#i hate how grainy some of them got but i give up
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Handing Katsuki father's day cards that are for his own dad or yours and he needs to "read and sign it" but as he's reading it his brow starts to furrows.
"Sweetheart, ya got the wrong cards." He's reading it for the third time now.
"I got the right ones." You're trying not to giggle before he's rolling his eyes and reading the card aloud.
"You're not just an amazing father," he flips it open, "You're going to be an amazing grandfather too."
"Yea baby that's the right card." You hum, stepping into the kitchen to get the final card and present.
"Baby, it isn't. We don't have kids. Unless ya mean our cats but then they've been grandparents." He tosses the card down, rising to help you find the backups he's assuming you're looking for. This wasn't the first year you'd accidently gotten the wrong card or one that was just slightly off, he thinks nothing of the message.
Barely had any caffeine as the two of you rose early to get ready to host his parents and yours.
"Katsuki, it is the right card." You say, pressing another card into his hands, no envelope or anything. Just thick white card stock with black letters and an image of white new balance shoes.
"It's almost time for these bad boys." He scoffs, looking at what the world has deemed the official dad shoe, he looks up to see a box in your hands, "Sweetheart, what the fuck? I hate these ugly ass shoes. Ya know that."
He's got this smile to his face the one where he thinks you're being too playful and silly, every now and again you two get each other gag gifts. You're surprised he hadn't caught on yet especially since you always joked that the second you knew, you'd be getting him "those ugly ass dad shoes."
"I know." You both share a laugh, you pressing the shoe box into hands, "Just open it. They'll be fun to wear today, goes with the theme."
"What's the fuckin theme? Dads?" He opens the box and sees the shoes but something is taped to the top of the box. A grainy picture in black and white, a blob in the circle and when he lets his eyes focus as best they can without his glasses perched on his nose, he thinks he sees a very specific shape.
He rips it from the box, bringing the film closer and yes he can see a nose and his face morphs into complete surprise. You giggle as you watch him figure it out, which you swore you wouldn't be able to get this far without him figuring out why you'd been feeling so sick lately.
"No fuckin way." It's low and for a split second you think he isn't excited, then he locks eyes with you and he gives you that look. The one where he's smiling but his brows furrow up and his eyes aglow with unshed tears like you are his world, like you're giving him the world, and he's putting the shoes down to gently pick you up and twirl you around.
"A baby. We're having a fucking baby." He's pressing kisses to your cheeks when he sets you on your feet, if you thought you were spoiled before you'd be rotten by the time this pregnancy was done.
"A baby." You repeat back to him, your own excited tears clinging to your lashes, ones Katsuki gently kisses away.
"How long?"
"Three months. It was really hard to keep a secret but I really wanted to do that shoe thing I teased you about. I've got the receipt so we can return them I'll-"
"Nah I've got the perfect idea for 'em."
An hour later after a shared shower and rapid fire questions, Bakugou is coming down the stairs, he's got some ugly ass jean jorts you gifted him as a gag for his birthday two years ago before giving him his real gift and one of his dad's old white tees he tucked into the waist band of the shorts and of course his new white new balance shoes.
"You look ridiculous." You giggle in your sundress, somehow he made the outfit a little hot. You were sure Bakugou could make anything look hot and here was living proof.
"Better get used to it Sweetheart, this is how I'm gonna look when I put another one in ya." He puffs his chest out, smoothing his big palms over his shirt as you roll your eyes.
"I've made a monster." The door bell rings, when you go to rise, Katsuki gently presses you back into the couch by your shoulder as he gets the door for his parents. He opens the door with a sense of pride that comes with being the cocky pro hero, looking much larger than life.
His mother is unphased.
"Oi, I brought that stuff you- Why are you dressed like a fuckin dad from the 90s?" Mitsuki makes a face before she processes what he's wearing, "Oh my fucking GOD OH MY FUCKING GOD MASARU! WE'RE GONNA BE GRANDPARENTS. YER GONNA BE A GRANDPA! RIGHT RIGHT?"
She pushes past her son, a quick squeeze to his forearm before she's honing in on the daughter in law she already adored and now even more.
Masaru quirks his brow and Katsuki nods.
"I'm so happy for you son." He hugs Katsuki the way men do, a quick tight squeeze before a clap on the back, Masaru tries not to let the tears slip past his eyes as Katsuki's life plays on fast forward in Masaru's mind. He remembers how Mitsuki told him they were expecting, remembers holding him for the first time and thought his whole world view shattered and changed. Remembers his first words and steps. Remembers his first mishap with his quirk and how Katsuki had blown the coffee table sky high. He remembers him growing taller and taller, going to UA, figuring out how to be a better person as he grew in size. How Katsuki called him and his ma in the middle of the night the first time he hit the top ten rankings. And again when he was number one.
How he took his dad out to lunch, wiping his palms on his pants like he did when he was nervous to ask his dad how he asked Mitsuki to marry him. He smiles, tears slip past anyway as he stares at his broad shouldered son adding one final comment that makes Katsuki's throat close up in the best way.
"I can't wait to watch them grow up to be as great as their parents and more."
#katsuki fluff#bakugou fluff#kitten writes bakugou 🖤🐈⬛ 🖋️#father bakugou#fathers day bakugou 🖤🐈⬛#kitten soft hours#bakugou soft hours#just a silly thought
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oooh steddie from this list with the quote:
"his dark eyes took me in, and i wondered what they would look like if he fell in love."
🖤🖤🖤
quick little blurb!! thanks for sending a prompt aud <3
send me a prompt from here!
****
"You looked so different."
The picture is grainy and torn at the edges. Some of the faces are blacked out with Sharpie. Eddie is in the center of the photo and only reaches his Uncle Wayne's shoulder. His hair is no more than an inch long.
Steve looks at Eddie now, at the Eddie he's always known. Eddie chews on a cuticle, one leg tucked under his butt.
"Yeah," he says, finger in his mouth. "My hair was buzzed. I hated it."
Steve glances back at the picture. "How old were you?"
"Maybe thirteen? It was right before I moved here with Pops. He got me a guitar that summer and said I could grow my hair 'long as I wanted."
"I'm glad you grew your hair," Steve says.
Eddie smiles lopsidedly around his finger. "Yeah, me too."
"Do you have any more pictures?"
Steve loves pictures. He loves families who keep their memories, good and bad. His house has one giant family portrait hanging above the fireplace. No other pictures exist outside of Steve's room.
"You wanna see more pictures of my skinny ass?" Eddie asks.
"Well, yeah. I want to get to know you."
Eddie blinks.
"You do know me."
"Yeah," Steve agrees. "But I want to know all of you. Who you were and who you will be."
"Shit. That's profound, Harrington."
Steve waves him off, but he's pleased. He's never been good with words or writing or poetry. And Eddie thinks he's profound.
"I'm full of surprises."
"You sure are. Hell, I—"
Ring!
Eddie grunts and drags himself off the bed.
"Probably Pops checking in. He's nervous since I came home. There's pictures and shit in the other drawers. Good luck finding them."
Steve doesn't dwell on the fact that Eddie trusts him to be alone in his room. They aren't even supposed to be here, really. They'd meant to take a drive. Anywhere. Just drive to get out. It had become a regular thing.
But then Steve had stopped to get breakfast for both of them: egg sandwiches from the diner. And then Eddie had invited him in. And they'd sat and ate their sandwiches on opposite sides of the Munsons' rickety kitchen table, with a dozen scratches on the top and a carving in the side that says fuck Reagan!
Eddie had said they'd gotten the table at a yard sale. Steve's not so sure that that removes all possibility that the carving was Eddie's doing.
And then they'd ended up in Eddie's new room. Steve hadn't seen much of Eddie's old room, but he can say with confidence that both feel like Eddie. Both feel like a place Steve could make a home in, if Eddie let him.
They're no longer sick with adrenaline, trying to stop the end of the world. Now, Steve can take his time getting to know Eddie. Because he does want to get to know him. He wants everything Eddie will give him. And Eddie doesn't have to feel the same—Steve doesn't expect him to. But Steve doesn't mind having Eddie like this: in breakfast at his table and photos in his drawers. He'll take anything, if only Eddie will take him too.
Steve finds another photo buried deep in the second desk drawer. Eddie is at the beach with his Uncle Wayne—his Pops—and he's holding a starfish with two hands. He's a little older, hair down to his chin. Wayne has a proud arm around Eddie's shoulders, which are now closer to his own.
Steve wonders who took the picture. If this stranger felt their love like Steve does now. If they ached for a scrap of family too.
He sets the photo on the desk and keeps digging through a concerning amount of unfinished homework assignments. He digs, and some papers fall to the floor, and Steve goes to pick them up and—
He finds a notebook.
Steve picks it up. He shouldn't snoop. He's been allowed in somebody else's space for the first time in so long, and he's not going to ruin it by being a creep.
But it's just one of those school-grade notebooks with the curly wire spine and the three-hole punched paper.
So Steve expects to find doodles. Something about DnD, maybe. Or school. Steve can't seriously picture Eddie filling up notebooks with notes. Not that he'd blame him. Most of Steve's own school notebooks are wholly empty and gathering dust.
Steve opens to the middle of the book. He skims the pages. It's not notes.
I don't think he's ever looked at me, the first line reads. I don't expect him to. I should consider it a fucking blessing he doesn't.
I look at him, though. All the time. I shouldn't do it. I'll make myself sick doing it.
He might be different than the thorns he surrounds himself with. He could be different. He could be a rose I can look at and not touch.
Maybe he'll look at me again, like he did today. He did look at me, I swear it. Do you believe me? He looked at me with those big, deer eyes. Don't tell anyone. He's so pr—
Pretty is scribbled out a thousand times. Steve has to squint to make it out.
He's cool, the line amends. Not cool like he's popular and rich and chicks are all over him, but cool like I wish he'd look at me again. Tomorrow. Next week. All the time. Whenever.
There's a drawing of a crown and a sword underneath. Steve's pulse quickens. Then the entry continues.
His dark eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like if he fell in love.
In the margins next to the line, it says, song insp. Change him to her before showing the guys.
The entry ends there. With shaky fingers, Steve turns to the next page, which is blank. He turns to the next.
He didn't look at me again, the first line reads.
"Where did you get that?"
Steve drops the book like it's aflame. Eddie stands in the doorway, dark eyes piercing. They take Steve in.
And I wonder what they would look like if he fell in love, Steve finishes in his head.
"Eddie—"
"You read it." There's no question.
"Not a lot! I only read a page. It—it's nice, seriously, you're a great writer. It's like poetry. Or like–like love letters."
Eddie flinches. Steve keeps talking.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know it was, like, a journal or something. I—I would never invade your privacy like that, man. I won't look through your stuff again, I promise."
Steve stops because Eddie's stuck in a squint, completely silent. Steve's used to that look. It's the same look Dustin gives him at least once a day. His parents too. And all the teachers in school. A classic what the hell are you talking about look.
Steve never knows how to answer. He waits for Eddie to ask anyway.
"Aren't you mad?" Eddie finally says.
"Um." Steve rewinds through the conversation. It takes him time to do that, sift through exchanges and try to figure out what people mean. People get angry when he asks too many questions. It's up to him to decode.
But... Eddie won't get mad. Eddie's never gotten frustrated before when Steve has to ask what he means, tell him he doesn't understand. And while Eddie looks like he's five seconds away from diving out the window, maybe Steve is still allowed to ask questions.
"Why... why would I be mad?" Steve asks.
Eddie gestures to the notebook on the floor. "Because I basically confessed my love for you through my shitty high school poetry."
"Oh." Steve looks at the notebook. "I don't think it was shitty. I liked it."
Eddie's eyes widen. "Come again?"
"I mean, I'm really flattered. No one's ever written poetry about me."
Eddie turns pink. "Steve, I feel like you're focusing on the wrong thing here."
"I am?"
"Well, I'm a guy. And I waxed on about how pretty you are, as a guy. So..."
Oh.
"I'm not straight," Steve says.
"Yeah, I'm putting that together."
"Do you not feel that way any more? I guess this is from a few years ago."
Steve tries not to deflate. It's silly to be disappointed. Three minutes ago, he hadn't even thought Eddie was a door to open.
"Oh, no, no," Eddie says, rocking on his feet. "Nope. I am, ah, still quite taken by your swoopy hair and mother hen tendencies."
He's still at the doorway, squished and stiff. Ready to run. And that just won't do. Not when he's just told Steve he's taken by him. Not when he wrote poetry about him like Steve's worth writing anything about.
Steve's no poet, but he's a lover. He'll show Eddie he'll keep this part of him safe. That he knows him and won't turn away.
Slowly, Steve closes the distance. He can feel Eddie's breath on his cheek.
"Swoopy, huh?"
Eddie fidgets with the chain on his jeans. He turns his head slightly, rolling his eyes.
"Yes, Steve. You have great, big hair. Don't get a great, big head to match."
Steve's smile is gentle. He eases a hand onto Eddie's cheek. Eddie freezes, but he doesn't pull away.
"Hey, Eddie?"
"Uh-huh?"
"In case you were wondering—" Steve leans in, lips an inch from Eddie's, voice low and sweet, "—this is what my eyes look like when I'm in love."
Eddie's breath hitches.
"Fuck me, that was smooth," he murmurs.
Steve kisses him.
#steddie#steddie fanfiction#steve x eddie#steve harrington x eddie munson#steddie fic#steddie blurb#stranger things fanfiction#stranger things#blurb#inbox#audra tag ☀️
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Sirius + Ftm! twin!Reader
Content: reader is sirius’s twin, Trans Reader, Cursing, self hatred, dead naming (not intentional)
Y/N
The feeling of the skirt against my legs makes my skin crawl. why is it so short? why is it so itchy? why can’t i wear pants instead? i hate it. the fabric is slightly grainy and rubs against my legs until they’re over stimulated and feel almost numb. i hate it. i can feel the air on my legs, the other boys in my class like to stare. i. hate. it.
as i’m walking to my next class i see sirius
“D/n!” Fuck. that’s not my name. it doesn’t feel right. i cant do this right now it’s too much. i can feel everything touching my legs and arms and my chest
��d/n hey!” stop talking. please
“hi….um…i’m going to my dorm”
“you can come to ours! i think the other girls are coming too. we’re gonna plan our next prank and-“ i cut him off before he can say anything else.
“sirius i need to go to my dorm. plus a slytherin in the grifindor common room doesn’t seem like a good idea. plus i’m tired.” sirius looks saddened for a minute. shit did i snap at him? i didn’t mean to
“sorry.” i quickly mumble so he can at least know i feel bad. i walk away before any more words can be said, heading for the slytherin common room.
~~~~~~~~~
i wake up in a cold sweat. what time is it? when did i fall asleep? it’s dark out. i just took a nap right? i look at a near by clock and see it’s around 7pm.
fuck i missed dinner. sirius definitely noticed. why did no one wake me up?
i sit up and head out towards the grifindor areas. when i get there i knock on the painting and wait for someone to let me in.
a short girl with brown hair and blue eyes opens the door.
“uh hi. can i come in? im looking for sirius.” she looks down at my robes and then back up to my face. she thinks i’m like them.
“yeah just… don’t touch anything that’s not yours.”
“excuse me?” The girl flinches a bit at my quick words and gives me enough room to squeeze into the room nervously. i’m not that scary am i?
she doesn’t say anything and just looks down. i go upstairs quickly and find the marauders room. it’s a silly name for them.
knocking on the door i mumble, “sirius? it’s me. its-“ i pause. i dont want to say it. i don’t even want to hear it. the door opens and sirius is standing there.
“you weren’t at dinner. i was worried you left or something.”
“i know i’m sorry i just took a nap. do you have any food? i’m starving.” i look down a little. this is a boys dorm. with boys in it. i’m supposed to be in a dorm like this. why can’t i just be normal?
“yeah! yeah come in.”
i look around. ive never been in here before. how have i not been in here before? remus, james, and peter are in here too. they’re all wearing pants. not skirts. i want to be like them. i want to look like them.
“sirius.” i start. what am i doing? “can borrow some pants?” what? what?! what am i saying why did i say that?!
“huh? what do the girls not get any? well that’s uncomfortable.”
“i’m not-“ i shout before i stop myself and realize that i shouldn’t say that. i can’t say it.
“hm? what?” james asks, slightly on edge because of my shout.
“shit…i just…i’m not….a girl…” i mumble the last part. hoping they won’t hear it. fuck, praying even. i shouldn’t have said anything. i shouldn’t have come here i shouldn’t have-
“you’re not a girl?” sirius asks gently. this is a trick isn’t it. it’s something that mom did when she wanted us to hurt the most. when she wanted us to feel weak.
“sirius i-“
“what’s your name?”
“what?” my name?
“what is your name?” he asks, slowing down a little.
“…d/n”
“no. your name. not what ever mom gave you.” oh. a warm tingling feeling bubbles into my stomach. i feel nice.
“…y/n” ive never said it outloud before. it felt like a pin in my stomach got pulled out for the first time ever.
“here’s some pants y/n.” he says with a smile. i take the pants and go to the bathroom quickly. “they’re definitely not going to fit you though so i have a belt for you too.”
putting on the pants felt like taking the first bite of food after being hungry for hours. warm, satisfying, and right.
this is right. i feel right. i walk out of the bathroom with a smile.
“look at you!” remus grins. “you look great!” his words are so genuine and calming.
“thank you.” i mumble, smiling and playing with my shirt.
“now what are we going to do about that hair hm?” oh my hair. it’s definitely making me more feminine. it’s too long and my bangs have grown out.
“are we gonna cut it?” i look up at him as he smirks.
“oh yeah.”
~~~~
when i look at myself in the mirror for the first time with short hair, i’m speechless.
“did i mess it up? what’s wrong?” sirius asks, a worried look on his face.
“i look like reg and you.”
“is that a bad thing?”
“absolutely…..” he frowns. “not! i love it! it’s- i- oh my god.” all i can do is hug him.
“i’m glad you do! i worked hard on it!”
“mothers gonna hate it.” i mumble. l
“oh well. it’s your hair she can cry about it for all i care.”
we’re quiet for a while. not wanting anything to ruin the moment.
“sirius?”
“yeah?”
“thank you.”
“of course y/n.”
