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aryareyes · 3 years

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Title : Happiness

Pairing : Gruvia

Summary : Basically a gruvia family fluff. (Because I really needed to read or write something of them).

Enjoy your reading!

If you asked Gray who's his most favorite person in the world, he would've said « Juvia » without an ounce of hesitation. Because, yes, she was his world, his light (even if he won't say that to her). She was the person he loved the most and she'd always be his favorite.

But all these beliefs were crashed down when he realized that he could no more say that Juvia was his absolute favorite, that he could love someone as much as loved her (or a little bit more). And that too before even meeting the said person.

He realized it the day he held his little princess for the first time. She was too tiny that Gray almost flipped that she'll slip through his arms. She was crying and when he carried her in his arms (after Juvia convincing him that he won't drop their baby), he held her gently and delicately too afraid to do any movement.

The crying girl opened wide her deep ocean blue eyes, just like his Juvia and smiled. Actually smiled. The emotion he felt that very instant was nothing like he ever felt in his twenty-five years of existence. He could still feel his knees go wobbly, his arms shaky and tears forming in his eyes as he held the life that he and his wife created together. Their daughter. Their everything. He didn't even mind Juvia liking her more than him, because common how can he be jealous of her? Of his cute little princess? She was so pure and so beautiful and the moment she laid eyes on him, Gray promised himself to always protect her and never let her feel any kind of pain. Yep. As hard as it was to believe, the great Gray Fullbuster was nothing but a total softie around his precious snowflake.

Which is why, Gray was lied on the ground with a big smile as his princess sat on his chest, her little hands gripping his cheeks and hair in a comical way. When she got the grimace she wanted from her father, her musical laugher filled the room and Gray laughed with her, his heart filling with love for his daughter.

He heard a clic and both father and daughter glanced over to find Juvia with a camera lacrima. She removed it from her face with a bright smile as she looked at her loves. Her baby squealed happily raising her arms up expectantly at her mother. (She was four months old and she couldn't crawl). Juvia almost melted at the sight and hurried toward them not minding the toys all over the floor. When she was at Gray's reach, he grinned and pulled her leg making her fall and caught her in an arm as he held the baby in his other arm. Juvia only gasped before she found herself staring at her husband's handsome face.

Even after having a child with her, he's always the handsome young man she met years ago. If so he's become even more handsome, like right now, he'd his hair held back with a band as it was a little bit longer, his eyes held the same warmth and love and his lips were sexier. Juvia was sometimes jealous of him, her body changed a lot with the pregnancy and even after losing weight after the childbirth, she still felt bigger and sensitive—very sensitive. But her Gray-sama was attractive and alluring as usual, any woman would stop and look at him when they walked out on the streets.

- " Boop." She got out of her trance surprised as Gray tapped her nose with a finger, a smirk tugging on his lips as his arms shifted around her.

- " Quite checking me out Wat'drop, even if I'm quite an irresistible sight."

She rolled her eyes with a smile as he placed a kiss on her cheek. Their baby protested, and Gray lifted an eyebrow.

- " See, she doesn't like you checking me out, she wants me all herself."

- " You mean she wants me to herself," she mumbled before smiling at their baby and taking her in her arms, she kissed her cheeks and face. Their little girl giggled, as Juvia lied down on his chest with his princess in her arms.

Juvia glanced up at him again then, a pout on her face. "And you're mine— no ours, right baby? Dad is ours, isn't he?" The little girl nodded her head making her blue curls bounce around her face as if she understood her mother's words.

Gray laughed softly, cupping her cheeks, "Of course, I'm all yours Yuki," he winked at his wife, "Not mama's..." His eyes trailed to Juvia's playful glare and he decided to play along. "She got me enough for years, I'm bored but now that you're finally here, I'm all yours."

With that he took Yuki in his arms and lifted her up with a grin as the little girl squealed and battled her legs asking for him to do it again and again. Juvia, lying on her side, could only watch them with a beautiful smile. Ever since he held her in his arms, her Gray-sama was under the spell of her snowflake. She was kinda proud of her daughter, because she needed three years of chasing to make the man fall for her while Yuki made him fall in an instant, with a simple smile. She sometimes would wonder how would he react when his little snowflake grow up and boys around her.

- " What're you thinking about?" Gray asked as Yuki was now, lying on his chest, eyes closing sleepily. She smiled.

- " You're always so natural with her, Juvia won't get enough of seeing both of you together."

Gray's mouth stretched in a soft smile as his eyes fell on his daughter. Juvia chuckled softly, caressing her daughter's back lovingly . " She's you wrapped around her little finger..." her smile tuned into a pout, " I needed three years to achieve it, not fair."

Gray let out laugh, " Who said you've me wrapped around your finger? Don't dream Juvia." That earned him a smack in ribs. He groaned. He forgot how strong she was.

- " Sleep on the couch, Gray Fullbuster. Or go and hug your daughter, you've forget about me anyway."

- " Seriously, you're jealous of our daughter?" He teased.

- " No. I can't be jealous of her... she's too cute, I can understand you." She frowned.

- " But?" Gray raised an eyebrow as he knew something was her mind. Juvia just sighed and crossing his eyes briefly. "Nothing Gray-sama." With that she kissed his head and Yuki's head before getting up and making her way to their room.

Gray watched her walk away raising an eyebrow as he decided to carry the sleeping Yuki to her room and talk to his wife after.

...

Juvia came out of the bathroom just as he closed their bedroom, leaving a steam behind her. Gray's eyes lingered on her body for a moment as she was only wearing his t-shirt with her wet hair falling on her back freely. He teared his gaze off her with great difficulty as he reminded himself that they should talk.

Seeing Juvia making her way to the dressing table, he trailed his feet to her. Arms crossed, he leaned on the nearest wall as he watched her brush her hair.

- " Juvia, what's in your mind?" He asked. She caught his gaze on the mirror and opened her mouth to answer but he knew her too well by now. "Don't say nothing."

She closed her mouth without a word and he set his eyes on her.

- " So? "

- " You'll think it's silly." She mumbled after a moment, not meeting his stare.

He rolled his eyes in response, " After all this time, I'd like to think that I'm used to you being you and it's not silly. Nothing about you is silly." She looked up at his honest answer and he gave her a smile.

- " Mind to tell me what's happening in that head of yours?"

She turned to face him, leaned against the dresser. " You look very handsome."

Gray raised a teasing eyebrow with a smirk. " Thanks? I know I'm a knockout."

She huffed.

- " Alright. I'm lost here. I won't understand if you don't explain me, Waterdrop."

She sighed. " Juvia's big and her body's changed a lot since the pregnancy. You're still the same and woman doesn't even have idea that you're a father when you walk in streets. And even if they knew they won't mind."

Gray took a moment to process before he broke the silence.

- " Wow. That's a load of crap." She looked up blinking back the moist of her eyes only to catch his firm, intent gaze.

He closed the distance between them in a few steps and wrapping an arm around her, he looked down at her.

- " From when are you thinking like this? "

She shrugged casting her eyes down.

- " Do you regret being pregnant?" He asked though he knew her answer.

- " No! Why would Gray-sama think that!? Juvia loves her baby and won't ever regret her baby or him!!" She exclaimed tears glistening in her eyes.

Gray smiled, " I know Juvs."

- " Who said you were big and not beautiful? " He placed a chaste kiss on her lips. " If you'd ask me, you're even more beautiful, and sexier now. And I'm sure every male thinks that when you walk on the streets of Magnolia even if I don't like the idea." He murmured.

- " Gray-sama thinks so?" She crossed his eyes, hopeful.

He nodded kissing down her mouth, "Hmm...you were glowing since you were pregnant, and now even after giving birth, you still look stunning."

He looked up giving her the loving smile that he only reserved for her. "You're perfect, Juvia Fullbuster."

She smiled widely at her surname, she loved it when he called her with his name. She felt like she was his—she was his but she loves to be called his and he knew it.

She wrapped her arms around his neck looking up at him lovingly as he kissed her cheek.

- " As for other woman looking at me, you don't have to worry, I'm all yours. I didn't even know that they looked at me until you pointed it out." He mumbled the last part to himself.

She giggled when he lifted her in his strong arms. "You just have to share me with Yuki just like I've to share you with our little princess." He lifted an eyebrow at her smirking, " Is that okay with you? "

She pretended to think, " Juvia doesn't see any objections of sharing you with our baby, Gray-sama."

Gray chuckled, sitting on the bed with her on his lap.

- " But, you stated something about being mine, does it count even when Juvia's old, ugly with stretch marks and grey hair ?"

- " Especially at that time Waterdrop." He kissed her nose as she ran her fingers in his hair.

- " I love you, Gray-sama." He looked up as he heard his favorite words from her. No matter how many times she tells it, his heart will always hammer in his chest.

- " I love you too, Juvia." He was proud that he could finally say those words after years of struggling. The first time he said them to her was after a battle, when she woke up after falling unconscious in his arms during the battle. He could still remember him clutching her tightly to him as he trembled of fear. His fears and nightmares were coming back at him as he was reminded of the memory of her dying form in the battlefield. If there's one thing that he feared the most in his life was to lose his amazing family.

- " Gray-sama?" Juvia held his cheek as he'd tightened his arms around her unconsciously.

He blinked back and shook his head at her reassuringly, he knew she was here with him and now, he'd his daughter and he'd do anything to protect his family. He smiled at his beautiful wife.

- " Can Juvia ask you something and you need to answer honestly?" She asked then.

Gray frowned cutely, " Am I in trouble?" Juvia chuckled softly, caressing his cheekbones.

When he nodded, she trailed,

- " Why haven't you touched Juvia ever since Yuki was born if you think she's beautiful?" Her voice was too low and she almost breathed the last part as her eyes fell on the bed.

Gray blinked, slightly taken aback from the question but decided to give her a honest answer as he promised.

Lifting her face up, he made her look at him as he stared into her blue orbs. " When you were in labor, you were hurting and I had to look at you in pain without doing anything..." she shook her head slightly but he trailed sighing, "And I couldn't help but be guilty that I've put you into this. So, I decided to give you some time for yourself."

She cupped his face smiling at him lovingly. " Gray-sama, having the chance to bear your baby is one of the best things that happened to Juvia, aside from marrying you. Juvia would go through more pain again if she's to be the mother of your child."

Gray looked at his woman and couldn't help but feel lucky to have her, to be able to call her his. Because this amazing woman entered his life and poured her unconditional love on him and managed to make his boring life, worth to live. She gave him her heart and soul and showed him that he can hope a future too. He wanted to punch his younger self for making her wait so long screw his reasons and fears. He loved her and he wanted to grew old with her, spend every second of his life with her.

Without a word he turned, making her fall under him as he hovered over her. " I held myself from jumping you for almost an year. I'm warning you. I'm not holding back this night."

Juvia's eyes darkened in desire as she looked into his eyes, the same way she looked at him in their intense moments. " Don't hold back." Her lips then trailed from his forehead to his eyes. He let her do as her lips traced their way to his cheek and ear which she kissed. " I want you, Gray-sama."

Gray turned his head swiftly and kissed her lips hard, making her gasp at the intensity of his kiss. Damn right, he loved her and he was going to show her just how much he loved her.

...

Waking up from his slumber, Gray watched his beautiful wife curled up against him, face buried in his chest, her breath on his naked chest. He sighed with a smile as his hands found her hair and back caressing it. He kissed her head and pulled her closer to him, chuckling softly when she clung to him like a koala.

- " You were not joking when you said you won't hold back." Came her muffled voice, he laughed more and couldn't help but to be proud. "Juvia's sore."

He frowned, "Are you hurt?"

She lifted her head up smiling at him brightly. " Not much, plus it's a good kind of hurt." He smirked at her and he kissed her lips softly when she blushed under his gaze.

- " I missed you." He confessed then.

- " Juvia missed you more."

- " Wanna show me how much you missed me?" He leaned in, hands making her back shiver.

But they were interrupted by a crying sound. Juvia laughed.

- " Looks like your daughter missed her mom more." With a last kiss on his lips, putting on the first thing she found while Gray watched her do with a grin, she headed out of their room.

Few minutes later, she was back with his princess in her arms, clad only in his t-shirt from last night. Their little girl stretched out her arms for him and squealed in delight as soon as she saw him and Gray grinned, crawling to the other side of the bed as his wife sat on the bed.

With a chuckle he watched his snowflake wiggle out of her mother's arms to him and he eagerly held her kissing her chubby cheeks. Juvia tickled her baby as she laughed with her and Gray found himself laughing along with them as he leaned against the headboard. Juvia leaned in his arms soon as their little girl continued to play between them.

His gaze moved from their daughter to his wife, the woman who gave him this amazing life. He looked at her fondly as his entire being screamed his unconditional love for her. She must've felt his eyes on her as she caught his eyes, he just continued to stare at her conveying feelings that can't be described with words and gave her his best happy smile to her. Juvia smiled back her loving smile that she reserved only for him as she intertwined their hands together. He squeezed back and they looked down at their hands as their daughter caught their intertwined hands in her little ones smiling a toothy grin at them.

Find more of my fanfics on Wattpad : Arya_Reyes.

https://www.wattpad.com/user/Arya_Reyes

#gruvia #gray fullbuster #juvia lockser #gruvia fanfiction #fairy tail #gruvia family #fluff #fan fiction #fanfics #cannon

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raspberry-arev · 3 years

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After the Flood (a.k.a. bicci fic)

Hello friends! Some of you may remember that back in... er, who knows, I was writing a Bicci Proposal Fanfic. However, school and lack of motivation got in the way, and essentially, I forgot it existed. Until now. It's done, it's ready, it's here for you to read in whole! (I posted half of it before, but I can't find the thing.)

Characters: Jimmy Kaga-Ricci, Lister Bird, Rowan Omondi, OC (Abby Omondi), Angel Rahimi

Themes: older Ark, marriage proposal, coming out, grand gestures, The Ark Revival Tour, and peak Bicci romance (hopefully)

TWs: mentions of recovery from addiction, anxiety, food

Word count: 9k

JIMMY

It’s often impossible to pinpoint what exactly set off an event – or perhaps multiple – that changed your life as you knew it.

That was not Jimmy’s case, however. He remembered that Barbecue Saturday very well.

This time, it was Rowan and his spouse Abby who hosted. The two couples took turns and Jimmy was oh so grateful for it; the idea of managing Lister’s chaotic culinary experiments more than twice in one summer filled him with dread.

On Saturday morning, Jimmy and Lister packed up and drove all the way to the suburbs of London where Rowan and Abby lived. The sun was bright, everything gleamed buttery yellow, and Jimmy managed to talk Abby into letting him set the table and carry in all the food instead of her, which was quite an accomplishment. She was about as stubborn as her husband.

They rarely invited more than three extra people though. Being in the public eye in your formative years made you appreciate small gatherings of trustworthy people. And one of those proved to be Angel. Or, you know, Feresteh, but her nickname really stuck with them. From that time Jimmy nearly quit the band and Lister impaled himself and almost drowned in mud… yeah, call that a wild youth.

Over ten years later, they were hardly the same people.

After they decided to quit being The Ark for their own wellbeing and safety, Rowan kept his place in the music industry as a songwriter, producer and a solo artist. He went with the name Le Monde, a play on his surname as well as French for “the world”. It suited him. He was the world, never small, never just one thing.

Lister stopped being involved in music after a few collabs. While he was figuring out what to do next, he took a few modelling jobs, acted in music videos and got a small part in a sitcom. Jimmy used that time to get a college degree, but found he just wouldn’t be able to get the usual “college experience” he yearned for, and only got his diploma after doing classes long-distance.

Jimmy and Lister also got together. After many failed attempts at courtship and pretending being friends with benefits was enough… they got together. To Jimmy, it felt like it was inevitable; they have acted like partners long before it was official, they just needed to clean up their own messes before they could be a couple. It wouldn’t have felt right back then, but it did now.

Rowan was already at the grill preparing meat and wrapping camembert in shiny aluminium foil when Angel marched in, tall, elegant, beaming. Jimmy loved to see her again. Each time, she seemed a little more confident, more expressive, more… just more. She really did find her calling in the music industry, just as much as he found his tucked away in rural England with his boyfriend.

Yet, he was to be “tucked away” no longer.

At a certain point, their group fell momentarily silent; everyone was chewing their meal and soaking in the sun. Then Angel said, in an unfamiliar, cautious tone: “You see, I was talking to a couple of people…”

Rowan exchanged a quick look with Jimmy. “Go on,” he said.

“It’s gonna be ten years since you guys disbanded, you know.”

“I know,” Jimmy echoed.

“So. I was thinking. Hear me out, even if you think it’s bollocks…” Angel shot them a look, and then made a motion with her hand as if she was presenting them with something. “Have you ever thought of doing a revival concert?”

As Rowan did a theatrical “errrm”, Jimmy saw straight through his best friend’s bullshit: the two of them rehearsed this conversation. He knew Ro for most of his life, who did he think he was fooling?

His mind offered the answer quickly: Abby, perhaps. He wants to see how she would react, doesn’t he? Rowan would love to do a revival show like that, no doubt, but he valued his wife’s opinion too much to make a decision without her.

He felt movement on his left, and looked Lister in the eyes.

“Well,” said Lister, looking at him. “Wow, okay,” said Jimmy. Both were considering.

Angel swiftly picked up, “Just wanted to run this idea by you. Not because it’s me who would love to see you play once more – I mean, of course I would – but it’s expected to have an amazing turn-out.”

“Obviously, they’re The Ark,” Abby commented matter-of-factly.

“You’re right, Abby. So, guys? How are we feeling about this?”

It was bizzare. Normally, Jimmy would have expected to say he wasn’t at all interested – the boyband life was not for him anymore, tough luck – but recently, he felt a strong sense of nostalgia surge through him as the ten year mark got closer. He found himself reaching for his old guitar way more often, strumming at it, looking for something between the strings he could not reach.

Maybe he could do it just once.

What eventually came out of his mouth was… “I haven’t sung like that for a long time though.”

“You sing to me,” Lister contradicted him, his fingers intertwining with his. “All the time.”

Jimmy felt his face get hotter. “That’s hardly… Are you thousands of people?” He turned to Angel. “How many are we talking, anyway?”

She smiled a kind smile. “I don’t know, Jimmy, that depends on whether you three are up to it or not.”

Rowan cleared his throat. “Personally speaking, I think I wouldn’t mind, as long as we are just doing it once, and not trying for a comeback. I wouldn’t go there.”

“Same,” Lister nodded. “I love you guys, but I’m fine the way things are.”

“Right,” said Rowan firmly. “But… just this once, I mean, why not? We could use some extra money.” With this, he gently let his palm rest on Abby’s belly that swelled under her summer dress like a balloon. (Jimmy fought the urge to aww at them.)

Abby immediately assured him they were more than fine financially, but Rowan barely listened, clearly waiting for his former bandmates to say something. Jimmy felt Lister looking at him, unwavering. So he turned to him and asked, “What do you think? Cool or not?”

“I’m waiting for you to say.”

“Why?”

“Don’t want you to feel pressured or anything.”

“You shouldn’t… Just say what your opinion is!”

“You express your opinion,” Lister retorted, pretending to square his shoulders as a threat. Jimmy lovingly nudged him, and to stop being annoying to the remaining three people at the table, he shrugged, “It doesn’t sound so bad. One concert. I mean, we are still friends after all this time, so why not?”

“In that case, I would love to be the centre of attention again!” Lister exclaimed and gave Jimmy a boyish grin. “The crowd was deprived of my looks for too long.”

“Buddy, you were the drummer,” Rowan said. “Bold of you to assume anyone even looked at you with me and Jimmy jumping at the front.”

Jimmy snorted with laughter, but Lister was quick to defend himself. “Google all Lister Bird slash Reader fanfic and then we can talk about who got noticed, buddy.”

“Oi, you’re not even properly revived yet, stop fighting!” Angel called out, but laughter started bubbling from every direction before she even finished the sentence.

They had a proper business meeting about it in two weeks. And then another and another. When they announced the first date, the sales went through the roof. Jimmy had to get off of social media because the internet exploded with their names and faces. But he sort of found it a bit sweet, that so many people stuck around for them, like old friends that he never had the chance to talk to. One concert became three and then five, which was, honestly, more like a small tour at that point. Jimmy fought to call it After the Flood and won.

LISTER

“You really shouldn’t do that, you know. This bitch is hard to get rid of.”

Rowan tried to hide a small cough and put out his cigarette on the metal window sill next to him. “Hey,” he greeted Lister. “Didn’t expect you to come out here.”

“Yeah.” Lister found it hard to hang around smokers, and unfortunately, he met quite the number of them while they were in the process of rehearsing. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

“Can we walk, like, over there? So… nobody can hear us through the door?”

Rowan eyed him suspiciously, but he followed him to the railing on the edge of the roof. There, he turned to him, seeming to fight himself.

“I’m really looking for a less shitty way to ask this,” he admitted eventually. “But… What have you done now, Lister?”

Lister felt a sort of numbed cramp seize his stomach for a second. It took a lot not to let anger overcome him. They were well over thirty, how the hell was Rowan still treating him like a fuck up? But no. This was more important than old grudges.

“Nothing! As of yet,” he assured his bandmate.

“Okay…?”

“Right. So. Erm. Nobody is here, right? Fine. I had this idea… you know, Jimmy and I have been together for a long time and I obviously care about him a lot, I always have, you kind of know that…”

“Yes, go on,” he pushed on gently.

“Fuck it. I want to fucking propose!”

A giant weight fell off his shoulders when he spoke those words aloud. It was like coming out all over again, god.

Rowan’s eyes twinkled. “Oooh,” he almost whispered, “and you need my help with that? I’m your man, tell me the plan!”

“There is none right now.”

“Oh, okay. I can still help if you want.”

This was another part Lister dreaded discussing.

“I… okay, so, I was thinking of… doing it on stage?”

His friend’s face changed rapidly.

Lister’s dream of a grand proposal to the love of his life in brilliant stage lights and the roars of the audience faded away. “That’s a no? That’s a no. Shit, forget it then.” He felt sick.

“Lister, I’m absolutely positive you mean well,” Rowan started. “But Jimmy would-“

Speak of the devil.

The door opened and out of it peaked Jimmy’s unshaven face. “Oh! There you both are.”

Rowan froze for a second. Lister was ready to improvise. “Alright, so how about I come by yours after practice and you transfer the files to me?” He smiled, but impaled Rowan with a meaningful look.

Fortunately, he caught on. “Oh yeah, yeah, that could work.”

“What files?” Jimmy inquired as he joined them, oblivious.

“Rowan has some of our old drafts still saved. I was thinking of squeezing in a drum solo somewhere, maybe with spoken word over it?”

“Sounds cool,” Jimmy smiled at him and slightly brushed the back of his hand with Lister’s. “Anyway, Dick the Sound Guy wants us all in there immediately.”

“Stop calling him that or I’ll have a Freudian slip at some point,” Lister laughed and guided Jimmy back into the building. Him and Rowan managed to exchange a subtle nod over the shorter man’s head.

JIMMY

As they were packing up that day, Jimmy tried incredibly hard to catch Rowan alone. Just like the old times when he needed to discuss something personal. And yet again, it involved Lister. Jimmy felt young and stupid again, but not really in a good way.

Finally, he managed to stop him while he was putting away the equipment. Lister was meanwhile in the office of their temporary new manager. “Ro, I need advice!” he whispered to his best friend.

“What about?”

“It’s Lister.”

“Oh dear Jesus, I’m having flashbacks.”

“Don’t be a dick, it’s important.”

“Okay then, tell me.”

“It kind of involves you too. Just… tell me if it’s a good idea.”

“Go on!”

“I want to, uh… I want to tell people Lister and I are a couple…” He took a breath. “Which means I would be coming out as gay as well, probably. I know that’s, like, a huge pile of drama, so if you don’t want me to complicate the tour, just say it, it’s honestly kind of irresponsible when I’m thinking about it now…”

“Jimbob. Easy.” Rowan waited for a second for Jimmy to wind down, leaning on a stack of five chairs, and then asked, “Are you really sure about it? Do you want people to know?”

Jimmy felt his thoughts humming in his head. He forced himself to say exactly how he felt.

“I know it’s gonna sound super dramatic, but I don’t want to die not saying it,” he explained slowly. “It became really important to me… I don’t know when. But it did. Talking about this part of me, too. I’m just worried about what Lister might say.”

“So I take it that you didn’t discuss this?”

“No way. I don’t even know how to start!” Jimmy exploded in loud whispering. “I should have talked to him a long time ago, but I just didn’t have the balls.”

“I get that, but… just bring it up. Like, theoretically. What if. I think he’s going to support you through it.”

“How could he?”

“What are you even saying at this point?

“You think he would like people sticking their nose in our personal business? I feel like it’s so unfair to him and his privacy… And I feel terrible about still wanting to do it… even though it’s inconsiderate. It’s all a fucking mess.”

“Okay, okay.” Rowan massaged his nose. He looked like he was trying incredibly hard not to snap at Jimmy and be at least somewhat encouraging. “Look, no spoilers, but I am going to say this. Lister absolutely will notbe mad and he will want to talk about the two of you if you give him the chance. That is all.”

“Wait, what? Ro, did he tell you something?”

“I am not talking!”

“Is that how you treat your best friend in a life crisis?!”

“You’re putting me in a life crisis, don’t you dare play the pity card! I swear, the two of you are a nightmare.”

“Rowan! Come back!”

LISTER

His visit to Rowan’s place was very brief, but it was enough for him to understand Rowan’s concerns. Eventually.

Lister explained that it didn’t feel appropriate for him to just whip out a ring in a restaurant: Jimmy was his love, his dream boy, as cliché as it sounded, and he wanted to do something that would measure up to all he was feeling. Which was… well, a whole lot. Like a “get down on one knee in front of thousands of people” lot.

And yet.

“It’s all great, and I’m sure there are people in the world that would love it, but we are talking about Jimmy.”

“Come on. I know, he’s private about… well, everything, but…”

“That, yes,” Rowan pointed at him while holding a can of coke, “but don’t you think this proposal on stage would be an anxiety-inducing situation? Because to me, that sounds like a lot of pressure and nerves.”

“He hasn’t had attacks since we moved and he went on those meds.”

“That doesn’t really –“

“Matter. Yeah. Yeah, I get your point, mate, he would die of shock. And everybody watching him. Fuck, I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” Rowan grinned. “The two of you are just different… in some aspects. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Will I? Lister asked himself as he was driving back to the hotel that Jimmy and him were staying at for the time being. This was the only thing I came up with, like, ever.

When he swept his key card over the sensor and the door to their suite opened, he was greeted by the smell of dinner. He took a look into their little kitchen and found his boyfriend sitting at the table with his laptop. He didn’t notice him for a second, so Lister came up behind him and hugged him tightly.

Jimmy yelped.

“Where’s the food?!” Lister shook him a little, imitating Batman.

“Your hands are so cold!” Jimmy protested, but there was a trace of laughter in his voice. “On the stove, you bully!”

Lister almost flew over there, looking under the lid on the pot.

“Pasta,” Jimmy shrugged. “I needed my comfort food, so that’s that for you.” Lister smiled and thanked him, because yes, he was starving. Pasta was Jimmy’s go-to meal to cook, as it was quick to make and he was a pasta-sauce prodigy.

While his dinner was heating up in the microwave, Jimmy made small-talk about the supposed unused lyrics Rowan and him exchanged. Lister found it hard to lie to him, so he just turned to playful teasing, telling Jimmy to stop sniffing around, he’ll hear it when the time comes.

“Oh come on,” Jimmy huffed. “I’m just asking! And it’s my show, too. Spill it.”

“Sorry. Totally gonna steal your spotlight.”

“Lister, just tell me what it is.”

