself a barista. He runs a tea shop that also sells coffee, although it’s really just a side because he begrudgingly accepts that not everyone wants tea. It’s not even that great coffee, but there’s this sleepy Scottish bloke who comes in most mornings, who never seems to have his shit together until he’s halfway through his first cup, pale blue shirt looking odd against his dark hair and eyes. They have an easy, slightly flirty banter going on, but then Wedge (and that had confused Luke the first time he’d introduced himself) had become strangely distant.

Luke wonders what’s happened when he vanishes for several months, but things make a painful kind of sense when the man returns, late in the afternoon after several months, his hand in a painful looking cast and an RAF uniform jacket draped over his shoulder.

“So, now they’ve finally pinned me to a desk, would it be rude of me to ask you out for a drink?”

• who’s the professor and who’s the TALuke’s the professor. The problem is he’s currently on the other side of the globe on a totally unauthorised research trip and Wedge is desperately trying to hold all his courses together, which convincing the department head that Luke is absolutely still around. He’s doing a good job, and Luke does occasionally answer his emails, but the department head is going to catch on soon, and a couple of the students are getting really suspicious.

Wedge is basically ready to defend his thesis, he just keeps putting it off because he hates being the centre of attention. He’s signed up for more and more really pointless modules because he has the funding, and so long as Luke doesn’t realise that he should have finished about a year and a half ago, it’ll be fine.

Sadly, the first thing Luke does when he gets back, isn’t actually mark some of the massive stack of essays that Wedge hasn’t got round to, but to schedule Wedge’s defence, whether he likes it or not.

“You realise you’re not going to be able to vanish out the country once I’ve graduated?” Wedge asks him, looking at the paperwork with horror.

Luke shrugs. “I thought it was about time you got to see some of the things you’ve been writing about. I’m taking a sabbatical, and you deserve a break from academia before you go and find a teaching position.”

• who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)Well obviously Luke is the prince who absolutely doesn’t need rescuing from the father he never knew. He had an entire escape planned, but he’s not going to say no to the rather attractive knight who had come from his sister (sister?!) to rescue him.

• who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent Wedge isn’t actually sure if Rey is Luke’s, or if he found her somewhere and hasn’t given her back; they don’t look anything alike, apart from their height, and their personalities are so different that Wedge seriously suspects adoption. It’s supposed to say things like that on the kids’ records, but things get missed, and there are 30 other kids in his form (not to mention the ones he teaches for other subjects) and he loses track.

There’s also the fact that he’s fairly sure Luke is younger than him, and he doesn’t feel old enough to have a fifteen year old.

Teenage fling? Adoption? Wedge really isn’t sure. All he knows is that if he has to call Luke in one more time, he’s going to have to involve the head, and Rey’s a good student, she’s just a little too quick to start fights and defend other kids.He looks up when the door opens, and honestly doesn’t feel an odd rush of something when Luke walks in, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, Rey sloping in behind him, the latest round of cuts and bruises just starting to turn livid colours.

“Thank you for coming in,” he offers Luke his hand, how this always starts.Luke shakes it briefly and then sits down. “I’ve spoken to Ben’s mother, she understands that Ben was at fault here, and won’t be taking action.”

It takes Wedge a moment to make the connection, he’s never taught Kylo Ren, but Ben sounds familiar, and suddenly the link of Luke and Rey Skywalker and Ben and Leia Organa makes sense, as does Rey and Kylo’s constant antagonism.

Wedge wants the ground to open up and swallow him as he realises he’s developing a crush on possibly the most inappropriate person going.

• who’s the writer and who’s the editor

Luke is possibly the nicest writer Wedge has ever met. He meets deadlines, he doesn’t throw tantrums, he makes polite replies to Wedge’s comments. He just REALLY needs to use fewer words. NaNoWriMo has a lot to answer for in Wedge’s opinion.

“Luke, you can’t return my edits with an extra three thousand words.” He looks over the laptop screen to Luke, who is fidgeting in his chair, “especially not after my edits said to trim sections down.”

“I know, but I suddenly realised that part of Poe’s chapter didn’t make sense if you didn’t understand Shara and Kes’ relationship and how they’d ended up living in Yavin, and it just flowed.” He smiles at Wedge, and it’s horribly disarming.

