#but it’s okay because my ao3 works is kind of just like my own library
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(hi just talking to myself here don’t mind me <3)
list of van der stoffels fics i want to write/have inspo for:
(yes. van der stoffels. i’m aware i’m the only one probably still hyperfixated on them but i need to create storage for all my little thoughts on them)
“before sunset” au (because them meeting by chance and spending the night together for escapism is so them??? need i say more??)
a possible lucas season (will work this one out a lot but i would like to write his season- it would either be a stand alone or a possible parallel to the jens season fic?? that sounds fun)
(POTENTIALLY) a fantasy au with the whole past lives concept + lucas being anti monarchy and jens is the prince (basically an extension of a one shot)
one in which they meet years later and it starts off at some cafe with very ambiguous emotions and conversations (i only have the title set up for this and it’s good enough to make me want to write more)
maybe a university/roommates sort of vibes one (this would probably be a bit more light hearted than the rest but still fun)
a couple more one shots probably (if i have the time and inspo)
(i am still very much here for my beloved lucas and jens and at this point it’s a sort of love that knows no end- and neither do the fics apparently)
#vds#van der stoffels#jens stoffels#lucas van der heijden#wtfock#skam nl#vds fic#yeah i’m still here#yes i’m still obsessed#i’m just going to take all of this slowly#the thing is a lot of these stories are really just for myself#i love an audience and i love reactions but i understand it’s a niche that has been grown out#but it’s okay because my ao3 works is kind of just like my own library#and i love them#and i feel like i could never write fics on any other characters#idk why i’m like this#anyway#<3
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Have a snippet from that one holy warrior au. thanks to @ent-is-indecisive for helping me come up with a title for this fic. i'll be tagging it as stasis in darkness for easy tracking. this is part of a rough draft so it probably will be modified by the time i finish the damn thing and make it ao3 ready. but my brain's kind of stuck and needs a kickstart to get it going again, so i thought i'd share it and hopefully get motivated again
It happened again.
–
The fourth night:
“Isn't it true the King of Darkness–”
“Lord of Night.”
“Yeah, him. He controls all the monsters in the dark and sets them on innocent people for fun. Don’t see why you’d want to throw your lot in with a god like that.”
“Because he doesn’t. He takes care of nighttime animals. Bats, coyotes, owls…”
“The scary ones, you mean.”
“No! Besides, he takes care of cats, too. Cats aren’t scary. They’re, you know, cute.”
“Hmm. If you say so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You got something against cats?”
“Of course not!" The man said, sounding mildly offended. Steve opened his mouth to go on about the Lord of Night's chosen creatures but the man interrupted with, "Well, look at the time! Later, gator.”
The man ran off with a grin not sparing him a second glance. Steve stared after him, baffled.
“What the fuck’s a gator?”
–
The fifth night:
“Don't you know your King, excuse me, Lord of Darkness–”
“Night. Lord of Night.”
“Same thing. He helps criminals evade justice. Pretty sure that one’s true.” The man lounged lazily on a nearby boulder as he asked. Kind of like a cat, Steve noticed with a trace of amusement that was easily smothered by annoyance at the man's…everything else.
“He helps people who travel by night. Most of the time they’re just night workers or people with nowhere to go. The ones that are shunned for being different or the ones too poor to afford safe shelter.”
“Huh. Alright, explain the horse thief thing, then, if he’s so good and noble.”
“...fine, he’s got a soft spot for horse thieves but thievery isn’t that bad of a crime in the grand scheme of things.”
“Ha! Sure,” the man conceded. “But! You can’t deny that this Lord of Night cursed people with terrible nightmares that left them sleepless and suffering for days. To the brink of lunacy, some say.”
The man said it with triumph, as if with this he’d finally break Steve’s faith. Steve shrugged.
“All gods get angry.”
“And that’s okay? You’re fine with him inflicting mind torture on some poor mortal just because he threw a tantrum?”
“First off, he wouldn’t just throw a tantrum," Steve said with exasperation. He might end up throwing a tantrum if this guy persisted. "I don’t think he’s the kind to get angry easily. And second, the people he cursed before always deserved it. Besides, he helps with good dreams, too. It’s not all bad.”
“Uh-huh, I totally believe you," the man said, heavy with mockery.
“Look man, if you’re so against the Lord of Night, why are you still here? Why do you keep coming back and bothering me?”
“...curiosity?”
“Well, be curious quietly. I need to pray.”
“...he probably doesn’t even have prayers.”
“I said shut up, man. I need to concentrate.”
The man leaves without any more fuss.
–
The sixth night:
“You have a lot of faith in a god who lost his own name. Does he even have any holy texts left?”
“Dustin could only find one, but that was enough.”
“Really? Other gods have entire libraries of stories and whole tomes of holy words. They have temples and monasteries all across the land of mortals.” The man motioned derisively at the crumbling statue. "This thing here is barely a shrine!"
“Hey, I'm working on that, alright? It's going to look great when I'm done with it," Steve protested. "And so what if he doesn't have more? Robin says quantity’s got nothing to do with quality.”
“Yeah, but the other gods are remembered for a reason. That counts for something,” the man's voice lost some of that smug edge. He fiddled with the hem of his fraying shirt as he spoke.
Steve refused to rise to the bait. He responded calmly, but firmly.
“I don’t need libraries to know I want to carry his symbol. From what Robin and Dustin found, he represents all the things my friends taught me were important.” Steve pauses. "I’m not a good reader anyway so less books are better for me.”
"Oh, so that's why you picked him! Very convenient," The man sounded very amused. Steve ignored him until he heard the man wander away for the night. He sighed in relief.
With a surge of restless energy leftover from being very good and calm about that nuisance of a man, Steve approached the statue elevated on its crumbling plinth. He reached up towards its open hand held at its side, barely within reach, and brushed his fingers along the worn knuckles.
"That guy's wrong about you, I know he is,” Steve whispered, fervently. “You deserve a temple. A hundred of them, all for your own."
Steve thought, for a moment, he heard a sharp intake of breath, but when he looked there was no one but him around.
“I’ll make sure you get a great temple."
He waited, strained his ears for even a single word from his god. He tried not to be disappointed when he heard nothing. Again.
–
ps: i do not do those reader tag list things. if you’d like to keep up with my stuff, follow my writing tag: trensu tells stories
#trensu tells stories#stasis in darkness#stranger things#steddie#thanks again to ent for helping find a title for this#and for listening to my directionless ramblings about it
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Hi hi! I have a question and I apologise if it's impertinent but I really didn't have anyone else to ask. I'm new to ao3 and I'm still figuring out how it works. The problem is this- when I look up a character x reader, I'll see the tag included in many works that have oneshots but since it's a side character, more often than not the oneshot for the character hasn't been written and the tag has been there for months. Is it okay to do that or is it tagging something incorrectly? They say they'll write one eventually but they never do, y'know? To me it kind of feels like they're just trying to reach a wider audience but because of this I can't even filter tags and I have to manually search through the book to check if the character is included, especially when the chapters are titled only by numbers :')
Is it okay to tag things in advance like that?
--
Oh boy...
Wattpad refugees do tend to use AO3 "wrong", sometimes in ways that break the rules and sometimes just in ways I find annoying and against typical AO3 culture.
I'm assuming you are coming from Wattpad based on you calling a work or a fic a "book", which is a very, very Wattpad thing to do.
I'm assuming they are coming from Wattpad given the bad behavior you're describing and the fact that they're a x reader writer.
--
So, here's the thing, if you start writing a fic and there's any amount of the actual fic, even if it's pretty short and bad or in a weird format or whatever, it's still a valid fanwork. Most of the time, AO3 leaves it to the author to decide how to tag (aside from a very few things like death threats in the tags or failing to use the required archive warnings).
AO3 won't stop someone from tagging a future pairing that hasn't appeared yet.
--
But "books" of "oneshots" are such an obnoxious Wattpad thing. This is a completely stupid use of AO3 from the "Please send me prompts" part that is usually in there to the way that unrelated fics are smashed together.
It's not against the rules, but it's a crappy use of AO3 befitting of n00bs.
Sadly, old hands at AO3 also make shitty works that are unrelated stories mashed together. They're often a whole set of kinktober fics or something where the trope tags and the ship tags are accurate, but you can't tell which ones go with which ones without searching the whole fic.
We regularly complain about that on here.
--
A much better way to use AO3 is to make a series titled "My x Reader Oneshots" or "All of my kinktober fics" where each separate story is its own work with its own tags.
My assumption is that this person is using the inaccurate tag both to get more eyeballs on their existing work and because they probably take prompts for that ship or something. (I'm basing this on the kinds of things people say on their oneshot books on Wattpad. Maybe they don't actually take prompts since you haven't mentioned it.)
Some people just don't care that they're annoying others and messing up the tags, but I think some actually don't realize how AO3 filtering works and have no idea this behavior is a nuisance.
On a lot of sites, both Wattpad and algorithm-driven social media, unless a post/work is very popular, it disappears out of sight. Even an inaccurate tag doesn't do that much.
On AO3, one is getting a full list of everything with the tag, going back however far. It's a library catalogue for which you should use accurate data. But this writer is probably thinking of tags more as advertising and a way to get their name out there so readers can follow them pre-emptively. They mean to write the ship in the future, so it's not really inaccurate... (And, tbh, if it were a single work and the ship just hadn't appeared yet, I would agree with them even though those are frustrating too.)
--
So no, they should not do this.
But it's not actually against the rules.
I would mute the annoying people who do this.
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Fic: Thermodynamics [Barbie/Gloria]
Title: Thermodynamics
Fandom: Barbie (2023)
Characters/Pairing: Barbie/Gloria
Rating: T
Word Count: 9,043
Summary:
Barbie has some serious trouble grasping the finer points of weather and humidity, which leads to her very first encounter with human illness. Gloria takes care of her, and some very confusing feelings accidentally come to the surface.
Written for prompt #3 "Sickfic" of @tropetember
AO3 LINK
Water is extremely complicated.
Barbie honestly doesn't think humans realize just how complicated it truly is. And she's not even just talking about its fluidity and how infuriatingly hard it can be to contain it once it's decided to go everywhere at once (she's working on her accuracy when eyeballing the volume of liquid she can pour into a glass). Oh, no. That's, like, beginner level water-handling. It's the way water affects... everything else that keeps tripping her up.
Sometimes there'll be a day when the heat is so oppressive Barbie feels like she's trying to breathe with plastic lungs. And Gloria will nod sagely and simply say "it's the humidity" right before suggesting she take a quick cool shower like that won't just add even more humidity to the mix. But it works, somehow, until it doesn't because she's out of the shower and her damp hair has gone from keeping her scalp cool to weighing her entire body down until she feels absolutely, indescribably gross.
"Yeah. It's the humidity," Sasha will say when Barbie mentions how she can't even tell where the dampness from the shower ends and her own sweat begins and are they sure she's not melting? It's the humidity but if you add more humidity by hanging a wet towel in front of the fan it helps. Yeah. Okay.
Eventually, by the end of her first Summer in the Real World, Barbie thinks she has somewhat grasped the basics of water when it comes to temperature. Water can cool you down if you drink it or pour it over yourself or blow air through it (the bowl of ice trick Sasha saw on TikTok worked even better than the wet towel one). But it will warm you up if it's naturally in the air (humidity is her least favorite word).
She can work with that.
"If you go out later you may want to wear a jacket," Gloria says over breakfast one late October morning, "it's a bit nippy outside."
Barbie likes the sound of that. Nippy. It sounds fun. Playful, even. She's nowhere near bored of the Real World yet, but she'll admit some things have become so routine by now she barely even notices them anymore, and that makes her a little sad. She misses the feeling of absolutely every experience being brand new and exciting. So, nippy weather, huh? Sounds like a good time to her!
As it turns out, she enjoys nippy. The cooler air feels so different on her skin. She gets goosebumps like when she takes too long drying off after a shower, but they're not exactly the same kind. She doesn't notice when she breathes anymore because she's been doing it for several months now, but she does notice when she breathes in the colder air. She feels it going all the way into her lungs. Through her trachea and into her bronchi and bronchioles and filling up her alveoli like tiny little balloons.
She loves Sasha's Bio textbook.
So, when a couple months later, she hears the words 'cold snap' while watching the weather report, Barbie is nothing short of delighted. Nippy was fun, so she's sure a snap can only be even better, right? A snap. Fun!
"Do you think we'll get any snow?" Sasha circles the coffee table for the third time, open backpack in her hand, like she's expecting whatever she can't find to magically appear if she looks at the exact same spot the correct number of times. "Like, not downtown obviously, but nearby? Hey Barbie, where'd you put my Chem book?"
"Oh, I left it on your desk. Thanks for letting me borrow it! I loved reading the little intro about water's specific heat capacity but I need way more information than that so I think I'll go to the library later." She feels like she's found the path to understanding water and its weird behaviors, and she can't wait to pay a visit to her favorite librarian. Sasha insists she should just Wikipedia stuff, but Barbie likes the face-to-face interaction and the fun of going from book to book like she's on a scavenger hunt.
"Okay, Nerd Barbie."
"Tone," Gloria warns, one finger pointing in Sasha's general direction in a slight sweeping motion that means she's not really in any trouble at all. You can tell a lot from the exact way Gloria points a finger at you, especially when you pay as much attention as Barbie does.
"Sorry," Sasha lies (Barbie can tell when that happens, too), already on her way to her bedroom, "but you gotta admit it is kinda nerdy."
Gloria chooses to ignore that particular comment and focus on the earlier part of the conversation instead. "I don't know about snow. Maybe. We got some nearby last year."
Barbie's been in the Real World for long enough to know even the things they do have back home, like snow, are completely different here. Because they're real. "Gloria? What does snow feel like?"
"It's like—" Gloria stops pouring coffee into her thermos to think for a moment. She can answer easy questions while doing other stuff, Barbie's found, but when it's a hard one, or when she really cares about giving a thoughtful answer, she has to fully focus on her thoughts. Watching it happen makes a very particular warmth start somewhere in the vicinity of where Barbie's heart is and then spread out towards her lungs and down to her lower abdomen where it pools like... like something both warm and fizzy, somehow. Like warm soda pop, but not nearly as disgusting as that sounds. She hasn't found an explanation to that particular phenomenon in any of the human biology books she's read so far.