——
a/n
this is probably really bad sorry!! please request<3
#harry potter#sirius x reader#sirius black#black!reader#sirius black x sibling reader#sirius x sibling reader#ftm reader#ftm#x reader
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could you make a detailed tutorial on how you do your big gifs, specifically the hotd ones? i struggle a lot with coloring cause everything is so grainy and dark. i have every episode in 1080p but the quality just doesn't seem to be that good once it's giffed
hi anon!
i have a comprehensive tutorial of sorts in the works, but i have, uh, absolutely no idea when it will be done. that said, i do have some tips/example psds i'm happy to share right now ✨
basic tips
to start off: my giffing process is the same no matter the size of the gifs. i use the process outlined in tay's incredible tutorial, so just follow that if you want to do exactly what i'm doing
always gif from 1080p or higher (i’m using 1080p here)
use the "load files into stack" method (see tutorial above) instead of "import video frames to layers"; this will give you much clearer, crisper gifs
crop once and do not attempt to resize once you have cropped; resizing/recropping will introduce a lot of fuzz
coloring tips
some caveats! coloring is hard, yo, and there are a million different way to go about it. the best (and least immediately helpful) advice i can give you is honestly to just screw around and figure out exactly what each adjustment option does—curves, exposure, levels, channel mixer, etc.—and start piecing together your own style
when it comes to "grainy" gifs, there are gifs with film grain and gifs that are noisy/fuzzy. hq footage will have film grain, and lightening aggressively tends to highlight that. if you're worried about noisy or fuzzy gifs, "files into stack" and cropping only once should help minimize those issues
also, hbo hates gifmakers. got and hotd are both straight up nightmares to color, so if you feel like you're struggling, just know that everyone is struggling :/
lighten first: i usually try one or two curves layers first to see if i like what the rgb "auto" option gives me. if i don't, i move on to exposure and adjust using that tool
darken the blacks: it sounds counterintuitive, but as you lighten the scene, you need to make sure you're not washing it out as well. darken blacks using selective color or increase contrast using levels (or both)
adjust colors: hotd is hideously yellow a lot of the time, so channel mixer is your friend here. i typically increase the green slider in the blue output channel and then fine tune by decreasing yellows in selective color. if i'm still struggling, i'll go to hue/saturation and adjust the yellows there
smooth artifacts: artifacts are blocky sections that don't match the coloring on the rest of the gif. do your best to correct them by adjusting in selective color or by cheating and applying a black and white gradient map over the gif— set the blend mode to color and reduce the opacity to around 10-20% to smooth out some of the artifacts
duplicate + blur: if you're really struggling with excessive fuzziness/artifacts, you can duplicate your base gif directly on top of the original, add gaussian blur at 3.5, and set the opacity to somewhere between 10-25% to smooth out the mess. be aware that this will increase your overall file size
adjust export settings: i use "diffusion" exclusively, but that's a personal preference. some people think "pattern" looks cleaner, and sometimes it can help reduce noise
and finally, here's a selection of psds i've used for hotd scenes:
psd #1
psd #2
psd #3
psd #4
there you go! these psds should give you a pretty good look at how i color, but feel free to send me another ask if you any more questions or want tips on coloring a particular scene!
good luck!
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Hi!! Just I just finished my first full rewatch of SPN season 1 and I have thoughts. Mostly just observations, little things I noticed. I’m not a media studies analyst nor an industry professional, so my ideas and opinions are just that. OPINIONS. We can discuss and debate them, but my fellow koolaid-drinking fan-girlies let’s be real with each other. We’re all freaks for loving/obsessing over this show so no hate, please.
In the name of transparency yes I am a Wincestie. Wincest was my first ever ship. EVER. And while that will inevitably color my interpretation of things, it’s not my primary lense or point of interest for this rewatch. I just wanted to rewatch the show again and see how I felt about it. However, since Wincest is a part of my enjoyment of/experience with the show, I will be mentioning it and discussing it so NO HATE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Anyway, a little context before we begin my probably long winded and unnecessary/unrequested commentary. I am an OG fangirl. I started watching the show when it first aired. Then after season 5, I dropped off and took a /long/ hiatus. I caught up after the fact watching DVDs of the later seasons that my brother had, so I stayed mostly up to date for a while before truly falling off the bandwagon sometime around Season 8 or 9. As the show wrapped up I popped back into watching it for old times sake and to see how it would all finish. So I got season 15 directly from the source, the backstory leading up to that I got from my brother giving me the highlights and then me dipping my toes in the streaming of those later seasons. An episode here or there, only the most notable/highest rated ones of their respective seasons and honestly that’s how I typically “rewatch” shows. Just the hits, no filler.
This rewatch, the one I’m documenting here and now at the end of this the year of our lord 2023, is my first ever true rewatch of the show. Episode per episode, no skipping and no fast forwarding. Here’s my observations:
The rainy, grainy aesthetic. Yes. Everyone who talks about the early seasons mentions it, but the wet, grayed out atmosphere and editing of the show really do lend a realness and grittiness to the show that adds something to the overall basic-ness of the storytelling.
The episodes move fast! This is partly due to the editing of course, but the show really did have a momentum, a keep-things-moving attitude in season 1 that took me by surprise at first. I had forgotten how streamlined and lean the show was then, following that Monster of the Week formula so tightly.
Adding to my previous point, I had forgotten after all these years how little explicit worldbuilding there really was then. Things weren’t explained. There were no origins for the monsters other than it’s there and needs to be stopped from killing people. No overarching intricate lore to bind it all together which left a lot of room for us fangirls in those days to wonder and question and come up with our own theories. There wasn’t much exposition stuffed in to explain how and why. It was left to our collective imaginations. (Until of course it wasn’t, but that’s just the nature of the beast as a show goes on and things like continuity and lore start to matter more.)
To that end I had also forgotten how ignorant the boys were in the beginning. These babies knew nothing! They were going off half cocked on little more than whatever they could decipher from their father’s scrapyard style of collage journalism and random, unsubstantiated Internet forums/posts. Rumors, legends, folk tales, and hearsay. Thats it. They didn’t even know that “the THING that killed Mom” was a demon until the latter half of the season! I had totally forgotten just how innocent and naive and gung-ho these kiddies were.
As a Tumblrina I of course see the same gif sets and edits as the rest of us Wincesties. And while some of those looks and line readings have been taken out of context or at least shifted from the actual context of the specific scenes themselves…yeah these brothers do be /like that/. It’s all subtextual so far and the “normalcy” of their relationship at this point can be debated, but the seeds of the unhinged, deranged, codependent behavior are definitely there. Some of those looks you see in the gifs really are just these two brothers eye-fucking/pining/being deeply fond of each other. So, yeah, I see it. The shipping of them didn’t start for me until seasons later during the initial run of the show, but I can see the seeds being planted. The subtextual hand sowing the fields…
Most of the episodes hold up pretty well in my opinion. At least in terms of rewatchability. Insert requisite mention of “Bugs” here. Which I contend is actually an alright episode as far as these things go at least until that third act. Yeeesh. It strains credulity, which is an embarrassing thing considering the genre.
In general, YES, there is a lot of early 2000s cringe (and lack of diversity/marginalized representation) but overall it’s manageable for me. I grew up in that era and I’m white, so it’s not as hard on me as it is for some. There were more than a few dated references but that’s to be expected in a show that ran so long, so long ago. (We’re aging y’all! I don’t like it, and nobody wants to talk about it, but we’re all aging and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. I started this show as a literal teenager and now I’m in my 30s and I’m still talking about it. Big Yikes. Major cringe. But 🤷🏻♀️ oh well. I’m in it for the long haul I guess. I escaped for a while, the show not the fandom, and now I’m back in the show again. Back on my bullshit. Is anyone surprised?)
Shoutout to so many wonderful women characters that all deserved better/more: Loretta Devine/Missouri in “Home”, you should’ve been recurring (and not killed off in later seasons but that’s besides the point); Cassie from “Route 666” you basically got erased from canon, never to be mentioned again despite being Dean’s canonical first love, and ultimately you were supplanted by Lisa as Dean’s romance stand-in (you were cooler than a one-off and definitely didn’t deserve to be completely forgotten by the show itself); the two surviving vampires from “Dead Man’s Blood” y’all should’ve been brought back sooner, but hey at least one of you got to kill Dean in the end, so WHOO-HOO🎉🎉🎉! For how little screen time y’all all got you kept it real and made the show better. We didn’t deserve you. (In this same vein hey Sarah from “Provenance” I see you girl. You also shouldn’t have been fridged later on for the ManPain™️ of it all. But hey at least the show was consistent in its bullshit, right?)
Moving on, *insert obligatory comment on the use of actors from other supernatural shows here*. I see you actress that played Christie on Charmed in that last season. I see you Amy Acker and Darla from Angel. I see you Aunt Zelda from the original Sabrina show. It was great seeing y’all pop up. Familiar faces and all that…I look forward to seeing the rest of your compatriots later on.
Going back to worldbuilding for a bit, can I just say how much I enjoy it when the Random Person Who Knew John trope comes up? It tickles me. Like the airplane guy in “Phantom Traveler”. Dude really did just hang on to John’s phone number for however long and dial him up again when things got weird. I missed that aspect of the show in later seasons. The randomness of the people and the tangential connection to the brothers really played into the “there’s a hidden supernatural world within/beside our own” trope. And it helped make the show feel more true to its working class roots. Showing up to help random strangers because they knew your daddy/met him once made it feel like there was a community support network and the brothers were fulfilling a role/a service as part of that network of poor/disenfranchised/working class people rather than being big heroes on a journey.
In other news “Hell House” was a truly forgettable episode. I had no recollection of it whatsoever until those Ghostfacer guys popped up and then I was like oh yeah, they’re a thing. I never cared about them tbh. Their episodes and antics always annoyed me during the show’s run. Still true today. “Hell House” was a struggle to get through and I very nearly skipped it/fast forwarded through it, but I bravely carried on. (Aren’t you proud of me?) Something about the lack of history for the quote unquote “monster” of the week really didn’t work for me. I like there being some amount of history in the mix no matter how distorted or fabricated or mishandled it may be. Legacies are never clean cut or simple. And having a random entity somehow exist because people online believe in it? A little too modern horror for my tastes. I’m not a Black Mirror girlie. I’m a Gothic horror girl. And honestly I’m not much of a horror girl, so I guess I’m actually here purely for the Gothic-ness of it all.
Also along the lines of something being completely erased from my memory: Bobby had a dog?! Poor little guy had a literal nanosecond of screen time so it makes sense that such a small detail escaped me, but still…you were a good junkyard dog (Rutherford? Was that his name? It was something like that . Anyways, RIP big guy. We hardly knew ye…)
And can I just say? Bobby what the hell were you wearing in your debut episode?! A t-shirt and vest?! Cover those arms, baby! You look like a teen going fishing down at the crick (aka the creek for those unfamiliar with country phrasing.) Plus, I chuckled a little at the characterization of you in that first appearance. You were just some dude. A hunter yes but seemingly retired(?) or at least not the supposed always prepared/always knowledgeable badass you later would be retconned to be. At one point when Meg burst into your house, Sam got in front of you, shielding you like you were a civilian/damsel in distress rather than treating you like a tough, gruff, father figure worthy of respect and unquestionably capable of taking care of yourself. You hadn’t achieved John status yet I guess.
Which brings me to John. It really do be like that post that was floating around said: you weren’t missing, dude. You were just playing keep-away with your boys for like over half the season. Miscommunication trope, much? More like ZERO communication trope. You really just ditched your kids and left them to worry about you without so much as a heads up, huh? You don’t deserve the amount of hate you get as a character from some fans and yes you did love your boys, but goddamn are you a negligent, uncommunicative parent. I totally understand Sam’s frustration with you. I’d be annoyed too. If you gotta dip, you gotta dip, but at least have the decency to let your kids know.
As a final aside, “Dead Man’s Blood” is a sexy episode. It definitely had that dirty, trashy vampire vibe thing going on and /unsurprisingly/ that works for me. I too would want revenge if some guys in flannel killed my Luther. He was hot and loved his girl. You gotta love it. And just yo be clear yes you could attack me and tie me up and make me watch my boyfriend die then watch you have sex with your vampire wife and seduce me into drinking your blood and becoming one of you any day. That slutty, murder-y biker gang, white trash vamp aesthetic really does things to me. OMG! I’m ashamed, but unapologetic. The truth is the truth. RIP vamp Daddy Luther! You were a hottie.
Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. These were just my most salient thoughts after finishing the season a few hours ago. It wasn’t a binge watch because I have taken breaks between chunks of episodes, but I really didn’t have that much to add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said and discussed at length. I just wanted to get some thoughts down to mark the occasion. I very rarely do genuine, complete rewatches of my favorite shows. I usually just hopscotch around revisiting my faves, getting a taste of their respective seasons without taking in the full experience. I didn’t do that this time.
In general, I enjoyed myself. I can see why I watched the show as a teen (though I wouldn’t say I became a fangirl of it until later into that OG Kripke five season run). It had the supernatural elements that I loved and still do, alongside other shows I watched then (Buffy, Angel, Charmed) plus the eye candy of the two lead boys who were absolutely my type: big, and tall, and pretty, and total white trash. With those mop-headed bangs and dick-sucking lips. Pretty is pretty. And I’m a sucker for it, but at least I’m aware of my bias. It’s a little scary how forgiving I can be when I think a guy is hot.
Farewell fellow freaks! Until next time I guess.
Carry on.
#supernatural sunday#supernatural rewatch#supernatural season 1#spn rewatch#spn season 1#fangirl nonsense#long post#personal post
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so recently, my very first pc died. 14 years of service! the hard disk finally gave out.
long post incoming as i vent a little about childhood and feelings.
i found out when i booted it up to look for some old pics and videos and the computer was like 'hey my hard disk is seconds from exploding, please back up your shit and turn me off' so i spent a painstaking 2 hours moving files to my external hard drive for backup.
i took a lot with me. drawings, pictures, videos i don't remember taking - some of them speedpaints that were never sped up, let's plays that were never uploaded, unfinished choppy 'animations', and even videos of me and my childhood friends playing together. there's a wedding between two bunny figurines officiated by a friend i don't speak to in a spot of our backyard that doesn't look that way anymore.
i thought i would hate to see my younger self again. i thought, surely dysphoria will make this a miserable experience, that seeing that plucky girl with long brown hair ramble on and on about my little pony would dredge up the ever boiling feeling of inadequacy. that seeing pictures of the kids i spent 6 school years with would remind me of how i always felt like everyone hated me.
but for some reason it wasn't like that.
it hit me as i watched grainy 10 minute videos i took on my 3ds at my cousin's birthday party. and when i held up my first real digital camera to record myself playing minecraft with one hand.
reliving these memories didn't feel as bad as i thought it would. it was more like holding a beloved pet as she passed away.
how i wanted to stroke her fur and cradle her close to my chest and tell her that i never hated her, i hated the way things were for her. i despise that she had to suffer with ailments both mental and physical that were never going to leave and still haven't to this day. i saw how i went from excited for life and everyday things (taking pictures of the pigeons in my yard and drawing faces on banana peels in sharpie) to reclusive, shy, internalizing everything. flinching at the slightest movement.
i feel sorry for her, and at the same time i'm so proud of her. she fought as hard as she could to make it through. she's gone now - i will never be her again. and i got to watch her slip away in photographs. but i still don't feel that sad. she wanted SO BADLY to grow up and have her own authority, publish her own books, adopt 15 dogs. now i'm a grown man with nothing to my name, barely scraping by. i find myself wishing that my biggest problem was once again that the ferris wheel looked too high up for my liking.
there's people in those videos who i haven't spoken to in years. including my ex girlfriend, who started out as my best friend, and is now practically a stranger to me. there's people in those photos who are dead now. some of them recently, others not so much. i never felt grief when they passed, not because i didn't care but because i just struggle to process grief. and yet i was sitting on the floor hunched over a usb keyboard, grieving 10 year old me.
i want to go back. i don't want to go back. i'd rather die than go back but i'd give my life to go back even for one day. just to watch - like a ghost - through the sliding glass door as i played pretend with my cousins and set up an agility course for our very much un-agile dog.
it's so weird. i'm so conflicted. i just needed a place to get my thoughts out really. i'm okay. speaking from the heart and not from the brain, that's all.
#long post#sorry. got a lot on my mind#vent#i guess? more or less a brain dump#something about being trans really amplified the 'this person is dead' feeling. it was like looking at crime scene photos
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Godzilla Series Rewatch
#6 Godzilla vs Monster Zero
or Invasion of the Astro Monster
etc
I think I might approach this one a little differently than the others. I like the monster action in this movie well enough, what there is of it. I'm a little torn on Godzilla's celebratory dance after chasing off Ghidorah in the rigged first round – sometimes I can roll with it, other times it feels just a little too silly. I do however always like Godzilla's overly flashy footwork when fighting Ghidorah at the end of the movie, and the finishing move where Rodan just grabs Godzilla to pull off a combo-attack that was almost certainly not consented to is fun.
Some of the comedy actually works, like when Planet X's controller is doing his monologue, turns around and finds the astronaut guys gone. There's also some unintentional humor, I like the voice over on old grainy stock photos of riots explaining how crazy things got without really showing much and then the office building or whatever in the scene immediately after is just randomly and lightly damaged to try and convince the audience that the world went nuts after Planet X sent its magnetic tape audio recording demanding surrender. The effects can be just funny, I have bad vision and from Gojira to Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster I haven't seen the wires without looking for them and getting lucky, in this movie I catch them quite often without looking for them. The alien ships are so simple and dorky looking it's funny.
I feel relatively confident calling this one the silliest of all Godzilla alien invasion movies, and that's not something to say lightly. It seems to be without much explanation but as soon as the heroes work out their plan to counter-attack the aliens their computers start going crazy prompting them to not let the heroes scheme and move the invasion ahead. I don't get how they knew, but it's sort of fun, “Heroes are up to something.” “Not on my watch!”
Now on to cons: I kind of hate this movie as a direct follow up to Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. It cheapens Ghidorah immediately, turning him into a tool right away and it discounts Mothra's contribution in that fight, saying that she was never needed to repel Ghidorah. It's probably not an extreme claim to make given that the larval stage is not really that impressive, but it still feels like a slight.
Planet X is so bad at being sneaky it veers between being annoying and kind of funny, the characters repeatedly comment that they seem off – at least in English, I goofed up the menu options with this movie. Showing up to grab Godzilla and Rodan before Earth can give an answer for starters, and then there's still outrage when the alien “miracle cure” is just orders to accept that Planet X is taking over.It's kind of weird that the aliens are apparently powerful enough to simply abduct Godzilla and Rodan without much incident and control King Ghidorah but still treat them as major weapons. Freeing the monsters is even a priority to stop the alien invasion, even though that simple abduction makes it seem like the aliens don't have anything to fear from a kaiju attack. Which is also kind of annoying because the monsters are supposed to be the stars of these films, not just cameos with little relevance. Yeah, far from the only Godzilla movie to be susceptible to this line of criticism. I don't really get why they felt the need to deceive the human characters for so long, but it is what it is.
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Bird Is the Word
Synopsis: A series of drunk texts leads to one of the best and worst things that has ever happened to you. Or, Han Jisung is never going to let you forget the time you forgot the word ‘bird.’ College AU. Not a text fic but does include some texts.
Warning: alcohol, a lot of bird puns
Word Count: 8.1k
Pairing: fem!reader x Han Jisung
2:23 AM [Me]: sOS SOS SOS SOSOSOS
2:23 AM [Me]: I NEED HELPPPP
2:23 AM [Jisung Bio]: You okay??
2:23 AM [Me]: YOU SMART HELPPPPP
2:24 AM [Jisung Bio]: Do you want me to call the police??
2:24 AM [Me]: WHAT ARE THE FLUFFY ANIMALS THAT GO FLAP CALLED
2:24 AM [Jisung Bio]: Is this a code word?
2:24 AM [Me]: THEY GO FLAP AND EAT SEEDS
2:24 AM [Jisung Bio]: Do you mean birds?
2:24 AM [Jisung Bio]: Are you drunk?
