#just a personal grievance y’all keep doing whatever
Text
I’m so tired of seeing MW fics that make ghost an antagonist.
Maybe it’s just because of the places I frequent but I rarely see other protagonist characters turned into villains for the sake of another’s angst or ship or plot, and it’s kinda disheartening to see a traumatized character be portrayed as evil because they had the audacity to be affected by it :/
#just a personal grievance y’all keep doing whatever#maybe it’s just me idk#I am very emotionally attached to ghost and I project a lot of my own issues with vulnerability and my autistic traits onto him ig#simon ghost Riley#fandom discussion#gonna tag soapghost because it’s unfortunate how often ghost is used as a prop to hurt soap ://
12 notes
·
View notes
Note
for absolutely no reason at all
svt members as your partner when you come home from work and become the equivalent of a dead fish because your job has sucked your soul from your body and you have nothing left to give but a few halfhearted flops
LET’S FUCKING GO.
seungcheol and jeonghan also have dead fuckin batteries.
they’re on the ground when you walk in the door. they may or may not have a “reason” for it, but they are fully in starfish mode on the floor, unwilling and unable to be moved. nobody is talking because that takes more energy than either of you have to spare, but it’s nice — finally being able to be quiet. it’s like the at-home equivalent of hiding in the work bathroom/walk-in freezer/whatever to have just a SINGLE MOMENT OF PEACE. sometimes, you just need a good Floor Sit™️. ya know? but…. you’re gonna order the takeout, right? their phone is a meter away, and they cannot be assed to sit up to grab it.
mingyu, joshua, and seokmin are gonna nurture the shit out of you.
you may be a shell of a person rn, but that just means there’s room for whatever criminally delicious thing they’re going to cook for you. they keep looking over their shoulder to check that your soul hasn’t left your body; and they only step away from the stove to top up the drink they made for you. tbh i would not put it past any one of them to hand feed you because they’ll be goddamned if you have to lift a finger. they’re also team Self Care™️ but you have to be the one applying their face mask because they got some in their eye last time and wailed for many minutes about it. y’all are also accidentally drunk on a week night. ooops 😇
jihoon, minghao and chan have already asked whether you want to vent or brainstorm solutions, and you chose the latter.
now, they’re actively listening to every single thought you have about your garbage day. they’re highly emotionally intelligent + pragmatic, so they have 10/10 insight to share without seeming pushy or patronizing about it. when you have a plan worked out for how to tackle xyz bullshit on zero (0) brain juice, they say or do something unexpectedly ridiculous in the midst of this ocean deep convo. that makes you crack tf up. you no longer wait for the sweet release of death 💘
👆🏻if you chose to vent, vernon and seungkwan are ready to rumble.
vernon sits quietly next to you (like, if you’re sprawled out on the living room floor, so is he; no questions asked). he soaks up every little word while emoting perfectly when your dramatic/comedic retelling calls for it. truly a 10/10 audience. you’ve never felt funnier/more interesting, and THAT is the spark you needed.
seungkwan, on the other hand, is getting amped with you — he doesn’t know who he’s fighting, but bitch, hold his americano because he’s coming out swinging. importantly, you’ve aired all your grievances and feel less like you’re being crushed to death under the heavy boot of a capitalist existence ✨
soonyoung, junhui, and wonwoo are on the emotional disaster clean-up crew — but in different ways.
you may be a flat tire, but even those can rotate, so soonyoung is doing his best to get you moving. he knows that partaking in a hobby of some sort is A Lot™️ right now, but it’s also the only thing that will restore your will to live. he’s right. you’ve successfully fought off the intense guilt that comes with foregoing joy due to exhaustion; and you have [insert labor of love project] to show for it.
junhui is more mellow in that he’s fine to leave you as a lump on the couch; HOWEVER, he’s going to be doing silly shit in your peripheral vision until you finally notice and start laughing. who ordered the prop gags? it’s a one-man show and it’s INCREDIBLE. he tires himself out and you both sleep like fuckin babies, and it doesn’t take you 59 years to force yourself out of bed the next morning 👏🏻
wonwoo, on the other hand, is subtle with it. i feel like he would dump himself next to you on the couch, pull up some sort of video game, and be content to exist quietly in your proximity. but just because you’re not talking doesn’t mean he’s not pulling shenanigans. i feel like he’d find the most fucking RIDICULOUS mods known to man (ex. replacing the dragons in skyrim with thomas the tank engine), or make a character that looks like you and run around doing super dumb shit that doesn’t advance the story but makes you cackle. he’s got that very specific lil wonu smirk going on, too, because he knew he’d be successful.
125 notes
·
View notes
Text
succession 3.09
(a little late because I was traveling this week, but if anyone out there is still interested…here is my finale recap!)
- I thought this finale was absolutely devastating and perfect coda to the end of this more insular, introspective season of Succession. There was a lot of internet discourse about whether or not the show has gotten too repetitive and if the dramatic stakes no longer translate when it’s all just different combinations of billionaires making different iterations of the same deal over and over again. I have a lot of thoughts about this and may do a separate post about it, but for now I’ll just say I felt this finale realigned the stakes sufficiently enough by introducing a genuinely new element into the plot (Waystar Royco will no longer be a “family owned” legacy media company, the fortunes of the children are fundamentally changed). At the same time, the sale of Waystar is still framed as primarily an emotional betrayal as opposed to a financial one, thus keeping the focus on the twisted dynamics that link this broken family together. (And as we’ve seen, Succession can end a season with a bombshell and then ground the bombshell in nitty-gritty details in the subsequent season, so tbd on how the sale actually goes or what its terms are.)
- on the related financial note: Succession has always been a bit vague on the actual terms of the Roy siblings’ wealth (trusts? stocks? who controls what?) (actually this is true for all the various financial deals on this show). I do find myself wanting to know a bit more in the wake of the Waystar sale. Shiv says specifically “Dad is cashing out” which seems to imply that the siblings won’t get the financial windfall the way he does, and certainly taking the company out of family hands affects the finances of Logan’s children to a certain degree. But at the same time, it’s hardly as if the personal lifestyles and financial security of the non-Logan Roys will change in any material way. They are losing power, control, and status more so than actual money (I could absolutely be misreading things, it’s possible that there is some serious financial hit here and S4 opens up with all three of them working at a Target or whatever the billionaire equivalent of working at a Target is--influencing?--but somehow I doubt it.)
- I normally don’t enjoy predicting what’s going to happen on shows that I’m watching, but I will say this: I did not once think that the show was going to kill Kendall off and I thought the internet frenzy over the possibility was completely ridiculous, so I’m going to take a second to pat myself on the back about that. This isn’t Game of Thrones, y’all, as much as HBO welcomes the comparison. I *did* think there was a possibility that Kendall might try and commit an act of self-harm, but no way would he actually die—not when there is at least one more season left. Are you kidding? The narrative vacuum would be too huge; Kendall remains the closest thing this show has to a protagonist, and the finale explicitly sets up an opportunity for him to re-take his place as a Roy sibling.
