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zulivaris · 3 years

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Art Block tips that helped me

I’ve recently experienced art block after 3 or so months of overcoming my last one. Thankfully this block only lasted a few days thanks to some things I’ve observed and noted down from the previous time. So I’m sharing these few tips in hopes that it might help someone get unstuck :D!

First and foremost if you’re tired, sad or anxious don’t be surprised that you can’t make art, go and take care of yourself by treating yourself with kindness and patience, the sketchbooks and canvases will wait for you :)

The tips are under here:

Separate art studies from the creative time: When you do art studies you’re there to focus on specific things, learn and understand how things work so you can apply them later in your art. Studies take a lot of energy and focus and are the opposite of the creative "flow” of making your own pieces. If you combine the two the results are either unfocused studies or stiff drawings. When you sit down at your desk ask yourself “Do I want to learn something new or do I want to create something of my own?”

When you have an idea don’t be afraid of being messy: Let’s say you want to make a picture of several cats kolo dancing in the moonlight. How do you go about doing this? Well since you came up with the idea you already have a vague image in your mind, sketch it out with simple shapes, stick figures, circle and spheres etc Don’t worry about cat anatomy, or the dancer’s moves, sketch out the essence of it. This method removes the need to be perfect or accurate.

Ok after the messy sketch then what? Well now that you have sketched out the essence of your idea (and hopefully had fun doing so) now you go on to look for references! You put the creative process on pause and you can do a few brief studies if you need to: anatomy, color schemes, values, poses. Pick out a few of your favorites but don't obsess over them, they are a guide, a tool.

You know much more than you think. You’ve probably been drawing for a few years now. You’ve probably done some studies and drawn more than one type of subject. Then you have already internalized some of that information. I used to be obsessed with capturing the minute detail of the subject, and not be able to draw ANYTHING without reference. Instead of a useful tool, references became another obstacle to my creativity. That’s perfectionism my friend, and that’s no good. Here is an exercise a good friend of mine offered: Draw a few characters, animals and objects from imagination. Make sure that the subjects have no personal value to you (no ocs for example) so that if you make a mistake you won’t feel bad about it. Make the process relaxed and comfortable, pour a nice cup of joe, listen to your favorite music ... You will notice that you do indeed know how to draw some things without reference, and it’ll help with your confidence.

The more you do studies the more you understand This seems evident but the more you understand your subject the freer you can be and the easier it’ll be to draw it from imagination in the future. If you really struggle with something to the point of frustration (as in you can’t get it right even with reference) It means you have to study it. Have a study list, for example: hands, perspective, color theory etc. And one of those days you want to study pick something from the list, and look for videos on youtube or useful sites like line of action etc. Only study one thing at the time. You can go from studying hands to studying arms since they’re more immediately connected, but you can’t study hands and then jump to learning perspective right after. Trust me you can learn perfectly fine with the resources online, and I’m sure you’re clever enough to do it :D

Mistakes don’t mean you “suck” I’ve noticed that the two most common causes for art block are perfectionism and lack of self-confidence. The two can often go in tandem which is worse :’D But let me remind you of something, you can fix your piece along the whole process. Use erasers, lasso tools, liquify , select, paint it all over etc If something looks off to you then you also know deep inside how to fix it. Useful ways to see what clunks: flip canvas horizontally (helps with placement, proportions), turn the image to grayscale (helps to check values and where your eye tends to look), look at your image in thumbnail size and ask yourself if it’s clear, see the pose’s silhouette and ask yourself if you can tell what the character is doing etc. Don’t fret, everything can always be fixed :)

Perfectionism, sometimes it stops you before you begin Perfectionism causes you to overwork a piece, it makes you draw less, it makes art stressful, it brings insecurity. Let’s remove it with a simple exercise. It can be combined with the “draw things from imagination” once you’ve drawn something you like: dont do line art, don’t shade it, keep it as simple and crude as possible and then...post it. Yes, post it. You’re not at your best? You’re only human, this will help you embrace that very human side of you. You make mistakes. So what? The more mistakes you make the more you know what you need to study and the better at art you become. Mistakes are there to show us what we need to learn. See them as another tool and not a sign of failure.

Make the process as enjoyable as possible: You like art. You love drawing. Never forget this. Otherwise why are you drawing if you don’t enjoy it? It’s easy to fall prey to the mentality of those relatable memes that “art= suffering” or “I can’t even draw the other eye”. No no no my friends, these messages are fueling your insecurities instead of overcoming them. Let me tell you what, art is fun. It is. Art is fun, because I decided to make it fun again. And you should decide on that too. Personally I adore lineart but my hand-eye coordination is lacking to do it digitally, so....I just skipped it. Yes. I skipped it. I do the sketch, I clean it up a bit and then jump onto color which I adore. It allowed me to draw more and more freely. When I draw I listen to music, make strokes with the rhythm, I take breaks often and I drink my favorite iced teas. If you don’t like coloring do it in grayscale, if you love lineart then do that etc It doesn’t mean you won’t learn your weak points in the future with studies and practice, but you won’t let your weaknesses prevent you from drawing at all. No no, you won’t let them. You draw because you want to, despite of them.

Don’t wait for inspiration, provoke it Inspiration is not a divine and capricious muse. You make inspiration. It’s easy just collect all the things you like, music, artists, objects, characters, animals, patterns, plants etc Make boards on pinterest or similar sites, combine things you like. You like suits? You like birds? You can draw a bird in a suit, or a bird-inspired suit design, there is frankly a lot of ideas that can spring up from little things like these.

When a project stops being enjoyable either pause it for now or move on to the next thing. Pieces aren’t precious. They’re not “the one time I got x right” they are one of many. This advice goes mainly to hobbyists who can afford the luxury of passing to a new project. I have a WIP of a character who is overly complicated (I enjoy a challenge from time to time) sitting for half a month. I sometimes come back to it and add something... but as soon as it starts to create discomfort and insecurity instead of enjoyment I move onto something else. In the meantime I created 3 or 4 new pieces. If I had waited on finishing that piece I would have been severely creatively and physically exhausted. The art comes from you, not inspiration. The more art you make the better you become.

That’s about it :D I know it’s long but I prefer to be thorough and cover all the possibilities. If you have read of this: Thank you so much I hope this helps you at least a bit, if it helps only 1 other person I’d still be very happy. Have a nice one, and kick art block’s butt!

#art block #art block tips #art block advice #art advice #art help #BloggityDiary #art reference #I hope this will help someone out #This will also help me remember my own advice sksksk

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a-n-conrad · 3 years

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Painting (Steve Rogers x Reader)

[Summary: You decide to paint your friend, Steve Rogers, realizing that no one had ever painted him without his uniform. However, things start to get heated after you start to daydream during your painting session. (She/Her pronouns)

Warnings: SMUT (18+, but with emotions), Not Canon Compliant (Because fuck you, Marvel.), Swearing, unprotected vaginal sex

Request: From my request survey (https://forms.gle/D9rsJtkERoBPaKvv8)]

You and Steve Rogers were widely considered to be an unlikely pair. There were a lot of things that you didn’t exactly agree on. Steve was a lot more social, being bold and outgoing. You were a bit quieter, preferring to avoid the company of a crowd. Steve was prone to waking up early to exercise. You stayed up into the quiet hours of the night, choosing instead to get a majority of your sleep in the morning. You weren’t exactly fond of Steve’s workout routines either, though you would join him on a short jog on occasion.

While you were technically considered an Avenger, you were really only brought out to fight for emergency circumstances. You had some incredibly powerful, incredibly volatile powers, but you really had no interest in using them unless it was completely needed. So you ended up making a few deals. You’d be treated like an Avenger, but you were basically benched unless some drastic, world-ending issue came up. So until then, you were kept on hold in Avengers Tower, spending most of your time painting in the studio that Tony had gotten set up for you.

Despite this power, and despite your title as an official Avenger, you were still a bit of an outsider among the team. You tended not to talk to them a lot, becoming a bit easily overwhelmed by the chaos that the team seemed to radiate. But surprisingly, you and Steve got along incredibly well.

You had originally bonded over your love of art. You loved Steve’s drawings. You admired the linework and shading in his drawings. He could do so much with just a pen, let alone if you gave him a few colors. He admired the amount of emotion you managed to instill into every single painting that you made. No matter what you painted, whether it was a portrait, a landscape, or something entirely different, it was always filled to the brim with the emotion that you had felt while painting it. It was like looking through a window into your soul. It was so honest and refreshing.

Eventually the two of you started to talk a bit more while you worked. It started pretty tame, just discussions of how your day was or general questions about each other like “What’s your favorite color”. But eventually you moved on to the harsher topics of your lives. Steve would talk about how exhausting it was to be the face of America, to be held on such a pedestal while also being expected to sacrifice everything at the drop of a hat. You talked about how cold and dehumanizing it felt to be seen by the American government as nothing more than a weapon, a walking nuclear bomb.

Your struggles overlapped at certain points. You both spent a lot of your time being used by the government. You were both seen as tools more than you were seen as people by a lot of the general public. You were a weapon and he was an idol, some sort of trophy. So you bonded a lot over your shared struggles as you talked to each other and worked on art side by side. And when the hard stuff got a bit too heavy, you’d sit and talk about art. About subjects that you just loved to add to all of your work. About what each shade of every color meant to you, about the emotions that you saw in every tiny color shift.

It was so nice, for both of you, to have something like that. The studio that you spent time in was so safe and peaceful for both of you, since the other Avengers tended to avoid it. And the two of you had started to see through each other’s masks enough to truly get to know each other. Steve couldn’t remember the last time someone had known him as Steve Rogers more than they had known him as Captain America. He had Bucky, but Bucky was far too busy with his own issues for Steve to even consider burdening him with anything else. But with you he could truly be himself, even if that meant getting angry, sad, or frustrated.

So the two of you had become incredibly close, despite your differences. And every day that you had some free time without any big meeting or mission, you would be in the studio helping each other with art. It was a good way for you to relieve stress, just relaxing with each other. It was one of those days that you came to a realization.

- - - - -

“Has anyone ever painted you?” You asked suddenly one day as the two of you sat side by side in the art studio. He looked a bit surprised, and then he looked confused.

“Of course. There are murals of me up all over the place, (Y/n).”

“No, there are murals of Captain America,” you responded, shaking your head, “They don’t really look that much like you. You really only look like that when you’re working as Captain America. So has anyone ever painted you? As Steve Rogers?”

He looked surprised again. And you could tell as the emotions cycled through his face that he didn’t really know how to respond. You supposed it was a bit of an odd question. And you knew that it was a bit odd to think of someone and their superhero persona as two different people, but Steve couldn’t disagree. He wasn’t Captain America all the time, and he loved that you understood that, “I suppose I’ve never really thought about it, but I guess not.”

You hummed a bit, “That’s a shame. It feels like a waste that everyone paints a costume. You should let me paint you sometime.”

You said it in a way that he wasn’t sure if you were serious. Your face was entirely serious when you said it, but you said it so casually, not even really looking at him, “Really?”

You finally looked up at him, noticing the pure confusion on his face, “Of course. I mean, you’d have to sit still for a while, but honestly, you could probably just sit and sketch for a while. You just seem too good of a subject to not be painted without the costume.”

Steve wasn’t really one to blush, but it was quite the compliment coming from you. He had women trying to hit on him all the time now, being Captain America, but that never really felt heartfelt. It had been a fairly long time since he had actually felt a real connection with someone. But to hear you compliment him, thinking of him as Steve Rogers instead of Captain America, made his heart flutter a bit. And the fact that he knew that you were rather picky about the subject you painted only made it more effective.

“I, uh, think that’d be cool,” He responded as soon as he was sure that he could trust his voice not to crack, though he couldn’t hide the slight stutter. It was honestly endearing how much his personality changed when he wasn’t working. While he was still headstrong and stubborn, he was a bit less confident. He knew he could win a fight. He knew that he looked good on television. But he didn’t really know how to interact with people in the new modern age. He was lucky to have the friends that he did. At least, that’s how he felt about it.

“Wonderful,” You hummed, starting to put away all of your supplies, “Why don’t we pack it up for the day and I can start painting you tomorrow if we aren’t too busy?”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

- - - - -

The next day was surprisingly slow. You had to say that you were thankful. You had been looking forward to getting to paint Steve, even though you knew it was making him a little nervous. You were honestly excited to have a new project, and part of you was excited for the opportunity to stare at Steve for a bit without it being considered weird. He was easy to admire, both physically and on a personal level, so you found yourself staring more often than you’d like to admit. You were pretty sure that you had been lucky enough to avoid being caught though.

He was physically gorgeous. Obviously. But something about the way that he looked when he was drawing was nearly angelic. The way he furrowed his brows just a little and turned his paper at odd angles to make sure that the proportions of his sketches were right was adorable. The look in his eyes when his work started to come together made your heart melt. When he got a bit frustrated and would run a hand through his hair you could feel your heart skip a beat. You felt a bit dumb to be drooling over your friend, but you had to admit you were falling pretty hard for him. So you’d use this painting as an excuse to admire him without any questions.

He was already blushing a bit when he came into the studio, and you had a feeling that part of it was from Tony teasing him. He had a habit of giving the two of you a bit of a hard time about how much time you spent together. But the blush was still adorable. Something about Steve when he was nervous stole your heart. He was surprisingly soft when he had the space to be.

“So, uh, what’s the plan?” He asked as he strode over to your work station that you had already gotten set up.

“Just pull a chair up in front of me. You can get comfortable, start sketching, and I’ll get a base outline and block out as much as I can. Just let me know if you need a break and try not to change your pose too much. At least until I can get all of the base shapes right,” You instructed, trying to keep your voice even. You were surprised at how well you managed to hide the fact that you were completely lovesick.

“Alright, sounds good,” He responded, pulling up a chair and getting himself situated. He crossed one of his legs over the other, resting his ankle on his other thigh to give himself a place to set his sketchbook. You tossed him his pencil once he got himself settled, and then you got to work.

You had to admit you had started to get a bit frustrated with how easily you managed to get distracted by him while you were trying to paint. You had hoped that maybe painting him would help. You had no reason to get distracted from your painting when you were painting him. At least, that’s what you had thought before you started sketching out the form.

You felt yourself losing focus as your brush moved smoothly, the incredibly thin, light paint building a form that you found yourself wanting to know a bit more intimately. You tried your best to stay focused on the canvas in front of you, but you couldn’t stop your mind from drifting. You imagined what his body looked like under his clothes as you blocked out the lights and shadows of the fabric that rested over his abs. And the vivid image in your brain, the detailed picture of his body that you had conjured up in front of you, followed your brush as you worked.

The brush slid smoothly across the canvas, outlining his muscles, almost all of which showed through his thin t-shirt. Your brain almost instantly conjured up a matching image, the fantasy becoming more and more dynamic as you went on. It shifted from regular images of what his abs looked like when he was shirtless to more detailed images. Thoughts of his biceps flexing a bit as he held himself over you, his arms covered in sweat. Thoughts of his hands sliding across your skin. It only got worse as you moved down, eventually reaching the point between his legs.

“(Y/n)? Are you alright?” Steve’s voice finally broke you from your thoughts, his eyes which had been focused intently on his drawing when you had last looked were now trained on your face, scanning for any sign as to what was causing you to space out, “You don’t normally get distracted when you’re painting, is everything alright?”

“Oh,” You tried your best to pull yourself back to reality, though the fantasies seemed to be burned into your brain, “Yeah, sorry. I was, uh, spacing out a bit.”

“Do you want to take a break for a bit? Maybe we should get up and stretch,” He suggested. You nodded in response, hoping it would help you refocus on your painting.

It didn’t help much, though, as Steve stood, stretching his arms above his head. His shirt lifted up just enough to show some skin, and his pants were riding fairly low. Your eyes almost involuntarily moved to look at him, landing right about the button to the jeans that he was wearing. The muscles in his hips and stomach formed an almost perfect V shape leading into his pants.

“(Y/N)?” You had been caught staring. You tried your best to look casual, relaxing your posture. Your mistake was to try to lean on the table, setting your hand directing on your palette, which was covered in paints.

You froze, and Steve’s eyes landed on your hand, the red and blue paint gushing out from the sides. You felt like an awkward teenager, doing stupid ridiculous shit in front of your crush. You watched intently for a reaction from Steve, not really knowing what to do and hoping that the way that he reacted would give you something easy to respond to.

He raised one of his eyebrows at you, a look of confusion, with a small hint of amusement under the surface painted across his face, “You seem to have set your hand in your paint.”

“Uh, yes, it would seem so,” You responded awkwardly, finally lifting your hand out of the paint. You still really weren’t sure what to say, and not knowing where to put your hand so that you wouldn’t smear any paint anywhere wasn’t really making you feel any better. You cleared your throat a bit, trying to think of something smart to say, something that wouldn’t signal exactly how far gone you were into your fantasies, but instead you just signaled to Steve how flustered you were.

You knew that Steve had never been the biggest ladies’ man. From what he had told you, he was actually pretty awkward growing up, but the confidence that washed over him as he finally figured out what was getting you so flustered was visible. He walked closer to you, standing close enough to emphasize how tall he was, “Got something on your mind, sweetheart?”

“Oh, uh,” You stuttered, not sure what to say. You could tell that he knew from the smirk on his face, but you could feel your face heating up as you thought about explaining your fantasizing to Steve. He smirked even more as you got visibly flustered.

“It’s okay, honey, I don’t mind if you stare a little,” He said, standing a bit closer, his hand moving to hold your chin. You swallowed deeply as his fingers brushed against your skin softly. Your eyes locked with his as his hand tilted your chin up just a little.

As much as he was keeping up his confident, masculine persona, you could see the complete warmth in his eyes. He softened completely when you looked at him, pure admiration in your eyes. He had to admit it warmed his heart to see you looking at him like that, like he was your whole world. And maybe it was because he felt the same way. He had been falling in love with you slowly, and as he looked at you, he wanted to find every way possible to express it.

“Can I kiss you?” He whispered, his voice soft.

“Please.”

His lips were much softer than you thought they’d be, but you didn’t think about it too much as his lips moved against your own. It was soft at first, but it began to escalate quickly, getting rough and more passionate. His hands moved to your waist, pulling your body into his own, and your hands moved to his face, too focused on the kiss to notice the fact that you were smearing paint across his cheek.

He pulled back, allowing you to get a breath of air. That was when you noticed the red and blue streaks across his cheek, “Shit, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about,” He brushed it off, before pulling you into another kiss. He truly didn’t seem to care at all about the paint, choosing instead to focus on you.

This kiss started off much more passionate, building even further. Before long he pulled away again, pulling a groan from your mouth as you instinctively wanted more. Your complaints were silenced, though, as he began to kiss down your neck, nipping slighting at a few select spots, leaving marks for you to see later.

“If you want me to stop, just say it,” He said, as his hands started to move towards the hem of your shirt. He was moving slowly, giving you the chance to stop him at any point. You didn’t.

Before long, your clothes were entirely discarded, scattered haphazardly across the floor. Steve’s followed shortly. Neither of you could keep your hands to yourself, feeling the curves of each other's bodies as you continued to kiss. Both of you were desperate, the tension that neither of you even realized had been building finally crashing to the ground around you, any sort of restraint being thrown out the window.

However, you had to take a few moments to admire his body. You knew that it was perfect, he was a super soldier, of course it’s perfect, but you didn’t really know how perfect until it was right in front of you. There was no way you could’ve imagined it in a way that did it true justice. The warmth under his skin, the pace of his breathing, the firm feeling of his grip on your waist. Those were things that you could never have imagined fully.

He lifted you up without any issue, placing his hands under your thighs, carrying you to the work table and setting you on a clear section of the table without breaking the kiss. His hands slid across the tops of your thighs before grabbing your hips. Yours moved from his cheeks to rest on his bare chest, smearing a bit more paint across his scalped chest. You could feel his erection brush against your leg as he leaned over you, the two of you trying to get as close to each other as possible.

You were breathing heavily, your brain clouded with need, both new and left over from your earlier fantasies. Fantasies that were coming true, “Please, Steve.”

“What is it, Sweetheart?” Steve asked, looking down at you, his pupils blown wide with desire, “What do you want?”

You began to grind against his thigh without really thinking about it. He had to admit that something about you needing him this much turned him on, but he wanted to wait until you said it before he did anything, “Please fuck me.”

He would’ve liked to have a bit more foreplay, but both of you were so needy, having built up to this for so long with so little release until now. So he complied with your request. He pulled you quickly to the edge of the table. You were forced to lay your upper body down completely so that he could pull your hips to hang over the edge a bit. He took a few moments to rub himself against the entrance to your pussy, coating the head of his cock with liquid that was practically dripping from your pussy. Finally, he pushed himself into you slowly, making sure to monitor your reaction for any sort of discomfort. You were indulging in the feeling of him slowly stretching you out, completely enjoying the feeling of having him as close to you as possible.