2:25 AM [Me]: [blurry_photo_of_your_window.jpg]
2:25 AM [Me]: HERE LOOK
2:25 AM [Me]: YES BIRDS
2:25 AM [Me]: THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH
2:25 AM [Me]: LOVE YOUUUUU
In your defense, you were drunk. And when you are drunk, your critical thinking skills disappear and are replaced by pure, uninhibited stupidity. It’s like some twisted Jekyll and Hyde situation, but only when you drink, you transform into this other version of yourself instead of suppressing it.
You mostly remember the things you have done and said while under the influence. The most embarrassing ones tend to be fuzzy. If it weren’t for the grainy phone video taken by Seungmin and your own voice cheerfully declaring that you had an idea, you wouldn’t have realized that you were the idiot who tried to make a chalk mural at the four-way intersection in the middle of the night. You didn’t even have chalk, but that didn’t stop you from drawing on the asphalt with a broken pen you found on the sidewalk.
Good thing Seungmin had the foresight to drag you back to the crosswalk before a car could come speeding by.
However, that legendary act of idiocy doesn’t even compare to this new one. Forget the fact that you could have died.
Your biology class just went over survival of the fittest using Darwin’s finches as an example. How in the world did you forget about the word ‘bird?’ Why did you think it was a good idea to ask the cute guy in your bio study group about “THE FLUFFY ANIMALS THAT GO FLAP?” And why, why, why did you insist on telling him that you loved him? The ‘THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH’ was already enough.
Jisung is never going to let you live this down.
It’s fine. You’re fine. It’s not like you spent the entire Sunday morning knocking back glasses of water and wishing it was vodka instead. It’s not like you drafted about five different apology messages and deleted them all. It’s not like you have to see him in class tomorrow.
Really, you’re fine.
You go out of your way to make yourself as inconspicuous as possible, which probably means you are very conspicuous. Do normal people not wear hoodies and sweatpants to class now, or are you just overthinking everything? The two people in the row in front of you are wearing jeans, and the girl heading down your row has a polka-dotted dress on. A secondary glance at the girl tells you that it’s another member of your study group. Speaking of the study group, maybe you should find another one. Preferably one without Jisung in it.
“Morning,” Lia says as she takes the seat beside you. She sets down her purple water bottle on the floor with a light clink. “How was your weekend?”
Terrible, but you say, “It was fine. I finished up the readings and did some notes. How about you?”
“Those readings took me forever!” she groans. “I was trying to finish everything on Saturday, so I could go out on Sunday. Which I did manage to do, so it all worked out. I got a new dress!” She plucks at the bodice of her dress, and you finally take a closer look at the pattern.
They’re not polka dots. They’re freaking birds — swoopy doves with outstretched wings. Or at least you think they’re doves. Your lack of bird knowledge speaks for itself.
“It’s pretty,” you hollowly say. The universe seems determined to remind you of your texts. Lia’s face falters, and you realize your disdain came across as you lying. “No, it’s not like that! Just… bad experiences with birds. You look really nice in this.”
She brightens up. “Oh, thanks! What do you mean by ‘bad experiences?’ What happened?”
“Good morning, birdbrain!”
“That happened.”
Looking far too happy for a Monday morning, Jisung takes the other seat beside you. He has a cup of coffee stacked high with whipped cream and chocolate drizzle, and you wonder if his extreme cheerfulness is from the caffeine or from your impending public humiliation. Why did you have to pick this guy to have a crush on? Sure, he’s cute and smart and sometimes nice, but there are plenty of people who have those traits without his witticism.
Lia looks at you with more amusement than concern. “So what happened?”
You tell her about what really happened during the weekend, and Jisung laughs all the while, reenacting his facial expression when he received your first frantic SOS message. Meanwhile, you sink lower and lower into your chair, ignoring your tailbone’s cries of pain as you slide further down the thin cushion.
“You can’t hide forever,” Jisung remarks as he looks at your slumping form. “C’mon, it wasn’t that bad. And you were drunk anyway.”
Yeah, you were, but the whole thing is doubly embarrassing because of how much you want him to like you. The overenthusiastic, all-caps messages are normal whenever you text while drunk, but ‘I love yous’ and the even rarer ‘I LOVE YOUUUU’ are few and far between. Only six people excluding Jisung have received them: your parents, your best friend, and your statistics group project members because you accidentally sent the message to the wrong chat.
On the bright side, seven is a lucky number. It means absolutely nothing in this case, and it’s hardly relevant to how you’re feeling, but everyone copes differently. Yours just happens to be clinging onto any silver lining available for solace.
“Anyway,” Lia cuts in, saving you from replying, “you’re here early, Jisung.”
He shrugs and flashes her a playful smile. However, his eyes are focused on you when he says, “You know what they say: early bird gets the worm.”
You give him a pitiful attempt of a withering glare. “I hate you.”
“Okay, fine.” He tugs at the shoulder of your hoodie to motion for you to stop trying to melt into the ground and to help you up. “It’s ‘cause I knew you would be here early.”
You are calm, you are fine, you will not be flustered. He just teased you five seconds ago; you should not be this willing to forgive him under these circumstances. Nonetheless, you slide back up to a more normal sitting position and try to pretend that you are still mildly upset. His next sentences make that impossible.
“You guys want brownies? Felix was stress-baking again.”
One may call you easily swayed by food, and they would be right. Jisung lets you have a coveted corner piece, and you decide that he’s alright again. He stretches an arm in front of you to get to Lia, and you lean back to avoid bumping into him. It also gives you a clear view of his profile. Wow, is he pretty. Look at that jawline. Suddenly his eyes go wide, and his mouth splits into a familiar excited grin.
“Are those birds?”
“Yep,” Lia answers, looking over at you to check your reaction. She tries to hide her smile, but it’s clear as day. You’re not entirely sure what she’s going to say next, but you already know it’s going to involve your current least favorite animal species. “Pretty… dove-ly, don’t you think?”
At least you were right about them being doves. “I hate you both.”
Jisung laughs at her pun and holds out his palm for a high-five. “You know what they say: birds of a feather flock together.”
“I really hate you both.”
Your initial prediction that Jisung is never going to let you live this down is correct. When you meet your bio group again Thursday night to study for the upcoming quiz, Jisung brings lemon poppy seed muffins for seemingly no other reason than to tease you. His housemate is still stress-baking, and judging by the bird silhouette made of glaze, Felix is very stressed and very eager to indulge in Jisung’s ideas.
“They’re finches!” Jisung proudly announces as he sets one right in front of you. The stupid decoration on top mocks you, but the muffin looks and smells delicious.
Hyunjin, who does not know about your current plight but does know about Darwin’s finches, appreciatively coos at them. “They’ve even got different beak shapes! These are so cool. Man, Felix must hate econ right now.”
“No kidding,” you mutter as you begin peeling off the wrapper. Felix must hate you as well because one bite of this is almost enough for you to forgive Jisung again. It’s that good. How are you supposed to stay mad at Jisung when he gives you free delicious food? “Forget college, he needs to be in culinary school.”
He smirks from across the table, and it takes a lot of willpower for you to pretend you’re unphased. “What if I told you that I made these?”
“Then I would call you a liar.” He better be lying. You do not need another reason to justify your crush on him.
“And you would be right.” He slides his plastic container down to Lia, who has just arrived and is eyeballing the muffins like a predator. “But I did help him.”
“It’s really good,” you admit. You continue nibbling on it, determined to make the muffin last as long as you can. “What part did you help him out with?”
“The birds on top. Turns out drawing them with runny glaze is hard. I gave you the prettiest one, so don’t get mad about the whole bird thing. It goes with what we’re studying too.”
“Fine,” you sigh as you fold the wrapper into halves over and over again. “But only because these are amazing.”
Hyunjin leans in closer, effectively popping the intimate bubble you and Jisung were in. “What’s ‘the bird thing?’”
Fortunately, Yeji has finally arrived, which gives you the perfect excuse to stop Jisung from letting another person know of your drunk texts. You make a big production of pulling out your notebook from your backpack and rifling through your pencil bag for a pen.
“Should we get started?” you ask. Lia nods and uncaps one of her many highlighters.
“I’ll tell you later,” Jisung whispers to Hyunjin, winking at you. You could cry, melt, die. You could do a lot of things, but you opt to stick your tongue out at him. So what if you’re being childish? You can barely concentrate on the real world after that wink. To Yeji, he says, “There’s snacks, if Lia hasn’t eaten them all yet.”
“Hey!”
Hyunjin laughs at her notorious sweet tooth before turning to Yeji. “He gave Y/N the prettiest one, so there’s probably only his fails left.”
“They’re not bad!”
Lia has only had two, so there are more than enough to choose from. Yeji peers inside the container before selecting the one closest to her.
“Is this a plague doctor?” she asks as she suppresses a laugh. “It’s got a top hat.”
Jisung shakes his head and groans. “You chose the worst one on purpose. It’s one of Darwin’s finches. You would have known if you studied.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t draw.” Taking no notice of Jisung’s affronted expression, she takes out the textbook the five of you split the cost to buy. “Okay, plague doctor cupcakes out of the way, what are the four main theories of evolution?”
“They’re lemon poppy seed finch muffins,” he clarifies.
“That’s not an evolution theory,” Hyunjin cheekily replies, earning him an elbow nudge from Jisung and a laugh from everyone else.
You end up answering Yeji’s question and reward your correct answer with another muffin. Besides them being addictive, you’ll need some energy for the rest of the study session if all this talk about birds persists. You select the most plague doctor-ish one out of the box, and Jisung notices.
“Seriously?” he pouts. “I give you the best one, and this is how you repay me? I thought you said you weren’t mad about the bird thing.”
You ignore the last sentence. “What? You’re not proud of these?” you say, mock astonished as you give him a good view of the glaze on top. “They look exactly like plague doctors.”
“I hate you.”
You smile and shrug before returning back into the discussion about Lamarckism. Let him get a taste of his own medicine.
Unfortunately, as promised and as possible revenge, Jisung tells Hyunjin about ‘the bird thing,’ and Yeji overhears since she is only two chairs away. You try melting into the ground instead, but Lia holds you in place as the story continues, so you are stuck reliving the memory. You knew Jisung wouldn’t let you forget, but you didn’t account for everyone else in the group finding out and joining in on the torture.
But thanks to Jisung’s brilliant idea to bring those spectacularly decorated muffins, he doesn’t go unscathed either. It’s a mediocre consolation prize, but you’ll take it.
All around, it’s a productive study session, if a bit long, courtesy of everyone’s unrelenting shots at you and Jisung.
Your study group splits off in three separate directions once you’re all at the library entrance: Yeji back to the on-campus dorms where she’s an RA, Hyunjin and Lia to the off-campus apartments a few streets down, you and Jisung to the bus stop to your apartments on the other of campus. There’s a few people already sitting at the bench, so you and Jisung stand under the streetlight nearby. A moth intent on reaching the light source rams itself repeatedly against the glass covering, and you tiredly watch it. You yawn.
“Not much of a night owl?” he asks. With no clever reply ready, you gently shove him towards the bushes, but he only sways at your push. He throws his hands up in surrender. “Alright, I’ll stop for today.”
“I’m really sorry for sending you that,” you say. You haven’t touched the chat between you and him since the incident. “And for not apologizing earlier.”
“It’s alright. Although I almost had a heart attack when you sent me ‘SOS’ like five times.”
You grimace as you remember your frantic texts. If you think back hard enough, you remember furiously tapping at your screen, trying to get his attention as quick as possible because you really, really, really needed to know what the animal that landed on your windowsill was called. Your housemate was in the next room over. You could have asked her instead, but no, you decided that Jisung from bio was the best option. Not even the group chat, just Jisung himself.
“Sorry again,” you weakly reply.
“It really is alright. Finding bird puns is my new favorite hobby now.” He wryly smiles. “I have so many more to try on you. You’re gonna love it.”
Is that endearing or annoying? Living rent-free inside his head isn’t terrible, especially since he seems to do the same in yours. You’ll probably have to endure lots more puns from him in the future, but for now, you’ll decide that it’s endearing.
The bus arrives, and you sit in the back with him. The ride to the apartment complex is quiet; only a group of people near the front are speaking to one another in low voices. Jisung makes no attempt at continuing the conversation, and you are content to stare out into the neon lights outside the window. You can see him in the reflection on the glass. The empty container devoid of muffins sits on Jisung’s lap, his phone placed face down on the lid. If it weren’t for all the other passengers on the bus, you would be convinced that it was just you and him, enjoying each other’s company.
You’re almost sad when you reach your stop.
“Do you want me to walk you to your apartment?” he asks as you step down to the pavement. “Yours is farther down, right?”
“Isn’t your place right here?” you say. You’ve seen him walk out from this particular complex several times while waiting for the bus. That’s not stalking. “You don’t have to go out of your way. It’s just a block away.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely walking you home.”
You hesitate a bit, but Jisung is already taking small steps in the direction of your apartment. A little more time with him doesn’t sound too horrendous right now. “Okay.”
Just like the bus ride, no conversation, which suits you fine. Jisung seems more enthralled by looking into the windows of apartment residents anyway. You can’t blame him, especially when it appears that someone is having their own mini rave in their living room. Once at the doors to your building, you thank him and tell him good night.
“No problem and good luck tomorrow.” His voice is softer at night, or maybe it’s because he’s tired as well.
Your tone matches his as well. “You too. See you in class then.”
“Good night.”
A few minutes after midnight, just as you’re about to get into bed, a message from Jisung pops up. Not Jisung in the study group, just Jisung.
12:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: Hey, I know you’re not much of a night owl, so would you call yourself a morning lark?
12:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: You’re always an early bird to class
12:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: Are you emu-sed?
12:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: :D
Well, he did say he would stop for the day. It’s technically the next day. You reply with an annoyed face before burrowing yourself under your blankets. There are other things to worry about, such as your quiz in nine hours.
You dream of birds, namely finches, that night. Thanks, Jisung.
“This is why I tell you to never drink alone,” Seungmin laughs. He picks up the last slice of pizza from the pan and folds it in half like the heathen he is before taking the first bite. “Bad things always happen.”
“To be fair, Ryujin was home.”
“In a completely different room from you.”
You groan and supplement your exasperation with an extra aggressive tear on your crust. “Okay, fine. I’ve learned my lesson. The point is, he won’t stop with the bird jokes, and I’m going insane.”
Seungmin, having been collateral damage from your drunken mishaps before, is unsympathetic. He still hasn’t quite forgiven you for the time you tried to make a Molotov cocktail in his kitchen. Look, the clickbait video you watched online promised that it would be a fun and easy science experiment, and your other self decided that it was a fantastic idea. Nothing bad happened in the end though since you couldn’t find a lighter. So, Seungmin, it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
“You have a crush on this guy. Why are you upset that he’s flirting with you?”
“He’s cute until he opens his mouth and starts giving me grief about birds.” You sigh as you remember the last text he sent: a photo of the sunset from his apartment window with the caption, A bird’s eye view of the neighborhood. On one hand, you were thrilled to have received a non-homework related picture. On the other hand, bird joke.
“You would do the same.”
“I know, but it still sucks.” You wipe your fingers with a napkin and amuse yourself with spinning the empty pan as Seungmin (slowly) finishes eating. “No more Jisung talk. How was your date?”
Seungmin turns flustered, just like you knew he would. “It wasn’t a date! I’m just her photographer. This is a business arrangement, nothing else.”
“Sure, sure. Whatever you say.”
“Hey, is that Jisung over there?” he asks, nodding over your shoulder.
“I’m not that gullible,” you sigh, though you can’t say you aren’t tempted. Seungmin loves to make fun of you, and he probably wants to get back at you for teasing him about the girl he’s been spending a suspicious amount of time with.
“Gull-ible?”
“Not you too," you plead. It's already awful with one person. To deter him any further, you continue, "Anyway, back to your definitely-not-a-date date—”
“Hey, Y/N, is that you?”
Seungmin has his “I told you so” face on. After sending him a glare, which he promptly pretends not to see, you turn around, resting your forearm on the back of your chair. Jisung, holding a pan of oven-fresh pizza, smiles back at you.
“Hey,” you greet. He's wearing the same black and red sweatshirt he usually has on, but why does he look so much better in it when he's in a pizza place than in class or in the library? “How are you doing? How’s your Saturday so far?”
“I just woke up like an hour ago, so it’s been pretty good, I guess.” His eyes go to Seungmin, who is now sipping on his soda, pretending to not eavesdrop. “Is this your…”
“This is my friend, Seungmin,” you quickly answer. Other than the fact that you need to make it abundantly clear that you are available, there is no way you’re ever going to date Seungmin. Apart from the girl he claims to not be dating, he’s even more merciless when it comes to reminding you about your drunken ideas. You can’t pass the intersection without him nudging your arm. “Seungmin, this is Jisung. We have bio together.”
Seungmin nods like he hasn’t heard of Jisung before. “Hey, nice to meet you. So, do you guys learn about birds in bio?”
Jisung lights up like a Christmas tree, and you want to cover yourself with the pizza pan. Praying for the ground to swallow you up also sounds like a decent option. In the midst of debating whether hiding under the table would be too odd, you notice that Seungmin has finally finished his slice.
“We should get going,” you interrupt. You do not need Seungmin to start sharing other stupid things you’ve done. He’s about five seconds away from telling Jisung about the intersection chalk mural. “And you probably want to eat dinner.”
Jisung sees right through your act, but he lets it go. “Yeah, Felix is probably starving. See you on Monday?”
“Yeah, see you.”
You expect him to go to wherever Felix is, but he still remains behind you. With a lopsided grin, he asks, “Should I expect any quail-ity texts at 2 AM tonight?”
Seungmin laughs, Jisung laughs, and you stare at the ceiling, wondering what you did to deserve this. Surely there were other people you could have in your life besides these two jerks.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” Jisung sings as you correctly answer his question. This week’s study session consists of a game show Jisung has created, and you almost want to believe that he put in all this effort just to say that phrase. “Another point for you.”
You sigh as Yeji slides a wrapped piece of candy towards you. It’s her turn to bring snacks, and though milk chocolate the size of golf balls are great, you’re still dreaming of those wickedly delicious cake slices Jisung shared with you yesterday. Hummingbird cake, he claimed, it was called. Bananas, pineapples, and pecans, all combined together to make a sweet treat. When you cheekily asked why his housemate was so stressed all the time — you really don’t mind. Sorry, Felix — Jisung cheerfully informed you that he made the entire thing himself. After you picked up your jaw from the floor, you stammered something about it being passable. Not nearly as good as Felix’s stuff, you said, lying through your teeth. Jisung, again, saw right through it but let it slide. See? Sometimes he’s nice. However, you did not need another reason to be attracted to Han Jisung, but here you are.
“Seriously, Yeji?” you mumble as you pull apart the blue foil. “You just had to pick the brand named after a bird?” It doesn’t stop you from popping the chocolate into your mouth though.
“They were on sale!”
While you and Yeji bicker about Dove chocolate and how the universe is conspiring against you, Hyunjin answers the next question correctly. Yeji absentmindedly pushes his reward towards him.
“No chicken dinner for me?” he asks.
Jisung shakes his head. “Your question was easy. You get a pheasant instead. Or a quail. Any bird smaller than a chicken works.”
“A hummingbird then?” you suggest. You really need to stop thinking about that cake. “But I hear those aren’t that great.”