- I liked the pre-credits scene of the Roy siblings playing Monopoly on the patio in their “casual” vacation clothes. Just like any other family wiling away time on vacation!
- the gross thing about Logan is that he would probably endorse Roman trying to sleep with Kerry, the assistant he has also slept with, as a way to “fix” him.
- “do you know Mark, by the way?” the billionaire’s version of the Name Game.
- “I’m just really excited about the future.” “Are you? Really?” “Well…it’s something to say, isn’t it.” ooof. I felt this line offered some great insight into Logan’s current mindset, and the reason he decides to sell. It reminded me of Marcia’s line to Logan in S2E1. “Maybe you should sell. You’re old. You’ve not been well.”
- Connor turning Kendall’s intervention into an opportunity to rant about his own grievances is peak Connor. (to be fair, Kendall did call himself the “the eldest”) Genuinely can’t wait to see how Connor fares in the aftermath of the sale, considering his complex about always being overlooked and the fact that his presidential campaign is entirely based on being a Roy and being an owner of Waystar.
- Also can’t wait for the addition of another fail-marriage to the Succession ensemble, Connor and Willa. Somehow I doubt that Willa’s tears at the wedding were because she thinks of marriage as a sacred and beautiful partnership of equal spirits.
- I still don’t understand what is going on with Kerry, but was intrigued by her exasperated line reading of “He’s amazing as always.” Also intrigued by Marcia’s very confident ordering around of Kerry, and Kerry’s willingness to be ordered around by her in a way she clearly won’t take from Roman. (Marcia has made it perfectly clear that she would be totally fine with Logan fucking around with someone else as long as her wifely status and her presence within the inner circle were not threatened in any way, so maybe Logan was smarter about this affair.)
- Still, by far the ultimate crime of this season was THE LACK OF MARCIA.
- “Get in there, Greg, if Roman marries her he’ll invade France.”
- Harriet Walter’s wedding…robe? Perfection.
- There has been a lot of discourse this season about Shiv’s fashion and what it indicates about her journey this season, specifically the “fit” of her outfits. I’ve been hesitant to engage with this because so much of our ideas about “fit” are inherently fatphobic—compared to talking about the color of a dress or the repetition of a certain fashion motif, analyzing the “fit” of Shiv’s clothes feels a bit too close to making a judgment about Sarah Snook’s weight, for my taste. But in terms of her outfits in the last two episodes, it was great to continue to see her in colors and to get a reprieve (mostly) from the usual girlboss suits. I *loved* her blue polka-dot jumper during the Monopoly scene. The pink in her floral finale dress also links her to Roman with his dusty pink button-down, which makes sense as this has really been the season of Shiv and Roman as a narrative pair.
- “Cool beans? Since when do you say cool beans?”
- “Okay, well, we need a plan to kill this baby.” Swear to god, my favorite line delivery of the episode. (Also seriously what is happening with this plotline.)
- “I have some beef with Greenpeace…long story short, they’re bad.”
- “But he stuck around?” absolutely devastating line reading from Sarah Snook here. Then: “He stuck around, yeah.” UGH. THESE FAIL SIBLINGS. Love the way these two little lines kick everything into the final act.
- just fucking obsessed with the final twenty minutes of this episode in general. you could honestly write an essay about it, everything from the dialogue to the blocking—critics are writing essays about it. Kendall’s confession interrupting their impromptu war council. how linked the siblings are and how different they all are as individuals. the blend between the psychological and the political.
- Roman’s response to Kendall’s confession: “This sounds like the story of a hero to me, I would have been straight out there. Seriously, I would have been out of there like a tabbycat out of a bath.”
- I’m sorry, but Roman’s lines in this scene were absolutely iconic.
- “Where do we go?” “Take him back to the chapel, stuff him in a confessional, that’ll fix it.”
- “Leave me here with all the feelings, thank you.”
- “I guess I’m just trying to say, who’s the real victim here, I waited three quarters of an hour for a fucking gin and tonic.”
- honestly felt a little verklempt at that shot of Kendall and Roman walking around the corner and we could see that they had had identical smears of white dirt on their pants. There was something so childish and vulnerable about it. Just two little boys sitting in the dirt talking.
- “You know Dad is never going to choose you, because he thinks there is something wrong with you.”
- Love how Kendall knew that the three siblings hold veto power regarding major company moves via the divorce. This is why Shiv and Roman need him—no one knows Waystar like Kendall. (Although, of course, classic Kendall, he also believes that Logan will play by the rules when Logan is already tearing up the damn rulebook.)
- God, I know S4 is going to open with all three siblings at each other’s throats, but the tentative professional AND emotional alliance between them was genuinely something to behold.
- Tom’s line to Shiv “so we can cite you as sources?” has a double-edge to it—Shiv is the source Tom can cite to Logan!
- We should have known what was happening when Tom asked Greg “do you want a deal with the devil?”
- I think I’m the most…let down about Greg’s arc this season, just because he seemed to play such a pivotal role in the war against Logan at the beginning by providing Kendall with the documents he needed, and then just kind of unceremoniously oozed back over to Logan’s side. Kendall never burned him, and he doesn’t seem *that* fussed about losing his inheritance from Uncle Ewan, so he’s just…floating along in Tom’s wake, like a remora fish. I do hope, one day, that we’ll see Greg experience an actual consequence, but for now I’m excited to see how he and Tom deal with the unexpected windfall of Logan’s appreciation.
- “Souls are boring.”
- Intrigued by where Gerri, Frank, and Karl all stand. Mattson seems to imply earlier in the episode that he would evaluate them to decide whether to keep them or not, but they are so definitively aligned with Logan in the final scene I also wonder if he negotiated some kind of job security for them.
- this is Roman’s first time really being betrayed by Logan, the way Kendall and Shiv have been. Very, very intrigued to see where this takes him next season!
- Caroline’s role in everything is just…god. “I think everything will be fine…please don’t be angry, I’ve never thought it was a good arrangement…” the absolute gaslighting of it all.
- Logan is always the most disappointed with his children when they fail to kill him.
- Roman literally getting on his knees in front of Gerri to beg for his life. “How does it serve my interests?” Noooooooo.
- the final few moments of the episode were so quick and chaotic…when Shiv asked “who told him we were coming?” my mind actually jumped to Connor, of all people, because of his rant earlier. Then Tom came on the screen and I literally yelled. What a reversal. What a shot in the arm. What an exhilarating and grandiose twist. More more more. Cannot wait for next season.