He started moving after he was sure that you were comfortable, his hands beginning to wander your body, squeezing at your hips and breasts, basically any part of you that had a bit of squish, something for him to grab. His mouth latched on to the base of your neck, leaving a deep, dark hickey. You could feel every movement of his hips, his cock brushing against your internal walls again with each thrust.

You couldn’t hold back your moans as he found the perfect spot to hit, one of his hands gripping one of your hips tightly to hold you in place as his thrusts gained momentum. He started picking up speed a bit, taking care to continue to hit the spot that made you moan the loudest. His other hand slid down further, his fingers making their way between your folds. He was surprisingly quick to find your clit, not that you were complaining. Your eyes practically rolled back in your head as he started to rub small circles over it, keeping pace with his thrusts.

You were practically putty in his hands, falling apart as he found every way to make you moan. Touch, squeezing, kissing, and biting exactly where you needed him to. You had no idea how he knew exactly what you wanted, but you didn’t really care as a knot began to build in the pit of your stomach.

You practically screamed his name as the knot finally snapped, Steve continuing his motions, continuing to rub your clit, as you rode out your climax, your whole body feeling as though fireworks were shooting through your veins. Your walls tightened with the waves of your orgasms, the fluttering feeling clear to Steve as he continued to bury himself inside of you. Soon after your climax finished, you could feel his thrust begin to get a bit sloppy, focus clear on his face as he tried his best to hold on longer.

He couldn’t hold on that long, though, soon giving in to the building pleasure. He came hard, his hips snapping into your own and his head being buried in your neck to hide his curses as he came completely undone. You could feel the thick hot ropes of his cum coating your insides as he finished. You both stayed like that for a few moments in order to catch your breath.

As you started to come back to reality, you finally noticed the mess you had made. Steve’s hair was a mess, blue paint sticking some of the tips together. You couldn’t even remember when you had grabbed his hair, but the paint smears left a clear map of where your hand had wandered. The blue and red stripes across his face and chest were clear, too. In fact, you had gotten paint all over his sculpted body, the blue smears outlining his muscles.

“We should probably clean up and get back to work, huh?” He eventually sighed, his eyes never leaving your body.

“I suppose.”

(A/N: Thanks for reading! If you want to send me a tip for my writing feel free to tip me over venmo! My venmo is Al3x13l. Tips aren't required, but as a broke college student, they are appreciated.)

#steve rogers x reader #marvel x reader #marvel #steve rogers #captain america #captain america x reader #smut #friends to lovers

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sevlgi · 3 years

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kind of dumb

requested: yes (💣anon)

group: twice

pairing: chaeyoung x gn!reader

genre: fluff

contents: established relationship, chaeyoung and y/n design tattoos for each other

warnings: none

synopsis: Your art skills definitely aren’t up to par with your girlfriend’s, but at least you know she’ll love anything you give her.

a/n: i loved this concept!! i kept the actual tattoo designs decently vague, so you can imagine what you’d like!

word count: 0.7k

Sighing out in exasperation, you rapped your knuckles on your girlfriend’s bedroom door. “Chaeyoung, it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“But it does!” she shouted from inside. Her voice was slightly muffled, but you bit back a smile when you imagined her swinging her legs on her chair as she gripped her sketchbook in her hands. The only reason that you weren’t with her was that she claimed it would stress her out. “I have to outdo yours somehow, and it’s your first.”

You winced at that. “Uh, about that... are you sure that you don’t want to swap designs until we’re there?”

“Absolutely. Okay, you can come in now.”

You pushed the door open to find her in the exact position that you imagined. Chaeyoung always liked to draw sitting on a barstool that you gifted her when she moved; apparently, being higher up in the air made her more creative. “It has to be a surprise, or it’s no fun,” she continued, still scratching away with her pencil.

“I choose placement, right?” Your girlfriend nodded in answer; her sleeves were rolled up to expose some of her existing tattoos, and you couldn’t resist leaning in to trace the shapes just like you were used to doing. “You can say no if you don’t like my design, okay?”

Chaeyoung shook her head then. “There’s no way I won’t like what you’ve done. Okay, are you ready to go?”

“Been ready,” you lied. The folded piece of paper in your pocket was feeling more like a burden, especially after seeing the multiple dark, elaborate sketches on the book that Chaeyoung held. But she smiled and took your hand before leading you out the door.

“I promise that it’s a really nice tattoo parlor,” she reassured you, taking your nervousness to be about the actual tattoo itself. “The artists are really nice and always do the exact design. Don’t be nervous, baby, I’m going to love whatever you have for me.”

Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that Chaeyoung’s favorite tattoo parlor was barely two blocks from the dorm. It seemed decently small, but the chairs arranged throughout were clean, and the air smelled faintly like rubbing alcohol.

Your girlfriend plopped down on one of the benches in the front. “I think we should exchange designs first, right? I can go first.”

“Yeah, you go first,” you exhaled. Your eyes widened when she produced her sketchbook-- there were three separated sketches, each one as beautiful as the next despite the differing designs. One was minimalistic and colorful, like the ones Chaeyoung herself liked; another was fancier and all-black, while the last was just her handwriting.

“Do you like any of them?” she whispered, checking your face for any thoughts you had.

“Any of them? Chae, I love all of them.” You ran a finger over the paper, imagining the art on your own skin. “I might just walk out with three tattoos instead of one.”

Chaeyoung grinned at that, the praise reddening the apples of her cheeks. “Okay, okay, now show me yours.”

“Oh.” In your excitement at seeing the tattoos drawn out for you, you had already forgotten that you also had to show her yours. You produced it guiltily, barely daring to offer it to your girlfriend.

She took the paper and stifled a laugh, smoothing one of the creases with her thumb. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t try very hard,” you sighed. “I can just get mine, and I’ll draw a better one for you--”

“No,” Chaeyoung shook her head. “I’m getting it... right here.”

She pressed the paper to her ribcage, an area that wouldn’t be seen all the time but was easy enough for the two of you to find. You said sheepishly, “It’s really fine if you don’t like it, I know it’s dumb as hell.”

“It is kind of dumb,” she smiled, “but it’s my kind of dumb. Do you want me to help you choose your placement?”

You nodded. “Actually, yeah.”

Though you doubted how much she actually liked it, Chaeyoung’s fond smile towards the paper that she tucked into her pocket as she stood did something to reassure you, at least.

#twice #twice x reader #chaeyoung x reader #twice chaeyoung #son chaeyoung #chaeyoung #twice imagines #twice scenarios #twice reactions #chaeyoung scenarios #chaeyoung imagines #twice icons #twice incorrect quotes #girl group imagines #girl group scenarios #chaeyoung icons

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lemonpeter · 3 years

Text

My first fill for @peterparkerbingo : Teacher/teacher !

I’ve had a little bit of a writers block, so I’m sorry if this isn’t my best. But I enjoyed writing it and I hope y’all enjoy reading it! 💕 just a bit of spidershield

1.5K words

Warnings: unprofessional behavior between coworkers, fluff, I think that’s it lol

***

Mr. Parker was no stranger to the stares of others. Whether his students, or his coworkers, or even the parents of his students sometimes, he knew that he was watched.

It didn’t bother him in the slightest.

Which was why he agreed to model for Mr. Rogers’ class. And also because he loved being around the other teacher.

The art teacher from across the hall needed a model for his class to do figure drawing. And he’d come to Peter first.

His reasoning was that the teacher had a strong body from dancing for so many years. And that allowed him to stay in positions to be drawn for longer periods of time.

The reasons he didn’t list were that he wanted an excuse to stare at the gorgeous man for a couple hours without seeming weird. But he didn’t need to tell anyone that.

Peter walked into the classroom during his free block, a small smile tugging at his lips when he saw Steve. The other teacher had charcoal smudged on his cheek and forehead and didn’t seem to notice at all. Or maybe he didn’t care.

“Pete! I mean- Mr. Parker.” Steve cleared his throat, grinning a little. “Hey, thank you so much for doing this. You’re the best.”

The younger man waved his hand, laughing. “It’s no big deal, I didn’t have anything going on right now anyways. I’m happy to help.”

Steve nodded. He rubbed at his nose momentarily, effectively smearing another black streak across his face. “Okay, so, the kids will all be here in a couple minutes. You know how most of them wait right up until the bell.” He gave Peter a knowing look. “But you’ll just be right there in the center and I’ll position you once we’re all ready, okay?”

Peter nodded, smile reaching his eyes as he watched Steve. “Sounds perfect. Now, do you want some help cleaning up?”

The art teacher blinked at him, glancing around the room. “I think I’m good, my kids are usually pretty-“

Peter shook his head, brushing his thumb over the charcoal mark on his cheek. “Not the room. Your face. You’ve got a little….” He rubbed at the mark gently until it started coming off.

“Oh! Oh, I’m okay.” Steve’s cheeks colored and he stepped away from Peter’s touch. “Thank you, though. I’m just gonna get more on me, right?” He joked a little. “No point in cleaning yet.”

Peter smiled at him fondly, nodding. “Alright. That makes sense.”

Students began filing in, whispering to those around them as they eyed the other teacher in the room. It wasn’t like it was anything scandalous to walk in on, but everyone loved drama and the chance to start a rumor. It was the most fun part about school. And almost everyone believed that there was something between the two teachers already.

Steve cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention when the final bell rang and the last of his students trickled in. “Alright, I mentioned yesterday that we’d be working on sketching figures today. So Mr. Parker here was kind enough to be our volunteer figure. Isn’t that nice of him?”

A few weak “Thanks, Mr. Parker”s were mumbled, but almost everyone stayed focused on Steve and getting their supplies out of their bags.

“Okay, so-“ Steve made his way to where Peter was standing, mentally figuring out how he wanted him positioned. Then he reached out to move him before pausing. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Peter’s cheeks burned at the words when he heard the giggles from around the room in response, but nodded. “Of course.”

The art teacher’s hands gently guided Peter to where he wanted him, positioning him in a traditional ballet fourth position with one hand in front of him with the other gracefully held above his head. Peter moved his feet into position on his own when he understood.

“Do you think you can hold this position?” Steve asked softly, pulling his hands away to look at the younger man after he was finished.

“Of course.” Peter nodded, not moving at all. He knew that holding his arm up would get tiring eventually, but he didn’t want to ruin the picture. So he stayed as still as possible.

“Perfect. Thank you.” Steve smiled, going to his own seat and looking around at his students. “This is the position you’ll draw him in. You have all of class to complete your picture, it’s due by the bell.”

Everyone quickly got to work, eyes on Peter.

Steve started on his own sketch, an easy smile on his face as he started.

A recreation of Peter began to fill his page. Firm muscle on a slim body, his upper body hidden mostly beneath a loose blue tee. Dainty fingers holding position that lead into strong arms. Thick thighs that Steve wanted to feel wrapped around him that were clear in tight leggings. A soft bulge that the man had to be sure he didn’t pay too much attention to.

His sketch became clearer as time went on, as he was sure to capture every single detail of the man he admired from across the hall.

Just as he finished the gentle smile that curved at Peter’s lips with a stroke of his pencil, the bell broke through his blissful trance.

Steve blinked as he looked up, seeing his students packing up and Peter relaxing from his pose. “Oh, leave your papers at the table by the door. Make sure you signed your name on them,” he called before too many could get out the door.

Peter’s fingers gently massaged at his stiff arm as he relaxed, not noticing the other teacher approaching him again.

“I hope you’re not too sore.” Steve spoke up, his sketch held between his fingers. “I’m sorry if the position I picked was too…demanding. I just figured it would look nice.”

“No, it’s alright,” Peter assured him. “I’m a tough guy, I can take it,” he joked. His eyes landed on the drawing hanging at Steve’s side in his hand and nodded towards it. “I saw you were pretty focused over there. Can I see it?”

The teacher looked at the paper like he’d forgotten it was there and then back at the other man. “Oh- uh, yeah. Sure.” He held the sketch out nervously.

The dance teacher took it with a smile, eyes scanning over the drawing as he took in every detail.

He was quiet for a moment. Two moments. Long enough to make Steve worried that he did something wrong. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not-“

“Shh,” Peter scolded, not looking away from the page in his hand. “You’re ruining the moment.”

Steve shut his mouth again, watching him. Ruining the moment? What was that supposed to mean?

After a few more seconds, Peter finally looked up. “I’m not sure who exactly that is that you drew. He can’t be me,” he said confidently.

“What?” The picture looked exactly like him. Steve may have been a little rusty, but it was definitely Peter.

“Nope, can’t be. Because whoever that is is gorgeous.” The dance teacher grinned at him, the expression a little goofy. “Steve, you’re incredible.”

Steve finally relaxed again, laughing a little. “Oh. Thanks, I don’t know about incredible, but thank you.”

Peter went to hand the paper back, looking up at him when he was stopped. “It’s yours.”

“No, I want you to have it. Please.”

The dancer smiled more, nodding. “Thank you.” Then he paused, going to grab a scrap piece of paper and a pencil.

Steve watched him curiously, chuckling at how he was furiously scribbling on the paper. “Okay?”

“Shh, I’m creating.”

After about a minute of frantic doodling, Peter confidently held up the paper and handed it over.

Steve raised an eyebrow, laughing loudly as he saw the drawing. He just couldn’t help himself. “Why am I a triangle? With just a circle for a head?”

Peter pouted a little before laughing with him. “We can’t all be artists. But that’s not the important part.”

Steve looked lower on the paper, brows furrowing when he saw a number. “I already have your extension. And you’re across the hall. Why would I need-“

“That’s my cell number, Steve.” Peter started to walk to the door. So he wouldn’t be stuck there if he was rejected. “Feel free to call. For anything.”

“Your cell…why?”

Peter sighed, leaning against the doorway. “I want you to call me, Stevie. Clear enough for you?” He bit the inside of his cheek before blurting out his comment. “Maybe you could do some more figure drawing of me. Just not as professional.”

He rushed to leave after what he said, face flushed in embarrassment. What the hell was that?

Steve watched him go, eyes squinted as students for his next class filed in. “Not as professional…what does- oh my god, does that mean naked?”

His classroom fell completely silent and he wished that he could take his words back. He’d forgotten that they could hear every word.

One brave soul decided to speak up after the silence continued. “I say go for it.”

#spidershield #my writing #peter parker #steve rogers #steve x peter #steve rogers x peter parker #dance teacher!Peter #art teacher!steve #peterparkerbingo2021 #if there are any insane obvious editing mistakes let me know #other than that just ignore them lol I’m tired and am proud for even getting this much written

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lloydskywalkers · 4 years

Text

any port in a storm

Pixal and Lloyd and the evolving nature of friendship, as highlighted by the regular burning down of your city.

(desperately trying to break through writer’s block and classes again, this was supposed to be under 2k and it is...very much not hdfjkgh but! i’ve been meaning to write for Pixal and Lloyd for a while so here are a whole bunch of feelings about the two of them and s8)

Pixal meets — truly meets — Lloyd Garmadon shortly after his brother’s been blown to pieces.

She says truly, because if you ask her, Pixal will tell you she met Lloyd Garmadon at exactly 8:48 in the evening outside his father’s monastery, moments before a horde of nindroids led there by Pixal herself descended upon them.

But Lloyd argues that since they said about two words total to each other, it doesn’t really count as meeting, and by the time Pixal’s spending the better part of her day with him running high and low around Ninjago City, she’s learned that it’s easier not to press the point.

Lloyd can be stubborn, like that.

She’d first learned that when she’d met him, just after they’d lost Zane. That loss hadn’t lasted long, especially for Pixal, but the immediate aftermath of it had been devastating. She’d watched with blank eyes as the team had fractured, splitting at the seams as they all fled their separate ways, too heartsore and dizzy with grief to do much otherwise.

All of them had fled, save Lloyd. She hadn’t paid him much attention before that point, the surprisingly small bearer of the Golden Power. Of course, he wasn’t the bearer of that power anymore, but his eyes alone had shown the experience of it. There’d been a brief, lost look that had crossed his face as the others had mentioned leaving, before it had been swept under a mask of stubborn, determined blankness. He wouldn’t be leaving. Someone had to stay behind and watch out for things, he’d claimed, even as the loss had bled through his voice.

Pixal hadn’t quite grasped the concept of empathy at that point, but she’d felt something dangerously close to it.

At any rate, the only interaction they’d had alone was brief. In fact, the only one Pixal can truly remember — and her memory never fails — is the quick exchange they’d had in the hospital lobby directly after the battle. The hospital was for Mr. Borg, and for the ninja’s minor injuries.

There was nothing any hospital on earth could do for Zane.

Pixal had found herself next to Lloyd in the waiting room, trying to distract herself from those thoughts while Lloyd stared at the stark white tiling with dull eyes.

“They never mentioned what your power was,” she’d asked him, almost absently. Collecting data, processing information — anything she could do to distract from the crushing grief.

“Oh.” Lloyd had blinked, startling back into awareness. He’d suddenly looked painfully young. “It’s, ah, I guess it’s just green, now.”

It had been Pixal’s turn to blink. “Green.”

“Yeah.” Lloyd had bit his lip, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, two habits he’ll never quite lose. “I mean — it’s more than that, but it’s like — energy, I guess, is the best way to put it?”

“Interesting,” Pixal had remarked.

“Yeah.”

They’d stared at each other in silence after that, before they’d both been called off to other errands — and then they were having Zane’s funeral and then Pixal was making realizations she never got to tell anyone, and that had been that in her early introductions to Lloyd Garmadon. Quiet, awkward, and possessing an incredible power he hardly even knew the name of.

Looking back, Pixal figures her introduction hadn’t gone much better.

They’d continued as passing acquaintances as time went on, separated by danger and the confines of Zane’s head, and Pixal had figured that’s all they’d ever be. But then their Sensei goes missing and, despite Pixal’s increasing disappearances on Zane as she rebuilds her own body, she’s been given the role of watching out for Ninjago city along with Lloyd.

She quickly learns that quiet is not a term fit for Lloyd Garmadon when you’re trapped alone with him.

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

“How is there not a single station playing actual music?” Lloyd seethes, flicking through the channels almost manically. “It’s two am, who’s gonna be listening to your stupid commercial for toothpaste now, are you kidding me?”

“Statistically speaking, this is the prime time for long-distance driving near Ninjago City,” Pixal supplies, her voice a hint scratchy where it comes through the his car’s radio speakers. “Or, if you factor in the construction in the east district, there could still be traffic from late-night bars.”

Lloyd groans, thunking his head against the steering wheel as another ad screeches through the small space. “Wonderful.”

“Your vocal tones suggest you find it otherwise.”

“Dont trust ‘em, my vocal tones are traitors.” As if to solidify his point, Lloyd’s voice cracks in the middle of his sentence, shooting up an octave higher. Lloyd goes bright red, and thunks his head against the steering wheel again.

Taking pity on him, Pixal aims for reassurance. “It is normal for your voice to break, Lloyd. It shouldn’t last too long.” She pauses, momentarily scanning through another article. “On second thought, this one suggests it could also take two to three years for your voice to stabilize.”

Lloyd gives a strangled moan. “End me.”

“Unfortunately, that would defeat the purpose of why I’m here in the first place.”

Lloyd tilts his head, cracking an eye open as he glances at the camera feed he knows she’s watching him from. “Unfortunately, huh,” he muses. “So you’re saying if Zane hadn’t made you promise to look out for me, you would end me?”

“That — no, that is not — of course I wouldn’t end you,” Pixal backtracks. An odd feeling flickers through her, almost as if she’s lost her place, floundering.

Or embarrassed might be more accurate, she thinks wryly. She briefly considers projecting a a glaring face at Lloyd from the monitor. This is his fault. She rarely stuttered before Lloyd started teasing her at all hours of the morning.

“I mean, you wouldn’t be the first,” Lloyd continues, conversationally. “And if we’re being honest, I’d definitely rather you be the one to off me, instead of like, random bad guy number eighty-five—”

“I know you think you are funny,” Pixal cuts over him. “But casually planning for your death is something Kai listed I was not to let you do. Also, it is not nearly as funny as you think it is.”

“Ouch,” Lloyd mutters, though he looks chastised. “Never mind, you just took me out in one sentence.”

Chastised might be the wrong term.

Pixal studies him through the monitor, then sighs. “I am, however, honored you think highly enough of me to offer the right to murder you,” she gives in.

She’s rewarded as Lloyd breaks into a bright grin.

He still looks painfully young these days, but it’s less obvious. His voice is pitching lower and he wears his hair different, and he’s gained a whip-like tendency to quip at people, as Pixal’s experienced firsthand. Kai calls it sass in grumbling but fond tones, and Nya calls it snark somewhere between the fourth book series she’s sent for Pixal to try.