Wedge sighs. “I’m beginning to think we might have to reconsider this as a trilogy, rather than a standalone.” He can already hear the screams from the publishers, but he thinks he can swing it.

#beth answers #beth writes #luke x wedge #wedge x luke #au ask meme #ask meme #elsajeni is a terrible enabler

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thetaekswoon · 7 years

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BTS Jin| Cast Away AU

**Warning! This AU depicts very traumatic situations and have many depictions of blood, death, injury, and anything else you could imagine for a plane crash/tragic accident. Briefly nsfw. Read at your own risk.

Jin

The last thing you could have expected when you woke up this morning was for your plane to crash on an island somewhere in the middle of the pacific.

You had never been a nervous flyer, knowing that thousands of flights left every hour of everyday and you only ever heard of some tragic accident happening once every few years or so.

No one knows for sure what actually sent your plane spiralling down, but you can only thank whatever you might believe in that you managed to crash on land.

Your plane was small and compact, less than thirty passengers on board, so somewhere during the impact the plane broke apart, sending about ten of the passengers, not including you, to fly out of the aircraft.

Besides the trauma of actually crashing and a few scrapes and bruises, you are unharmed, just a long cut above your eyebrow.

And now, you are in one of your later years of studying to become a nurse and are currently interning at hospitals,

so as soon as you can you duck out of the gaping hole in the airplane and rush around to check all the people who have been thrown out of the plane.

As you check the first person who was only a few feet from the plane you can already see that the man is dead, his head must have hit a rock or something, and as you are continuing your rounds you see that this is mostly the case for the people who were pulled out of the plane.

That or they were crushed by some of the metal pieces.

And tbh if it wasn’t for your history helping patients you would not have been able to look at all these dead people without throwing up.

By now some of the other survivors in the plane are making their way out, stumbling and clutching their arms or heads,

and you are about to determine that everyone who has been thrown out of the plane is dead, and go help the rest of the passengers when you hear someone gasping in pain further away in the sand.

So of course you rush over and there, halfway underneath a significant part of the exterior of the plane is the most attractive young man you have ever seen in your whole life.

You remember seeing him in the airport’s terminal, reading a book - you were pretty sure it was a cook book and that made you laugh a little to yourself - with his headphones in,

, and you couldn’t help but watch him as you were waiting to board the plane because well as mentioned before,,,

HE’S THE MOST ATTRACTIVE HUMAN BEING YOU HAVE EVER HAD THE PLEASURE TO LAY YOUR EYES ON LIKE EVER

But now his face is bright red and his legs and trapped under part of the plane, and he’s having a hard time catching his breath.

You rush over to this man, and introduce yourself and quickly as possible, simultaneously explaining how you are a nurse - kinda - and yelling for the other survivors to help you get this piece of metal off of him because it is too heavy for you to lift off yourself.

The man is gasping from the intense pain he’s clearly feeling, but somehow is still able to say cooly, “Y/N’s a pretty name, I’m Seokjin, just Jin please.”

And when you are able to finally pull the piece off of him and his legs, you have an oh fuck moment because his legs are completely destroyed, how he has not been screaming in agony for the last minute or so finally makes sense to you because there’s no way that he can still feel anything below his waist.

Jin’s legs are completely torn up, the bones in both crushed by the impact and the weight of the exterior plane part, his left femur is also projected through the skin,

and theres so much blood how has he not bleed out to death yet?

And you’re just there shaking because omg, what do you do, what CAN you do? Is there even anything you can do for Jin?

So you’re just like, “Jin, stay calm, I’m not going to bullshit you but this isn’t good, this is bad, like really bad.”

and he’s just like, ok ok just do what you can,

, You yell for someone to run back into the plane and grab the medical supply kit and to your relief one of the older men on the flight has already thought ahead of you and immediately hands the kit off to you.

To start you just try stopping his bleeding so he doesn’t bleed out, and you tear off the bottoms of your jeans to make tourniquets only to find that his thighs are just way too LARGE for that fabric to wrap around, so again the older man is one step ahead and hands off his sweater to you.

eventually as the other passengers are gathering their bearings and start scavenging around for supplies and to scope out the island, you are able to stabilize Jin enough for you to try and figure out just how bad the nerve damage is,

You start out on his feet, poking him around, asking if he is able to feel anything... he says no,

, so you move up to his calves... which he can’t feel, to his knees... which he can’t feel either, but then somewhere halfway up his thigh he starts yelling something,

and you’re just like, oh thank god he’s in pain, HE CAN FEEL.