“You already ate every single crumb of that cake I gave you!” Jisung says, but there’s not a drop of displeasure in his tone. In fact, he seems rather happy that you liked it so much that you remembered about it. “All my hard work gone in five seconds.”
“You made her a cake?” Lia gasps in disbelief, secretive note checking forgotten. She’s in last place with only six points, so no one cares too much about her cheating. “What about us? We’re your study buddies too!”
Hyunjin and Yeji chorus their agreements, and you realize that he only shared his cake with you. He followed you out of the lecture hall and gave it to you in a plastic container, so you assumed that he also hand delivered a few slices to everyone else. Never mind that he oh-so-conveniently had a fork with him. Never mind that he sat with you at a bench and watched you try a few bites before devouring it all. Never mind all that.
Wait. Does this mean he likes you too?
You fold and unfold your discarded foil wrappers as you contemplate over this revelation, sneaking glances at Jisung all the while. He looks… normal. Infuriatingly so. Same carefree smile, same arguments with Hyunjin, same lackadaisical chair leaning even though he fell backwards that one time. How is one supposed to tell if someone actually likes you when said someone is the same all the time?
Jisung promises to bring something for the next study session to make up for not sharing his cake and continues on with the review game like nothing has happened. However, those thoughts are still in the back of your mind when the session ends. You have gained five more pieces of chocolate and no further information as to whether Jisung is actually into you or not. As per usual, you and he head to the bus stop together. It’s more crowded than last week since it’s only eight.
“Did you have a pheasant time today?” he asks, pausing next to a hedge.
You keep your eyes on the asphalt instead of looking at him. It’s much easier to pretend you’re calm when you don’t have vision of his face. “I see you discovered pheasants recently. And yes, it was fun. Thanks for making it.”
“You don’t want to crow about winning the game?” When you grimace — you did kind of want to point out how amazing your score was but now you don’t — he quickly adds, “Okay, okay. But you’re going to ace that quiz tomorrow.”
And you simply say, “I know,” because you are and because you have nothing else prepared to say.
It goes quiet, and with only the sounds of cars racing by, Jisung abruptly says, “This is a little awkward now. Or should I say… hawk-ward?”
You groan and break your staring contest with the road to give him an exasperated look. A mistake because he’s smiling so wide, squirrels would be jealous of his cheeks. He has no right to be so cute after those jokes. “Why do I feel like you searched up ‘bird puns’ online and are trying to insert them in every possible scenario?”
“Because I did and because I am.” He sighs in contentment. “Those were the best texts I’ve ever received. I’m never letting you forget it.”
You were right about that, and now you have verbal confirmation from the man himself. Another mediocre consolation prize you will gladly accept. But for now, you say, “Well, toucan play at that game, plague doctor Han Jisung.” The only perk of hearing all these wretched jokes is that you are now rather knowledgeable about them. Thank you, Seungmin, for making that one a few days ago.
“They looked just like finches!” he protests, but he’s laughing along, head tilted back. He sighs again. When he turns to face you again, his eyes are soft. “That was a pretty good one.”
“Seungmin came up with it.” There’s a warm feeling spreading across your chest, constricting your air flow and making all your blood rush to your cheeks. It was one compliment; why are you like this? What are you going to do if he keeps looking at you like that? You swiftly go back to the road, counting the number of cars that pass by. One, two, three, four…
And a gray bus pulling up to the curb.
“Bus is here,” you uselessly announce. Jisung follows you into the growing crowd surrounding the entrance. He hovers behind you as the two of you wait for the people in front to board, and his presence is more palpable than usual. “There’s a lot of people today,” you remark in a vain attempt to distract yourself.
“Yeah, everyone’s heading home for the day.” He pauses dramatically before adding, “The birds are all going back to their nest.”
The joke successfully snaps you out of your haze. “That’s not a real saying.”
“I think it should be. It makes perfect sense!”
“You’re—” As the line shuffles forward, you try to think of something bird related, but he beats to the punch.
“Cuckoo?”
It’s almost impressive how much time he has invested in annoying you. Does it make you fall for him more? No, not really, or so you try to convince yourself. It’s strangely endearing, just like everything about him. You merely answer, “Yes.”
He chuckles and nudges you forward up the steps of the bus.
Even though there’s a little bit of daylight left, Jisung walks you back to your apartment building. You’re not upset by this, but where was this chivalry two weeks ago after the first study session? You teasingly ask him about it, and he turns bashful. How unlike him.
“I thought you lived in my complex, for some reason. You were always at the bus stop before me, so I assumed you lived nearby. I didn’t know until I overheard you and Yeji talking about it,” he says, hiding himself with his collar.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” you say, stopping in front of the walkway to your building, “see you tomorrow then. Thanks for walking me back. Good night.”
The Jisung you’re used to seeing, is back with a mischievous smile and yet another joke. “Good night-ingale.”
You bite the inside of your cheek and try not to seem too amused by it. He’s not charming, not even a little bit. “That was awful.” It’s the smile, you tell yourself. No one should have one like that. It has too much power.
“Yet I can see you smiling at it.”
Remain calm. You can do that. You’ve faked this before, so why is your head not cooperating right now? Jisung really needs to stop looking at you with anything more than a neutral face. It’s bad for you, like really, really bad. No witty remarks at the ready is typical, but you can’t even think of anything to say.
After an excruciating five seconds, you manage to stammer out, “Good night.” Cheeks aflame and your heart threatening to pop out of you like a cuckoo clock, you roughly yank open the door and bolt up the stairs. You have too much adrenaline in you right now. Waiting for the elevator knowing that he could be observing your twitchy movements, would be too nerve wracking.
Ryujin asks if you’re alright when she sees you hunched against the kitchen counter, out of breath and muttering to yourself.
“I decided to take the stairs,” you say, which only partially explains your dishevelled state. “I’ll be alright. I think.”
“I’ll get you some water. You look like you're about to collapse.”
Then your phone chimes with a new message, and you decidedly won’t be alright.
8:22 PM [Jisung Bio]: Did my nightingale pun quack you up that badly?
8:22 PM [Jisung Bio]: Was it that ducking good?
8:22 PM [Jisung Bio]: :D
8:23 PM [Jisung Bio]: Anyway, good luck tomorrow. Sleep well and sweet dreams, morning lark
There is no food in the fridge. Well, no proper food. A bag of spinach that expired three days ago but still seems okay, does not count. The same goes for the half empty jar of peanut butter, but Ryujin would likely disagree with that. There’s a reason why the jar is half empty. However, if you actually want to eat something for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, you need to go shopping.
For some strange reason, it does not occur to you that you can run into Jisung at the grocery store. Jisung belongs in four locations: the bus stop, the lecture hall, the library, and the pizza place you saw him at last week. Not the dairy aisle on a Wednesday night.
“Hey.” You stop in front of him, basket at your feet and hands folded in front of you like the world’s worst defense. Heart, stop beating so fast.
Jisung looks up from his phone to search for the owner of the voice and brightens when he sees that it’s you. “Hey, morning lark.” He has taken to calling you that ever since he sent that particular message. You wish it produced another reaction from you besides pure bliss, but that is the price you pay for pretending to be still annoyed by his jokes. That’s how bad your crush on him now is; you are increasingly beguiled by the puns. “Oh, did you need milk?”
“Yeah.” You grab a blue carton with a picture of a smiling cow from the shelf and place it in your basket. In the meantime, you can’t help but peer into Jisung’s. There is a bag of chocolate chips and a packet of gelatin. “Is this stuff for tomorrow’s study session?”
He nods and grabs the same brand of milk as you did. You get a rush of excitement, much to your chagrin. It’s just milk, and this is the most popular brand too. “Yeah. Felix is trying a new recipe, so you guys get to have some of the failed ones too.”
“What is it? Cheesecake?”
“You’ll see,” he mysteriously says. Then he adds, “You’re gonna love it,” which immediately gives away the theme.
“It’s something to do with birds, isn’t it?”
“You’ll see.”
And when you do see, you’re wrong. Library food rules ignored, at each seat, Jisung has set a slice of layer cake topped with chocolate ganache, no bird motifs of any sort. You take your usual spot at the end of the table and find that yours is slightly larger than the others. Well, except for maybe Lia’s. He has to placate her sweet tooth and her disappointment of not being able to have hummingbird cake.
“Did I not get a message or something?” Hyunjin asks when he takes in the over-the-top display. “Is this a dinner party?”
“Isn’t this against the library’s rules?” Yeji asks as she surreptitiously looks around for any librarians. The surrounding tables of fellow students won’t care.
Jisung elects to not answer Yeji’s concerns. “This is tonight’s snack,” he proudly replies. “Also, Felix wants feedback on it.”
You cut a section off with the plastic fork and marvel at the airiness of the cake. It’s unlike anything you have ever had. The frosting in between the sponge layers is so light, and the ganache is so dark and rich. “This is really amazing. It’s so fluffy. Wow. Tell Felix that he really needs to consider culinary school.”
“Wanna guess what it’s called?”
“Isn’t this just an extra fancy vanilla cake?” you ask. You take another bite, but other than the chocolate ganache on top, you can only taste vanilla. “I don’t know. The… vanilla fluff cake?”
“Nope.” He leans forward, face inches away from yours, lips curled into a smirk, and slowly says, “Bird’s milk cake.”
This can’t be real. Birds don’t even produce milk. “No way. You’re lying.” Even as you say the words, they sound false to your ears. Jisung has made it his mission to find anything and everything bird-related for you, so you doubt he’s lying.
“It’s called this” — he holds up his phone screen — “in Russian. It translates to ‘bird’s milk.’”
Ptichye moloko.
“You convinced Felix to make this, didn’t you?” you say. What are the chances that Felix conveniently wanted to make bird’s milk cake without any nudging from Jisung? Absolutely none. You have never even heard of this dessert before, let alone by it’s Russian name, and you’re willing to bet that Jisung searched up ‘bird cake’ or something of that nature just for this. Maybe that’s how he found out about hummingbird cake too.
“It’s all for you, morning lark,” he cheerfully replies, winking at you. He leans back in his chair again, precariously balancing on the two back legs. “I knew you’d like it.”
Jisung is really not making this easy for you. Forget subtleties, he’s just shamelessly flirting with you now. And in the sanctity of the library of all places! In a poor attempt to save yourself from this mess, you unconsciously begin to slide down the chair, trying to shield your hot face with your raised shoulders. Lia notices this — one of the perks having sat next to you for nearly four weeks during lectures — and grabs your forearm.
“No melting,” she reminds you, “or else you’re going to hit your head on the seat again.”
“I wasn’t melting,” you protest as you wriggle back up. Slowly dying might have been a better descriptor. That wink shot arrows into your already fragile heart. “We’re gonna get in trouble if one of the librarians sees this.”
“Guess we should get started then,” Hyunjin says. Yeji, the only responsible one in the group, begins pulling out the textbook, and everyone laughs at her eagerness. “Not what I meant, but that too.”
After you’re done with the cake and while the others are preoccupied about the timeline of human evolution, Jisung whispers across the table, “Did you still like it?”
“Yeah. No hard feelings about the name because it was good,” you whisper back.
“I thought it would turn out like this, morning lark. I know you love free food too much to be mad.”
The nickname again. You rest your cheek against your palm in a vain attempt to tamp down the growing heat. “Can I get a different name, plague doctor?”
He’s not at all phased by his own nickname, which doesn’t bode well for any future snarky remarks from you. “What, you don’t like birds or something?” He blinks so innocently back at you that you have to stifle a giggle.
“Yeah, well, that’s the—”
“Hey, lovebirds,” Hyunjin interrupts, making you profusely blush and Yeji lightly laugh at the expression, “we’re gonna move on to the next section now. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” you reply even though you are most definitely not okay. Jisung, who you notice is uncharacteristically sheepish, echoes your sentiment.
It’s difficult not to stare at Jisung during the remainder of the study session. It seems to be true the other way around as well.
You’re sober when you read the messages, but you don’t think Jisung was when he sent them. Oh, how the tables have turned.
3:02 AM [Jisung Bio]: Good morning morning lark!!
3:02 AM [Jisung Bio]: Winner winner chicken dinner remember? So yes or no?
3:03 AM [Jisung Bio]: Or maybe yes or yes?
3:03 AM [Jisung Bio]: I really want to go on a date with you
3:03 AM [Jisung Bio]: Not lying I swear
3:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re always on my mind and every time I see a bird, I think about you
3:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: I bought grey goose because of you
3:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: [jisung’s_hand_holding_grey_goose_vodka.jpg]
3:04 AM [Jisung Bio]: I don’t even like it that much
3:05 AM [Jisung Bio]: You make me dizzy sometimes and I don’t know what to do
3:05 AM [Jisung Bio]: You’re probably sleeping so good night larky
3:05 AM [Jisung Bio]: Or morning
3:06 AM [Jisung Bio]: Fly high in your dreams!!!
He must have been wasted and under no responsible supervision because this is what you would have done if you were in his place. Does he not have a Seungmin in his life? Or a Ryujin? There’s a Felix, so where was he when all of this happened?
But forget about Jisung’s own problems.
He wants to go on a date with you. A real date, not a study date with three other people and fake quiz questions. If his words are to be taken literally, then one involving a chicken dinner. Possibly a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, but a chicken dinner nonetheless.
He can’t stop thinking about you. All those bird jokes had you charmed, and all those cakes were baked with you in mind. They weren’t just for show. They were all about you.
You make him dizzy, which is hilarious because he does the same to you. He smiles at you so brightly, laughs so easily, and flirts so shamelessly that you never realized that you could ever make him feel that way.
And “fly high in your dreams?” You’re practically soaring in real life. Han Jisung, cute bio boy, plague doctor, pun enthusiast, surprisingly decent baker, wants to go on a date with you.
You, you, you!
While you alternate between hyperventilating and forgetting how to breathe as you process all this, three gray dots appear at the bottom of the chat. You clutch your phone as you wait. Apparently, your body is on the ‘forgetting how to breathe’ cycle.
11:14 AM [Jisung Bio]: I am so sorry about that. I was very drunk when I sent that
11:15 AM [Jisung Bio]: You can just ignore them or delete them
11:15 AM [Jisung Bio]: Highly recommend deleting
11:15 AM [Jisung Bio]: Also sorry if I woke you up
Your fingers hover over the keyboard. Should you answer him over text, call, or in-person? Is in-person too dramatic though? You feel like something like this is supposed to be done face-to-face, but he’s probably hungover beyond belief.
11:16 AM [Me]: It’s okay. A morning lark is always up early anyway :)
11:16 AM [Me]: Were you serious though?
11:17 AM [Jisung Bio]: Can we meet up in an hour? At the bus stop? I want to talk to you
11:17 AM [Me]: Yeah. Me too
The bus stop is neutral territory or maybe just the closest meeting spot you and Jisung have. If it’s supposed to be neutral territory, it most definitely is not since his apartment complex is right behind it. Despite his close proximity to the spot, you arrive first, so you make yourself as comfortable as possible underneath the sign, standing in its shadow. It’s silly when you think about it, but you wish you dressed in something nicer than a hoodie. In your rush to leave the apartment, you threw on whatever, but maybe you should have worn something prettier for this confrontation. Make Jisung go dizzy and gain a little bit of power from that.
This is even worse than when you had to face him after you sent your drunk texts. At least then it was just a middling attraction and not a full-on crush.
“Hey, morning lark. You’re early. As expected.”
“Hey. You’re… alive.”
Jisung is strangely fresh-faced, not a hint of hungover clouding around him. Why can’t you look like him after a night of seemingly heavy drinking? Where are the pinched eyebrows from the blinding lights? The ghostly gray face? The haunted eyes as one remembers all the incredibly stupid things they did the night before? Unfair. Completely unfair.
“Yeah.” He’s wearing his usual sweatshirt, but his hands are stuffed into its pockets instead of being out and about. He rocks back and forth on his heels. “Well, uh, I meant everything I sent. And I’m serious about taking you to dinner, so do you want to go on a date with me?”
You anticipated this. Why does it feel like you have just finished running a marathon? “Yeah, I do. I really want to.”
He smiles so brightly, the sun would be jealous. Correction, should be jealous. You don’t think you’ve seen a prettier sight than this since he sat down next to you on the first day of class and asked if you wanted to start a study group. He pumps his fist in the air like he’s a movie character, and you hide your laugh behind your hoodie sleeve. You’ve never seen him so happy before.
“How are you not hungover?” you ask as he raises his face to the sky, taking in the afternoon light, basking in the moment. He’s really living his movie character dreams. “You said you were really drunk.”
“I kind of lied?” he says, sounding more wistful than you would expect. When he looks back at you, you finally see dark circles underneath his eyes, but he is still as jubilant as before. “I was more tipsy than drunk. So, when do you wanna get that chicken dinner, winner, winner?”
It’s amazing how shy, excited Jisung disappears and how the usual casual, teasing Jisung reappears. That’s his Jekyll and Hyde moment, you suppose. And the switch is all activated by his one-track mind of bird jokes. How wonderful.
“Next week, after midterms? I’ve got two this week to study for. I should be free on Friday night.”
He enthusiastically nods. “Sounds good to me.”
2:57 PM [Me]: I’m done with all my midterms! Are you free tonight?
2:59 PM [Jisung Bio]: Free as a bird :D
2:59 PM [Jisung Bio]: Also congrats on being done
2:59 PM [Me]: I hate you
3:00 PM [Jisung Bio]: So chicken dinner? The restaurant next to the pizza place just opened
3:00 PM [Jisung Bio]: I heard it’s really clucking good
3:00 PM [Jisung Bio]: A hen out of hen
3:01 PM [Me]: I might actually kill you during our date
3:02 PM [Jisung Bio]: Don’t you mean
3:02 PM [Jisung Bio]: [flock_of_crows.jpg]
3:02 PM [Jisung Bio]: Murder :D
3:05 PM [Jisung Bio]: I’ll see you at 6?
3:05 PM [Me]: See you then
You do not end up murdering Jisung on your date, though you do come pretty close after you audibly ask the ground to swallow you up when he compliments your egg-cellent outfit.
“Swallow?” he slyly says. “Like the bird?”
Instead of committing a crime, you kiss him on the cheek, effectively silencing him. You’ve been waiting to do both those things for some time now, and look at you now, killing two birds with one stone.
Jisung turns a delightful shade of pink and mutters something about needing to get to the restaurant before it gets too crowded. All of his bluster from just five seconds ago is gone. You merrily follow him down the pavement, feeling a little bit like the cat who swallowed the canary.
Yes, you did search up bird expressions beforehand. Jisung will be Jisung, and like you told him before, toucan play at this game. You will not spend your first date with him being humiliated by his large repertoire of puns. Besides, if he retaliates like you expect him to, you will have the perfect excuse to kiss him again.
See? No fowl play at all.
Then he takes your hand into his, his warmth enveloping yours, and everything suddenly isn’t fair again.
And based on his all-too-pleased grin, Jisung knows this as well.
~ ad.gray
#stray kids#skz#han jisung#han#han fluff#jisung fluff#jisung fic#stray kids fluff#skz fluff#stray kids fanfiction#skz fanfic#stray kids scenarios#skz scenarios#stray kids imagines#skz imagines#stray kids x reader#skz x reader#stray kids au#skz au#college au#20210520
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”This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.