The ninja have been kind like that, sharing the interests they have in an attempt to make her feel…well, more human, she supposes. Less confined to a voice in a computer. Of course, Pixal isn’t confined to a voice in a computer anymore, but they don’t know that yet. She’ll tell them someday soon, she promises herself. Any day now.

In the meantime, it’s easy enough to keep up with Lloyd by lurking in his car radio, as he spends half his time in there anyways.

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

“You’d think we’d have found their hideout by now,” Lloyd notes, as they wait in a darkened alleyway again. It gives them an excellent view of the major highways, so if the rumored biker gang does show up, they won’t miss it.

If they show up being the key point.

“Whoever their leader is, they certainly know how to keep a low profile,” Pixal answers, closing out another dead end police report in frustration.

“It’s weird,” Lloyd says, propping the notebook he’s sketching in on his knee as he squints at the paper. “Normally the boss types aren’t this quiet. They like to show off, y’know? Make a big scene, dramatic speeches and all.”

“Are you referring to the villains, or yourselves?”

“Touché,” Lloyd snorts. “But still, you gotta admit it’s weird they haven’t even made any demands. What’s their end game here, elaborate advertising for motorcycle design?”

“I would hope not,” Pixal says. “Their color coordination is lacking.”

Lloyd fights back a smile, his pencil scratching as he shifts his notebook again. “I don’t know, I kinda like the punk look.”

“I noticed that, when you tried to redecorate the car.”

“Hey, skulls are cool.”

“They are also conspicuous, especially when they come in acid green colors.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Lloyd sighs, making a face as he scrubs the eraser across the paper. Pixal tries to tilt the camera further, to see what he’s drawing tonight, but the angle he’s holding it at remains just out of sight.

She could probably guess what he’s drawing, if she tried. The notebook is one they’ve been steadily working their way through on these late-night patrols, the pages filled with little hangman games and Lloyd’s sketches of animals and his teammates. He’s drawn her a few times from memory, and she’s been tempted to ask him to draw her in the new Samurai X armor more than once.

Soon, she tells herself.

“What are you drawing?” she finally asks, curiosity getting the better of her.

Lloyd’s cheeks tinge pink, and he quickly plasters the notebook to his chest, hiding it entirely from view. “Nothing.”

Pixal waits, letting the silence fill with her judgement. “Lloyd, I have seen your drawings before.”

He doesn’t reply, and Pixal tries again. “It gets boring, being stuck with the car monitors for eyes.”

“I know you can hack other cameras,” Lloyd mutters, but he sighs, relenting as he turns the notebook over. Pixal’s eyes rake over the detailed sketch — it’s a comical little thing of her and Lloyd, jammed together on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a darkening ocean. She can spot the smudges where he’s redrawn her head several times, and the numerous attempts he’s made at his own hair. Pixal studies Lloyd’s portrayal of himself, which is noticeably lacking in facial features. While Lloyd draws the others plenty, it’s a rare occasion that he draws himself, and she can’t help but be curious.

“I thought you were drawing the others again,” she admits.

“They’re on the ship,” Lloyd says, absently. “I’ll draw them when they remember to pull us back in.”

There’s nothing bitter in his tone to suggest it has any bearing on their actual lives, but the lost expressions Lloyd ends up giving their tiny caricatures feel familiar nonetheless.

“Zane has assured me they will be back as soon as they can,” Pixal speaks ups quietly.

Lloyd finally looks up fully, and flashes the monitor a smile. “I know,” he says. “So we better have this thing busted by the time they do, or they’ll never let us run a city on our own again.”

“If only we were truly running the city,” Pixal grumbles. “I could do a better job in two days than the current leaders could do in a year.”

“I’d vote for you,” Lloyd says, sincerely.

It’s a sweet gesture, but Pixal is unable to resist. “You don’t know how to vote.”

“Yes I do, it’s not hard!”

“Really? Then why are you not currently registered in the Ninjago voting system?”

Lloyd makes a strangled noise. “That’s a thing?”

She’s unable to keep the smugness from her voice. “I make my point.” Lloyd scowls, and scribbles a mustache on his drawing of her in revenge.

Pixal thinks it looks nice nonetheless.

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

She can’t really hold it against Lloyd for talking as much as he does, considering she does the same. It gets dull, sitting on patrol for hours on end, and there are only so many hours of light reading they can do before the silence begins to drive them both insane.

Pixal finds herself talking about more useless things with Lloyd than she has in her existence, pointless conversations in circles with each other. She also finds she doesn’t entirely mind. She’s become quite good at quipping back and forth with him, at least. It’s different than the kind of talk she has with Zane, lacking in the depth of feeling with the love they share. Her exchanges with Lloyd are lighter, though that’s not to say they’re less sincere.

For example, Zane hasn’t tried to teach her how to redesign a gi in poor lighting in the early hours of the morning because he’s bored out of his mind, that’s for sure.

“I’m teaching you how to sew,” Lloyd corrects, wincing as he accidentally stabs himself with the needle. “And I’m not redesigning the whole thing, I’m just adding some designs to spice it up.”

“I did not know you were allowed to wear colors other than green,” Pixal comments.

Lloyd pauses, squinting at the monitor. “You’re teasing me,” he finally says. “You’re making fun of how much green this gi has in it.”

“I would never,” Pixal replies, her tone flat and even. “The intricacies of your human humor evade me—”

“Human humor, nice—”

“—unlike the unusually bright shade of green you’ve chosen will fail to evade any eyes of your enemies.”

“I knew you were making fun of me!” Lloyd accuses, then flinches as he stabs his finger again trying to point at her. “And bright colors are our thing. Being subtle is, uh…not. Usually.”

Pixal is losing the battle to laugh at his expression by the minute. “I am shocked.”

Lloyd glares at the monitor, shifting his sewing to rest on his knees as he slouches in the car seat. “How’d you even get so good at sarcasm, anyways,” he mutters. “Zane still doesn’t get it half the time.”

“Perhaps it is part of my glowing personality,” Pixal says. Lloyd gives a huff of laughter, relenting.

“Fair enough,” he says, shifting in his seat again. “Fine, you win. The green is probably too bright, but that’s not the point. I’m gonna show you how to do a backstitch."

Pixal falls quiet, letting Lloyd gesture with the needle as he explains. There are a hundred, a thousand tutorials she could pull up online, digitized knowledge instantly learned on all the countless types of stitches she could use, sorted and categorized in neat columns of use and effectiveness. All of them more detailed, more easily understood than Lloyd’s absent rambling and unsteady hands as he struggles with the end of a knot.

Not one of them will care whether or not Pixal learns the odd way Zane likes to loop his stitches, or will quietly add which stitches knit skin back together quickest.

So Pixal ignores her programming, and does her best to follow Lloyd’s rambling instructions, watching as his scarred fingers tug another thread of dull gold through the green mess of fabric, the city quiet around them.

“You never did tell me where you learned how to sew,” Pixal says, as Lloyd starts up a new thread of black on the other side of the gi. “Was that something the others taught you in training?”

“They’d have to know how to be able to teach it,” Lloyd snickers. “And, uh, no. I taught myself to back at Darkley’s.”

“Oh,” Pixal falters. She’s heard about Darkley’s, both from Zane and the legal reports she’s read online. Neither gave a positive impression of the place. Her mind is suddenly filled with images of a younger Lloyd trying to give himself stitches, and her heart twists.

Lloyd starts, seemingly having picked up on her train of thought. “I mean, I did it for fun, mostly. I like sewing,” he explains. “It’s useful. You can pull things back together, and fix ‘em.”

Pixal is quiet, but she hopes Lloyd takes her silence as agreement with his motive. She likes to think he knows her well enough for that, by now.

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

Pixal finds, somewhere during their fourth month alone, that she’s glad the team elected to stick her and Lloyd together. Not because she doesn’t want to be with Zane — there’s never a moment she doesn’t miss him, and with every day that passes her resolve to keep her secret from him grows weaker, as the longing for actual connection grows stronger.

But there are conversations she can have with Lloyd that she can never have with Zane, and the dangerous thing about spending time with Lloyd, Pixal finds, is that they’re more similar than she’s realized.

“Sometimes I think I’m jealous,” Lloyd whispers to her one night. It’s one of the bad ones, the ones where their enemies struck too sudden to stop, and the mission ends in the hospital. “I think I’m jealous of Zane, and I hate myself for it.”

Pixal is quiet, trying to pick apart the tone of his voice in the words he’s just spoken, and factors in the victims they’ve just left behind at the hospital. She finds herself no closer to an answer.

“Is it the metal skin part?” she finally asks, though she knows that’s wrong. “The, what was it, technical immortality?”

“No,” Lloyd shakes his head. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he says emphatically, his fingers fluttering at over the steering wheel, tapping incessantly with unspent energy. “I don’t want to, but that’s — it’s not what I’m scared of. I’m more scared of how I go out.”

He swallows, and his fingers move to dance over the woven bracelet on his wrist instead, twisting at the tiny beads and tracing senseless designs in constant, steady movement. It’s a motion he does often, and it had puzzled Pixal at first. She’d decided to write it off as an odd tick, a way to spend excess energy.

Now, she recognizes the desperate kind of reassurance that movement gives. She understands too well the need to remind yourself that you can move — that your body will obey you and you alone.

Pixal thinks back to the other factors in tonight’s accident, of the way the drugged man’s eyes had cleared when they’d finally turned him over to the police, the way he’d sworn he’d never do such a thing in his right mind. She thinks of the way the first victim had thrown themselves over their companion.

That victim hadn’t made it to the hospital.

“Ah,” Pixal says, quietly.

She’s silent again, and she thinks back to when she’d met him, the very first time. She recalls the way her programming had rebelled against her in favor of the Overlord, corrupting her body and forcing it against her, twisting everything she was and wanted to be into something different.

She thinks back again, to the searing-hot anger, the terror, the despair as she was torn apart, piece by piece like a machine, burning out at the whims of another. Her end purposeless, her demise belonging to someone else, just like every other part of her.

She thinks of the last glimpse she’d caught of Zane, bright and beautiful as a supernova. Burning with the terrible brilliance of his own, determined choice. Terrible, because the death of something always is. Beautiful, because it was his own. Zane died, not a machine, not a weapon, not a tool of anyone or anything, but as himself. Zane died to save the ones he loves. Pixal could’ve died for spare parts.

Never again, she promises herself. If she goes out, she goes out on her own terms. This time, they choose the end of their own destiny themselves.

In hindsight, it’s the kind of promise they’re both too young to make, but neither of them have ever seen themselves as such, and promises like that are easy.

“Love can be terrible, sometimes,” Lloyd murmurs. Pixal watches him scrub at the blood on his uniform, and thinks how ironically well-timed it is that he finished the stitching on his new gi this morning. “Sometimes I forget how ugly it can be.”

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

The end of their nighttime stakeouts begins with a break-in at Mr. Borg’s tower. Lloyd argues that she should get to call it her father’s tower, if she wants, but the ninja aren’t the only ones Pixal’s hiding herself from.

And then Lloyd gets very tense at the thought of fathers very fast, and they never finish the conversation.

They stay at the edge of the bridge long after the parachute, emblazoned with the unmistakable visage of Lloyd’s father, disappears from sight. Pixal wonders if it’s burned into Lloyd’s eyes, like the way she’s read black spots linger in humans’ vision after they’ve looked at something too bright. The way Lloyd stares at the river, his shoulders tense and his teeth worrying at his lip, she thinks she might be right.

They’re waiting on the report from the commissioner —they’re waiting for anything, anyone who can offer them any explanation of what’s going on. Pixal’s reminded of how much she loathes this kind of waiting.

“It could be—” Lloyd begins, then breaks off, his voice wavering. He swallows, and Pixal can see the way his fists clench tightly from the cameras they’ve put in his car. There’s a fierce part of her that longs to reveal herself, to meet his eyes herself and offer some semblance of comfort. But there’s a time and place for things, and Pixal isn’t ready.

“It could be anything,” Lloyd finally continues, his voice small. “It could — it doesn’t mean anything. It could mean nothing, right?”

Pixal is silent, her mind racing. She’s run the calculations over and over in her head already, scouring the internet for anything related to the bikers. She’s been foolish, she realizes — they both have. Letting the gang go unnamed for so long, thinking nothing of it. Now, with the name flashing vibrant across Pixal’s vision, a part of her wants to let them go nameless just a bit longer.

Before she can answer, Lloyds phone goes off with a sharp ping, just as Pixal’s sensors alert her to the message from the commissioner. Lloyd snatches for his phone like it’s on fire, and Pixal’s already scanning the message frantically, as if she can salvage this if she’s fast enough, save Lloyd from this one pain.

Lloyd’s gotten much better at reading quickly though, these days.

She can pinpoint the moment he reaches the last paragraph, because his breath hitches. There’s a long, pressing pause of silence, Lloyd’s hands trembling as they clutch weakly at his phone. Then it’s punctured by a reedy, wheezing gasp, and Pixal’s suddenly wishing she’d revealed herself after all.

Instead, all she has is her voice as Lloyd crumples, crouching over in visible distress. Pixal’s mind races, recalling everything Zane’s ever told her about his team, the way their panic manifests in different shades. Lloyd’s is quiet but desperate, rapid breathes that stutter as his eyes slide more and more into a frightening kind of blankness.

“Lloyd, please, listen to my voice,” she begs, trying to reach him in the only way she can. “Please, you have to breathe—”

“He’s gone,” Lloyd rasps, unhearing of her words. “He’s s’posed to be gone, it’s supposed to be over, I’m supposed to be done—”

Pixal fights back the sense of overwhelming helplessness. She knows loss. She knows how to finish his sentence. He’s supposed to be done grieving, done mourning, done clinging to false scraps of hope that his father isn’t lost forever only to be met with heartbreak.

And now, to be met with the possibility of something so much worse.

“We’ll stop them,” she tells him, unflinching. “We won’t let it happen.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a vivid green where they stare at her through the monitor, almost ghostly in the misting light reflecting from the river.

He’s silent, but Pixal is, too.

Pixal remembers the way her head had spun when she’d first picked up the traces of Zane in the system, how the world had rushed then steadied, flooding with color as she’d realized he might not be lost after all. She remembers the surging, overwhelming flood of joy, that someone she’d thought she lost might live after all. She remembers being so happy, at even the smallest chance to get him back, because the voice was Zane’s, without a doubt.

She watches the color seep from Lloyd’s expression as his shoulders shudder, the words from the commissioner’s message almost echoing through the air. Watches the terror as the both of them fill the silence.

Will we?

The radio scratches, as if echoing Pixal’s anxiety. Love can be terrible, sometimes. She’s underestimated how it also be so cruel.

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

She’s also, apparently, underestimated how the universe on the whole could be so cruel.

She should’ve revealed herself to them from day one. That way, when Harumi’s corrupted programming suddenly ravages through her like an electric shock, she could be reassured they’d at least be familiar with the person they were fighting.

Instead, she doesn’t even get to scream. Pixal’s only able to force out a desperate, broken warning before she’s lost again, drowning in her own body as she’s forced under. Furious panic grips her as she screams without lungs, bashing herself against the overwhelming helplessness that’s taken over her.

Not again, not again, not again—

Her limbs creak and jolt against her will, lashing out at the people she cares most about, and Pixal can’t even rage back in her own voice. She’s sworn, she’s promised herself she’d never let anyone do this to her again — she’s sworn she’d die before she let someone reach into her head and snatch control away, and yet here she is, frozen as her body’s used to target her friends.

If she could cry, she might.

There’s not much more to say than that. She breaks free, her body her own once again, but by then it’s too late.

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

If Pixal had the same gift of foresight that Zane did, maybe she would have seen it coming. Maybe she’d have remembered how similar her and Lloyd are, and that this kind of pained desperation always yields impulsiveness and mistakes.

She doesn’t, though. She barely even manages to do what she’s trying to, which is convincing Lloyd to join the others while they celebrate their victory. Their off-key singing is something he normally wouldn’t hesitate to join in on, she thinks, and she hates Harumi a little more.

Maybe she’ll try his mother next. The expression on Lloyd’s face screams unapproachable, and remains fixedly sullen.

Almost to her surprise, he meets her eyes as she draws near— it’s odd, being able to meet his back — and his own eyes are dark, from despair over Harumi or despair over his father, Pixal isn’t sure. She’s thinking it might be both, when his eyebrows crease, and a flicker of concern cuts through them instead.

“You good?”

It takes her a moment to realize why he’s asking, but the answer is obvious. Her head tilts downward, and she watches as her fingers curl and uncurl. Her movements, her choices. She lets out an even breath.

“As I can be,” she replies. Lloyd nods, and his eyes are understanding. His lips twist in a scowl.

“She shouldn’t have done that to you. That was a low blow.”

Pixal’s mouth curves into a humorless smile. “That it was. She’s rather good at those, isn’t she.”

Lloyd’s eyes shadow again, and he looks away, crossing his arms. “This isn’t supposed to be about me,” he mutters.

“Yes, it is,” Pixal counters. “It is why I came over here, in the first place. She hurt—”

“All of us, and who’s fault is that,” Lloyd snaps, his arms crossing tighter.

“I would hope you know it’s hers,” she says, holding firm.

Lloyd looks away again, biting his lip, and Pixal shifts anxiously, rolling her wrists. The sensation of control sliding away still haunts her, worse than it had the first time. She should be better than this, she tells herself hotly. She’s lived without a body long enough that losing it so briefly shouldn’t effect her this much.

Curse her programming, she thinks, tapping agitatedly at the banister. She knew she should have reinforce it sooner.

“Hey, um.” Lloyd is looking at her again, hesitant. He twists at his bracelet, and his eyes lose a fraction of that darkness. “Kai made this for me, after Morro,” he says. “I kept shredding the sleeves of my uniform, so he told me to mess with this instead, when I needed to remember that…that I was in control.”

He shrugs, hesitant. “We could make you one too, if you wanted. It helps, having something.”

Pixal lets out a steady breath, despite not actually needing to. The action is grounding, she’s found. “I would like that.”

Lloyd gives her a ghost of a smile in return. “Soon as this is over, then.”

There’s a heavy weight to his words, and Pixal’s eyes narrow.

“Lloyd,” she says. He looks at her, his eyes dark. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

He’s quiet, not meeting her eyes, and this is where Pixal should stop him. This is when she should see the end of the road they’ve been on since they started this, and force him to turn before it’s too late.

“I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t.

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

Lloyd is battered and bleeding by the time they drag him onto the ship, a gruesome portrait of cruelty. Pixal is frozen as she watches him writhe in Kai’s hold, his screams cracked and wet as he thrashes erratically like a broken thing.

Nya is already barking orders before they’ve even gotten Lloyd fully on the ship, and Zane is running scans with a horrified, wavering focus. Pixal follows Cole as he carries Lloyd to the medbay with a blank numbness, the rush of wind streaming past the Bounty sails thunderously loud in her ears.

This isn’t Lloyd, she thinks, staring at his crumpled form. Lloyd isn’t this battered, broken shell of a person. Lloyd isn’t hazy eyes that fail to recognize them and frantic murmuring through bloody lips. Lloyd is bright-eyed and gentle and would rather die before he screams the way he does when Cole moves him to the table.

Lloyd is her friend, and this is where that promise they made has led them. She knows why Lloyd set out for the prison, hot on the collapse of his own star. She also knows he wouldn’t have chosen to burn out like this.

Cole calls out for Zane, his voice ringing in panic as Lloyd screeches in pain again. Pixal thinks of quiet words in the safety of his car, and she feels sick. This is the ugliness of love, the terrible, hideous side of it.

And Lloyd would hate it, if he could see himself, if he were any semblance of lucid. He’d hate to know just how much better he was at breaking himself than Morro ever was.

Zane is gentle as he pushes past her, but Pixal can feel the tremble in his hands. He’s every bit as rattled as she is, if not more so — Zane’s heart is larger and softer than hers has ever been, and he cares about each and every one of them with a painful intensity. It’s a cruel thing, to have to pull those same people back together with your own hands.

Kai’s eyes are streaming as he clutches at Lloyd’s wrists, pinning him in place. Zane’s hands waver again over one of the jagged wounds near Lloyd’s ribcage, the green of his uniform already dyed dark in blood, soaking over the careful stitches Pixal watched him put in himself.

Pixal finally finds her footing, reminding herself of the solid wood beneath her feet. She recalls the steady, smooth stitch Lloyd’s scarred fingers traced out for her.

“Here.” She takes the needle from Zane’s hands, squeezing his briefly before letting go. “I can do it.”

She sets the needle against Lloyd’s skin and wonders what kind of stitch it’d take to pull your heart back together.

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

Pixal cannot cry. It’s one of the features Mr. Borg spent hours debating, weighing the pros and cons of giving her the ability before he was truly sure how rust-proof she was. He’d never gotten the chance to, as the Overlord had interrupted him, then Pixal had lost any body to give the ability to cry to, which had eliminated the need entirely.