"It's like a snow cone, but like, without the syrup obviously." Sasha's voice travels through the open door of her bedroom and snaps Barbie back to reality, pulling her focus away from the mysterious Gloria-related effervescence in her belly. "And it's cold. And wet. It doesn't look like it should get your clothes wet, but it totally does."
See? Water. Doing unexpected things once again, even in solid form.
"I'd love to see it. Do you think it'll happen soon?"
"Maybe, yeah! You heard the weather guy." Gloria grabs Barbie's house keys instead of her own car keys, like she does nearly every morning. And like nearly every morning, Barbie notices before Gloria does and picks up the forgotten car keys, jiggling them to bring Gloria's attention to her mistake. "Shoot, thank you, Barbie. Sasha! We're gonna be late!"
"And, you know," Gloria continues, her voice down to a conversational tone once again, "even if it doesn't snow right here, we can plan a weekend getaway some time. Do some sledding, maybe skiing or even snowb—"
"I vote Switzerland," Sasha interrupts, walking past her mother towards the front door, "for the chocolate. And the cheese. Wait, do you have a passport? Can you even get a passport?"
"Right," Gloria says, "let's aim for Big Bear Lake or even Tahoe this year. I don't think we're at the international travel level just yet."
Gloria winks at Barbie like she's in on some kind of joke. Like they've just told someone Barbie's spent most of her life in Australia and that's why she's not fully confident with American money yet, and it's funny because they both know that's not the reason but it's a completely harmless fib. Barbie has no idea why Gloria is winking right now (international travel does sound complicated, and Sasha brought up a valid point about passports, whatever those are) but she smiles anyway, the kind of smile that's so wide she can feel it on her cheeks and in the crinkle of her eyes. She may not know exactly what the joke is, but whatever it is is between her and Gloria, and that's good enough for her.
"See you at lunch time?" Gloria is already halfway through the front door when she asks, like Barbie hasn't had lunch with her every single day since she arrived in the Real World. She even has a favorite taco truck that stops near the Mattel headquarters every other day.
So Barbie just lets her smile answer for her.
Later, Barbie finds out the cold snap is not fun. At all. As it turns out, there is a drastic difference between nippy and cold (Sasha's insistence that it doesn't even get really cold in LA does not help Barbie feel any better about it), and Barbie is firmly against cold as a weather concept, thank you very much.
It's interesting at first. It's like nippy, but more. Sharper against her skin and in her lungs and on the tip of her nose. But soon enough it becomes uncomfortable. Just like the heat in the Summer, it seems to permeate her clothes and then her skin and all its layers until she feels like it's inside her and there's no getting rid of it. Gloria recommends a warm shower, which helps just like the cool ones in the Summer did. Barbie figures she can let her damp hair do what it did back then and become warmer with time, but Gloria already has the blow dryer in her hand when she steps out of the bathroom, and Barbie is more than happy to let her play with her hair for as long as Gloria wants.
On the second day of the cold snap, the weather guy informs there's a low-pressure system bringing in higher humidity, and Barbie breathes a sigh of relief. Humidity makes things hotter. It makes you sweat. If heat plus humidity equals being slowly cooked in your own juices, then cold plus humidity should equal something between pleasant and slightly nippy, right?
See, she's been reading about thermodynamics. It's all about equilibrium, as it turns out.
So you can imagine her surprise (and, frankly, outrage) when she goes out in a light cardigan and finds herself standing in what can only be described as an outdoors fridge. Ridiculous. It's ridiculous and wrong and downright unfair, because the air is cold and the humidity is in there and she's been reading those books that say the heat will go from the hotter substance into the cooler one until they reach thermodynamic equilibrium so why is the moisture not heating up the cold air? Why is the air somehow even colder than yesterday?
Barbie feels her eyes sting with tears and she's not sure if they're from the sheer frustration of feeling like the laws of Physics keep tricking her, or from the cold air hitting her eyeballs. She figures it's a combination of both of those things.
All she wants is to go back into the warmth of their home, but it feels like letting the humidity win, somehow. Like going back inside is admitting defeat. And Barbara Millicent Handler may be many things (she's still figuring out which things she is, as a matter of fact) but she's absolutely not the kind of woman who gets defeated by moisture, of all things.
No way.
So, frown in place and arms tightly wrapped around herself and her puny cardigan, she marches towards the library determined to figure out this humidity nonsense before lunchtime. It can't be this hard. Everyone else seems to get it. There has to be something she's missing.
Her favorite librarian is helpful as always, even offering Barbie a cup of hot cocoa from the coffee machine when she notices the way her teeth chatter as she asks for another book on thermodynamics.
"Is there anything in particular you want to research?" She asks, and is kind enough not to mention the way Barbie's eyes water all over again when her nearly numb fingers wrap around the warm paper cup. "We may have better luck finding exactly what you're looking for if we narrow the field a bit more."
Fifteen minutes later, Barbie's sitting at her usual table with a book about weather that has her feeling so giddy she's no longer thinking about the cold. Well, she's thinking about cold as a concept. Just not about how cold she was just a moment ago. Sasha can insist all she wants: there's no way her beloved Wikipedia would've provided not only the perfect book, but also the perfect hot beverage.
Once she's finished her cocoa, Barbie opens the book and immediately realizes she's found a whole area of knowledge she didn't even know existed. Weather seems simple enough on the surface, but the more she reads, the more she realizes just how much there is to learn about it. By page four she's feeling so full of excitement about all the things she's about to discover that she actually giggles out loud. By page ten, she's wondering why the weather segment is always so short when there's so much to talk about.
"Barbara?" The librarian's soft voice pulls Barbie's attention from a two-page illustrated guide to cloud shapes. She's got to tell Gloria about lenticular clouds. "I hate to interrupt your reading, but you always leave at eleven, so—"
"Oh?" Eleven. Gloria. Lunch. "Oh! Thank you so much, Evelyn."
She rushes out of the library with the reassurance that Evelyn will make sure nobody checks out the book before tomorrow and makes it to the bus stop with six minutes to spare (running helps with the cold, she finds) according to the clock on her phone. And she has only been waiting for a minute when she feels a drop of water on the very cold tip of her nose.
"Oh, no."
It doesn't rain often in Los Angeles, but she's already experienced a couple of rainy days and she can recognize the first sign. Rain is a lot like crying, in that you get one drop first and then a whole bunch of them with no warning at all.
By the time the bus stops in front of her, she feels like she's spent the last five minutes taking a cold shower with her clothes on.
The bus ride to the Mattel headquarters is not very long, but when she gets off at her stop Barbie feels like even her bones are soaked through. Her clothes stick to her skin, cold and heavy and wet, and (thermodynamic equilibrium!) seem to be sapping every last kilojoule of body heat out of her. She feels like there isn't an amount of hot cocoa in the world that could possibly warm her back up.
"Barbie! Oh, honey, didn't you bring— I should've told you to grab an umbrella. Why aren't you wearing your coat?" Gloria is waiting at the bus stop like always, dry under her umbrella and toasty warm inside her fleece-lined rain coat. "Why aren't you wearing your boots!?" Gloria looks at Barbie's soaked tennis shoes like the sight of wet feet is something out of her wildest nightmares.
"I just—" Barbie feels her chin tremble. It's half shivers and half wanting to cry from just how uncomfortable she feels standing in the cold (at least Gloria's pulled her under her umbrella so she's not getting rained on anymore) in soaking wet clothes. And shoes. And socks. "I just thought—" Barbie shakes her head just as the first tear falls, "I just don't get humidity, okay!?"
"Humidit—?" Gloria shakes her head slightly, like she's decided halfway through her question that she's not actually going to focus on that right now. "Oh, look at you," Gloria's fingers feel soft and warm against her skin when she gently brushes strands of wet blond hair away from her forehead, "why didn't you go back inside when you saw it was raining?"
Barbie shrugs and sniffles slightly. Sometimes being a real person is a bit much for her. There are too many things to feel all at once. And she was already close to the point of being overwhelmed by all the terrible feelings from before — cold and uncomfortable and wet and sad and confused and frustrated — but now there are all these new things added to the mix, and she doesn't even have a name for most of them. The feeling of being very close to someone under an umbrella while it rains. Is there a name for that feeling? The feeling when someone's voice is so soothing it feels like you're being wrapped up in the softest blanket in the world. The feeling when being near someone makes all the bad feelings fade into the background until they barely register anymore.
The feeling of someone catching one of your tears with the pad of her thumb and then pressing her warm palm against your cheek. Is there a name for that? Because it spreads from the point of contact between Gloria's hand and her face, filling her up with whatever the feeling is called until there's simply no room for cold anymore and all she can feel is that.
"I didn't want to miss lunch," she finally says, leaning into Gloria's touch and adding another feeling to the mix when Gloria smiles.
And for a handful of heartbeats they just stand there, Gloria's hand on her cheek, thumb brushing softly against her skin, like they're both a bit too busy feeling to do anything else.
"Let's get you home," Gloria finally says. She moves her hand away from Barbie's cheek and holds the umbrella in her direction. "Here, hold this for me for a second." And when Barbie does, Gloria quickly unbuttons her raincoat and slides it off to wrap it around Barbie's shoulders instead. "Better?"
Barbie nods. The fleece lining is warm from being wrapped around Gloria and it smells faintly of her perfume, and "home" is the closest she can get to finding a name for the feeling in her chest.
"Come on," Gloria lets Barbie hold the umbrella and loops one arm through Barbie's so they can walk close together towards the car, "I don't want you to get sick."
—-
Gloria practically shoves her into the hot shower the second they walk through the door. And if her brain felt even just a bit less foggy, Barbie would've had a thought or two about one kind of water being the cure for another kind of water, but she can't focus on that right now. She's never felt worse in all her months as a human woman. She's cold even if her skin gets warmed up by the hot water. She keeps shivering but she can feel herself sweat. She keeps sneezing, and every sneeze makes her head hurt.
"This is the worst day ever." Barbie pouts, sitting on the couch with a flannel blanket wrapped tightly around her body. The words scratch against her throat as they come out in the most annoying way.
"I know," Gloria says, tone sympathetic from the kitchen area, "I'm sorry, honey."
They've been home for a few hours now — Gloria decided Barbie's first brush with sickness was more important than the rest of her work day, and Mattel agreed — and Barbie keeps feeling steadily worse with every passing minute. At first she was just cold and wet. Now she feels like she's been run over by a cold, wet truck.
"Here," Gloria hands her a bowl of hot chicken soup and sits next to her, "it'll make you feel better. I promise."
It doesn't work right away, but it's delicious and it soothes her throat as it goes down so Barbie can't complain at all.
"How are your feet?" Gloria slips one hand under the blanket to feel around for one of Barbie's feet, both of them safely wrapped in the warmest, fluffiest socks she's ever worn. Barbie doesn't think she's ever seen Gloria look as horrified as she did when she saw Barbie's drenched socks before.
"Warm," Barbie offers, even if she's sure Gloria can tell when she lightly squeezes one of them.
"Good. That's good." Gloria lets go of her foot and fixes the blanket, tightly tucking it under Barbie's legs. "That's good," she repeats, softer this time, like she's talking to herself. She doesn't speak again until Barbie's left the nearly empty bowl on the coffee table.
"I'm sorry you're not feeling well." In her time in the Real World, Barbie's learned people often say things like 'I'm sorry' without really meaning them. Just because it's polite. But she can tell Gloria means it in the most literal, true sense of the words. She can see the sorrow in dark brown eyes, in the worry lines on her face, in the way she moves around Barbie, like she used to be made of the most delicate porcelain instead of plastic. "I wish I had a magic cure."
Barbie can tell she means that, too.
What Barbie can't do is understand why the thought of Gloria snapping her fingers and making it all go back to normal doesn't sound nearly as appealing as it probably should. She wouldn't miss the shivers or the sneezing, but she thinks she'd miss the way Gloria's stayed close all afternoon, making sure she's okay.
"You should go to bed. Chicken soup and rest is the best remedy for the sniffles."
Barbie nods. She's not exactly tired, but she doesn't feel like being awake either. Being sick, unsurprisingly, is no fun at all.
"Shouldn't Sasha be home already?" Barbie stands up from the couch, bringing the blanket along like a long, fluffy dress. "It's Wednesday so she doesn't have practice."
Gloria smiles the specific smile she reserves for moments when Barbie remembers details about her or Sasha. She's noticed.
"She's staying over at Mei's to finish a project. She asked for permission in the car this morning." Gloria watches Barbie take the first few steps away from the couch like she's not sure she'll manage without falling over, and breathes a sigh that sounds a lot like relief when Barbie manages to stay upright. "I'm here if you need me, okay?"
Barbie smiles, because she already knows.
—-
"Hey." Gloria's voice is barely above a whisper. Barbie's bedroom is dark except for the warm light sneaking in from the hallway through the halfway open door. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."
Barbie has never had as much trouble figuring out whether she's awake or still fast asleep as she does right now, with Gloria sitting on the edge of her bed and tucking Barbie's hair behind her ear.
"How are you feeling?"
Barbie wants to answer. She wants to say she's not sure, because she isn't even sure this is really real or just a warm, hazy dream. But Gloria's fingertips brush against Barbie's warm skin as she moves her hand from Barbie's ear to her temple, and then Gloria's slightly cooler palm presses against Barbie's forehead, and all she can do is breathe.
"Oh, that's too warm." Gloria sighs, and Barbie feels the soft whoosh of the air leaving Gloria's lungs and hitting her skin as Gloria leans in to press her lips against her forehead.
It's not a kiss. It's just a press. The softest ghost of a touch. And Barbie realizes in that very moment that she's forgotten how to breathe, but her heart seems to have decided to beat twice as fast to make up for it so she figures she'll be fine.
Gloria remains so close when she pulls away that Barbie can't really tell if she's hearing her or just feeling the words against her skin when she speaks again. "Family trick. You can tell if there's a fever easier with your lips than with your hand."
Barbie nods, maybe a little dumbly. She's never had a fever, but she knows the concept of it. And she definitely feels like her body temperature is much higher than just a few seconds ago.