#succession#succession season three#succession spoilers#succession analysis#succession meta#succ#kendall roy#logan roy#roman roy#shiv roy#connor roy#tom wambsgans#greg hirsch#THE ROYS
42 notes
·
View notes
Text
i will never understand hate anons. ever. i will never understand going onto someone’s blog, and leaving something nasty. i don’t get it. like if you have an issue with someone, dm them. talk to them off anon. if you see something you don’t like that doesn’t warrant a reason to come into asks anonymously and leave hate. like just keep your mouth shut and move on or block the person.
like, do you guys think you’re doing something by leaving hate? do you think you’re making me feel bad about myself when you can me a bitch or that i’m selfish? like do you think i’m THAT insecure about myself i’m going to take anon hate seriously? because i’m not, y’all make me funnier and witty.
like leaving hate doesn’t make you a better person, and some of the anons i’ve gotten seem like they are two faced people in my life and i don’t want any of y’all to talk to me. the assumptions of being a bad friend & all this shit is kinda funny because i only do what’s best for me. i have friends on this site and not once have they given me any grievances about me or whatever. i’ve only dropped three people in my life on this app because i cannot with their behavior. one of them is actually a pos so like, why would i want that in my life?
hate anons, get a life. block me for all i care, cause i dont.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Yo NB vibe check for a Guiltless:
(Guiltless: Gender R2)
I’m not nonbinary, but a lot of you all are, so I figured I’d show my work here on my NB OC for a game I’m making (GRAVEN). I’m checking if it scratches a good itch for y’all, like, reblog, lmk, hmu, call me a fucker, whatever.
So, I know you guys have an affinity for characters that are biologically androgynous as well as reasonable grievance that we don’t have any Enby Humans (or elves or whatever) in media.
These ideas can coexist, even in the same character, it’s half the fun of playing fantasy. Guilt’s the biggest NB rep in the game by a large margin, so I’m trying try to hit both notes in one chord.
Enter “Guiltless”, a brain-eating slime assassin. Imagine The Thing, but not an asshole. I’m doing an Odo DS9, if you watched it.
Check it:
Being a Shapeshifter-of-Unclear-Provenance (even they don’t know), so Guiltless is actually just a giant amoeba, so they don’t have a biological sex even though they can emulate it, if needs suit them.
They can pass for whatever if they gotta (specific hard, general easy), and have to rehearse a form to keep it without effort. They have to eat brains to retain a memory, and can only “remember” a couple shapes at a time.
They were never a particular fan of gender, but they’ve got the ability to conceptualize, understand, and keep one if they like it. They didn’t, even though they’d pick one as their resting state for a while and ditch it later when they had to go to ground:
First-person brain they ate was a young teenager’s corpse (Guiltless didn’t kill them, they think) whose gender they either didn’t process or later forgot. They made that form their default, and have been revising it ever since. It’s “grown up” as they figured people out.
If other organisms like Guiltless exist, they probably have their own ideas about what to do with it, but Guiltless adopted whatever generated the least suspicion.
They’ve since edited and revised it as they became more acclimated to people-society. It became “them” instead of just a mask they were wearing-- literally at the same rate they acclimated to society. They’re an adult slime, at any rate, and nobody pays a kid what they deserve, even assassins. Fuck that noise.
At the same rate, their stabs at actually deciding a gender eroded off. So, instead of having a puberty, the Starveling took a pass and kinda “grew up” into a gawky androgyny.
It was a process of nudges, but as soon as they met their first NB person, it was revalatory, like, “Hah, yes, gender is indeed wack- what the fuck do you mean it’s optional? Oh fuck, bet.”
From then on, Guiltless quit trying entirely, and is now androgynous as hell any time they could get away with it.
Appearance: Guiltless is a Din, so they’re like, 4 feet tall, look like they’ve been living rough for 20 years, and have stumpy little horns which generally only appear in males, but some females have ‘em (it’s about 80/20). Either way, short ones are signs of poor nutrition as a kid.
Din have either reddish blue or purple skin, but Guitless is like, corpse-blue. Otherwise you can’t tell they’re a transparent sludge puddle without stickin’ a sword in ‘em. Shorts, hoodie with long sleeves, and lil socks over their feet. Legs are built and sleeves are a little too long, hoodie’s baggy, all to cover for the drifty, sliminess of their movements. Faking that you have bones is a lotta work!
They’re Kuudere, but as their first brain was one of incredible suffering at the hands of a few, so they try to be better for the Starveling’s sake, and generally pick their jobs with a vigilante’s zeal. Thus, they are incredibly gentle with most people, especially children, though animals don’t know what to make of Guiltless, and usually get spooked.
It’s a shame, because they very much like dogs and were very disappointed that simple mimicry was insufficient to make friends with them. A Loyalty Quest in my notes involves trying to find a pet that likes Guiltless.
Otherwise, Guiltless obviously eats people, and also eats animals to keep up their memory. Thus they suck up rats like there’s a prize inside (ibrains): they’re smart critters, after all.
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
why i don’t fuck with beanz twitter
disclaimer: this doesn’t include ALL the stans on twitter. and yes i was on beanz twitter for a while (i was mutuals with ezra before her first n word scandal) so i’ve seen enough to make this post; and with that, let’s begin
there’s always some kind of fight going on. like i barely go on there anymore but every time i do, someone’s always getting attacked or cancelled
they’re very cliquey. while yes it’s completely normal to have a circle of friends who are similar to you and your taste in interests, they take it to the next level. they have an aura of “my clique is superior and we are better” and then proceed to tweet a million screenshots of their group dms.
small accs seem very isolated (but i could be wrong)
i’ve noticed that beanz twitter is basically “run” by a group of big accs. like when did this happen? when did everyone start following the lead of a select few? what fandom are y’all in again?
they’re very entitled. very. true story: bc of timezones, we got to hear Blind before the US stans so when it came out, i heard some chains rustling at the end of the song so i went back to twitter & tweeted pm and was like “i KNOW brandon was wearing all chains while recording. we can hear them at the end” and this girl came at me like “WE TOLD Y’ALL NOT TO SPOIL IT FOR US!!” like first of all, chill. i didn’t spoil anything i just said i heard chains at the END. second of all, i’m not allowed to tweet about a song until YOU hear it?? i have to contain my excitement? i have to curb my enthusiasm for YOU? until you’ve heard it?? please
they can’t take a joke. the number of times i’ve seen people getting attacked for what is clearly a harmless joke is insane like someone could say “brandon looks like a bobble head” and a few minutes later you’ll see someone going at them for their lane. maybe it’s bc i’m used to us trashing them but ive had to water down whatever i wanna say on that app
they attack if you don’t have the same taste. like excuse me art is subjective. just bc someone doesn’t like a certain song or artist there’s no need for a “rich coming from a *insert song title* stan”. so your taste in music is so elite that anyone who doesn’t conform is beneath you?