She cannot cry, but she can hurt, and the rain that streams through her hair, dripping down her forehead spotting raindrops on her cheeks, could be tears if she pretended.

She doesn’t, though, because tears are a waste of water and overall useless in the grand scheme of things. She doubts they’d have helped her fare any better in the battle with Colossi, either.

Tears won’t bring anyone back.

Lloyd cries anyways. She can’t see him, but she can hear it in his voice, the way it wavers and breaks over the radio, nasally tones pronounced.

He’s barely able to gasp a few coordinates to her before he cuts the radio off abruptly. Pixal’s spent enough time with him to envision his scarred fingers snapping it off with a particular desperation, green sparking from his hands in distress.

She reminds herself those sparks are gone, now, bled away into nothing like the vivid green of Lloyd’s eyes had. The thought makes her sadder than she’d expected. She had a joke, about his eyes, she had wanted to make. Now that she has a body, and her own set of glowing green eyes, she’d — there was something he would’ve laughed at, she thought —

It doesn’t matter, now. Neither of them are likely to laugh anytime soon.

The coordinates blink brightly in her vision, and she’s almost surprised she managed to key them in. She’s running on autopilot, she supposes. It could be ironic — she’s been so desperate for control, it’s been so important that she’s the one feeling. Now, she’d give anything not to feel at all.

She lets out a shaky breath, dispelling the mist in her vision left from the rain. She leans forward, just over the edge of the building she’s crouched on, and her loose hair falls forward, silvery and synthetic and horribly tangled. Irritated, she reaches for another hair tie, and her hands falter around her wrist.

Lloyd had promised her a bracelet there. But he’d promised Kai would make the bracelet, hadn’t he, and Kai couldn’t make the bracelet if he was dead, could he.

Pixal blinks, her breath hitching. She’s been so numb to the pain of Zane’s loss, it hasn’t yet occurred to her that she’s losing Kai, too. And Jay, and Cole, and—

She sucks in the same shuddery kind of breath she’s seen Lloyd do, and carefully fists her hand in the area of her uniform above her chest. Her fingers dig in tightly, clutching in a hopeless attempt to feel some sort of comfort she knows she’ll never find.

But perhaps, for these few seconds, she can pretend the action is holding her together.

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

“It was inevitable,” Pixal tells Lloyd blankly, as he rasps out his third apology in the dark cover of their small hideout. “That one of us would fall, eventually. It had nothing to do with you.”

Lloyd swallows thickly. “It could’ve — it should’ve been—”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Pixal’s hand shoots out, clamping tightly around his wrist, and there’s a beat of gratitude that she doesn’t need to rely on her voice alone anymore.

“Don’t.” Her voice is strung tighter than the tension in their shoulders. “You cannot change anything. You can’t, Lloyd, and you should not wish to — to change it that way.”

Lloyd jerks his hand free, wiping miserably at his eyes. He sets it back down within her reach, though, and if Pixal were any different, she’d take it.

But Pixal isn’t that different from Lloyd at all in the end, and neither of them reach for the other’s hand, no matter how desperately they crave the contact. Fear is more familiar, and it’s easier to give into it than it is the clawing need for comfort in your chest, after all.

“Still,” Lloyd finally whispers. “Still.”

Pixal swallows. She doesn’t disagree. If one of them had to fall, she knows she gladly would have taken it upon herself. She knows the others care for her, certainly, but she also knows her place in the grand scheme of things. They were six before she came along, and even now she’s kept far too many secrets to be fully counted among them.

She listens to Lloyd’s quiet, cracked voice, and she wonders if he’s thinking that they were five before he came along, younger than Pixal got to know him as.

Now they’re three, hollow and heartbroken. Though counting herself as one whole feels like cheating, right now.

Pixal squeezes her eyes shut, and wonders what it’s like to cry. Perhaps it helps, though Lloyd doesn’t look any less miserable.

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

“I was thinking,” Lloyd tells her, during one of the precious few quiet moments they have while trying to overthrow Garmadon and Harumi. Pixal’s turning the tiny tea flower he’d given her over in her hands, a part of her mind already marking articles about flower-pressing, another part wondering if it’s already too late to save the blossom. “About that promise we made, before all this.”

Pixal finally tucks the flower into the pocket of her uniform, pressed close to her chest. If anything, it can be a reminder of the lives that are safe — the life that’s coming back to her, if she has to drag him back from another realm herself. “And?”

Lloyd’s hands twist together. “Maybe we should focus more on staying alive.”

Pixal coughs out a laugh, breathless and startled. Lloyd wrinkles his nose at her, but his eyes are amused, even with their light lost. “I mean, the emphasis would be on keeping everyone else alive, but it’s kinda hard to do that if we’re dead, so…yeah. Priorities.”

“Staying alive should always be a priority,” Pixal corrects him, but she tugs the edge of his armor out of place with a smile.

“Why didn’t you teach me how to graffiti?” she nods at the designs on the green leather. “Or was this another Darkley’s tradition.”

“This is a refined art, called whatever I had on me that showed up on dark green,” Lloyd grumbles, fixing his armor. “I’ll teach it to you when we get out of this.”

“Another reason why staying alive would be a more productive focus,” Pixal points out. “I’ve heard teaching is easier when you’re alive.”

“And I’ve heard you’re a real riot,” Lloyd mutters. “It’s a promise, okay? I promise to teach you how to do cool armor design if you promise not to disappear into another realm on me.”

Pixal nods, adjusting her own armor tighter as screams ring out from a street nearby. “A promise, then.”

She keeps both the promise and the flower, the tiny blossom dried and faded by the time she’s escaped from the prison, heart racing with leftover adrenaline as Zane sweeps her into his arms. She clutches back every bit as tight, listening to his breathless laughter as cheers rise from the streets behind them, the smoke drifting across the early morning sky above them pale against the lightening blue. Pixal buries her face in his shoulder and breathes, tucking the moment away in her heart where it won’t fade. There’s a future stretching out before her, and she’s got the limbs to walk her path on her own, but all she wants right now is the steady ground beneath her feet and the bright laughter of what she’s managed to keep.

Lloyd meets them shortly after, his own promise kept as he tears his gaze from his father, handing him off to the authorities before sprinting for the others. Pixal barely snags a moment alone with him, and even then no one’s particularly keen on letting him out of their sights.

He meets her eyes as they pick their way through the wrecked streets, the city more alive around them than it’s been in weeks. In the dark of the early morning, Pixal’s eyes glow a bright green, reflecting oddly in the windows they pass. It’s always been her preferred color, in contrast to Zane’s bright blue. Lloyd glances at her, his own eerily green eyes glowing back. He bites his lip, but it’s to hold back real laughter this time.

“My eyes were green first,” she tells him.

“Sue me,” he shoots back, before Kai’s throwing an arm over his shoulders again, tucking Lloyd neatly in between him and Nya. Pixal smothers a laugh at the look on his face, and tightens her own arm further where it’s linked firmly in Zane’s.

It’s going to be an easy promise to keep, she thinks.

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #pixal #there was a point to this but it got lost in pix and lloyd do arts and crafts #either way i'd die for both these characters #ninjago where is the pixal love i miss her #my fic

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charminglyantiquated · 4 years

Text

step-by-step comic page

@weremouse and I were talking yesterday about drawing comics, and the shortcuts and tricks that you end up figuring out to speed up the ordeal. I ended up breaking down one of my short-comic pages into the steps of my current process, and having done that I figured I’d post it here in case anyone else finds it useful!

everything under the cut, since this is pretty image heavy:

1. Panels! I freehand them these days, which saves a lot of time, and I like how it looks a bit softer and more dynamic, especially compared to the perfectly geometrical rectangles I used to do.

2. New layer for major lines, and a new layer for speech bubbles (I seem to have deleted the rough draft layer I was working on, but it was definitely there - no details, but I sketch out the panel layout/major shapes/speech bubbles beforehand and draw over that).

3. New layer for text, new layer for details like hair, tattoos, etc, and new layer for line shading (which is probably the single biggest step backwards I’ve taken in terms of saving time lmao)

4. And that’s the hard work! The rest is pretty easy. I color most of my short comics in greyscale and then add color later. Wouldn’t work nearly as nicely for full-color, but it’s a good quick way to color limited palette comics. First step is to pick a shade of grey for the overall background:

5. New layer, and block color the small panels. Use greys that contrast the background shade, either much lighter or much darker. (note - I didn’t color the car windows, since I wanted to shade what was ‘outside’ differently than the car interior. I also colored the road on this layer instead of the previous one, which was a mistake I just didn’t care enough to fix whoops).

6. New layer, color the people and any any other objects you want to shade/color separately from the background. Having the big panel background, small panel background, and people on three different layers makes it really easy to color them later.

7. Time to add color! I’ll break down the individual steps I used, but the tl:dr is that I make a couple different clipping mask layers attached to a layer of flat grey, and play around with color/opacity/layer settings with a big soft brush until I like how it looks. I use a lot of soft light and overlay! Anything on a clipping mask layer only affects the layer it’s clipped to, so you don’t have to worry about precision.

Once you’re happy with it, then do the same for the other two grey layers. Each grey layer ends up looking more or less like this:

I’ll use the people layer as the example - first clipping mask layer is set to soft light, at a low opacity, and I used purple with a soft brush to add some shadows.

Next is another low-opacity soft light layer - yellow and purple, with a watercolor brush, to add a bit of texture. It’s very very faint on the people layer (you can barely see it, honestly) but recreating it for the background levels I turned up the opacity a bit more.

And the last clipping layer is set to high-opacity overlay, painting on pink with another big soft brush. I like how sharper shadows and highlights look but they take up a lot of time so I almost never do them in comics. And I like the kind of glowy look that less-exact soft round brushes add.

8. And that’s the people layer done! Because I wanted the same colors throughout, I did the same set of clipping masks for each of the other two grey layers. but this is also a really quick way to color something like my comic cursed - if you want the people to be one color and the background another, or the small panels to be a different color then the big panels, just add a clipping mask set to color/hue/overlay/whatever else works over the grey layer in question and fill it with the color you want.

anyway! here’s the small panels with the same treatment, and then the background with the same treatment.

9. That’s highlights, shadows, and some basic color all set! The last thing is adding some additional soft light/overlay/etc layers on top of everything, filling them with different colors, and seeing what works. I want to get rid of the last of the grey, and unify the page’s color scheme a little more.

full disclosure: I have absolutely no idea what most of the layer settings actually DO. it’s a mystery. I’ll cycle through different settings with different colors and I am surprised pretty much every time by what happens.

What I ended up with for this comic was a layer of mid-opacity light grey, set to screen, which lightened the page a little:

Then above that a mid-opacity layer set to color burn, this one filled a pale blue. Now the remaining greys are more bluish, which is closer to what I wanted:

But still not quite the right atmosphere. So above that there’s a low-opacity vivid light layer, filled with the same purple I used for shadows. Now the color’s pretty much perfect.

But it looks a little dark, and the pink has been toned down by the cool-colored layers. So one final layer, on top of everything: soft light, full opacity, using a big soft round brush to add the same pink in places I want to be brighter.

And that’s the final page! The linework still takes a while, but I’ve pared coloring down to pretty much just clipping masks, haphazard soft brush application of colors, and dicking around with layer settings. I hope this is useful!

#long post #like. long #my art #process breakdown #i learned a LOT of shortcuts from seeing how other artists made comics #even if i didn't end up using them #understanding the options available has always been helpful!#so here's this

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miracul0us-multishipper · 4 years

Text

“You”

A grin spread over Felix' face as he let the charade drop.

“Me.”

The black haired girl he now knew was Marinette rolled her eyes and turned back to her sketch book, a clear dismissal.

“You’re blocking the light. Go bother someone else.”

He sighed and brushed his hair back, decreasing the similarities to his cousin to the necessary minimum.

“Why would I? Everybody else is so boring.”

No one in this entire city had even realized he was back; not their classmates, not the teachers, not even the brunette fashion disaster that obviously had some experience with deception. Of course his little charade would have to end once Adrien had recovered from the cold that kept him at home, but until then Felix would have his fun. Yesterday he'd spend the entire day in the Bourgeois Spa, fooling the entire staff, the Mayor and his clingy brat. Despite the latter being Adriens “best friend”, not even she had realized who she was really inviting. Getting rid of her had been a little harder, but in the end he'd spent a wonderfully relaxing day in a steam bath and his skin was softer than ever. Courtesy of the ridiculously expensive mud bath he hadn’t had to pay a single penny for.

“Looks like you'd fit right in then.”, Marinette commented and drew an especially vigorous line in her book.

“Ouch. You wound me, darling!”

She shrugged and ignored him. Ignored him! That wouldn’t do.

With a last tug at his no longer messy strands he sat down next to her, leaning into her space as far as he could risk without getting slapped. His last few attempts had thought him that lesson.

“Oh, come on, Marinette, you must to tell me!”, he nagged her, happy when her face turned from concentration to annoyance. “What gave me away? Was it the wink? Or no, it was the greeting, wasn't it? Too much enthusiasm.”

“Why do you even care? You got all the others, didn’t you?”

He clicked his tongue.

“I have standards. If there's one person who can tell the difference, my performance is obviously lacking.”

She huffed and added a little bow to the skirt she was working on. Knee-length and plain colored, decorated with small ribbons. Classic and elegant, yet a touch of playfulness. He would have complimented it if he'd thought she might value his opinion.

“If it wasn’t my words or gestures, what was it?”, he asked on, not willing to give up and admit defeat. It was their little routine by now. He'd come up and try to pass as Adrien, she'd see through him and he would try to annoy her until she either gave him her full attention, or snarked him off. Marinette Dupain-Cheng – despite her cute appearance – could be mean, he'd learned.

“I don’t think I want to tell you.”, she shrugged, but he could see the beginning of a smile tugging at her lips. She'd deny it, but secretly she enjoyed their little battles of wits.

“What?”, he gasped and slumped against her in played shock, conveniently knocking the book out of her hands and onto the steps of the Trocadero. “But why?”

Now unable to draw on, she finally gave him her undivided focus.

“Because you, Monsieur Graham de Vanilly, are a major pain in my butt.”

“Oh? I would have thought you above such pettiness.”, he lamented. “To deny a fellow fashion enthusiast your criticism! To dishonor the sacred solidarity between artists! Truly a shame.”

“You? An artist?” She snickered. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Hey! Deception is as much of an art as these tiny scribbles of yours. And I am a master of my craft, thank you very much.”

She waved her hand and shooed him back a little.

“The questionable status of your craft aside, I'd hardly call you an expert. You were here for a day and already had the entire class plus three akumas after you. Your play didn’t even last an hour before it blew up in your face. Maybe you should ask Lila for a bit of advice! She's been here for months and is still on her unquestioned bullshit.”

He growled at that, drawing out another of these smug little smirks Marinette so rarely wore. After all his visits she knew how to rile him up.

“Do not compare me to that- that klutz! Anybody could spew some fancy tales and name drop, but that doesn’t mean she has skill. There's no finesse, no authenticity beneath that badly styled hair of her.”

“And there is beneath yours?”, Marinette said sweetly. He huffed and raised his chin.

“Of course there is. I don’t run around as Adrien for the fame, but for the fun of it. And I actually put in some effort. I was only found out because my goal required breaking character, and I still had a score to settle with my dear cousin. You think I only depend on my pretty face, because it looks conveniently close to Adrien? Wrong!”

His chest swoll a little as he spoke. With his accomplishments, he'd earned a little pride in himself.

“True, artful deception requires three things Lila Rossi couldn’t fake if her life depended on it: Discretion, Distraction and the right timing. She only ever barges in headfirst, unable to survive even a second outside of the spotlight.”

She hummed.

“My mistake. How could I ever assume you to be alike, since you obviously care so little about getting attention?”

Snarky little minx. Well, she wasn’t wrong, to be fair.

“Enough of that!”, he decided and eagerly turned back to her. “Now tell me what gave me away.”

“Let me see...”, she mused and pursed her lips. “I guess I could tell you that...”

“Yes?”

“...under certain circumstances...”

“Go on!”

“...it might be...”

“Might be?”

“The scent.”

He blinked. This had been his mistake? What kind of cologne did his cousin even wear?

“The... the scent.”

“Uh-huh.”

She moved to get back to her sketching, but he snatched the book before she could even touch it.

“Nah-ah! First you've got to expand on that. What perfume is he wearing?”

She shrugged and leaned back.

“Oh, isn’t it obvious? Adrien always wears “Manners and Class” N° 5. You on the other hand reek of “Wouldn’t know politeness if it hit me in the face”. A poor choice, really.”

She leaned in.

“You stink.”

It took a moment for her words to register, and he couldn't suppress a gasp when they did. With a satisfied smile she tugged her sketchbook out of his hands and crossed her legs, ready to put the finishing touch on her latest design. Felix fell back on the step next to her.

“That's it.”

“Yup.”

“You've won.”

“Fair and square.”

“I am defeated.”

“Annihilated. But to be fair, that opening was too easy.”

“Perfect set-up. Clean execution. Merciless punchline. You have earned your victory, so claim it properly.”

“I will.”

He fell silent after that, acknowledging his defeat. He lasted all but two minutes before his need for attention beat his shame.

“So? What do you want as your prize?”

“Peace and quiet?”, she proposed, gnawing at the end of her pencil.

He shook his head in disbelief.

“You're more ambitious than that, Dupain-Cheng. Here I am, Felix Graham du Vanilly, offering you everything I can give, and you settle for peace and quiet? Tsk, you can do better than that.”

“Maybe I could ask you to clear the area, while I’m already at it. For the entire week.”

He should leave. He wouldn’t get any real feedback out of her today, and now that he had offered her a prize she might develop some common sense and ask him for his connections, or some favors that could get her publicity. He was stretching his luck every time he decided to pester her again.

But he stayed. Whether it was his wounded pride, or his curiosity ever since she'd sent that little love declaration to his cousin... he couldn’t allow the only borderline interesting person in this city to dismiss him like that. Especially not when he hadn’t been able to get a rise out of her yet.

An idea popped into his mind and he spoke before he could think.

“You could ask me for a date.”

Now Marinette did put her book away.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

She blinked.

“Did you miss the part where I asked you to leave me to my scribbles, as you put it? Because I am sure I mentioned it a few times, now.”

“No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

She groaned and closed her book. He counted that as a victory.

“Well, then maybe you remember the fact that I’m in love with Adrien. Which you already know, since you watched the video clearly addressed to him. And deleted said video. And replied very rudely.”

He hummed and stood up to circle her. An actor had to have a sense of drama, after all.

“The past is the past. And in the present, I look just like Adrien.”

Now he finally seemed to have broken through her cool facade.

“So what?”, she snapped at him, crossing her arms. “Do you think I like him for his looks? Am I that shallow, in your opinion?”

Of course she wasn’t. But he'd finally struck a nerve.

“You're not?”, he provoked slyly.

“No!”

She stomped her pink flats on the ground with more force than should be physically possible.

“I love him because he is kind. And thoughtful. And funny and confident and fair and so classy, and because he loves to make friends, and because he's loyal and caring and-“

“Okay, okay, I get it. He's your little fairy tale prince.”, he interrupted a little harsher than intended. Clearing his throat he continued. “And you'll be relieved to know that I don’t want to date you either. No offense to you, but I am above such mundane things as crushes.”

She rolled her eyes and sat back down.

“Of course you are.”

“Fact is, my dear Marinette,” he lectured smugly, “that you can’t even say two words to your loverboy without seemingly suffering a particularly unflattering stroke.”

“What a flowery statement, Sherlock.”

“Another fact is that you can talk very fluently to me. Far too fluently, in my opinion.”

Marinette's eyes narrowed with suspicion and he smiled.

“What's your point?”

“My point is,” he finished his circling and came to a stand right in front of her. “that you can use me to practice. Here, I'll even mess up my hair again!”

“Wait, I didn’t even agree to-“

“You're welcome. Aren’t I a dashing little dream prince?”

He posed in true Adrien fashion and Marinette pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Please, just don’t.”

“Pah! Ungrateful as always. Anyway, back to business!”

He spun into a dramatic pirouette and kneeled down before her, taking her hand between his.

“Marinette, my fairest!”, he proclaimed with vigor. “Is there something on that bright mind of yours you want to share with me, Adrien Agreste?”

She groaned again, but didn’t pull away.

“If you'll leave me alone after that...”

“I'll do anything my good friend asks of me! I am sunshine personified!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Close enough.”

He almost regretted looking for Marinette this late. The sun was about to set and most tourists had already left for locations with a better view. If there had been more, one might have captured a snap shot of Adrien Agreste kneeling in front of a random girl about to confess. His cousin would be delighted when he found out about his scandal in the news.

Alas, it was only the two of them who paid attention to each other. But Marinette was about to begin, so he didn’t ponder on the viewers anymore.

“I... I wanted to tell you that...”