"Can you sit up?" Gloria turns towards the side table while Barbie rearranges herself against the headboard. The light from the hallway is enough for Barbie to make out a water bottle and a glass, and she watches with fascination as Gloria carefully pours some water and then shakes a little packet of something and adds its contents to the glass. "Here. Take this. If the fever hasn't budged by tomorrow we'll call the doctor, okay?"
Barbie nods again. She's never tried drinking water in bed — that seems, frankly, like the sort of advanced fluid dynamics she should not be trusted with just yet — but Gloria seems very sure of this whole process and Barbie doesn't think she can speak right now, let alone argue with Gloria's instructions.
As it turns out, she shouldn't have worried at all. Because Gloria's hands don't leave hers when she hands Barbie the glass. One warm hand remains covering Barbie's, steadying her fingers around the cool glass, and the other rests gently on the back of her head. It feels like a reminder that Gloria will catch her if she falls.
"I'm not gonna lie to you, it doesn't taste good at all, but I don't think this is the time to learn how to swallow pills," Gloria says, and Barbie looks into the glass even if she can't really see what the liquid looks like with such little light. She can hear it fizzling, louder and faster than any soda she's tried so far (and she's tried a few). It smells oddly... synthetic. Like it doesn't belong in the Real World. "It'll make you feel better. I promise."
It tastes even worse than she imagined. It tastes like nothing she's ever tasted in her short human life. It tastes like something not meant to go inside or even near a human body at all. It tastes so bad she lets out a horrified gasp at the end because she's honestly a bit surprised the awful taste didn't kill her.
"That was—" Barbie struggles to form the words around the lingering taste coating her tongue.
"I know." There's the slightest bit of amusement in Gloria's voice, even if she still mostly sounds concerned. "I know, honey, I'm sorry. Here, have some water. Wash off the taste."
Water only really helps a little bit. The aftertaste remains, gross and bitter and metallic— no. Not metallic. Plasticky. She wonders if her face will ever go back to normal again or it will simply remain in a slight grimace forever.
Barbie rests against her pillow once again with a sigh. She's oddly tired but in a nebulous sort of way, not in the same way she's tired after a long day or after a trip to the mall with Sasha.
"I hate being sick," she says, bottom lip jutting out in a slight pout. She hates that it makes everything she's slowly gotten used to about being human feel just off enough to keep her constantly uncomfortable. She hates that her thoughts feel fuzzy (not in a good way) and slow. She hates everything about it.
"That's a very human emotion, if it helps you feel better at all."
Barbie's never been to the desert. She doesn't know what a glass of water may feel like under those circumstances. But she thinks it must feel similar to hearing Gloria's soft voice right now. Like the one thing that feels good when everything else sucks.
"You help me feel better."
It's not the first time she's said something similar to Gloria. Barbie appreciates everything Gloria's done for her since coming to live in the Real World, and she makes sure to be very vocal with that appreciation. But it feels a little different when she says it right now. Like there's something extra weighing down the words.
"Yeah?" Gloria smiles, Barbie thinks, but there's not enough light to be sure. She thinks she hears it in her voice anyway.
Barbie nods and reaches for Gloria's hand. It's warm against her own even if it felt cool against her forehead before, and Barbie briefly wonders whether Gloria's lips would feel different against her hand, too. What they'd feel against her—
"That's good," Gloria says, soft and quiet like a secret, fingers squeezing Barbie's, "I want you to feel good."
And it feels like there's a weight to Gloria's words, too. It feels like the air around them is thick with things they both mean but neither say. And then Gloria leans in and Barbie thinks maybe she's going to check her temperature with her lips again, or maybe she's going to do something else entirely, and maybe Barbie's human body picks up on things her brain can't quite grasp just yet because she feels herself... react. Her skin tingles and her stomach flip-flops and her lips part because her breaths are just a little bit shallower and her heart beats just a little bit faster and she's fairly sure her entire nervous system has been rerouted to her hand and her fingers as they slot in the spaces between Gloria's and whatever Gloria is going to do Barbie just knows she wants it to happen, and then—
Nothing.
Nothing happens.
Gloria sits up straight once again and Barbie can tell what she feels is loss even if she still doesn't know what was going to happen.
"You should go back to sleep," Gloria says, a little breathless, fingers still tangled with Barbie's, "get some rest."
But Gloria doesn't stand up or let go of Barbie's hand, and honestly the thought of that happening — the thought of Gloria leaving her right now — makes something twist uncomfortably in Barbie's chest, so she decides to say something before Gloria can change her mind.
"Can you stay with me?"
Gloria doesn't answer right away. Her thumb rubs gently against Barbie's knuckles, and the air fills up with unsaid things once again, only this time it's uncomfortable and a little oppressive. It reminds Barbie of the humidity on hot summer days.
"I don't—"
"You don't have to." Barbie quickly clarifies, because something about this situation has clearly made Gloria uncomfortable, and that's the last thing Barbie wants. "Of course you don't have to, I'm sorry." But when she lets go and pulls her hand away, Gloria's hand chases it and holds it once again.
"It's not— that."
Is this conversation particularly cryptic and heavy on subtext, or is it normal and Barbie's cold-impaired brain is just a bit too slow to follow it like it normally would?
"I want to stay with you. I just wonder—" Barbie hears a sigh, and it's not an exasperated one or a tired one or even a sad one. It's a different kind of sigh. Barbie doesn't think she's ever heard Gloria let out that kind of sigh before. "Because you don't have all the context for this stuff, right?"
Barbie feels herself nod even if she honestly, truly has no idea what Gloria is even referring to. Maybe that's the lack of context she means.
"So I'm not sure if we're looking at things the same way or if you even— if you know what's happening sometimes. You know?"
Barbie is nearly sure this has something to do with before. With the moment Gloria leaned in and something almost happened but didn't.
"The last thing I want to do is hurt you. And if I cross a line and then you didn't want to or— God, or you didn't even know there was a line, I just—" Gloria shakes her head and squeezes Barbie's fingers for just a second, and Barbie still doesn't know exactly what they're talking about but she knows she wants Gloria to not be upset.
"I trust you."
Barbie's words are soft and quiet but there's nothing unsure or tentative about them and she thinks maybe that's why Gloria seems to snap out of her previous thoughts as quickly as she does.
"What? What do you—?"
"I trust you," she says again, "so I'm not worried."
It's not that simple, she knows. She knows almost nothing in the Real World is ever simple or easy, and especially not things involving feelings and worries and potential hurt. But she thinks maybe knowing Barbie feels like she's in excellent hands, like she has nothing to worry about as long as Gloria is with her, will help. Maybe it can be enough for now.
And it looks like it may be, for a while. Gloria doesn't speak for a few moments, and the silence that settles around them is comfortable and light to the point where Barbie feels herself relax into the pillows as her body grows heavier with sleep. She's tired but she's not as achy anymore, and the room is mostly dark and her hand is warm and safe in Gloria's. It would be so easy to just fall asleep.
"I just—" Gloria's voice is softer than before. So soft, actually, that Barbie doesn't feel like she's expected to make an effort to stay awake. "I don't want to ruin things. I don't want this to change."
Barbie isn't sure Gloria is actually talking to her. She sounds a bit like she's talking to herself, like when she's going through the shopping list in her head to make sure it's all in there before she leaves the house. But Barbie feels like maybe this is a rare moment where she knows something Gloria doesn't. Or, more accurately, she knows something Gloria knows, but isn't thinking about right now.
"But that's life," Barbie says, and even she can tell her words sound a bit muffled by sleep, "it's all change."
Her eyelids are so heavy. The room is mostly dark anyway, so she can't see Gloria but she hears a huff of something that sounds almost like laughter, but not quite.
"You were right, you know," Gloria whispers, like it's a secret, "it is terrifying."
It could be the disgusting powder in the water from before muddling her thoughts. It could be the fever, or the cold, or really just being so close to asleep that her brain isn't working right. But Barbie feels like it's been years and decades and centuries since she was sitting on that patch of plastic grass, fighting against the notion of change and imperfection and the unknown.
She was right, like Gloria says, in some ways. The cold is awful. She could do without humidity as a concept. Being sick? She would not recommend it. Pockets weren't really a thing in Barbieland but they're a basic necessity in the Real World and there seems to be a global plot to not put any in clothes marketed towards women. And you do not want to know what happens to milk when you forget it on the counter overnight in the Summer.
But now she knows what it feels like to drink a glass of water when you wake up parched in the middle of the night. She knows what it feels like to bite into a blueberry muffin and get that perfect spot of soft, warm, blueberry-infused cake. She knows the feeling of freshly washed sheets against her skin after a long day. She knows the smell of Gloria's hair when it's late at night and they stay up too late watching old films Barbie's never even heard of but Gloria insists they are a 'must watch' but then she falls asleep halfway through and Barbie pays more attention to the weight of Gloria's head on her shoulder than whatever cinematic masterpiece is playing in front of her.
"Yeah," she finally agrees, because she'd be lying if she said she's not scared at all about all the bad feelings she's sure she'll inevitably discover in her years as a human woman, "but it's worth it."
She thinks she sees Gloria nod right before she finally gives in and closes her eyes. A little later, she thinks she feels Gloria's lips against her temple once again, but she's nearly sure it was the start of a dream.
—-
Barbie's cold lasts less than twenty-four hours.
She's fine the next morning. A little groggy from sleeping twelve hours straight, but all her body parts feel fine and free from aches, there isn't a shiver in sight, and if Gloria hadn't made her promise she'd stay in the house just to make sure she's fully recovered, she would have happily taken the bus and joined her for lunch.
It's one of the most boring days she remembers, but she's fine.
She's fine the day after that, too, when she returns to the library and to her Weather Encyclopedia. She's fine when the cold snap officially ends and the weather goes back to a very boring yet pleasant "mild". She's fine! She's fine.
It's just—
Sometimes she thinks about those few hours between getting home soaking wet and miserable after her mishap in the rain and feeling (or imagining?) Gloria's lips against her temple. And the memories are just hazy enough that she wouldn't be able to say what exactly she and Gloria said, or what she did beyond sleeping and drinking the most vile — yet effective — medicine in the world, but the feelings.
The feelings are so clear in her mind she feels like her brain is taunting her by interrupting her normal thoughts with flashes of Gloria's hand around hers and Gloria's lips against her skin and a moment when Gloria leaned in and then nothing happened. And that moment haunts her in a way that has her unable to fully focus on things like dew point and wet bulb temperature and tsunamis. Her brain keeps circling back to it over and over and over again and she keeps hearing Gloria's words — words about missing context and lines that may or may not exist — and it's driving her a little insane.
She could ask Evelyn, of course. The librarian is so smart, Barbie's sure she could explain or at least point her in the direction of the right book to research it, but it feels... it feels...
It feels hers. Theirs, maybe. Hers and Gloria's. It feels like something she doesn't want to share with anyone else. And a few times she considers asking Gloria herself. Asking her for context or an explanation or even just asking her if she's aware that something almost happened, too. But it's scary in a way she can't exactly pinpoint, and though so far all the risks she's taken since this whole humanity adventure started have worked out for her, there's something about this particular one that gives her pause.
So she doesn't ask. And she's fine. Kind of. Mostly.
Until she suddenly has an epiphany. She's watching daytime television, which may not be the pinnacle of cinematic arts but has its charm. Soap operas feel like crash courses in human emotions, and Barbie likes to indulge from time to time. And she's doing just that when she witnesses a scene that makes her understand why light bulbs are used as metaphors for having ideas. Because she sees a very beautiful woman about to die in a hospital bed, and she sees the Ken-like man standing by her with tastefully glistening eyes, and she sees him confess his secret love for her. And it all makes sense.
This isn't her first 'deathbed confessions' scene, but she hadn't made the connection until now: people say things when other people are dying. Things they may not say when nobody is about to die. And it doesn't even have to be something as drastic as dying, actually. When she was sick, Gloria talked about lines and context, about changes and being terrified. Barbie didn't have to ask, Gloria just talked about them on her own.
Clearly, the way to get the answers she desperately needs is to recreate the exact situation once again. It's a foolproof plan.
So she... lies.
Okay, calling it a lie may be a bit of an exaggeration. It's playing pretend. A fib, at most. It's nothing, in the grand scheme of things. She feels suitably guilty, if that helps her case at all. And when she calls Gloria to tell her she won't be joining her for lunch because she has a bit of a cold, she makes sure Gloria understands it's nothing serious and she doesn't need to take the afternoon off.
She thinks that's just about as ethically sound as she can make this whole plan.
"Hey," Gloria says when she walks into Barbie's room, quiet and soft like last time, "how are you feeling?"
And then Gloria does it again. She presses her palm against Barbie's forehead, and Barbie's eyes flutter closed because when you don't actually have a cold everything feels a little crisper and sharper than when you do.
"I don't think you have a fever. You don't feel too warm."
Barbie's not proud of herself for what she does next. She just wants to make that clear. She's not proud at all but she does it anyway because there are some weaknesses that come with being a human, and this is clearly hers.
"Are you sure?" Did she just infuse her voice with just a hint of a pained tone? Perhaps.
"Well, I don't know," Gloria concedes, and then she leans in and presses her lips against Barbie's forehead and her hair smells like her conditioner but not exactly like it does when it's in the bottle (Barbie's smelled it). It's an entirely different, unique smell that's a mixture of conditioner and Gloria filling Barbie's lungs, and she decides a fib can be worth it sometimes.
"No fever." Barbie can hear the smile in Gloria's voice. "Looks like you're already on the mend. I'll make you some soup for dinner and you'll be just fine in the morning."
And Gloria is already turning to walk out of the room, clearly relieved and happy to see Barbie's sickness was nothing serious. And it's not that Barbie wants her to worry. She doesn't. Not at all. She just feels like she's missing her chance to finally know the answers to all the questions in her head.
"Wait! Wait, I—" She what? She's not going to fake a serious illness, that would be just plain mean. But she needs Gloria to stay. "I think you need to double check."
Barbie sees the second Gloria figures it out, because her entire stance changes. She flicks the light on and looks at Barbie with a slightly raised eyebrow that reminds her of the look she gives Sasha when she says there is no homework on a Friday afternoon.
"Are you faking a cold?"