And even though he can’t feel all of his legs it’s a lot farther down than you had expected it to be, which means that there is a better chance for recovery!

“Hey Y/N?” Jin says, and you’re like oh what do you need another painkiller? I think there might be more in the kit give me a sec,,,”

and Jin is just like no listen to me, “You’re head, it’s bleeding.” and it is, the cut on your eyebrow has started to bleed and you can feel the blood start to trickle down the side of your face,

and Jin leans up, the best that he can, and is like, “Now it’s my time to take care of you,” and reaches for the gauze in the kit.

And his hands are so soft, like so unexpected, and his fingers are so long and his touch is delicate on your face and you’re just like oooooo

oooooooo, HOLY SHIT YOUR LEFT FIBULA IS STICKING OUT OF YOUR LEG AGAIN HOLD ON I GOT THIS!

By the end of the first day, you and one of the other survivors, a young man who is strong enough to actually carry another man, helps you move Jin into the temporary shelter that was made of plane scraps, blankets and literally whatever people could scavenge together.

The pilot has certainly taken a leadership position among the rest of the survivors and says that since you are the only one with any advanced medical training that you are the “doctor” and should just focus on keeping Jin alive,

that first night you don’t get a wink of sleep because you are too busy attending to anyone else that was injured in the crash, which was most people, though no one else had anything more than a broken wrist, and checking on Jin’s sleeping form to make sure he didn’t just die in his sleep.

And when the sun was finally starting to rise and everyone else was starting to wake up, you finally had your first chance to pass out, and you settle down a foot away from Jin so that you could sleep with one eye still open checking on him,

, and Jin is sitting up now and is just like, “You’re can sleep now, I’m fine trust me, if I start spasming or whatever I’ll wake you, and don’t be afraid I’ll protect you from whatever bears or lions or whatever might try to eat us,”

you can’t help but chuckle at his joke, you can’t help but admire how he is trying to stay hopeful in this situation.

You are able to sleep for a few hours, and you wake up with a face full of sand and Jin’s arm resting on your back, playing around with the ends of your hair.

For the next week till you are rescued, you watch over Jin like a hawk, helping him with any situation he could possibly need help with and for the most part just talking and keeping each other entertained while everyone else is running around trying to get work done or find food.

You learn that you both went to universities within the same city, but just different ones, and that he recently graduated and got a job at a publishing company in that city for - - wait for it, cooking books.

“Do you know what island we crashed on?”

“No Jin, what island is this?”

“It’s Handsome, you know cause I’m here.”

Overtime you notice that the facade that Jin is putting up around the others, the one that shows him still as a cocky and self aware about his looks, crumbles during the day while they aren’t around,

, and that the fact that he doesn’t know if he can walk again actually really worries him a lot and he whispers something about how being handsome doesn’t always help when girls will always look at him as a cripple with a bunch of baggage, and you’re just like,

well screw those girls and only hang out with me, and Jin gives you this look that no other guy has ever given to you before, and for a moment you actually think that he is about to kiss you but he never does,

“I gotta make you wait and really want me”

The next day he kisses you because the rescue units that have been searching for your plane have finally found you guys, and you’re all so happy and cheering,,, and kissing.

For the next several weeks after you guys are rescued you visit him recovering in the hospital because your university is so close

His injuries are really bad, and part of his left leg even needed to be amputated in order to save the rest of the limb, but you had mentioned that amputation was a likely option for him back on the island, so it wasn’t that much of a shock to hear a doctor actually say it for real.

You bring him pink flowers every time you visit and he gets really happy because pink is his favorite color, and he promises that one day when he’s not trapped in a hospital that he’ll be the one to buy YOU flowers because he’s so thankful for everything you’ve done to help him.

You’re dating, I didn’t say that yet, but you start dating as soon as you kiss and you never really mind the fact that his legs don’t really work because he’s all you’ve ever wanted in a guy and let’s face it, his FACE is so P R E T T Y.

After a long time recovering in the hospital Jin is finally released and to celebrate you and his family go out for dinner to celebrate, and Jin just whispers in your ear,

I have no idea how to have sex like this, but I can still make you a mean lasagna.

<><> do not edit/remove anything from the original post <><> this AU belongs to me <><>

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