“A song.”

“What song?”

“A song that you have to wait for.”

“Babe, what song?!”

Lister took him by the waist and pulled him against his body. “Are you trying to ‘babe’ me into telling you right now? Is that what’s happening? Right in front of my pasta?” He went in for a kiss, and Jimmy tried to murmur something against his lips… but then he gave up. They leaned into each other and kept kissing until Lister pulled away to open the microwave. He got himself a fork and went to sit down after the long day, but Jimmy stayed there, right next to the sink. Looking a bit like he was going to hurl.

Before Lister could ask if he’s okay, Jimmy sat down on the other chair with a determined look on his face.

“There is something I need to discuss!” he blurted out.

Lister cautiously dropped the fork back into the bowl. “Okay…? And it’s something to do with me, yeah?”

“Yep. A lot to do with you.” He was visibly nervous. He clasped his hands together, as if Lister would have not noticed. “I… I was thinking about this one thing, and I need your opinion about it.”

“Cool. Go for it.”

“It’s about our relationship.”

“Are you aware you sound very sinister right now?”

He wildly shook his hands as if he wanted to dry them off. “Sorry, didn’t mean to,” he apologized in a strained voice. Then he cleared his throat, sharply lifted his eyes towards Lister’s and exclaimed, “I would like to reveal that we’re together.”

Lister felt everything about his face go lax in shock. He opened his eyes round and wide, his mouth followed, and Jimmy looked like he would faint.

“I, er. I just. I thought about it and I think it’s a decent idea and – please say something, Lister, before I get a fucking heart attack right now.”

It must have been so hard for him to speak up. Lister thought of his proposal plans and felt his mouth slowly form a smile. “I think it’s… brilliant! Yes, I would really like to do that!”

“Wait, really?”

“This is – I didn’t think you would want to, when did you change your mind?”

Jimmy shrugged, grinning in a sheepish way that made him look much younger. And cuter. “I thought I just… wanted to be open about this part of my life. Figured it’s time to say we are together. But if you, like, don’t feel like it, then…”

Lister beamed. “I feel like it. If you do, I do, trust me.” He walked around the table and lifted Jimmy into a hug. He laughed, relieved.

This was when it dawned on Lister… it was not such an easy matter. Exciting, yes, but it would gather all kinds of attention. He leaned onto the table, grabbed his dinner and him and Jimmy started talking about the situation it would put them in. If both are truly okay with it, how much would they reveal, when is the best time to do it. They kept talking through the bathroom door and while they were changing into pajamas in their bedroom.

As they were laying down and Lister gestured Jimmy to crawl into his arms, they became quieter. “You know why I also want to say it?” Jimmy mumbled, lying on the soft linen with one eye open.

“I’m all ears.”

“If I have to see one more article about which model or actress you’re screwing, I’m gonna lose the remaining marbles that I have.” Lister started chuckling as Jimmy awkwardly added, “Which is, admittedly, not many. Most have been lost in my youth.”

“Oh no,” Lister laughed and turned Jimmy’s face upwards to his. “So this just in: my boyfriend is possessive. Fancy that.”

“I’m not, it’s… I am… Oh, you hated Jowan, stop being smug.”

“I know I did, we both know. But jealous Jimmy? That’s a rare sight.”

“It’s just super uncomfortable. It’s all women, as well.”

“Heteronormativity is a bitch,” Lister nodded. He snuggled closer and let out a breath, “Don’t worry though. I am exclusively your problem.”

Jimmy kissed him, smiling. Lister felt lightheaded. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Jimmy’s. He loved this – he loved how much he felt for him after so long they have been together. It never ceased or faded away… because it was Jimmy.

Lister was pretty sure he would love him until his last day on Earth.

It was time to start looking for a ring.

JIMMY

Not much later, they had a team meeting scheduled with all the important people at their recording company that were involved with their tour. Jimmy and Lister announced their intention to come out during the tour, and with Rowan’s full support, it wasn’t too hard to win the producers over. Jimmy had anticipated the PR people would deem it overly risky to their image, but they were fairly chill. As Rowan had put it, “As if anything about The Ark was ever about pandering to conservatives.”

They agreed that their demographic is absolutely different, and before they knew it, they were being ignored while people were exchanging speculations about how it all could help them promote the tour.

“If they do it on, like, the second show…”

“…we could sell some extra tickets after… another wave…”

“…that would probably be a good time to release a single, something related to…”

Jimmy felt something in his chest sink. This is why they left. These people took something good, something from their hearts and souls, and wanted to turn it into money. Some part of him understood, that’s how business works, but mostly, he just felt really sad for them.

“Oi!” Lister exploded over the chatter. “Sorry, but we are still here, and – Could you maybe not act like this coming out is a marketing tactic?!”

The room went briefly silent.

Jimmy squeezed his hand under the table to say a silent thanks. Then he choked out, “That’s not why we’re doing it!”

Their producer looked at them over the top of her reading glasses.

“Of course it’s not, love,” she cooed. “But to say it bluntly, I think you need all the help you can get.”

After many weeks and many briefings, they had agreed on making the announcement on the third show. Right in the middle of tour. Everybody was nervous, expectant, but there was this air of hopefulness when Jimmy and Lister ended up alone together. The glimmer in his partner’s eye when their eyes met promised something… no, it was not living absolutely openly, they still wanted privacy. But it felt like they were sealing something.

This was not an easy coming out.

But they were in for it. Together.

LISTER

“Just so I know,” Rowan said as Lister was trying to take off his Doc Martens with all his might, “what did you tell Jimmy this time?”

“We’re still working on music.”

“We should really make something then, before you go. I am not gonna lie to my childhood best friend, y’know.”

Finally, the boot came off, and Lister got off the little cabinet in Rowan’s hall. Abby was already making tea, and when she saw him walk by the kitchen door, she just nodded at him. Lister smirked at her; she loved pretending to still be mad at him for taking Rowan to a strip club on his stag night. (Or was it dancing on the table at the wedding reception? Anyhow.)

Rowan sat him down in the lounge and started the conversation with: “So. The big reveal is getting closer. How are we feeling?”

“I – great, good. I’m fine, and Jimmy seems to be fine, so yeah, we’re fine.”

“But I assume that’s not what you need help with?”

“You assume right. I will need you to bear with me, though.”

“That sounds interesting,” Rowan retorted and flashed a smile at Abby who was bringing them two steaming mugs of earl gray. “And when I say interesting I mean impending doom, why thank you, Abby!”

“No problem.” She slowly leaned over, careful not to lose balance with her belly, and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be off for my swimming class then. You two behave, will you.”

As she was making her way to the hall, Lister jokingly remarked, “No goodbye kiss for me?”

She stopped in the middle of the room and exchanged a glance with Rowan. Rowan, stirring his tea with a teaspoon, said, “Please don’t kill him, I need him for the concert.”

“Come on, you guys, I was fully kidding. Goodbye, Abby,” he waved to her with a bright smile. “Enjoy your swimming stuff!”

“Thank you, will do.” She disappeared.

“Just a question!” he called after her. She came back with an eyeroll. “Is it, like, harder to swim when you are pregnant? Like, I don’t mean to insult you or anything, I’m just genuinely wondering.”

She, too, put aside her snarky façade for a second. “Actually, I go there because it’s relieving. The water makes you float, so the weight of the baby is taken off my back and legs for a little while.”

“Oh! That’s clever.”

“Thank you. The more you know, am I right?”

“You know what I was just thinking of?”

“Yeah? I really have to go.”

“When you’re swimming, you’re a human submarine for the baby.”

It seemed to take Abby a minute to realize what he was saying. Very slowly, she brought her palm to her forehead.

Rowan then didn’t make it much better by adding, “Since when does a submarine have water inside? That would defeat the purpose.”

Lister thought about it and then gasped. “So… right now, you are a reverse human submarine!”

Abby looked at them both, clearly lost for words. “I’ll just go…” She closed the lounge door behind her.

After a good ten minutes of Rowan half laughing and half chastising Lister for saying the things he says, Lister threw his hands up in the air and claimed they seem to have “traded their sense of humour for a marriage certificate” two years ago.

Rowan immediately followed: “Speaking of marriage, any updates on that? You and…?”

“Well, my friend, that is precisely what we need to talk about today.”

“Okay. The meeting is officially in session, go.”

“First: am I the only one that was really surprised by Jimmy wanting to make us public? Because I really didn’t expect that at all.”

“Yeah, I guess he’s still full of surprises, huh?”

“That he is. However, Ro, I was thinking, and I still want to do a proposal. No – let me finish, it’s not that straightforward. I spent a lot of time talking to Jimmy about what he wants and how he sees the future, and you were super right in saying that I should never put him on the spot like that. Being so exposed to the public when we were kids messed with us in a big way, all of us.”

Rowan snapped his fingers in agreement.

“The idea is… It would be a proposal before a proposal. Like… I don’t know, announcing that I have the intention of proposing to him soon. And asking him if he is okay with that, you know? If he’s okay with the idea of saying yes. That way,” Lister gesticulated with his hands, “he’s not forced right there to say yes, the eventual real proposal can be sort of expected, which would calm him down a bit, but still a surprise, because when is it going to happen? I’m not saying.”

Rowan stared at him for about three seconds. “That was… a whole thing, buddy.”

“Thoughts?”

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. Wait. You want to do a proposal before the actual proposal.”

“Yes.”

“On stage. At the same time you are announcing that the two of you are together?”

“No! I mean, I don’t think so. I thought like, more at the end, maybe.”

“Proposal before a proposal…”

“It’s clever, if you think about it.”

“To me, it just seems very extra, Lister. Which I know is your trademark, but –”

“No, but listen. I want to propose to Jimmy. He wouldn’t survive a big flashy proposal, but I still want to make it a big deal, because it is. Ergo, I announce that I want to spend the rest of my stupid little life with him and ask him if it is okay to propose to him one day, likely soon.”

Rowan’ expression changed. “That does make sense,” he said. “For the two of you, especially.”

“Okay then: dear dad, do I have your blessing?”

“Never call me that again. But yes.”

“You are the closest to being a father out of all of us.”

“That is not what it sounds like and you know it.”

JIMMY

The first show was an explosion of feeling and memories. Nauseous with anxiety, burdened with expectation and weak in the knees, Jimmy ran into his first appearance on the stage the same way he would run into the middle of the highway. The lights and screams and colours almost blew him to pieces and then glued him back together. His first words addressed to the crowd and the earth-shattering screams that came in answer woke something in him, a force of nature. The gig was rather small compared to those they ended on ten years ago, but the crowd loved them to pieces and oh, he felt so alive.

The second show was slightly bigger, yes, and their fans didn’t disappoint. Plenty of pride flags were chucked at him, and he waved them and gave them to his mates and it made him even more excited about what him and Lister were going to do the next time round. These people stayed with them for so long, this sea of faces that looked toward him… for many of them, he would be the representation they need, again.

He remembered being a young trans boy, questioning if there is a life, a future, for him. Where were all the queer adults? The trans adults? How could he imagine adult life if he had never seen someone like him live it?

There he was, now. Adult. Gay. Transgender. A lot of time, he still knew very little about what he was doing, but he had a boyfriend who knew equally little, and together, they might be just what some queer kid in the crowd yearns to see.

LISTER

It was D-Day. Christ and Mary, it was, and they were going to say it. Finally. The staff have been informed, the security has been strengthened, they did everything so that some fan wouldn’t try and knock them the fuck out…, but he was still incredibly nervous. Minutes before the show, among all the rush and flourish, he caught Jimmy and pulled him to the side, apologizing to a couple of sound guys securing some cables on the ground.

“How are you doing?” he blurted out.

“I’ll die, but maybe in a good way. You?”

“Same. Or I’ll throw up, in a bad way.”

“Wait really?”

“No, I’m sick, but not the vomiting kind.”

“Anxiety! Welcome to the club!” Jimmy shouted as he was being ushered away under the stage so he could come up on a platform.

More pushing, more ushering, and he stood next to Rowan.

Their intro – a dramatic organ solo as light flashed through the artificial fog like sunbeams – was rumbling all around them. The crowd was losing their minds. He didn’t know how, but he still heard Rowan whisper:

“Lister, promise me you won’t do the other thing today!”

“Told you I won’t, stop being patronizing!” he snapped back, but then it was their time, and they were on a stage, coming up from behind Jimmy, each on every side, acting astonished as they supposedly came down from Noah’s Ark onto new land.

Listed dared to put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder as they did so.

The show was on.

Here we go.

JIMMY

During the concert, he used every opportunity to interact with the audience that he had. It felt a bit manipulative at first – he wanted them to be up for a bit of talking, eventually – but then the feeling of guilt faded away. However complicated his relationship with the fans used to be, these people were the fans. They stayed loyal to them, they kept their music in their hearts, and came to this revival gig…

It would be okay, okay, okay.

When the last accords of the last song whizzed away into the night and he was thanking the crowd that stomped and cheered and waved signs in hope of an encore… he stopped at the front of the stage. Rowan strummed a few last cords on the guitar and fell silent.

He wished he had somewhere to sit down. His legs were shaking.

But he was not afraid. Not really.

“Now, you guys, these shows are very special for us. Because every single one of you, as we’re standing here and looking at each other, you have been waiting for so long…” His voice was drowned out by cheers. “For so long, you have not forgotten us, you came to our shows, you have been amazingly supportive, and I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart!” He shouted the last few words as the sea of faces roared in joy.

When they calmed down again, he continued. “And because you are the ones that stuck with us… because of that, I would like to say a few things to you.

If you know about the days of my youth…” Pause as people laughed and shouted affirmations at him. “…you would probably remember that I was presumed to be in a relationship with a person that is standing on the stage with me, right now.”

It was good that only a few people cheered. But it made him sick to the stomach, still.

“Okay, no,” Rowan came in, and people applauded, and he pointed at them with a not-so-fake scolding look, “no, no, don’t you woo at me, young lady. This is so utterly not a thing! Jimmy has never left the friendzone!”

“Same here,” Jimmy laughed and patted Rowan across the back, maybe a little too hard, overcompensating. “Did you all, like, miss that Rowan came out as straight all those years ago?”

People were laughing. Nobody really cared, they just found it funny. Rowan claimed he was leaving it to Jimmy before “the PR team has me taken out”, and retreated a few steps, leaving Jimmy to face the crowd again.

Deep breaths, he told himself.

“What I wanted to say was that there was one thing that those people back then got right.” Breathe in, breathe out. “I am gay.”

Two seconds of silence and then an absolute thunderstorm of an applause. A rainbow pride flag landed at his feet and Jimmy took it, with meek laughter, and put it around his shoulders. He heard Rowan cheer and clap too, and for what felt like years, he couldn’t get a word in. He wished the whole world could be like this.

“I – gosh, thank you all, I’m not sure whether it was a surprise,” he finally managed to say, his voice breaking a little from surprise, “but yeah. I am a trans, gay man…” The hall exploded with joyous noise. “…and it’s not all that there is to me, but I’m here. And queer. Hello.”

He thought he was going to pass out. He had a clever segway prepared, but he couldn’t remember a word of it. This was the moment. He wanted to say it, but at the same time… How could he? It was so hard, why do things have to be so hard?

“The other… the second thing,” he said, gripping the pride flag. “It is that… wow, it’s hard. It’s that I am…” He felt himself turn around, and like a lost child call: “Lister?”

Lister climbed out from behind the drum set instantly. Nobody cheered, there were only confused whispers. Jimmy looked at him, asking for help without words, and he knew, as he always did. Jimmy found a place to look, above the crowd, beyond everything, as Lister stepped in and slowly took his hand.

“The second thing is that we are together,” Lister said, his voice steady.

And the crowd lost it.

There were people wailing in happy tears. Screaming at the top of their lungs. A dissonance of chanting their names, all at a different rhythm, before Rowan ran up to them and hugged them and spurred the crowd on, and they stood there wrapped in a pride flag, and Jimmy was kind of crying and leaning on Lister, and it was another half an hour of a pure mess, before they really left the stage with their ears buzzing and eyes wide.

Jimmy and Lister tumbled into a corner somewhere, and Jimmy had happy tears streaming down his cheeks and they were kissing and holding each other and shaking.

“Oh, I’m such a mess,” Jimmy laughed as he was smearing tears and foundation on his sleeve.

“And I love you so much,” Lister blurted out in a moment of raw honesty.

“Me too,” Jimmy took one of his hands and kissed the palm. “I love you so fucking much it’s unreal sometimes.”

LISTER

This was, hands down, the most jittery Lister got before a show. Ever.

Currently, he found himself sat at an old sofa in the dressing room, hands clasped and both legs involuntarily jumping up and down. Was it annoying? Likely. But he had to let his knees jump in such a vigorous way because if he hadn’t, his teeth might start clattering.

He hated that he couldn’t just be pumped and excited. He had to feel this unsettling, buzzing mess of an emotion. Anxiety, as Jimmy informed him. This is what it’s like for an anxious person, he said… except make it all the time and often for no real reason.

Lister shook his head a little.

His reason, too, was basically nothing. He knew. As if Jimmy would actually reject him or something…

Or would he?

Maybe he could? Oh God, maybe he could…

“Hey! You’re actually scaring me, what’s up with you?!”

Lister blinked in confusion. He saw Jimmy as he was making his way over. A half scolding, half worried look decorated his face.

He lowered his voice when he added: “The last time I saw you like this was when you had withdrawal symptoms. You can tell me if that’s what it is.”

“It’s not that. I’m fine,” Lister insisted. Crap, he was panicking too hard to actually come up with anything convincing. Come on, Bird, focus… He’s onto you…

“Actually,” Rowan’s voice travelled to them from the corner, “I just think we had weird coffee.”

“What? But you’re fine.”

“Yeah, well,” Rowan continued to make up a story, “we both got one, but I didn’t like the taste, it was too strong. Lister felt bad for throwing them out so he finished both of them, didn’t you?”

“Ye-Yes,” he finally caught on. Had to admit, Ro was impressive at this. Lister started to believe what their friend used to say: that he can lie very well, he just chooses not to. “I didn’t want to waste it. The coffee.”

“Lister,” Jimmy grunted in disbelief, hands on his hips. “That was a brilliant idea, you walnut! Look at yourself, you’re gonna be sick now!”

“I’m not.”

“You look it.”

“I’m just…” He rubbed his clammy hands together. “I’m just anxious I guess.”

“Well, no shit. Why do you think I avoid caffeine?” Jimmy sighed and dropped into a squat in front of Lister. He took Lister’s hands in his. “Seriously, are you okay? You’re not gonna have a heart attack, are you?”

“No, babe. I’m alright.” The last thing he wanted was for his boyfriend to be anxious too.

He looked down at Jimmy. The realization dawned on him, as he noticed that his partner dropped onto one of his knees to be more comfortable; very soon, the roles will be reversed. It will be Lister down on one knee, only Jimmy would be standing up in that case…

Okay.

Wow.

This is what true internal screaming felt like.

“You need water, as in now,” Jimmy decided and jumped up. “I’ll need you to drink at least three glasses before we start, that should help.”

He rushed out of the room to get hands on some water. Rowan and Lister looked at each other, the pretence gone.

“Alright?” Rowan nodded.

“I’m fucking choking, dude,” Lister replied.

It almost looked as if his friend was going to give him advice, or maybe say something generic and calming… but instead, Rowan let out a small laugh. Lister’s lips started twisting without him giving the command.

And then the two collapsed laughing. The pressure of this being the very last show and the knowledge of what Lister was about to do at the end of it were just the right recipe for hysterics.

Jimmy didn’t bother to ask twice what the joke was, as long as they promised they weren’t laughing at him.

-----------------------------------

As the concert was coming to an end and the crowd was cheering and chanting for an encore, Rowan seized the opportunity and called: “Alright, friends, we would like to indulge you in a little experiment! Can you join me at the front, Lister?”

Lister got out from behind the drum set and jogged to meet the rest of the group. Jimmy smiled, but his eyes studied both of them suspiciously. “What is this?”

Lister lazily raised his arms with the palms of his hands towards the crowd. “I have to admit, we kind of didn’t tell Jimmy what this is about. Sorry, my guy.” People laughed. Rowan signalled someone backstage, as Lister added: “But just so you don’t feel left out, you can have this triangle.” A nervous assistant handed Jimmy the instrument and ran off again.

Everybody was jeering and whistling, but there was an air of anticipation in the air.

“Oh wow, that’s generous of you,” Jimmy grimaced.

“I know, right? Anyhow.” Lister took a step forward, trying to calm himself. He could do this. He had acting jobs, he could absolutely pull this off.

He was Lister freaking Bird! He was the fan favourite!

“Dear audience, allow me to tell you a tale,” he addressed the crowd in his best narrator voice. A couple of screams rose from the crowd, but everyone else was listening intently. Behind him, Rowan started strumming a little melody on his guitar – one they created especially as a backdrop to Lister’s talk.

“I know this is a little unusual,” Lister admitted to the sea of people, “I know that you’re used to stories coming to you via this man’s voice,” he pointed at Jimmy, “and this man’s lyrics.” Rowan. “I know that I am just a simple drummer in this arrangement. But today, I will do the voice and the words. Because, well… Talking all the time is the one thing I am actually good at.”

That made the crowd laugh. Good. Great.

“But now, on with the story!” he exclaimed and made a motion with his hands as if he was showing them a canvas.

“Picture this. We are all fifteen, stuffed into a tiny studio in London,” he smiled, as if nostalgic. His voice flowed out of him in a steady melody, like the hum of a river. “We all had that awkward long hair phase – yes, I see some true veterans in the audience today. Good,” he smiled at a couple of girls in the front who seemed to know exactly which haircuts he meant. He raised his hands again. “I am sitting outside the recording room, behind the glass. On the other side, there’s Jimmy. I can see him clearly, I hope you can too,” he said, keeping his dreamy smile. “The giant black hoodie. The fringe almost hiding his eyes. Jimmy waits for the cue, bouncing up and down,” he chuckled as he swayed up and down on his toes, “and then starts singing the interlude in our first album. It’s only about two lines that we need to record, but I remember wishing it lasted longer. Obviously. Because his voice is amazing.”

The audience started yelling and swooning at once. Lister was honestly more okay looking at them than if he had to look at Jimmy and see what his reaction is.

Now, here comes the real cliché.

“But then,” he paused with real embarrassment in his voice, “then he looked up from under his hair… at me, with those big brown eyes… and asked me, if he was okay.”

Breathe in, and:

“My friends, that was the moment I have fallen for Jimmy Kaga-Ricci.”

A roar of screams started rising from the audience, when Rowan strummed dramatically on the guitar, as if something tragic had happened. Lister shot a look at Jimmy and found him laughing. Surprised, but amused.

Thank fuck. I’ve never told him that before.

On the outside, he theatrically turned to Rowan and scolded him: “I was just getting sentimental here?”

Rowan shrugged and strummed a more positive jingle. Everyone laughed and clapped. Lister was starting to enjoy this, actually. He sighed and walked forward onto a prolonged platform where Jimmy was usually stood on.

“Well, maybe my trusty assistant was right with the sound effects,” he admitted jovially. “Because my crush absolutely did not like me back for years. Hey, but that’s not to throw shade at the guy,” he added quickly to prevent any pitiful reaction that would make Jimmy feel bad. “Because you have to consider that I was and still am a bloody mess of a person.” That amused the listeners. Lister turned round, as he exclaimed. “I am the creator of problems, the maker of terrible decisions. We can all agree that Jimmy is a lovely lad…” He had to pause for the overwhelming reaction in support of that statement. “Yes, he is, but inflicting my teenage self upon him, that would just not be right.”

Jimmy suddenly clanked the metal stick against the triangle in an absolute cacophony to draw attention to himself. “Excuse me,” he called to Lister, “could you stop insulting yourself? I would enjoy that.”

A girl somewhere below them screamed as if she was getting murdered. They exchanged a quick glance, as if to say a little yikes, but then Lister laughed it off.

“Sorry, sorry,” he continued. “Through it all, Jimmy was always here for me. He was one of my first real friends. He was understanding when I needed it most, and ready to kick my ass when I needed it most.” He smiled at his boyfriend and hoped his voice is not shaking. “Look at you, Jimmy! I’m being embarrassing in front of hundreds of people and you still haven’t walked off stage.”

Jimmy laughed and lightly hit the triangle. He was ever the professional, but his eyes glimmered in curiosity. Expectation.

Lister kept looking at him. Rowan was strumming a slightly different melody now, and if Lister did say so himself, the atmosphere was fucking perfect.

“What I want to say is…, I feel that we were together before we got together. We were always partners. A great team. Maybe you wouldn’t think the same,” he admitted to Jimmy, “but a girl can dream. Oh! A rhyme!” He exclaimed to a symphony of awwws and ooohs. People were laughing again, clapping here and there. “That will be the only time!” Lister made a face of feigned shock. “Or not? Wow, I’m unpredictable!”

“You’re hot,” Jimmy rhymed with unexpected confidence.

The crowd was screaming their heads off at this interaction. Even Lister was a little flustered. He came back to his bandmates and gestured toward Jimmy, who was still smirking a little. “And he can improv, what’s not to like, honestly!”

Now, there came the challenge. Lister took a deep breath and prayed to all deities that were listening for this to come off as more sweet than cringy.

His voice fell into a different rhythm. One he kept studying every possible minute from any good slam poetry or original poem reading he could find online.

“But now, if our audience permits,” he put one hand on his chest, turning directly to Jimmy, “I would like to address you. Because, dear Jimmy, although I love each face in the crowd, my friends, my family, those that are both… I can state loud and proud that the biggest part of my heart goes to you.” He grinned sheepishly at Jimmy’s stunned expression, when he added: “If not all of it.”

“I can only guess what goes on in that mind, whether you think this is suspicious or kind… I can’t know these things. But there is one thing I do know. That no matter how much we grow, what we lose and what we gain, through all the smiles and all the pain, I will love you. It’s as big and as small as this. And today was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. So, nobody panic, stay in your seats. It’s not what it looks like.”

He got down on one knee in front of his boyfriend.

Jimmy gasped in sync with the audience: “Lister!” He backed away.

“Oh no, mister, don’t panic,” Lister retorted. That managed to amuse Jimmy a little – that he would know this would be the reaction. The audience was still going absolutely wild. Another pride flag just about missed Lister’s left ear.

“As I said, it’s not what it looks like. And I’m sick of rhyming by now, so…” He reached for Jimmy’s hand. Pulled it down to his by the triangle and encouragingly pressed a thumb into his palm. “I wanted to tell you – in a way that means something – that I don’t see myself living my life with anyone but you. So I have a question. Can you imagine me proposing in the near future?”

Jimmy looked like he suddenly couldn’t speak any human language. The only thing that came from his open lips was: “Huh?”

He was trying not to panic. To explain it well. Better than he had to Rowan.

“I would like to start talking about marriage. With you. I’m asking your permission to… go pick out a ring, perhaps. And propose to you. One day.”

“You want to…” He was trying so hard to make sense of this situation. Lister could almost hear the wheels in his brain clanking and whirring. After a second, Jimmy blurted out about the last thing Lister expected. “You really want to marry me?”

He had to laugh. That sounded so bizarre! You have the wrong number, I don’t think you want to marry me, of all people. As if.

Covering Jimmy’s hand with both of his own, he answered: “Who else, Jimmy?”

As there was no instant reply, Lister felt the audience grow impatient.

This was the time to smooth things out. Make it amusing.

“Okay, I don’t want to stress you out. You can just think about it,” he ensured his partner. But I just wanted to let you know my, er, intentions.” Wow, great choice of words, Bird. But was there any better? He decided to make fun of himself a little when he sarcastically added: “Because this is the regency era, apparently.”