Barbie feels her blood immediately rush to her cheeks. They feel so warm she's sure Gloria would believe she has a fever if she checked right now. And she's bracing herself for a lecture like the ones Sasha gets when she's far from honest about her school obligations, but Gloria sighs and comes closer instead.
"Why are you faking a cold?" Gloria sits on the edge of the bed, close to Barbie, both hands resting on her lap.
Barbie shrugs. This is a new feeling, actually. She doesn't think she's ever felt it, but it's one of those she's heard about enough to be able to name it. She thinks it's shame. It makes her eyes prickle with tears that fall as soon as she blinks twice.
"Hey. Honey, I'm not mad. Please don't—" Gloria brushes tears away with her thumbs and Barbie doesn't know what she's feeling anymore. Shame and something else, something warm, something big. Shame and too many things at the same time. "What is it?"
"I just—" Barbie's chin trembles, and she's trying not to let this turn into actual crying because she's really not very good at sobbing and talking at the same time, but she's a bit overwhelmed by it all. By her feelings and the things she doesn't know and doesn't even know how to ask about. "I just wanted you to talk to me again."
"But we talk all the time," Gloria says, brows furrowed even if her voice remains gentle, "like, literally all the time I'm not at work."
Barbie shakes her head. "Not like that. Not like— like the other night. When I had the cold."
"I don't know—"
"When you said I didn't have the context." Barbie watches as realization washes over Gloria. As brown eyes round and cheeks darken and she stands a little straighter. "When you said there were lines. That you might cross."
Gloria nods, slowly. Barbie lets the silence settle between them for a few moments, because she figures maybe Gloria needs some time to figure out what to say. But she doesn't. And Barbie's not about to let this conversation end here so she can go back to thinking about it constantly for another week, so she decides to press on herself.
"You leaned in, and then nothing happened." The moment is so vivid in her mind she doesn't feel the need to clarify further. Surely Gloria knows exactly what she's talking about. "Was that a line you didn't cross?"
"Yeah, I—" Gloria looks down at her hands, and then at the coffee table, and Barbie wonders if she's just doing whatever she can to avoid looking at her, "I'd say that's right."
Barbie sighs, relieved to finally have at least one answer. That moment did happen, and it was significant, and it wasn't just her own inexperienced human brain making it bigger than it actually was.
"What was the context?"
"What?"
"The context," Barbie folds her legs under the covers and wraps her arms around her knees, settling in for what she hopes will be an enlightening lesson, "you said I don't have all the context, so I want to know what it is. What the line was and why you didn't cross it. You know. Context."
"Well, I just—" Gloria looks at one of the flowers on Barbie's bedding, and then at her left foot, and at one of the pictures on Barbie's wall, and the more she looks away the more flushed her cheeks look. "There was— I mean I—" Eventually after a few more failed attempts to get out a full sentence, Gloria shakes her head and looks at Barbie once again. "You can't just ask that. I can't just answer that. That's not—"
"See? That's why I had to fake a cold!" Barbie just cannot believe Gloria would simply refuse to answer a question. She doesn't think that's ever happened before. And it really only serves to fuel her belief that whatever it was had a lot to do with her being sick and a milder version of deathbed confessions. "You talked about it then, kind of, so why won't you just tell me now?"
"Because!"
"That's not a real answer!"
"Well, it's the only answer I have!"
Barbie could just cry again from the sheer frustration of knowing there's this apparently essential bit of knowledge she doesn't have and is also not allowed to learn. It's like the freaking humidity all over again. Obvious for everyone except for her. Because she doesn't have the context. And for the first time since she met her, Gloria is not willing to help.
She's watched enough movies (and soap opera episodes) by now to know she probably should say something right now. It's an emotionally charged moment. An argument. She's angry at Gloria for the first time in her life. But she can't come up with anything to say, so instead Barbie shifts under the covers and slips out of her bed. Gloria can stay seated on it for as long as she wants. She just needs to not be with her right now.
But when she's walking around the bed to leave the room, she feels Gloria's fingers wrapping around her wrist. Lightly. Light enough that Barbie could easily keep walking and they would do nothing to stop her. The touch feels like being asked to stay.
"Wait," Gloria finally says when Barbie stops walking, and her voice sounds quiet and almost small and Barbie feels the anger melting away, "I'm sorry."
Barbie has already forgiven Gloria by the time she looks at her. Because she knows she really is sorry, and she knows she never wants to hurt her. Because Gloria's fingers are so soft and warm around her wrist, and there's something in Gloria's eyes that feels nearly as big as the feeling that lodges itself between her ribcage and her heart when she thinks about whatever almost happened when Gloria leaned in.
"I'll tell you. I just need to—" Gloria stands up without letting go of Barbie's wrist, and she reaches for the light switch to make the room mostly dark once again. "It's easier like this."
Barbie nods. Maybe it wasn't her illness making Gloria want to open up. Maybe it was just the lack of light.
"There was a line." Gloria's thumb presses against Barbie's pulse and Barbie doesn't tell her she's read you're not supposed to take someone's pulse with your thumb because you'll feel your own pulse instead. She just stays quiet and imagines the sound of both of their heartbeats at the same time. "When I leaned in." Gloria moves her hand, thumb sliding from Barbie's wrist to her palm, and Barbie's fingers wrap around Gloria's almost on instinct. "And what I nearly did— what I wanted to do," Gloria swallows and squeezes Barbie's fingers like she's keeping herself from running away, "was kiss you."
"Oh."
Barbie knows what a kiss is. She's never experienced a kiss — not a real kiss — but she knows what they are. And she wants one. It surprises even herself because if she's perfectly honest she doesn't know exactly what a kiss entails beyond lips touching lips (which really doesn't sound appealing at all out of context) but right now she wants Gloria to kiss her more than she's ever wanted anything in her life. It's a want that comes from somewhere she doesn't control, somewhere that's definitely not her brain because there's nothing rational about what she's feeling right now. All she knows is she wants the kiss that nearly happened that other night.
"I'm sorry if you—"
"Kiss me now."
"What?"
Barbie takes one step forward, closer to Gloria, and she feels like maybe she's stepped over one of those invisible lines herself. Because they've been physically close a million times before. They've hugged and held hands and fell asleep on each other's shoulders while watching movies. But this feels different. This jump-starts something, makes her feel like one of those magic balls that make your hair stand up when you touch them, gives name to a bunch of different feelings she hadn't been able to categorize before.
"Please," Barbie says, and she's so close now she can feel Gloria's breath against her lips, "kiss me now."
Gloria's lips feel soft and gentle and real. Barbie doesn't think she's ever felt anything as real as a kiss. It's short but it lingers, and when Barbie thinks it's over Gloria presses another, quicker, softer kiss to her lips that makes Barbie smile around a sigh.
"Good?" Gloria asks, still so close and so warm and making Barbie feel all kinds of things she now thinks are different flavors of want.
"Mhmm," Barbie manages, licking her lips and feeling a sudden urge to do the same to Gloria's, "again?"
She feels Gloria's silent chuckle against her skin just before she feels Gloria's lips again. And this time it lasts longer. Barbie's free hand moves to rest on Gloria's waist, to keep her close, and Gloria's lips part to suck on her bottom lip as Gloria's fingers slide into Barbie's hair, and Barbie feels like her world has changed completely once again and there's no going back from this.
She doesn't ever want to go back from this.
"Still good?" Gloria's whispered words come out muffled against Barbie's lips, and all Barbie can manage is an affirmative (she hopes) sound as she chases Gloria's mouth to kiss her once again, bolder this time, tongue nudging Gloria's lips apart and then sliding inside her mouth and feeling a new wave of want build up low in her belly at the sound of Gloria's moan.
They kiss for a long time. Barbie doesn't know how much time passes. She knows they go back to the bed eventually, sitting first and then Gloria is on her back and Barbie is on top of her and their bodies are pressed together, legs tangled and hands exploring warm skin under a work blouse and a sleep shirt and Barbie can't remember ever pondering the actual meaning of life, but she's pretty sure this is it.
Hours or days or weeks (under an hour, realistically) later, their kisses become less hurried. Less hungry. There's less urgency and more warmth, and they're back to just soft lips meeting soft lips until they're both smiling a bit too much to go on.
"Are you okay?" Gloria reaches up and tucks a wisp of blond hair behind Barbie's ear, her other hand still busy under Barbie's night shirt as her fingertips slowly trace the line of Barbie's spine.
"Yeah," Barbie's voice comes out low and breaks halfway through the word, and it makes her smile even more. "I'm very okay."
"We'll have to talk about all this," Gloria says, thumb brushing against Barbie's tingling bottom lip, "about—"
"The context?" Barbie offers right before she presses a kiss to the pad of Gloria's thumb. She's not sure whether Gloria laughs at the kiss or at Barbie's suggestion, and she's not sure she cares.
"Yeah. The context. We'll have to talk about that."
Barbie nods. She has a feeling kisses are like water, in that they're seemingly straightforward but there's a lot going on under the surface. She wonders, briefly, if there's an encyclopedia of kisses at the library, but then decides she'd rather learn from Gloria than read about it anyway.
"Will I have to fake a cold again so you'll talk to me about it?" She teases, and she feels Gloria's laughter under the hand she has pressed against Gloria's ribcage.
"No more faking, please."
Barbie nods and kisses her again. Just because there's nothing less fake than that.
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Admissible (Part Five)
Pairing: Sam Winchester x Female Reader (You)
Summary: You've always hunted alone. That is, until Bobby sends you on a hunt near the Winchester brothers. How will things change when they come to help?
Word Count: 1.3k
Warnings: 18+, series typical violence and monsters, weapons, cursing, groping/ almost sexual assault, self-doubt/ self-esteem issues, character death, injuries, hurt/comfort
Author's Note: Here's part five! A bit shorter than usual, and I'm hoping to have another one to you all later this week to make up for it. Hope you're enjoying so far! Feel free to message me if you have any questions or concerns about anything. Y/N is your name, and feedback is always welcome. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the love so far! <3
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, or any of the related characters. The Supernatural series is created by Eric Kripke and owned by The CW Network. This work of fan fiction is for entertainment only. I am not making a profit of any kind from this story. All rights of the original Supernatural series belong to The CW Network.
Part One
AO3 link here
You sit for a few moments, feeling like your brain has shut off and time has stopped. I have to tell them. But what if we’re being watched here? What if our phones are being watched?
Calmly, as if nothing has happened, you get up from your seat and walk to the library. You find some paper and a pencil, then set out to find either of the Winchesters. Castiel, if you’re available and can be discrete, we might need some help at the bunker.
You’re walking down the hallway toward the bedrooms when Sam comes out of his room and notices you. “Hey, settling in okay?”
“Yeah, this place is great. Actually, I’m glad I found you, can I get your help with something?” Stay calm, act normal.
“Sure, what’s up?” He asks.
“I need to grab a few things first, but can you show me to the shower room again? This place is huge.” Surely if there are cameras here, there won’t be any in the bathroom.
“Sure, no problem,” He gives you a smile.
“Great, thanks. Give me a second.” You step into your room, leave your phone on your bed, and grab some clothes and a towel, tucking your paper and pencil inside. “Okay, I’m ready. Lead the way?”
Sam nods, leading you down the hall. When you get to the door of the shower room, he stops and gestures, “here you go.”
You wrap a hand behind his neck, pulling him down so your lips meet. Catching him by surprise, it takes a moment before he kisses you back, but once he snaps out of it, he is kissing you with fervor and grabbing your hips to pull you even closer. As his tongue works its way into your mouth, your arms wrap around his neck and you use them to pull him with you into the shower room. Once the door closes behind him, you reluctantly pull back and place a finger on his lips. He opens his eyes to look at you in confusion, lips swollen and reddened from your attack. God, I want to do that more. I hope Dean is right, and I really hope kissing him like this doesn’t ruin my chances. You gesture with your finger for him to wait, and you grab your paper to write a message: “Please trust me. Don’t speak yet. Turn your phone off.”
He reads the message with furrowed brows, and you look at him with pleading eyes. He nods, doing as you asked. You write another message: “Cameras in here?” He shakes his head no. You turn on one of the showers, hoping it’ll swallow any noises that could be picked up from the hallway.
“Okay, I definitely want to talk more about that kiss later,” you keep your voice low. “But I needed to get you in here because I think someone might be watching us, or at least me. The bunker does have security cameras, right?”
“Oh- uh- yeah, yeah it does,” Sam stutters out, his brain trying to catch up, “Everywhere except the bathrooms and bedrooms.”
“Do they have audio?”
He shakes his head, “no, just video.”
“Okay, good,” you turn off the shower. “I got a call from an unknown number and I didn’t recognize the voice, it said ‘vedimus te. Venimus ad vos.’ But it wasn’t even like the voice came from the phone, it felt like it came from my head.”
“Shit,” Sam runs his hands through his hair. “Can you think of anything that would be after you?”
“No,” you answer, “nothing big, anyway. I don’t make a habit of going after the big stuff, that’s more your thing.”
“Well- yeah, that’s fair. If it is something big, it would have to be really big to get in here past the wardings-”
You cut him off, “-unless it managed to power down the wardings when it hacked the cameras. Also the voice said ‘we,’ I’m thinking it isn’t working solo.”
“Okay, so multiple somethings speaking Latin that can see inside the bunker and they are coming for you. We need to let Dean know.” He pulls out his phone, turning it back on.
“Sam, what if they’re watching your phones?”
“We have a code, don’t worry, Y/N.” He says, texting Dean. “I’m thinking that if we can get Cass here, he can blow out the cameras. That way, no one sees us turning them off and we have something to blame it on.”
“Okay, but what if that makes them come inside the bunker since they don’t have eyes on us anymore?”
“Well,” he says with determination shining in his eyes, “we’ll just have to be armed and as ready as we can be. Plus, we’ll have backup.”
“What if it’s not enough though, Sam? We don’t even know what they are. I don’t want you guys to get hurt because of me. I mean, they called me, not either of you. What if I go find them, give them what they want-”
“No,” he stops you, placing his hands on either side of your face, “absolutely not, Y/N. We can handle whatever this is, but we’ll handle it together.”