He almost winced at that poor display of rhetorical talent, but she wasn’t done yet. Taking a deep breath, Marinette lifted her eyes off of her shoes and looked directly at him. And for a moment it felt as if she were looking into him. He'd seen these bluebell eyes roll in annoyance, glare in anger and sparkle with mirth, but never had he seen them this piercing, this all-consuming.

“Adrien, there's something I haven’t told you yet.”, she said, and it was as if he'd never heard her speak before. This wasn’t the voice that had teased and bantered with him, or the disinterested lull she mumbled in when she tried to ignore him. This was soft, yet firm and confident. Like tugging the strings of a violin: a clear, pleasant sound that offered a first hint of the potential in this slender instrument.

“I didn’t keep this from you because I don’t value our friendship.”, she said and her fingers tightened around his. Felix was suddenly sure that no expensive mudbath could ever make his skin as soft as hers. “It's the furthest thing from it. I didn’t tell you because I value our friendship so much. And I was scared to risk it.”

She took a step closer and he had to swallow.

“Adrien, you are the first person I think of when I wake up, and the only person I see in my dreams. Every morning, when I walk into class and see you, I feel like there's pure sunshine in my chest and springs under my feet. Like gravity is just a loose suggestion and I could float if I jumped. Like... like I could do anything I ever dreamed of.”

She looked down upon their hands. Disentangling their fingers surprised him, but even more surprising was that this time, she took his hands between hers.

“I know you feel trapped sometimes.”, she whispered and he found himself suddenly very insecure. Was she still acting? Was she this deep in their little charade? Or... or was she truly talking to him?

“I know you put up a smile and try to give everybody what they expect. And that you don’t have a lot of chances to just be you, not the heir of a great legacy. But I... I want to be your escape. Your safe haven. What I am trying to say is...”

She looked back up to him, and her smile was radiant.

“I love you.”

...

There was a tightness in his chest.

Because he wasn’t breathing, he realized.

Odd.

He didn’t have time to overthink this little detail, though. For as soon as he opened his mouth to say something – what, he didn’t know – she blinked and took a step back. The spell faded and his mouth fell shut again.

“So,” Marinette cleared her throat and looked away. “How... How was it?”

“Uh...”, he made, which was admittedly not the smartest reply he’d ever given her. The fact that he still hadn’t remembered to breathe in didn’t make things easier.

Marinette shifted her weight from one leg to the other, uncomfortable.

“That bad?”

Ha.

Ha ha.

He shook his head and finally sucked in some much needed air.

“Good”, he croaked out, which was still not much of an improvement from his earlier statement of ‘uh’.

“It was... really good.”

Ah. The simple beauty of a full sentence.

“You think so?”, she asked, voice high with surprise. “It wasn’t... I don’t know, a little too much?”

“No!”, he answered a little too fast. “Uh, no. No, it was really... really good.”

Marinette's eyes went narrow.

“Are you making fun of me? Because I may be small, but if you did this to humiliate me then I swear to god, I will take this pencil and-“

“I was serious. What you said was beautiful.”

They both blinked at his words. He hadn’t meant to say that. This wasn’t how their interactions went. They were snarky. Mean. Teasing from time to time. But not... this. Never this open. Never vulnerable.

“Thank you.”, Marinette gave back, seemingly unsure herself. “I should... you know, it’s late and my parents are waiting.”

He nodded far too eagerly for his earlier efforts to make her stay.

“Yes, of course. I'll... No, you know the way better than me, probably.”

She laughed at that. It wasn’t a snicker, or one of her smug little huffs. It sounded... sweet.

“Yeah, no need to walk me home.”

She eyed him for a a moment, then the emptying place.

“I could walk you home, though. If you want to.”

Yes.

“No.”, he said and something in his chest roared in disappointment. “Thank you, but it would be quite the detour for you.”

She shrugged.

“Alright. Don’t get lost.”

Shouldering her bag she took her sketch book and moved to leave, but stopped mid movement to turn back around.

“Oh, and if you tell anybody – especially Adrien! – about any of this, you'll find out what I was going to do with that pencil! Got it?”

He rolled his eyes, finally in control of himself.

“Yes, oh great master of pencilmanship. Your weapon is as feared as its wielder.”

Satisfied she nodded and turned around, but stopped yet again. With a groan she dropped the bag, stepped in front of him and grabbed his collar. He'd never admit to anybody that the surprised squeal that followed had come from him. Utterly frozen in shock he could only watch as Marinette came closer and...

“There!”, she hummed and combed back his hair with her fingers. “I like you hair better this way.”

A small nod was all he could muster up, but it was enough for her. Waving him goodbye she turned around for good.

“Well then. See you around, Felix!”

He watched her leave, desperately trying to regain his voice.

“Y-Yeah. See you around, Marinette.”

Only when she had completely disappeared in the nearby metro station he allowed himself to sit down, wobbly knees no longer able to support him.

“What...”, he mumbled to himself, “...the entire fuck...”

What did just happen? Nothing made sense, not this stupid idea and certainly not his reaction to it. Sighing he leaned back against the steps and touched his hair. It was still a little messy, but laid back against his head in its usual fashion. If he concentrated he could almost feel the warmth of her fingers trapped between his strands.

He sighed deeply.

...damnit.

- - -

A little one shot because I hadn't written about canon!felix yet.

#miramu writes #felinette #felix graham de vanily #canon felix #ml felix #ml felinette #ml marinette #marinette dupain cheng

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lilhawkeye3 · 3 years

Text

Black Coffee & Sugary Sweets - Part 3

Rating: T |||| Word Count: ~1k |||| The Mandalorian Café AU |||| AO3 Link

Summary: “Paint Sketch me like one of your French girls boys, Jack Bri”

A/N: Paz is thicc & Bri has noticed and that’s all you need to know for this chapter lmao

Masterlist

On slow days, Bri pulls out her sketch pad from under the counter and adds a new doodle to the hand-bound pages. Sometimes she’d use one of her newly-made pastries as her model, other times, she’d try to quietly sketch one of the patrons as they sat at their seats, drinking their morning brew.

Today though, she does her best to draw from memory. Paz’s smile is easy for her to do, drawing the rounded curve of his lips and crinkles at the corner of his eyes. The shape of his eyes though gave her grief, and she’d already erased and started over again three times. She taps the eraser end of her pencil against her temple and sighed heavily. Maybe he was just too pretty to put to paper?

“I could pose for you if that’d be easier.”

This time, Bri does shriek and reel backwards at Paz’s sudden appearance, but his hand shoots out quickly and grips her forearm to keep her upright. Her eyes widen and she looks up to find herself staring into his dark eyes.

His initial teasing grin fades as he took in her startled appearance. “Bri?”

“Ahhh... yeah?” She responds, voice rising high as her brain tries to catch up to what’s going on. “I mean, yes! Yes, I’d like that. Very much.”

“Wait, really?” Paz’s brows rise dramatically, but he tries quickly to recover, bringing his free hand up to rub sheepishly at his jaw. “Just let me know when.”

Bri feels her face grow warm at his obvious willingness. “Well, it is slow this morning… You could pull up a bar chair to the counter and sit here?” She offers, trying to seem nonchalant. Paz watches her carefully for a moment before dipping his head in a nod. The deviation of his gaze finally has him realize he was still holding her arm, and he lets go with a rush of apologies that Bri easily accepts. The sudden absence of his touch has her missing his warmth as he goes to move one of the tall stools. In the meantime, she focuses on fixing Paz’s usual drink, and tries to ignore the way her hands are trembling in anticipation.

It settles her nerves when she sees Paz’s hands shaking as much as hers when she hands over his black coffee with an unhealthy amount of sugar.

He asks her questions about her hobby as she picks up her pencil again and gets to work. It has Bri fighting to keep from bouncing in her excitement at his genuine interest in her art. His eyes hold a curious spark as he watches her in her element, scratching the graphite in precise lines as it slowly forms the shape of his face.

It’s hard to stay focused though when Bri keeps peeking up through her lashes to find her model trying to not be caught staring at her. She wonders if this is what art feels like, to be beheld and revered with such open awe and wonder.

His voice is a soothing soundtrack as she loses herself in her art, tongue peeking between her teeth as she hones her precise skills to make her immortalization of him look as perfect as possible. She paused when needed in order to service the few customers that did show up that morning, and it caused her to swell with pride when they all commented positively on her rendition of Paz.

Of course, his opinion would be most important, but so far she’s been blocking his line of sight in order to keep her finished sketch a complete surprise.

It’s only at the end, when Bri’s preparing to doodle a symbol by his name, that she draws a blank. She’s learned a lot about him in the past hour: he has a kitten named Blue that he adopted and is the main feature of his phone camera roll, he goes hiking in his free time and is trying a new trail this weekend, he’s trying to teach himself to play guitar solely with Youtube videos because he’s “not a good singer,” something to which Bri is highly doubtful of but she encourages his learning all the same.

But… none of that feels right. She’s pretty sure none of that is the reason that the universe decided to drop him into her lap.

“Hey, Paz?”

He’d been looking out the store front windows, watching the morning work crowd scurry by to their posts, but he turns towards her easily with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Why did you start coming here?” Bri asks, obvious confusion clear in her voice. She hopes it doesn’t sound like an attack– she’s just genuinely curious at this point.

Paz rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Did I never mention?”

“My best guess is ‘leather jacket model.’”

His laugh is quite honestly her favorite sound. “I’m a construction worker; I supervise a site nearby.” He glances down as an afterthought, tugging on the open collar of his jacket. “This was a gift from a friend who works with me actually, but I’ll let them know it was a good one.”

Bri bites her lip and hopes the heat rising to her cheeks isn’t enough to give away what she’s about to say. “They should get you a matching set of leather pants next time to accentuate your features.”

Seeing his eyes go wide in response was completely worth the risk, and Bri doubles over in laughter at the way his mouth falls open in shock. A slow, hopeful smile spreads across his face.

“Two can play at that game,” he warns, and she knows he’s giving her an out.

Instead, she crosses her arms on the countertop and leans forward. “Always more fun than playing solo.”

He leaves a few minutes later in a rush, racing to make it to his shift on time after having stayed longer than he originally planned. Bri’s a bit glad she hadn’t finished the sketch by then, because now she has a chance to add some color to it before tomorrow morning.

It’s a lively yet mischievous dance they’re waltzing, not trying to trip each other up, but rather seeing if they can get each other to stumble briefly and grab on tighter. In fact, she feels a bit like a peacock, putting on her best and most colorful show in order to attract a mate.

...though, she considered after some thought, that made her and Paz two birds of a feather!

#paz vizsla x oc #Paz Vizsla #the mandalorian #café au #coffee shop au #meet cute #fluff #fanfiction #Winston Duke #Paz x Bri #star wars

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melancholic-pigeon · 3 years

Text

WIP Wednesday #15

Since Jason's birthday is tomorrow and all, I'm doing something longer as a treat. A triptych, if you will!

Content warnings for child abuse and neglect, alcoholism and food insecurity.

Thalia wakes up, like she usually does, to Jason curled against her with his fingers in his mouth. She can't easily put him in his crib by herself, but her mattress is on the floor and there's nowhere for him to fall, so she can ensure that she's there to hold him whenever he wakes up crying. Her shirt's a little damp, but this time it's just because he's drooling in his sleep. Last night, thankfully, was free from disruptions.

For him, at least.

He's a year old today, and she hasn't seen their mother since two nights ago, slumped on the couch with an empty bottle of vodka on the ground next to her. The door to her room is closed. Whether she's in there sleeping it off or out somewhere getting drunker, Thalia has no idea.

Bitterly, she doesn't care. It's not like their mom cares about them, either.

Jason yawns, his hair sticking up like a cockatoo's feathers. The first eye contact of the morning always leaves him giggling and reaching for her, and the feeling of his small, warm body flopping onto her brings her focus back to where it should be.

"Happy birthday, shrimp."

"Happy," he repeats, nosing at her stomach.

It's up to her, like usual, so she gets him dressed and ready and gives him the last of the cereal to occupy himself while she digs through her closet to find the old coffee can she stashed there.

Every time she thinks she can get away with it, she lifts a bill from their mother's wallet and puts it in the can. Every nickel she finds on the street, every dime she pulls from the couch cushions; it all adds up, a little at a time.

After carefully saving as much as she could for the past few weeks, she's squirreled away enough. She takes out a fistful and stuffs it in her pocket, then re-buries the can under a pile of her laundry.

Today's special, and she'll cover the loss somehow— by sneaking some extra groceries under her coat again, if she has to.

Jason's finished with his breakfast by the time she emerges, sitting patiently and playing with the plastic dish she'd given it to him on. Her sweet baby brother, looking up at her with a smile so sunny you'd think they were living like kings.

Her chest feels tight and her throat's in no better condition. After a deep breath, she reaches down to grab his hands.

"Do you know what birthdays mean?"

He takes a second to think about it as she pulls him to his feet, then shakes his head.

"Birthdays, Jason," she says, grinning— it's harder to dwell when he's holding onto her hand— "mean birthday cake."

The gas station a block away at least has the miniature kind wrapped in cellophane. He won't know the difference, since he hasn't even been introduced to the concept of cake yet, but she'll still have to make it up to him with a real one someday.

—

By the time Jason turns two, Thalia has shoplifting down to an art form.

People are usually too busy fawning over how precious her brother is to pay her much attention, and having Luke along makes it almost easy. Jason adores him, and he's happy to draw focus away from her by translating the toddler babble and proclaiming that they're his favorite babysitting clients, which conveniently explains the lack of adult supervision.

Thanks to him, she's managed to get Jason something a lot better than cake.

She saw it in the window of a toy shop and immediately knew it was perfect, but it cost more than she'd scrounged in the past six months. She'd been resigned to the idea of stealing a brownie instead, and then last night, Luke showed up at her doorstep with it tucked under his arm and his face split into a wicked grin.

She's not sure she wants to know how he managed to smuggle it out without getting caught, but the way Jason lights up when he lays eyes on it, happier than she's ever seen him, is enough to make her ignore the uneasy feeling.

"Puppy!"

She can't help but mirror it back to him, her heart swelling with emotion as he flings his arms around the stuffed animal's neck. It's almost as big as he is.

"That's right. It's a wolf puppy. She's named after a mama wolf called Lupa."

The real Lupa is the matriarch of a pack living at a conservancy in San Diego county. Her likeness is an embodiment of the fiercely protective love Jason should have gotten from his own mother, and which has fallen to Thalia and her limited capabilities instead.

Jason rolls over, still holding tight to his new doll, and lays his head in her lap. If she's coming up short, he certainly hasn't noticed.

"My Lupa?"

He's gently petting the wolf's fur, in a movement that's strikingly similar to how Thalia's petting his hair. She blinks a few times to chase away the burning in her eyes.

"Your Lupa."

She can't give him the childhood that he deserves. It's a struggle to make sure even his most basic needs are met, and some days it feels like the whole world is united against them, but then he hugs her leg or curls up against her shoulder or tells her in that sweet voice love you, Taya—

And everything settles in her chest, refining itself into a white-hot determination.

She's all he has, and the one thing she can make sure he'll never want for is someone who loves him enough to fight for him.

She understands how the real Lupa must feel about her cubs. She knows, with more certainty than she's ever known anything, that if anyone so much as thinks about hurting her little brother— hurting her baby— she'll tear them to shreds with her teeth before they have time to run.

—

Everything is perfect. Thalia's made sure of it.

The party doesn't start for another hour, so she has to keep Jason occupied until then. He thinks she has lunch reservations and they're meeting at her place for coffee first— the second part is true; she has a pot of Kona ready to go as soon as he arrives.

While she's preparing his decoy surprise, the rest of his friends are in Manhattan, helping Percy and Sally get his bash underway. She finds herself quivering with excitement as she puts the last few touches in place.

The doorbell rings and she squeaks, shoving the main item behind a bookshelf before racing to answer the door.

"Happy birthday, shrimp." She stands up on her tiptoes and hugs him around the neck. "I have something for you."

Jason beams, pink, and squeezes her back.

"I told you last year that you don't have to get me anything. Your company is a gift in and of itself."

"Ha ha," she counters dryly, knowing he can hear her getting a little emotional at the sincerity on his face. "Very funny. Like I'm not going to try to make up for the ten of them that I missed."

She takes hold of his arm and pulls him into the apartment, past the kitchen to the hall that leads to her bedroom. She opens the door beside it, the one that used to be her study.

Jason's eyes go wide.

The desk is still there, but the chair is new, much larger than the one she used. The bookcase is the same, too, but she's put her video games in a box in her bedroom and filled the shelves with fresh sketchbooks and paints and pencils instead. The bed is new too, as well as the nightstand and the dresser.

Sally stripped and varnished all of the wood, and built a set of floating shelves that are currently storing a series of framed photos from Annabeth's camera reel. Piper decided on the paint colors— sky blue with a deep purple accent on the wall that slants to the ceiling. Leo took care of borrowing Jason's favorite sketches to make the framed prints above his bed, by pretending he was doing a photography project with them.

(He'd burst into laughter when she gave him Jason's baby drawings to frame too, and she'd almost punched him in the mouth— but then she'd noticed his voice was a little tight when he told her the crayon scribbles looked just like her.)

"Wow," Jason breathes, staring around the room as though he doesn't know where to land his focus. "This— is all of this for me?"

"Anytime you need an escape, you've got one. Think of it as your safe house. And there's one more thing."

Reluctantly, she steps away and retrieves what she hid earlier.

Jason's mouth drops.

"Lupa," he whispers, raising his hand. He stops himself halfway through reaching over, like he doesn't know if he should. "How did you find another one? I thought they were a limited run."

Thalia takes his hand, wrapping his fingers around the new doll's front leg.

"I traded twenty-seven ultra-rare mint-condition beanie babies for her with a collector in Montana."

"Do I want to know how you got twenty-seven ultra-rare mint-condition beanie babies?"

"It's not as sordid as you're thinking, I just spent a lot of time on Ebay."

Jason laughs, shaky, and sits down on his new mattress. He's probably not even conscious of the way he's running his thumb over Lupa's paw, exactly the way he did the first time.

He said that donating the original to charity was his idea, but Thalia has a suspicion he was pushed into it with a healthy dose of shaming and manipulation, and the look on his face— shocked, bright-eyed, a little scared like he thinks she'll disappear if he blinks— pretty much confirms it.

Thalia sits beside him and wraps an arm around his back. He slides down along the mattress until he's lying with his head in her lap.

"My Lupa," he says quietly, and she knows he remembers doing it before.

"Your Lupa," she chokes back. "For real, this time. Nobody's going to take her away from you, ever again."

It's different now, because Lupa is about the size of a two year old child, and Jason very much no longer is. She fits in the crook of his elbow, and he couldn't wrap his arms and legs around her if he tried.

Thalia tries not to think about all the nights between then and now that he's needed her, and didn't have her.

He smiles, wiser than his fifteen years.

(He's fifteen years old. God. She missed so much— thirteen months isn't long enough to even really begin to catch up.)

"I know they won't," he tells her. "You won't let them."

She's never going to get those years back. The only thing she can do is make sure she appreciates what she has now.

"I believe you would."

"I'll bite anyone who tries," she whispers back, leaning down to kiss his forehead. He bursts into laughter, reaching up to ruffle her hair like she used to do to him.

@perseusjackson-jasongrace @msdrpreist I still feel self-conscious about pinging people tell me if you'd prefer I didn't difjvhg

#thundersibs are go #wip wednesday #let jason grace be cuddly dammit #q #Jason Grace Birthday Spam #i wrote this #stellarverse

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spencerreidimagines · 4 years

Text

Lovely Little Details

//Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: none

A/N: hey y’all, sorry for the late post!! This just a little coffee shop imagine that foreverrrr to get out of my head lol. Hope y’all enjoy! p.s. there usually is a read more link but I’m on mobile so this post is just gonna be left as is until I get my hands on a laptop :)

It was in a quaint coffee shop that Spencer had first laid his eyes on her. She was tucked into a corner, with her head low and her eyes steady. Her hands cupped a steaming coffee mug dotted with stars and hand painted constellations, as her eyes followed the wandering city-goers through the window beside her. A leather journal was splayed open before her; with a shift of her elbow, he caught a glimpse of the ragged manifestations of her thoughts.

He spotted lines and dots and creatures lining the side of her page, her sketches on the journal's edge were specific; definite. He followed along the coils and stray hairs that sprung from her high bun, the slope of her neck, the slight smile that rested upon her lips...

Spencer sighed and righted himself in his seat to face the nearly empty coffee cup before him; he had been staring, he realized. He clacked his fingers against the table as he silently hoped the splinted moment when they caught eyes hadn't been as noticeable as he felt it was.