People were losing it. However, Lister was only looking at Jimmy now… and realized that the eyes of his boyfriend were welling up with tears as he looked down. Were they happy or sad tears? Shit.

“Oh…” Lister managed to say, when Jimmy dropped the triangle on the floor with a thud and shakily took Lister’s face into his soft palms.

His voice was trembling with emotion, as he answered:

“Allister Bird, I would love to marry you. I don’t think you even need to propose again.”

Before Lister could even register what he meant, Jimmy leaned down and gently pressed a kiss at his forehead. This was probably as close to kissing in public as Jimmy would ever allow.

Lister finally realized. He realized.

At the same time, Jimmy dropped down and Lister shot up. They embraced each other tightly, a mess of crumpled clothes and limbs and teary laughing, and Lister almost lifted Jimmy off the ground as he was happy-crying into the shorter man’s shoulder.

They heard Rowan screaming at the top of his lungs: “HE SAID YES, PEOPLE!” His voice was drowned out by the massive storm of excited screams that wouldn’t seize for good twenty minutes after.

But Lister and Jimmy didn’t really pay attention.

Paradoxically, although everyone could see them – and everyone would see them, as the news probably already travelled through the internet at the speed of light – it felt like this moment was theirs alone.

#osemanverse #osemanverse fanfic #alice oseman #jimmy kaga ricci #lister bird #bicci #rowan omondi #angel rahimi #oc #bicci proposal #i was born for this #iwbft #the ark #older ark #older au #proposal #engagement #grand gesture #fanfiction

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burnedbyshoto · 4 years

Text

reincarnation

— Five chances to fall in love. Five reincarnations to find the person you’re destined to be with. It just so happens that in each life you keep meeting a man with brown hair and a sweet involvement of primroses —

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pairing: kaibara sen x fem!reader

warnings: soulmate au!, reincarnation au!, royalty au!, fake dating au!, college au!, villain!kaibara au!, fluff, angst, cursing, alcohol consumption

word count: 11,820

a/n: this is for the bnharem flower server collab!!!! check out the masterlist here, its pretty dope as fuck!!!! also I know dat none yall know who he is because we sleep on class 1-b, but i worked so hard on this and I wrote it in a single day, and its 4 am rn and im exhausted so pretty please help a girl out and just read it ;-; I also tried out a new... voice??? idk how to even explain dis, but yes huzzah!!!! kaibara sen rights!!!!

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The world is a fantastic place.

And to my beautiful reader, know that this is a world where soulmates exist. A world where someone is created flawlessly for you is someone who holds you to the highest symbol, who carries you through the most significant highs and lowest lows without a whine or grievance.

A soulmate is destined to be yours, but sadly they are hidden within the world.

My dearest reader, you only have five chances to figure out who your soulmate is. Five reincarnations to figure out who the one who is meant for you. Lucky for most humans, soulmates are found within the first two reincarnation cycles but heed this warning.

At the end of you and your soulmates twenty-first year, you must find each other and fall in love. Should you fail to find and love your soulmate, you’re put into another reincarnation to try again. Each attempt is marked on your wrist, a Roman numeral to indicate whether you have succeeded or failed. You will carry the rest of that reincarnation unable to ever see your soulmate ever again, but when the tattoo changes colors, you know the person you love is the one for you.

Good luck, my dearest reader, this is a challenging journey, but I know that you will do well.

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“It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone on their first reincarnation!”

Your eyes looked up to the handmaiden, who was currently helping you dress for the ball tonight. You were to wear a heavy dress of silks and satin sitting prettily on your body, the detail exquisite, the meaning behind each embroidered flower astonishing.

You knew that the importance of your appearance was paramount as the daughter of a duke and duchess. You could very much be a future Queen consort considering that the royal families were dried of ladies. This was to be a ball in your name, a moment for courting, and arrangements to be made.

At the age of eighteen, it was much later than other people would have expected it to be, after all, most balls such as these were to be done in the sixteenth year, definitely not the eighteenth. Two years truly made a difference.

But to your parent’s advantage, it would mean that by tonight you would most likely be engaged to some man you had been educated on years before.

Glancing down at the small Roman Numeral I on your wrist, you smiled, nodding your head. Around this area of the world, most people already seemed to be on their second and third reincarnation. For all that was good, your parents themselves were on their third and second reincarnation. They weren’t soulmates but figured a life of leisure and power was better than a life of love since they had more chances.

“I know that I am the only one on my first reincarnation cycle around here,” you sighed, your manicured finger tracing the innard of your wrist. The red ink was strong against your skin, so strongly procuring against your skin, a statement of your isolation from your soulmate.

Long ago, you had learned about soulmates, you remembered the warm light that held you in your earliest memories that explained the concept, and you further learned more as you grew. A near 75% of the population encountered and fell in love with their soulmate on their first reincarnation. Of course, once you fell in love and lived happily ever after, that was it for you, or so that’s what everyone claimed as there had been no true love gold ink gracing anyone’s wrists on their second or so on reincarnation.

You were a bit of a romantic, keening in the thought of having someone perfect for you. Inexplicably yours, impossibly perfect for you.

You often wondered if you had already met your soulmate, but the barring symbol of no one else having a roman numeral one on their wrists made you realize it was no one you already knew.

“Mrs. Lane?” you spoke, your fingers twisting into the silk undergarments you wore.

Your hair was done already, the makeup sitting beautifully on your skin. But there was an undeniable fear in your eyes when you brushed over the mirror before you.

“Yes, Your Grace?”

“Have you met your soulmate already?” you asked, your stomach twisting in the thought of what may happen tonight. Could you really handle maybe passing a handsome gentleman or a beautiful woman with a Roman numeral one on their wrist and resist not immediately believing it was your soulmate?

“I have,” she nodded, exposing her slender wrist to you, the gold Roman Numeral II shining beautifully in your gaze. “He works in the palace, actually. Why do you ask, Your Grace?”

A soft smile graced your face at the sight of the golden ink. For too long, you had only seen it within your literature. Never once having been exposed to it in your world that was heavily plagued with those who cared more about politics than love.

“It just occurred to me that I had never once asked if you had,” you smiled, your fingers letting go of your tightly held undergarments. “But let us carry on, my guests should be expecting me soon.”

Balls were glamorous and needless to say, quite fun.

The music was lively, the food was exquisite, and the people were merry and handsome as they danced around the floor. Most balls you attend always leave you rosy-cheeked with both alcohol in your blood and from the rounds of dancing you would participate in, but tonight was different.

Your cheeks were rosy with exhaustion, hours of being twirled along the dancefloor, terribly bleak conversations going on between you and a hopeful courter, and the refusal of alcohol from your parent’s behalf. They wouldn’t have you messing up their only chance of seeing you married to the Prince, who was duller than a rock.

Your feet hurt with the unforgiving throb of the tight heels you had to wear, and in this moment of peace, you wanted to cry when you watched two men come to approach the table where you sat between your parents.

“Your Grace,” the older man bowed lowly, his most likely son bowing as well.

“Duke Kaibara, what do we owe this pleasure?” your father spoke clearly and eloquently, the smile on his face charming, but you knew better.

He didn’t want a marriage of equal status — especially not when the Kaibara family was known for their war abilities, which were meaningless in a time of peace.

“My son wishes to have a dance with your own daughter,” Duke Kaibara spoke with a transparent lie painted on his face.

Attempting not to scoff, you glanced over at the man who stood beside the Duke.

He was reasonably tall, his stature befitting of someone of his class and quite honestly much better than the Royal Highness himself. Unruly dark brown hair that you could tell immediately had his servants in a craze to put into the slicked-back style it was attempted to be in, the few strands falling into his eyes, making him more comfortable to look at. His eyes were as black as midnight, shining bleakly yet with stern sharpness to it that had you questioning his stoic aura.

The black of his suit was also adorned with pops of gold and royal blue, definitely a commander.

“Y/n would love to accompany him for a dance,” your mother spoke, her hand pressing against the back of your dress, lifting you up to stand before you could even think of protesting.

“I’m glad,” the Duke laughed heartily, and you sighed quietly.

With your hand pressing into his own, both of you walked in silence to the dance floor.

The song began, one that involved more one on one time and less prancing with everyone on the dancefloor, and you were unsure whether you appreciated that at all. On the one hand, it would have saved you the horror of having his smoldering eyes everywhere on you, but it also meant you two could waltz around without a care.

“I don’t care to marry you,” he spoke suddenly, catching you off guard immediately. “As a matter of fact, I had no desire to come to your ball.”

“Well, that’s a bit rude to say,” you splutter, your fingers digging into his shoulder while you nearly stumbled in your box step. “There was no need to tell me that!”

“My father thinks that because we are both in our first reincarnation, it will give some leeway into having our union, but he is too much of a romantic.”

“And just who are you exactly, Your Grace? I know of your surname, but if you are going to be speaking to me so brashly, I have the right to your birth name.”

As the two of you spun against the floor, the throb in your feet ignored; his eyes came down to meet yours in a piercing gaze. Was he shocked by your lack of submission?

“Sen,” he spoke, his lips pursing. “Sen of House Kaibara.”

“Well, Sen, you are incredibly rude!” you flustered, smoothly moving with him with the sudden pick up of speed in the music. “Even if you are not here for my hand, the least you could do is pretend!”

“You looked like someone who appreciated honesty, Your Grace,” there’s a glint in his eyes. Something you can’t quite pin or understand, but it sends your stomach into a loop at the way his lip quirks with his words, and how his eyes narrow almost as if in teasing.

“Oh, I definitely am, but even that was too honest for our first conversation,” you bite back, your long ruined lipstick-stained lips pulling into a smile. “Have you never been around a lady before? You should really be paying attention to your etiquette classes, Sen.”

“Are you really lecturing me on my etiquette while calling me Sen?” he asked, his jaw-dropping just the slightest in disbelief, using a heavy hand on your waist to pull you in and twirl you out of the way of a drunken pair of dancers. “I think it might be you who needs to be paying attention, Your Grace. Especially if you are defying my every word and not turning into a submissive rock at my commands.”

“It is a woman’s job to make sure a man knows their place,” you snickered, twirling with the beat of the song. “I am simply doing that.”

Kaibara’s mouth opened, words almost daring to pour out, but alas, the song was over.

The two of you parted, bowing to one another while the other dancers did the same while everyone cheered and rejoiced in their ability to dance to this song.

“Would you like to go on a walk with me?” Kaibara asked, his hand reaching out towards you.

“I don’t care to walk with you,” you breezed, quickly repeating his first words to you ever. “But I assume it will be better than returning to the table to be sold off.”

Although Kaibara’s stoic face had long remelted over his face, you couldn’t deny the glint of amusement in his eyes at your words. With yet another outstretched hand, you took it, and off the two of you went. Away from the party and into the cold night.

The both of you wandered aimlessly through the gardens of your estate, the hedge labyrinth being something you went through with him under his predictions as you already knew the answer to this puzzle.

You felt at ease with Kaibara, the initial belligerence of his personality seemingly disappearing the more you talked with him. He was still quite aggressive, his words clear, loud, and intentional with each speech he made. But you found yourself enjoying it more and more, especially after the two of you bonded over the spinning fountain in the royal palace.

“Do you like flowers?” he asked when the two of you sat against a stone bench.

“Depends,” you hum, placing a finger on your chin. “I am less than thrilled with flowers with thorns. Do you have any idea how many idiot men have given my flowers with thorns in them?”

“I will assume a lot?”

“Three! That is three too many!”

Kaibara laughed merrily, his hand running through his gelled unruly hair, while his head dipped back to stare at the sky.

“I’ve only gifted someone a flower once, and I did not go according to plan.”

Your eyebrows scrunched, you studied the man who stared up at the sky in a way that looked like he would fight the gods themselves should they appear. The soft glow of the halls barely reached this side of the garden, but with the help of the heavenly moon, you saw him clearly. He was a stranger, you knew that, but there was something about him that called for you, pleading you to learn more about him — everything about him.

“What was the plan?” you asked softly, your bare foot hitting his leather-clad shoe with a pointed toe. He had helped you take off your shoes the moment you entered the garden.

“Well, we were the same age, as you and I are,” Kaibara nodded, his hands pressing to the bench behind him as he shifted his weight to lean on his hands. “As I spoke earlier, my dad was a romantic, and embarrassingly enough, I was too at one point…”

He trailed off, and your head tilted, you felt like you knew where he was going with this.

“I offered the girl I loved a red rose, but she told me that we would be wrong together. She was on her second incarnation, and I was on my first, so there was no way we could be destined for one another,” Kaibara confessed, his tongue wetting his lips while he shrugged.

“That is quite unfortunate,” you frown, your gaze dropping to your hands.

“It was.”

The two of you fell into a tense silence, your mind unable to procure any form of thought to ease the tension between the two of you. But you looked up and saw a bush of white primroses before you. With a surge of confidence, you stood up and took a single primrose from the bush. Returning to Kaibara’s side, you placed the primrose in his hands.

“You may not appreciate this primrose, but our estate is known for the primrose, it's a trademark of my family. You may not have found your soulmate yet, Your Grace, but when you do, they will be amazed to call you theirs.”

Kaibara’s hold on the white flower was delicate, his fingers twirling the stem between his fingers while he sat there. A soft chuckle escaped his lips, and he nodded, his eyes warming up while he locked eyes on you.

“You’re a bit weird, you know that y/n.”

“Only those I trust know that,” you winked, further delighting in the way that a crooked grin sat on his face.

Unfortunately for you after that night, you would never have one like that again. The arrangement to marry His Royal Highness was set, and you would never see Kaibara again after your wedlock to the Prince that happened on your twenty-first year alive — not that the two of you realized that.

You long after passed away.

You lived a happy life, a full life, but the thoughts of his Grace Duke Kaibara Sen always plagued your mind no matter what you did. How you wished that he was to be reborn too so that you could possibly meet him once again.

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“Sen, leave my primroses alone!”

“I just can’t believe you still have these?!”

Your face was abnormally warm while you stared at your childhood friend Kaibara who was currently walking around your entire room, deliberately, and horribly going through your personal belongings. He was in workout clothes, black gym shorts, and a grey t-shirt under a yellow windbreaker; the sight of him so comfortable in your room made you a bit more embarrassed.

The two of you had been friends for forever! Your parents were best friends and soulmates, so they figured that both of you would be soulmates. While it had been a cute and innocent thought when the two of you were young, it wasn’t so nice with the two of you nearing twenty-one and with no actual relationship in sight. How your parents found each other on their first attempt was beyond you, especially since you had the exact ii marked on your wrist.

But the worst part of your parents trying to convince both of you that you were soulmates was the thought that the two of you had once sort of dated. It had happened in secret, after all, both of you agreed should your parents find out it would equate to some block party celebration — which both of you didn’t want.

Still, the two of you were only sixteen when it happened, and while it could have happened that the two of you were meant for one another considering, you shared the same birth year and were on the exact reincarnation it didn’t work out. You loved Kaibara, you indeed did, but the romantic feelings between the two of you quickly burned out. Thankfully, it hadn’t made anything genuinely awkward between the two of you, and your parents never knew!

Win-win!

But the first memory you ever had of Kaibara and you, it involved a primrose. It was spring, and he had found a bush full of them, and with his chubby baby hands, he had picked them out for you and gave it to you. You had loved it, and it seemed to become an unspoken tradition between you and him.

Every significant moment between your lives, he would always give you a primrose, even when they were out of season.

The last time he had given you a primrose was when both of you graduated high school and went onto college. He had gone to a different one from you, and it was like facing death itself when you no longer saw him in your classes. Nowadays, the two of you only saw each other during breaks and the occasional facetime.

So in the middle of summer break, he was over in your room after a run — judging everything you were saving apparently.

“I should destroy these flowers; they’re not supposed to be kept like this,” Kaibara sighed, the stems of the dried and pressed flowers so brittle between his fingers. He looked back down at the box he had found, his free hand stretching out towards your storming figure to keep you at bay. “Damn, y/l/n, did you really keep every single primrose I ever gave you?!”

“It’s sentimental, asshole!” you cried in embarrassment, your hands trying to grab the box that indeed held every primrose he had given you with a tag that had the day you got it and why.

“How have I known you my entire life and still not know this about you?” Kaibara grinned, his knees bent, and ass jutting out to keep you from nearing too close.

“I’m going to kill you!” you sobbed, your fists beating into his back while he simply continued on.

“I haven’t seen you face to face in months, and you’re going to kill me? You’re sort of the worst best friend ever,” Kaibara admitted, finally relenting and letting go of the box and leaving your possessions alone.

You quickly covered the box, grateful that he hadn’t destroyed anything, and sighed when you put the box back in your bookshelf. Out of sight, out of mind for now.

“I do have a favor to ask of you,” Kaibara admits, your bed groaning quietly under his weight while he sat on your bed. Your face immediately questioned his motives; you knew your best friend probably better than he knew himself, and you knew that there was no bliss in having him say those words to you. All your life, his favors had nearly landed you in the hospital after all.

“And what favor is this?” you asked, your arms crossing while you looked at him with your eyebrow raised. “Am I going to have to go egg your highschool rivals' house again? Oh! Am I going to tell your girlfriend to not be intimidated by me anymore?”

Kaibara’s grin melted away, a stoic and unnerved face glaring back at you. Being best friends with someone like him was not a good thing at times like this, it seemed.

“Then I’ll go ask Ami for help then,” he spoke without a hint of mercy, his hands pressing onto his lap to stand up.

“Wait, no, Sen! I was joking! Please don’t do this to me!” you whined, shoving him back down onto his bed so that he was sitting there with a still expressionless face, but his eyes gave him away. “Anyone but stupid, Ami!”

“Well, if you don’t want to help me, I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you,” he pointed out with a slow blink.

How he got under your nerves sometimes.

“What do you want then?” you grumble, sitting down on the bed beside him, your arms folded and a pout on your lips.

“I need you to be my date on top of pretending to be my girlfriend,” Kaibara replied immediately, his eyes resting on you with ease and grace. You looked ready to question everything he was saying, so he moved on to explain. “My parents were invited to a wedding, and I need to win a bet.”

“What kind of fucking bets are you making that it involves having a girlfriend? I thought you were anti-soulmates?” you question, your gaze unamused while your dark-haired friend raked his fingers through his spiky hair.

“Okay, first of all, I just found your creepy primrose collection, so I know you’re still in love with me, but I’m going to need you to back off —” he dodged a punch you aimed for his shoulder— “But the bet was made because no one thought I could get a girl like you.”

“You can’t get a girl like me.”

“I already have, hello?”

You grinned at his look of discontent at your statement, but you finally sighed, your head coming to lean on his shoulder. You smiled, feeling his head resting upon yours, and a silent agreement was exchanged through this pose.

“When’s the wedding?” you ask, your eyes closing at the gentle rolling heat emitting from his body.

“This Friday.”

“The theme?”

“Summer? I don’t fucking know.”

“How long have we been dating?”

“Seven months.”

“Oh, so detailed,” you softly sigh, eventually laughing when his fingers twisted the skin on your shoulder. “Do you still kiss like a twelve-year-old boy?”

“No,” he groaned, his hand covering his face. “We shouldn’t have to kiss anyways.”

You laugh more, your shoulder pressing into his a few times while you bite your lower lip, “I’m just making sure we cover all the bases.”

“Yeah sure,” he sighed, holding your hand in his. “Thank you for agreeing.”

“I’m going to look hot as fuck, and I expect to make sure that everyone at this wedding is starstruck by me.”

“I’m sure they will be.”

The apples of your cheeks burned from all the fake smiling you had done while exchanging hellos with the other guests you had never seen in your life at this wedding. It was the wedding for Kaibara’s boss, which explained why your parents were not here today — most parties had both your families in attendance after all.

“When Sen told us that the two of you were finally dating, I think I actually cried,” his mother told you, her hands grabbing yours when you sat beside her. As part of the favor, Kaibara had asked you to run most of the crowd control just because he was horrible at keeping things… not hostile. “Your parents told me that they didn’t know either!”

You laughed, your gaze flashing over to Kaibara, who was in the middle of a conversation with the guests who were sitting at his left. A coworker, it seemed, and if you knew any better, a coworker he liked just based on his body language.

“Yeah, it just sorta happened over a call?” you squawk unsure of how to handle this best. “I guess it helped that we’ve known each other for so long!”

She nodded her head, her eyes swimming with mirth and love while she sighed happily.

“I can’t wait until it’s your wedding with Kaibara!”

With a nod of agreement, you were almost too excited when plates of food were distributed to you all. For the remainder of the dinner, you and Kaibara put up a solid front, the both of you falling into old habits of once being lovers to pull off this scam. It was the gentle whispers between the two of you, the silent exchanges, and the physical actions of your relationship that seemed to tie the story together.

“Y/n?” Kaibara’s female coworker spoke to you in the middle of a joking argument between you and Kaibara. You paused mid-rant, your head dipping towards the table so you could see her past Kaibara’s chest.

“Yes?”

“Do you mind coming to grab some dessert?”

With no reason to say no, you nodded your head, a smile gracing your figure.

The two of you went over to the esteemed dessert table. Piles upon piles of sweets and goodies sat on the table that called your name while you skimmed around with his coworker.

“I’m Kimi, by the way,” she introduced herself when you zeroed in on a brownie.

“Nice to meet you!” you smiled, the name further confirming the fact that she was the one that Kaibara liked.

“Likewise,” she smiled, bringing a Rice Krispy treat to her plate. “Um, Sen told me about the bet, I know that it’s all fake.”

Your eyebrows raised, you hadn’t known that much.

“Don’t worry! I’m not spilling! This is a bet against Tsurabara, and I want him to lose anyways,” she quickly interrupted, her hand rubbing the back of her neck. “You two looked ready to start a big fight, so I thought it was best to get you out.”

A burst of soft laughter bubbled in your throat while you nodded, “Oh yeah, it’s okay! I’ve known Kaibara since we were in our mom’s bellies, this isn’t anything!”

Kimi’s eyes blinked rapidly, her eyes casting to the side in some sort of inferior action that you knew almost too well as the best friend of a handsome boy. “He likes you too,” you whispered, winking at her before walking back to the table to provide your fake-boyfriend and his parents with their favorite desserts.

But as you returned to the table, you were stopped when Kaibara stood up, his face set in a soft scowl, and his stare a mile away.

“Please go and dance with our son, y/n!” his father asked with sincere hope in his voice. “The two of you have been entertaining us this entire time, please go have fun!”

You wanted to say that it was fine, but it seemed in the three minutes that you had gone, Kaibara had been made to do this. He grabbed the plate of desserts in your hand, dropping them onto the table and led you out to the dance floor where everyone was gathered.

And as a slow dance came through, a weird sense of deja vu overcame you when he held you close.

“I haven’t danced with you in years,” you mused when your wrists rested onto his shoulders, his hands warm on your waist.

“And that’s my fault?” Kaibara asked, his eyebrows raised in amusement and annoyance.

“For sure,” you sighed your gaze stubbornly on his. “If you didn’t let me go to all those high school dances with a date that wasn’t you, I wouldn’t have this problem.”

“You’re a brat, you know that?”

“You say brat, but I prefer the term… aware of my worth.”

“You’re as equal in value as my pinky toe is.”

And even though there was never an awkward moment in your relationship with Kaibara, there was this melting that occurred between the two of you. Something invisible that melted away between the two of you while you swayed side to side while in his arms. Your head rested on his shoulder, and he lay on your head. A peaceful silence while you danced in time, a perfect movement between the two of you while the music seemed to fade away.

“I’m going to kiss you, okay?” he whispered in your left ear.

There was a weird yet pleasurable shiver that traveled down your spine with his hot breath against your ear. You liked it, but that still didn’t stop the twist in your stomach when you pulled away. His eyes were dark and serious, so very much Kaibara Sen it seemed.

“Okay.”

His lips met yours in a soft embrace. The smoothness of his lips softly parted between yours, dancing in different ways from your swaying bodies, and much more fulfilling than any other kiss you had ever shared with him before. Your fingers locked in the back of his hair, and he drew shapes into your back.

Kiss after kiss was exchanged between the two of you on this dance floor, each sequential kiss blazing your heart brighter and brighter until you realized that your heart was hammering disgustingly loud in your ears when he finally pulled away for the last time. You didn’t think that this favor would have landed you in the hospital, but with the way your heart failed to stop drumming violently throughout your body after the many kisses the two of you shared that day, it was hard to say that he didn’t.

But after that day, you came to realize that you still liked Kaibara, but he didn’t feel the same way. You cut off contact with him when he started dating Kimi, and the two of you last saw each other Christmas on your twenty-first year alive. He was happy and in love, and you quietly sat with your head in the storm clouds.

After that… you never saw him again, which made you think that made your parents have been right about the two of you being soulmates.

But you had to move on for this reincarnation, it seemed.

You lived, loved, married, and died.

The box of primroses he had given you your most prized possession until the day you peacefully passed away.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆ iii ⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

“Can I please get a black roast coffee... in the biggest size you have,” you sniffle, your eyes red, fingers dabbing a tissue at the falling tears on your face.

“Uh, that’ll be seven hundred yen,” the man with the name tag Kaibara S. spoke.

You handed him the cents in your hand and waited for your receipt.

“This is only five hundred,” Kaibara slowly stated, and it seemed to push you over the edge because you began to bawl.

Primrose Coffeeshop was the only coffee shop that had discounts for broke college students such as yourself nearby, so it was the place you went to practically every day. So it was to no surprise to workers such as Kaibara to see that you were finally breaking down.

The world blurred in the time he told you that it was okay to not have the adequate amount since you were always buying things from the store, to someone quite literally leading you back to your mountain of textbooks and laptop, and the coffee coming out and being placed at your table. Through your tear drowned eyes, you looked at the assignment you had to write.

Twenty pages of research for something you didn’t understand at all.

“Are you okay?” a voice interrupted the hiccuping snuffled sobs that continued to pour from your mouth.

With a tear-streaked face, a wet nose, and blotchy skin, you looked at the dark brown haired barista who seemed to have gotten off of his own shift. His apron rested on his forearm, his hair still pushed back with the hairband that sat on his face, and his clothes were plain and simple. His face was pretty stoic to look at. Given the apparent discomfort in his eyes, he must have taken a lot to ask you this.

“N-No!” you sobbed, your lips trying to keep shut to stop the self-proclaimed horrible sobs that still tried to pour from your mouth.

“What’s… uh… what’s wrong?”

“My whole life is falling apart!” you laugh humorlessly, your hands slapping the coffee table with a pathetic sniffle. “I-I’m on my third reincarnation, and the statistics of finding your soulmate this late in the cycle have plummeted dramatically! My thesis for my p-paper isn’t viable anymore because I didn’t c-contact my professor on time. So I h-had to make a new one… I don’t even know!”

Kaibara remained silent, unsure if he should stay or leave. He had only asked because his coworker had been weirdly worried for you, and well… he did too, but this was a bit too much for him. Why couldn’t you have just said you were alright?!

“That… sucks, I’m sorry.”

You let out a choked sob, the veins in your face bulging in your attempt to just… stay quiet.

Kaibara stared at you, pity and concern seeping into his bones the longer he looked. With a sharp sigh, he pulled the chair out and sat down. “How can I help?”

Somehow from this one interaction, a weird comradery began between you and the barista you had ordered from for two years.

In the span of an hour, he had helped you calm down, calmly instructing and aiding you in your academic endeavor to understand what you were doing. It was a paper for a stupid physics class you were forced to take, and thankfully Kaibara was a physics student himself.

Kaibara introduced you to some reliable papers, explaining to you the things you didn’t understand in very perceptive depth and understanding that you didn’t get from your own professor. An hour into talking and you realized that you were no longer crying, your coffee went drunk to completion, and you were smiling while he pointed to different things on your screen.