You stare into his eyes, tears forming in yours at how sweet and selfless Sam is. One tear manages to escape, rolling down your cheek until he wipes it away with his thumb, and then his lips are back on yours. The kiss is sweet but strong, your feelings for each other pouring into the passionate embrace. He pulls away slightly, placing his forehead against yours. “We can talk later about that kiss, too,” he says, grinning.
You smile and nod, pulling away and wiping your face for any other tears. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
Sam’s phone dings, signaling that he got a text. “Cass is here. You ready?” he asks.
You reach out, taking his hand. “Let’s do this.” He squeezes your hand, leading the both of you out into the hallway and toward the War Room. Dean and Castiel are standing there. Cass gives you a small nod when you enter, and Dean looks at your hand in Sam’s, a small grin forming on his lips. Sam nods at Cass, whose eyes then shine with a bright white light, and you see sparks flying from several spots on the walls.
“All cameras in the bunker have been destroyed,” Cass affirmed, his eyes returning to their normal blue. His head tilts to the side and his brows furrow, “the wardings are down. Do you all have weapons?”
In response, the brothers each draw their pistols. “Shit,” you respond, “my stuff is in my bag in my room.” You drop Sam’s hand and jog down the hall, heading for your room to grab your weapons and cell phone. You grab your usual knives and pistol, but your phone rings with another unknown number as soon as your hand touches it. Coincidence or can they somehow still see me? But Sam said there weren’t cameras in the bedrooms.
You lift the phone, intending to answer it, but you hear a breath behind you. Shit. As you turn to face your attacker, you feel a sting in the side of your neck. Your hand instinctively goes to the spot, finding a syringe. Your vision immediately blurs, your muscles seem to turn to liquid, and you collapse. You register a blurred figure bending over you before you lose consciousness.
*
Feeling halfway between awake and asleep, your limbs dangle lifelessly and feel as if they are made of lead. You’re being carried over someone’s shoulder. Staying as limp as you can manage in the hopes of not alerting your attacker, you struggle to pry your eyes open slightly. Seeing that it is too dark to make out any surroundings, you let them drift closed again. Your thoughts feel like they’re moving through molasses, and awareness slips through your grasp again.
Part Six
#sam winchester#sam winchester x reader#female reader#supernatural#sam winchester x you#sam x you#supernatural imagine#spn#reader insert#fanfic#fanfiction#dean winchester#castiel#bobby singer#sam winchester imagine#sam winchester fic#sam x y/n#pov you#keiththecat#spn imagine
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song as old as rhyme - chapter 1
{Beauty and the Beast AU - Raphael x OC (Elize)}
chapter 2
Read it on AO3
A/N: I did it, i actually wrote this thing. So this chapter and the few next are more set up and so, Raphael won't be showing up so soon, sorry! This is my first time writing for canon x OC so be kind. Also english isn't my first language, so excuse the mistakes. And important to note that OC is not Tav. Finally, shoutout to @littlemoondarling for giving me feedback, i love you!
Warnings: Harrasment and bullying.
Elize enjoyed watching the sun rise and she would take the opportunity whenever possible, which is why she was waking up while it was still dark outside. The good part about this was that she was able to get ready in her own time, without worrying about being late, and while she was out, Elize wouldn’t have to deal with people just yet. Quietly getting off the bed, she began to dress herself.
First, she took off her nightgown and put on a simple brown dress that was a bit dirty at the hem. She wore her usual shoes, that at this point were black at the bottom from being used so many times. Finally, Elize did her hair in a simple ponytail, put her glasses on, took a basket and left the house. She intended on going to a nearby hill, away from everyone.
The walk there wasn’t too long and she took the time to think about her responsibilities for the day. First, she would buy some bread, because she and her father had already eaten all that was left. Since he woke up a long time after her, she’d be able to eat with him when she got back. After breakfast, and while it was still morning, she’d wash their clothes in the river and put them to dry out, and after that, she’d go to the local library for work, as the owner had taken an injury and would pay her to help organize the books while he couldn’t.
She only hoped she’d get back home in time for dinner.
As Elize arrived on the hill, the dark sky was starting to turn orange. From her basket, she took out a picnic blanket, laying it on the ground before sitting on it. After settling down, she closed her eyes and sighed.
There is a certain calmness when watching the sun rise. Most people haven’t woken up yet, and the only sounds to be heard are those of nature - the birds waking up to sing, the water flowing in the river and the wind breezing through the grass. It was a moment where time seemed to stop. The stresses of the day had yet to begin and the horizon was filled with possibility.
She stayed there until it was finally time to leave. The girl decided to head straight to the baker, as she usually did. The first trays of bread were just put out and there were only a few people in line. While waiting, she put her hand in one of the pockets of her dress and retrieved a small leather pouch, which contained her coins. She decided to count them to make sure she brought the necessary amount. Elize had 10 silver pieces, which was enough to buy two loaves of bread. When it was finally her turn, she made her order and showed her money.
The baker stopped her. “That will be 4 gold pieces.”
Her brows furrowed. “But yesterday it was only 10 silver!”
“Yesterday is not today, and today it is 4 gold pieces for them or nothing.” The baker huffed.
She tried to persuade him. “Please sir, I don’t have the money for it right now, but I can work for it, like I did last time.”
“That just won’t do.” He answered while shaking his head.
“Please, there must be some other way to, this isn’t fair and -”
“Look girl, life’s not fair and if you don’t have the money, you can’t buy it.” He looked behind her and then gave Elize a stern look. “Now would you leave? You’re holding up the line.”
She had failed to notice the people behind her until that point, but when she saw all the annoyed and angry faces, she left.
Elize breathed heavily as she tried not to cry. ‘It will be okay.’ she thought to herself. ‘You won’t die cause you missed breakfast, and with the money Mr. Antoine will give you later, you can buy bread tomorrow. Besides, there’s an apple tree close to the well, you can get some before heading home.’
“Okay, okay, okay, you’ll be okay” she mumbled to herself, while also tapping her hands on her legs, something she started to do to avoid biting her nails.
As she got closer to the well, Elize noticed three girls talking to a young man she had never seen before. Some of them were giggling while the other twirled her hair. He would occasionally chuckle. Elize decided to mind her own business and head straight for the trees.
Elize carefully looked at the apples before deciding which were best to go. It was better to have less apples that were actually good and would last a bit longer, than take a bunch that’d rot in a day or two. She remembered being a small child and her mother bringing her here, and showing her how to look for ripeness, and then going back home and teaching Elize how to cut the apples and use them for different recipes.
She was taken out of her reverie when she felt a strong hand land on her shoulder, causing Elize to get scared and accidentally let the apple she was holding fall to the ground. She shrugged her shoulders and turned around to see who had touched her.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” The man she had seen from earlier spoke. He was slightly taller than her, with black long hair that was tied back, blue eyes and by the slight point in his ears, Elize figured he must be a half-elf.
“But you did.” She gave him a stern look. “And you made me waste a perfectly good apple.” Elize knew she could still take the fruit home and wash it but it would be better to just try and get another one.
“Well, allow me to help you then. I’m Sylvester.” he said, with a smug look on his face.
She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need your help.”
Elize tried to walk past him but he stuck his arm out, blocking her path. “Please, my lady, I insist.” He reached out a hand, putting a hair of hers behind her ear. “A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be working so hard.”
She swatted his hand away. “First of all, don’t touch me. Second, you already ruined one apple, who knows how many more you’ll ruin too. And finally, leave me be.” Elize huffed and once again, tried to leave but he stuck his foot out, making her trip and fall on the ground. Her basket ended up falling underneath her and she could feel some of the smashed apples.
Slowly, she got up, her dress a complete mess and her glasses were dirty and had possibly even cracked.
Looking at her distressed expression, Sylvester got close to her ear and whispered “Next time I offer some help, you better accept it. I don’t like being denied, dear.” And with that, he went away.
This was not the first time people in the city had been mean to her. Far from it, actually. She was used to the dirty looks, to the unnecessary shoving or when she occasionally saw someone pointing and giggling at her. Elize was used to being the odd one out, even if she couldn’t figure out why.
However, she had never felt this humiliated before. All she wanted now was to run back home and not get out again until tomorrow. She wished she could lay in bed and just cry herself to sleep. But, there were things still needed to be done. Elize looked to the sky and figured that her father might be waking up soon and so, while shaking, she picked up the broken basket from the ground and tried to fix it.
‘It doesn’t look great but it will do.’ She thought while looking at what she attempted to salvage. With it, she noticed some apples had survived the fall and against her better judgment, she put them in the basket. ‘Better than nothing.’
Elize wiped the tears off her face, took a deep breath and headed home.
#raphael x oc#raphael baldur's gate 3#non tav oc#raphael x elize#raphael bg3#baldur's gate 3#beauty and the beast AU#raphael the cambion#my writing
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Do you have any fic recs you can pass along to us? :3
Oh, wow. This is kinda a hard one to answer, but it all depends on what kind of fic recs you're looking for? I'll warn you, a lot of my recs come with their own fair share of TW/CW.
I have a TONS of fics that I absolutely love! Most are from the same authors too! I'm going to start by sharing a list of the authors I have on sub. Virtually EVERYTHING by these authors are well worth the time to read.
atlas_x - If you like smut, look no further than Atlas lol. I am addicted to their smutfics. Their recent zombie apocalypse fic Infected only has 2 chapters atm (and not as smut focused...yet), but I am absolutely in love with it.
BladeofM - The first work I ever read from BladeofM was Eldritch Encounter. Not only did this fic then introduce me to the indescribable awesomeness that is @andr0nap's art, but I fell in love with BladeofM's writing style. All I need to see is the name and I knwo it'll be good.
QueenBastet - You would have to be living under a rock to have not read any of QueenBastet's work. I can't pick just one AU by this amazing author.
Resuri - This is one author I will read new stuff at the speed of inbox notif! Everything they write leaves me wanting to smash that main keyboard row! I seriously need some plushies for the Conspire group, because I just need to hug them bitches every time I finish reading a new chapter or fic.
Those are just my main subscribed authors. Next I have a few fave fics outside of everything those authors write. These are 'longfics' in a sense. I, personally, love getting invested in longfics.
The Cornered Collection by YadonushiRyou. This AU has an alternative 'bad' ending that ripped my heart out and made me cry...and that's my favorite ending for some reason. If you love your fics in the same genre that Ryou loves his movies, then this is for you.
Role Play AU by Ninjam117. I have always loved fantasy, and this AU hits the spot. Filled with everything a fantasy fic needs: Magic, a Unicorn, battles filled with action, romance/smut, you name it.
The Last Puzzle - by Tenderwulf. I originally binged this over on FFN, and was so inspired that I took the leap and began writing my own longfic. If you've read 'Homecoming' by Fiver over on FFN, you'll love The Last Puzzle.
Philosophy of a Knife by crushedmary. Not really a longfic atm, but it's getting there. Their writing style is so poetic. I absolutely love it!
Kill Shot by MMMOTH- Another AU that I absolutely love. I am such a fan of immortality and magic in a modern setting. And of course, there's smut. Gotta have that smut in there.
Chained to You by SaijSpellheart. A post-season Zero setting where Yugi never learned about the Spirit of the Puzzle. This is another of those longfics that I originally binged over on FFN, and now have bookmarked on AO3.
Okay, I could go on and on, but then I would be here all night lol. Asking me for fic recs without giving me something specific that you're looking for is like walking into a library and asking what the librarian recommends without specifying a genre. You get trapped in the library lol.
Before I end this, I'm going to throw two self-recs onto this list. These are two fics of my own that I absolutely love to reread, and have gotten great comments on both.
Returned - Gemshipping fic where TKB comes back to life and catches a cold.
White Lady - Small look into my longfic AU, but can be read stand-alone. TKB is an immortal elemental that finds himself in an odd predicament.
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I just saw that post you reblogged about archiving MCYT stuff - is there a particular reason stuff disappears so often? (That's very cool people are putting in so much effort to preserve it, though; big respect to that tbh)
reyni! :D okay i should be clear upfront that some of my information may be incomplete here because (1) i don't have twitter and (2) i'm not directly involved in any mcyt archival efforts. also putting this under a cut because it's long and i do need to reference recent events involving abuse and sexual assault:
despite mcyt = minecraft youtube(r), a lot of stuff relevant to mcyt happens like. exclusively on stream? really, really ~plot-critical or deeply characterizing stuff happens on stream sometimes and never makes it into a youtube video! and on twitch at least, unless you explicitly set it to save your vods, twitch will just delete them after a certain number of days. i don't know exactly how this works if you stream on youtube but also my impression is that a significant majority of people are not streaming on youtube anyway. since fairly early in my time in mcyt fandoms, there's been concern about creators not saving their own vods, and on top of that, sometimes you save a vod and it gets taken down anyway for copyright infringement (playing copyrighted music, the creator themself asked for it to be removed, etc). so like. as baseline, there's a sense of inherent ephemerality to the medium. that post i reblogged is explicitly pushing back against the description of mcyt vods as "a constantly burning library of alexandria," and in light of the evidence that follows i agree (and also am a little weepy about the efforts people make to save these things), but that sense doesn't come from nowhere, you know?
speaking of that post though, i suspect this archival stuff is coming up More now because it's been a rough couple of weeks in mcyt fandom. several really influential creators in the space were recently outed as being abusive or predatory in a way that's caught a lot of attention, and many people in response have been (understandably!) deleting their fanworks or otherwise distancing or removing themselves from mcyt fandom. i want to be clear, i know stuff gets deleted all the time in fanspaces -- the internet is kind of just Like That in terms of how easy it is to lose things -- and it's incredibly fair to go "no, even if there was a strong distinction between character and creator this leaves a sour taste in my mouth and i'm not doing this anymore." i don't want to pretend that no one has ever deleted a fanwork outside of mcyt spaces, and i don't want to insinuate that it's bad to vocally revoke your support of those creators -- those people have done awful things and generally failed to meaningfully apologize or take accountability, and it is worth remembering and saying so. but to give you a sense of numbers: antimony-medusa does monthly stats on mcyt fic on ao3, and dsmp, which even after it's kind of died off has seen monthly increases in the range of hundreds of new fic per month, saw a decrease of roughly 800 fics. other fandoms have similarly seen decreases, and video blogging rpf, which ao3 treats as an umbrella for basically all mcyt stuff, saw an increase of 51, as compared to last month's increase of (approximately) 3500. and that's just fic -- there's also a rich trove of animatics, fanvids, fanart, etc that i don't have any numbers for, but i've seen people talking about deleting those, too, you know? you see how people might be worried about what we are losing.
at this point i think your question is answered, but if you'll forgive some baseless speculation here, i wonder to what extent mcyt is also. complicated by how closely character and creator can sit? i don't know how other people feel, but there is a difference to me between "i've written fic about This Person Specifically (or, arguably, their streamer persona which may be somewhat divorced from the Real Life Human Being Behind The Screen)" and "i've written fic about a character this person plays." i dunno, there's a sense to me of the flimsiness of the line between creator and character and then also of the line between creator and fandom that i think makes it harder to be like "okay, i am doing my own thing, separate from the creator, so i'm going to keep my stuff public even if i don't stand by it 100% anymore." i remember when i first joined mcyt fandom, there was a period of time people were really worried that the creators were actively on ao3, or that fans would try to send their fanfic directly to the creators. i thought to myself, "well, if anyone Tries Shit with my work, i will simply delete all my relevant accounts and disappear." that's... not really a back-up plan that i feel good about these days, but. you know. it's been a thing, if not always for the same reasons, and i do understand the impulse.