A name was then shouted in the background, and through the bustle of the cafe he heard the soft kick of someones hasty steps. He'd held his breath as he ran through the incredibly slim chances that it might be that stranger from across the room, a slight knot curling in his stomach as he had no idea what to say to this woman if she decided to confront him. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, his face shriveled into a grimace before he fixed himself to face this stranger, his eyes soft and apologetic.

"I think this might be yours," a mild voice floated to his ears, "They handed me the wrong drink, then just gestured over here so..."

"Oh," he responded, surprised, before reaching to take the cup from her hands and nodding in thanks, which she waved away with an awkward smile resting on her lips.

"I also noticed you staring earlier," the beginnings of an apology began to push against his lips before she continued on, "Which normally would throw me off but, you're kind of cute, so I thought I'd just...invite you to sit with me for a while."

His brows shot up in surprise before he composed himself and checked his watch, thankful that he still had about half an hour before his lecture, "Sure," he responded as he began to gather his things.

"Alright," she sighed, donning an accomplished smile before she turned on her heel and crossed the room to return to her seat, nerves now beginning to fester in her core as she absently scanned over her notes to distract herself from the growing pit in her stomach.

‘what on Earth was I thinking?' she thought to herself before she stifled her thoughts as Spencer set his things along the back of the chair and sunk into his seat. He flashed her a courteous smile once their eyes met.

"I have to admit," he started, "I'm a little surprised that you'd invite me over here after you caught me staring."

“You know, I'm surprised myself," she admitted with a small chuckle, "I don't usually do things like this, but something about you caught my attention," She paused as her gaze flicked to his hands playing at his sleeves, he was fixing the watch to peek out of his tweed jacket, "do you have somewhere to be?" she asked.

“I have a, uh, lecture in half an hour," he responded, his voice stern and yielding against her open ears.

"You're a teacher?" she asked, brow raised in intrigue, to which he nodded with a shrug, "That explains so much about you."

"It does?" he asked, his head lightly cocked to the side.

"Mhm," she hummed, taking a sip from her mug, "You seem like the scholarly type." His eyes flicked to the side as he digested her oddly forward answer, "What's your name?"

"Spencer," he said before he quirked his brow to silently request for her own.

"(y/n)," her gaze wide and inviting, before she set her mug down with a soft clink, and rested her chin onto her hand, "So tell me about yourself, Spencer, there has to be more to you than teaching."

"I only teach lectures occasionally," Spencer flitted his eyes to the table, her unwavering attention slightly overwhelming, yet warm enough to keep his own tethered between them, "majority of the time, I work in the behavioral sciences unit, in the FBI."

Surprise and intrigue flashed across her features as she raised her mug to hide her gleaming smile, "Behavioral sciences unit, huh? So you study people?"

"That's actually a misconception," he began, "we investigate federal crimes through a behavioral lens. The creation of this department is actually a pretty interesting story," She nodded for him to go on, and as he spoke, (y/n) followed his hands as they fluttered about, "When it was first established, most of the general public didn't believe that serial killers could've had the capacity for compassion in their early lives."

"Well, in their defense, it's pretty hard to see someone as a compassionate human being after you've been a direct witness to the families that they tore apart," (y/n) responded, frankly, "So, what changed their minds?"

"The profiles started working," he said matter of factually.

(y/n) just nodded, a simple frown on her face as she digested his information, "It must've taken years for a turn around like that," she lowered her mug, "I can only imagine how hard it must've been to get that department off of the ground."

Spencer scoffed, "Yea, not many people liked to change their minds back then," he responded, accents of jest and spite dancing along his words, "So, uh, what do you do?"

"I'm an author," she responded, pride flashing across her features before melting into rested humility.

Spencer's eyes flashed before his tongue dashed across his lips, he could only imagine the worlds hidden away in her mind, "How long have you been writing?"

"Oh, I've been writing for years, and it was a challenge to find a way to get paid for it," she responded, dismissive yet firm with her voice, "nobody believed me when I said that I was going to open up the world through my words; make it seem more inviting and colorful than it's turned out to be."

He watched a storm roll across her gaze as she followed her rippled reflection in her mug, her finger lightly playing at the rim. "I know I probably just sound like every other starving artist out there," she chuckled, "but I've dreamt this big since I was a kid, so a couple of naysayers aren't going to stop me from doing what I love."

Spencer nodded, "I know how hard it is to be doubted by the people who are supposed to support you," an empathetic smile flickered across his lips, "it took my mother years to accept my career path."

"Oh, yea?" she asked, "I had no idea you could meet so much resistance in becoming an FBI agent."

Spencer chuckled, bashful, "Most of the resistance came from how young I was. The other training agents were nearly ten years older than me when I started."

(y/n) startled a bit, "Ten years? How young were you when you started working for the FBI?"

"Twenty two." He answered simply, and upon realizing her blase response, he quickly followed up with, "Most agents join the FBI in their mid-thirties."

"Oh, I see I have a genius on my hands," she jested, "somehow, that doesn't surprise me." She muttered wistfully, her hands interlocked under her chin. "The jacket, the hair, the wide intelligent eyes; you have scholar written all over you."

"You could tell that just from what I was wearing?" He asked, a mild wonder tinting his words.

"Mhm, writers study people too," she responded nonchalantly, "passers by present so many details of who they are on the surface."

He spared himself a glance as her eyes turned to the bustling city goers, drinking her in as much as he could. The white sheen of the snow covered sidewalks bounced off of her skin; she seemed to steep in the weak winter sun. He followed how her shoulders rose and fell with a wistful breath before she darted her gaze back down to her journal, her fingers caressing the page as kindly as the breeze that spins autumn leaves.

"That's how I make sense of the world," she started, "those little characteristics that no one pays any mind to make the world so bright for me, and I want to share that perspective with as many people as I possibly can."

Spencer felt the apples of his cheeks grow warm as he gathered the earnest hope held in her eyes while she cradled the page between her finger tips. Her drive to share her craft ran so deep; she was so open and honest.

Before he could get another word out, his watch beeped, drawing both of their gazes to his wrist; their half hour was up. The rising excitement in his chest deflated as he began to tuck his watch back into its place, “I hate to cut this short, but I have to go.” He said, apologetically, “When can I see you again?”

"I'm not going anywhere any time soon." An easy grin spread across her lips as she scanned her frenzied notes, “I like to come to this corner of the coffee shop whenever I have writer's block, and I usually don’t leave until I have a decent story on my hands."

Spencer's lips quirked up to a grin that matched hers, before he nodded and stood to gather his things.

"On the off chance that I do leave before you’re done lecturing," she started, grabbing a napkin and scrawling something across it, "Here's my number. I would love to see you again."

His grin widened as he took the napkin and pocketed it before gathering the rest of his things, “I’m glad you invited me over here,” he said bashfully with his hand gripping his satchel’s strap.

“I am too.” (y/n) responded, her hands cupping her mug once more, while she smiled softly, “now go before you’re late.”

With a curt nod and a gentle wave, Spencer turned on his heel, and made his way to the coffee shop doors, a slight bounce in his stride as he let his mind travel mere hours ahead of him when he could see (y/n) again. Her and her idiosyncrasies drew him in, and he could not wait to figure her out.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer fluff #spencer x reader #criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #dr. spencer reid #spencer reid x reader fluff

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tybaku · 3 years

Text

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30691259

Midoriya Izuku finds the incarnation of beauty and divinity sitting at a window of a hole-in-the-wall café just a few blocks away from home.

Or: An artist in search of inspiration unexpectedly finds a new muse.

When Izuku lays eyes on him, it’s like salvation.

It’s a feeling of warmth, like fire licking at the grooves of his teeth and spreading throughout the apples of his cheeks. It’s a pleasant thing, the following lurch in the very pit of his chest, like all the air in his lungs had turned into honey the color of molten gold. It’s electric in the way he can feel it’s lingering buzz in his fingertips just as he’s left in a reverie.

Izuku hasn’t felt this way in weeks.

A thin, reserved smile finds its way onto his bitten lips as he twirls his mechanical pencil between his fingers. If he were an artist of a different medium—say, a photographer—he would capture this very moment for safe keeping, have it frozen in all its sharp and bright clarity and contrast. (But he is not, so he will have to make due with his pencil and paper.)

It’s a gray kind of day today. Storm clouds were rumbling gently in the sky, crooning and purring in the promise of rainfall. It set a somber mood, and a gloomy undertone to the colors of the café Izuku frequented, despite its yellow lights and setup of deep, rich browns, reds, and oranges.

Though it did pair perfectly with the man who sat by the window.

Izuku’s eyes fell, and his pencil danced on the paper of his sketchbook. Curves and corners formed a light, faint base, precise enough to embody a sitting figure. Izuku looks up again, eyes gently observing the piece in front of him.

And damn if that man at the window didn’t resemble something straight out of a Rembrandt. He was soft, pale colors, from fair skin to blond hair, and awfully kind on the eyes, muted and light. He held a dark sort of overtone over his features and the way he breathed, grays and blues amongst warmth.

He’s wearing a scarf in a bright shade of cream low on his neck, and the material gives off the impression of cotton, which is soft and comforting in the current cold of late autumn. His clothes are dark, old, and large, falling off his slim figure. His eyes are downcast, and though Izuku can’t quite tell from this distance, they are deep and dim in hue, and enraptured by the laptop in front of him, a halo of cool light illuminating his high cheeks and sharp jaw.

Simply put, the man at the window was agonizingly gorgeous, and Izuku was determined to capture his beauty on sketch paper.

He’s quietly scribbling his third concept drawing (he quietly berated himself for not bringing any paints today, but then considered the fact he wasn’t even planning to draw at the café anyway, and he could always just start a piece when he got home as long as he had a decent thumbnail) when the man stops, rolls his shoulders back, and rises from his seat.

Surprised, Izuku nearly drops his pencil, not having expected any movement and having forgotten the man at the window wasn’t actually modeling for him, nor made of marble. (He could be though, Izuku thinks. If he let me, I could immortalize him with just my hands.)

The man steps up to the counter and orders a coffee.

Izuku watches him wait as subtly as he can, glasses slipping to the tip of his nose with how often his head moves up and down, and up and down again in order to somewhat perfect the piece in his book.

Faintly, he realizes that he should maybe be a little more inconspicuous about his sightseeing, but he’s too thrilled about finally finding a view that was actually worth looking at. Plus, the man hasn’t yet noticed Izuku’s stare on his stern profile, even if the artist was just as tactful about it as a toddler.

Izuku rolls his own shoulders, a mimic of what the man had done earlier, and continues. When the man returns to his seat, Izuku is on his third sheet of paper.

They’re faint, quick doodles now, thumbnails overlapping thumbnails, because Izuku is rapidly losing his patience, and doesn’t want to spend more than a minute on a sketch. He’s too excited now, and the ideas keep coming in, insistent on making their presence known even as the page becomes more and more crowded, filled to the brim with messy artwork.

The man finally meets his eye, and scowls.

Embarrassed, Izuku ducks his head quickly, pretending to be occupied with his sketchbook. It’s a half-truth really, because he has been busy with it for the past twenty something minutes. Only now there’s a more than healthy flush to his cheeks that can’t be blamed on the chilly weather. He looks up tentatively.

The man has gone back to glaring at his laptop screen and sipping on what Izuku assumes to be his dark brew (with exactly two and a half packets of sugar substitute—Izuku knows this because he had seen him pour and stir them into his mug at the sidebar before he took his seat again).

Izuku lets out a quiet sigh of relief as the heat in his face fades out like a dying candle, and then resumes his sketching calmly. He never really could draw when he knew someone was watching, it made him feel too nervous, and much too exposed. One is meant to create art privately, and wholeheartedly, not under a persistent microscope.

Then again, Izuku probably shouldn’t be out in public if he wanted privacy and be away from prying eyes. Even if they are a deep, rich shade of brown that sat on his skin like hot, burning coal. (Even if they are red and piercing like they must be in another life, in another painting of beauty.)

And it wasn’t as if Izuku came to the little coffeehouse with the intention to create, he had simply wanted to mill about, and see if maybe he could find some inspiration outside his lonely studio apartment, and even his actual art studio. He never thought he would actually strike gold, and have to sit down to milk it for all it was worth.

Unfortunately, there comes a point where all the gold runs out, and Izuku is left with dirty hands and an ache in his chest.

The man packs up his belongings and leaves. The bell above the door sings cheerily. Izuku watches as the man breathes a puff of air like smoke before he shields his mouth from the cold with his scarf. Izuku's eyes fall when the man rounds a corner and disappears from view.

The coffee in the mug Izuku bought out of courtesy has gone cold, since he had been far too busy trying to map out the shapes and shadows of the man at the window. He looks down into it, detested, not being able to help feeling a little upset about the man’s departure.

If I had asked, Izuku thinks rather absently, would he have stayed?

He shakes his head at himself, hair tickling his cheeks, feeling a little ridiculous. That wasn’t something you could just ask of someone you didn’t even know the name of. It wasn’t appropriate by any means, to ask a stranger something so intimate. To stay. And just so you could admire them and the lines of their human body, and preserve them on sketch paper for you to have and hold selfishly.

So really, there wasn’t anything Izuku could’ve done to prevent the inevitable. The loss of a light and warmth so bright it felt holy—the inside of a dying sun, the core of a supernova.

What he does do, however, is take advantage of all that he had basked in and hurry on home with intent of creating a new art piece of paints, making sure to leave a fat tip on the underside of his untouched coffee before leaving the shop with a little spring to his step and a pink blush on his face.

He makes it home in a flurry, hair wildly windswept and cold air in his panting mouth, having broken into a sprint, and then a run, by the time he was only a block away from his apartment, nerves buzzing under his skin. He had taken two steps at a time up the stairs and into his studio, as if he were being chased by a madman. (He was the only madman around really, one who was much too eager to capture what he felt back at the café on a canvas with his oils at home, rather than make the trip to his professional workspace.)

Izuku makes a quick beeline to his art desk (it’s standing where maybe a television stand would be if he had one, right in front of his comfy loveseat, and it’s covered in all sorts of paints because Izuku tends to use it as a glorified paint palette) and sets his sketchbook down on the cleanest spot he could find, immediately crouching down in order to rummage through his art supply bins for his spare oil paints.

He mutters as he does this, about colors and brushes and the man at the window of the café, but it’s nothing short of white noise to his ears, a harmless habit. It helped him focus in fact, his own whispered musings to an empty room, and it helped him relax enough to calm the heart trying to break his rib cage and beat a gaping wound through his chest.

He finally finds the oils, and then the brushes, that he needs to replicate the image in his head that burns in the backs of his eyes. He sets them all down on his art desk, only where it’s dry, and moves about the apartment in search of the final, most important ingredient: a canvas.

He looks down, around, and behind every piece of furniture, grumbling under his breath. After about five minutes, it finally sinks in, and he makes a terrible discovery: there were no clean canvases he could use.

Usually, he would have one or two lying around, for easy commission pieces, and even when the occasional creative mood would randomly strike, but as of late, he hasn’t actually been painting much of anything, whether it be for personal purposes or professional pursuits. And his past self had figured the canvases in his art studio would suffice because of this, so he hadn’t bought any to keep at home.

His past self was a bumbling idiot.

Determined, and not yet ready to detach himself from this bout of sudden inspiration, Izuku rolls up his sleeves, gathers his supplies, and gets to work, canvas or no canvas. He paints and paints until his knuckles ache and his jaw goes sore from clenching in concentration.

He finishes his piece with tired arms and oils not only on his face, but on his plastic frames. He finishes liberated, with relief strung throughout him.

Admittedly, it’s not his best piece, for his living room wall isn’t suited for his oils, but Izuku can’t help but think it’s his most beautiful. It’s the first thumbnail he made of the man at the window of the café, one where he’s looking out the window, blown out right on the wall, his sharp yet soft profile glowing gently with warm, nude colors.

The man at the window takes Izuku’s breath away all over again.

Warm in the face, Izuku lets his eyes wander away, and fall to the wooden floor. The sun is bright and high in the sky now, a telltale sign of noon, beaming hot yellows into the apartment, and beating down onto the back of his clothes. The lighting is wonderful, and perfect for a picture, but a seed of greed is already sprouting in the mouth of Izuku’s stomach.

This sight, this piece, wasn’t one he was willingly to share with anyone just yet, if ever. It feels too deeply personal somehow, and much too intimate to showcase on any of his social medias, much less his professional art blog. Plus, it’s not even a complete piece, or one he can profit off of, since it lies dormant on his wall. There wasn’t a reason to post this anywhere, and there wasn’t a reason why Izuku should even want to. This piece was for his eyes only.

Embarrassed at the mere thought, Izuku brings his stained hands to his face, no doubt smearing more oil paint onto his blushy cheeks. Now what kind of reasoning was that? He didn’t want to share? The man at the window was only his to admire? How selfish! And how embarrassing! Izuku thinks in a flushing stupor, berating himself in belated humiliation. He hadn’t meant to think any of that, honest!

The artist smacks his face once, and then twice, to pull himself back together. Nevermind all that, there was nothing wrong with wanting to keep some of his work to himself in the first place. Just like his personal, and very much private sketchbook where he allowed himself to experiment and make mistakes, this living room piece served as an act of unexpected creativity and originality, a subjective study of an intriguing character.

At the very least, Izuku had fully convinced himself of this in less than a minute, not allowing himself to think about the matter any further lest he wanted to mutter a whole dissertation about it straight through the wall and into his neighbor’s apartment. (The walls here weren’t as thick as they were supposed to be, unfortunately.) (Vaguely, Izuku recalls his apartment lease and its rules, specifically the too-lengthy paragraph under “alterations” and how he was not allowed to “paint, wallpaper, alter, or redecorate without written consent of the landlord.”)

Izuku brings his thumb to his mouth and bites down on the painted nail to keep himself quiet, letting his eyes settle back up to his artwork. It truly was an astonishing piece, if he did say so himself. It was very new, and very different from any of his other work, and it reflected an entirely distinct side of Izuku’s artistic capabilities. It felt real, and warm, and overwhelmingly human; very dissimilar from his usual painting style.

It was nude, and dark, and utterly stunning in all the unexpectedly right ways. A handsome painting crafted by hands that never knew they could portray such divinity.

A fresh flame ignites in Izuku all over again, and his hands go back to feel the blood rising in his face once more. It was becoming increasingly more and more difficult for him to mellow out of this stage of embarrassing elation, since each time he tries to take a look to admire his piece he gets worked all up, and ends up awkward and out of place in his own home. He just—He just needs something more.

Huffing, Izuku removes his glasses and wipes them down with the hem of his shirt. His hands go a little blurry under his gaze, which was a little watery and soft at the edges, far-sightedness at its best. As he removes any paint off his lenses, he allows his mind to wander just a bit, back to his painting, and back to the prospect of sharing.

He nearly drops his glasses moments after, right on the line of a most groundbreaking revelation—a victory caused by something straight out of a storybook or myth, one where stars, planets, suns, minds, and hearts aligned.

Izuku fits his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and quickly fishes his phone out of his pocket, inputting his passcode with no hesitation.

He had some calls to make.

#fic #link #bnha #bkdk #ty.txt #ty.types

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aria-writes · 4 years

Text

Viktoria frowned and crossed her arms in front of herself. “Tyler, leave the seagulls alone.”

Tyler grinned cheekily as he tried in vain to wave her off. “Mr. Boss said to bring something back from the beach for him!” Viktoria shifted her weight and glanced over her shoulder in Tegan’s general direction, but it was immediately clear to her that he wasn’t going to be any help whatsoever in this sort of situation.

“You and I both darn well know that he didn’t mean the wildlife!”

Tyler pointed at her. “He didn’t specify. So, there is still a very slim but entirely probable–”

Viktoria threw her arms up in the air. “Dude.” “Do it for the meme,” Tegan called from under his frowny-face umbrella.

Victoria turned and looked straight at him for the first time that day, hands resting on her hips. “Where did you even find that thing?” Tegan shrugged nonchalantly. Well, as nonchalant as one can be while sweating to death, at least. “The internet.”

Viktoria sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, then directed her attention towards the mock volleyball court that Raquel, Alistair, and Axel had set up. Axel and Ellie were up against Raquel and Alistair, and it was not going very well for the former team.

On Viktoria’s opposite side, Tadashi seemed lost inside his own little world as he drew a large square in the sand with a big stick, then started writing in large block letters underneath it. “D...E...T…”

That was clearly going to take him a while, and she was already bored watching.

Tegan shot Tyler a look that Viktoria couldn’t even begin to decipher, but she could tell it meant something meaningful.

Tyler began loudly heckling Axel, mocking his (admittedly lackluster) volleyball playing style from what he probably assumed was a safe distance away.

“I hope your vocal warmups aren’t as weak as your physical warmups are, AHAHAHA– OW!” Tyler was cut off abruptly via an inflatable beach ball to the face, courtesy of a smirking Axel.

Tyler snatched it out of the air with his hands before it had a chance to fall and raised it above his head, then ran straight towards him with a battle yell.