“I’m y/l/n y/n,” you finally introduced yourself when he was standing to leave.

“I know,” he nodded, a soft smile on his face. “You have been ordering from me with that name for two years now.”

“Well, it wasn’t ever an introduction, though,” you pointed out with a sigh. “Besides, this is much more official.”

He nodded in agreement, his hand pulling off the headband in his hair, letting his shaggy hair fall onto his eyes. “I’m Kaibara Sen, and I know you didn’t know my first name.”

“I did not,” you agree, your head bowing in both thanks.

He seemed to debate something in his head, teetering between telling you and not, but with a tilt of your head, and a lean towards him, he broke.

“I’m in here a lot, I don’t know if you’ve noticed? I work fulltime on top of going to school and guessing by the professor’s name, you also attend Tokyo University,” Kaibara said, his eyes locked onto yours. “If you want, I can help you out for the rest of the semester with physics. I know that it can be a hard class.”

“Are… are you serious?!” you gasp, your hands pressing to your mouth in undeniable joy and mirth.

“Completely.”

“I’d appreciate that so much!” you chirped, your body resisting the urge to hug him in your gratitude.

“Okay, that’s good,” he nodded, his feet already moving towards the exit.

You watched as he walked to the door, but noticed that he hesitated when he reached the door.

Wordlessly he lifted up his left arm and showed off a tattoo.

iii

“I’m also on my third reincarnation,” he admitted with a shrug, and the embarrassing memory of your breakdown hit you heavily over the head while your face grew red hot. “It’s totally okay if you haven’t met your soulmate yet, that’s why we have multiple shots, right?”

You were for a loss of words, only managing to nod your head in stunned embarrassment. Kaibara smiled, his face genuinely pleased while he pushed onto the front door.

“Then, I’ll see you later, y/l/n.”

Like that, a friendship was born between you and the cute barista.

Without even this new tutoring system between the two of you, you had always shown up at the coffee shop every day, but now it was put at specific times — typically taking in mind his shift and class schedule. Day in and day out, he would help you out with physics, teaching you about work and joules and energy, and you, in turn, would buy lots of coffee and pastries and even helped him with his own work that wasn’t physics related.

You came to know more about Kaibara too.

About how he was born the same year you were, or how the both of you were a bit scared about the fact that you were on your third reincarnation. You both would even make up extremely extravagant stories of your past lives. Of how you were royalty and the smartest geniuses alive who had created the items you had used to this very day.

Jokes of knowing Newton and Plato and Shakespeare never failed to make the both of you smile during moments where you weren’t worrying about your academia.

Kaibara Sen was someone you could come to see could be very special in your life. His often neutral and stoic personality quickly melted away to become invigorating and chaotically loud. He was someone you would very much appreciate to be friends with, no matter what class you could have met him in or timeline you met him in.

“How do you feel about this year?”

Your words were soft in the empty coffee shop, the warm sweater you wore snug on your body while you drank a new concoction Kaibara made for a future menu item. It was something sweet, not overwhelmingly so, just enough that made it pleasant to drink without milk or sugar — not that you didn’t mind a cup of black coffee every once in a while.

“I’d rather not make it to a fourth reincarnation,” you heard Kaibara admit, from beside you, his face buried in the notes he was rewriting during your studying session. “This seems like a good time frame to have things end with the person I’m meant to be with. Nothing crazy is happening, it’s calm… I like that.”

“You have no sense of adventure Sen!” you laugh, your hands bringing the coffee cup to the table and writing down your thoughts and rating for the drink onto the yellow paper he had given to you for an official review. “I think I’m going to push it to reincarnation number five, I want to see the flying cars and moving cities.”

“I’m not sure if that sounds horrible or like a nightmare,” he dryly stated, flipping his notebook for the next significant section to write on.

“Don’t be rude,” you huff, your pen scratching out the mistake you made with a frown. “I mean, I wouldn’t remember anything, but it would still be nice!”

“And just who do you think your soulmate is?” Kaibara asked, his pencil dropping on his notes while he shook his sore and tired wrist out. He looked at you with a crooked grin that made you smile back, and he leaned in to whisper, “I can imagine that you’ve pictured what they look like.”

“How’d you know?!” you ask in mock surprise, your hand pressing to your mouth in a dramatic effect.

“You look the type,” he snickered, leaning back against his chair. “Okay, what does a lover boy look like, and what does lover girl look like?”

“Okay, so ideally, a male soulmate will look like a supermodel. Like the kind that just drives girls and older women wild because goddamn is he fine,” you whistle, your tongue wetting your lips in an attempt to mask your humor from this.

“Yes, I can see you with someone like that too,” Kaibara sagely nodded his head, his fingers now grasping the pencil in his hand. “Now, the other?”

“If it’s a girl… I don’t care, just as long as she’s super tall,” you sigh wistfully, your smile growing when Kaibara seems to agree with this information.

“You are ready to meet your soulmate, I’ve decided,” Kaibara announced his pencil scratching his paper as he began to write again.

“Oh thank you, kami-sama, please reveal to me the name of my betrothed.”

“I will, under one circumstance, and one circumstance only.”

The smile that spread on your face was warm, your eyes looking at how his lips were curled into his own smile that he often enjoyed hiding from you.

“What must a mere stupid mortal like me do?”

Kaibara finished writing his section of the notes before pulling away, his eyes severe while they peered at you. Dark, serious, and very, very intense.

He often confused you; he was so dark and brooding at times but often melted into someone you could only describe as a twelve-year-old boy finding out that his parents installed his favorite game to whatever console he loved most. His eyes, despite their deep charcoal color, seemed to melt into warm chocolate the longer he held your gaze, and finally, he spoke:

“Go on a date with me?”

Your eyes blinked rapidly, and a sour feeling erupted in your chest at his words.

Oh no.

“I… I can’t,” you spoke, your eyes traveling to your lap, the previous warmth in your chest disappearing quicker than the speed of light.

Kaibara blinked, his jaw opening and closing repetitively, almost as if in confusion and misunderstanding of the situation.

“Can I ask why not?” he spoke, but his voice had never sounded this hollow before.

“I’m actually seeing someone right now,” you admit slowly, your stomach twisting and knotting because dear god had you led him on this entire time? “We uh… we started dating a bit after you and I started talking.”

Kaibara’s face was void of all emotion, the deep chocolate gone from his eyes, replaced with only reliable bitter charcoal.

“Are they… are they your soulmate?” he asked in the softest of whispers, a tone you recognized as someone who was doing everything in their power not to cry. His nostrils flared, and he trembled slightly, his stoic mask entirely see-through to you.

“I hope so,” you admit, your fingers digging into your sweater. “I’m sorry, Sen.”

Kaibara’s lips press into a thin wavering line, and he shakes his head, “No, it’s okay. Um, let’s finish up?”

He didn’t accept the rejection well, although he was still a good friend and helping you out, you could read this man better than yourself; it seemed because you could see how much it pained him to sit next to you every day and help you. Study sessions diminished by a lot, his free time being occupied more and more until it was finally after midnight for new years, and despite whispering that you loved your partner at the stroke of midnight, the tattoo remained red — not golden.

You visited the Primrose Coffeeshop the moment it was opened, and to your dismay, Kaibara had left the shop, and his phone number no longer worked.

You stayed with your partner; both of you agree to just live out the rest of your life in love since you had been so sure of the other being your soulmate. But no matter how much time had passed, the shape of your soulmate began to resemble Kaibara, but you knew better than to wish for such silly things, especially in this world. For if it was true, there was no use to even trying to find him — after all, the world forbade it.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆ iv ⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

The world was emerging with the beginning of quirks.

There wasn’t a high population of individuals with quirks yet, but there was a growing number of them. People hated those with quirks, pushing backs against the “freaks” of nature, demanding that they get put down and killed without a moment’s thought.

Without a doubt, people with quirks would begin to fight back, some turning to villainy, some to vigilante work, and some to hero work.

Everything was masked, no one could know anyone’s true identity, or else it would end in heads being chopped off. It was like a comic book gone wrong.

And you? You were a hero, someone just trying to get by because while you didn’t want to be a freak of nature, those with powerful quirks using them against the quirkless still was not a righteous society.

Right now, you were living the most perfect life.

A secret hero that the quirkless were starting to appreciate, keeping a big evil villain in check, succeeding in your job, and in love with none other than Kaibara Sen, who you were so positive was your soulmate.

You screeched as Kaibara held you over his shoulder. Your legs kicked as he threw you onto the bed. His grinning face blowing raspberries into your exposed stomach. Your howls doing nothing to stop him.

“Stop it!” you shriek, trying to remove his lips from your abdomen. “I’m–Sen–GOING TO PEE IF YOU DON’T STOP!”

Kaibara pulls away, peppering kisses up your chest until he’s kissing you over and over again. Your lips can’t even form a pout from your exhaustion, letting him kiss you so weirdly while you lay in defeat. “If you peed yourself, I would have made you clean it up.”

“You’re the worst boyfriend ever!!!” you moan in exhaustion as Kaibara nuzzles his nose into the crook of your neck.

“I know, it matches your worst girlfriend category too,” Kaibara grins against your skin, and your fingers tug at his hair, trying to get him to kiss you again.

“Mm, so I’m the worst girlfriend? I might call Silence on myself then,” you tease, your lips pressing against his.

“I would fight her to keep you then,” Kaibara brushes your hair out of your eyes, and your eyes flutter. God, there was so much you would do for this man. You loved him so much, it hurt you.

“Alright, baby, I have to go! It’s ladies’ night!” you sigh into his mouth despite doing everything you could to keep him there. Kaibara’s hands keep you close to him as his tongue slips into your mouth. You moan in half-hearted defeat at the feeling of his tongue dancing with yours.

“You can tell Fukuda-san she can rip you out of my fucking hands,” Kaibara growls as he sucks softly against your neck. You arch into him as you shake your head.

“Stupid, she could totally beat your ass, and you have that — fuck, you have that meeting of yoURS!” you smack his chest when his fingers brush against your bare skin. “Kaibara Sen!”

“Fine, fine, fine!” Kaibara chuckles, pulling away, love lacing his eyes. “I love you, stay safe tonight? You girls can’t handle your liquor.”

You roll your eyes as you peck a last kiss to his lips. “Only because we go straight for the hard stuff!!!”

Kaibara walks you out of his house, and into your car. His face sticking through the window for some last kisses. You give him as many as you can until you have no more time to waste. “Okay, bye! I love you!” you chirped, finally driving off.

You watch as Kaibara continues to wave at you from the street, a smile on your face until you turn the corner. Your smile instantly drops as you’re far away.

You give a call to Fukuda, and she instantly picks up.

“Hello? Are you ready? There’s a lot of activity going on tonight… I’m worried,” Fukuda’s voice cries, and you’re consumed with the smallest bit of guilt as you drive faster.

“I’m sorry… where to first?”

You ran along rooftops, your eyes locked on the man running away from you. Your breathing is harsh, raspy. You’ve been running for almost an hour now, jumping and weaving through pipes. You’re trying to get to him, the one man you’ve been chasing for years now. The man that taunted your dreams. Your life.

Your eyes caught onto the rubbish on a nearby ceiling, and you threw out your arm. Yellow energy shoots from your arms as it attaches to the objects and falls. Trapping the man by high walls, and a fifty story drop.

“Come on, you know you want to give in!” you pant as the man stops running, turns around, and his guard is up. His gaze concentrated on you entirely as you stopped in front of him. The yellow energy filling your hands as you raise your own guard. “Give in.”

“As much as I would love to wrestle it out with you, sweetheart, I’m in a loving relationship.” his voice is dripping with sarcasm as whirring noises emit from his skin.

The two of you were among the minuscule population that had superpowers. A revolutionary feat that had the world in battle. You were a superhero. As if you were straight off a comic book, you fought against people who threatened those beneath them. Hell, most times, you were a glorified therapist! You really only hardly ever got into fistfights, but this man. This… vile man in front of you was an exception. He was cruel.

Using this power of his to create chaos and mayhem. It was not something you liked, you hated him for it, and you have been trying to get him. To corner him! But he was always one step ahead. A finger brushes away from you as you try to get him.

It was a dreadful and repeating dance now, one the two of you frequently explored. You would lunge forward, and he would take a step backward, you would spin out, and he would pull you back in. Even the way you two fought, it was fluid, sharp, deadly, yet melodic. The occasional locking fists could have been a dance had it not been for the fire in your stance.

The masks on his face covered everything on him, but you knew he was looking at you. The only thing you needed though, was to have him pinned to the ground. His wrists in a handcuff as you dropped him off to the police. Then you’d be able to go home to Kaibara, to tell him the only secret you kept from him.

You ducked under his gyrating fist, something you had known too well as it sent you flying into walls on multiple occasions, but he stopped jumping backward when you rolled to the side.

“I will have to bid you adieu, my sweet Silence! Duty calls, and well, I’m merely here to distract you!”

Your eyes widened as an explosion blew in the distance, and you whipped around. You snap back through to see him waving goodbye, and you freeze. “Oh, no...”

You took off in the direction of the explosion, your heart hammering away as you near it. Screams and cries echoing through the streets as you jumped in to help. Your words aiding everyone in the fiery trap. “Don’t worry, I’m here for you!” You repeated over and over, but their pain never stopped.

“Hi, beautiful,” Kaibara says, walking into your room. Your eyes look up at him in the mirror, and your smile is affectionate. Kaibara is in a pair of dark blue slacks. A white button-up shirt that hugged his chest beautifully, and a black-tie with a jacket on. His hair combed back, overall, he was drop-dead gorgeous.

The brown-haired man walks to you and hugs you by your waist. Kaibara’s eyes dawdling on your outfit as you turn your head to press a kiss to his temple. “Hi.”

“Let’s go for dinner now?”

You nod your head, this dinner was a much-needed distraction from the explosion after all. “Yes, let’s go.”

The dinner is fantastic.

You love the way Kaibara’s eyes burn like steady embers into you the entire night, his energy never once wavering. His hand held yours after the meal was over, listening to you all while he pressed fluttering kisses to the tattoo that reads iv. You giggle out his name as he refuses to quit, and your cheeks burn.

“Y/l/n y/n,” Kaibara states, and you raise your eyebrows inviting him to continue. “I met you years ago, and you’re… incredible. Your energy is intoxicating as is your smile.” Kaibara smiles as he kisses the back of your hand. “I love the way you hate Tuesday mornings, I love that you always jump onto your bed, you do not have to, but you do. You complete me, you make me want to be a better person, and I have only one thing to ask…”

Your eyes sparkle with unshed tears, and Kaibara presses up and kneels before you.

“Will you marry me, y/n? Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”

A black velvet box presents itself on his palm. A luminescent diamond ring shining against the light surrounded by primroses, the flower you said represented your love with him. Your tears shedding uncontrollably from your eyes while you grin like a fool.

Your head nods over and over.

“Yes!” You cry as you pepper wet kisses all over his face. “Yes, please! Yes!”

The diamond ring slips onto your finger, and you can’t even begin to describe your emotions as you kiss him. The cheering of the crowds disappearing as you hold him even closer.

He asked you for your hand that night, and yet you felt united in a whole other way. The overwhelming love between the two of you palatable the entire night.

You struggle against the wall, gasping as the villain holds you by your throat. You had foiled his next plan and were now paying dearly for it.

You slam your foot into his crotch, and he grunts, letting you go. You collapse to the ground gasping for air. You stagger but act quickly, sweeping his feet out from underneath him. He falls to the ground, and you shoot energy from your hands, allowing you to smoothly and rapidly hop on top of him. You press your knees into his arms, and he hisses.

His legs sweep up, kicking you forward, and you tumble off of him.

So the two of you embark on another dangerous dance of yours. Fukuda screams in your ear about the dangers lurking around you if you don’t get out of there! But you had landed a hit, you were going to get him today!

You duck under a punch and shove a palm to his ribcage. He stumbles backward, you narrow your eyebrows as you lock an energy strand around his leg, pulling him in. You race over, but you miss the whirring of his skin. You’re blown backward, white-hot pain scorching your cheek, the mask on your face cracking in two. You gasp for air, the mask breaking completing as it falls to the ground. You couldn’t hear Fukuda yelling at you anymore as knees slam into your chest, and you wheeze.

Your eyes lock onto the villain before you. His arm cocked back for another devastating punch, but he’s frozen. His body is still. You don’t feel your energy power up, only that your arm is thrust up, and he’s thrown off you. A sickening crash is heard, and you sit up wheezing.

You stare at the man, your vision dizzy, and you feel sick.

Not because you’re dizzy, but because of the face that’s revealed as his mask falls.

Kaibara.

His eyes are so vast, and your eyes are tearing up.

He can’t stand up, and you stumble to your feet, swaying where you stand.

“Get the fuck out of there, y/n!” Fukuda’s voice is yelling at you, and you flinch, finally hearing it.

“Sen…” You whisper, your head shaking in disbelief. “You can’t be… how are you, Spinner?”

The villain’s name. The name you loathe, the name you refuse to use. You prefer ‘villain’ because giving him a name gives him an identity. A reason for him to be committing the atrocities he’s committed.

How was this man in front of you the person you loved with all your heart?

You can’t remember running away. You only remember that you’re back in your house sobbing as you stare at the diamond ring on your nightstand.

You stare at the ceiling of your room. You feel hollow.

Since that fateful encounter, neither one of you has attempted to reach out. Neither one of you calling, texting, or showing up. You hated it, but you couldn’t stand seeing him here. How could you ever talk to the man you love knowing who he was? What he was; what he is?

You knew everyone had secrets, but why was his secret this, anything but this…

The engagement ring is on your finger still. It makes perfect sense, everything tells you that it should be there. But it feels heavy… it weighs you down in more ways than its weight. Could you really forgive a man like him? Yes, he’s your Kaibara, but he’s also Spinner.

Notorious as the underground crime king. Spinner was someone you’ve been fighting since day one. It made you nauseous, just thinking about how that man was your Kaibara.

How were they the same person?

The floorboards in your hallway creak, and you slam up. Your eyes concentrating on the doorframe. Your mouth runs dry as you stare at angry black eyes. His mouth pressed into a flat line as his hands roughly weave through his hair.

It hurts knowing that it wasn’t a hoax. You knew Kaibara Kaibara like the back of your hand, and being able to read him now burned your throat and heart. You lick your lips as he steps closer, his eyes focused on you.

“You’re Silence?”

“You’re Spinner…”

Kaibara shakes his head, his lips barking with cold humor as he can’t believe it. To be fair, you can’t either as you stare at his conflicted features.

“I don’t understand?” he admits, his eyes swimming with confusion, anger, and yet longing.

“You and me both,” you laugh bitterly, shaking your head as you look up at him. “Care to explain?”

“I don’t really want to.” Kaibara shakes his head, his smile sad, and you blink.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” you snap, your brows furrowing when you stalk over to Kaibara, who held his ground. “You’re the one causing all this mayhem, and you’re not going to even explain it to me?!”

“What’s the point, y/n? So that you can cry the next time we meet? You’re not going to give me mercy! You don’t understand! So why should I bother?!” Kaibara’s face clouded, angry, and focused.

“Because you fucking love me!” you hiss, shoving Kaibara with your full strength. This entire time you’ve been able to pull off using mere fractions of your power. Enough to fight with Kaibara, but definitely not enough to send him stumbling backward.

Kaibara’s black eyes snap on you as he gathers his balance. “Don’t do this.”

“I am a hero!” you tremble, your hands pulling at the roots of your hair. Your heart is racing in the worst of ways. You feel faint, ready to fall over, and never wake back up. “I save people nearly every damn day, Kaibara! I save people from you!”

There’s a glower on his face, and you know it’s because you’re putting Kaibara on a fence he doesn’t want to be. A wall that he hates. Kaibara always had something to say, he wasn’t one to pretend to not have an opinion, and so this was killing him.

“Some people in this world deserve to have checks,” Kaibara states, his steely voice calm, his eyes raging. “I don’t do anything to people who don’t deserve it.”

Your nostrils flare, and you can feel your throat thick with emotions. What the actual fuck was he on? “Really? Do these people deserve to die? People fucking deserve to get their life blown to shreds because of what? Because you think they’re corrupt? Oh, grow the fuck up, Kaibara! No, I don’t believe your bullcrap! Do you think I really haven’t tried finding correlations? Correlations for every single crime you committed? Yes, these people are terrible! But that’s why we have other ways of stopping them! You can’t play fucking god and decide whether these people deserve to live or not! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

You’re pressed flat against his chest. Your chest heaving with lack of air and overwhelming emotions. Kaibara’s face contorted with anger. His black eyes flashing before sinking into blackness.

Then you say words you wish you could regret, words that broke your heart as you said it.

“How can you expect me to love someone like you?”

He left your shared place after that. The year ended, and there was nothing to stop the tragic downfall of both Spinner and Silence, both of you never recovered from this moment.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆ v ⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

“Kaibara, is that you?!”

Your eyes looked at the brown-haired man walking into the hero agency where you were currently a sidekick in.

It had been two years since graduating from UA, and you were here with Miruko, a signing that had honestly shocked many, many people when it happened. Sure enough, as an alumnus of UA and being a part of his rival classroom 1-A, it was a pleasant surprise to see someone outside of your classmates.

“Y/l/n?” he greeted you in return, his hands resting on his hips, his body completely decked out in his uniform. You guessed he started his day before you.

“It’s been so long!” you grin, stopping at his side with your hands clutched by your thighs, “How can I help you today?”

“Well, I need some help. I’m here to recruit you to help with Gang Orca’s mission.”

You watched him hand you a folder and immediately upon reading it understood why he was here for you. This was a job that was perfect with your quirk.

“I can help out,” you say after reading the file, a smile on your face. “Will you be there?”

“I am his sidekick, plus I gathered most of the evidence,” Kaibara shrugged, and you nodded.

“Okay, sounds good, Spiral.”

Kaibara smiled, his eyebrow lifted while he walked away. “Good, see you then.”

You and Kaibara always got along, maybe it was because both of you were the only people in UA who were on their fifth reincarnation cycle, but knowing you weren’t alone was always nice. He was still kind to you, even if he seemed bland at times, but you came to see that it was just… him. Regardless he was a formidable foe and a strong hero. Your only regret was not getting as close to him as you could have since the rivalry between the two classes never lessened.

The team-up mission went smoothly. The extraction of the hostages on top of capturing the brass of the cult, and stopping their influence on victims of their power was an excellent boost to your reputation and Miruko’s agency. Still, you had suffered minor injuries and had an EMT checking you out this very moment.

Your eyes fell on Kaibara, who was a few strides away. He had a nasty looking bruise on his jaw, a punch he had taken for you during your lack of attention. Signaling that you were fine now, the EMT let you go, and you walked over to Kaibara, your guilt looming heavy in your stance.

“Sorry for getting you hurt,” you apologized, your finger looming over the spot where he got hit on your own skin.

“No problem,” he brushed it off with a shrug of his shoulders. “You didn’t see it, plus you still got it handled in the end, which was much more important.”

“Yeah, but now I feel like I owe you drinks or something,” you huff, not at all pleased with how he was okay with this.

A silence fell over you two, the EMT avoiding eye contact as if this was like avoiding the plague. But with your vision glued to your feet, you didn’t catch the way that his eyebrows bunched and relaxed over and over in thought until finally, he spoke.

“I could go for drinks.”

And so this night where you and Kaibara found yourselves at a bar with drinks in hands, did you realize that you wanted to actually get to know him. You didn’t want to associate Kaibara as the other fifth reincarnation cycle guy, or the guy from class 1-B, you wanted to know him for… him.

It turned out, he felt the same way.

Thus began a strange but quaint relationship between the two of you.

Kaibara ended up being a personality you enjoyed to be around a lot. He often danced between being a straight face and serious, to chaotic and enthusiastic, to sometimes straight-up aggressive and demanding. The fluctuation often amuses you, three different branches to his personality, much like the three spirals on his gloves.

“I don’t think I’m ridiculous,” you point out, your finger following Kaibara’s walking form as he was grabbing the two of you drinks from his fridge. “I get that most people give up at this point, but I really do think I’ll meet my soulmate this time about!”

Kaibara looked at you incredulously when he sat next to you, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbow so you could see the Roman numeral for five tattoo on his wrist. “What makes this lifetime so special? Besides, we know that soulmates always meet in every reincarnation. If you and your soulmate haven’t clicked since the first cycle, what’s the point in fighting so hard at this cycle?” A frown overcomes your face, and you glare at Kaibara, who struggles to uphold a serious reaction. “I’m sorry, too far?”

“Shut up.”

His laughter fills the room while you turn away from him pouting.

“So you don’t want to meet your soulmate?” you asked, trying your hardest to not sound too nosey but just the perfect amount of curiosity.

“I’d love to meet my soulmate, don’t get it wrong,” Kaibara sighs, his back falling onto the back of the couch, his head tilting up to the ceiling. “But it’s… weird to keep my hopes up. With no memories of past reincarnations, it seems like I’m stumbling around in the dark.”

You hummed, your fingers bringing the drink to your mouth and taking a small sip from it.

“Would you like to go on a date with me?” you asked when you brought your cup down.

Kaibara looked at you, his eyes like the void, daunting dark yet beautiful, “Why?”

“Well, if this is going to be my last reincarnation, I don’t want to live a life of regrets,” you smile, your head tilting to the side. “I would always regret not asking you out.”

His face melted into one of softness and undeniable excitement at your practical confession, “As long as you think your class could handle you dating someone from class 1-B.”

“I think that’s more of a question of if your class can handle you dating someone from class 1-A!”

So the two of you began to date.

It took no time for you to fall inexplicably and wholly in love with Kaibara Sen; he was perfect for you. Day and night he was someone you could entirely rely on, never once would he slip up, always coming to aid you when you needed it and vice versa. There were still hard nights, after all, you were still human.

But rain or shine, momentous fight or sweet staples of your relationship, the both of you always ended up in the same bed, holding each other close as night consumed you.

Before you knew it, it was New Year's Eve, and instead of going out tonight, you and Kaibara decided to stay in. A feeble nervous attempt in the hope that the two of you genuinely were soulmates. Five reincarnations later, and now you would finally find out if he was made for you if you were made for him.

“I want to give these to you,” Kaibara spoke to you when you came to the couch, a hefty blanket in your arms that you planned on drawing the both of you in while you watched the fireworks display on a TV monitor. Today was your first day off in a while, and because the crime rate was notoriously low on this holiday, staying home together sounded better than a clashed reunion of your high school classmates.

Your eyes found the small bouquet of primroses in his hands, the pink and white flowers sitting charmingly in their tan paper. A smile spread across your face immediately, and you brought your lips to him in a chaste kiss.

“They’re beautiful, thank you,” you happily sigh, moving to sit at his side, snuggled comfortably against him with the blanket over both of you. “What do they mean?”

“I can’t live without you,” Kaibara whispered, his eyes locking against yours.

And with warm cheeks, you smiled earnestly and connected your lips against his.

The bouquet went forgotten as the two of you continued your passionate kiss, the words of ‘I love you’ continuing to pour from your lips well past midnight. Hope and endearment fully saturated between your hopeful mouth.

And alas, my dearest reader, I’m glad to tell you that at last, you found the one meant for you.

Primroses graced each of your lives with Kaibara Sen; after all, they were the flower of love, a flower that also meant that you couldn’t live without the other — a real sign of soulmate love through reincarnation. And my sweet reader, the moment your lips removed from Kaibaras as the stroke of midnight passed, the words of love exchanged between the two of you with complete honesty, you’ll be pleased to know that the tattoo turned to gold.

#kaibara x reader #kaibara sen x reader #bnha #bnha x reader #mha x reader

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a-very-fond-farewell · 4 years

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The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 25/?