it’s nedwin or nothing
the amount of disrespect i’ve seen towards austin is baffling like do y’all not have a heart?
drama is blown out of proportion on there like i’ve seen shit that’s died down on every other platform still be talked about on twitter and they just keep dragging it and making it seem bigger than it actually is. (excl slurs)
they’re at each other's throats for situations that were never that big in the first place
they think they’re superior? idk what that’s based on but let me know with your 18 tweet thread
tumblr posts have been stolen and used as tweets. idk if it’s still happening but i’ve seen it twice back in the day
“1k likes and i’ll tweet brandon” like babe we know you’re looking for likes and won’t do it anyway
that one fan who called nicks mom bc he met and followed a fan who happened to be 15? (idk her age i’m sorry)
in conclusion, i do not like them. any twitter stan that has grievances can come up to me and reason with me personally on here. i know y’all love to subtweet but don’t be passive aggressive for once in your life.
#insert THAT nicki audio#idc if the twitter stans get mad#someone needs to hold a mirror up to them#and if they’re mad they can just come talk to me#prettymuch
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
Two Sides of the Coin (13)
Chapter 13: Strange Way of Finding Things | Jidné Sheedra x Cal Kestis
Summary: Hell-bent on exacting revenge and retrieving the Holocron, the dreaded Darth Vader is now on the hunt for the young Jedi Knight, Cal Kestis. Under the assumption that he still possessed the artifact, while fueled by the intrigue of the boy’s strength and skill with the Force, the dark lord hires the bounty hunter, Jidné Sheedra, to track him down and have him delivered alive. However, the task becomes a trial for young Jidné, as she faces a conflict that tests her beliefs of a scarred past she had hidden for so long.
A/N: This was supposed to be a full-length flashback chapter but I looked at the word count and I just-- 😳😵😧😬 So I just decided to split it because I don’t wanna drag you guys on with more than 5000 words of a single chapter. I would’ve broken my record average word count 😜 anyway, I hope y’all are ready for the angst
Also tagging: @silver-is-in-too-many-fandoms @berenilion @justtinfoley @stellar-trinity @peterwandaparker @calgasm @queen-destenie @calsponchoemporium @cal-jestis @ayamenimthiriel @sweeetteaa @fallenjedii @superwarsofthrones
Also in AO3
Tags: Fem OC, Jidné Sheedra, Force-Sensitive! Fem OC, Bounty Hunter! Fem OC, Jedi! Fem OC | Additional (last 2 tags count as TW): Nomara Anesh, Jedi Master! Fem OC, Togruta Fem OC, Jedi Seeker! Fem OC, family separation, separation anxiety
Chapters: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 | Previous: Part 12 | Next: Part 14 | Masterlist
13 of ?
31 BBY
ESHYN, LAU’NON SYSTEM, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES
The clouds clear a path for the Jedi Starfighter, aboard it is the young Jedi Seeker, Nomara Anesh, one of the youngest seekers at only 34 years old.
Her aerial view of the archipelago captivated her as she flew by the land mass. The sapphire blue coastline surrounded the island, high mesas with a vast carpet of grass framed the formation while the torrential waves kissed the rigid rock faces with its ivory-white seafoam and mist.
It was simply breathtaking.
Though it saddened her that the Trade Federation has begun to press its ugly thumb into this tropical masterpiece. Prior to her visit, Nomara did her reading on the planet, its current political and economic state as well. She has always been the curious one amongst her batch—said her former master—thus resulting to her inquisitive upbringing.
“There it is, Evy,” Nomara peered through the side window of the cockpit. “Sa’Junna: where we need to be.”
She afforded another pass above the main island, searching for a safe place to land with the assistance of the astromech droid.
“Do you see anything, Evy?”
The droid, EV-65 or Evy as Nomara personally nicknamed it, chirped in excitement, equally as captivated as its Jedi owner; the droid popped out a tiny satellite from a small hatch on its dome head.
The young woman managed a smile at her droid’s happy trills, but something stirred within her as she approaches the island. The closer she got, the swirling at the pit of her stomach became stronger—though, it didn’t alarm her because she doesn’t sense anything wrong with it; nevertheless, whatever the Force was subtly telling her, it intrigued her.
“Bee-beep!!”
“Great job, Evy. Override the landing cycle now,”
“Beeep-doo!”
It took Evy a few seconds before relaying the area coordinates for a safe landing area to Nomara’s dashboard. A virtual map of the island flashed and a green blip blinked over the center section of the land mass. The Jedi followed the lead and managed to dock her ship in between the capital and a village half a mile away from each landmark. The droid remained on the ship while Nomara dismounted the vessel.
The city of Sa’Junna was developed by a civilization of old, and then later cultivated and nurtured by the past generations until the current one. Having grown and thrived for countless millennia, a great majority of the residents were humans, but other humanoids like Twi’leks and Nautolans have migrated to this idyllic sanctuary. The place appeared to have seen better days priors to the Trade Federation’s occupation.
Nomara could see the bustle of trade in the city, it wasn’t as grand as Coruscant or Naboo, but the prosperity is evident.
Upon alighting her starship, she was promptly greeted by a tall stature of a human male with a greying beard that covered half of his olive-skinned face. He gestured with open arms, welcoming the Togruta, while subtly keeping a tinge of caution in his words and actions.
Nomara bowed slowly and solemnly in greeting.
“Welcome, traveler. What is it that you seek in our already-disturbed home?”
“The exact disturbance you speak of, friend.”
The tribe leader introduced himself as Sentuk Nirmo, he governed one of the villages that networked with the main city—where most of the trade transpires. Seeing that Nomara bore better will than the Trade Federation’s emissaries, he invited her into their settlement where they could speak openly within closed walls. As they walked, Sentuk briefed Nomara of their situation.
“At first, they wanted the metal. But when they found the deeper caverns, that’s when they’ve completely sucked our mines dry! The Federation has robbed us of our own homeland.” Sentuk grieved, and then added. “They barricaded the Yishen Strait—our main trade route—from civilians and real traders. Since then, business has been slow for many of us.”
Sentuk’s voice trailed off when he noticed Nomara subtly panning her head left and right, as if searching for something. The Jedi apologized for zoning out, the tribe leader dismissed it as a fascination towards the planet as well as exhaustion—and so he invited her to their settlement. The Togruta follows the Sentuk into the village; along the way, he explains that each village has a leader which then comprises the council. With every step, the faint trace of the Force that Nomara has picked up gotten stronger.
Sentuk presented his humble home, it seems that the Federation has already left its mark in this village along with the others surrounding the capital city—Nomara looked around and found children playing out in the open, whilst weavers make baskets and rucksacks out of their looms for the hunters to store their game, other residents tend and plow their modest vegetable gardens and orchards.