#chattering sparrow#is this... a helpful explanation? does it clarify anything for you?#i've been having a weird week for reasons unrelated to ~fandom bullshit but wow the bullshit has certainly not helped#thank you for the ask though! gave me the kick i needed to go back and add disclaimers to some of my existing fic
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Tempary upload while ao3 is down
Peter-Xmen movie quicksilver
Pietro-Age of Ultron fanfic
Pietro carefully snuck inside walking past the kitchen. He was halfway through the living room when someone cleared their throat.
"What are you doing sneaking around?" Pietro froze in his tracks, slowly looking back to see Wanda standing behind him.
"I had a small accident" He sighed before pulling a piece of paper out of his coat pocket. Wanda took the paper reading over it very carefully. Peter peered into the room holding a bowl of ice cream, seeing that things were about to get interesting he quickly jumped on the couch.
"I can't believe you wrecked Dad's car!!!!" Wanda yelled at Pietro as she stormed back and forth across the room.
"It was an accident I was driving as carefully as I possibly could" Wanda turned to face her brother, giving him the, you have got to be kidding me, look before continuing to yell. Peter sat on the couch with a bowl of ice cream enjoying the chaos.
"You call going one hundred miles over the speed limit careful?" Wanda's eyes turn red and she put on her power restraint bracelets to keep from tearing down the house.
"You have no idea what it is like having to live life in slow motion" Pietro wined. Wanda was glad she had her bracelets on because by now she would have knocked Pietro out cold.
"You are literally the second fastest person alive why couldn't you just run" Pietro started to do the puppy face.
"But then I'll be tired" Peter gave a small laugh. Pietro sent him a glare but Peter just continued to laugh.
"You sound like an old man," Peter said stuffing another spoon full of strawberry cheesecake ice cream in his mouth.
"I may not be as fast as you but I'm stronger and one hundred times better looking," Pietro said trying to make himself look more buff.
"As if, you look like some kind of shield experiment gone wrong" By this time both speedsters were racing around the room. 'I hope I'm adopted' Wanda thinks as she tries to stop them.
"Why you little-" Pietro tripped over his own foot crashing into the couch. Peter turned around to laugh and crashed into the wall. 'If I am adopted I'm so un-adopting myself' Wanda facepalmed.
"Pietro this is serious, we need to figure out what to tell Dad that won't make him go on a rampage" Peter shivered.
"Trust me that is something you never want to see" Images of Magneto attacking innocent people flash in his mind. Pietro started to look very worried as he thought of a way out of this "You know I could just 'borrow' a car that looks like Dad's"
"We don't steal kid" Pietro reminded him. Wanda gave a disapproving look to her younger brother, which Peter just rolled his eyes at.
"I know for a fact both of you stole stuff while working for Hydra," Peter said finishing off the last of his ice cream "Heck Dad stole an entire bridge and football stadium"
"Okay I've got it we say that I got in a fight with these bad guys and they stole the car" Wanda rolled her eyes before walking outside.
"This is bad what do I do dad will be home any second!!?!?"Pietro turned to see Erik getting dropped off by one of his friends from work.
"Welp, dear brother of mine it looks like you're on your own" Peter zoomed upstairs. Pietro would have run too, if not for the fact that his feet felt glued to the ground. The first thing Magneto did before going into the house was check the garage.
"Hey, Dadneto what's up?" Pietro asked nervously as Erik walked in the door.
"Where is my car?"Pietro went completely pale as his dad turned to him.
"Well, you see-" Pietro was cut off by someone beeping a car horn outside. He looked out the window to see Wanda driving a car that looked like their Dad's but was not wrecked.
"Sorry, Dad I had to go get some books from the library so I could study" Wanda tossed Erik the key as she walked in. Erik gave a small nod of approval before going to his room.
"You owe me one," Wanda said a little annoyed. Pietro hugged her repeatedly saying that she was his favorite sibling and he owed her his life. "You still owe me seventy thousand dollars"
(This is a chapter from my Magnetos kids fanfic)
#dadneto#erik lehsherr#magneto#quicksilver#peter maximoff#pietro maximoff#wanda maximoff#x-men#marvel#ao3#ao3 fanfic#fanfic
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hi! good to see you, i hope life calms down for you <3
regarding the future of the blog, i think it's a great idea to use it as a community center and not a library. honestly formatting fics for tumblr is kind of a hassle, and i like to keep them in my own blog just in case, so personally that's why i stopped submitting. how do you feel about reblogging fics instead of receiving submissions? people could share you the links.
and i love the challenges, prompt lists and numerous things used to inspire writers and commenters. i like this blog a lot! it'd be great if it can stil work as a central of sorts.
Thank you baby!!! I would definitely be open to reblogging fic! I think that's a great idea, whether it's another Tumblr post or an AO3 link.
In the past, I've tried to be sensitive about making sure that authors are okay with it, because some people specifically avoid AQ for personal reasons, but if it's just a reblog or link to signal boost, I don't see why that would be a problem.
And of course we can keep the challenges going! I think those are fun, too. Maybe for future ones, we can just post the guidelines here but have people actually submit to AO3 collections.
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Okay, so, I missed the prompt for yesterday but I still want to do it. Sooo. Here we goo.
What Kotlc means to me
There's something kind of special about how I got here, in a really strange way. There's something special about it. Being 15 and trying to read every single book in the library. Picking up a book because I need somewhere else to go, someone else's life to live. Reading the entire series through Nightfall in 3 days.
I never looked back, to be honest? I had huge opinions and my cousin had read the books and another friend of mine has also read the books so I talked about it with them, and the Flashback came out and I read it and got so annoyed with Fitz and Alden. Like, literally. Part of my love and attachment to this series was born from my distinct hatred of specific characters.
And I'd never been one to write fanfic. My mom had thoroughly pounded it into my head that fanfic wasn't real writing, and that I should be doing more real things with my work. I guess, with kotlc? I decided that didn't matter?
Who cares if it's not real writing, I enjoy it deeply and I loved sharing it with other people? It brought so much joy to me when I was able to capture the voices of Keefe and Sophie in Walk Through Hell. I remember sitting there and thinking "This sounds like something Shannon would write".
And I remember recommending the books to everyone. My then-boyfriend took me up on reading it, and fell in love with it, too, and I think that was the only time he ever liked my writing, when I sent him the Google doc for Walk Through Hell.
I was a Pinterest fan for a long while, and Tumblr posts in the making lurk in the comments sections of the kotlc pins. I went on mini rants about how Keefe and Sophie and even Fitz, even though I changed my tune about him after a while of character analysis. But nobody really interacts on Pinterest. Comments get likes or maybe a comment back, but it's not a social media. It's just media. No social. Like YouTube.
So like, in a really dark part of my life, I started posting stuff to AO3. And it just opened up this world where I could write and discuss my thoughts through my writing? If I had something to say I could say it, even if it was writing a fanfic about it and posting it, qnd people would see it! People would comment, or leave kudos!! It was insane.
And, eventually, I joined Tumblr.
You would not believe how freaked out I was the first time @hunkyhair-my-beloved interacted with one of my posts. Like. Holy crap. You guys don't understand how much of my Pinterest collection of kotlc stuff was their incorrect quotes. Like, not even kidding. I literally felt like I was interacting with a celebrity.
So, I guess.
Kotlc is writing stories. Kotlc is getting mad at characters and writing a 6k dissertation on why they're awful, or a 10k thesis about why they're misunderstood. Kotlc is reading the tags of the people who reblog stuff from me. Kotlc is rolling my eyes at @fintan-pyren. Kotlc is giggling at incorrect quotes and crying when I think about songs that fit Keefe's character. Kotlc is sharing my stupid media analysis with people who actually love hearing it, and enjoy my nonsense enough to stick around and come back for more.
Like, I look back on it now and I'm like, ah, yes. I coped with my spiraling life by writing about Linh Song in a similar situation to me. I wrote about Sophie to understand myself. I wrote about Keefe to get inside my own head and understand the pieces of my own broken heart. Yada yada yada.
At the time, I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just doing something fun.
Kotlc for me is being up at 1 in the morning writing so that I finish the next chapter. It's grinning at AO3 comments and laughing with you crazies. Kotlc is just.... Fun. Kotlc is so much fun.
As much as I can get worked up over the ways I think canon is lacking, stars.
Kotlc means a whole lot to me.
#kotlc#keeptober#ten years of keeper#kotlc fandom#kotlc thoughts#SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY FRIENDS ON THIS HELLSITE Y'ALL ARE SO COOL#what kotlc means to me
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Ahhhh! I’m here now! For the actual fic request!!!
spoiler alert!!! It’s THUNDER ANGST!
basically if you know anything about me is that I am the number one simp for any Thunder angst fic.
It’s gonna be a Toradeen fic! So that should fall into your rules!
So basically what I was thinking, was Clawdeen and Toralei are paired together to do some project. And so they’re working on it in the library or something late at night. They’re not enemies anymore. But friends also feels like a wrong term. More like acquaintances with extreme chemistry lol.
but then, of course. A FREAK THUNDERSTORM happens!
Toralei is of course scared. But she at first tries to hide it. But that quickly fails drastically since she’s way to scared of it to hide her reactions. And now (I’m low key having my own fic be some kind of unspoken base for this? It’s nothing big I’m just saying there was a storm while Tor was being brutally tortured). Like Toralei already had a bad phobia of storm. But since the stabbing it’s like so much worse and she gets these panic attacks and fears the witches are gonna get her again.
Clawdeen is very alarmed cause she doesn’t really know what to do. But now there is a shaking ball of fur hiding underneath the table and the little whimpers she’s emitting absolutely break her heart. So she forces past her awkwardness and ducks down with her. And idk. She helps/comforts her through the panic attack then storm? Some fluff at the end. Toralei probably needs close contact after the panic attack to get through the storm (cause during the panic attack any touch scares the shit out of her) but after when it’s just the storm fear she craves hugs and comfort desperately
idk!!! You do what you want with that! That’s just me rantinb about thunder angst. But I’m excited to see what you do! And any updates on it would be greatly appreciated but I also totally get if you don’t! Take your time!!! I’m very excited!
Please do not repost on other platforms. This will be posted on AO3 and TTBC under the same username.
Toralei didn't like thunderstorms. No, she hated thunderstorms.
She understood they were just a natural part of the weather cycle and typically not dangerous so long as you didn't go outside in steel armor, but they'd always freaked her out ever since she was a little kid.
This fear became especially bad after she'd been tortured by witches. By complete coincidence, there'd been a storm going on when she was attacked, permanently forming a link in her mind between the memory of her attack and thunderstorms.
She was already a bit irritated because she'd been paired up with Clawdeen Wolf, of all people, for a class assignment. Sure, the two weren't enemies anymore, but friends also felt like one hell of a stretch.
Still, she endured. She supposed there were definitely worse people to get paired with, at least in terms of productivity. Clawdeen, as it turned out, was actually pretty knowledgeable on the subject they were working on, which she hadn't been expecting from a half-monster who'd been solely raised by a human almost her whole life.
It all went to shit, though, when a sudden clap of thunder radiated in from outside, shaking the whole library with the aftershocks. Her whole body immediately went rigid and Clawdeen shot her a concerned look.
This was bad. This was really bad. Not only was there apparently a thunderstorm now (which had not been on the forecast that morning when she checked), but she also couldn't let Clawdeen Wolf know that she had a fear of thunderstorms.
"Just startled me" she said dismissively, trying to force the shake out of her hands and voice. Clawdeen gave her a small, sympathetic smile that made her want to crawl into a hole and die.
It wasn't long before another clap of thunder came along and shook her to her very core. She was unable to suppress the flinch or the terrified whimper, and her breathing was picking up at an alarming rate, as was the pitter-patter of her heart.
"Toralei, it's okay if you're freaked o-"
"I am not freaked out!" Toralei objected maybe a bit too passionately. Her whole body was trembling at this point and she was completely hopeless to stop it. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Clawdeen knew she was freaking out. Great.
"Tor-" Clawdeen was cut off by another clap of thunder, which caused the werecat to squeal in fear and leap under the study table.
Clawdeen just sat there for a moment, unsure of what to do. While she wasn't rivals with Toralei anymore, the two were hardly friends, and she'd also never seen the girl freaked out like this before. She wasn't sure how exactly to approach the situation and she felt stuck.
Her unsure daze was quickly broken by the panicked whimpers coming from under the table. Personal comfort be damned, she had to at least try.
She cautiously got out of her seat and kneeled down to look under the table. Toralei was curled in a ball, her terrified eyes poking out from behind her knees and darting around frantically, as though the world was closing in on her.
Clawdeen had only experienced a panic attack once in her life, and it was when she'd first shifted into her human form. She tried to remember what Frankie had done to calm her down. Talking her down and... Some sort of bubbly water...
She didn't have bubbly water, but she did have her voice.