Gaming Chat AU [xuexiao + songxiao = ?]: “Lie to Me”

[tw cyber bullying; tw use of slurs; tw fake suicide mention; there’s a redemption arc, but it starts with 15yo Xue Yang being... well, himself I guess. so be warned.]

[attn!: I don’t know shit about playing games and going to quests with strangers on the internet so bear with me. if you feel inspired by this please, by all means, feel free to use this prompt and write something and then tag me so I can read it and reblog it!]

[enjoy!]

It’s been 15 years since that idiotic intern at the school counseling center suggested him to... what did he say? “Channel his anger in something productive”. And then tried to talk Meng Shi into purchasing a fucking computer to let him “get off some steam” by killing fictional people instead of smashing actual valuable objects like, say, the principal’s Mercedes with a stolen golf club, or, the nurse’s desk with a fire extinguisher back in middle school.

Good thing Su She had disappeared under mysterious circumstances after Xue Yang had surreptitiously let the intern’s uni professor know in a detailed email how the aspiring counselor had suggested him (a sweet innocent 15 year old) to use his new computer to watch porn instead of focusing on his studies. Song Lan was much better than him, and bitchier too, which was fine by Xue Yang anyway. Not that he cared.

What good had that stupid glorified television brought him in the end? Most of the computers at school had become intimately familiar with many a malware and virus already with how frequently he used to browse through the deep web. The ones at the local library had let him in on the secrets of 4ch*n since the tender age of 8. Hell, even his pediatrician had made the glorious mistake to leave him alone in her office one merry day of winter when he discovered the wonders of x-rated videos.

But Meng Shi had tried to cheer him up anyway, buying him that stupid thing. Working her ass off at the bar trying to make social services forget she used to be a stripper back in the days. All to provide a place for children in foster care to feel safe, the stupid hag. Xue Yang wasn’t fucking stupid, he knew she was collecting money for every kid ever stepping inside her ratty flat. He knew that she would have never adopted anyone for real because she already had a son and she was working to send him to university anyway.

Yet, she had come home one day with a big smile on her youngish and bland face, hoisting up the heavy computer in a box, and told Xue Yang to share it with his siblings. Yeah, fuck that. That little bitch A-Qing was even worse than him, and she probably used to sell feet-pictures recycled from the internet to disgusting men online. To this day Xue Yang is none the wiser and he doesn’t need to know what that fucking witch had been up to at 14. XuanYu would have used the computer to stream and torrent shit nonstop to sell at school even if he was only, like, 12. Qin Su was 15 like him and she would have been tempted to set up a fucking YT channel and subject him and XuanYu to whatever scientific experiment she would have come up with. And Meng Yao had too much embarrassing blackmail material on Xue Yang already, he didn’t need to have access on his erased search history after digging gods-knows for how long.

Ahah no. No thanks.

But detention got him occupied for so long by cutting library books pages down to papermen without getting bored out of his mind. And he did have his fun that one time when he caught a pervert with a hand down his pants when they chatted on Om*gle after Xue Yang had catfished him good by pretending to be a girl. Got everything on tape and published the whole interaction on the school website for everyone to see. Which had been appropriate at the time, given that the man had been part of the board of directors. Fittingly hilarious too.

Still, boredom loomed over him like a quilt of sadness on summer break and he had been tempted to log in and play games in the end. Nobody wanted him in their stupid ass teams anyway, with him having higher kill counts than them and all, not following tactics and so on. Whatever.

Until one day user shuan_ghua naively trusted Xue Yang when the other assured him that “teabagging“ was just a fancy slang for ordering a cup of jasmine tea. The 17 year old boy named Xiao XingChen had thanked him for teaching something new to him and then proceeded to ask him to join his one-man-party out of fucking nowhere.

Everything changed after that.

[more under the cut. it’s long long tho]

XXC family!:

XXC is 17 at the beginning of the story and he used to live with his mother Baoshan [i know that “Sanren” and “Daoren” are titles, but in absence of a real surname I will use them as such for this prompt. feel free to change that if you take inspiration from this post to write your take on the story] and the rest of their family on a mountain before they moved back to the city in Gusu.

XXC’s mother was barely 20 when she got married the first time and her first son Daoren YanLing was born. two years later her husband died and she travelled a lot afterwards, adopting 4yo CanSe when she was 25. then she married again at 41, had XXC at 44, and then divorced at 48.

CanSe eloped with ChangZe when she was 18 and got WWX at 20, the same year her own mother got married again (at 41).

BaoShan got XXC three years later (at 44).

hence, WWX is 3 whole ass years older than XXC despite being his nephew. both boys find the thing absolutely hilarious.

YanLing and CanSe are only 1 year apart and they still bicker nonstop. both of them went to school with Lan QiRen and his older brother and frequently got in fights back in the days at Gusu.

(if YanLing had a thing for Lan QiRen, well, nobody has to know)

XXC, being the baby of his family, is doted on by YanLing and brought to mischief by CanSe until XXC’s father divorces their mother and they move on the mountain along with ChangZe and 7yo WWX.

up on the mountain BaoShan works as a tour guide and she takes baby XXC and WWX on hikes along with tourists to admire the beauty of the scenery.

XXC’s sight starts deteriorating when he is 12 and WWX is 15. they have been homeschooled until then, so when it gets clear XXC will not improve much so far away from proper healthcare, the whole family moves back to the city in Gusu.

XXC is not comfortable leaving his new home, not with all those new noises and flashing lights. WWX is drawn to them instead, more than happy to enroll in school, where he meets JC and he realizes the boy is the son of CanSe’s middle school boyfriend. WWX declares them to be almost-brothers and is perfectly fine with adopting even JC’s older sister in the family and CanSe can only laugh at that. JC and YanLi visit XXC often as a result and they help him make sense of the new environment without stressing him too much.

YanLing finds a job as a cook in WWX’s school and he is back to making Lan QiRen’s life impossible after learning the man is a teacher there.

LWJ and LXC’s mother is a music teacher there as well and YanLing bonds with her to make Lan QiRen life’s an absolute nightmare.

LWJ and LXC make friends with the mountain gremlins and they are initially horrified by their manners: XXC would pick food from the ground and eat it, it doesn’t have to be his for that to happen to begin with; WWX doesn’t realize he should cut his nails (both for his feet and hands) until he is forced to wear shoes outside and not climb up trees, for he assumed nails simply never grew bc he used them constantly, wearing them down; etc.

LWJ hates himself for falling for WWX but he cannot care less.

LXC notices how lonely XXC feels when wangxian becomes a thing, so he buys him a computer to better gather more information about the world and adjust the settings to maximum accessibility whenever XXC wants to read something.

by the age of 17 XXC is mostly left alone in the house: WWX goes to uni; his mother BaoShan works at a local museum; his brother YanLing is trying to not get fired at his job; and his sister CanSe has started to travel with her husband selling the delicate dizi flutes ChangZe makes as an artisan.

XXC is also on the waiting list for an important eye surgery and he figures he has a couple of years to go before he will either lose his sight or be granted a second chance at life altogether.

XY’s family!:

Meng Shi had Meng Yao at 19 and started stripping the following year in Yunmeng.

her friend SiSi helped her both financially and emotionally, spending time with A-Yao while she worked at night. after four years she can move out of her flat and finds a job as a bartender downtown. she would have kept her old job, if SiSi hadn’t convinced her to think of A-Yao first, who was painfully shy and didn’t know how to socialize with other kids his age.

at 24 she starts the paperwork to become a foster parent and has to child-proof her entire apartment before the first kid arrives. at 25 she welcomes Qin Su, who is only 5, and initially A-Yao doesn’t want to share his mother with anyone. the situation gets bad to the point social services have to take Qin Su away one year later, because she tried to set A-Yao’s hair on fire in retaliation once, but two years later Meng Shi gets her back.

A-Yao, now 9 years old, has thought about it and reasoned that having a sister wasn’t so bad after all. Qin Su is only one year younger than him and she will not take up much space, right? wrong. but they bond over their shared nerdiness and while A-Su likes to blow things up, A-Yao helps his mother with taxes every year.

at 29 Meng Shi takes in XuanYu, who is not an orphan like A-Su, and still misses his birth mother fiercely. she had to give him up for adoption when he was 3, because she had been only 15 when XuanYu was born and her family threatened to disown her.

being profoundly deaf on top of that, no foster home wanted to have him and he was kept in the system for three years after his mother had to let him go. the woman had tried to be present for him while he waited for a family to pick him, teaching him sign language and reading lips, but she had been forced to eventually let go.

XuanYu arrives at Meng Shi’s when he’s 6. A-Yao (10yo) and A-Su (9yo) try their best to involve their new brother, but they don’t know how to communicate with him. SiSi takes the children to sign language classes at the community center after school and XuanYu warms up to them. he teaches Meng Shi what they learned the previous day every morning, before going to school. teachers don’t really pay attention to him, but he manages by reading lips when people face him properly, which is a rare occurrence, but he tries his best.

when A-Yao and A-Su realizes A-Yu is being bullied, they start to get nasty, setting backpacks on fire and terrorizing the other children at school. even when they move to middle school one after the other nobody picks on A-Yu, fearing what his siblings could do.

XY arrives at Meng Shi’s when she is 32 (A-Yu is 9, A-Su is 12, A-Yao is 13) and XY is 12. A-Su initially gets jealous bc they are the same age, but XY doesn’t talk to anyone for a year and ignores her attempts to rile him up. Meng Shi had been warned about him: his father had killed his mother and then failed to kill himself afterwards... and XY still believed the man was out there, looking for him to finish the job. XY had lived on the street for years before social services could find him, but he had felt trapped like a dog, not wanting to be touched, frequently running away.

XY doesn’t remember much of his life before entering foster care. he only knows everything is a bother, that his nightmares give him constant migraines, and that he doesn’t care how he lost one of his fingers. but anyone who makes fun of him for that gets kicked, that’s for sure.

it’s only when A-Qing (12) comes one year after XY’s arrival that things get a bit better... so to speak.

she is even less well behaved than him, thrashing around at night, screaming at the top of her lungs, saying that she doesn’t want to be there. that she’s better than the rest of them combined.

her anger issues trigger something in XY and the two of them get into fights with each other constantly.

A-Yao (14) and A-Su (13), reminiscing of the 2 years they spent apart because they couldn’t stop hitting each other up, take the issue seriously and convince Meng Shi to ask for help. SiSi is the one taking A-Qing and XY to therapy two times a week and they are followed through by professionals who know how to tackle their issues, an elderly woman who goes by the name of Lan Yi (LWJ and LXC’s paternal grandma) and her assistant Wen Qing, an intern working there for uni credits.

one year later XY is 14 and A-Qing is 13 and they... don’t really love each other, but at least they can talk to one another without trying to kill anyone in the process. they spend a lot of time with A-Yu (11) and learn sign language to keep him entertained.

by the age of 35, Meng Shi has 5 kids and can barely afford food for herself but she is happy like never before. A-Yao (16) is already considered smart enough to attend advanced math classes in high school. A-Su (15) has won a science competition sponsored by city hall. A-Yang (15) is trying to work on his anger issues with video games, making friends online. A-Qing (14) doesn’t let anyone make fun of her for her dyslexia, asking adults and classmates to take her issue seriously for once. And A-Yu (12) wants to learn how to sign in different languages to maybe travel the world one day.

Meng Shi is very happy indeed.

now, the plot: (tw fake suicide mention; tw use of homophobic slurs)

XY (15) and XXC (17) meet online every night before bed, playing video games together. XY made a mistake first time they chatted, saying he was 17 instead of 15 bc he didn’t want the other to look down on him.

XXC trusts him a little too much and doesn’t question if his new friend is lying to him or not. he’s the funnies person he has ever met, after all.

WWX (20) notices something is wrong by the way XXC starts speaking around others, using inappropriate language when he has never been anything but polite and gentle. even if, technically, XXC is WWX’s uncle, the latter sees the other more like a cousin than anything else given that he’s older. so he takes the matter in his own hands and one day asks him to let him play games with him.

XY doesn’t like his only friend not telling him someone else would have joined their party, and initially he covers XXC in insults and threatens to leave. but then WWX is really good at killing fictional people and XY reconsiders. he makes fun of WWX for being the older one AND the other’s nephew at the same time, but aside from that he doesn’t try to run away like a caged animal anymore.

WWX trust XXC when the younger says XY is 17 like him, but he still supervisions most of their sessions just to be sure XY cannot teach too many horrible things to XXC. WWX wants XXC to make more friends and maybe one day leave the house to attend university if the other will feel inclined to do so, but he doesn’t pressure him.

in the meantime, XY changes counselor at school and it is Song Lan (23) who tries to make a better human out of him. SL is deaf and occasionally uses cochlear implants to hear, but only because his family made the choice for him to have surgery when he was only a child. he can speak if he feels like it at times (not frequently, he’s very adamant about reminding others he doesn’t owe them anything. he’s also trying to make a change at the school where he works by organizing classes on Deaf culture and sign language for the students to take as an elective)

XY already knew of SL thanks to XuanYu, bc A-Yu had seen the counselor at the community center where SiSi usually takes the kids to for sign language classes. counseling at school doesn’t really happen one-on-one, detention kids being too many to follow one at a time and all, but when SL comes by to chat with them he’s always funny as fuck and XY (who will never admit it) feels good about being the only one in class able to understand SL only through sign language.

SL forces himself to talk to the kids and read their lips only bc... well, they’re young and did nothing wrong to him. he occasionally asks XY to help him translate, but aside from that there are really too many kids to look after and he doesn’t treat XY differently from the others, nor he notices him much.

two years pass and XXC (19) announces to XY (17) that wangxian (22) is having their wedding. since XY has learned all about their family, he asks XXC if it’s a common thing to get married super young in their household and XXC laughs... but it’s a sad and brittle thing and XY gets a bit worried.

XXC reveals then that soon after the wedding he will have a surgery to (hopefully) fix his sight and he’s very anxious. he timidly asks XY if he wants to go to the wedding with him, because he would like to see his face at least once before the surgery.

XY panics: he knew XXC’s eyesight was bad, but he never knew to what extent exactly; he’s not really of age yet, so he cannot move on the other side of the country just to attend a wedding; he has never talked specifically about XXC with his family and Meng Shi is working a lot and A-Yu should get his hearing aids soon and A-Qing needs help for her finals and... and...

...and he’s not ready to meet XXC.

XY lied to him and told him they’re the same age. he had never told XXC his name, even if the other had revealed his own, always going by his username jiang_zai. he called him and chatted with him and made fun of his own family and the other had been nothing but kind and amazing and... and... and XY realizes he’s been in love for a while and he abhors the idea to the point where he openly laughs at XXC and calls him a sap.

XXC notices the change in his tone immediately and wonders if he’s overstepped, if he’s asked too much by inviting the other over to celebrate with the rest of the family. XXC apologizes to XY and begs him to not step away like he usually does when he feels cornered.

XY feels absolutely cornered and attacks XXC by asking him why he’s so keen on asking him out (“are you a f*g or something?” etc.). the other doesn’t even know what that means but hearing XY so scared hurts, bc he doesn’t want to make the other uncomfortable in any way.

XXC does like XY romantically, but would never dream to say anything and hinder their friendship. yet, it hurts more to hear his only friend so afraid and angry. he apologizes profusely and promises him not to bring the subject back.

after that, XY doesn’t log in much, avoiding XXC. A-Yao (18) notices he’s sullen and tries to spend more time with him, but the younger doesn’t budge and talks less and less. even SL (25) sees XY less and less, but he doesn’t thinks the younger one is actually skipping classes or anything.

but XY is, in fact, skipping school and Meng Shi covers for him saying he doesn’t feel well enough to go to class. she knows something’s up and she also understands the need to have days off in order to take care of yourself when everything goes to shit.

wangxian wedding happens and XXC is both happy and sad. they made him the official photographer of the day, which is both sweet and incredibly hurtful, because he’s the one taking all those beautiful pictures... and maybe he will never be able to look at them ever again after the surgery. WWX and LWJ already had to organize the wedding earlier than what they originally planned to accommodate XXC and the date of the surgery. XXC feels bad but he’s very happy for them.

YanLing and CanSe worry about him and they ask their mother to help them figure out what’s going on. BaoShan agrees with WWX that XXC had a fight with a friend, alright, but that cannot be all, surely...

it’s the week before XXC’s hospitalization and WWX takes the issue in his hands. logs in pretending to be XXC and plays until he takes XY’s place in the rankings of his and XXC’s favorite game.

XY receives notifications about it and initially fumes at the idea of being outranked, but then he understands what XXC is trying to do and doesn’t know how to react.

he does something horrible instead.

WWX waits to be contacted by this jiang_zai boy who broke XXC’s heart, but when it finally happens... it’s not the familiar, high-pitched voice he expects to hear in the chat. it’s a girl (A-Qing), who tells him her brother had died and that he won’t be playing games anymore. she sounds too serious to be joking and WWX tries to ask more about it... but she just tells him her brother killed himself before ending the call.

WWX doesn’t have the heart to tell this to XXC, not before the surgery and not until he has properly recovered (one year later).

XXC had wondered about XY in silence, not trusting himself to reveal all about his crush to his family, worrying about making the other boy uncomfortable.

XXC misses XY, but he is patient. he can wait.

A-Qing had agreed to lie for XY only because he lied to her first: he told her a creep on the internet had tried to meet with him and he needed a way out; outraged, A-Qing had helped him without a second thought and answered the chat in his place.

this spurs her to take more seriously what she and her siblings had been doing on the Internet and reconsiders some of the things she herself posted in the past. she will take this topic so much at heart that she will pursue an academic career to become a social worker.

XXC’s surgery goes well, but he still loses his sight after a while. WWX ends up telling him what happened to his online friend and XXC is so heartbroken he doesn’t even blame WWX for keeping the secret from him for so long.

after some time BaoShan makes sure he goes to therapy and takes better care of him, helping him figure out what to do. she fears people will look down on XXC and, as a blind person, he will probably be hindered by the system to pursue a career, so she retires from her job at the museum and focuses all of her attention on him.

XXC feels guilty for XY’s passing, but he doesn’t think the other had been triggered to commit suicide bc of him: XXC simply fears XY had hid a different type of sorrow from him; a pain so deep that XXC had failed to see while they were playing silly games. so, three years after the surgery, when he’s 21, he enrolls in uni to study psychology to help kids who are struggling to ask for help.

15 years after XXC and XY had met online:

XY is 30 and a professional carer. he studied to become a nurse, of all things, after what happened. he got a lot of time to think about the horrible thing he had done to XXC and considered helpings others to atone for that.

he is the first to say such a choice was very out of character for him, and even if he has to bite his tongues at times he doesn’t mind his job: it keeps him occupied and exhausts him well enough... but after working in the hospital for 5 or so years he decides to become a carer and trains to help disabled people in particular in his late twenties.

A-Su (30) has become a chemical engineer and married a man working as a lawyer (who happens to be LXC), while A-Yao (31) ends up moving in with his best friend (NMJ). A-Qin (29) doesn’t find romance interesting enough to give up on her career as a social worker, so she doesn’t really move out of Meng Shi’s old flat and everyone is fine with that. A-Yu (27) has graduated from uni and travels the world as an interpreter. Meng Shi and SiSi have lived together since the first has adopted all the kids and they opened a B&B near the seaside. they are wives and very in love.

XY lives with A-Qing in Yunmeng until his late 20s and they fight a lot for stupid things (like when A-Qing makes fun of the boring people her brother hooks up with on the regular, or when XY tries to coerce her to do the fucking laundry by tickling her into a pulp of pain and tears), but otherwise they work well together.

A-Qing is working at the community center as a social worker to help the kids find purpose in life and use the internet safely. she still believes a creep had tried to mess with her brother and doesn’t want anything to happen to the kids under her care. XY knows this, but never got around to tell her the truth, believing it would have been pointless to reveal her how everything she knew had been a lie. even her own purpose on top of that.

A-Su’s husband (LXC) rarely got to speak with XY in person, the latter busy with his job as a nurse most of the time, but during a dinner party LXC has to suddenly leave because of an emergency: his brother-in-law had been brought to the hospital after a car crash and lost the use for both of his legs.

one year later, XY (29) coincidentally becomes WWX’s personal carer and decides to move closer to the man’s house in Yiling since it would be troublesome to help him as efficiently otherwise. XY does not recognize WWX (34) from his voice or name (he did play games with him in the past, sure, but he knew him as XXC’s nephew by the name of Wei WuXian, not Wei Ying, which is the name LWJ uses around him) and helps him around the house and out of it.

WWX’s husband (LWJ) is frequently out of the house to work as a lawyer like his older brother and entrusts WWX to XY, even if begrudgingly so.

WWX pretends to be fine, but he has a tendency to try to sneak out and walk on crutches without anyone noticing, so LWJ has asked for a carer to come to their house every day. XY doesn’t have to bite his tongue as much around WWX, their interactions easy enough for the both of them to work together despite bickering about the stupidest things.

XY discovers WWX is friends with Wen Qing (37) (the same intern who helped the psychologist take care of XY and A-Qing while they sorted their shit out in the past).

he meets her and learns from her how WWX’s family had moved in Yiling to help him recover after the crash. her brother Wen Ning is the physiotherapist helping WWX regain control of his legs, but there are basically no chances for him to go back to be a professional athlete even if he were to walk once more.

this new information spurs XY to force WWX to rest more and take his situation more seriously. they work together to find possible solutions and WWX decides that he would much rather have his legs cut off from the knee down that suffer through the pain of having multiple fractures splitting him apart day after day. the surgeons had done their best to save his legs, but the fractures had compromised his nerves maybe forever and the pain is now unbearable.

LWJ trusts his husband but he’s weary at the idea of having him evaluated for amputation. XY refuses to feel responsible for the tension in the house, since this is clearly what WWX wants. XY knows WWX is secretly considering running again on prosthetic legs in the future, but he doesn’t want to anger LWJ more by mentioning it. it’s too soon to know anyway, and who is he to tamper down what little hope WWX has managed to harbor for himself after an entire year drowning in grief?

one year later WWX (35) gets permission from his physician to get prosthetic legs fitted for his needs and he couldn’t be happier. his family visit him more frequently now to congratulate him, even his grandmother who has descended from the mountain where she retired to in order to celebrate him.

XY (30) has already met WWX’s parents and his oldest uncle, but he never suspected them to be related to XXC, because he had never knew them by name.

yet, one day Song Lan (38) comes in with a huge backpack on his shoulders and recognizes XY immediately. XY doesn’t know why his old counselor is there: he knew WWX’s other uncle was coming over, but he never imagined it was SL they were talking about.

SL is beaming at him, signing he met XY’s bother A-Yu during one of his travels as a tour guide and that they kept in touch. SL has come to know XY is the reason behind WWX’s recovery and he tells the younger man that everyone in their family is happy XY has appeared in their life.

XY doesn’t have time to answer, overwhelmed with this sense of belonging, this sense of being finally, finally accepted somewhere outside of his own family... that someone else enters the house with a backpack on his shoulders.

XY doesn’t know the man and SL enthusiastically guides him over to meet the newcomer. XY is surprised to hear SL speak out instead of using sign language as the older man asks “A-Chen” to come meet “his nephew’s savior”. based on the pronouns SL has just used, XY recognizes the newcomer to be WWX’s actual uncle and he smiles at the beautiful man in front of him...

...only to be filled with horror the minute the other speaks.

XXC (32) greets XY without knowing who he really is, smiling at him without even recognizing the younger man’s voice. the two of them had never seen each other, playing games only through chats and calls... but XY recognizes XXC immediately, aware that his own voice has changed drastically over the years.

XY is still transfixed and petrified when XXC asks him if it would be okay for him to touch his face to have a better idea of who he’s interacting with. XY doesn’t even register himself voicing his consent when he feels XXC’s hands on his face. only then he understands the infamous surgery had failed and that XXC did not regain his sight after his nephew’s wedding.

overwhelmed with grief, guilt and longing for what never was and never could be, XY is unaware of the tears rolling down his cheeks as XXC gently trails his features. XXC apologizes when he feels his palms dampening and he asks XY if he overstepped. next to them SL is distressed, not understanding what’s happening in front of him.

XY shakes his head and simply says... that he lost someone and that XXC reminded him of that person. then he excuses himself looking for WWX, to ask him to give him something... anything to do. he gets himself a task to accomplish and leaves the house brimming with relatives that he will never be able to call his own.

1 year later:

XXC and SL do not leave the city as they originally planned. they have travelled long enough for the time being and they decide to get a house close to WWX and his husband. they spend the following year after their return looking for stability and peace.

XY (31) didn’t stop working for WWX (36) and doesn’t plan to. not now that he got his new legs finally fitted. the recovery takes long, but it’s already been two years since the amputation now and WWX tries his best every day. he believes to be a handful and doesn’t dare ask for things he needs after receiving the prosthetics. XY is there to loudly remind him to stop being an idiot and that he is paying XY to boss him around however the fuck he wants. LWJ is very grateful to hear WWX laugh more and more these days thanks to XY.

XXC (33), however, is frequently around his nephew’s house, keeping him company. before his three-or-so years of traveling with his boyfriend SL, XXC has briefly worked as a psychologist with Wen Qing, of all people and the two of them have applied for a position at the community center in Yunmeng at the same time. there isn’t one available in Yiling and the commute shouldn’t be too bad. during that first year after his return, XXC has met A-Qing multiple times to inquire for a place at the center in Yunmeng and they are quickly becoming more involved with each other because of their shared passion for the job.

XY feels the end nearing, time ticking away. it had been an agonizing, brilliant, terrible year the one he had spent so close to XXC... and it is now coming to an end. knowing that A-Qing will eventually tell XXC how and why she became a social worker, spilling everything about how “her pitiful bastard of a brother had been molested by a pervert online” and so on. he only hopes A-Qing will never get to meet WWX... she would absolutely recognize the other man’s voice and accuse him of being the pervert in question and XY... XY will die.

XY feels trapped and he will most certainly have a stroke the moment XXC will realize that he lied to him, that he is still alive, that his reason to become a psychologist to help troubled kids was not a real thing... XY will die and Meng Shi will cry.

only because he lied about being 17 when he was 15 one day of 16 years ago.

XY disappears the same night XXC tells him he invited A-Qing over. SL (39) is overjoyed at the idea of meeting the girl once more after the time she and her step-siblings used to go to sign language classes at the community center in Yunmeng. WWX is interested as well, having heard all about A-Qing from XY along the years.

but XY disappears anyway.

2 years later:

it’s XuanYu (30) who finds him, but doesn’t ask him to go back home. A-Yu takes XY (33) with him in his travels for some months to hide him. he doesn’t ask him what he did in those two years, but he does force him to call Meng Shi and SiSi at least.

XY complies but still feels empty inside. the single year he had spent with XXC while the other visited WWX will be permanently engraved in his memories and he cannot stop thinking about it. about how gentle XXC had always been with him, how sad he had looked and sounded reminiscing an “old online friend who had died many years back”, how generous he had always been towards him and everyone and... and XY cannot do this anymore.

A-Yu may be younger than him, but he protects him well for those months... waiting for XY to tell him the truth. so one winters night finally XY does, starting from the beginning.

the following week, close to New Years, XY realizes A-Yu had betrayed him.

someone rings the bell of their shared apartment and A-Yu asks him to go open the door. XY does and it’s A-Qing (32) and WWX (38) who greet him with tears in their eyes. A-Qing tackles him on the ground and tries to hit him they way they used to do as kids, fists getting the point across faster than any word ever could, but WWX pries them apart and hugs them instead.

somehow, XY had not been notified of having acquired a new sibling, but WWX clearly considers him a brother of sorts and he had missed him greatly. A-Qing explains that A-Yu had sent her an email with XY’s version of the truth, sure... but she also tells him that she and WWX had solved the mystery soon after XY’s disappearance already, after talking extensively on the matter.