But enough is enough.
The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.
American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”
>>Copied here in case anyone gets paywalled when they click the above. The full article is...a lot.<<
WHY AM I WRITING THIS
As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.
I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.
One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.
YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS
I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?
No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.
See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.
Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.
If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.
We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.
I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.
In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.
And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.
None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.
This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.
BASTARD 101
I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.
Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.
I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.
To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:
“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”
Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.
When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.
Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.
One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.
This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”
I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality. Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed. After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back.
Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.
HOW TO BE A BASTARD
I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things.
Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want.
Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify a use of force after the fact.
Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back.
Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.
Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches.
Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true.
Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them.
Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened.
Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession.
Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.
Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.
Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for.
Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.
Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.
Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view.
Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone.
A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search.
A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it.
A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.
If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.
Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.
Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops.
I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.
Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:
Do
not
fucking
talk
to
cops.
Ever.
Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.
DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?
Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.
During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.
The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.
It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.
And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?
To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started.
Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?
So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:
Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.
Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.
More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.
Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.
Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:
No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.
No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.
Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.
Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.
Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.
One final idea: consider abolishing the police.
I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.
I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.
What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.
You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?” And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence.
This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.
Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?
Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save?
Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, houselessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.
Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters. People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and Playstations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.
Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:
“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”
(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)
I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.
A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE
If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops. But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you:
When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world?
When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world?
When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, jesus fucking christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?
And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.
Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?
If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.
RESOURCES TO YES-AND WITH
Achele Mbembe — Necropolitics
Angela Y. Davis — Are Prisons Obsolete?
CriticalResistance.org — Abolition Toolkit
Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price — Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?
Ruth Wilson Gilmore — COVID-19, Decarceration, Abolition [video]
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iced caramel macchiato [dream's version]
dream x reader — coffee shop!au
summary: enemies? to lovers? or maybe dream just plays hard to get lmaoooo
word count: 1.7k+
warnings: swearing? sometimes.
a/n: my harry fic rewritten for dream :] i just changed the pov and some lines but its basically the same asdfghjk enjoy ig <3
Service has been slow. So slow, that you’re sure your head will roll off your neck from the number of times you’ve looked at the clock behind you. The copper hands of the round object tick obnoxiously, making you bring a hand up to your temple to rub firmly.
Closing your eyes, you loll your head back to stare at the grainy ceiling in hopes that the bell above the glass door would chime. You move your head back to stare blankly at the door before you run your hands over the brown apron on your hips, the fabric harsh against your fingers.
You then bend down to lean your head on your palm in a bored manner while you watch the countless pedestrians walk past the coffee shop. Just one customer, please!
The light reflecting off of the glass is giving you a headache, but you still stare. In your state of utter boredom, anything would be exciting.
Your gaze shifts to the painting on the right wall when the glass door opens and a man stalks in. He is mumbling lowly into his phone, telling someone named George that he doesn’t know why Sapnap isn’t answering. You silently cheer at the sight of a customer, pleased to be productive on this slow workday.
The man has his light hair pulled into a small bun at the base of his neck and he looks borderline intimidating to you—maybe it’s his height, or perhaps it’s his cold stare. He scans the shop before he stalks towards the counter.
You’re slightly concerned at the sound of him not knowing where someone is, thinking that he will simply move off to the side to finish his call before ordering; but he doesn’t.
You seethe slightly at the blatant disrespect of the man. How are you supposed to catch a person’s order in between a string of conversation they’re having with someone else about something completely different? You don’t understand how someone can be that rude.
But nonetheless, the man stands there talking aimlessly before glancing up at you with an uninterested look on his face. You furrow your brows at him before your eyes flicker back to the cash register in front of you. You choose to pick at your chipped nail polish before the man decides to pause his phone call to order. But, the clearing of his throat catches you off guard and then you’re met the man’s hard stare.
“Well, aren’t you going to ask me what I want?”
Your eyebrows fly to your hairline as you stutter, “W-What?”
The man huffs as he switches his weight to his other foot and swaps his phone to his other ear, his eyes wide with irritation. He waves his hand in front of your face as you stand in shock at his rudeness. The man rolls his eyes before speaking to the person on the phone again. You reach over to pluck a plastic cup from the stack and grab a Sharpie pen, ready for his choice. However, you’ve soon got a death grip on the cup as he carries on talking to the person on the line.
“A cold caramel whatever.” You catch what he mumbles before he continues whispering into his phone. You grumble bitterly to yourself that it isn’t an order. But, not wanting to have to interact with him any longer, you ask for his name.
“Clay.”
And with that, he steps to the side, laughing into his device. You stand in disbelief holding the black Sharpie marker in your hand. How can his demeanour shift so quickly? Pulling yourself together, you scribble quickly, ‘C-… Cray’? You cock your head at the spelling but shrug one shoulder and slide it towards the metal bench next to you.
When the barista at the other end of the bench calls ‘Cray’, the man either isn’t paying attention or doesn’t care because he takes his drink and leaves; not even sparing a glance at you, who had misspelt his name.
The next day’s rush is far more fast-paced. The chatter of people around the coffee shop makes it near impossible to hear the orders of customers at the counter—but it is the way you like it. The more customers, the faster the day goes. And at this pace, you swear your shift is almost over.
As you finish taking the order of a young girl, your mood instantly dims when the girl moves to the side. Head down, Clay stands in front of you typing on his phone, murmuring his order to you. You tilt your head as you huff. The plain disrespect, again.
“Excuse me?” You say while leaning closer to him.
He gives a quick glance towards you before sighing, “A caramel cold, no cream.” His irritated expression makes you stare blankly at him.
His bleak response earns a quick eyebrow raise from you, who struggles to understand his order, but grabs a cup anyway and scribbles ‘Cole’ on the side along with a whole bunch of jumble on ‘caramel cold’. You assume he means the same drink as yesterday. And as the same as yesterday, his hair is pulled back, leaving his forehead bare and the crease in between his brows evident. Why does he always look so angry?
—
Over the next few weeks, you had continually and deliberately gotten Clay’s name wrong. You had become quite creative with ridiculous nicknames when he ordered his boring ‘cold caramel’ drink and think he deserves it from how rude he was to you. As much as you disliked the man, you found fun in getting his name wrong.
Cloud, Clam, Cleo, and even clarinet. At this point, the barista at the other end of the counter could yell ‘cabbage’ and he’d just accept it.
You had the luck of not running into him anywhere outside of the coffee shop, saving yourself the embarrassment of confessing why you write his name like that on the cups. But you can’t help it, you hate when people are distracted whilst they order; as well as arsehole men who wave their hand in front of your face when you’re simply waiting for them to finish their call to tell you their order.
No matter how much you despised it, Clay never failed to walk into the shop without being on his phone in some way. And he never once looked at you when he walked out with his drink, only sparing you a glance when ordering. You just didn’t understand this man!
It’s Friday and it’s raining. The dark clouds hang in the sky like a bad smell and you can’t shake the feeling in your gut. It is 15 minutes to closing time and Clay hasn’t walked in today. A weird sense of disappointment washes over you as you gaze out of the glass door.
The bell chimed for the last time that day at 5:55 pm and as you wrote down the abbreviations of a latte on the top of a white coffee lid, you felt sadness. It was subtle but it was there. And you didn’t know why it sat at the bottom of your stomach for so long, but it wasn’t pleasant.
As you reach to close up the register, the bell at the door rings. Your head shoots up from looking at the numbers on the buttons and is met with Clay—with no phone in sight. As much as you were looking forward to writing down a new nickname for him, your thought process is interrupted.
Clay looks at you, straight in the eye, and smiles. You stand in confusion, the black sharpie dangling from your fingertips as he leans on the counter. The cup in your hands is close to falling on the floor when he nods towards it.
“Iced caramel. And get my name right this time.”
You feel your cheeks heat before you scrunch your nose in distaste, “So you did notice.”
The man hums in confirmation before he reaches over the register to snatch the cup from your grasp. “Of course I did. I’m gonna show you how to spell it right.”
You’re quick to bite back the urge to comment that you know how to spell his fucking name but you patiently wait for him to return the cup.
He hands the cup back to you, holding it teasingly above your head before he drops it onto the counter. You catch the cup before it rolls onto the floor and become confused at the scribble of numbers on the cup instead. You lift your head to meet his gaze when you see his lips drawn into a large grin. Your features soften as you give him a soft closed-lipped smile. You turn your head to look towards the menu behind you, the numbers next to the orders catching your attention.
“Are these all of the orders you want?” You ask. You furrow your eyebrows while you look back down at the cup. Oh.
Clay bites back a giggle and shakes his head at your expression. “It’s my number.”
As shocked as you are, you manage to keep your grip on the cup, despite it nearly falling from your hand again.
“W-Why?” You mumble, face flushing at the thought of Clay even thinking about you in that way.
Clay makes a smug face, shrugs, and then spins around before walking back towards the door. You stand frozen; like literally stuck in your spot as you watch Clay glance over his shoulder.
“This place closes in 5 right? I’ll wait outside while you finish up and we’ll go get dinner together.”
His statement lingers even after he leaves. You still hold the plastic cup in your hand as you stare at the spot he was last in. Your heartbeat is in your ears as you finally blink. No… I can’t, he’s—. You shift your eyes down to the cup and the haphazard writing and feel as your heart skip a beat.
And as soon as you step out of the shop, the rain patters lightly on the pavement and you spot his figure leaning against the side of the bookshop next door—typing on his phone. You scoff out a laugh as you begin approaching him. Clay lifts his head at the sound of someone nearing and smiles when he sees you.
“Ready?” He asks, offering you his elbow. You roll your eyes at his gesture, nod and place your hand on his bicep.
No matter what happened in the past, you’re willing to see where this goes… with Cray— I mean Clay.
#dream smp imagine#dream smp imagines#dream smp x reader#dream x reader#dream imagine#dream imagines#mcyt imagine#mcyt x reader#mcyt imagines
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i wish i could disappear
word count: 3.6k
warnings: explicit!fem reader, cursing, feelings of anxiety due to social media harassment, invasion of privacy that border on stalking
recommended listening: brutal | olivia rodrigo
series masterpost: here
a/n: and we're off to the races!! i love this album and olivia so much. there's a shoutout to goon by tobias jesso jr. in here bc it's my favourite album to cry to lmao (highly recommend giving it a listen!). i'm on the fence about this one but am posting it anyways because i don't think i can make it any better
How the fuck do people find your social media?
All of your accounts are private and Kevin makes sure to never tag you on the rare occasion he posts a picture of the two of you together. The wives and girlfriends who have public accounts make sure to never post about you, and you’re careful not to comment on posts often. You’re a private person and though you understand that due to the nature of your relationship with Kevin you intrigue some fans, you don’t want to give them more than you have to.
Despite making no attempt to open up to the public or media, every day you wake up with hundreds of follow requests from complete strangers. At first it was a little exciting knowing that people were curious about your life but after years of the same routine it’s become draining. It takes you nearly twenty minutes each day to weed through them and accept only the people you know personally. Kevin doesn’t actually know how many people want to catch a glimpse of your daily life because you do your best to keep it from him. Knowing would only bring him stress, and you want him to be able to focus on winning games and loving you with his entire heart.
☼☼☼☼
The phone on your desk rings loudly, pulling your attention away from the computer screen that has way too many numbers on it for your liking. The finance department needed someone to proof their audit before sending it away and since you’re the only one in human relations that has a business degree the job landed on your shoulders. Eager to take a break, you pick it up and press the receiver against your ear.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other side laughs gently, but you immediately know it’s Kevin. “Hi sweetheart,” he says warmly, “How’s work?”
“Fine I guess. It’s work, Kev. Nothing terribly exciting happens here,” you explain but continue to fill him in on all the coffee pot gossip you got this morning. Kevin listens as you complain about forgetting your lunch on the counter and chuckles at how upset the situation makes you.
“What if I told you I’m outside your window with a burrito bowl?”
Excited at the possibility of seeing your boyfriend before dinnertime, you whip towards the window and spot Kevin on the sidewalk, waving like an idiot despite knowing your office is on the fifth floor. You hang up quickly after telling him you’ll be down in two minutes and let the receptionist know you’re stepping out for lunch. There’s a line for the elevator so you head to the stairwell, taking them two at a time in your haste. You’re crossing the street to the small park where Kevin has set up a picnic before your co-workers are even out the door.
You plop down on the blanket beside Kevin and lean into him. He presses a sweet kiss to your forehead before passing you the food he brought. You take a bite, sighing at the taste. Kevin knows you better than you know yourself and knew exactly what to get that would satisfy your mounting hunger.
“Thanks babe,” you smile, holding up your fork and offering him a bite. He takes it graciously but makes a face. “What’s the matter?” you laugh as you take the utensil back.
“I fucking hate avocado.”
The two of you eat in relative silence, speaking only when you remember a detail from your morning. Kevin tells you about the drills he’s going to lead at practice in the afternoon and what he plans on cooking for dinner since he’ll be home before you. You insist you can whip something up when you get home but Kevin shakes his head. He reminds you that relationships are give and take, and that you’ve made dinner the past three nights because he had a string of games. You manage to reach a compromise that has you doing the dishes before you have to return to work.
Kevin insists on walking you back to your office even though you protest vehemently. Your relationship is far from secret, and has been the topic of workplace gossip more times than you can count, but after five years you’ve learned to ignore most of it. However, you don’t want your co-workers to think you flaunt your NHL player boyfriend to prove you’re better than them. They all love Kevin, and a couple of them congratulate him on last night’s goal as he follows you down the hall. A few of the newer hires stare in awe and shake his hand, completely blown away that one of Philadelphia’s biggest stars is asking how they like their jobs.
“Pretty soon they’re going to approach you to do PR for us,” you chuckle as you flip the light on and close the door of your office.
His laughter echoes off the walls as a pair of strong arms find a home around your waist. “It would be kind of fun to hear myself crush those radio commercials.”
“Since when do you listen to the radio?”
“Checkmate,” Kevin sighs, pulling you closer. He kisses you quickly, not wanting to give a show to anyone who could be walking past, but it still sends you reeling. You don’t want him to pull away and kiss him again.
You get your way for a few more moments and then Kevin’s leaving with a promise to not burn the house down and wishes for a good rest of the day. Focussed on giving the audit its final once-over you don’t bother pulling your phone from the drawer you had placed it in when you got to work that morning. You turn up the small radio at the corner of your desk and get to work scanning the document for errors. There’s a mistake halfway through that skews the rest of the data and fixing it takes a bit of time, but it isn’t a huge deal. You have nothing else to do except answer a few emails and organize meetings for after the weekend.
An hour or so later you’ve completed all your tasks and debate what to do. It’s too early to leave for the day, so you decide to kill time by checking your phone. You’re expecting a few notifications, perhaps two or three memes in the group chat you share with your friends, but not the hundreds that greet you.
The majority of them are instagram notifications, and assuming they’re just more fans requesting a follow you ignore them, instead heading to your text messages. There’s a picture from Kevin of a dog he found walking home and another from your mom asking why you haven’t called home in a few weeks. However the one from Claude’s wife is the one that piques your curiosity.
Just a heads up that someone posted a pic of you and Kev to one of those stupid wag pages. I filed a request for Instagram to take it down but it’s gotten a lot of traction. Sorry :((
Your heartbeat increases rapidly and a million thoughts fly through your head at a rapid speed. Fingers shaking, you respond with a thanks and open up the dreaded app. You don’t see it immediately, your feed being full of photos belonging to friends and family, but it’s in your messages almost two hundred times. Many of them have text attached and you know there will be a comment about your relationship regardless of which one you open.
Tapping on the most recent message you brace yourself for the worst. The new window opens a photo someone took of you and Kevin while eating lunch in the park across from your office not even three hours prior. It’s grainy and the camera angle is strange, but you’re eating and Kevin is looking somewhere out of frame. The accompanying caption reads Kev and his girlfriend out for lunch today! Follow @philllywagupdates for more :).
You let out a sigh of relief – it could have been a lot worse. Personal pictures of yourself have made it onto pages like that before and most of them they’re paired with mean-spirited captions about your appearance or other trivial matters. Assuming you’re in the clear, you head back to the page of the original message to thank the person for bringing the post to your attention. However, the message accompanying the post is anything but positive.
He can’t even fucking look at you. It’s only a matter of time before he leaves you
The blood in your veins runs cold. You know it’s not true – Kevin’s made it clear you’re the one and truthfully you’re just waiting for a ring – but it doesn’t stop the sting you feel. What could possess someone to say such horrible things? You decide not to respond despite, possibly opening another can of worms with the seen function, and close the app. Leaning back in your office chair you focus on anything but your phone, looking out the window at passersby while regaining your breath. It works for a while, but eventually not knowing what others said eats away at you. You go through every single message to see hundreds of similar comments to the first, with only a few saying they’re glad you’re happy or how posting the picture is a violation of your privacy.
By the time you’re finished your spirit has been crushed. However, it’s also an acceptable time to start the weekend – at least no one in the office will have to see you cry. Things are hastily packed into your bag and you wave a few quick goodbyes before once again taking the stairs. You curse yourself for deciding to walk to work that morning and set off in the direction of home wiping away tears. The last thing you need right now is for someone to recognize you, but you have to get home. Tobias Jesso Jr plays at much too loud a volume through your headphones and Kevin will most certainly remind you it’s bad for your hearing, but the melancholy piano riffs of Goon overpower the thoughts swirling around your head.
Do people really feel that way about me?
Are my friends just too nice to stop inviting me places?
Does Kevin really feel trapped?
Hundreds of similar sentiments and situations cross your mind as you stumble through the streets of downtown Philadelphia, but you force them as far back as possible before opening the door to the apartment you share with Kevin. Hoping to slip inside undetected, you take your shoes off slowly and throw your jacket on the end table instead of hanging it in the closet. Your plan fails somehow and Kevin hears you, greeting you in a goofy apron covered in flour.
“Hey sweetheart,” he smiles, but it drops once your eyes meet and he sees the hurt on your face. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing,” you insist, trying to step around him in pursuit of the bathroom.
Kevin doesn’t buy it and sees right through your feeble words. “It’s not nothing if you’re this upset. If you don’t want to talk now that’s fine, but I think you should get it off your chest.”
You know he’s right, but you also know you can’t tell him the true cause of your despair. “Just some work stuff,” you sigh. “The audit got all fucked up and I had to fix it even though it’s not my job.”
It’s not technically a lie, which makes you feel better, and Kevin buys it. He presses a sweet kiss to your lips in sympathy. “Go take a shower and the gnocchi should be ready by the time you’re done. We can spend the night cuddling on the couch.”
“And watching Selling Sunset?”
“We can watch whatever you want sweetheart,” he chuckles. You part from him with a final kiss and head to the bathroom. Hopefully the steam from the water will carry away the negativity brought on by that damn post.
☼☼☼☼
Time passes but the hateful comments on social media don’t stop. In fact, you’re pretty sure they get worse. It’s so bad that you’ve deleted every app except facebook because you need it for work. Kevin doesn’t notice your abstinence from social media, but he picks up on how you spend more time criticizing yourself or staring off into space. When he pushes you either brush him off or feed some bullshit excuse about how work is getting you down. You know he doesn’t believe you but trusts you enough to come to him when you’re ready to talk.