The smirk quickly disappeared off of Axel’s face, replaced by a scream of “SHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII–” that completely drowned out Tyler’s voice as he started running down the beach, both of them being deliberate in their avoidance of Claire’s very elaborate sandcastle, of course.

Viktoria raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very impressive lung capacity right there. And here I thought ‘singing on a treadmill’ was just an exaggeration.”

Tegan ran a hand through his hair and muttered something under his breath that Viktoria couldn’t quite catch. Something about someone owing someone, perhaps? Viktoria grinned to herself at the mental image of Tegan as a mob boss.

Karolina and Neha relaxed on lounge chairs a good few yards away and pretended not to know any of them. Neha took a long sip of her iced lemonade as she sketched out ideas for a swimwear line while Karolina thumbed through a magazine, protected from the sun’s harsh rays under an umbrella, a very fashionable floppy hat, Guccy sunglasses, and three layers of 100 SPF sunscreen.

Speaking of which… “Did you at least put some sunscreen on?” Viktoria turned and asked Tegan suddenly. He fell silent, then gave her a guilty smile. “That would be a no.” Viktoria sat down beside him and pulled a brightly colored tube out of her tote bag despite Tegan’s protesting.

Axel and Tyler ran by, still screaming at the top of both their lungs as they went right on past Tadashi’s…

“DETENTION DUNGEON,” Viktoria read aloud.

The beach ball must have gotten lost somewhere along the way, as Tyler was now just flailing his arms around above his head as he chased Axel.

Viktoria blinked dumbly. “Huh. Interesting. I guess old habits die hard.” She shook her head and squeezed a generous amount of sunscreen into her palm, then moved to apply it to Tegan’s arm.

Tegan gasped as the cold cream made contact with his uncomfortably warm skin. “You uh, you really don’t have to fuss over me like this...” Viktoria grinned as she slathered it up and down the length of his arm. “Awwh, but I want to, though.” She set to work, watching Tadashi out of the corner of her eye.

Tadashi scooted over to the ‘entrance’ of his detention dungeon, then started drawing what seemed to be some very elaborate puzzles and traps.

Viktoria paused and sat back on her heels, squinting. It was difficult to tell where exactly the sunscreen ended and Tegan’s pale skin began.

“What exactly is Tyler going to do if he catches Axel, anyway?”

Tegan rolled his eyes as the corners of his mouth turned upwards. “Well, you know the four F’s? Axel’s doing one of them right now, and then two out of the three remaining ones are… take your pick.”

Viktoria groaned and smacked her forehead against the armrest of Tegan’s chair. “Tegaaan!” “Viktoriaaaa!” Tegan whined back, matching her tone.

Viktoria raised her head and grinned suddenly as a thought struck her. “Hey, do you think Tadashi would throw people in his detention dungeon for PDA?” Tegan nearly fell out of his chair as he sputtered, barely coherent. “I– What– are you– I mean, he– you mean like–” “Because Ellie and Alistair have been making googly eyes at each other all day,” she continued, seemingly oblivious.

Was that a hint of a genuinely relaxed smile on his face as Tadashi added an extra leg to his manticore? Maybe it was a trick of the light.

Tegan took a deep breath to steady himself and sank further into his seat. “You are going to be the death of me, Viktoria.” He pulled his hood up over his head and covered his face with it, the corner of his glasses getting hooked on the fabric in the process.

“You… have a T-shirt... with a hood attached to it?” Viktoria asked incredulously, eyebrows raised.

Tegan stuck his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout and crossed his arms, the effect only enhanced by his askew glasses. “Don’t judge me.”

Viktoria smiled as she moved from his left side to his right. “Well, at least it’s on-brand.”

Tegan lifted his hood to pull it back just enough to uncover his eyes and fixed his glasses. “So, what, I’m predictable now? I gotta change things up a bit.”

Viktoria motioned towards Tyler and Axel. “You could go join them, nobody would expect that.” She involuntarily cringed as Axel’s scream went shrill and went just sharp of the high C.

“Ugh, exercise. Never mind, I’ll stick with predictable.”

Tegan rolled his eyes again and wiped the palms of his hands on his shorts. “Lovely weather we’re having,” he said sarcastically.

Viktoria slowly inclined her head. “I don’t want to pry or come across as rude, but…” She trailed off, electing to stare at the crook of his elbow instead of his face. “Why are you out here instead of inside with the sweet, blessed air conditioning if you hate it so much?” She glanced up to gauge his reaction.

Tegan’s mouth twisted to the side as he avoided looking straight at her.

“...An hour of pure torment is paradise if I’m spending it with you.”

Viktoria inhaled sharply. “Tegan, I…”

Oh no, She thought to herself, not emotions and feelings! Not here! Not now!

She racked her brain for a fast and simple way to deflect. “If Axel ever decides to rebrand as darker and edgier, you could totally be his songwriter.”

“Like, what,” Tegan gestured grandly into the air with his arm, “The night sky is dark/just like my soul/and like the full moon/it swallows me whole?” Viktoria squeezed Tegan’s shoulder. “Pure poetry.” Tegan ran a hand through his hair, laughing in disbelief. “I don’t even know what it means!” Viktoria shrugged and shifted her weight. “That’s what makes it so perfect, though. Even if it has no meaning, people will eventually find one, anyway.” Tegan nodded slowly. “Wow. That got deep.”

Just then, Axel and Tyler came running by for the second time and collapsed on the sand, panting heavily.

“I’m,,, never,,, doing,,, that,,, again,,,” Axel gasped, arms wrapped around his middle.

“Me,,, neither,,,” Tyler agreed, nodding weakly as he stared straight up at the crystal blue sky.

“Okay, that dragged on for way too long.” Tegan stretched his arms above his head and let out a satisfied groan as his joints cracked loudly.

Tadashi’s head snapped to attention. “WHO BROUGHT FIREWORKS?!”

“Ooh, Tadpole’s gonna throw you in his detentsand,” Viktoria teased, resting one arm across the back of his chair.

Tegan pointed with his pale, ridiculously slender index finger. “Out. Get out.”

“I just—“ Viktoria started.

Tegan shook his head vigorously. “Nope nope nope, that was too horrible.” His glasses fell off. He retrieved and replaced them as nonchalantly as he could, which was difficult since he dropped them back onto the sand twice during the process.

Viktoria wandered over to the volleyball court, palms turned upwards. “Looks like I’m booted, so–” “Oh, good.” Ellie grabbed her arm. “We need another player to balance the teams, since–” she gestured vigorously at Axel and Tyler, who looked like a couple of stranded fish.

Viktoria grimaced and shied away. “Oh no, I’m terrible at all sports.” Ellie placed her hands on her hips. “Do you run away from the ball when it comes toward you?” Viktoria shuffled her feet, reluctant to answer. “...Yes, except for in dodgeball, because that’s an easy out.”

Ellie groaned and threw her head back. “Well, at least you’re capable of running, so there’s a start.”

Viktoria pursed her lips and cocked her head, crossing her arms behind herself.

“That depends on your definition of running. Because ‘moving as fast as you can, which is still not a lot’, is just about all I can muster.”

Ellie gave her a deep frown. Viktoria didn’t even know that mouths and eyebrows could turn like that before.

Viktoria gave a backward glance at Tegan, who seemed to be doing a decent enough job of entertaining himself on his phone. Little did she know, he was most definitely taking photos of her. Tasteful ones, of course.

“Okay, fine, I’m in. What do we need to do?” Viktoria began stretching, then started pulling her hair into a low ponytail.

Ellie offered her a spare hair tie and clapped her on the back. “Win, of course!” Viktoria’s jaw dropped open, almost cartoonishly. “Against Raquel and Alistair?” She shook her head, eyes wide. “I’m just gonna hold you back, hon. This has ‘bad idea’ written all over it.”

Alistair looked in their direction and shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m open to switching if you want.” “Tired of winning?” Raquel teased, spinning the ball on the tip of her finger. Viktoria watched enviously.

“Nah, but it sounds like you are.” Alistair chugged a bottle of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I am very in over my head I’m not competitive at all this isn’t going to end well for me–” Viktoria very much resembled a deer that wandered onto the highway and was now caught in a rapidly approaching car’s headlights.

Claire rose to her feet and carefully stepped over her completed sandcastle and matching sea dragon, dusting the sand off herself.

“I can join in too, if you want? To take the pressure off of it being two vs. two.” She gave her a tentative smile. Viktoria made a noise of appreciation and threw her arm around her shoulders. “You’re the best, Claire.”

Claire pulled her thick hair over her shoulders and smiled down at her feet. “Now we can suck together. Yay?” Viktoria stared at her in shock, then doubled over laughing. “I can’t believe you just said that! You’re not wrong, though!”

Raquel stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled, one fist in the air. “ALRIGHT, PANSIES! HALFTIME’S OVER! LET’S GOOOO!”

“Y’all are going down!” Ellie bounded over to the other side of the net, game face on.

Alistair placed his hands on his knees and planted his heels in the sand. “In history, maybe!” He hollered back, then to his teammates, “Don’t let them intimidate you, they’re all talk.”

The fire in Raquel’s eyes and the way Ellie pounded her fist into her opposite palm said otherwise.

Claire and Viktoria shared a tight-lipped, ‘we are doomed’ glance.

Claire reached over and weakly touched her fingertips to Viktoria’s. “That’s our team high-five,” she whispered.

“Dream tea–” Viktoria started to whisper back, but was rudely interrupted by Alistair’s shout of “BALL!”

Viktoria flailed her arms outwards. “Ack!”

Claire shielded her face as it headed in her direction. “Eep!” Raquel threw her arm out to the side, palm flat. “OUT!” She called, gleefully.

Viktoria scrunched up her shoulders and reached over to tap fingertips. “Yay, Claire! You got it over!”

Claire returned the gesture, eyes shining. “Dream team!”

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athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

Text

How Kurt Cobain

PART TWENTY-SEVEN OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: drinking, anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references, this is the product of intense writer’s block so who knows its quality honestly

Word Count: 4.3K

Summary: Ella takes a morning walk through Philly. Then, she takes Jess to Lane’s wedding.

Tangled beneath the sheets, Ella awoke with the sunlight streaming through Jess’s window and into her closed eyes. She squinted as she cleared her throat and shifted to find Jess’s side of the bed empty. Furrowing her brows, she raked a hand through her messy hair and sat up against the green wall, Nietzche’s eyes looking over her almost comically. Still, she found no Jess in the room, though the door was slightly ajar. The smell of coffee drifted in from the kitchen. She worried frantically if she had missed her interview with the Dean.

“Jess?” she called.

After only a moment, he waltzed in with the paper in one hand and a mug in the other. He smirked when he saw the scowl on her face. Yet another thing he could count on never changing. Ella Stevens was not a morning person. “Yeah?”

“What the hell? Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded, rubbing at her eyes with both hands.

Jess snickered. “Like it’s so easy. I tried. You told me to fuck off.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, but you did. Twice.”

Groaning slightly, she shook her head at herself. “Sorry.”

“No problem. I’m used to the colorful vocabulary by now,” he shrugged, taking a long sip of his black coffee.

She rushed over to her bag, convinced of her tardiness.

“Woah, where’s the fire?” Jess asked.

“What time is it?”

“Relax. It’s only nine. Your interview isn’t until eleven, right?’ he asked, smug smirk ever-present.

Blowing out a small breath, she nodded. “Yeah. Jesus. I thought it was noon.”

“Why?”

“That’s usually how late I sleep when I forget to set an alarm,” she said, running her fingers through her hair again.

He chuckled. “Well, you’ve got a while. I had to get up to let the poet guy in. There’s donuts in the kitchen. Campus is only a few blocks away. I can walk you there later, if you want.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, she tried to fight the smile which threatened to cross her face. “I don’t need an escort, Mariano.”

“Oh, right. I forgot you know exactly how to get there from here,” he said, feigning understanding.

She rolled her eyes. “I brought a map.”

“That’s cute,” he teased.

“Fuck you.”

“It’s not the twentieth century anymore. Just let me walk you, Stevens.”

“Okay, fine,” she conceded, finally letting herself break into a little grin.

. . .

Cloudy light shone through the overcast sky in gray tones, but the air was light. Philadelphia was not due for rain. Ella breathed in the city as they strolled down the sidewalk. It was a little grimy, but so alive. The pulse of the noise and the people made her feel excited, inspired. She would have to draw something of it as soon as she got a moment. Jess had his hands shoved in his pockets, stealing occasional glances at Ella. He saw the same wonder in her eyes that he had when she’d come to visit him in New York all those years ago. A pleasant warmth radiated throughout him, and for just a little while he stopped wondering where they stood with each other, what would happen, about the words they still needed to speak.

She fiddled with the thin strap of her watch as she walked along. “Do you like Philly better than New York?”

He perked his head up as she suddenly broke the silence between them. “Oh yeah. Less people. Better art scene.”

“Really?”

“Definitely. And it also helps that my mom doesn’t live here.”

“Ah,” Ella replied knowingly, nodding slightly. “So, you guys haven’t talked much since the wedding, I take it?”

“Every now and again,” he shrugged.

They turned down a road lined with coffee shops and bookstores. Ella could tell it was a backwards way of getting to campus, but expected nothing less of Jess. It made her want to smile. The more she saw of the city, the more she could tell he belonged. Finally, he had a place where he fit.

“She did call me when April showed up, though,” Jess continued casually.

Ella uttered a small laugh. “Yeah. That was...straight outta left field. She’s a good kid, though. Can recite the whole periodic table in like sixty seconds. She kinda reminds me of my brother.”

“Adam?” Jess asked.

Ella nodded, the warm breeze blowing her bangs back from her face. Her hair was in a low bun, and she was dressed in the same clothes as the day before. Most of her wardrobe wasn’t the most professional. And straight-laced clothes, she thought, were an important balance for her visible tattoos.

“How’s he doin’?”

She shrugged, smiling lightly. “He’s good. Almost done with his junior year. He’s applying to all those big schools. MIT is his top choice, I think.”

“Jeez. Another valedictorian in the family?”

“Maybe. He might get a full ride, especially since…” she paused, biting at the inside of her cheek. Looking over at Jess, she saw his curious expression. He seemed more open than he ever had, comfortable in his own skin. When she continued, her tone was firmer, more direct. “Well, my dad left to live with my uncle in Baltimore a few months ago. It’s just Adam and Fiona back in the house. He’ll get lots of financial aid points for having a single step-parent.”

“Oh, that’s…”

“Yeah. But, I think everyone’s better off,” she said, averting her gaze from him. Again, Jess thought he saw her try and grab for a necklace, but instead she reached up to tug gently at one of her small earrings. “Once the baby thing didn’t work out with Fiona, my dad started drinking more and...I think he realized he’d never...losing my mom. He’s never gonna be the same. Adam’s doing well, though. And Fiona’s doing better. It’s better.”

He hummed in acknowledgement, appraising her with a careful eye. “I’m glad, then.”

“Me too.” She cast him a tiny, reassured smile. “Sorry. That’s heavy stuff and it’s not even afternoon.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry over,” he replied.

Rushing over a crowded crosswalk as the seconds blinked off the timer, Jess took her hand to lead her. She wouldn’t be late, but he could tell she was anxious to get where she needed to be. “We’re almost there.”

He thought for a moment about disentangling their fingers, but she gave his hand a squeeze instead. His heart glowed with nostalgia and hope. The noise around them seemed like music. Cherry trees, which dotted campus, were blooming and they stepped over the petals beneath their feet. Hardly thinking, Jess ran a thumb over the smooth skin of the back of her hand. Her smile grew.

They were approaching the brick building which held the dean of the art school’s office. Students whizzed past them with backpacks and frantic looks. A sense of surrealism dawned on Ella. She was going to end up at an Ivy League, after all. Just a little later than she had once hoped she would. The air smelled clean and damp with spring.

“So,” Jess began, coming to a stop a few feet from the walkway which led to the double doors, “after this, you’re all set?”

“Guess so,” she said, slightly breathless with the moment.

He hummed, looking around him. “Y’know, this morning, I was thinking-”

“That’s a bad sign,” Ella interjected.

Jess rolled his eyes. “Age has not helped your stand-up material, Stevens.”

“I disagree,” she said shortly. “Please, continue.”

He sighed heavily, separating their fingers and running a hand over his mouth. “Well, you don’t have a place to live here yet, right?”

“Not yet.”

“I was thinking maybe you’d want to come live with us. Above Truncheon,” he said, spitting out the words as fast as he could.

Ella’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Really?”

Jess nodded shyly. “My bed’s big enough. And I don’t have that much stuff; there’s room for you. Chris already loves you. I’m sure Matthew wouldn’t mind either. And your sketches are down in the main room anyway. We could put a price on them and...only if you want to. I know it’s a lot to process, so you don’t need to answer right now or anything.”

Her eyes were calculating as she gathered her thoughts. “Just so I’m clear...you want us to get back together. And you want us to live together in your apartment. With Matthew and Chris. Above Truncheon.”

“Yes,” Jess confirmed, tone growing more confident, though his heart was beating painfully against his ribs.

“Are you sure? I mean...we haven’t seen each other in two years. Maybe time has corrupted me,” she said, voice serious despite her weak joke.

Again, he sighed. “I think we were both pretty corrupted to begin with-”

“How Kurt Cobain of you.”

“And I don’t care how long it’s been. We’ve got a lot to make up for. I feel like I’ve been waiting for you forever. And I’m tired of waiting. I’m ready to try again. Really try, this time. But only if you are. Only if you want this too,” he said.

A familiar nausea rose in his throat, and his hands began to shake. The only other time he’d taken such a leap of faith, it hadn’t gone over well. But everything was different. He was settled, with a steady income. She had graduated, and was finally embracing her dreams. His foolish hope persisted, even still. When he’d woken up next to her again, in a bed which he’d bought himself, and eaten breakfast with her, read morning papers with her, he could think of nothing he wanted more. Communication, he reminded himself. Open and honest communication. Even if he still wanted to roll his eyes at just the thought of Luke’s self-help nonsense.

“And,” he continued, when she hadn’t said a word, was only turning thoughts over in her head silently, “you don’t have to say anything now. I...dammit. I should’ve done this after your interview. I just got caught up after yesterday and this morning. I wasn’t sure if I’d see you later and...I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m sorry. Really, you don’t have to say anything-”

“Jess,” she interrupted, finally locking eyes with him again. “Just shut up for a second.”

“Okay.”

After chewing on her thumb nail for a moment, she blew a breath out through her nose with finality. “Can I get cactuses again? There was no place for them at Lane’s. And, Jesus, you guys have got to organize your living room. I mean, the kitchen and your bedroom are okay. But I have no idea how you guys even find anything. The piles of paperwork on the table are, like, seven feet high.”

A slow grin formed on Jess’s face, and the worry began to clear from his brown eyes. “You can do whatever you want, Stevens.”

“Truer words never spoken,” she agreed earnestly. “You better make room for my fucking records then, too. They’ve been living in my car for way too long.”

Jess chuckled, nodding slightly. His eyes lingered on her lips. “I was thinking about kissing you, just now. Is that okay?”

Ella thought her heart would melt at his words. “Go for it, Mariano.”

Jess brought his hands to her waist and kissed her. For the first time in years. Ella smiled into it, pressed against him. It tasted sugary-sweet, from the donuts they’d eaten. Her fingers tangled into his hair, longer and less greasy than she remembered. But it felt much the same. A tingly joy began in her stomach and then spread throughout her body, new and old and welcome and perfect.

. . .

Of all the people not to be at Lane’s wedding, Ella did not expect Luke to miss it. For some reason, he was still out of town for April’s field trip. Not that it was any of her business, but she couldn’t help be slightly irritated at his absence. However, she wasn’t entirely alone. Though Lane and the other people in her life weren’t exactly sold on him, Ella had taken a shot in the dark and invited Jess. At Mrs. Kim’s millionth reference to her loneliness, her lack of a date, Ella had finally let it slip to Lane. She had seen Jess again. They were talking on the phone every single night. She was set to move in with him in a week. And, soon, she was calling him up. Hearing the surprised tone of his voice, his apprehension to come back to town. But, honestly, he’d caved a little quicker than she thought he would. All it had taken was her offering to try Hemingway again. And Kerouac. She knew she was going to absolutely loathe the latter, but it would be worth it.

As the ceremony ended, most of Lane’s family, including her mother, left the gathering in town square. None of them were eager to party with the townies. Kirk revealed the white food truck parked on the street opposite the gazebo to actually be the bar. He was exploring business ownership, and Yummy Bartenders was his most recent endeavor. Lorelai, without Luke and somehow having ended up with Rory’s father, Christopher, as her date, flocked straight to the alcohol. It made Ella snort a laugh, but inside, it made her heart ache. Luke and Lorelai had taken so long to get together. And now, things were headed nowhere good. A hot, dry sunlight shone down on them in yellow tones, and soon the sky would darken. Everyone’s mood had changed as soon as they left the church. Lorelai ripped off the bottom half of Lane’s dress, revealing her calves joyfully. Standing beside Ella, Rory let out a hoot of excitement and rushed over to the new bride. Snickering, Ella took the long pin from her low bun and let her blonde waves loose down her back.