A-Qing had recognized WWX as the person she had talked to in chat all those years ago, that is true, but she also realized WWX was not, in fact, a bad person and that something didn’t add. when she understood who XY’s online friend actually was... she had felt sick to her stomach for having let someone as kind as XXC presume XY had killed himself bc of him.

hurt and confused, XXC’s family and even A-Qing’s one had initially blamed XY for the pain he had caused, the lot of them filled with anger and grief. especially BaoShan, who had felt guilty for not supervising and protecting her younger son better when he was still too naive to understand the ways of the world.

but then, seeing XY was not coming back, Meng Shi and SiSi insisted for XXC’s family to help them with the search instead. after two years the lot of them missed him. yes, even those who still berated him for his poor choices in life.

XXC now knows the truth and only wants XY to come back home.

some days later:

XXC opens the door after hearing the bell and he knows, he knows who the person in front of him is. he already had his suspicions back when he used to visit WWX every day two years back. WWX’s carer reminded him so much of his friend that... that he may have hoped.

but now XY is back and he has a name and a face and is alive and XXC greets him with a smile as the other hugs him and never lets go.

XY has never been happier in his entire, miserable life.

and XXC will never lose sight of him ever again.

the end.

[now imma go weep for fucking ages. also fuck typos.]

#mdzs #cql #songxiao #xuexiao #wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #(possible songxuexiao ?)#mdzs/au: modern #mdzs/au: gaming chat #tw suicide mention #tw homophobic slurs #the forbidden crack! untamed prompts #sorry for the horrible pun at the end

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okimargarvez · 4 years

Text

ONE IN PARTICULAR

Original title: Uno in particolare.

Prompt: Luke and Ashley Seaver start to dating.

Warning: crossover with CSI: NY and CSI: Las Vegas.

Genre: romantic, tragicomic.

Characters: Luke Alvez, Penelope Garcia, BAU team, Aaron Hotchner, Ashley Seaver, Sara Sidle, Don Flack, Roxy, Lou.

Pairing: Garvez, Luke x Ashley, Penelope x Don, Prendoza.

Note: oneshot 55 in Garvez collection.

Legend: 💏😘🔦🐶🎲🎈.

Song mentioned: 13 anni, Tiziano Ferro.

GARVEZ STORIES

ONE IN PARTICULAR

It was exhausting. This is all that the brain of the special supervisor agent Luke Alvez can think of. Meanwhile he looks at this, tough girl. Yeah, man, like she was twenty years younger than you. You're ridiculous, Alvez. Let your mind rest. Try applying one of those techniques Spencer told you about. -Hey, who's want to take something at O'Keefe?- he's already about to decline the offer of the oldest, when he hears that voice.

-I'm in!- here, perfect. He looks towards the open and contagious smile of his colleague and sighs. Goodbye, bed, we will probably meet again in another life. He feels a hand resting on his shoulder.

-Luke, don't you come?- although he isn't so distracted, he seems so for the other man.

-Yes, yes, I just have to... check that the dog sitter has fed Roxy.- he mumbles, congratulating himself on his quick reflexes. And wishing to pat himself on the head. Strong enough. Judging by the way he's staring at him, Matt thinks the same way. Then, here comes that mischievous smile that so irritates him, ever since Simmons realized that there was a girl who was buzzing in his head.

The sound of high heels in the distance. But Luke doesn't notice. -You know, I didn't think you liked blondes...- here, he starts to provoke him.

-Why shouldn't I like them?- he replies in the same joking tone, hoping to seem less suspicious. The other nods, but it is clear that he is not entirely convinced. Shit. This's what happens when your friends are profilers.

-Especially one in particular, right?- and he winks at him. For a moment Luke fears he was exposed, but is saved by a slight cough. And in that moment, he realizes the presence of a third person. Thanks to her unmistakable scent, which penetrates his nostrils and remains in his head until he can sleep.

-See you later, guys?- Penelope asks, looking only at Simmons, who gives her a friendly caress on her back.

-Go ahead. I'll join you in a moment.- he hopes to get rid of them so easily and for once, he's lucky.

She would only ask for a moment of peace. She would have asked only to listen again to a wisp of his voice, which says: I go away slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly... Take my hand. I'm leaving and I'm not taking you with me. From now on, think only of yourself.

Why is she there too? While he reflects, he feels that slight tingling that he felt even during the first days with Lisa. That pleasant sensation of novelty, future and discovery. No anxiety, no expectations.

-Let's drink to the couple of the day, and above all about the man who performed the miracle of the century: melting the heart of the most fascinating boss that BAU has ever had. No offense, Hotch.- the serious and severe looking man smiles, hugging a dark haired woman to himself and raising his goblet upwards.

-No offense.- he repeats, then, between a burst of laughter. Emily, in a flaming red dress that makes her looks as a stunning, blushes, becoming the same color. If it weren't for the man who shakes her hand, she probably would have already run away. And what would you do in her place? Luke dismisses the thought as if it were a gnat visible only to him.

-To Emily and Andrew.- the eldest announces and they all do the same. Not long after the first couples began to form: the newlyweds, Krystall and Rossi, are the first that start to dance, followed by the others. The singles are the last, including him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a rather cheerful Tara grabbing a reluctant Reid and forcing him to dance. His hands sweat, but his feet have already begun to walk in the direction of the blonde. How can he forget what he has felt dancing with her at Dave's wedding? By now the ice had broken, it wouldn't have seemed so strange. But a voice stops him.

-Hey.- he turns and here is a very pretty blonde who smiles at him. -Luke, right?- he nods, feeling Garcia's laughter behind him, but forcing himself to pay attention to the woman in front of him. -Even you alone?- he nods. -Would you like to dance?- that tingling again.

-Yes, I'd like.- he has to get used to it, now it's the women who take the initia-tive. Hadn't it been Prentiss pushed Mendoza to get invited out to dinner? Ashley smiles at him again and he can't help but imitate her. At every twirl he realizes he is thinking less and less about the other blonde. She whispers jokes in his ear and it's surprising, because everything she seems, other than a witty person. He knew her past; he knew who her father was and how she liked to spend her holidays: accumulating score in military exercises. Then the music changes and Luke immediately realizes that it’s the time for the slow dance. He hesitates, thinking that maybe there is someone with whom she would like to share more this dance, but she holds him tightly, strong and rests her head on his shoulder. He can feel the woman's heart beating fast and even his own. Was I getting caught up in the atmosphere? Is it just this? He doesn't even notice that the romantic song is already over, until she separates and looks him intently in the eyes. He finds himself looks at her and before he can formulate any hypothesis, he feels Ashley's soft and fresh lips on his and his eyes are closed. When he opens them again, the first thing he sees is again her sweet and cheeky smile; the second is Matt's wink and the third another blonde woman, running towards the inside, probably heading for the bathroom. He can only grasp her expression for a moment, but enough to throw him back into the abyss of his obsession. And to ditch the girl he has just kissed to follow another with a pathetic excuse, that he can't even repeat.

He doesn’t need to hear sobs to deduce what he already knows. It's just that I can't stand to see her sad, nothing else, there's nothing else behind it. He knocks, not too strong and immediately the sobs stop. -Penelope?- he calls her, naturally, automatically choosing to use the name instead of the surname. Steps, then a faucet that is opened. He imagines her rinsing her face trying to erase the traces of crying. As if she were ashamed for being too sensitive. -Penelope, are you in there?- even if he already knows the answer he is forced to carry on the pantomime.

A moment of hesitation. -Yes.- a sigh. She can't adjust her tone of voice; she has never been good at pretending. -But don't enter, please.- once again that pleading tone, which produces the exact opposite effect of what she hoped for. Or maybe, actually, that's what she wants too, but without letting it too obvious. He leans on the door.

-Why? Are you ill?- no response this time. Only silence. -I can't leave you alone, you know.- he's prepared for a long confrontation, so he almost ends up sit on the floor, when she opens it, to let him in or to get out. Despite the funny aspect of the situation, there is not even the shadow of a smile on her face.

-Hey.- he leaves her decide whether to get close or stay where she is. -You cried?- direct approach, certainly not the smartest choice, but all the strategies go to hell, when he is alone with her. He sees her withdraw and cover her face with her hands. Well done, Alvez. -No, you don't need to hide from me, you don't need it.- it is perhaps his delicate tone, calm with some sweet nuances to make her come out of the shell. -We are friends, now, or am I wrong?- he smiles, as he puts his hand on her shoulder.

Penelope stares at it for a few seconds. -No, you're not wrong.- she replies then, raising her eyes to finish in Luke's. That smiles at her more openly. Carefully he starts to move his hand. They go out into the corridor and sit on one of the sofas, quite distant.

-And then you have no reason to be ashamed.- he continues, in a reasonable tone. -What happened?- he asks her, after waiting in vain for a reply. -Why did you run away like this?- she gasps, realizing that she was caught in the act and that how much she can deny, this won't help her to get rid of him.

She then opts to make him feel pity. -I ... I don't want to talk about it, please.- she stares him straight in the eye with her best dramatic expression, not that she has to try very hard. It comes naturally to her. -Don't force me.- the goal is to make him feel like a worm in case he decides to insist. And it seems to work enough.

-I don't want to make you feel worse, so I won't force you.- Luke says, sighing, shaking his head and looking away. -But I can't just doing nothing either.- he adds, blocking the woman's sigh of relief in the bud. For a few seconds they challenge themselves to the game of looks. She wins.

-Go back to the others, Luke.- Penelope folds her arms and walks away, unconsciously or not, even more from him, until she reaches the other side of the sofa. -I can handle it alone.- it's hard not to laugh at that childish pout, which is also so sexy...

He shakes his head. -No. I don't want to leave you here.- with a leap he finds himself at a few centimeters from the female body. -We'll come back from the others together.- he extends his hand, but she pushes him back a little too sharply. If Luke's upset, he doesn't show it.

-Really, there's no need for it.- she talks overlapping words, like when she's agitated. By now he has learned to read most of her nuances. They've known each other for over three years. It’s almost impressive. -Why do you insist so much?- it sounds like a criticism, but he sees us behind more. She is testing me, does she want me to say what I believe? Or am I seeing just what I want to see? For a moment he lives in the illusion of finding the answer in Penelope's dark eyes. But there is a barrier between them, and it's not about the lenses of her glasses.

This time, he doesn't let go the occasion. -Because I care about you, I love you.- she jumps at his words, not even he has gave her shock. She is genuinely surprise. Was it possible that she had not yet understood it? After all the experiences they had lived together as a team.

However, she is able to recover. -Oh. I love you too.- it would be so nice to be able to extrapolate that phrase and imagine a completely different context and a different meaning. She smiles at him and, Dios, all thoughts are confused in his mind, all memories and intentions. Only the present exists. And I was under the illusion that I was out of it. Yes, out of mind. -But I can't go out like this.- he returns to the real world in time to see her pointing with disapproval. -I look like a panda.- it's one of her jokes and at another time he would laugh at it. But he must not lend a push to her insecurity.

-What you say!- he comments instead, taking her hand and making her stand up. -You just need to rinse your face a little.- and again, they are on the bathroom doorway.

-But then all the makeup will go away and I don't have a way to...- she starts to protest, but he silences her by shaking his head.

-Then? Do you want to know a secret?- only her eyes wide open as an answer. -You are much prettier natural.- and he even winks at her, like one of their first times in the elevator. Where he found the courage, he doesn't know either.

Penelope blushes. -If you say so...- she takes a step towards the sink, then stops, continuing to give him her back. -But they will understand that I cried. I don't want to ruin Emily's party.- she doesn't need to open her eyes and look in the mirror to understand that he came in, breaking the taboo of the women's bathroom and placing both hands on her shoulders.

-Come here, otherwise you will start again.- he whispers, bending down to reach her ear. -Come here.- not even finished the sentence that he makes her turn on the opposite side and against his chest. Penelope doesn’t rebel, says nothing, but he notices a significant difference from their first hug, during another engagement party. She is not rigid, she doesn't try to maintain the distances in some way. On the contrary, she totally abandons herself to his hold, even if she doesn’t start crying again. -Sometimes nothing helps more than a hug, don't you think?- he still whispers, feeling her distinctly vibrate, this time he is certain, he hasn’t dreamed it, it was not his imagination that making him believe it.

-Yes.- she says only, diving completely into his arms; anyone would be clearly understand how she would never let him away. But the voice of conscience is stronger than any selfish desire. She backs to being a rigid and cold body. Luke understands and lets her go. -Don't you think Ashley is wondering where you ended up?- then she saw them dance together. And did she also notice...?

-Even the others will have asked themselves the same about you.- he replies, in order not to give way to the other thought to come out.

And finally, here is her smile. -Thank you, Luke.- she touches his arm and with all his cursed profiler experience, the man can't remember if the gesture has a friendly, mischievous, playful, affectionate meaning, or if it is a clear manifestation of that kind of interest.

-For what? I didn't do anything special.- she shakes her head and forces him to promise not to say anything to others. And he certainly can't deny her anything.

As soon as the friend arrives, she drags her to the most isolated corner of the room. Sara says nothing, her chuckle is more than eloquent. Penelope pretends not to have noticed. -I'm also happy to see you.- the brunette woman comments as soon as she finds herself sitting down.

-Did you see them?- the other asks, bouncing on her chair.

-Who?- the blonde scrutinizes her to see if she's making fun of her. -Oh, you mean...- she silences her with a dirty look. -Well, they're not doing anything. They are just sitting close together.- the friend shakes her head, disconsolate.

-It's a disaster.- she comments. -There is no solution. I'm going crazy.- she takes her head in her hands. Sara gives her time to calm down.

-Why don't you tell him the truth?- she asks her then for the umpteenth time.

-What truth?- she replies with another question. The brunette can’t understand if she is really so naive as not to know that whoever answers one question with another one has something to hide.

-That you are in love with him?- she replies.

-I don't...- Penelope understands alone that it's not worth the effort. -Ok, it's true. I can’t explain otherwise what I felt when he hugged me. It was so sweet... you should have seen it.- Sara rolls her eyes. They are no longer of age for certain speeches. -Why does he have to be so great? I hate him!- she punches the table.

-You look like a little girl at her first crush. Damn it, Pen, pull out the ovaries.- she pretends to be scandalized, but she doesn't hold up.

-No! I could never tell him... and then not now that he's happy with Ashley.- here we go again. If this continues, Sara will tell all to Luke. What does it matter that no one has ever introduced them at each other and that he has no idea who she is?

She forces herself to be patient. She thinks back to every night that the blonde woke up to hear her talking about her situation with Grissom. -You were in this phase of denial even when he was with Lisa.- she points out diplomatically.

-Yes, but... I could be happy for them. I'm not saying that I didn't feel bad anyway... I'd be lying in that case. But...- she still looks in the direction of her colleagues' table. Ashley is laughing and her eyes are shining. Even Luke's are no less so. She sighs. -Why can't I do it now?- Sara takes her hand and their fingers intertwine.

-There are only two possibilities: either you no longer have the strength to resist, or you see something different in Ashley.- that's what happens when your friends are all part of the police force. Maybe she should start dating other companies. She has went straight to the point and has hit the target. -Do you think he seems happier with her than with Lisa?- the answer is so easy that she can't even hold it.

-Yes, he is very happy, they are so cute. They're perfect for each other.- sigh. -He is a former soldier, you know, he has that way of doing and thinking a little stiff... and that also makes him more intriguing, but that's another story. And she... she is like that too. She is athletic, sporty. It's perfect for him. Nor is she stupid or light. She has her weight on her shoulders.- another sigh. Sara stands up and joins her from the other side to hug her.

-Do you know why I love you so much? Because despite the deep love you feel, you still put the happiness of others in front of yours.- the friend enjoys the close, but detaches fear that someone could understand that something is at stake.

-What's wrong with that?- the brunette rolls her eyes.

-Leave it. Rather, let's change the subject.- the blonde shakes her head.

-Oh, no. I already know what you're going to say. You want that I go out with one of your crazy friends.- she says.

-Indeed. But before you say no, look at this.- Sara shows her a pic on her phone.

-Mmm. Maybe I could make an effort. But you have to tell him: without obligation. Ok?- she asks.

-Sure.-

***

-Come on, honestly. Tell me. Why are you single?- they are walking along a park near Garcia's apartment. The evening was very pleasant, neither of them felt particularly embarrassed, but that question has been on her mind since she saw his photograph. The subtext is obvious: you're too attractive to be single yet, so where's the catch?

-I could ask you the same question.- Don replies, chuckling and finally laughing at taste when Penelope rolls her eyes. She feels a pleasant tingling in the lower abdomen. -I had an important story, but...- he hesitates and she senses that something really bad must have happened, not a simple rupture.

She barely touches his arm. -You are not forced to tell me about it.- they look each other for a second in the eyes. He nods, sighs, then beckons her to sit on a bench.

-She was killed. I risked to make the same end too. It was hard to accept.- Penelope looks at him sympathetically. -I preferred to throw myself at work and think about it as little as possible.- she looks at her shoes, thinking about how to get out of this sad atmosphere, but it is he who saves her. -And now it's your turn. How does the BAU oracle still be on the market?- Penelope opens her eyes and mouth, really surprised to hear him use that nickname that she herself hadn't used for a long time.

-Well... too little free time certainly doesn't help. I had a boyfriend... three years ago.- she chuckles alone. -But he couldn't understand mine, our work, in short. He was unable to help me psychologically, I mean...- she sighs, for the effort to explain herself without being misunderstood and pass for a madwoman. -I shot a man in the hospital who was about to hurt my injured colleague. He is not dead. But I still felt guilty. They sentenced him to death and I tried to prevent it. He wanted me to witness his execution.- she feels the tears sting her eyes.

-Hey, don't worry, you don't have to hold back with me.- Penelope nods and without understanding the sequence of facts she finds herself with her head resting on his shoulder. And his arm around her hips.

-Would you like to come and meet the team one of these evenings?-

****

Tonight, Ashley couldn’t accompany him and this is enough to throw again him in the memories of his story with Lisa. In fact, if it was over it was because of the incompatibility of their work; it's true, Morgan and Savannah had managed to make it work, or almost, since Derek was no longer a federal. But Ashley is not the only blonde that is missing. Even Penelope. Just when he is about to ask others discreetly if they know why, here she comes in, arm in arm with a man who he must have already seen somewhere else.

-Hey guys! Sorry for the delay.- she smiles, one of her dazzling smiles and Luke feels an invisible punch hit him in the chest and take his breath away. -I want to present you the New York investigator Donald Flack.- the girls are so interested, but the man continues to look only at Penelope and this doesn’t pass unnoticed by anyone. As well as the way Don looks at her: obvious, declared interest.

-What a presentation!- he exclaims, in a pleased tone. -You can simply call me Don.- meanwhile the wheels of the Latin brain have continued to turn until they reach the solution. A decade earlier, during a case in his neighborhood. The Bronx strangler. He had liked him at that time. But there was nothing in the middle... What the hell am I thinking? Does she have not the right to go out with whomever she wants, like me? I'm not jealous. I can't be jealous. Staying on the sidelines is the only way to avoid making fool of himself.

*****

She hears the door open, but doesn’t have the strength for one of her witty sentences. -Garcia, I need...- she immediately recognizes him, but instead of hiding, she continues to work on the computer. Limiting herself to hoping for a sudden blindness. -What's the matter?- but she's not lucky. She feels his gaze on her back, the shadow widening as he approaches.

-Nothing.- she replies anyway, pretending to ignore him.

-Penelope...- the tone of the man sounds like a warning. -You will force me to repeat the speech of the other night?- he places a hand on the backside of her chair to make her turn slowly in his own direction. Penelope instantly crosses her legs, proving to be involuntarily provocative.

-No.- she exclaims then, even looking terrified. A shadow passes before her eyes. -Maybe...- but only for a moment. -Nothing.- she hasn’t tried with much effort and the results are visible. Luke gently takes her by both hands and forces her to rise.

-Maybe you would need this?- he asks her before hugging her. But she struggles, not too forcefully.

-No, no, it's better than no.- to the point that he leaves her free. -Really.- he watches her caressing her arms alone. An attitude that he has seen too many times in a woman. And he knows perfectly the meaning of this gesture. Even if it doesn't seem possible.

-Did something happen with Don?- he is forced to ask. As bad it could be, he must know the truth. -Did he hurt you?- is his low and guttural tone of voice that most frightens Penelope. She can't know, but it's the same as when he asked what happened to Battle and the interrogations with Shaw after seeing her in tears. -Because if was that, I...- Penelope stops him, putting her hand on his arm for a second.

-No, he's a sweetie, he's fantastic, really.- Luke doesn't seem to be a hundred percent convinced. -It has nothing to do with him. My problem is… me.- she finally admitted and now she feels free, light. She breathes a sigh and the same air seems to have a different taste.

-You could never be a problem, Penelope.- the man replies in a gentle tone. But in reality, the thoughts that buzz around his head are quite different. It's a sweetie, it's fantastic. Damn it. So why are you so sad? Why isn't he here to console you? Think about it, he works a lot of miles from here. Yes, but I would have moved for her. What I said? He must definitely stop conducting conversations with himself. The thing is starting to get out of hand.

-Thanks, Luke, you are very sweet.- Penelope rewards him, giving him a small smile. -But there's nothing you can do to help me. I'm sorry.- he shakes his head, annoyed. And for once he says exactly what he thinks.

-I don't believe it, I can't accept it.- she replies nothing, just looks at him. -You're my friend, I love you, it's not possible.- he says again. I love you that it would be so easy to exchange for something else. But no, now he has Ashley. It means nothing.

-Maybe I can accept that hug.- she throws it there, then, hoping to get away with it this way. -But then you tell me what you needed and go back to work like a good guy.- she intimates with a voice that makes her look like the Garcia he fell in love with. Shit. Well, you admitted it now. What are you doing standing there? Hug. At least this is not an ambiguous gesture. Here, so, spread your arms.

-I am forced to accept the compromise.- he sighs. Good, stay above her hips, you don't have to cross certain borders. Try to forget that the prosperous breasts you've been spying on a thousand times are now pressed against your chest. A little sob. But she doesn't seem to have noticed anything. Hey, little Luke, you don't help me like that. What is my fault if you have a sick mind? Try to think of something that is totally anti-sex. But he can't do it, because the scent of Penelope's hair makes his head spin completely. For this he comes off and keeps himself a little too away to forward his request.

******

He is distracted just a second and then an orange spot darted past him and stopped only in front of a gate. -Roxy!- she's waiting for him sitting on the bench with a very intriguing crooked smile. She looks at her watch and shakes her head, her blond hair gathered in a neat braid.

-We gave you two minutes, Alvez.- she caresses the dog, she makes some tickle behind her ears. He lets himself go beside her. -Hey Luke.- he looks at her inquisitive look. She puts her hand on his knee, giving him a slight shiver down his spine. -Are you okay?- he meditates for a moment whether a harmless lie or the raw truth is more convenient. -You're pensive.- he nods and takes her hand, intertwining their fingers. He needs contact and human warmth. He needs to stop thinking.

-Yes, you are right. It's that... I don't know.- he sighs and shakes his head.

-You're confused.- Ashley begins to explain in his place. -You're in love, but not with me.- Luke doesn't deny it and that's enough. -Are you afraid of hurting me and hurting yourself, am I right?- even if he doesn't want to, he finds himself smiling like he was caught. -I can't speak for other people, but as far as I'm concerned... we can continue to see each other and take a little jog every now and then, without necessarily being together. Don't get me wrong, it was nice, well... you kiss well and you're pretty cute. But I noticed it almost immediately that you were almost always with your head elsewhere.- he is about to apologize but she doesn't leave him. -Luke, I really mean, I'm not madly in love with you, not yet, at least.- the subtext is clear. -So, I just ask you to be honest. Do you already have another person in your heart or I’m doing too many paranoia?- he sighs, feeling like a profiteer, because he has done nothing to deal with this situation.

-Yes, you're right.- he admits, forcing himself to look into her eyes as he says it. -It was nice for me too. And I'd like to meet you again and challenge you to run.- she smiles at him giving him an affectionate little push.

-We are better suited to be friends than something more. Think about it: we are too similar. There is complicity, but it lacks... you know, the... the passion.- he nods. -And with the other? I guess it's a woman. With her you have that shock, you feel that shiver in the air?- he hesitates a moment, but not out of uncertainty. -I told you, you don't have to worry about me. Indeed, don't you want to take advantage of another girl's opinion?-

*******

Being alone again, or almost, is not that bad. Roxy gives him a tug. Sorry, girl, I meant a human company. He has now resigned himself to continuing to speak alone. At least he does it only in his head, so nobody can see it. The dog continues to pull, which is quite unusual for her. It is trained to do so only when there is a goal to be achieved. And indeed, even if he has not yet realized, it is so.

-Roxy, slow down, you'll make me fall! Have pity for a lonely man.- but she ignores him and his delirium is interrupted when he sees the reason for so much anxiety: another Belgian shepherd, thin, slender, recently no longer a puppy, whom he knows very well. As well as the woman who takes him on a leash. Blonde and decidedly exhausted by attempts to keep up with Lou. -Penelope!- Roxy meanwhile, as a good older sister, is sniffing the younger one, checking his health. Penelope wears casual clothes and sneakers that make her almost another person.

-Hey!- she greets him, then looks around, so that he suspects she is not alone. For a good minute he lives in terror of seeing the handsome New York detective appear.

-I'm glad to have met you, because I was just thinking of calling you.- it's not about courage, but about inevitability. Ashley threatened him after making him spill the beans. Better that she comes to know it from him and not from others. In any case it will be embarrassing, but in this way, a little less.

-Oh yes? Do you need help with some electronic devices?- she, naive, hasn’t guessed anything. She tries to settle a rebellious strand, but between Lou's shots and the bag that unbalances her, it doesn’t seem a viable undertaking.

-No, nothing like that.- Luke walks over and does it in her place. For a moment they look at each other without practically breathing. Then he breaks the bubble. -So... how's it going with Don?- Penelope sighs and searches for the dog's head to give herself support.

-It’s not going.- she replies, not knowing that she has illuminated all the spies in her colleague's brain. -I stopped seeing him because... I wouldn't want to talk about it, but I'm afraid you'll insist.- he just stares at her. -It's the usual boring and banal thing you see happening in the movies.- she bends down to caress both dogs. No necklines to take advantage of, this time. So, it's easier to focus only on her words. -He was perfect, really, sweet, caring, interesting and interested in me...- again a praise that he doesn’t particularly like to listen -also from the physical point of view...- here, considering that there is worse? -The problem is that unfortunately when I met him... I was already in love with someone else.- What was that Ashley told you about? You felt that vibration now. No, directly an earth-quake. But look, she could even talk about someone else, it doesn't have to be you. Maybe that bar-tender who is always nice... But if he's gay! He forces both voices to keep quiet because she is looking at him strangely. -I tried to go out with him to see if I would have been able to not think at least for a while...- she was going to say the name, but unfortunately for him she stopped on the edge of the ravine -but it didn't work and since he's a good person , I preferred to clarify the situation.- she lifts up and starts walking again. He follows her.

-Oh... I...- Penelope shakes her head.

-No need for you to say it, I know.- unexpectedly she takes his hand and squeezes it. -Thank you for your time.- he opens his eyes wide, but the contact doesn’t last long. - Although I doubt they are things you can understand... because you found the right one.- he freezes, forcing her to do the same and so do the dogs.

-Who, Ashley? I'm sorry to give you a disappointment...- he gets messed up, even blushing. She chuckles. -We broken up, well, it's not like we've ever really been a couple, anyway... I was... too- wrong verb tense -I'm in love with another woman.- it's her turn to be surprised.