“It seems so peaceful here,” Nomara’s smile faded as instantaneously as it appeared. “But I sense the distraught in these people.”
Sentuk hummed in agreement, recalling his grievance of their overall predicament. Nomara’s brows pulled together, she closed her eyes for a moment to detect that trail she’s picked up.
“There’s something else,” she mumbled so quietly that Sentuk barely heard.
The Togruta blinked her eyes open and the first thing she saw was a small girl watching the other children play—she looked like she had just learned how to stand and walk. Forgetting that she stood with the tribe leader, Nomara approached the child slowly until the girl acknowledged her with wide, quiet eyes bursting with curiosity.
She knelt down to level with the child, she offered her open palm, and without a single ounce of hesitation the toddler placed her pudgy hands on the vibrant red-skinned palm of the visitor. Their eyes met, Nomara’s heart leapt for a reason she can’t explain, her lips involuntarily curled and by impulse, her fingers folded around the soft, tender hand.
“Jidné!” a melodic voice beckoned from the cottage.
Both Nomara and the child turned to the direction of the voice, it was the mother. Nomara slowly hoisted herself back to her full height, when the mother stepped out of the doorway of their home, two more little girls followed behind her—presumably the little one’s older sisters—but they kept themselves close by the skirt of their mother, intrigued and at the same time shy of the unusual-looking visitor.
“I’m sorry, I just…” stammered the Jedi softly. “Your daughter.”
The mother flashed a friendly smile, “Yes, what about her?”
“She’s strong with the Force. For someone so little, she carries a significant amount of it within her.”
The woman immediately got the hint, she’s heard the stories, though this is the first time she’s met one in the flesh. Her eyes wandered to the waistband of the Togruta’s robes and spotted the silver hilt shimmering, dominating the neutral colors of her clothes.
“You’re a Jedi, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my name is Nomara Anesh,” the Jedi bowed her head briefly as soon as she uttered her own name.
“My name is Tymara Sheedra, I see you have met my little Jidné,” the woman peeked over the backside of her skirt, spotting her two other daughters, she introduced Krea and Maryn—aged eleven and eight respectively. The girls greeted the Togruta who beamed a gentle smile at them as she returned the gesture.
Nomara clarified that she was a Seeker and stated her purpose to Tymara, the Togruta’s emotions synched with the other woman’s—that friendly smile reduced into a poker face and then replaced with a blank smile.
“Um… Why don’t we talk inside? I just finished making supper,” Tymara invited the guest into her house, who politely obliged despite the tension.
The single-storey cottage was quaint, although each room was cramped and limiting to a number of persons inside. The kitchen was in the same space as the dining table—which lacked chairs and had woven cushions and mantles in its place. If one is to peek a little bit to their right, they could see the bedroom—the girls’ beds were thick-enough cushions each sitting atop a wooden frame, whilst the parents’ bed is settled on another side of the room; the only thing distinguishing the “rooms” was a wooden divider panel.
Nomara wagered this house couldn’t fit any more family members, Jidné would be the live marker of the home’s limit. She settled herself by the table—across where she sat, the three girls played in a small space that only fit them perfectly without needing to duck or crouch, the two older sisters watched with great fascination as Jidné lift a doll off the floor without touching it, Nomara watched intently along with them.
Tymara offered her a bowl of broth and bread on the side.
“I’m really sorry about our house. It’s not exactly much, isn’t it?” Tymara initiated quite apologetically, poking the bits of meat in the soup.
“I don’t mind,” Nomara awkwardly chuckled, parroting Tymara’s nervous poking before scooping up a spoonful and then bringing it into her mouth.
“What is it that you Seekers do?”
“We search the galaxy for Force-sensitive children. We bring them to the Jedi Temple in Coruscant and then train them into becoming Jedi Knights like myself.”
Tymara bit her lip and gawked emotionlessly at her food, it took her a good minute before she started to touch her food again. She spoke again, but didn’t face Nomara when she did.
“Have you come for her?”
The Jedi’s head perked to the mother, Tymara let the bottom of the spoon float above the soup—sensing her fluctuating appetite swirling together with the anxiety slowly eating away her mind; Nomara inhaled deeply, ceasing to touch her food to find the right words to say.
“Not specifically. I didn’t even know it was her until I… well, found her. The Force—or perhaps the universe—has a strange way of showing things we need to see when we least expect it, no matter how difficult it is to accept the signs.”
“And this Force… showed you to my daughter?”
“It would appear so,”
“Are you going to take her from me?”
“I wouldn’t force it,” Nomara replied somberly, as if understanding the grief of separation. In a way, she has felt that in one way or another.
There was silence, even the girls have purposefully hushed their voices and giggling to secretly listen to their conversation between the guest and their mother—even the little, two-year-old Jidné followed suit of her sisters.
“Eshyn isn’t what it used to be anymore, this was my home, and my husband’s, and our parents…” Tymara mumbled, watching her daughters resume playing. “We thought the Federation would make us prosper—because that’s what they promised us. You could imagine how stupid we all felt when the Trade Federation delivered the perfect opposite of what they told us. Ever since then, life has been hard for all of us. Especially the children—even if they don’t see it that way, at least not yet.”
Nomara understood Tymara’s sentiments, after all, she is a mother just looking for out for children and wanting what’s only best for them. The collective giggling of the girls was the only thing that warmed the abode today.
“Where’s their father?”
Tymara’s clasped fingers tightened around one another, she breathed deeply and bit her lip before she spoke a word.
“I lost him to a mining accident… because they wanted more metal. That’s all we ever heard from them. More metal. More work. More yields.”
“I’m sorry,” Nomara averted her gaze to the food that had now gone cold.
Little Jidné approached the table, specifically to Nomara’s side. She waddled towards the Jedi, the baby stared and studied the vibrant indigo patterns of the montrals while feeling its texture; then her pudgy paws found the tassel of turquoise beads that framed the side of the Togruta’s face, mistaking it for a toy. The two women giggled, endeared the little one’s innocence as Jidné continued to lightly swat the accessory and watch it dangle, immediately and easily entertained. Eventually, her sisters joined in and bombarded the Togruta with questions of wonderment—to name a few, they asked her where her species lived, if the white patterns on their faces were actual skin or tattoos, and how long can their montrals grow.
Nomara is simply overwhelmed by the cheeriness of these three girls combined, but the unexplainable lightness of Jidné prevailed. She knew it was the girl’s Force energy, but also the purity of her heart and spirit.