Jess tucked her hair behind her ear gently as they both took a moment to breathe. The church had been stuffy and hot, filled to the brim with people. The air was no cooler, but at least there was a wide open space to mingle in. Grabbing his hand, Ella ventured a glance at Jess. As soon as his rusty Ambassador had rolled into town three hours earlier, she could sense how anxious he was. Maybe just being in Stars Hollow made him uncomfortable, or maybe it gave him too many flashbacks to his own mother’s wedding.

“You okay? I have the key to the diner, if you wanna go. I called Luke earlier and he said we could stay in the apartment. I’ll be up there later,” she said, tone apologetic.

Jess shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Just don’t know where we should sit.”

“Next to Miss Patty?” she asked. The dance teacher had noticed her across the way, and Ella waved back at her.

“She’ll eat me alive,” Jess sighed. “What about with Rory and Lorelai?”

Narrowing her eyes, Ella considered it. Then, she bit the inside of her cheek for a moment. “I don’t know. I haven’t been so close with them recently. And I don’t know if I wanna get in the middle of the happy family back together.”

“Fair enough,” Jess agreed. “Alright. Miss Patty and Babette, then. But I’m counting on your protection.”

Her grin grew wicked. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m your knight in shining polyester.”

. . .

Hep Alien was on fire, despite the wasted state of every single band member. Balmy breezes blew and Ella’s flushed skin was finally beginning to cool down. The night was dark and the sky clear. Every so often, her eyes flicked to Rory, Lorelai, and Christopher’s table. Sookie and Jackson had been sitting with them, but they had long since left. Without Ella to babysit the kids, they’d had to hire a new girl. Jackson could barely handle the nerves at a random high-schooler watching his babies. Ella twirled her rings nervously on her fingers, while Patty, Babette, and Maury chain-smoked across the centerpiece floral arrangement. Jess, at her side, had his arm around her shoulder. He stroked her upper arm absently.

He raised an eyebrow and followed her gaze to Rory. “What’s with you?”

“Hm?” she asked, blinking the reverie from her eyes. Facing him again, Ella was struck by how much more mature he looked. Back in Stars Hollow, but as a man with a publishing business and a decently neat bedroom of his own. Despite the uneasiness brewing in her stomach, she also felt pride appear. It didn’t shock her where he ended up. But it still made her feel such joy to see him successful and content.

Jess nodded in the direction of the Gilmores, three tables over. “Did something happen between you guys? Is it why you weren’t a bridesmaid?”

Ella shook her head. “No. I wasn’t a bridesmaid because Mrs. Kim hates me with the fire of a thousand suns. I mean, my outfit alone is probably enough for her to condemn me.”

Giving Ella a once-over, Jess smirked wider. Her camisole dress was black, with small pink flowers embroidered on it. It had thin spaghetti straps and fell above her knees. Of course, there were no heels on her shoes, black leather ballet flats. The ensemble was so very Ella, along with her dark eye makeup. And, it was true, Mrs. Kim was not a fan of anything which could be described as ‘so very Ella.’

“It does give off a certain Beetlejuice vibe,” Jess agreed.

“The best compliment you’ve ever given me,” she said lightly, then turned back to the crowd of wedding-goers. “But...I don’t know. Rory slept with Dean when he was married and then took a year off from Yale and stole a boat.”

“What?” Jess chirped, almost choking on the watery soda he sipped. He’d debated going to the bar, but decided against it. Best not to get drunk in the town where everyone hated you. Especially when your long lost girlfriend didn’t drink anyway.

A certain sadness came to Ella’s smile, shrinking slightly. She tugged at her earring. “Yeah. And she was fighting with Lorelai forever. They weren’t talking. I’m also pretty sure the guy Rory’s dating now is some trust fund kid from Yale with a porsche.”

“Ugh,” Jess grimaced, unable to hold back his distaste.

“We’re just...different. We grew up. Went in different directions. I mean...Lane and Rory are still best friends. I was friendly with her at a bachelorette party last night. But it’s weird now. I can’t...I don’t really know her anymore, I guess.”

Jess nodded.

She shrugged again, deflective. “I still love Lorelai. But I haven’t seen her much lately, since Luke didn’t want her to meet April, which is a whole different beast. Things...changed. But, hey, maybe I changed too.”

“You did,” Jess said. “But not in a bad way.”

She scoffed, gently plucking at the collar of his white button-up. He wore with it black pants, completing their gothic look when they stood together. Ella knew, though, that both of their outfits came cheap and basic. That’s why they had them. Of course, he still refused to wear a tie of any kind. “You too. Still a jackass, though.”

“Glad you see me in such a positive light.”

“But, in an arguing-with-me-about-Kerouac kind of way. Not in a gnome-stealing, running-off-to-California kind of way,” she explained, feeling goosebumps rise on her pale skin where his fingertips still brushed against her arm.

As much as Jess lived in his words, touch had always been such a major form of communication with him. Older and able to judge it more easily, Ella could see it. It calmed him down, made him feel safe. She could understand that. It was what happened when someone grew up in a place where they were often touched in anger.

“Well, the Kerouac defense will never change. He’s a genius,” Jess insisted mockingly.

Ella rolled her eyes, leaning back against him. “You’re impossible.”

“Right back at ya.”

The band began one of their familiar White Stripes covers. Ella couldn’t count how many times she’d heard it over the years, during nightly practice. It was so odd to see Lane in a wedding dress, all grown up. A nostalgic smile ghosted over her lips and she sighed. Neither she nor Jess said a word for a long while, comfortable in each other’s grasp. June crickets and cicadas sung, mixing with the sound of Zach’s vocals. Patty and Babette laughed heartily at something across the table. The air smelled of cigarettes and beer and summer-cut grass. Soon, the song faded away and Zach played the opening chords to something different, something Ella hadn’t heard him play in a long time. “Sweet Thing” by Van Morrison, a cover they’d attempted after Ella moved in, when she’d let Lane hear one of her Jeff Buckley live albums, on which he did his own cover of the song. She broke into a full grin. It was the perfect song for a late-night wedding reception, romantic and long and calm.

Jess seemed to notice her brightening up at the tune, as he sat up and faced her with a mysterious smile. “You wanna dance?”

She snorted a disbelieving chuckle. “Excuse me?”

“Do you wanna dance? I know you like this song.”

Ella raised her eyebrows. “Liking the song is one thing. Subjecting everyone to the horrifying visual of my dance moves is another.”

He rolled his eyes, standing up and extending a hand to her. “So dramatic. It’s a slow song. And we didn’t dance at Liz and TJ’s wedding. Making up for lost time.”

“Fine,” she sighed, taking his hand, and letting him pull her up. “But it’s your funeral.”

“I like to live dangerously,” Jess said, leading her to the dance floor.

“Whatever, James Dean.”

Before they were out of range, Miss Patty blew a stream of bluish smoke in their direction and gave a bark of haughty laughter. “I’d watch out for her, young man. Have you heard about the domino incident of 1992? Ella made the Gazette. Her talents run more towards the musical.”

His smirk grew. “I’ve been warned.”

They passed Lorelai on the way, lingering by the bar and sipping her Manhattan. Tumbler filled with cherries, sugar on the rim. The sight almost made Ella want to chuckle, almost grimace. The drink looked as sweet as cotton candy, but she would expect nothing less of a Gilmore woman. More than half of the sleepovers she’d had with Rory involved a midnight raid of the kitchen. S’mores pop tarts were one of Ella’s personal favorites. Lorelai reached out an arm to stop them, wavering drunkenly on her feet.

“Ugh, I can’t believe Sid Vicious is back,” she slurred to Ella, pointing at Jess angrily.

With Lorelai so close to her face, Ella could smell the tequila on her breath. “I told you before. He’s got more of a Richard Hell vibe, in my opinion.”

Jess blushed, but said nothing. He only tightened his grip on Ella’s hand.

“Your uncle is out of town,” Lorelai continued, facing Jess.

“That he is,” Jess said shortly. Time had passed, but it was clear Lorelai still wasn’t quite over her contempt for him. Though, he could definitely recognize what an asshole he’d been as a teenager.

Lorelai laughed bitterly. “He’s with his daughter. Who Ella’s met and you’ve met and Rory’s met. And I haven’t met!”

Searching her head for a careful response, Ella was utterly relieved when Rory came up from behind her mother.

“Hey, mom, let’s get some coffee for you, why don’t we?” Rory asked, voice bouncy and nervous.

“You got her?” Ella raised her eyebrows at Rory as she took her mother by the shoulders and began steering her away.

“Oh, I guess we’re going over here now,” Lorelai muttered in drunken surprise.

“Yeah, go have fun,” Rory answered with a little wink, disappearing into the crowd with her mother, headed for the table where her father and some steaming coffee sat.

Blowing out a long breath, Jess shook his head. “I take it that she and Luke aren’t seeing eye to eye.”

“Understatement of the year,” Ella scoffed. “No matter where she and Luke are though, I think you’ll always be a portrait of Sid Vicious to her.”

“Not even with the haircut?” he asked as they made it to the edge of the wooden dance floor.

“Not even with the haircut,” she replied with a smug smirk.

With a heavy breath, Ella placed her hands on the back of Jess’s neck as he brought his hands to her waist. She felt glad Hep Alien’s version of the song was nearly ten minutes long; it would have nearly been over after Patty’s warning and Lorelai’s ramblings if not.

“Don’t worry, Elle. Just follow my lead,” Jess said quietly, beginning to sway side to side, taking small steps.

“Shut up, I’m focusing,” she hissed, watching her feet.

He chuckled slightly. “Relax. Just look at me.”

Sighing again, Ella managed to drag her gaze away from her shoes and up to Jess’s big brown eyes.

“Hi,” he whispered, smiling fondly.

“Hi,” she replied, feeling the anxiety in her stomach lessen slightly. “Deja-vu, huh?”

“Maybe a little,” he said, shrugging. “But I’d say things are looking a little sunnier now.”

“Still finding those silver linings.” Ella gave him an affectionate peck on the lips.

Why was she nervous?, she asked herself. She didn’t need to be. Maybe it was the future creeping up on her, or her exit from the only place she had ever lived only a week away. But, as she looked at Jess, she felt her heartbeat slow. And her lips even turned up a touch at the corners. Where she was going, he’d be.

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chestnutroan · 4 years

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i love your coloring style so much do you have any advice for digital painting?

thank you sm!!!! i think first and foremost my best tip is to like, streamline everything. set shortcuts for everything you regularly use i.e my paint brush is set to W, increase/decrease brush size set to a and z respectively, zoom to x etc. put your shortcuts to where it feels natural and grouped together enough theyre easy to reach and it could save you a lot of frustration. another good thing imo is to have the color box floating down where its a little easier to pick from

this might be a personal preference but also i find it easier to draw and way less straining on my posture if i set the tablet at an angle, either a slight on if its a regular drawing tablet or nearly parallel to the desk if its a display one

when it comes to drawing! try and sketch in color, especially if you intend to ink over in black. and use references, if not for everything at least as a jumping off point to like, anchor your thoughts on what you want to paint if that makes sense. try and draw in sweeping strokes where necessary, when i first started out i lined like on the left, even though in traditional i could already do it like on the right

if its your style ofc by all means keep it up, but drawing like the right example can help with clarity. my fav tip for when youre sketching and nothing seems to turn out right is to block and then line all on the same layer and to keep adjusting and adjusting until you find something that works, like how the initial “sketch” on the left (block of color plus a couple lines) became the drawing on the right

when it comes to color style im a huuuuuuuuuuuuggggggeeeeee sucker for staying in the saturated zone...it just rules. im not sure if i could really like. put to words how i color (not that its special, im just stupid) escept that i generally like to keep most colors similar, with subtle difference in hue as well as in uhhh tone (?) and saturation. like how if youre painting something orange, lighter colors help to be closer to yellow on the spectrum and darker colors red. analogous colors. these are words to do with color. and then use an accent color if youre feeling sexy. also not color but try out textured brushes!!!! they do like a million percent of the work of making my art look good dfkjghsdfhgf

those are just some sort of subjective tips i can think of right now, i hope it helps!!!!! 🥺🥺😊 if you have an specific questions as well i could try to help you!

#art advice #art tips #Anonymous

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anystalker707 · 4 years

Text

Paintings and cuddles

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader Genre: Fluff/comfort Summary: Gerard and reader barely have time to spend together, but that doesn’t really prevent them from having dates in the middle of the night Word count: 1 876

Difficult. That's how it has been. I mean, not like most of the people expect to have an easy relationship with someone who they're barely able to see. While a great part of my work can be done either from my place or quickly, Gerard is so busy that we're rarely see each other. Of course we're always exchanging messages and occasionally meeting each other, but it's barely nothing considering sending messages are useless when it comes to wanting to kiss the other and when we see each other personally, it's not for long even if the times are relatively many. All of that induces us to being extremely needy when meeting up, not to mention the cheesy texts.

Lately, I'm starting to believe Gerard somehow affects on my creativity. A breathy chuckle leaves my lips as I gaze at the half done sketch over the white sheet; I just can't find how to complete it without making it worse or coming to nothing at all and whenever I try to think about a solution, my need of Gerard is everything ends up filling my mind.

It doesn't take me much to notice I've used all my daily creativity quota by now, so I let go of all my art materials, stretching myself with a groan before standing up. My eyes rest once again over the wide sheet of paper, expecting a random idea to show up in my mind - unfortunately, it never happens and I'm left frustrated as going to bed, rather early than usual. Maybe I'll have some kind of inspirational dream? Sure as hell I hope.

Well, perhaps there would have been any chances of getting an inspo dream if I was able to get some sleep in first place, but all I have been doing on my bed is rolling around for the past hours in long pauses between naps and Gerard thoughts. Immediately recognizing it's my escape from another long hour of staring at the darkness of my room, my hand flies to my phone at the moment it vibrates at the arrival of a new notification. Seeing it's a message from Gerard makes my heart flutter.

Gee❤⛓🌹🖤: Miss u

Me: Miss u too Can I come over?

Gee❤⛓🌹🖤: I was gonna complain it's almost midnight, but I want you too much

Chuckling to myself, I place the phone aside before getting up to my feet; I just bother changing my clothes - into others that are also comfortable, but don't look like they were incessantly used for a certain period of time five years ago - then grab my things to leave. It's not like his place is too far from mine, so a small jog towards there will do. As soon as I reach his place, the cold night air is pleasantly substituted by Gerard's warmth when he throws his arms around me.

"I'm considering kidnapping you and not letting you go for a whole week." I mutter through a chuckle, tightening my arms around him as much as I can, causing him to do the same.

"Sadly, my job would be compromised and I unfortunately need to work if I want to eat something or maintain everything I need." He replies in the same joking tone, placing kisses on my cheek right after. Finally we pull away, but it's just for time enough for me to lean in and lock our lips in a kiss that mixes neediness and relief. We pull away with a last peck placed over my lips before he looks at me with a bright smile, taking my hand in his. "C'mon, it's kinda cold out here." He mutters as pulling me with him, closing the door once we're inside.

"I'm not bothering you, right?" I ask him with a small smile as letting my shoes by the door. "I know I should've asked before and all-"

He rolls his eyes, shaking his head in certain disbelief - I know the exact thought that crosses his mind, don't you know me enough? "I would've let you know." Just one side of his mouth moves when he speaks - the exact way like it does whenever he's being sassy, sarcastic or impatient - while a hand rests over his hip.

"Yeah, but that I want you too much was a reason to get suspicious." Humming, I narrow my eyes at him in a playful manner, watching his defeated face. Muttering for me to come along once more, he takes my hand in his once again and just lets go of it when we're on the couch, so we're able to cuddle. "Being away from you for too long gives me art block." I start, suddenly remembering about today's earlier events while adjusting myself next to him, under the blankets. "I sat for six hours in front of a white sheet and all I could do was nothing."

"I can't say it's easy without you either." Gerard breathes a chuckle mixed with a whine, glancing at me before returning his attention to the TV, setting something for us to watch. "If I didn't see you today, I'd probably go crazy." He furrows his eyebrows while smiling lightly; I slowly shake my head at him, leaning my head against his shoulder. "I'm not joking!" A grin cracks his lips as he turns to look at me, letting the remote control on the other side of the couch. "I wasn't even able to sleep properly!"

"I know you're serious!" I laugh at his reaction. "The same happened to me. Good thing you decided to text me." Because I definitely wouldn't do it, afraid I would disturb him or something.

"Indeed." His sweet tone makes me internally melt, even more when he places his lips over mine once again. Ugh, he better kiss me a lot to make it up for the time he's away. He just pulls away enough to disconnect our lips, still gazing at me with a need that equals itself to mine. "A question." Gerard says rather hesitantly, now with his hazel eyes flickering over my face, hidden twice due to a couple of quick blinks; he continues after I hum questioningly. "Can I... paint you?" A red color makes itself present over his cheeks, intensifying once I smile.

"Can I?" I ask in return, excited about the idea. Honestly, it feels like all the creativity just flows back in my head after his request. In response, I earn from him a shy yes, to what I answer with "Then of course you can."

Seeming happier, Gerard pecks my lips once again before standing up and disappearing in the hall, leaving me watching the TV until he's back with his art supplies - all of them neatly organized inside a paint stained briefcase. He leaves again, to the kitchen this time, but returns quickly with a glass of water. There's a big grin over his face as he sits down next to me with the palette in hands. No words are exchanged to decide where he'll start painting - we simply look at each other and his eyes move briefly to my arm then meet mine with a raise of eyebrows, earning from me a light shrug in response as I move closer, extending my arm towards him.

"So," Gerard starts, dipping the paintbrush in the black paint; it touches my skin and makes me shiver at the cold pleasant sensation. "how was your week?" With the brush gaining a rhythm of taps against my skin, I quickly get used to it.

"Oh," I breathe out, taking a moment to think while half of my attention is still taken by the TV. "it was mostly boring, but had some nice moments." And I start a ramble about how my week was full of suffering for inspiration, boring talks with costumers and a nice art exposition I got the opportunity of going to, mentioning how he'd love it. He makes some comments now and then and it may sound stupid, but it makes me soft how he cares. By the time I finish talking, his job on my arm is done and dry. "That's beautiful!" I widen my eyes at the roses painted on my forearm, carefully moving my arm so I'm able to take a good look at it.

"I need to do my best, anyways, my canvas is you." His hazel eyes gaze at me from under his eyelashes as he cleans the paintbrush, shyly smiling. I scoff at it, silently asking for the supplies this time. He gives them to me and adjust his position on the couch so his arm can comfortably rest over my lap for me to paint it.

"What about you, hm?" I mix some of the paints on the palette until reaching the tone I've got in mind. "You were over to New York this week, right?" He's midway through his answer when the paintbrush touches his skin, making him flinch lightly and move away. That results in me chuckling while he mutters embarrassed apologies.

His week sounds far more interesting than mine and I don't hesitate in showing that, groaning about how boring my life is when he's done. "Of course not." He answers with a chuckle, pressing a kiss to my lips before finally admiring my work. I tried to do something similar to his drawings, copying all the goth punk style. Gerard playfully pulls on a judging face as scanning my painting, raising and lowering his arm to have different angles of it. "I guess it's good." His dramatic tone makes me roll my eyes, containing a grin that ends up cracking my lips when he admits finding it perfect and places a kiss on my cheek.

While the paint on Gerard's arm dries, we get immersed in another talk and, noticing my sleepy state, Gerard pulls me to lay with my head on his lap. Having him playing with my hair gets me to the edge of sleepiness and I'm able to hear him chuckling softly while caressing my cheek with his thumb. "Hey," He asks quietly, continuing once I hum in response. "can I paint your back?"

"Sounds awesome." I grin, thinking about how wonderful it may feel. As soon as I've got my top bare, I lay over his lap, facing down, with my head over a pillow and in a way my stomach is right over his lap so he can easily reach my whole back and I'm comfortable. Wow, fuck, having my back painted almost feels better than having a massage on it. He chuckles lightly at the pleased hum I release, making me smile.

It's simply amazing how he paints precisely, with a light hand and is extremely careful at what feels like the details. Even if the brush tickles lightly, it just happens when there isn't much paint on it, but feels extremely pleasant when he passes the brush over the skin after dipping it in paint once more. I wouldn't complain about having more nights like this. Soon, the moment's comfort pulls me at once to fall asleep.

#my chemical romance #mcr #mcr imagine #mcr x reader #gerard way #gerard x reader #x reader #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #emo #emocore #oneshot #writer #my post

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