-Let me guess: it's blonde.- but she passes the ball again to him. Luke fails to mask the confusion. He thinks she finally understood.

-How did you..?- she doesn't seem very happy though. She lowers again, letting his dog kiss her.

-I heard you say a month ago to Matt that you liked a blonde colleague.- she says, in a low tone, without looking at him even by mistake. -I thought you were referring to Ashley, then you two started dating...- Luke understands how she should close the subject before he gets even more messed up.

-No, I wasn't referring to her.- he takes her from under her shoulders and pulls her up, a gesture that both consider too intimate, strange. The two dogs also stop chasing each other and twist the leads around them.

-But then... who can it be?- he admires her as she tries hard to reach the solution of the enigma. Her furrowed brow, her concentrated expression, her lips slightly bent. God, her mouth. Don't stare at it or it will be the end. -JJ no, because she is married.- luckily she brings out a theory so absurd as to force him to answer her. -It's not JJ, is it?- how can she think he might be in love with a married woman and that has two children?

-Of course not!- he sounds a little too indignant.

-Then, I don't understand.- and her naivety and confusion instead of making him angry, makes her even more attractive in his eyes. Literally irresistible.

-Pen, you're practically omniscient, you can find information in a few seconds, but sometimes you don't get to the solution that you have exactly in front of your nose.- he gradually lowers the tone. He takes Lou's leash from her hand. He doesn't need another one to do what he has in mind.

-You mean...?- she widens her eyes, her pupils dilated. He also frees her right hand from the bag, which he places at their feet. And he puts his hand behind her neck. This was not the original plan, but he will not stop.

-I’m sure that usually you follow the rule of third date, but for me you can do an exception…- Penelope has only time to remember that she and Don have argued a similar argument, then Luke does exactly what he seemed he has decided to do. He kisses her, with passion, love, not able to stop or hold himself. When their lips are in touch, it seems that the whole Sun system has found its right alignment. She doesn’t stay inactive, she kisses him back, despite the sensation of unreality. And then, they can’t leave each other. She leans her head in the crease of his shoulder. Other pieces find their places. No only one voices in Luke head seem to have something to say.

-So it is true that you like blondes?- she asks with her natural tone, full of life, joyful, enthusiastic for any minutia. -You didn't look like the type.- Luke chuckles. -Maybe it was the only thing that made Ashley seem not like the perfect girl for you.- she adds. Luke opens his mouth and changes his mind at the last second.

-Yes, I like blondes, or rather...- dramatic pause. With his free hand from the leash, he lifts her chin up to bring their lips close a few millimeters -one in particular.- Penelope moves her mouth in funny expressions.

-Mmm.- but with eyes she laughs.

-And you?- he provokes her without putting an end to the sweet torture. -Based on your track record, I would say that you prefer dark hair...- she bites her tongue. But then she answers in the same tone.

-Yes, but one in particular.- she whispers, before ending the distance.

---------------------------------------------------

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konaizumi · 5 years

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The Untamed: The Living Dead Review - SPOILERS

The is a review of The Living Dead and IT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS, if you haven’t watched it yet and want to avoid spoilers, skip this review.

Honestly, I was disappointed with the movie. I was so excited about and I found it really underwhelming. Before I get into specifics, I would like to preface this by saying that I think a majority of the problems arose from a) a bad director and b) they tried to fit too much into an 80 minute movie. I think that it could have been a lot better with a better director and if they had made this into like a 4-6 episode mini-series.

My first problem was lack of context. I was under the impression that this movie was supposed to be Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui pretty much right after the end of canon when they go off together to explore Lan Sizhui’s heritage. Obviously I figured out that wasn’t the case when they met up in the beginning and I only later learned after reading reviews that this is supposed to be years after the end of canon. In a mini-series, I think they could have elaborated on this a bit and established what Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui had been doing and how they ended up there.

When I was watching Wen Ning, I didn’t feel like I was watching Wen Ning, he was so different. Like, I get that it’s years after the canon so he’s grown and matured a lot, but I felt like they changed his character too much. Part of what made his character so lovable in the original was that he was kinda goofy. He was awkward and shy and a little dense sometimes and it was cute. I’m not saying he wasn’t smart and competent in the original (because he was, he just didn’t always have a chance to show it), but there’s a stark contrast because he’s just very serious in the movie. They try to make some attempts at humor with him (“call me brother, wwx says uncle makes me sound old) but they often fell flat because of poor timing or poor acting. (In terms of acting, I choose to put the most blame on the director and not the actors, but I will elaborate on that further later).

WN also had what I thought was a very interesting character arc, but it was rushed and resolved itself too easily and had no build up (again, because they tried to cram too many plotlines into an 80 minute movie). We see that he has internal conflict over being a ghost puppet and he questions his own agency, but ultimately overcomes this in time for the final battle. This could have been done so well had they given it proper time. In a mini-series, they definitely could’ve built up to it by showing more interactions between WN and the townspeople where they react badly to him (they had some, but I didn’t realize they were connected to WN’s arc until after the arc was over) and maybe some conversations about it with LSZ. I thought Zhou Yi pretending to be WN in the hellscape was cool and I wish there had been more of that.

Speaking of WN character arc, I have to address the “cameo.” It was such a joke. It was very clearly not Xiao Zhan and was just a double and I wish they hadn’t included it at all. There was a lot of implication that WWX was important to WN development, but none of it was shown. In the original, it’s clear how much WWX means to WN and it was a very important step when he decided to leave WWX. In the movie, it’s implied that WN has kept in contact with WWX and they see each other sometimes, but it still felt out of place when WWX appeared in the hellscape (also I’m confused because I can’t tell if that was actually supposed to be WWX or just WN’s imagined version of him). I love the relationship between WN and WWX and I think some well-placed backflashes could’ve a) really added to WN’s developmental arc and b) would’ve provided some good cameo without needing to insert the characters into the current story (also could’ve given sneak peak into what WWX and LWJ are up to).

(to reiterate, the point of a cameo a) excitement at seeing a fav character, b) providing a glimpse into what that character (and others) are up to and what they’ve been doing since canon, c) because they are somehow relevant to the story, and/or d) they add another layer to the story. The WWX cameo accomplishes none of these things and shouldn’t have been included, unless they could incorporate him more into WN’s plot throughout the movie)

The Yin Metal. This made me so confused because they didn’t explain it at all. I might be wrong, but I thought that in canon they destroyed all the yin metal pieces? But then all of the sudden Zhou Yi has a piece? And they never explain where he got it. They never explain the manuscript either. Or what’s even on the manuscript, though I think it’s supposed to be how to build the tiger seal, but it’s also implied to have to do with resurrection maybe? Again, with more time and maybe some flashbacks, they could’ve explained this better.

LSZ was largely pointless to this movie (WN kinda was too, but at least he had his own arc) and this upset me. I was so excited to see my babies going on adventure but that’s not really what this movie ended up being. I was reminded of one of the reasons I hate The Great Gatsby. Now, I won’t go on a full rant about the Great Gatsby (though I could), but my biggest problem is Nick. Nick is the narrator of the story, but he serves no purpose in the story other than to take it from scene to scene and he has almost no effect on the central plot. I felt this way with WN and LSZ, like they didn’t really contribute much to the story, other than the final boss fight. It felt like they were just witnessing everything, especially LSZ who basically just followed whatever WN said. The story of the Xiao’s took a lot of time and in a mini-series, I think time could be used a lot more effectively and split better between the past and the present, and it would give more time for WN and LSZ interactions and actions.

The new characters. I liked them, but they and their story all lacked development. Which, again, feels like a missed opportunity. The big reveal that Zhou Yi was the evil person and that he was lying lacked a certain umpf because the story sped along to fast. Like, the very next day, WN realizes inconsistencies and the name on the grave and the entire story is revealed within what feels like five minutes. If they had more time, they could’ve really built up the credibility of Zhou Yi first, so that his lie had more emotional impact like what they were going for. Also more in depth backflashes for some better world building of the relationships between Xiao Ching, Zhou Zishu, and Zhou Yi because like I said, I did actually like and enjoy these new characters, but I couldn’t fully appreciate them because there wasn’t enough time.

(another problem I had was that big reveal was confusing to me. So Zhou Yi is just a servant and he imagined his interactions with Xiao Qing, right? But then he brings back her spirit(?) and she’s all nice? But then they imply that that’s not really her, so what or who is it? Also, Zhou Zishu and Zhou Yi have the same surname, is there is a relation there or coincidence? Or was it supposed to be implied that Zhou Zishu’s surname isn’t Zhou and Yi lied about that too? Lots of questions, and given more time I think they could’ve clarified a lot of this)

My last point for now is some of the weak performances by the actors, which I feel can probably be attributed to the director. A lot of dialogue, especially between WN and LSZ felt very stilted and awkward and did not speak to the easy camaraderie that they’re supposed to have. Just the timing and some of the back and forth felt off and lacked fluidity. I loved the relationship between WN and LSZ in the original and how they made each other laugh and smile and there was none of that in this movie, they felt more like acquaintances than family members. There have also been complaints that the actors underacted, especially the new characters, and I would disagree with, and again, cite this to a bad director who wasn’t good at or didn’t care as much about pulling out strong performances, and to the fact that all of the characters had relatively small roles individually and didn’t have a chance to fully flesh out their characters.

(sorry, one final brief thought, but the music during the final fight scene irritated me. The soundtrack for the rest of the movie was fine, and I even liked it, but a 3 minute electric guitar solo felt so out of place in a franchise that has only ever used traditional chinese music)

Wow, so this review ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be, so let me end with some positives.

The CGI. Some people may complain that it was too cheesy or whatnot, but I honestly really liked the CGI. It provided some cool visual effects during the fights (though they could’ve toned a bit in the fight scenes) and it made spiritual cultivation a more physical thing and helped me understand why using a sword requires high cultivation levels. Were the fights a bit showy? Yeah, but I’m a sucker for flashy fights.

The next movie. You guys, I am so excited for the next movie, Fatal Journey! I fucking hate Jin Guangyao, but I would like to see more of his story that was only alluded to in canon. Also, I love the Nie brothers (especially Huaisang) and I can’t wait to see more interactions between them! I also have high hopes for this movie and I don’t think the same problems with the living dead will apply because it’s based on characters we already know (I assume and hope) and doesn’t introduce new completely unrelated characters, I think it will be more dialogue/interactions based rather than a murder mystery, plus it’s not a new story, it’s an untold story, so it’s just adding more content to the canon rather than expanding the canon.

If you have opinions on the movie or just want to talk about the Untamed with me, feel free!

#the untamed: the living dead #the untamed #the living dead #cql #wen ning #lan sizhui #review #mo dao su zhi #grandmaster of demonic arts #grandmaster of demonic cultivation

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fullstop-official · 5 years

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A Hellish Freak Disaster with Burning Rubble and No Survivors

AKA: Chapter One - July 18

In three days, everything will change.

But right now, Travis Longfield is swatting his free hand at my shoulder as punishment for having my feet up on the space above the glovebox in the Gator – his Wrangler nicknamed aptly for its military-appropriate paint job. I have to laugh a little at his feeble attempt to keep straight on the road and hit me at the same time, more to mock him than anything else. But I finally give in and give up my recline before he takes his chance at the next stop sign to go for the ankles.

“You care about this thing too much, dude,” I tease, “I’m not allowed to sit comfortably – Jesus, I can’t even eat in here!”

“Do you want her to end up like Cole’s car?” The Gator, of course, has always been a her. “He wrecked that Cherokee. It can’t be saved. They should write it off for internal damage.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry I upset your girlfriend here. I won’t dirty her up.”

“I’m not really worried about that,” he says with a smirk. “You’re not even the one dirtying up your own girlfriend.”

His comment makes my mood immediately plummet, and, as we pull into the Mechis’ driveway behind a sleek, black Lexus, my mood suddenly becomes a satellite that drops from the stratosphere, falling down, down, down toward the earth at thousands of miles per hour and on fire. Travis parks the Gator and we both climb out. He takes a moment to pull his guitar case from the back seat before we go about picking our way around the aforementioned Lexus and Cole’s hopelessly-stained, wrapper-littered Grand Cherokee to reach the side door to the garage.

We enter, and we’re the last two to arrive. Cole is sprawled out on the duct-taped loveseat by the wall that’s way too tiny to fit all of him. He looks over and his shaggy and badly-highlighted hair flips naturally as his head turns. Still, our appearance isn’t enough to steal his attention away from loudly strumming a progression of power chords on his guitar in order to mess with Matt. Matt is attempting to tune his bass on the other side of the room in spite of the noise, but probably isn’t having an easy time without anything that resembles quiet. Bryson is on the beat-up couch opposite of Cole, scribbling in a binder that’s full of schedules, sets, general to-do lists, and other notes that he says are necessary and need to be kept – though the entire thing is so crammed with papers that it will explode one day.

My satellite mood fails to brace for impact and crashes against the ground, colliding in a hellish, freak disaster with burning rubble and no survivors when I see the Lexus’ owner practicing the screeches that she calls “vocal warmups” by her mic stand, front and center. Saying she’s my mortal enemy undoubtedly makes me sound like some sort of comic book supervillain, but I’ve never come up with anything more accurate and less theatrical and childish to describe what we have. Our rivalry would probably take an entire war map with battalions and flags to comprehend.

I met Selena Walton when we were in seventh grade – briefly – but truly got to know and dislike her the following year when our feud officially ignited. It was just shortly after that, during the same year, that the rest of us really jumped on the idea of forming the band and, by the end of eighth grade, we’d seen it through.

There was just one problem. I play the drums. Travis is lead guitar, and Cole is on second. Matt plays bass. Bryson covers keyboard when we need it for certain songs, but otherwise acts as our manager. We were good on our own, just the five of us, but when things started getting more and more serious, we had a debate about lyrics.

Cole is an incredible singer – when he’s singing unclean vocals (the screamo parts). When it comes to singing regularly, he may as well just strangle a bird on stage; the sound it would make is more or less the same. Our preferred genre of punk and its “close-enough” offshoots (we’ve found that a healthy mixture brings in a bigger audience) are starting to blur the lines a little, but we all agreed that we wouldn’t be a full-fledged screamo band. We resolved to use his talent conservatively. The rest of the guys couldn’t carry a tune to save their lives.

I can sing, but drummers stay at the back of the stage, and squishing the two roles together makes the show lose a certain kind of energy. The audience generally likes to see the singer while they’re singing. I can sing backup, but there needs to be someone up front. A hype man.

Enter Selena Walton. Unwelcomely welcomed to the band after our first five months of minimal lyrics with a three-to-two vote.

And whom I hate more than anyone else in the universe.

And maybe it would be slightly better if she didn’t front our band. I have nothing against female punk singers, or really just female singers in general. Many of them are good, even pretty great. Selena, however, is an exception. She hates the vast majority of the music that we perform. And, though what she does is technically considered singing, she is an alto who thinks she’s a soprano, which is the worst kind of alto and does not make for a spectacular – or even subpar – show. Her signature style is going up a few too many notes at the end of nearly every line, regardless of whether or not she can hit them, and it is such a pain to listen to that I’m surprised my head hasn’t shattered like glass, or exploded like Bryson’s band binder is going to do. This is all in addition to her entitled, annoying, spoiled brat attitude which is all wrapped up into one short, oblivious, bitchy, brunette package.

I wish that was the end of it, but, devastatingly, having Selena as our lead singer isn’t even the terrible part. I can deal with that. But about a year ago, band practice went from being the few hours a week that I had to tolerate the fact she exists to my own, personal hell.

Bryson’s managerial skills are sharp, but PR-wise he tends to run things like a scripted reality TV show in order to make us stand out from other local acts so people can invest in our “personal” lives. I don’t know what celebrity dating scandal gave him the idea, but a fake inter-band relationship was proposed and, by some weird misfortune, not immediately vetoed. After a ton of arguing, I literally drew the short straw.

Selena Walton is my fake girlfriend.

And I hate her.

At the very least, after a year of playing pretend (and having her hang off of me during shows after spitting in my face behind the scenes), I haven’t actually been forced to kiss her or anything yet. I think I’d have to tear off my lips and cauterize the wounds if that happened.

Bryson still sticks to his delusional claim that having us fake date is a good thing for the band, even though it causes more drama when we’re alone together than it ever does when we’re out in the public eye. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to keep it up because Selena only acts like she’s staying faithful to me when, in reality, she’s probably slept with every guy who’s ever looked at her for more than five seconds. Pretending that I tolerate her is a tough challenge, but I deserve an Oscar for acting like I love her.

And so, when Travis and I walk in, she pretends to ignore me, but I watch her in my peripheral when she thinks I’m not paying attention. She gives me a look; it’s a spiteful, almost disgusted scowl. For what it’s worth, I’m glad she can just barely endure my mere presence. It’s the one thing about this entire situation that makes me feel all happy and light inside.

Travis sets his case down to take out his guitar, and I go sit on the arm of the couch next to Bryson. Since we cleared out his garage to act as our rehearsal space, my setup has lived here permanently and I’m the only one who ever touches my drums. They only move for gigs, and I don’t have much to prepare before practice.

Cole gives me a subtle nod, but doesn’t stop strumming one of our originals. “S’up, Scott,” he greets me. He uses my last name instead of my first. Bryson, Matt, and Cole have all done that as long as I’ve known them – apparently, the single syllable of my surname is easier than having to waste energy saying the two in Morgan.

I glance over Bryson’s shoulder after nodding back. The paper he’s mentally wrestling with has July twentieth – Friday’s date – and the time of our show at the top. The rest is the final setlist he’s been compiling that has only just been finished. It takes us a long time to decide which songs we’ll be playing, and in what order. (I blame Selena.) The one thing that Bryson has left blank is the space after encore:.

We always do an encore. And it’s always a Paramore song because they’re the only non-objectionable option Selena likes. Paramore is an amazing group, and I do like their music, but if she doesn’t learn to like literally anyone else, I’ll start to lose my goddamn mind.

Bryson taps his pen against the paper for another minute, and then grabs the list and, leaving the space empty, shuts the binder. Our logo is on the front of it, slipped into the plastic cover. It’s just a black circle with our band name, Full Stop., inside of it in an all-caps, blocky, white font. We let Cole design it – we’d said we wanted something simple, and, though it looks like something that was created in Microsoft Paint (and it probably was), he’d delivered. Selena thinks it’s too plain, which is why I think it’s the most wonderful graphic in the world. I wear one of our T-shirts as much as possible and I’m met with her judgy glare each time.

I watch Bryson set the binder aside and look over the setlist another time before rising. “I guess we can start,” he announces. Cole’s instrument abruptly stops. The garage, however, is not entirely silent. Matt and Travis use the absence of guitar riffs to actually tune their instruments. At the very least, Selena shuts up.

I proceed over to my kit, and purposefully bump Selena’s shoulder with my arm as I pass. She’s about five-foot-four – about a head shorter than me – and it irritates her when I “accidentally” run into her. It makes my whole day. I sit on the stool and the others slowly start to claim their positions. Cole drags his amp over from the loveseat, and Travis pulls the elastic from his hair so it falls just to his shoulders. He claims having it loose helps him rock harder. I fail to see the correlation, but he’s a damn good guitarist, so I try not to question his methods.

As Matt takes his place, and Selena taps her microphone to make sure no one (me) has muted it behind her back again, I put my earplugs in and grab my sticks. They feel like an extension of my body when I hold them – like having just a little bit more to my arms. My nerves begin to hum with anticipation. I saw the first song and I’m pumped to play it.

Bryson gets started and reads the set from the paper like always: song title, and then the artist for Selena’s music-illiterate benefit. He only skips the artist if it’s one of our originals – at least she knows the titles of those. And she seems to tolerate singing them. Sometimes.

“Okay, open with This Could Be Anywhere in the World – Alexisonfire. Selena will take a sec to introduce everything, then Silver Bullet – Hawthorne Heights, right into Bring Me To The Light. Selena can improvise something after that. Green Day’s Holiday smoothly into Boulevard of Broken Dreams, then You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid – The Offspring, and this is the working title for the story of two crazy kids.”

“We never really found a title for that, did we?” Travis says teasingly. He throws a small smirk my way.

“No,” I agree in a similar manner, “We really didn’t.”

If he’s going to make fun of me, I’m taking it in stride. I wrote that particular number, and a fair chunk of our other originals. I think that sometimes my titles are pretty good, even when they’re just chorus lyrics. But sometimes – well, they’re that.

“Selena improvises something, and then we go to the Red Block,” Bryson continues without missing another heartbeat. I’m pretty sure I hear his voice raise a little to grab our focus again. “Red Flag – Billy Talent, Red Sam – Flyleaf, and Something Different – Red As Dusk. Selena says stuff. Changing – Saosin. Pressure – Paramore. Selena talks. Be Like The Zeros. Kiss Me, Kill Me – Mest, and Selena introduces the final song. Strong finish with Postcards – Amber Pacific. Got it?”

Four of us nod, or make our brief sounds of agreement. Selena ruins the unanimous confirmation.

“And my encore?”

“If I keep thinking about that, I’ll have a fucking aneurysm,” Bryson says with a straight face. He passes her the setlist. He knows if we start having that discussion now, this won’t be a rehearsal, it’ll be a homicide. “Just run through what we’ve got. We can look at that when I know this set is okay.”

She mutters, “Well, for once I’d like to know what we’re doing before the night of the gig.”

“Yeah, then maybe we could do something other than Misery Business, or Still Into You, or Rose-Colored Boy, or – no, wait. That’s about it, huh?”

She doesn’t turn, but she does stick her middle finger up at me. I hear Travis try to softly suppress amused laughter; a small, entertained huff escapes him. She hates me. It’s so great.

“Please just practice the damn set.” Bryson’s voice has shifted to something like exhausted pleading. He’s not in the mood to break up a fight today. I mean, he’s going to have to anyway – there’s not a single doubt in my mind there – but he doesn’t want to. He always gets this way so close to a show. The stick doesn’t come out of his ass until the stage lights go off.

To ease his stress a little, we do as he says.

This Could Be Anywhere in the World is one of Cole’s favourites to perform because nearly half of it is unclean vocals. This means that it’s one of my favourites to perform because Selena’s unstable wailing only has to pierce my auricular space half as much.

And it’s a ton of fun to play on drums.

Once she’s butchered her way through Silver Bullet and one of our originals, I’m introduced as the representative from California by one of Travis’ very few spoken contributions during Holiday. Even though its absolutely necessary, Selena hates the fact that I’m the best she’s got for clean backup vocals that won’t make our audience’s ears bleed. She especially despises this brief part Matt and I share – my voice and drumming and his iconic bass line – simply because it takes the attention off of her for nearly a full bridge. I sing the rebellious lyrics with a smirk shot her way. She flips me off.

Selena hates singing You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid, and sings this is the working title for the story of two crazy kids terribly in an attempt to annoy me. She makes it painfully obvious that she’s suffering through the Red Block, and gets a smidge better during Changing because a Paramore song follows. She always complains that I use too much cymbal during Pressure. I wonder if she’s actually listened to the song, or if she’s just deaf.

I watch her reach for the list again as it comes to a close and beat her to it.

“I Love How You Say We Can Be Anything But Treat Us Like Shit.”

“That’s not what it’s called!” she snaps.

“Sorry. Be Like The Zeros, parentheses: I Love How You Say We Can Be Anything But Treat Us Like Shit.”

She turns a bit just so I have the luxury of seeing her roll her eyes.

“What? Do I need to say it backwards too?”

I can visibly see the rage manifest inside of her head and, with another smirk that I can’t help at this point, and that I can’t say is innocent, I launch into a hidden talent that frustrates her to no end. I don’t know exactly how I came across it, I just know that I’m able to do it and she’s not. Travis can do it as well, and he watches me with amusement as I drive Selena up the wall. I picture the smoke coming out of her ears as she glares at me.

“Tihs ekil su taert tub gnihtyna eb nac ew yas uoy woh evol I,” I recite. “Bryson knows the title – he wrote it!”

“Just start the damn song, Scott,” Bryson sighs rather than taking a side, even though I’m right.

I don’t give Selena the chance to have the final word. The crash cymbal screams beneath my stick in the intro. Thankfully, Bryson purposefully wrote this song in the right key for her alto voice, so I don’t have to hear her try and fail to sing outside of her vocal range.

“My mind is clouded like a smokehouse / I think I need a light to find what I was gonna say / My body’s numb and feeling funny / Lost here in a strange place / Just another average day.”

I’m sure Bryson is relieved when we finally make it to the end of Postcards without another interruption. The first hour of practice ends with our finalized setlist played in full and no unstoppable brawls.

“Can we talk about my encore now, Bryson?” Selena demands at the final note, ever the princess.

Bryson starts to look as if he would rather eat his own hand than discuss the encore and incite her wrath, but also that he knows if we don’t talk about it beforehand, we’ll have to pick ten minutes before the show and we’ll end up doing Let The Flames Begin again.

“Okay, fine,” he relents. “Band meeting.”

I set down my sticks and pull out my earplugs as the guys put their guitars on the assorted stands. Selena leaves her mic and goes to take a seat. She hates sitting on the furniture because everything in here is a relic too shitty for a thrift store; it’s all either tearing, patched with duct tape, or just too stained or dusty to be used by anyone other than a semi-successful garage band in LA. Selena’s in one, but she doesn’t act like it.

We make it a habit to sit as far away from each other as possible. Matt and Bryson take the loveseat where Selena’s perched herself on the one not-duct-taped arm that’s probably going to need a layer of the stuff in about a month. Travis, Cole, and I take the couch.

“Thoughts?” Bryson asks. I can tell he’s bracing himself.

I am too, but I keep my mouth shut and wait for Selena to get her terrible idea out of the way first.

“We should do Ain’t It Fun,” she pitches. “It’s always a crowd-pleaser.”

“It would be if our regular crowd hadn’t already heard you sing it a hundred thousand times.”

“What’s fucking wrong with that?” Her angled eyebrows raise, and I can already see her pupils filling up with fire. If anyone else had said it, she wouldn’t be as pissed off, and that simple fact alone is why I argue in the first place.

“Should I say it forwards or backwards?” I demand. She scowls. “They’re getting bored! If we lose the audience at Underground, we won’t get gigs, and Full Stop. is just fucked! Back me up here, Bryce.”

Selena whips her head around to glare at Bryson so fast that I expect her to break her neck, and I’m almost disappointed when she doesn’t. Bryson’s biting into his cheek, not wanting to say that I’m right in order to avoid her fury, but not denying it either. The others show their agreement plainly – Matt’s mouth takes on an uncertain slant, eyes bright, and Cole can’t stop himself from nodding subtly. Travis wears a smirk. He always takes my side in this war.

“Oh, fuck you guys!” she spits. Her defeat is a delicate sound. It’s like music to my ears.

“What do you want to do, Scott?” Bryson asks. His voice is calm, a mediator.

“We already have a Paramore song in the set. We can’t do another. We need to try something new this time. An original, or–” I rifle through my mental music library. I know which songs we’ve done, and all of the options we haven’t ever tried because Selena is a brat with bad taste. “Maybe actually try some My Chemical Romance for once? They’re a fucking staple to the punk-pop genre.”

“Ew, no,” Selena interrupts. “Veto.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Where do I start? They’re terrible.”

“First of all, how dare you.”

“Here we go,” Bryson sighs. He goes unheard.

“Second, do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah, like fifty! We should do something by The Chainsmokers.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“What? They’re good!”

“No, they’re overplayed! The crowd will be asleep before we even start. They’re not even punk!”

“You’re such a fucking snob!”

“Wow! Look, everyone! The pot is calling the kettle black!”