Tymara smiled at the sight of her youngest daughter getting along too easily with their visitor, but it was a sad smile—in her mind, she was already arguing against herself for the betterment of her youngest. With the occupation rendering them dirt poor and being a single parent, she had to make the toughest decision of her life. It took Tymara the entire evening to let it sink into her and toughen herself up even though she’s already falling apart because of their economic state.
By sunset, the entire village was rattled by the presence of the Trade Federation emissaries and their guards—a small unit of battle droids. What barred them from taking a step further into the settlement is Sentuk, with his warriors and hunters united to making a barricade out of themselves to protect their home.
“Not one step further!” Sentuk bellowed.
“I am sure you are aware of your settlement’s dues, old man,” the Neimoidian official flapped its trouty lips at the tribe leader.
“Your demands do not have a single drop of realism in them! You demand large yields over a short period of time, not even the manpower of two villages combined can make that quota,”
“Yeah, with what you’ve done with our mines—that quota is ridiculous!” added a spear-wielding warrior standing beside Sentuk and the men behind them murmured in agreement.
“Is your brain smaller than what it appears?!” taunted another man in the barricade, the joke was received differently from each party.
Vexed and provoked, the Neimoidian emissary raised a finger at Sentuk.
“I have given you more than enough time for that quota and you have failed me once more! I told you what would come to you should you not do what you are asked!”
A hasty wave of the hand prompted the guards to aim their rifles at the people making up the human barricade, the people in the village shrieked in fright—many of which have already retreated into their homes but peered through their windows. Nomara, who had been observing the sour exchange between the leader and the slimy emissary, rushed into the scene a split second after the command to fire has been given—killing off five of the men already and fatally wounding Sentuk after being shot in the side of his stomach.
“Jedi!? Here!?” the Neimodian screeched in a panic.
All of the villagers completely retreated into their homes—including Tymara and the girls—while Nomara aided the warriors in eradicating the battle droids, leaving the empty-handed emissary standing amongst the pile of dead clankers. Completely befuddled and frightened for his life, Nomara had him at swordpoint.
“I… I didn’t give the order! I’m just a messenger…!” he whimpered and his sheer terror had unconsciously dragged his legs to make him run away, leaving the wake of the ruined droids behind him.
When the tension eased, Nomara quickly turned her attention to the wounded Sentuk. A group of people have already gathered around him.
“Bring him to your healer, quickly now!”
The group carried their leader by the feet and underneath his arms, they briskly brought him to the cottage of the village healer while Nomara caught her breath and examined the droids’ remains. She felt the gaze of Tymara piercing right through her, she found the mother and children huddled by the doorway after the skirmish; Nomara saw the sad, disdainful sigh of the mother as she herded her children back into the house again.
After tucking the girls to bed, Tymara joined Nomara who was overlooking the coastline; the ocean breeze made the ladies’ robes and skirt billow wildly above the grass. There was a voiceless banter between the women, as if they have already began this conversation in their minds and linked it to each other.
“Will she be taken care of?” Tymara blurted.
Taken aback by the question, Nomara turned her head to the mother and stared at her for a long moment, unaware that her lips have parted due to the surprise. She turned her eyes back to the ocean slowly being devoured by the evening’s darkness.
“What?”
“Jidné. If you bring her with you, to become a Jedi, will she be taken care of?”
“Tymara, a Jedi’s hard life is a hard life,” Nomara shifted her body to face Tymara. “Jidné will have to grow up facing a lot of dangers as she grows up if she comes with me.”
Tymara bitterly chuckled, more of a nasal exhalation than an actual laugh, “Better than scratching the earth for her next meal. At least I know that she lives fighting for something honorable.”
“What about you? And Krea and Maryn?”
“We’ll manage. They’ve already learned how to loom and tend farms, they know their craft well. But for Jidné, well…” Tymara licked her lips. “This will always be her home, but I know she’s made for something greater. I just know it. You can never underestimate a mother’s intuition.”
Nomara smiled, although sadly, mostly for Tymara and the girls. Having nothing more to say, the two of them continued to look into the horizon, finding an individual sort of comfort underneath the pale blue moonlight.
“No, I suppose not.”
That night, Tymara snuck upon her sleeping daughters, but fixated her eyes on the youngest—plump cheeks squished against the pillow, her round and supple belly rising and falling as she slept, and her twitching eyelids made Tymara wonder what the little one could be dreaming of. She knelt down by Jidné’s bedside, her hands smoothly glided over her soft head and fine head of dark hair, and leaned forward to kiss Jidné’s forehead—it was a long kiss, and even after she pulled her lips away, the roundness of the baby’s cheek perfectly fit the curve of Tymara’s nose bridge, inhaling Jidné’s infant scent.
The woman bit her lip as she battled with her tears. It’s going to be a long night for Tymara.
Nomara watched from the open doorway, arms crossed with each other, there was a heavy gloom around the house that suffocated her—not even sighing deeply helped. She retired to the space in the bedroom that Tymara had personally fixed up for her.
In the morning of their departure, Tymara held her youngest daughter for the final time and rocked her as if putting her to sleep. Her sisters, as well, bade their own tearful goodbyes to their baby sister, ceaselessly riddling her plump cheeks with kisses and leaving tears stains upon her skin—in a way, Jidné is lucky that she is unaware that this is the sorrow of parting.
Tymara nuzzled her cheek against Jidné’s smooth forehead. One last embrace and a kiss buried into the crook of the child neck; with her eyes closed, she imagined how Jidné would grow up to be—but she’s completely certain that she’d grow up to be a strong, courageous woman—and she painted a mental picture of how her daughter would look like once she’s come of age.
In a prayerful solemnity, Tymara whispered all of her wishes for Jidné to Jidné herself—be strong and brave yet remain kind, wise, and gentle; make good friends with the other children if she meets any; listen well to the instructions of the elders; and most importantly, listen to her heart.
Tymara savored this last moment, Nomara was kind enough to give all the time she needs—the Togruta passed the time by prepping her Starfighter and doing the necessary maintenance checks before takeoff.
“I love you… I love you so much, my darling girl,” Tymara feigns a brave face. She held Jidné right in front of her, then Jidné’s pudgy hands caressed both of her cheeks, and that’s when she lost it—tears streamed down her cheeks, wetting the child’s tiny fingers.
The true, final embrace and kiss from her mother before Jidné is transferred to the arms of Nomara Anesh.
“You have my word. She’ll be treated well.”
“I know,” muttered Tymara quite weakly, rubbing her arms together to whisk away the cold goosebumps pelting her skin. “I know.”
Tymara watches her daughter walk away in the arms of the Togruta. She watches a part of her heart and soul shrink in the distance, unaware eyes looking over the shoulder of the Seeker and back into the grieving eyes of her mother. Tymara’s hand flinched into a short-lived wave and quickly brought them to her lip, biting into her fingernails until her daughter has fully disappeared in a ship with Nomara and out of Eshyn.