You aren’t sure if you’ll ever be able to tell Kevin what’s been going on. There’s been scrutiny from social media before, when you first started dating, but it quieted down after the initial media frenzy. He helped you through that but it’s different this time around. Never before have you had strangers tell you your life is worthless or that your boyfriend should end your relationship. Some of the other wags notice your absence on instagram but chalk it up to you just taking a break. They reach out via the group chat and send wishes to see you at the next home game. It’s nice to know they care, but the voice in your head that has grown much larger in recent weeks tells you they don’t truly mean it. This leads you to decline the invite as politely as possible, citing extended work hours for your absence. In reality you’re too anxious to be anywhere that isn’t home or work, petrified someone is going to post something that will add fuel to the flames of those who interrogate you.
It’s another Friday afternoon, and you’re leaving the office early once again. There’s a small craft exhibition taking place around the corner from work and today is the last day it’s open. You had been meaning to go all week, hoping to find something small to add to Kevin’s birthday gift. As you step out of the building there’s a small group of young women, who don’t look old enough to have graduated college, standing off to the side. It fills you with dread, worried that somehow someone found out where you work and the insults are going to start occurring verbally, but you force yourself to be rational. You work fairly close to one of the artsier districts in the city and it’s more than likely they just want to find a cute mural to take pictures in front of.
You pass by and swear you hear them snicker, but you remind yourself you’ve just been jumpy lately. When they peel from their place on the wall and follow behind at a distance you think the coincidences are running out. It seems a little too strange how their movements line up with yours, and you go down a few winding side streets in an attempt to lose them. Part of you feels ridiculous because what group of barely legal girls would track a full-blown adult around a city of nearly two million people, but your life is currently strange enough you can’t be sure. They don’t follow you, and by the time you reach the market your heart rate has returned to normal.
The first few stalls have little to catch your eye, but a few rows in you find a leatherworker who makes adorable wallets. Kevin’s is ridiculously old and falling apart at the seams – his mom bought it for him before the two of you got together. You think a new one will make a perfect addition to the concert tickets you already bought and browse the table for something simple and elegant. A deep brown one with tan braiding around the edges catches your eye and you know it’s the one for Kevin. Checking the price to make sure you have enough cash in your wallet, you approach the shop owner to purchase. The older man has a kind smile that reaches his eyes as he thanks you for purchasing from him.
“No, thank you for making something so beautiful!” you gush. “My boyfriend is going to love it.”
It’s then you hear it – snickering accompanied by the click of a camera. You look over your shoulder to see the same group of girls from before laughing as they huddle over a cell phone, no doubt already starting to broadcast the photo across the internet. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes but you refuse to let them fall. Those girls don’t deserve to see their mission accomplished, but the longer they laugh at you the harder it is to swallow your feelings.
Head held high, you thank the owner one more time before holding your head high and walking past the group. The only way out is past them so you hold your breath and pray they don’t notice you. Unfortunately you aren’t that lucky, and one of them looks up just as you come into earshot.
“If Kevin doesn’t leave you after that sorry excuse for a gift I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she sneers.
Another one chimes in, “You’re honestly so pathetic.” They all cackle in amusement, and you speed up. The tears flow freely now, and you call an uber even though it will be a ridiculous amount of money. You just want to get home.
The uber driver doesn’t say anything when you get in, though you know it’s strange to be bawling your eyes out at four in the afternoon. You can’t help it – weeks of keeping all the hate to yourself finally got to you and being followed with the sole intent of ridicule is the final straw. At one red light he silently passes you a box of tissues, which you accept gratefully.
Luckily the lobby of your apartment complex is empty and you manage to get to your floor without encountering a familiar face. There’s a few hours until Kevin gets home from his final roadtrip of the season, and if you play your cards right you can get all the tears out and be as normal as possible before he comes through the door. You don’t even bother to put anything away, just head straight to the bathroom to slump against the tub. Sobs rack your body and you lose all sense of time. All you can feel is the hurt you’ve been holding in releasing itself and soaking the material of your blouse.
Kevin finds you laying in the position hours later. He tripped over your shoes coming in the door and immediately knew something was wrong – you always place them neatly on the rack in the closet upon arriving home. Peering through the quiet house for a hint at where you are, he sees the bathroom light on and makes a beeline for the room. It breaks his heart to see you like this, and even more so because he doesn’t know what spurred it on.
“Sweetheart, hey,” he coos, maneuvering his body to sit beside you and pull you into his lap. “What’s the matter?”
You bury your head in his shoulder and clutch the material of his dress shirt as you cry harder at the sound of his voice. Kevin takes your reaction in stride, rubbing circles on your back and working on evening out your breath. He doesn’t pressure you to speak and provides the stability you desperately crave as the world around you spins. An unknown amount of time passes before your tears run out, but spend it all on the bathroom floor curled into Kevin.
“I guess I should have told you sooner,” you mumble, “But I didn’t want to bother you.”
Concern laces Kevin’s features and his eyebrows knit together. “Tell me what?”
“I, uh, have been the subject of some internet hate for the past little bit,” you say sheepishly. It feels stupid to not have told him now, but you can’t change that. “But you were really busy with the season and I wanted to make sure your head was completely focused on the game so I just dealt with it myself. I deleted the apps and tried my best to go about my life. And then today after work I was followed by some people and they said some really hurtful stuff and shit became a little too real.”
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
It’s your turn to be confused. “Why are you sorry Kev? You're Not the one sending me death threats.”
He tucks a loose strand of hair back into your ponytail. “Maybe not, but I still made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me about what was going on. What kind of partner am I?”
“The best one,” you say confidently. “It’s okay, I’m okay. I just want to forget about it right now. Can we just disappear for a little bit?”
Kevin wraps his arms around you tighter, as if he can engulf you to protect from the cruel outside world. “We can do whatever you want. If you want to get out of the city for a bit if you want, or just spend the next few days here away from prying eyes.”
“I love you.”
You say it because you mean it, and if you could scream it from the rooftops you would. Kevin is incredibly easy to love, even when you make it difficult for him to love you back. You know another much longer conversation is coming about everything that has happened recently because communication is the only way to solve problems and Kevin deserves that, but you’re thankful he’s willing to put it to rest for a few more moments.
He cracks a smile for the first time since he’s been home and kisses the crown of your head. “I love you too sweetheart,” he whispers, “Always and forever.”
Things are far from over and though you still never want to show your face in public ever again, you know that Kevin is going to do whatever he can to make things better and that’s enough for you.
☼☼☼☼
taglist: @ricohenrique @tortito @boqvistsbabe @iwantahockeyhimbo @himbos-on-ice @2manytabsopen if you want to be added just shoot me an ask :)
#i don't love this but here it is!!!#one day i'll like the stories i write#kevin hayes imagine#kevin hayes x reader#kevin hayes fic#philadelphia flyers imagine#nhl imagine#nhl fic#hockey imagine#hockey fic#cwrites#sour
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Fight Like Siblings: Scud/Reader
You fight like siblings. That’s where anything "familial" ends.
For the Season of Kink bingo square: wall sex, at @phoenixblack89’s request along with a gender neutral reader (well, female, but I couldn’t manage so we settled on gender neutral). Sorry for the delay! Got a migraine towards the end of the night and wanted to do one last proofread this morning.
Title is a wink to Eric and his "sister" Nora from True Blood, when he says they fight like siblings but fuck like champions. No incest here, though.
- - -
The van’s cluttered. Weapons, junk, junk food out in the open or stuffed away under ratty blankets. There’s hardly a place for you to be without something clanging off your hip or crinkling under your foot. It’s unavoidable, because not only is the van trashed, but it’s dark. A bank of TVs is your only light source, some of them switched off, the rest displaying grainy feed that just barely gives you the shapes of the other familiar against the opposite wall.
You slump against the back wall, eyeing the doors the familiar slammed shut after you leapt in. You don’t hear anything, and the feed’s utterly boring, so you relax by a fraction—and stiffen when you feel something with give to it sag under the hand you put down. Soft, sticky, and it flakes off onto your palm when you snatch your hand back.
It’s a goddamn donut.
"Could’ve left you out there, you know," Frohmeyer—Damaskinos is too formal to call him Josh, or Scud, which you don’t blame; it’s fucking stupid—says from where he’s a lump on the floor, seeing your look. Content with the rest of the trash.
"Couldn’t kill you to clean up," you scoff, tossing the donut at him. It’s childish, but so’s the cartoon he’s got playing on one of the TVs. "Damaskinos would be disgusted."
"Damaskinos ain’t here," Frohmeyer scoffs.
He fishes out a cigarette, and the orange spark of the lighter that materializes like some magic trick hurts your eyes. Nicotine burns your sinuses, but at least it isn’t the earthy weed you get a whiff of, seeped into the blankets.
"’Sides, keep your voice down," he snaps, clapping the Zippo shut and tossing it into the middle of the van. You guess that’s what he does with most of the junk scattered around when he’s done with it. "Damaskinos wouldn’t be too thrilled if you gave us away."
"Oh, so now you’re worried about it?"
You fall into bickering. Fighting like siblings, some of the familiars do. Part of it’s the need to get out of familiar status alive—well, turned. Prove to the one you’ve given yourself over to that you’re worth it, carrying their name, representing them.
Part of it’s that the only thing that bonds you is that you are familiars, otherwise you’d likely never interact with one another a day in your lives.
With Frohmeyer, you’d be sure of that.
"You should smile more," pulls you out of scowling at the donut where it landed against his leg.
You’d finally fallen quiet, too—but it’s just like Frohmeyer to ruin things. "You should get drained."
"Aw," he hums, and another cloud of smoke burns your nose, "the baby jealous Big Brother got the job instead? Had to hold Nyssa’s hand after I did all the work?"
You’re livid, and you make that clear by your lack of response. You’ve only been sent in after Frohmeyer’s done the hard task of getting in the daywalker’s good graces. You know why, that logically, Frohmeyer was the better choice to lure those two females at that campsite—and by default, the daywalker, once they started tearing into him.
But it still stings. And by the smokey grin that leers at you, Frohmeyer knows it still does, too.
"Fuck off," is what you settle on, pushing to your feet and not caring when you kick his ankle by accident.
"Fuck off yourself," gets scoffed up from below, with another thick cloud of smoke. You expect that.
But you don’t expect the foot he lashes out, that hooks your instep and sends you stumbling. "Asshole!" would probably draw a reaper or two, if there were any shown skulking around in the feeds; but there aren’t, so you let it bellow, and because he just grins at that you can’t do anything but lunge at him.
It isn’t fair. Tinkering and building—he calls it art; you call it clutter to stub your foot on—has given him strength, from having to clamber and lift his bigger projects. You don’t have any hobbies that give you an edge, so it’s you that ends up against the van’s wall, thumped into it, with his hands bracing yours in the curve where wall and ceiling bend.
It’s not fair, either, that he isn’t even bad-looking. That would make hating him easier.
At least it does so for the fucking.
His bangs are greasy, unwashed, but you like the way they both hide and make his eyes pop. A blue that’ll be downright deadly, once he’s turned. That’ll go bleach-blue, once he’s drank his fill, silver in the worst of blackness. Cheekbones that cut, soft-looking arms that bunch with hidden steel when you try to wrangle yourself free. It’ll cut harsher, harden to bedrock when he’s earned his place.
Maybe there’s something in that nicotine that isn’t, after all. The cigs did look home-rolled.
You’re too busy taking in his tongue to ask.
You feel his laugh buzz around your teeth as you cringe back, at first; he was halfway through puffing out another damn cloud, and it dries out your throat and chalks your tongue.
You get back at him by kissing deeper, biting into his bottom lip where the tattoo is. He has a penchant for rubbing the spot on the outside, you’ve noticed, the nerves scrambled from the overeager vampire that inked it. Yours doesn’t bother you—the meat of it’s raised, but that’s all—but he bites down on yours in retaliation. But the growl he follows it with is light and playful.
"Quit fucking around," you huff.
His grin’s wide and flashes teeth that aren’t sharp. They will be, one day, you can practically see the fangs he’ll get wink down with it. "Get right to it, then? Sure, baby."
"Don’t," you warn, even as he lets your hands go so you can paw at the front of his pants. Baby is too often used when he’s dangling the fact that he’s older (and was found and picked first) over your head. You can’t associate it with anything but the fact that you’re not-really-siblings.
You don’t need some incest angle forced into this. Jesus, no.
He lets it go, not because he’s being nice. You pulling him out is distracting—one of the guaranteed ways you’ve figured out, over the years, that will shut him up.
It doesn’t quiet him entirely. He pants against your cheek where he leans his head against yours, curling his fingers in your hair to keep them busy—they always need to be doing something—and his sharp inhales shake back out thready. He moans when you start stroking him, at a slow and even pace because this is the only peace you’ll get from him anytime soon. You want to take advantage of that. Even if his weight pressing on yours slowly drags you down, until you both kneel on the floor with the junk and trash.
You hiss at the burn in your legs as the hands that are plucking at a knot in your hair drop to your shoulders and bend you back, pinning you back. But the noise gets swallowed as he kisses you again, his hard-on pressing into your stomach.
You get a hand back on his cock, the other pushing his hip out so you can get to it.
"Just think how good this’ll be, when we don’t need air," he hums, panting.
You roll your eyes, but you help him get your jeans down, and he turns you to the van’s wall to get things going.
And it’s going well, his rhythm eager and greedy, your meeting thrusts keeping up, until the van shudders as something heavy drops on its roof.
Your swear gets muffled by the hand that clamps over it. You’re too frozen to bite it like you want to, and you don’t get the chance when you get your wits back because it’s off your mouth just as fast. He’s out of you, with it, and you can’t help but ache at the abrupt end even as he points to one of the TVs and you get your jeans up.
On top of the roof, a reaper’s crouched, scenting—and down the street, from another angle, you watch more lope towards the van.
"Shit," he hisses, fumbling with the panel under the TVs and you get ahold of his gun. You’re already pointing it towards the doors, waiting, as you hear a shriek too awful to even be vampire. Normal vampire.
"Get your pants up," you tell him distantly. If you have to make a run for it, you aren’t risking your own neck to help him up if he trips over himself.
He does, and you shove his gun at him while you grab yours, when a quick glance to the feeds show you aren’t going to be overrun in the second you’re defenseless. But it’ll happen, soon enough; the reaper overhead snarls and the blow it aims lags after the dent and crunch that bursts down, mangling the roof. It’s some kind of rallying or hunting cry, because the reapers in the street begin to sprint.
"Ready?" He’s got a thumb on one of the panel’s switches, ready to flick. "UV’ll smoke most of ‘em, ‘cept the dipshit on the roof."
It’ll try to get in any way it can. You get what his nod to the door means: control where it gets in, so you aren’t surprised.
"Do it."
He does, and when what’s left of the pack is still flaking and sizzling, you put more than enough rounds in the remaining repeal. Just to be safe, one of the UV lights are angled it’s way, where it’s already wilting and curling like a dead spider.
Then it’s gone, too.
It’s a mood killer, but once you’re back in the van and he’s done radioing the team to let them know what’s been dealt with, you get into light petting easily enough.
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Knight in Beskar Armor - Chapter 9
The Message
words: 3.6k
warnings: smut/NSFW/18+ ONLY ! unprotected sex, oral sex (female and male receiving, daddy kink
a/n: this one has a dash of angst in it! I apologize for the delay--I was moving and life was hectic for a while. I hope you enjoy this one!
series masterlist | read on ao3
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Din received the transmission when they left hyperspace. You continued to gaze out the window, Nevarro coming into view. Grogu was awake again, fiddling with his little metal ball. Hearing his babbling made you smile and feel a little calmer inside.
“Please, return home,” a grainy voice said.
Your head immediately snapped towards the holoprojection. It was Nelly, and you could tell that her face was contorted with concern. Din turned to look at you, moving out of the way when you approached him and stood in awe in front of the holoprojector.
“Princess, your people need you,” Nelly sniffled, and you nearly cried when you saw a tear roll down her cheek. “Please, return home.”
The message repeated, the words reaching your ears but not fully processed in your mind. You’d been waiting so long for this message, for some sort of communication from home, that it felt like a joke. The Mandalorian allowed the transmission to repeat, slowing the ship’s approach to Nevarro. You could feel him—and Grogu—watching you, your mouth open and eyes welling with tears. Finally, you turned to Din, rolling your shoulders back.
“We are going to Naboo.”
“We’ll go to Naboo after I give Karga this bounty.” Before you could protest, he continued, “I need the credits to refuel, unless you want us to only make it halfway before the ship dies.”
You blushed but held your gaze. “Fine.”
It was all you could manage under the Mandalorian’s scrutiny, and as you strapped back into your seat before traveling through Nevarro’s atmosphere, you felt a sense of hope for the first time since your journey with the bounty hunter began.
Karga frowned when Din told him the news of your departure. You smiled, uneasy as he hugged you. He’d given Din four new pucks; obviously the Mandalorian was relieved to return to normalcy. It made you scoff when he accepted them. He was just going to dump you on Naboo and leave—it had always been about protecting you until he didn’t need to anymore. But for some reason, you got the feeling that his acceptance of so many bounties wasn’t because he was anxious to return to his life before you, but because he needed some way to distract himself from losing you.
There was a battle in your head between the two assumptions as you walked with Din to visit Cara one last time, Grogu’s crib levitating on Din’s left side. The only sound was your footsteps in the dirt and the child’s babbles. The Mandalorian walked by your side, his hand brushing yours occasionally. It made you flush and you felt silly for even the slightest touch making you melt. You recalled how it felt to be beneath him, so unbearably warm, sweat on your skin as he slid in and out, his mouth peppering your cheeks with kisses—mesh’la, mesh’la—as you sighed and moaned. You’d had flings with knights before, but none like this. Even if you couldn’t see his face, you could feel yourself falling a little bit more each passing moment for the mysterious Mandalorian, and now that your time was coming to an end, your heart was beginning to break as the seconds ticked by.
You weakly smiled at Cara when she let you, Din, and the child inside, waiting to see if she already heard the news. Apparently, she had, as she took your hand in hers and nodded down at you.
“Stay out of trouble, Princess,” she said. “Naboo needs you.”
You blushed and thanked her. The Mandalorian was standing near the door, and his helmet was averted away from you. Grogu cooed and toyed with his metal ball. It was going to be the little things like this that you’d miss most.
Cara bid you one last farewell, and you made your way back to the Crest with the bounty hunter and the child.
The departure from Nevarro and the jump into hyperspace was filled with a heavy silence. Even Grogu seemed to understand something was different, closing his crib and hiding from the tension. You barely glanced in the Mandalorian’s direction, instead focusing on the blinking buttons and intermittent beeps from the control panel, and the sickly green glow the navcomputer cast on his beskar armor. Once you were safely in hyperspace en route to Naboo, you descended the ladder and opened the rack panel.
Your gown and tiara were still safely stored on the top shelf where you’d left it all those cycles ago. I didn’t even like it, you’d told Din, his hands combing through your hair. I hated it at first, you’d whispered into his bare chest, still sticky after taking you mercilessly from behind.
How do you feel about it now? Din had asked, his hand running up your back, fingers tracing your spine.
I think I love it.