“Guys! Holy fuck – calm down!” Bryson’s voice cuts through us both. He’s rubbing his temples to curb the migraine Selena’s clearly bringing upon him. “Can we all remember that music is subjective?”

For a moment, the silence rests. Travis is clearly entertained and firmly stuck on my side. Bryson’s trying to fight off that brain aneurysm he promised himself. Cole and Matt are somewhere between rolling their eyes and coming up with an excuse to leave.

Selena is on the brink of completely detonating. Her jaw is set, posture disturbed and rigid. She doesn’t remove her beady, flaming eyes from me, and looks like she’s trying to murder me with her sheer force of will. In her imagination, she’s probably stabbing me with one of my drumsticks. Her tiny fists are clenched.

“Marianas Trench,” she says through her teeth.

“Are you joking? You’d need a church choir just to sing half their crap,” I say. “Dead Kennedys.”

“Veto. Ed Sheeran.”

“Worse than The Chainsmokers. Jimmy Eat World.”

“What? With their one fucking song? Vance Joy.”

“Who?”

That one really makes her mad, so I grin as I say it. She knows I know who Vance Joy is – if only because she’s mentioned him four million times and butchered one of his stupid indie songs over and over again with her shrieking.

“Good Charlotte,” I suggest.

She rolls her eyes. “Twenty One Pilots.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Really?” For a brief moment, I watch her little, round face light up.

“Yeah, as soon as you can rap, feel free to buy us all synths and ukuleles. I’m sure your Daddy can afford it.”

She’s so angry that I can nearly see her brain boiling. There are a few Twenty One Pilots songs I would willingly relent to adding to a Full Stop. setlist, but at the moment I know she’s too pissed off to even name one. I almost want to laugh.

“Taylor. Swift,” she hisses, enunciating every single syllable with a seething staccato. She knows I would never agree to it and that’s the only reason why she suggests it. Everything she ever does or says is designed to make me mad. In this way, we’re one and the same.

So, I mimic her tone. “Fuck. No.” And I’m just about to throw out The Gits – not that Selena could ever dream to live up to Mia Zapata’s legacy – when–

“Wait!”

The single word from Cole breaks our staring contest. I still feel my blood thundering from the rush of adrenaline that comes with pushing Selena to her breaking point, but I turn my attention on him. Cole’s straightened up from his lax slouch and, even though he’s sitting, he’s still a human tower – it’s no wonder the football coach spent nearly two years trying to recruit him. His eyes are stretched wide with an idea.

“What?” Travis asks.

He takes the question, but turns to me. His massive hand is slapped against his forehead, an indication of an epiphany. “Punk Goes Pop.”

“Excuse me?” Selena demands. Her teeth are clenched, and her brows are high.

Cole doesn’t need to explain it to me – I’ve caught onto his idea the second my mental music library dredges up the collection. He elaborates for everyone else.

“Yeah, okay, so Fearless Records has this series where they have punk bands cover pop songs, and, like, they’ve done some Taylor Swift stuff. Uh, You Belong With Me, Trouble – oh!” – he claps abruptly as the next idea enters his head and, again, his eyes turn on me, full of excitement and what appears to be an ego boost due to his own perceived genius. He’s gesticulating with the approximate energy of a German Shepherd – “Blank Space from the volume six rerelease! Dude, I Prevail goes so fucking hard on it! I had it on repeat for a month, and I can do Eric Vanlerberghe’s parts no problem!” He’s practically already playing air guitar.

“There. See? It’s a compromise,” Matt agrees.

And maybe it seems too good to be true…

Because it is.

“Yeah, too bad we can’t do it,” I object. Bryson sighs audibly and mutters under his breath. “If we let her sing the clean vocals, it won’t sound anything like a punk song! She’ll just try to sing it exactly like the original and fuck it up!”

“Fuck you!” Selena fires at me.

“Then you sing it, Morgan.”

I give myself whiplash turning to look at Travis, and the energy of the garage turns palpable – a thick, stunned tension that I could slice through with a razor blade and a ton of effort. Arms crossed over his chest, Travis shrugs, completely relaxed and completely, unbelievably serious.

In an instant, the initial surprise melts away, and I’m more confused by his proposal than I am shocked – or maybe it’s just an intense mixture of both. But the point is that I can’t sing it! I’m a drummer! That’s the only reason she’s even here in the first place!

“What?! No!”

“Yeah! ‘What?! No!’” Selena parrots me. For once, we’re actually in agreement on something.

“Why not? You’ve got a good voice, and I know you know the song.”

“Who’s going to play the drums?!” I reason. “That’s why she’s here!”

“I suggested Taylor Swift! I don’t want him singing it!” Selena protests.

“Exactly! Then she can’t hog the stage and be an attention whore and has to settle for being a regular–”

“Morgan,” Travis interjects (scolds), still calm despite presenting me with an insane idea just a moment ago. Selena flips me off with a look of pure hatred. I generally don’t like to push it that far, but I stand by what I was about to say. Her name is synonymous with it.

“I’ll find someone to drum for you,” Bryson says.

I scoff. “What? Am I that easily replaceable?! You’re all fucking ridiculous!”

“Scott,” Bryson starts in his middleman voice. I look at our manager and lift a brow. He seems to wait until everyone has copied me and all eyes are on him.

And then he supports Travis’ idea.

Using some of the most glorious words I have ever heard in my life.

“If we can just get this over with – pick the cover of Blank Space with you on clean vocals so this discussion will fucking stop – you can dump Selena.”

I have no idea what to say.

So it comes out unfiltered.

“Oh, screw you, Bryson.”

Not meant to be hurtful. Just… I can’t even explain it – just some sort of instinctual, astonished reaction.

I would be free of Selena Walton. And I would get to steal her encore.

But I would have to sing front-and-center. Even though it’s a cover, it’s still a Taylor Swift song. I wouldn’t have to sing all of it – about half the vocals in I Prevail’s version are unclean, so Cole would take them. But it’s still a tough debate.

I can’t really feel my body. I guess the shock is still settling in. Or it has settled in pretty deep and fried my nerves or something. But, while I’m internally wrestling against my own opinions, I dare to steal a look at Selena that ends up lasting longer than just a glance. Her eyes are narrowed, her jaw is tight, and her back is rod straight. She’s still inconsolably pissed at the idea that she could end up without an encore even though she’s had plenty already, but I see something else underneath that.

She wants me to take it. She doesn’t want to have to pretend to be shackled to me any longer. The feeling is mutual.

They’re all staring at me as I weigh the pros and cons a few more times.

In the end, I look Bryson dead in the eyes using what I can only describe as a defeated, cold glare.

“I want it in writing.”

Chapter: 2

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creepycreepyspacewizard · 6 years

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I cant make up my mind, but for the kiss prompts, for Kylux, 22, 28 and/or 46? pretty please

[Two out of three ain’t bad - 22. …in a rush of adrenaline. | 28. …as a lie.]

Hux should not have come to this housewarming party. He was a graduate student now. He was above all this undergraduate nonsense with the crap beer, terrible music, and awful, awful people.

The school year hadn’t even officially started yet and Hux was already having a terrible time.

Where the hell had Ben found these guys? Well, probably posing in front of the mirrors in the gym, but really, who knew there were this many stacked guys in the engineering program? Especially since they seemed to be sharing a single lone brain cell between them.

He gave a pained grimace that was supposed to be a smile and tried to find a discreet location to hide the gift of yet another open bottle of lager. There were already four shoved behind the curtain next to him and the windowsill was getting dangerously full.

Giving up on that for now he chose to keep it in his hand, nervously picking at the label around the neck while he tried to follow what passed for conversation here.

At just over six feet tall Hux hadn’t felt small since he was fourteen when he’d finally punched his own father in the face, but being trapped in the corner of the kitchen with these six goliaths was really starting to ping his anxiety. Each of them had thighs thicker than his head. One of them had arms that were probably bigger than his entire torso. They kept on asking him awkward questions about his love life and giving him beers that he absolutely wasn’t going to drink.

Maybe this wasn’t actually a housewarming party. Maybe Ben had decided to try his hand at matchmaking but Hux was the only brainy twink who’d taken the bait.

Where was Ben? Hux hadn’t seen him yet this year, they’d just kept in touch over email while Ben spent the summer working for his father’s totally legal private airline and Hux tried to will his thesis to write itself. When he’d arrived at the party he’d been told Ben was getting dressed, but that was an hour ago. Since when had Ben taken more than 30 seconds to get ready for anything?

Hux tried to look around the room- scanning simultaneously for the only person he actually knew here and the closest available exit- but the wall of muscle seemed to close in around him.

He did not like this party one bit.

“So, are you, like, a bottom?” Asked a guy with a neck as wide as his ribcage who was probably called Chad.

“I beg your pardon!?” Oh god, he sounded like his stepmother.

Seriously, though, who the fuck asked complete strangers questions like that? Okay maybe guys like this did, it wasn’t as if Hux had ever gone out to a gay bar, or been on a date, or ever explored his sexuality beyond that one awkward conversation with Ben just before he went home from the summer, but, seriously?!

The guy to the left of maybe-Chad leaned in. “He wants to know if you…”

Bloody hell, was he actually going to try to explain the question?

He was. There were hand gestures and everything.

Nope. Hux couldn’t deal with this.

“Excuse me.” He made a break for it.

Shoving between these muscular monoliths felt like being in that film where the guy got his hand caught by a boulder- all his strength did absolutely nothing to move them so Hux was forced to slither between them and risk losing a limb at any second if they decided to close ranks.

Just when he thought he was free one of them grabbed his wrist.

“Hey, dude, don’t be like that…”

Through the frosted back door out of the kitchen Hux could just make out the shape of a figure who was both wider and taller than these guys.

His brain made a stupid decision.

“My boyfriend’s just arrived out there, excuse me,” he lied far more smoothly than he expected.

Chad or Brad or whatever his name was let go with a small grumble but didn’t try to stop Hux leaving this time.

As he staggered across the room, dumping the untouched beer into the sink as he passed by, the kitchen door swung open and Hux was able to see more details of his new fake-boyfriend.

Even from the back it was clear the man was tall, and broad across the shoulders to the point of looking almost dorito shaped, but with sculpted thighs wrapped in skin-tight jeans that declared he never missed leg day. His mid-length dark hair styled in soft waves that seemed perfect for stroking. There was a rainbow patch inexpertly sew to the back of his leather jacket and a cloud of clove scented vape around him like he’d been made by some benevolent deity just for Armitage Hux.

With a level of bravery Hux had never known he had, he reached out and tapped the stranger’s elbow.

“Hey, mate,” Hux said in a nervous rush. “Sorry to bother you, but could you pretend to be my boyfriend for like five minutes? It’s an emergency.”

There was a rumbled “sure” and an exhaling of vapour that completely obscured the man’s face, but it didn’t matter because Hux was enthusiastically pulled forward into what he was only just realising would be his very first kiss.

Suddenly shy and terrified, Hux closed his eyes.

The lips that met his own were perfect- thick, plump, warm, and deliciously slick with spit.

He’d never considered that kissing might feel like that. Armed with this new information his brain immediately presented him with a thousand and one other places those lips could be put to use… then the stranger’s tongue slipped into his mouth.

Hux’ mind gave an error message and shut down so his nerve endings could really enjoy the show.

There was a hand in his hair, and another at his back, and one of those thick thighs had pressed forward between his own, and parts of his anatomy were rising to meet it, and oh god what had he been missing all these years.

Without any conscious decision on his part his hands came up to sink into that tempting hair. It was just as soft as it had looked from a distance. Hux let his fingers comb back through the curling strands and down over the man’s ears.

The muscular figure in his arms trembled like a leaf at the contact. Who knew ears could be so sensitive? Who knew they could be so big?

… Wait.

Hux opened his eyes to find himself- still with another man’s tongue in his mouth- staring into a pair of very familiar brown eyes.

“Ben?!” He pulled back as best he could against arms that felt like they were made of stone. “Ben, what the fuck? When did you…”

There wasn’t really a way to express the change in front of him. When they’d last seen each other in May Ben had been all long limbs and out of proportion potential, like a humanoid baby giraffe with a terrible haircut that barely covered his giant ears. Now he was…

“Holy shit.” There was no other way to put it.

As if to prove his identity the man gave him the wide goofy grin that Hux would always associate with Ben and his schemes.

“I worked out a little,” he said with a wink. “And I’m going by Kylo Ren now.”

“Huh.” A dozen snarky responses came to mind, but a man who went by his surname was in no position to judge.

“So… why do you need a fake boyfriend?” ‘Kylo’ asked.

They both looked down at the same moment- they were still wrapped around each other like horny teenagers. Neither of them moved.

“Uh…” Hux blushed. The answer felt pretty stupid now. “Your friends sort of freaked me out, they wouldn’t stop giving me beers and asking me weirdly personal questions. So I thought a fake-boyfriend would be a good way to avoid getting roofied by half a dozen giants.”

Kylo snorted and shook his head. “They were supposed to be doing reconnaissance.”

“What?”

“They told me they were going to ‘subtly find out if you were still single’.” Kylo explained. “They never mentioned trying to get you drunk. Sorry.”

“Subtle is not the word I would use.”

“So are you?”

“What?”

“Still single?”

Hux shrugged. “I dunno, I mean, I have this hot fake-boyfriend now. I’d say it’s up to him…”

“Oh, well in that case, you’re definitely not single then.” Kylo said, and kissed him again.

Kiss Prompts

#kiss prompts #kylux #kylo ren #armitage hux #benarmie #ben solo #knights of ren #technically #alcohol mention #british university #everyone is of legal drinking age #first kiss #mistaken identity #reinvention of self #I dunno what this is...#thanks for the awesome prompt!#mioka #C2SW Replies #my writing

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tabundabun · 2 years

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Not as good as I thought, not as bad as you said. (part2/?)

part1 part2 part3 part4 part5

Taking the "controversy" about the live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop as an opportunity to analyzing the anime from Japanese perspective (again)

cw// "Representation wise, the 90s anime was generally not that great" talks like pointing out uses of the F-slur and stereotypes and the lack of diversity, “The anime is not bad but wrong at some/many points” perspective

[I'm not trying to convince to change the opinions about the live action was enjoyable or not, my opinion about the live action is "okay". I hope this post will not be used to bash that poor ugly duckling (maybe it will not turn into a beautiful swan but anyway.)] [I’m here to just give a crap about some obvious bigotry on social media which pretend as "they ruined my childhood" defense and stop the prove-yourself-as-a-true-anime-fan-tough-guy-desu!-championship.] [Since Netflix doesn't let me watch any dub/sub other than Japanese, most quotes from the anime are translated by myself.] [Honorifics omitted.]

“Was not Jet French?”

Marvis is basically Japanese-like, but I don’t know.

Despite the names of locations on Ganymede are French, Marvis rather has a lot of cultural similarity with Japan than France, and Jet knows a lot of things about Japanese culture, but it’s unlikely Jet is familiar with Japanese as a language.

In Gateway Shuffle

A restaurant in Ganymede had miso-stewed lobster with rice and meat of marine mammals.

While the whole plot about sea rat hunting is a mockery of anti-whaling activism, it hinted sea rat hunting can’t be rationalized, and the line "the moratorium on sea rat hunting is under consideration" is clearly satirizing the tendency to put-off-everything of the Japanese government.

In Ganymede Elegy

the title itself is named “ガニメデ慕情(Ganymede bojou.)” 慕情 is the term for feelings like longing, affection, and love(romantically or not), it’s widely used for the titles of enka in the 70s. “Elegy” is a bit different from typical enka as a genre of music (enka is more like a sentimental ballad), but commonly used for the titles of Showa pop (kayou) as a word. Faye’s narration in the Next Session segment of Jamming With Edward (previewing Ganymede Elegy) is a parody of intro voice-overs, a unique way to introduce enka and kayou songs, mostly composed of the words with 5 or 7 moraics. She mentioned Jet's sentimentalism as “He’s such a naniwa-bushi [guy]” in the main part of Ganymede Elegy. Naniwa-bushi is the genre of Japanese narrative singing songs, or it’s a reference to the popular enka song “Naniwa-Bushi dayo Jinsei ha”.

The fishermen in Marvis is based on Japanese ones, and they have the boxes of fishes which Japanese, simplified Chinese characters, and Latin script written on them.

There's the sign read “SNACK” (a style of homey and chatty bar managed by a woman called “mama” by patrons) in a backstreet, also Alisa's outfit is looks like the combination of kimono and kappōgi, a typical hostess of Japanese bar (Japanese-style Japanese bar technically.)

In Speak Like A Child

Jet is talking about the Japanese fairy tale Urashima taro.

In Knockin’ on heaven’s door

Jet plays shōgi but uses bilingual pieces and calls it “shoh-gi thing” with a bit of awkward pronunciation, like it’s unfamiliar to him.

He stocks a box of Japanese style instant meals and the one he eats is 広東風 (Kanton[Guangdong]-style) (which means a variation of ramen "Kanton-men", but it's something like "Hawaiian" pizza, there's no similar dish in Guangdong.)

Other intentional appearance of Japanese people or Japanese culture

Piyoko (a parody of Hiyoko), a Japanese souvenir treat (souvenir treats itself is also a part of Japanese culture) appeared in Jamming With Edward.

The only one person with a Japanese surname in anime (as I recall) is Whitney Haggis Matsumoto, but his name and Totus insurance company are a play on the name of the Japanese singer Tortoise Matsumoto.

The video maniac guy in Speak Like A Child is ordinary for Japanese people living in metropolises in the 90s.

Spike and Jet go to the ruin of the “electric museum”, a museum of electrical machinery in Akihabara. It seems the museum is fictional, but the kind of museum (more like a gallery despite its name actually) which is owned by companies and located in their buildings, displaying their own product to preserve the legacy is a common exhibition in Japan.

Possibly Jet’s mistake about the choice of video decks is a reference to “A large basket or a small basket” from Shita-kiri Suzume, since this episode is filled with references to fairy tales.

There's an unused episode idea named “エウロパ湯けむり殺人事件(The murder in the steam* : a case in the hot spring of Europa)” in the list which Watanabe noted as “maybe we never make it real” *The murder in the steam (a case in hot spring) is a trope used in the weekly mystery television shows, which aired advertisements-of-tourist-spots style comedic mystery. If you’re familiar with Ace Attorney or Detective Conan, you can understand the “weekly take a trip or go somewhere then got involved in a murder case” weirdness.

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raspberry-arev · 3 years

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After The Flood - pt.1

@opalpower13 thank you for sending me a suggestion that inspired this!! There will be a part two :)

It has been 10 years since the famous British boyband, The Ark, disbanded for personal reasons. Jimmy and Lister have been a couple for a long time now, and as the trio of friends starts their small revival tour, they both realize there are things they need to say - to each other, to the fanbase, and to the world.

Characters: Jimmy, Lister, Rowan, Angel/Feresteh, OC Abby (Rowan’s wife)

Tags: Bicci, Older Ark, Proposal, Coming out ... no Frowan this time sorry

Length: 3.6k words

JIMMY

It’s often impossible to pinpoint what exactly set off an event – or perhaps multiple – that changed your life as you knew it.

That was not Jimmy’s case, however. He remembered that Barbecue Saturday very well.

Over ten years later, they were hardly the same people.

Rowan was already at the grill preparing meat and grilling camembert in shiny aluminium foil when Angel marched in, tall, elegant, beaming. Jimmy loved to see her again. Each time, she seemed a little more confident, more expressive, more… just more. She really did find her calling in the music industry, just as much as he found his tucked away in rural England with his boyfriend.

Yet, he was to be “tucked away” no longer. At a certain point during their cook-out, their group fell momentarily silent; everyone was chewing their meal and soaking in the sun. Then Angel said, in an unfamiliar, cautious tone: “You see, I was talking to a couple of people…”

Rowan exchanged a quick look with Jimmy. “Go on,” he said.

“It’s gonna be ten years since you guys disbanded, you know.”

“I know,” Jimmy echoed.

He felt movement on his left, and looked Lister in the eyes.

“Well,” said Lister, looking at him. “Wow, okay,” said Jimmy. Both were considering.

“Obviously, they’re The Ark,” Abby commented matter-of-factly.

“You’re right, Abby. So, guys? How are we feeling about this?”

Maybe he could do it just once.

What eventually came out of his mouth was… “I haven’t sung like that for a long time though.”

“You sing to me,” Lister contradicted him, his fingers intertwining with his. “All the time.”

Jimmy felt his face get hotter. “That’s hardly… Are you thousands of people?” He turned to Angel. “How many are we talking, anyway?”

She smiled a kind smile. “I don’t know, Jimmy, that depends on whether you three are up to it or not.”

Rowan cleared his throat. “Personally speaking, I think I wouldn’t mind, as long as we are just doing it once, and not trying for a comeback. I wouldn’t go there.”

“Same,” Lister nodded. “I love you guys, but I’m fine the way things are.”

“I’m waiting for you to say.”

“Why?”

“Don’t want you to feel pressured or anything.”

“You shouldn’t… Just say what your opinion is!”

“In that case, I would love to be the centre of attention again!” Lister exclaimed and gave Jimmy a boyish grin. “The crowd was deprived of my looks for too long.”

“Buddy, you were the drummer,” Rowan said. “Bold of you to assume anyone even looked at you with me and Jimmy jumping at the front.”

Jimmy snorted with laughter, but Lister was quick to defend himself. “Google all Lister Bird slash Reader fanfic and then we can talk about who got noticed, buddy.”

“Oi, you’re not even properly revived yet, stop fighting!” Angel called out, but laughter started bubbling from every direction before she even finished the sentence.

LISTER

“You really shouldn’t do that, you know. This bitch is hard to get rid of.”

Rowan tried to hide a small cough and put out his cigarette on the metal window sill next to him. “Hey,” he greeted Lister. “Didn’t expect you to come out here.”

“Yeah.” Lister found it hard to hang around smokers, and unfortunately, he met quite the number of them while they were in the process of rehearsing. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

“Can we walk, like, over there? So… nobody can hear us through the door?”

Rowan eyed him suspiciously, but he followed him to the railing on the edge of the roof. There, he turned to him, seeming to fight himself.

“I’m really looking for a less shitty way to ask this,” he admitted eventually. “But… What have you done now, Lister?”

“Nothing! As of yet,” he assured his bandmate.

“Okay…?”

“Yes, go on,” he pushed on gently.

“Fuck it. I want to fucking propose!”

A giant weight fell off his shoulders when he spoke those words aloud. It was like coming out all over again, god.

Rowan’s eyes twinkled. “Oooh,” he almost whispered, “and you need my help with that? I’m your man, tell me the plan!”

“There is none right now.”

“Oh, okay. I can still help if you want.”

This was another part Lister dreaded discussing.

“I… okay, so, I was thinking of… doing it on stage?”

His friend’s face changed rapidly.

“Lister, I’m absolutely positive you mean well,” Rowan started. “But Jimmy would-“

Speak of the devil.

The door opened and out of it peaked Jimmy’s unshaven face. “Oh! There you both are.”

Fortunately, he caught on. “Oh yeah, yeah, that could work.”

“What files?” Jimmy inquired as he joined them, oblivious.

“Rowan has some of our old drafts still saved. I was thinking of squeezing in a drum solo somewhere, maybe with spoken word over it?”

“Sounds cool,” Jimmy smiled at him and slightly brushed the back of his hand with Lister’s. “Anyway, Dick the Sound Guy wants us all in there immediately.”

JIMMY

Finally, he managed to stop him while he was putting away the equipment. Lister was meanwhile in the office of their temporary new manager. “Ro, I need advice!” he whispered to his best friend.

“What about?”

“It’s Lister.”

“Oh dear Jesus, I’m having flashbacks.”

“Don’t be a dick, it’s important.”

“Okay then, spill.”

“It kind of involves you too. Just… tell me if it’s a good idea.”

“Go on!”

“Jimbob. Easy.” Rowan waited for a second for Jimmy to wind down, leaning on a stack of five chairs, and then asked, “Are you really sure about it? Do you want people to know?”

Jimmy felt his thoughts humming in his head. He forced himself to say exactly how he felt.

“So I take it that you didn’t discuss this?”

“No way. I don’t even know how to start!” Jimmy exploded in loud whispering. “I should have talked to him a long time ago, but I just didn’t have the balls.”

“I get that, but… just bring it up. Like, theoretically. What if. I think he’s going to support you through it.”

“How could he?”

“What are you even saying at this point?

“Wait, what? Ro, did he tell you something?”

“I am not talking!”

“Is that how you treat your best friend in a life crisis?!”

“You’re putting me in a life crisis, don’t you dare play the pity card! I swear, the two of you are a nightmare.”

“Rowan! Come back!”

LISTER

His visit to Rowan’s place was very brief, but it was enough for him to understand Rowan’s concerns. Eventually.

And yet.

“It’s all great, and I’m sure there are people in the world that would love it, but we are talking about Jimmy.”

“Come on. I know, he’s private about… well, everything, but…”

“He hasn’t had attacks since we moved and he went on those meds.”

“That doesn’t really –“

“Matter. Yeah. Yeah, I get your point, mate, he would die of shock. And everybody watching him. Fuck, I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” Rowan grinned. “The two of you are just different… in some aspects. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Will I? Lister asked himself as he was driving back to the hotel that Jimmy and him were staying at for the time being. This was the only thing I came up with, like, ever.

Jimmy yelped.

“Where’s the food?!” Lister shook him a little, imitating Batman.

“Your hands are so cold!” Jimmy protested, but there was a trace of laughter in his voice. “On the stove, you bully!”

Lister almost flew over there, looking under the lid on the pot.

“Oh come on,” Jimmy huffed. “I’m just asking! And it’s my show, too.”

“Sorry. Totally gonna steal your spotlight.”

“Lister, just tell me what it is.”

“A song.”

“What song?”

“A song that you have to wait for.”

“Babe, what song?!”

Before Lister could ask if he’s okay, Jimmy sat down on the other chair with a determined look on his face.

“There is something I need to discuss!” he blurted out.

Lister cautiously dropped the fork back into the bowl. “Okay…? And it’s something to do with me, yeah?”

“Cool. Go for it.”

“It’s about our relationship.”

“Are you aware you sound very sinister right now?”

Lister felt everything about his face go lax in shock. He opened his eyes round and wide, his mouth followed, and Jimmy looked like he would faint.

“I, er. I just. I thought about it and I think it’s a decent idea and – please say something, Lister, before I get a fucking heart attack right now.”

It must have been so hard for him to speak up. Lister thought of his proposal plans and felt his mouth slowly form a smile. “I think it’s… brilliant! Yes, I would really like to do that!”

“Wait, really?”

“This is – I didn’t think you would want to, when did you change your mind?”

Lister beamed. “I feel like it. If you do, I do, trust me.” He walked around the table and lifted Jimmy into a hug. He laughed, relieved.

As they were laying down and Lister gestured Jimmy to crawl into his arms, they became quieter. “You know why I also want to say it?” Jimmy mumbled, lying on the soft linen with one eye open.

“I’m all ears.”

“Oh no,” Lister laughed and turned Jimmy’s face upwards to his. “So this just in: my boyfriend is possessive. Fancy that.”

“I’m not, it’s… I am… Oh, you hated Jowan, stop being smug.”

“I know I did, we both know. But jealous Jimmy? That’s a rare sight.”

“It’s just super uncomfortable. It’s all women, as well.”

“Heteronormativity is a bitch,” Lister nodded. He snuggled closer and let out a breath, “Don’t worry though. I am exclusively your problem.”

Lister was pretty sure he would love him until his last day on Earth.

It was time to start looking for a ring.

#bicci #rowan omondi #jimmy gaga ricci #lister bird #iwbft #i was born for this #fanfiction #osemanverse fanfiction #osemanverse #alice oseman #proposal #request

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