"Hey, Toralei" she said in a soft voice. Toralei's eyes continued to dart about but landed solidly on her a few times. As good a start as any, Clawdeen thought. She reached out her hand but the werecat flinched away, so she quickly retracted it. "No touch. Got it"
"They're coming" Toralei began to mutter repeatedly. Clawdeen frowned. She looked around but no one else seemed to be near their corner of the library.
"Who's coming?"
"The witches" Toralei said. "They're coming to take me back. That's why there's a thunderstorm" she explained. The rational part of her brain knew that didn't really make any sense, but that part of her brain was a shrimp in comparison to the vast majority, which was currently panicking. "There was a thunderstorm last time, so-"
"Toralei, I promise you, no witches are trying to get in here right now" Clawdeen said. "Even if they were, I'm not letting you get kidnapped, okay? You're safe here"
It took a few minutes, but Toralei's panic attack began to let up and she silently moved herself closer to Clawdeen. The immediate trauma response may have finished its course, but she still decidedly hated thunderstorms.
Clawdeen allowed the sudden switch in behavior and didn't comment on Toralei's sudden clinginess, instead just wrapping her arms around the clearly afraid girl, occasionally muttering basic reassurances whenever another clap of thunder came down, causing the werecat's trembling to worsen.
When the storm eventually decided to go away and bother someone else, Toralei came to her senses and realized how close in proximity she'd gotten to the other girl.
She quickly pulled out of the hug and got out from under the table, brushing herself off and blushing furiously- Whether it was embarrassment or realization that she didn't completely hate that closeness was beyond her.
"So..." Clawdeen started awkwardly, also getting out from under the table. "You wanna finish working on the project, or-"
"Yes"
"Okay"
They would end up getting an A+ on that assignment, something which Toralei found inexplicably fascinating, and, when possible, the pair always tried to work together in that class from that point forward.
#fanfiction#fanfic#monster high#monster high live action#monster high g3#clawdeen x toralei#toralei x clawdeen#toralei stripe#clawdeen wolf#astraphobia#hurt/comfort
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How did you start writing on ao3? What was the learning process like, formatting and etc?
Hi Anon!!
Writing on AO3, honestly, was a dream, because both of us started on ffnet, and posting to ffnet is exhausting. In comparison, AO3 is easy as pie. Kam and I actually met because we were both authors of X/1999 fic on ffnet. Someone put all the authors they knew into one giant AIM chatroom and the rest is history 😂
But that was back in high school, sometime around 2005. Kam primarily draws/paints, and really only wrote one (1) thing. I wrote a handful of short fics, tried to write regularly, but just could not keep it up through college. Idk if you've got a physics degree, but it kind of takes a lot of mental energy and there was nothing left for writing for fun. I managed, like... istg like 3 short fics early in college (And they went on lj, lawl) and then nothing for years.
Somewhere in there, I started reading on AO3. I consume fanfic like it's an Olympic sport. Eventually I got an account.
And then, one day, I just got tired of not writing. Instead of saying that classic, "If only I had the time..." I decided to make the time. I looked up tips on writing. Took a glance at the writing shelf in the library, and read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Took actual notes. Applied them. This was around 2015.
The biggest thing really is making it a habit. Even if you just stare at a screen, putting the time into staring at it makes a difference. But Anne had another tip that revolutionized my process: writing advantageously. I don't only write when I make the time; I'll stop in the middle of the grocery store and write down an idea if I have it. I write anywhere and everywhere.
In 2019, a good friend of mine hit me with a new technique that changed everything again: word tracking. I use Tris' word tracking spreadsheet every year now and it doubled my output in 2019 and has increased steadily through 2022.
And 2022 had an insane output, because I unlocked another new skill: writing out of order. I used to have to write chronologically, but now I've figured out how to not do that, and I managed that illusive 50k in one month last year.
So what was my learning process like? A whole lot of trial and error. Sometimes tips didn't work out, but I kept trying everything. Sometimes I had to try them more than once, as I grew as a writer. Writing out of order didn't work for me until I figured out how to make it work for me. Shitty first drafts also didn't work for me, until I found a half-way method that does work for me. If every author out there tells you the same trick, chances are it's a good trick. But tricks take practice and time to get good at them. I had to be patient with myself, and I had to keep at it, one bird at a time.
Grant Faulkner's Pep Talks for Writers has an excellent anecdote that boils down to: write more things. We like to get caught up in trying to make our projects perfect, but we learn more by just finishing it up and moving onto the next. Sometimes you need to learn from the next project before you can figure out what's wrong with the first. Some stories will just never be that great. And it's okay. Don't get stuck. Write more things.
“if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
So thank you, Anon ❤ and I hope something in all of that was what you were looking for.
PS, if you write on gdocs and don't like removing all those extra spaces between paragraphs when you copy to AO3, just change the gdocs spacing to 'add space before paragraph' + 'add space after paragraph' and that'll make it match AO3. Only real formatting tip I've used 😂
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The Real Heroes
Steggy Week 2k22, day 4
Prompt: Trope or genre
Summary: Cass has a favorite comic book hero. A companion to my fic Out of the Frying Pan from Steggy Week 2018.
AO3 link here. Thanks to @steggyfanevents for organizing!
Cass watches Dad’s hands very carefully, holding out her own finger and closing one eye, trying to make sure he is matching the top of the poster to the straight line of the ceiling.
“Okay,” she finally says. “Right there.”
He steps back after he’s taped it and comes to rest a hand on her shoulder. “Does it look like you wanted?”
Cass beams. “It looks perfect. Everyone at the meeting is going to be very jealous.”
“That’s—Wait, the meeting?”
“Yes.” She lifts her chin. “The meeting of the Girl Fridays. We’re going to schedule one every other week after school: first when the new issue comes out so we can read it together and give our reactions, and then another two weeks after, when it’ll have had time to sink in so we can have a better discussion. I had the idea first, so I am the president.”
Her father looks down at her. He puts his hands in his pockets and pretends not to smile, but Cass can see. “And this is a…fan club?”
Cass pushes up her glasses. She crosses her arms. “Dad,” she says, very seriously, “this is a lifestyle.”
She saw other kids reading comics long before she tried them out herself. There was always a group that went to the newsstand together for the latest issue of Mr. Mysterious or Captain America, taking them out at recess or sitting with them on the street corners, even hiding them under the desk during class. (She’d had to keep herself from clearing her throat loudly to remind them that they were meant to be listening to the teacher.)
It wasn’t that she thought it was a thing only boys were allowed. She knows that there aren’t rules about what she’s supposed to like or do or be and what she isn’t; if she hadn't already realized that for herself, she’d be reminded by the memory of Mom raising her eyebrow mildly when Cassie had mentioned that her teacher only ever chose boys to be the line leader or to present when they did group work and when Cass asked why, the answer she got was that that there were certain students who were “better suited” to those jobs, and how that had changed after Mom was the one to bring her to her classroom the next day. Comics just never seemed that interesting to her - they all went to the library with Dad whenever they wanted so she always had as many books as she could read, and there wasn’t anything much special about the flimsy, brightly colored pamphlets with their silly storylines and dramatically written-out sound effects.
But then Karen Carlton came over to babysit while Mom and Dad had a date night, and when she was wrestling Annie and Ben into bed - well, wrestling Annie; Ben usually just got himself into his PJs, brushed his teeth, and read for fifteen minutes before turning out his light - Cass might have done a very tiny little bit of snooping. And in her bag, behind two kind of school-looking notebooks, there was Girl Friday issue #14.
She only got a chance to read the first few pages, where it goes from a normal day at school for average teenager Francie Day to Francie having to put on her mystical disguising deerstalker so she could investigate the latest mysterious happenings in Springville as Girl Friday. By the time Karen got down the stairs and exhaustedly told her that her extra half hour was up and it was bedtime for her too, Cass was sitting innocently on the other side of the room with a copy of Five Children and It - carefully turned right side up, of course, because Cass knows how not to get caught - and issue #14 was back just where it had been before.
The next day, she’d started searching through the newsstands and drugstores in the neighborhood until she had every issue. She never missed another one.
“—And that's how Francie realizes that her new neighbor, the friendly Dr. Crayshur, is actually the Creature Catcher, who's been luring all the animals in town into her basement to do experiments on them!"
Mom looks down at Cass and raises a soft eyebrow as they cross the street. It had been a little surprise when she turned up at the door instead of Dad when it was time to come home from playing with Nancy Freeman, but a nice surprise. She'd been able to tell Mom all about how the teacher hadn't done anything when Harry Grady was pulling on Nancy's braids, so Cass had checked out a library book under his name and then made sure not to return it on time; everyone know that Miss Weathers in the library was the nicest person in the school until you didn't treat her books right. Even after debating with Mom about whether that had been the right choice for how to do things - Mom would probably call it a lecture, but Cass is actually an expert on Mom's real lectures - there was still plenty of time to fill her in on the plot of issue #20, which had just been released two days ago.
"Well," Mom says thoughtfully, "I suppose one can't fault her investigative skills. But I do wonder, darling, if you might turn your devotion to someone else - someone real, perhaps?"
The idea almost stops Cass's feet. "Like who?" she demands.
"Oh, there's Mrs. Roosevelt, for example, or the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, or Lucille Ball, or Althea Gibson, or even your aunt Angie - it's taken quite a lot of hard work for her to get to the place that she is today."
While she's thinking, Cass squints at Mom's hand where it's wrapped around hers, her deep pink polish shiny, her grip firm enough to hold on tight and safe without hurting. Then she says slowly, "Well, I guess I can be interested in them too. But it isn't as if they have comic books written about them, you know."
"True enough, although I'm certain your father could draw some for you if you wanted. But then how about Captain America? After all, he was a real hero during the war, and there are certainly enough comic books about him.
This time, Cassie doesn't even need to think. "Mom. Captain America is boring. And everyone knows that none of his best stuff could ever be real."
There was never a day when Mom's office building was really empty, but Saturday was probably the closest it came. They'd gone over and had dinner at their usual table in the kitchen because Mom couldn't get home, Cass mostly talking about what might happen in issue #23 coming out soon, and then Mom wanted Dad's help with some work, so Cass and Ben and Annie got to have some fun, running around in the downstairs gym and coloring on a million sheets of paper while Mom's secretary Maria watched them.
Even when it got late and Annie and Ben started falling asleep, Cass had been sure she could stay awake, reading by herself until it was time to go home. She was sure she was awake - really! - except that she did get a little startled and made a "huh?!" sound when Dad lifted her out of the chair. Her head dropped back against his neck as he carried her in one arm, Annie in the other, out of the office while Mom, holding Ben, said good night to Maria and locked up.
No one talks most of the way back to the car, and Cass would probably have actually fallen asleep, except that suddenly Mom says, so quiet that Cass almost doesn’t hear it through her drowsy, muffled brain, "Do you ever regret that none of the children know who you were and what you did, and that perhaps they never will?"
"What I did which time?" Cass can feel the even rise and fall of Dad's breathing, the rumble of his voice in her own body.
"Oh, either, I suppose. But certainly your slightly more believable - or at least verifiable - exploits to begin with.”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it,” Dad says after a minute. “Maybe I will talk about it someday, but I didn’t do any of it to be recognized or admired, even by them. Did you?”
Slowly Mom replies, “No, there was a need and I had the skills, and that’s been the story ever since. But it’s…I appreciate, sometimes, the way that the things I’ve done show them what they can do, that they see my work and even if they don’t understand it now, they get some sense of what it could mean for them, how open the possibilities of their own futures can be. It isn't the reason, precisely, but my life and choices have cleared a path for them, or at least let them see that the path is there. ”
Dad makes an understanding sort of sound. His footsteps pause for a moment, and Cass knows that he’s letting Mom go first through the door. “For my part, I guess I think about how I’ve made the world better for them. And maybe they won't know exactly how or that I was the one doing it, maybe they won't realize for a second that things might have been different otherwise, but it’s enough for me to have that, just to remember that for myself.”
“Even if they never know about any of it - Azzano, or New York, or, of course, your most daring starring role?” Cass can hear the smile in Mom’s voice now, just before she begins to hum that song she sometimes sings when she’s teasing Dad - Cass remembers that the words are something about “strong and brave” and “carry the flag shore to shore,” but mostly she remembers that it makes Dad roll his eyes and smile too.
“Not sure you exactly have a place to talk with that, Betty,” Dad says, and the matching smile is in his voice already. Cass must be sleepier than she thought if her ears aren't working - Betty isn’t Mom’s name, after all.
“I neither participated in that, nor authorized it, as you well know,” Mom says in her boss voice, nudging Dad with her elbow. He laughs, readjusts Cass so she’s held tighter. Cass can hear Mom doing the same for Ben so she can find the keys which means that they must be getting close to the car. She’s glad. The car is new, and nice as these things go, but she just wants it to bring them home soon. She wants to be in her bed now, snuggled underneath her favorite blanket, with the door closed but the hall light on, feeling so cozy and safe…
“I suppose it’s a good thing that it doesn’t bother you,” Mom says from somewhere in the front seat. “Because I don’t know that even the truth would allow you to unseat a certain comic book detective in Cassandra’s mind.”
Dad laughs again. Even his voice seems to make a sort of shrug. “If I was going to be shown up by someone, Girl Friday is at least one I don’t mind losing to.”
In the back, her cheek against the window and Ben warm beside her, Cassie smiles. Finally starting to understand, she thinks. I’ll work on them more tomorrow.
She’ll figure out the exact details of that plan when she wakes up.
#SteggyWeek22#Steggy fic#Steggy#Steve Rogers#Peggy Carter#this is tropes x2 - both kidfic and outsider POV
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Variations on a Sin, Ch. 3: Greed
Prev - Greed - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ]
Written for @intrulogicalweek's Seven Deadly Sins writing event.
Remus was working through the third movement of Beethoven’s 29th Sonata and his hands flew across the keys. The metronome kept time, ticking just a little faster than it had during his first session with Logan. That day's lesson had begun a half hour early.
“Logan!” Remus had stood on the doorstep, a sheaf of sheet music clutched in one hand and a to-go coffee holder in the other. “Logan, what was the metronome set at for the Hammerklavier?