As you ran your hands across the gown’s fabric, you remembered the fateful night that brought you and the Mandalorian together. Torn away from all that you knew and left with an imposing bounty hunter had shocked you to your core, but for some reason you were grateful it was him, it was Din, instead of someone else. You reached up and set the gown down gently and took the tiara in your hand, hesitating to place it on your head. It felt wrong to wear it while you were dressed in such drab garb. Mando had tried to get you to wear it a few times, but you refused to touch it—and refused to let him touch it. So, it had remained on top of the gown, a ghost and reminder of life before the bounty hunter.
“Do you want to wear it again?”
The modulated voice made you gasp and jump, clutching the tiara to your chest. You turned and looked at him, your back still facing him. His head was tilted slightly, helmet glowing under the light. He took a step towards you and cradled your chin in his hand.
“Answer me, Princess.”
You rose and his hand fell to your waist as you closed your eyes. “Take off that helmet, and I’ll tell you.”
There was a hiss and then a clang that made you flinch before his lips caught yours in a deep kiss. The tiara was still in your hands, but you felt his free hand ease it out of your grip. You didn’t want to wait for any further words from him; you could feel yourself burning with desire, a molten hot feeling threatening to spill and scorch anything in its path. You nearly tore off your clothes, trying your best to keep your lips attached to his, even when he chuckled against your mouth at your haste. The cold air of the Crest bit at your bare skin, making your hair stand on end and your nipples harden. He must have noticed the latter, as he pinched one of the buds between his fingers, snickering when gasped and jumped.
“You’re missing something, princess.”
“And what might that be?” you murmured, moving to kiss his warm neck.
“A crown,” he said, pushing you down on your knees. You heard him grunting and tossing off pieces of his armor, obviously as impatient as you. “You need to look like a princess while I fuck your mouth.”
He was growling, and it made your cunt get even wetter than it already was. You felt him place the tiara on your head, and he grunted in approval when it was set in place. His hands guided yours to rest on his thick cock, and he groaned as you took him into your mouth, sucking on the thick head of his dick before pulling away and licking up the shaft from the base. The Mandalorian, however, was apparently tired of your teasing—he held the back of your head and started to thrust into your mouth, his dick hitting the back of your throat. The tiara was bouncing as he fucked your throat, threatening to fall off, but he placed his other hand on it, securing the tiara on your head and your wet mouth around his cock.
Tears slid down your cheeks as he continued to fuck your throat, your head bobbing on his cock. You were completely at his mercy and knowing this only made you want him more. As you gagged on his thick length, your hands gripped his bare hips, nails digging into his skin.
“Yes, cyar’ika—that’s it—just like that—suck daddy’s cock, princess,” Din growled, his fingers tangled in your hair as he started to thrust even harder, choking you with each stroke.
He suddenly pulled away, and spit dribbled down your chin, dotting your bare breasts. His hand stroked your cheek before slapping it, making you gasp.
“Look at you. Look at my princess. All dirtied up for me.” He swept you into his arms and dropped you onto the cot. You could feel him kneeling between your legs and you yelped when his tongue licked your soaking slit.
“Mmm, so wet for me too.” He flicked your sensitive clit with his tongue, and you squirmed when he chuckled against it, the vibrations making you ache even more for him.
But right now, you didn’t want his mouth—not licking your cunt, at least. You blindly grasped for his hand and when you found it gripping your waist, you grabbed his wrist and guided him to cup your wet heat, letting his fingers tease your entrance.
“F-finger me, Mando,” you breathed. His free hand was massaging your breast, and you felt him shift and move to lay next to you. “P-please, Din—please.”
He gently kissed you and slid two of his fingers inside of you, making you moan into his mouth. Din pumped his fingers in and out of your soaking cunt, making sure to drag the tips slowly against the spot he knew drove you wild.
“Rub your clit, baby—yes, just like that—such a good little princess.”
His praise drove you crazy, and as he curled his fingers inside of you, you felt your walls clench around them, pressure building in your core. All you could hear was his voice and all you could feel was his fingers filling you as you got closer and closer to the edge. He was breathing with you and pumping his fingers in and out until you were on the precipice of release.
“Cum for me, Princess.”
Your climax washed over you in a white-hot wave of pleasure, your knees and legs shaking as you came all over the Mandalorian’s fingers. He was whispering in your ear, coaxing you through your orgasm—good girl, mesh’la���as his fingers slowed their pace. He peppered your cheek with kisses and you groaned when he finally pulled his fingers out of your pussy, the emptiness suddenly unbearable. You grabbed at his bicep, whining for his touch. Your relief came when you felt his torso above yours, his cock twitching on your belly as he kissed you, slow and deep, melting into you when he finally slid inside of you.
Your nails dug into his arms and then crept up to his shoulders when he sheathed himself fully inside of you, his cock filling you up entirely. Each stroke sent delicious shocks of pleasure throughout your body, his warm voice murmuring praise in your ear and encouraging you to moan louder, say his name, breathe with him—
“Fuck—Din—I’m c-cumming—”
“Cum on my cock, princess,” he growled. “You’re mine.”
His possessiveness sent you hurtling over the edge again, and you felt your cunt clench around him and get even wetter than it already was, soaking his length in your juices. Seconds later, he was filling you up full of his cum, his cock throbbing as he kissed you once again. Your skin was sticky and you noticed how damp you were. The Mandalorian chuckled as he slid out of you, and you felt his weight shifting towards the edge of the cot.
“You look so beautiful with my cum leaking out of you,” he said, running his hand up your inner thigh and teasing your clit.
You were still trying to catch your breath from your intense orgasm; it had left you rattled and shaken in the best way possible and all you wanted was your Mandalorian laying next to you, playing with your hair and holding you close. You reached for him, wiggling your fingers, hoping he understood your signals. He gently removed your tiara and you felt him shift to replace it on the shelf. You hummed in content when he settled back down next to you, moving you so your back was pressed to his chest, his arms wrapped around you in a protective embrace.
“Din?”
“Hm?”
You hesitated, weighing the words resting on your tongue. “I…I’m grateful for you.”
Din kissed the back of your head and chuckled. “You certainly make my life interesting.”
You almost whipped around but remembered that your retort wouldn’t be as powerful with your eyes closed; instead, you huffed and lightly slapped the hand that was on your waist. In response, he grabbed one of your breasts and squeezed, holding you tighter when you squirmed and tried to roll away. You gave up and relaxed into him once again, sighing and letting his calloused hands grip you and explore your curves.
Suddenly, you remembered where you were: hurtling through hyperspace, returning to your old life. Returning to a world of sunny breakfasts, a planet full of your citizens, a kingdom wrought with uncertainty. Naboo was your home—of that, there was no question. But there was something new within you, wrapping you in warmth from the inside out, something that even the sunniest morning on Naboo couldn’t bring you. It was here on the Crest, holding you tight in a tiny cot. Perhaps losing one home had brought you another.
You swallowed the lump in your throat. “I don’t want to leave you.”
The words tumbled out of your mouth before you could stop them, and you felt the Mandalorian stiffen behind you. You cursed yourself, knowing you should have held your tongue instead of speaking foolishly.
“It’s safer for you to leave.”
You nearly turned around but continued to keep your eyes closed and head turned from him. Your chest suddenly burned, and your cheeks felt like they were on fire.
“I thought I was safe with you,” you whispered, remembering his words from before when he’d promised his protection.
“Your people need you.”
You sat up, making sure to keep your back to him. “I need you.” You felt his lips on your shoulder, but you shrugged him off. “You should go check on Grogu.”
He left the rack without a word, and only when the panel slid closed did you finally allow your tears to fall. Were you nothing more than a bounty to him?
“We’re here.”
You woke up to see the rack panel open and the Mandalorian staring down at you, assessing you like he did all those nights ago in the garden. The child was staring at you from his floating crib, ears perked and head tilted. Maybe he could sense that something was changing.
“I’ll make myself decent,” you said, sitting up and stretching.
The Mandalorian nodded and strode away, his feet stomping up the cockpit ladder. You felt your cheeks flush and you shook away the lump in your throat as you reached and grabbed your gown and tiara off the top shelf. As you changed in the ‘fresher, you tidied yourself and fixed your hair. You noticed that your gown was slightly dirtied, but at least it was still intact. You tried your best to tame your hair and make yourself presentable; your people deserved to see their princess clean and polished.
You left the ‘fresher and back to the rack, reaching in to grab your slippers. Your heart felt heavy as you stepped into them, the reality of your ending with the Mandalorian setting in. You heard his familiar footsteps and averted your gaze.
“You look good.”
You scoffed, standing and finally looking into the visor. “Thanks.”
He walked over to the ramp, and you joined him at his side. Grogu was in his crib to the side—the Mandalorian was leaving him behind, apparently, so you gave him a wave and a weak smile. You smoothed out your gown, frowning at the dirt that stained the bottom of it, no doubt from the night when the Mandalorian rescued you from the ball. You jumped when you felt him brush a hair out of your face, and you looked into his visor again, trying to search for his eyes, for something to investigate instead of an abyss. His gaze lingered on you, his palm cradling your cheek. You shied away from his touch, clearing your throat. He pushed a button, and the ramp began to lower.
You heard a familiar voice yell your name, and as soon as the ramp was low enough, you walked as fast as you could into the arms of Nelly. She was crying into your shoulder and a wave of relief passed over you. She was here, she was alive, she loved you. You both sunk to the ground, crying and whispering each other’s names like a prayer, clinging to a lifeline. Your hope had strengthened and grown now that were reconnected with your surrogate mother, warm in her arms. You felt Nelly lift her head from your shoulder, and you followed her gaze to see the Mandalorian towering above you.
“Thank you,” Nelly said.
“Just doing my job,” the bounty hunter responded, his modulated voice cutting through your ribs and slicing your heart open.
All you were was a job to him? After all this time, he saw you as a means to a reward, and you’d been a fool to think otherwise. It made your cheeks burn and your heart bleed. You rose and lifted your chin, meeting his gaze. You refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing you break.
“Follow me, I’ll give you your payment.”
He nodded and you turned on your heel, patting Nelly’s shoulder, letting her know not to follow you. The Mandalorian stayed behind you and followed you to the throne room. The hallways were empty, and only a few knights roamed the halls, bowing when they saw you. You held your head high—they need you, they need you, keep it together just a moment longer—and swung the throne room doors open, not waiting for some knight to do it for you. You heard the door slam shut, and you finally turned to face the Mandalorian now that you were alone with him.
“Princess, I don’t want payment.” He crossed his arms.
“How much do you need to refuel?”
“I refueled on Nevarro and had repairs done there.”
“Surely you’d like compensation for the extra rations you had to buy.”
“No,” he said, taking a step toward you.
“Then what do you want?” you whispered, your breath hitching when you felt his hand on your waist.
“You.” His other hand stroked your cheek, and squeezed your eyes shut to stop tears from falling.
You turned your head slightly, trying to will yourself to move away from his touch. Your efforts were in vain; your hand wrapped around his wrist as he ran his thumb across your cheek.
“Din,” you whispered. You shook your head, finally opening your eyes and letting tears finally fall. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.” He said your name and got even closer to you, but you shook his hands off you and walked away.
“You never cared about me,” you said, raising your voice as you moved away towards the thrones. “You just wanted the credits.”
“I do care about you, Princess.” He seemed to hesitate, and you turned to face him, seeing his head tilted and gaze on the floor.
“But I was just a job to you, I didn’t mean anything more than that. You only cared about me because returning me with even the tiniest scratch meant a deduction from your payment.”
“That’s not true,” he growled, striding over to you.
“Then prove it.” You were crying, tears flowing from your eyes. You didn’t care if the Mandalorian saw you like this—emotional, distressed—because he had already seen you in many other vulnerable ways. You wanted him to see you crack, you wanted him to see you shake and sob, to see the pain he was causing.
Before he could speak, the throne room doors opened with a crash, and you quickly wiped your eyes and fixed yourself. A few knights entered the room, flanking Sir Pov Gres, your father’s court chancellor. Nelly followed them, looking concerned but more composed than before.
“Princess,” Sir Gres said, bowing. He turned to the Mandalorian, barely hiding a scowl. “Mandalorian.”
“Sir Gres, it’s good to see you again,” you said, putting on a smile.
“It’s good to see you return to us, Princess.” He gave you a curt nod, then looked at Mando again. He held out a pouch. “Your payment, as promised by the late king.”
The Mandalorian pushed it away. “Keep it. I’ll be on my way now.”
Sir Gres nodded and signaled to the guards. “Lead the bounty hunter back to his ship.”
You watched as the Mandalorian gave you one last glance before following the knights out of the throne room and out of your life.
Once the doors were shut and the Mandalorian gone, Sir Gres took your hands, making you jump. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” His short black hair was smoothed back, his royal blue clothes smoothed. He smelled fresh, but it was almost overwhelming.
You met his icy blue eyes and smiled. “No, no he didn’t.”
Sir Gres believed your lie.
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@andiesturgss
#mandalorian x y/n#mandalorian x reader#mandalorian x you#mandalorian smut#the mandalorian fanfiction#mandalorian fanfic#mando fanfiction#mando x y/n#mando x you#the mandalorian#mando x reader#din djarin x reader#din x y/n#din djarin fic#din djarin x y/n#din x reader#din djarin x you#din djarin#angst#mandalorian angst
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The Things We Can’t Tell Pete About iv
You approach Pete about your situation and deal with the aftermath.
Colson Baker X Reader
Warnings: Angst, cursing
Word Count: 1380
| i | ii | iii | v |
You texted Pete later that night, telling him to meet you for lunch the next day. He obliges, meeting you at your favorite Staten Island diner. The conversation started easy enough, talking about work, your mom, light stuff.
But then you shifted the conversation to what you really needed to talk to your brother about, Colson.
“So, Petey, dude, my favorite brother.” You started, a smile on your face. He raised an eyebrow at you, knowing you were up to something.
“I am your only brother, Y/N.” He muttered, but let you continue.
“So, just say, hypothetically, one of your lovely sisters, your favorite sister, actually, went on a date with someone you knew.” You started, “someone that you considered a friend, maybe even a good friend.” Pete’s expression darkened, his eyes squinting at you, but you continued. “And like, she really, really likes this guy and he likes her. How would you react?”
You knew it wasn’t the most subtle way to go about the situation, but Pete would figure you out if you went about it any other way. Might as well rip off the band-aid.
“Are you fucking serious, Y/N?” His tone was dark, angry. You weren’t expecting him to be happy, but you weren’t expecting him to be this angry either. His tone actually scared you.
You moved back in your chair, taking in a sharp breath. “I’m not saying it happened, I’m just asking how you would react.”
You could see the clench in Pete’s jaw, and you swallowed deeply. “I told you, I don’t want you getting involved with any of my friends.” You nodded, hoping he would end there, but he didn’t. “I’m serious, my friends are off limits. If you sleep with any of them, I will never forgive you.”
“Okay, got it.” You mumbled, regretting everything immediately.
Pete sighed, getting up from the table and throwing down cash to cover the meals. “I can’t believe you would even think about it. How fucking selfish can you get?”
Your mouth dropped, shocked at his accusation. “Oh, fuck off, Pete. Don’t talk to me about being selfish you prick.” You stood up too, grabbing your jacket and purse. “I can do whatever I want.”
He scoffed, “sure you can, but don’t expect me to take care of you when your heart gets broken. I can’t wait to hear you tell me I’m right.”
You shook your head angrily, “Whatever, forget I even asked. I forgot you’re an unreasonable, unstable asshole.” You pushed past him and walked out the door of the diner, heading to your apartment.
You knew it was wrong of you to use his mental illness against him, but he has no right to say who you can and can’t date.
Do you regret what you said? Yes. Will you apologize? Absolutely not.
When you got to your apartment you texted Colson.
Call me when u can.
Within moments his caller ID appeared on your phone screen.
“Hey, what’s up?” He asked, his voice grainy through the phone.
You sighed, sitting down on your couch, “Pete and I got in a fight. He’s being an unreasonable asshole and I just can’t deal with it right now.”
Colson hummed sadly, letting out a breath of air. “Do you want me to come over?”
You smiled at his suggestion, “I mean if you’re offering…” you trailed off, raising your voice at the end of your sentence.
He chuckled through the phone, “I’ll be there in 10, princess.”
You bit your lip, excited at the thought of you and Colson being alone in your apartment… together. You cleaned up your apartment a little bit and freshened yourself up. When you heard the knock on your door, your heart fluttered. You skipped over and opened the door to reveal the blond beauty that constantly occupied your mind.
“Hey.” You said quietly, grabbing his hand and pulling him into your apartment.
He towered over you, hands in yours. “Hi.” He whispered, eyes staring straight into your soul. “You are much happier than I thought you’d be.” He chuckled, and it was the most beautiful sound you’d ever heard.
You shrugged, closing the door, and pulling him towards the couch. “I was upset at first, but now I’m just kind of pissed off at him. It’s whatever though, all I care about is that you’re here.” You smiled, leaning up and pressing a soft kiss to his lips.
He gladly kissed you back, laughing against your lips as you sat down on the couch, pulling him down with you. “What did he say?” Colson asked and you rolled your eyes.
“He just said I was being selfish and shit. He blew it way out of proportion. I mean, what’s wrong with us being happy?” You asked, a small pout on your lips.
Colson’s expression went from giddy to serious, concern in his eyes. “Y/N I don’t want to be the reason you and Pete fight, I told you that.”
You scoffed, “you’re not. Pete and I are fighting because he’s being a stubborn asshole who can’t accept that there’s a world outside of him.”
Colson frowned, “but all this came from you asking if he’d approve of our relationship?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point.” You sighed, hands running up and down his arms.
He shook his head, “that is the point. I don’t wanna do this if it means you and Pete are mad at each other.”
Your tone betrayed your emotions that you were trying to hide. “Can you stop saying that shit? It’s like you’re looking for a fucking way out of this.” You stood up, letting out a huff. You turned to face away from him, feeling tears coming to your eyes. You did not want to cry in front of him.
He stood up, wrapping his arms around you. “Y/N, listen to me.” He paused, looking for a sign that you were doing so. You just turned your head down, hiding the emotions on your face. “I’m not looking for a way out, okay? I want this. Like really fucking want this. Bu-“
You cut him off, “just end the sentence there. You don’t need a but. You want this, I want this. It shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”
He sighed, continuing with his original spiel, “But, I refuse to be the reason you and Pete get in a fight. He talks to me about how close you two are all the time. I know you’re frustrated right now, but he’s your brother. I’m just some dude. As much as I hate to admit it, there’s plenty of me’s lined up for you.”
You rolled your eyes, trying to wiggle out of his grasp but he kept his arms tight around you. “You’re gorgeous, you’ll find tons of great guys, but you only get one brother. Okay?”
You turned around to face him, the tears visible in your eyes making his heart crack. “I don’t want someone else; I want you.” You whined. You realized you were acting stupid; you’d only been on one date with him. But it felt so right, and you hated thinking that something great was gonna be taken from you and there was nothing you could do about it.
Colson smiled sadly at you, forehead pressing against yours. “I hate this.” He mumbled and you nodded in agreement. “But I don’t think we can do this.”