#cal kestis#cal kestis fic#jidne sheedra#cal kestis x jidne sheedra#cal kestis x jidne sheedra fic#fem oc#cal kestis x fem oc#cal kestis x fem oc fic#force-sensitive! fem oc#bounty hunter! fem oc#jedi! fem oc#nomara anesh#jedi master! fem oc#togruta fem oc#jedi seeker! fem oc#family separation#separation anxiety#star wars#star wars jedi fallen order#star wars jedi fallen order fic#sw#swjfo#swjfo fic#jedi fallen order#jfo#jedi fallen order fic#jfo fic#fic#fluff#fluff fic
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
Memento Mori
Summary: When being in the wrong place at the wrong time lands (Y/N) in the blood-stained hands of D.C.’s most notorious crime boss, Duncan Shepherd, she finds herself unexpectedly in his debt. Perhaps owing the dangerous man a favor would be more torturous if he weren’t so engaging.
Word Count: 3286
A/N: Here it is! The first chapter of my crime boss Duncan fic. I’m SO excited to share this labor of love with you all, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. Feedback is always much appreciated and, if you feel so inclined, I would love if you left a like or a reblog.
(special thanks to Caitlin @divinelangdon for helping me with this!)
EDIT: *clears throat* as far as I am aware, Mallory @lvngdvns was the first to write a mob AU for THIS fandom. Thanks, Mal. I’d like to remind everyone that mob AUs are not a new concept, so y’all can hop off my dick.
Chapter 1: King of the Underground
It’s not a route that she would normally take home after classes, but today, (Y/N) (Y/L/N) is running late. The maintenance man is supposed to be at her apartment to fix the kitchen sink in twenty minutes, and it will most assuredly be another week before he can repair it if she doesn’t get home to let him in. This shortcut, through alleyways and past abandoned buildings, is a tour of the dark underbelly of Washington D.C. It’s one that she doesn’t get to dwell on when running late; instead, she walks quickly and clutches her keys in her hand tightly, eyes up and darting back and forth vigilantly.
After taking this way home twice previously to today, (Y/N) quickly learned which alleys to avoid and which were safer to go down. The alley next to the butcher was safe, the stench of rotting meat causing even the most nefarious of characters to stay away. Bypassing the bridge meant she could dodge the junkies that traded drugs and needles there, and the abandoned set of warehouses were considered too “haunted” and “creepy” for most to venture into. With the rain that drenches the city today and (Y/N)’s lack of an umbrella, these deserted buildings provide the perfect cover as she tries to race home.
(Y/N)’s never seen another person in or around this empty strip, only mice and other small creatures. That’s why it’s so shocking when, as she walks quickly along the back wall, she hears voices from one of the rooms. Ducking behind a wall, she peeks in through a crack in the boards that had hastily been put up to cover a large hole.
It’s difficult for (Y/N) to comprehend what she’s seeing at first. A man with shaggy hair is on his knees, hands raised pleadingly in the air as he trembles. Others are positioned around the room, blocking exits and providing what she assumes is security. Security for what, she can’t be certain, since the most danger looks to be the man standing above what must be his prisoner.
“You seem to think that I’m some sort of idiot, Malakai,” the man with the artfully messy brunette hair says nonchalantly, as if he’s discussing the weather.
‘Malakai’ shakes his head furiously as he stutters, “No, sir, never!” The man in question walks a slow circle around his captive, teeth bared in a savage grin as he takes glee in the scared reaction that he evokes.
“Hmm, then why did you believe that it wouldn’t get back to me that you were attempting to make deals with people who are determined to take me, and my family, down?” The hostage pales, obviously not thinking he knew. “An amateur mistake; somebody makes a deal, and they foolishly believe that I don’t have eyes and ears everywhere around this city.”
“I-it was an accident, Mr. Shepherd, I promise.” (Y/N) slaps a hand over her mouth, stifling the gasp that threatens to force its way out.
She hasn’t lived in Washington D.C. her entire life, having only moved to the area for school. However, even somebody from the other end of the country would know the Shepherd family name. Although it’s never been said outright, it’s very much implied that the powerful family is involved in more than just politics. Their sudden prominence within the circles of the elite, the roots that spread everywhere, their influence on matters that don’t pertain to politics: it’s easy to make the inference that the Shepherds are involved in some “darker” activities.
(Y/N)’s heard rumors of what the Shepherd family is capable of. Drugs, weapons, disappearances, murder, and corruption are just the beginning of an extremely long list of grievances. This man, with his hand on his captive’s shoulder and a look that screams revenge, must be the head of the Shepherd family.
“An accident,” he teases, reassuming his previous spot in front of the man on his knees. “Unfortunately, you know all too well that we can’t have accidents.”
A gunshot cracks through the air, the bullet quickly and efficiently leaving a hole in the middle of ‘Malakai’s’ head. His eyes roll back into his head slowly as his body slumps forward, blood pooling from the wound on his head. The man who was doing the interrogating, Mr. Shepherd, glances disdainfully down at the blood before stepping back to avoid staining his shoes.
“I’ve told you time and time again that I don’t like a messy job, Langdon,” he calls to someone that (Y/N) can’t see.
If (Y/N) hadn’t just witnessed a murder, her first time ever seeing someone’s life taken from them, she would stick around to see who he’s talking to. She stumbles back in shock, unable to take her eyes off of the corpse lying on the other side of the repaired wall. Since she’s not looking, she doesn’t see the mouse that scurries over her foot. The shriek of fear that she attempts to hold back isn’t as muffled as she thought it would be under her hand, causing the heads of everyone in the room to snap up as they look for the source of the sound.
She holds her breath, hoping that the crack she was spying through is too small for somebody to look through if they’re not right up against it. Her heart, along with her hope, sinks when she makes eye contact with the pair of stormy blue eyes belonging to Mr. Shepherd.
“Shit,” he gasps.
She runs before her brain even realizes what she’s doing, sprinting faster than she can remember running in a long time. Footsteps pound behind her, the echoing sound ironically reminding (Y/N) of gunshots. Once she bursts outside, she immediately searches for an exit that will give her the best chance of evading a horde of murderers. Ducking down, she crawls through a large gap in the bottom of a chain link fence. Those chasing her aren’t deterred, and one quick glance over her shoulder (stupid, she thinks, you’re lucky you didn’t trip over your own feet) confirms that they’ve decided jumping the fence is easier.
(Y/N) skids to a stop when she sees that a brick wall blocks her path to freedom. Making a split-second decision, she climbs up onto the dumpster and jumps. Her hands make purchase on the lip of the brick wall, and she summons all of the upper-arm and core strength that she has to start pulling herself up and over. It’s a struggle, and she tries to keep her legs tucked to her chest to prevent whoever’s chasing her from grabbing at her. She’s underestimated how tall these men (or women) are, and shrieks when her nails claw at the brick as she’s yanked down from the wall.