“Good afternoon, Remus,” Logan said smoothly, blinking for a moment before smiling at his new favorite student with one eyebrow raised. “Won’t you come in? You are ahead of schedule, but we may begin whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks!” Remus grinned. His bright eyes danced between Logan’s face and the papers in his hand. “Oh, and I got us coffee! Well, I needed a little caffeination and I thought it would be rude to show up with a half-drunk cup of the fucking best coffee in Seattle and not have one for you, too, so I got you one.” He stepping inside and handed Logan the coffee tray with a happy little dance. “I didn’t know how you took it so I brought a bunch of different sweeteners and some of that fancy pants raw agave crystals that are the latest clean eating sugar we’re all supposed to use so we don’t die like cancerous lab rats.”
He peeled off his jacket, holding the sheet music tucked under his chin, his voice a little muffled and strained as he continued. “So, anyway, about the beats per minute? I was doing a little research and apparently there’s this big controversy about the piece and whether our dearly departed Ludwig had a faulty metronome or was just too deaf to hear that the piece was too fast at the tempo he’d marked on the score.”
Logan followed, still holding the coffees as Remus continued his explanation on the way to the piano. “And I read that this is the only piece that Beethoven included beats per minute on! That’s just wild! Is that true? I mean, I read that same bit of info on two different websites and then when I hit the library downtown—did you know they don’t open until nine o’clock in the morning on weekdays? It’s even later on weekends. What are you supposed to do when you’ve got something to look up?”
He sat down on the piano bench, facing the wrong way for a moment and took the coffee tray from Logan’s hands and set it down next to him. “So, the piece. Two more books I found both said the same thing. Is this just one of those one schmuck wrote it down wrong and that ‘fact’ has just been carried from documentarian to documentarian in error or is the poor schmuck who wrote it down wrong Beethoven himself?”
Remus let out a laugh and then took a long sip of his coffee. “I mean, that’s what a couple of sources were saying, too, that it wasn’t the metronome but just his mistake. He was kind of getting on in years when he wrote it. Oh!” He set down the coffee and spun around in his seat, hands hovering over the keyboard. “So what was I playing it at? I listened to some recordings, but I should have tried my own memory first because after the sixth one—Mitsuko Uchida is goddamn amazing, by the way! Her rendition of the last movement of Sonate für Klavier was just… ah!”
Before getting the signal to begin from Logan, Remus began the first few bars of the last movement, then switched over the the third, pounding the keys in a furious scherzo, tapping his foot to the beat. He looked up at Logan, still playing, “It was just so good.” He finished with a small flourish then spun back around and drank more of his coffee. “Oh, you should have some while it’s still hot. Seriously, Downpour is the be- \hest coffee in Seattle. Okay, it’s not technically Seattle but you know what I mean. We all say we live in Seattle ‘cause who the fuck’s ever heard of Kirkland outside of the a fifty mile radius from Lake Washington unless you’re staring at your soap from Costco, right?” He threw his head back and laughed, shaking his head.
“So what was the beats per minute?” He tapped his heels against the floor, still drinking his coffee. Logan picked up the carrier and set it on a side table before prying out his own cup and popping the little tab to take a sip.
“I take my coffee black, except for my first cup of the day,” he said slowly, watching his student over the top of his cup. “Are you feeling alright, Remus?” He took another small sip and eyed the syncopated tempo of Remus’ tapping. “You seem like you might have had a little extra coffee today.”
Remus giggled and shook his head. “Nah, actually this is my first cup today. I know, weird. Usually I’m on cup three by this time of the afternoon.”
Nodding, Logan picked up the metronome and showed Remus the settings, moving the little knob up a few notches. “I had it set for 124 beats per minute. Most modern theorists fall in the figurative ‘Beethoven must have included the bpm in error' camp.” He set down the metronome and watched it tick for a moment. “It was, as you mentioned, the only piece for which he included a recommended tempo.”
“I wanna try it the way he wrote it!” Remus announced, snatching up the metronome and ratcheted it up to 138 beats per minute. The little arm swung back and forth at an impossibly fast rate. “Will you tell me where I miss it?”
And so, at Logan’s quick nod, Remus swung back around on the bench and began to play. His first run through was nearly flawless, only missing a note on one little trill, but he went back and started from the beginning and did it again until he’d gotten it right. The final notes still vibrated on the low G when Remus looked up. “Can I try it faster?”
For the next hour and a half, Logan edged up the speed of the metronome a few beats at a time. Finally, Remus was playing the piece at 147 beats per minute when the doorbell rang. Logan looked down at his watch, brows knit together. “Oh, we seem to have let time get away from us.” He rested his hand on Remus’ forearm. “We have gone over our allotted time.” He gestured toward the door with a sheepish grin. “I believe that is my next student.”
“Oh, fuck, Logan, I’m so sorry. I probably ran right over the time that you use to take a break or breathe or just be a human for five seconds between lessons.” He stood up. “I’ll pay you for the overage, of course!”
“That is not necessary, Remus, I’ve enjoyed this time,” Logan smiled and raised his now-cold remaining coffee as Remus gathered the sheet music and his own empty cup. “Besides, you brought me coffee.”
“Fuck that noise,” Remus muttered, shaking his head. “You have a skill and you shouldn’t undervalue it.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small wad of bills. As Logan moved to open the door, Remus peeled off several and pressed them into his hand before he could see the denominations. Grabbing his coat and holding the music close to his chest, he stopped. “Hey, I was wondering if maybe I could add a few lessons a week. Like do you have any openings on other any other days?”
Logan greeted his next student and their parent and let them in. “Hi Mx. Nadella. I’ll be right with you both. Please go ahead, Cory, take a seat at the bench and begin your scales.” The little girl skipped into the front room, dragging her parent along by the hand.
“Well, I just had a few students graduate and start school out of state.” He scribbled on a piece of paper from the little notepad at the door. “I have three openings you can choose from.”
Remus took the paper and glanced down at it, smile dazzling. “I’ll take them all!”
"We— Well I will see you tomorrow, then," Logan stuttered as he gave a little awkward wave before closing the door.
"See you, tomorrow, Teach."
#Variations on a Sin#ts logan#ts remus#Logan Sanders#Remus Hyde#prequel to Play Us a Song#yes‚ you know what that means#Love and Madness series#intrulogical#intrulogical week#intrulogicalweek2022#sanders sides fanfic#sanders sides fanfiction#ts fanfic#ts fanfiction
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I Really Really Like You
Mobius x gn!reader
Requested on ao3 by clammy hands:
"Would you mind writing something Mobius x reader where reader is drinking to cope w being in the TVA and Mobius didn't realize how much being a variant was affecting them and basically helps them to their room and stays w them and the reader ends up drunkenly confessing their feelings to him?"
Warnings: drinking, alcohol, forbidden relationships??? kinda??
Word Count: 1699
ao3 link to fic
Loki Masterlist
Being a variant was… difficult, to say the least. You had to continue living, knowing that you’d never be able to experience all the joys and sadness and anger the rest of your life had to offer. You were allowed to watch it over and over again, as many times as you wanted (when you weren’t working to please Ravonna Renslayer to convince her not to prune you). But it would never be the same as actually being there.
Your life wasn’t anything special. You had your ups and downs, you had your likes and dislikes.
And then someone came along and took you off your path, pulled you off of the Sacred Timeline.
You felt another sob in the back of your throat as you remembered that day. You were just minding your own business, and then she had to come along and… You slammed down the rest of your whiskey and signalled the bartender for more.
Mobius couldn’t find you. He searched your desk, his desk, the library - he felt like he was on a wild goose chase.
He was the agent who saved you from being reset. You had become a variant because of the variant Loki, and he believed you might be able to help him with the case. He couldn’t say you were actually any closer to cracking the case than he was, but you were still trying your best.
He walked into the cafeteria, the last place he could think to look, and found nothing. You weren’t here either. But, Casey was. You’d become friends with the office worker, trying to explain Earth things to him, even though Casey was about as intelligent as a rock. He didn’t even know what a rock was.
“Hey, have you seen Y/N?” His sudden presence startled the desk jockey, and he apologized under his breath for it. His mind was too preoccupied to offer a full apology.
Casey nodded, pointing in a vague direction. “Yeah, they went to the bar, I think.”
Mobius’ brow furrowed. “Since when have we had a bar?”
Casey shrugged.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
This was the bartenders third attempt at cutting you off… Or was it her fourth? It didn’t matter. You shook your head and held out your glass, and she filled it up anyway.
“Y/N!” A hand was suddenly on your shoulder. With your dulled reflexes, you barely reacted. You weren’t sure you would have even if you were drunk. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“That’s probably what my mom would say…” Your eyes watered again, tears already spilling out the sides. “If she knew I was here.”
Your body shook with sobs. They were hard and ugly. Your body could barely keep up, breathing heavily just to get some semblance of oxygen back into your lungs.
Mobius was shocked. He didn’t think… Well, of course, being a variant must have been hard, but…
He wrapped his arms around you, shifting your dead-weight body so you weren’t hunched over the bar, and pulled you into something that might have looked like a hug to some alien species. He pried the drink from your hand, setting it on the bar for the bartender to take. And he just let you cry.
He rubbed your back and pet your hair, and eventually sat down on a stool next to you to keep himself from falling over. He cooed what kind words he knew into your ears, assuring you that it would be okay - somehow, and that he was there for you.
When your sobs turned into little more than hiccups, he pulled back enough to see your red, puffy face. It made his heart ache.
“Hey, let’s get you to bed, alright?”
You nodded weakly, sniffling and wiping at your eyes. Mobius helped clean you up with some napkins from the bar, too.
He helped you stand and kept a supportive arm around your waist, carrying most of your weight against him as you both began the long trek to the elevator.
You’d been staying at the TVA so long, Ravonna was nice enough (Mobius begged her and may have bribed her with rare alcohol) to give you a room to stay in. It was right next to Mobius’, just in case there were any “issues”. Getting drunk and getting you to bed probably fell under those issues, right?
Getting to your room is more of an ordeal than Mobius previously thought it would be. You were stumbling half the time, and not walking at all the other half. Still, your little whimpers, talking about home and your pets and your family, spurred him on with little more than a sigh and a gentle, “Come on, we’re almost there.”
He helped you take off your shoes and tie, and stood by the door with his back turned as you changed into your pajamas in case you needed help. He made a mental note to talk to Ravonna about getting some of your items from home, like your own personal pjs and books, and exactly what alcohol he’d have to bribe her with this time.
“‘M done…”
He turned his head first, looking over his shoulder carefully, just to make sure you were actually dressed. He had to admit: You looked pretty cute in the TVA-issued pajamas.
“They fit okay?”
You hummed. You were already sitting on your bed. You looked exhausted. Mobius sat down next to you, his weight shifting the bed, and you didn’t stop your head from falling to his shoulder.
He ignored how his heart leapt at the sight of you, so small and fragile, resting against him like that.
It wasn’t the first time he had to ignore his heart because you did something he found adorable. You trying to explain what dogs were to Casey was the most recent, but by far this was the cutest. He didn’t think any of the other things his heart had reacted to had involved you touching him, and especially not like this.
He cursed his brain. Now was not the time to be thinking about this.
He cleared his throat as gently as possible, to bring his mind back to the present and get your attention. “Did you want to talk about it?”
You hummed a “no”.
He didn’t press the subject further.
“You should sleep,” he told you. His voice was soft and caring. It reminded you of home. “I don’t know how much you drank, but we still get hangovers here.”
You chuckled slightly. Yes, the TVA was all powerful, but god forbid someone drink too much. “As long as you have Tylenol, I’ll survive.”
He nodded, chuckling softly himself. “Yeah, I’m sure we do.”
You didn’t want to pull away from him. He was warm and safe, and even if this position did hurt your neck, it didn’t matter, because it was Mobius. But, you had to.
With a sigh, you sat up straight once more and pushed yourself to lay on one side of the large mattress. You struggled with the blankets, but Mobius helped you out. Once you were settled in, he patted your leg and stood up.
Panic gripped your heart.
You reached forward and grabbed for his hand, managing to grab on to his brown coat instead. His attention was caught, nonetheless.
“Please don’t go.” You tugged as best as you could on his sleeve to pull him toward the bed, barely moving his arm. “Stay with me... Please?”
How could he possibly say no to that?
Mobius nodded, gently prying your hand off his coat and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Okay, okay. I’ll stay.”
You watched, worried he might be lying, as he pulled off his jacket and tie, laying them in a nearby chair. Next to come off were his shoes, which he left by the chair’s feet. Then, he finally slid in under the covers to be laying next to you. He was surprised when you wrapped your arms around his middle, hugging him close and burying your face into his button-down shirt.
“Mobius, I have something to tell you,” you admitted, voice barely a muffled whisper against his chest.
He wrapped his arms around you, getting comfortable in the admittedly odd setting. If Ravonna knew, well, surely, you’d both be pruned.
He nodded, running his fingers through your hair as he had at the bar, finding comfort in the motion. “Okay?”
You lifted your head, chin propped up on his chest, and looked into his eyes. You got lost staring. He had such pretty hazel eyes...
“Y/N?”
“Hm…”
“What do you have to tell me?”
“Oh!” He chuckled at your drunken antics. “I really, really, really, really, really-” Your eyes were already beginning to flutter closed and your words became more slurred together. You really were more tired than he thought.
“Really?” he prompted. He was eager to know now.
“Like you.” Your eyes, half-lidded and still closing more as each second passed, looked up at him. “I really, really like you…”
His chest felt light. He… couldn’t really put the feelings into words. He’d never felt so warm and light before. His heart was pounding, brain running a million miles a second trying to put those words together, even when they were laid out before him so clearly.
By the time his mouth caught up to his brain, you were already snoring. He chuckled, at himself mostly. For the usually quick-witted investigator to be stunned silent…
He brushed a strand of hair back from your face, smiling to himself. No jetski could compare to this feeling.
He leaned his head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a while, just thinking. His mind ran through everything a relationship between a TVA agent and a variant would entail, but it also reminded him of all the wonderful things that came with it. Just the idea of sleeping in the same bed as you like this put an unwavering smile on his face as he allowed his eyes to close, ready to drift off and talk to you in the morning. After all...
He really, really liked you, too.
#loki series#mobius x reader#mobius x you#mobius x y/n#fluff#gender neutral reader#gn reader#x gn reader
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