A tear fell from your eye. Colson reached up to wipe it away but you stepped away from him, out of reach. “This isn’t fair.” You muttered, sniffling. “I finally find something good, for once, and he rips it from me before I can even give it a chance.”
Colson shook his head, stepping towards you, “no, this isn’t Pete’s fault.” He whispered. “This is on me, okay? I’m ending it.”
You turned away from him, embarrassment covering you like a blanket. “I’m the one walking away. I’m calling this quits, not Pete. “
You bit your lip as you heard him walk towards the door. He paused, hand on the handle, looking back at you. “You’re giving up.” You mumbled, just loud enough for him to hear it.
“Yeah, I am.” He said before turning the handle and leaving.
#Colson baker#colson x reader#colson baker imagine#colson baker angst#mgk#mgk imagine#mgk angst#machine gun kelly#machine gun kelly imagine#colson imagine#pete davidson#pete davidson imagine#brother!Pete
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I Love To Hate You.
Part One: My Hatred Runs Deep....
maki zenin x fem! black reader
—> fluff + angst series....
Description: In this story reader has a burning hatred towards maki zenin, she find’s her unbearable, despising her very presence. On the contrary, maki has an unexplained fascination towards the girl, causing her to bother reader whenever possible. Soon, this abhorrence blooms into a passionate love unable to be contained.
Warnings: Slight gore, cursing, mild angst, slightly suggestive
Word Count: 1K
You hated Maki. No, that word was much too generous to describe your feelings for the girl. You despised Maki. You loathed how she acted as if she knew everything, smirking whenever you seemed to be confused about what she referred to as a “simple concept.” when in reality, she was just unbelievably intelligent when it came to knowledge about cursed energy.
You detested how she went out of her way to purposely get under your skin, swiftly throwing around seemingly light hearted insults, her grin — which always seemed to be present when you were around — growing once glancing at your furrowed eyebrows and your plush lips scrunched upwards into an unpleasant scowl.
Yes, your hatred for the girl ran deep. Deep along side the blood which flowed inside your veins, giving your very being life. And although it was well known that you hated, ah no despised the girl, she simply could not get enough of you. She loved your little witty comebacks, words laced with fire shooting from those soft lips of yours, like darts slicing through the cool air.
She adored your pouts, and the crinkle of skin which laid between your eyebrows as you harshly glared downwards at her upturned lips, eyebrows narrowing at the smirk adoring her pale face. She found it amusing, the reactions you made whenever she was present, it was entertaining to her, and not only her but others as well. Because of that, she made sure to annoy you as much as possible, and in this case that time was now.
“Maki please shut the absolute fuck up.” you grumbled, legs stretching further and further, trying to get yourself away from the infuriating woman.
Maki chucked at your vexed expression, your arched eyebrows furrowing just how she adored them to, lips down turned into a that delicious pout that captivated her each time it appeared. “Why should I? You seem to be enjoying my presence.”
“Ha ha, funny.” you replied, pace quickening as your annoyance increased.
“I know, glad you agree.”
From afar— if one looked hard enough — two teenagers peaked from behind their respective oak trees, both their heads were tilted as they gazed curiously at the pair swiftly walking a few feet ahead of them, watching their interaction closely.
“Hey Nobara.” a pink haired male called out rather loudly, causing his partner in crime to send him a deadly glare in return.
“Hush Itadori! We don’t want them to hear us! Y/N is scary when she’s mad.” the girl shuttered, her eyes closing as she imagined you standing before her, knife in hand, eyes gleaming with blood lust.
“Why do you think Y/N hates Maki so much?” the boy asked, ignoring Nobara’s request and continuing to speak at the same volume as before.
“I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP ASSHOLE, DO YOU WANT US TO GET CAUGHT?”
“WELL YOU’RE NOT HELPING EITHER WITH YOUR SCREAMING!!”
“God, what are you idiots doing this time?” the sudden appearance of this new voice made the two squeal in surprise, eyes bulging comically out of their sockets, hands flinging forward to clasp the others. Megumi looked at the pair in exasperation, hands shoved deep into his navy blue pants pockets as he cautiously raised an eyebrow, almost frightened to learn what the duo’s motives were.
“Oh thank god it’s only you, you scared the crap outta us!” Itadori exhaled, gingerly letting go of Nobara’s hands which were intertwined with his own.
“DON’T SCARE US LIKE THAT ASSHOLE!!” Nobara howled, the image of you with a bloody kitchen knife still present in her mind.
“Alright geez, stop screaming.” Megumi rolled his eyes in false irritation, leaning his right shoulder against the same oak tree Itadori was supposed to be hiding behind. “You didn’t answer my question, what are you idiots doing?”
“Nothing!”
“Spying on Y/N and Maki!” the duo replied simultaneously, snapping their heads to peer at one another when their answers didn’t correspond. Megumi shook his head in amusement, softly snickering under his breath at their idiocy.
“Spying on Y/N and Maki!”
“Nothing!” their answers now switching, causing them to once again turn their heads to face each other, slightly glaring when they once again failed to answer Megumi’s awfully simple question.
“So you’re spying on Y/N and Maki...got it.”
“Hey Megumi, you’ve been here a while. Do you know why Y/N seems to hate Maki so much?” Itadori questioned. Nobara nodded her head beside him in agreement while slightly leaning forward, for she wanted to know the answer as well.
Megumi shrugged in response, his eyes fluttering shut as he kicked a lone rock which laid in front of him. “I honestly don’t know much. For as long as I’ve known them all they’ve ever done is argue. If you wanna know, you’d probably have to ask Y/N herself.” he rested his head against the rough wood of the oak tree, eyes opening to peer upwards at the setting sun.
“Hm no way am I asking her, she’s way too damn scary.” Nobara glowered, swinging her foot back and forth to make harsh contact with the tree in front of her, pieces of dead wood dropping to the ground as a result.
“You know what I think?” Itadori slumped against a bush directly behind him, resting his arms on each knee below him. His pink locks ruffled as the wind tussled each individual strand, some ending up brushing against his forehead. “I think Y/N actually likes Maki, she just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Pfft, yeah right!” Nobara cackled, brown hair bouncing as slight quivers erupted from the aftermath of her laughter, her eyes crinkling shut.
“Hey! I’m serious!”
“Yeah and so am I! No way in hell she secretly likes her. What is this, a romance story?”
“Shhh, before they hear us!!” the pair continued to bicker, words becoming louder and louder with every passing second. Megumi quickly darted his eyes away from the dulled sunlight, his own midnight blue irises settling on to Maki’s light green ones. Their eyes only met for a moment, but in that brief split of a second he noticed the inexplicable mischievousness present within her gaze, her cunning aura intensifying before eventually dissipating, eyes now resting on your body several steps in front of her.
Megumi sighed for what seemed to be the thousandth time in a span of 4 minutes, kicking his foot against the grainy surface behind him. “Yeah it’s a little too late for that.”
—> taglist: @mitsumya @myhoodacademia @mypimpademia @racistareversa @xetou @katsumox @blackweebtrash @koishiguro @yuujisbby @mads-fairy @asaincy @namjoonswifeyy @angiebug101 @amethyst09 @sisifromthed @lilsparkyswife @morosis-haze @solar3lunar @lightofcordonia
—> notes: let me know if you would like to be added to the taglist, also let me know if I forgot you from the taglist !! — yes ik not a lot of maki and reader, but imma get thea I promise —
#maki zenin x reader#maki zenin x poc reader#maki zenin x black reader#maki x reader#maki x black reader#maki x poc reader#jjk x reader#jjk x poc reader#jjk x black reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen x black reader#jujutsu kaisen x poc reader
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Nemesis - Choose Your Own Whump 2
With A receiving the most votes on my last post, for this adventure we are going with a drugged Villain whumpee. Sorry about the generic name for this one, I really couldn’t think of anything else ^^
I hope you enjoy, and thanks to everyone for replying to the last post! As always, votes can be sent in through any method you want. Comments, asks, and PMs are all just fine. I’ll see it!
CW//Falling off a building, hostage situations, shapeshifting, medical abuse, extensive talk of sedatives, brief mention of a needle
Please note that the third scene of this piece is from the point of view of a drugged character, and thus the scene has some aspects that could be described as unreality. Please skip this scene if this would make you uncomfortable.
The video was grainy.
It was always grainy. That was the strange thing about it-- everyone carried around miniature computers in their pockets, equipped with tiny cameras that would have rivaled the most powerful devices of years prior. Any civilian could take a 4k quality video on some social media, but the moment anything actually important was happening, technology seemed to regress twenty years.
Hero supposed it didn’t matter. Their memory of the incident was certainly clear as day, better than any camera could ever capture.
And yet...
They clicked a button on the remote, and the clip restarted.
The sides of the screen were blocked out in fuzzy grey-- the video having been taken through the bars of a metal fence. Between them, the camera focused at first on the foot of a brown brick building, before panning upwards, only stopping upon reaching the roof. It took a moment for the visual to adjust, focusing against the glare of the sun overhead.
Two figures, on the building’s roof. Two figures seen so often together, in so many similar videos.
The standoff had taken from dawn till sunset. How Villain had gotten into the building unnoticed had yet to be fully understood, but, regardless of method, they wasted little time in taking hostage a group of professors, eating lunch together. A single one had been released, bringing with them a message:
“Everyone leaves. No one comes in. Everyone stays outside the fence.”
It had seemed like a trap, at first. Of course it had. It wouldn’t be the first time that Villain had played such a trick. After much debating, however, evacuation was deemed to be the best option, and the campus was soon barren.
The hours afterwards had been as long and hot as they had been nerve-wracking. The very thought of following orders from Villain made Hero’s stomach twist, but their orders were incredibly clear: Don’t do anything stupid.
It was an incredibly difficult order to follow.
Establishing a line of communication had been the hardest part. Villain had quickly disconnected any security cameras in the vicinity, alongside confiscating any technology their hostages might have held.
In the end, it was decided that a reporter would be the one to go in. One of the most recognizable faces in the city, and one that was neutral. Not fighting for either side, but representing the citizenry.
The whole plan bet on one fact: That the shapeshifting Hero could pull of the imitation.
It worked. At least, it worked for as long as it needed to. Villain accepted the olive branch, and allowed the supposed reporter to enter unharmed.
Of course, the illusion broke as soon as Hero opened their mouth. No matter how good they were at changing their shape, it did not change their voice. In the brief moment of confusion, the hostages had managed to make their escape.
Leaving only the two nemeses, and the building as their battlefield.
It was hard to remember the fight. They had waged so many battles against one another, they all seemed to blend together, at one point or another. There was broken glass, pushed over tables, exploding equipment, and then-
And then they were on the roof.
Villain was stupid, but they weren’t, well, they weren’t stupid. They may have had the moral compass of a kleptomaniac feline, and the brain cells to match, but they had common sense. A sense of self-preservation.
Forcing them to the edge of the roof... it was supposed to be like pushing them to a corner. Trapping them.
In the video, the two figures danced. Forward, and back, until one took the lead. Until they were up against the edge, with nowhere left to go.
They were supposed to stop. They weren’t supposed to fall.
They stopped their own fall, or at least they tried. They were telekinetic. Of course they did. But they were surprised, or confused, or, or something. They slowed themself down. But they did not stop. The force with which they struck the concrete parking lot below was more than enough to knock them out.
The video ended.
And... that was it. The end. Years and years of battles, some won, some lost, all ended. They should have been happy, and they were! They hated Villain, sincerely and truly hated them.
But no other villain fought like them. No other villain had their tongue, their wit. Their skill. Their fight.
Villain’s defeat should have been epic! The ultimate confrontation of good and evil, of chaos, and order.
Yet, their downfall was a simple trip.
In the corner of Hero’s TV screen, small white text helpfully reported to them just when that video had been recorded.
One year ago.
One year, since that day. Since Villain’s downfall. And now...
Hero’s phone buzzed. A text message. The confirmation of a meeting.
One whole year, and still, Hero’s mind was consumed by their lost nemesis.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The diner was terribly busy, and yet, when Hacker walked through the door, Hero had no doubts as to their identity.
Despite their rather stereotypical appearance, there was nothing about the person’s manner that would have indicated the sheer amount of time they spent behind a computer screen. They greeted the receptionist, pointed to Hero, and exchanged a few words beyond that. With a smile, then, they parted, and made their way to Hero’s table.
Their manner only seemed strange when they sat down, and Hero noted that the way they smiled seemed to pain them.
“Is this seriously what you people act like?” They hissed through bared teeth. “Can I stop smiling now? Or will they look at me weird?”
“They’re already looking at you weird.”
“They are?”
“You- You don’t need to do that.”
“Oh thank god.” Immediately, their expression fell into one far more analytic. Far less friendly. “I, uh, don’t get out much.”
“Really?” Hero raised a brow incredulously.
“I’ve got more important things to do than, uh, than going out. Anyways.” They stuck a hand outwards. It was partially covered by a fingerless glove. “I’m Hacker.”
“I figured.” Hero shook the offered hand. “I’m Hero, though I suppose you already know that.”
“You’d think people here would be, uh, a bit more in awe? It’s not everyday you get to eat in the same building as a superhero.”
“Keep your voice down, please.”
“Oh, sorry. Is it, like, a secret? You don’t have a secret identity, do you?”
“No. But when I’m out of costume, I’m not exactly that recognizable. So let’s keep it that way. Kapish?”
“Kapash. But, still, oh my god. This is so cool! A real life hero...”
“Yeah... Yeah. A real hero alright.”
A hero who could hardly focus during battle. A hero who infuriated their team leader more than they aided them.
“Anyways.” Hacker raised their head, a far more natural smile coming onto their face. “I have the... thing.”
“You mentioned that. It’s about Villain, right?”
“Mhm.”
The person across the booth leaned down, prying a laptop from a carrying case and placing it atop the table. It was a bulky thing, and as soon as it was turned on, the shrill sound of fans struggling not to overheat filled Hero’s head. Hacker clicked around a bit. They gripped the edges of the device, as if about to spin it around, before they stopped, frowning.
“It’s been a year now, hasn’t it?” They commented.
“Since Villain was captured. Yes. 374 days.”
“You remember?”
“Yes.”
“You miss them, don’t you?”
It was so direct. Hero couldn’t help but stutter:
“I don’t- Of course I don’t miss them. I hate them.”
Hacker looked up over the laptop screen to give them an incredulous look. It wasn’t a convincing lie.
“I don’t miss them.” Hero stood their ground. “But I want to make sure they’re contained.”
“I just... I don’t know if this is something you want to see. You’re trying to move on, and-”
“Show me it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. If it’s something to do with their containment, I need to know about it. I can’t let them hurt anyone else.”
“Well, that’s not the problem here. If you’re sure.”
With a sigh, Hacker spun the computer around, so that it’s screen faced Hero.
They weren’t sure what they expected. Some kind of... deep web threat? A message from Villain? A copycat? An escape attempt?
But they didn’t get any of that. Instead, the screen displayed a simple PDF. Medical records. At the top, in bold letters and a rather ostentatious logo, the header read:
Specialized Criminal Rehabilitation Unit of Organization
For the most part, the page was Greek to Hero. A slew of ID numbers and attending physicians with far too many acronyms following their names. What did make sense to them was the spreadsheet that made up most of the page, labelled:
Approved Daily Medication Dosage for Patient: Villain
The spreadsheet took up two pages with solid text. Hero did not recognize the medication names, of course, but they did not need to be a doctor to understand the entries written under the column labelled “Medication Purpose.”
Every single data cell, even as they scrolled to the bottom of the document, contained only one word. The same word.
Sedation
“This is...” Hero muttered, furrowing their brow. Scrolling up and down. This had to be wrong, somehow.
“I don’t understand most of it.” Hacker commented sheepishly. “But, uh, I have a few friends with some more medical knowledge than me. They’ve never seen anything like it. It’s more than enough medication to sedate a fucking elephant- sorry, excuse my language.”
“It’s fine.” The confusion in their voice was rapidly melting to fury.
“Even for major surgical procedures... nothing near this level would ever be used.”
“This has to be a mistake.” Hero shook their head. “A mix-up. Maybe it’s like... all the medications the facility ordered. And they just labelled it wrong.”
“Well, if it’s a mistake, they’ve been making the exact same one for an entire year. I’ve got 374 of these files. Newest one just got uploaded a few hours ago.”
“And they’re always the same?”
“With some minor dosage adjustments, but yes. That’s not, um, that’s not all of it.”
Hacker reached over, dragging the computer back so that it faced them again. There was more clicking this time, along with typing at a speed that made Hero’s fingers hurt, just to watch it.
When the laptop was spun back around, this time, it was a video.
A camera feed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Villain felt about to choke on their tongue.
It wasn’t a new feeling. More or less, it was the only thing they felt, anymore. That heavy block of muscle in their mouth, threatening at any moment to block throat choke air no air no-
They were losing their words again. Words... wordsssssss... Voices. Voices spoke words. Sometimes, they did. Sometimes they grumbled and muttered and sputtered and murmured like a car murmured. Cars... or was it cats? No, cats didn’t murmur. They purred. What else did they do? Not bark... no, barking too loud for cats. Cat go mew mew, real quiet like.
Cat’s meow, that is a cat’s voice. There were other voices, too. Quiet like cats. Two of them, two voices. They knew those voices, those were the doctors’ voices. The doctors liked to talk a lot. They talked, but they did not see. Or... no. They were not seen. Villain did not see them. They wanted to, but their eyes were broken. The engines in their eyelids would not run anymore, would not open the garage door, Sally!
One of the doctors’ voices got closer. A million miles away, a hand was laid upon Villain’s wrist, flipping over their hand so that their palm faced downward.
“Let’s move it.”
It was a silly thing to say. Nothing moved in this place. Nothing that Villain could see, as their eyes were broken.
“Is the other vein healed enough?”
“It’s going to have to be.”
Silly words... Villain wanted to laugh, but their muscles were firmly locked away behind a padlock.
“Okay.” The doctor sounded so sad. Why were they so sad? Villain’s mouth was full of soil. The doctor was tired. “I’ll get the rest of the medicines.”
“We’re going 30 milligrams up from yesterday on the Propofol.”
“Oh? Why?”
“They opened their eyes, yesterday.”
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Hero felt sick. In the top right corner of the security footage, the same logo from the medical records was displayed. The Specialized Criminal Rehabilitation Unit of Organization. Below it, a subtitle.
“Keeping the city safe.”
Was this safety? It shouldn’t have been. They had known, of course, what had happened to Villain after their capture and very brief hospital stay. It was what happened to all villains. They were sent to the rehab unit.
A therapy program. Helping villains to control their powers and reform their lives. To return them to the straight and narrow. But, now that Hero thought about it...
Villain was the only one who had never been released.
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Thanks so much for reading! Just like last time, there are two options along with every part of this story. Alongside each options is a question, so that you guys can give more specific suggestions if you so wish. The option that receives the most votes will be the choice that our Hero makes!
A.) Tell someone about what is happening - Who should Hero tell? (They are on a small team, as well as part of a larger Organization, for reference.)
B.) Attempt a more direct approach. Visit Villain in the rehab program - Should Hero try to rescue Villain immediately?
#whump#whumpee#whumpblr#whump community#hero villain whump#drugged whumpee#drugged villain#villain whumpee#hero villain prompt#choose your own whump#choose your own adventure#nemesis
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