Her head cracks painfully against the pavement as she’s unceremoniously thrown to the ground. Scrambling back on her elbows, (Y/N) stares up at the two burly men who have managed to get her before she could make it over the wall. Hoping that they’ll show her some mercy, she holds up her hands in an ‘I surrender’ gesture. The men look at each other for a moment, as if debating what to do with her, and (Y/N) watches them optimistically.
A swift punch to the face knocks her out.
//
She doesn’t jolt awake in one smooth movement, eyes wide and glancing fearfully around. Instead, conscious returns slowly for (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Like pieces of a puzzle being fitted together, the blackness that had enveloped her is replaced, bit by bit, by a state of awareness. She tries to move when she realizes that she’s awake, but her arms refuse. Cold bites at her wrists, the telltale weight of some sort of metal weighing her down. Although her neck aches when she turns her head, protesting after sleeping in such an awkward position, she looks down and notices that she’s handcuffed to a chair.
Blinking quickly to adjust her vision to the shadows that envelop everything, (Y/N) tries to steady her breathing and not panic as she catalogues the room. This definitely isn’t the same room where she saw a man murdered. It’s small, maybe 8x8, and everything’s made of concrete. The walls, the ceiling, the floors: the room looks to be the same flat gray color. A small cart sits in the corner of the room, the only other furnishing besides the chair (Y/N)’s currently bound to. She kicks her legs uselessly, huffing when she sees that they’re bound by rope. Not that her legs being freed would do anything, since the chair is bolted to the floor, but it would still be a bit of a comfort.
She doesn’t need a mirror to know that there’s blood on her face, probably from the punch that knocked her out. Her nose feels off, like it was broken when she was hit. Maybe it is broken; of course, that won’t matter if she’s killed in this small room.
Quick footsteps sound in whatever hallway connects to the room (Y/N)’s being held hostage in, making her stare at the door as she tries to figure out what’s going to happen. Will this person save her, free her from her binds and lead her out of this mess? Or will they end her life quickly, using whatever method this mafia decides to be quickest and easiest?
The bright fluorescent lights flicker on as the door opens, momentarily blinding her. The man that stands before her is tall, his all-black ensemble making him look even more imposing. Two others, a man and a woman, stand behind him (the security detail for these deadly mafia personnel is a little ridiculous). He moves towards her slowly, each move calculated in its fluidity. What scares (Y/N) about this man isn’t the knife that he slowly twirls between his fingers; it’s his cold blue eyes that are completely devoid of any emotion.
His long blond hair, expertly draped over his shoulders, shines as he teasingly drags the flat edge of his knife down her cheek with a chilling smile. “You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble for my boss, are you aware of that?”
“I promise you that I had no clue what was going to happen,” she says seriously, eyes wide and pleading.
“That’s funny, all the little mice seem to say the same thing when they’re caught in a trap,” he hisses, tapping her nose harshly to make her wince in pain. “Now, you’re going to tell me who you’re working for, or your nose is going to be the least of your worries.”
“I’m not working for anybody,” (Y/N) insists. He nods as if he understands, but she can tell he’s only humoring her once he rears his hand back and smacks her across the face.
Her ears ring as her vision whites out for a moment, leaving her unable to hear the cry of pain that rips from her chest. She’s bleeding, that much is obvious. The large rings on this man’s hand must have opened up a couple of cuts on her now-swollen lip. He smirks, tangling his fingers in her hair and yanking her head back.
“I don’t like to repeat myself, (Y/N).” She doesn’t have time to wonder how he knows her name when she notices the knife he’s holding is now pressed against her chest. “Who do you work for?”
“Nobody, I promise! I was running late to get home--” shit, the maintenance man must be long gone by now, “--and I took a shortcut that I always take when I’m late. I had never seen somebody in that strip of warehouses before, so I stopped to see what was going on. I didn’t know what was happening until that guy got shot.”
“Well then, this must all be one big misunderstanding.”
She nods gratefully. “Yes! Thank you so much, you have no clue--” a searing pain erupts above her eyebrow, and she groans in pain. Her eyesight goes blurry in her left eye, and it’s only when she blinks enough to see the red tint that she realizes she’s bleeding.
(Y/N) watches in disgust as he lifts his stained knife to his lips and cleans the blood off of it with his tongue. He hums delightedly, leaning in close enough that his breath stings the array of cuts. His hot tongue laves at the still-bleeding cut, sampling her blood until it finally clots.
“Mmm, you’re just my type,” he jokes. In the blink of an eye, his amused expression changes to one of anger as he slams his hands on the arms of the chair. “Tell me who you work for!”
“I’ve already told you!” She earns another smack to the face for that, blood dribbling down her chin as she grimaces.
“Langdon,” a voice sounds from the door that she hadn’t heard open, making (Y/N) jump in her restraints. The man that she saw interrogate his now-dead victim stands behind the blond, a hand rubbing at the stubble on his face. “What did I say about making messes?”
Langdon sighs, rolling his eyes. “But it’s just so much more fun when I get to spill a little blood.” Regardless of his personal feelings, he moves for the door when Mr. Shepherd gives him a pointed look.
(Y/N) glares at Mr. Shepherd as he examines her in silence once Langdon has left. The security, she notices with a sideways glance, remains posted against the door. He fiddles with the sleeves of his expensive leather jacket, and she hopes it’s her defiant look that’s making him show a trait very uncharacteristic to someone who’s supposed to be a mob boss.
“It’s a shame my associate felt the need to bloody up such a pretty face.” He goes to stroke his hand along her face, stopping when (Y/N)’s spit lands on his cheek. Chuckling, he shakes his head. “Now (Y/N), there’s no need to be so hostile.”
“Give me one good reason.”
He doesn’t speak, instead grabbing a key out of his pocket and unlocking the cuffs that bind her hands behind her back. They fall off easily with a quick shake of her wrists as she pulls them forward and rubs at the chapped skin there. Mr. Shepherd takes out a knife and kneels, cutting the ropes tying her feet together. It’s an obvious ploy at attempting to gain her trust, but it’s one that, she reluctantly admits, works.
He holds out his hand, “Allow me to properly introduce myself. Duncan Shepherd.”
(Y/N) eyes his hand warily, hesitantly shaking it before snatching her hand out of his grip. “I would introduce myself, but you seem to already know who I am.” She falters when Duncan Shepherd sheathes his knife, thrown off by this sudden change. “You’re not...going to kill me? Or you are, just not with that.”
“It wasn’t at all difficult to find out everything about you from a few simple background checks. I figured, either you’re telling the truth or you’re the worst informant my enemies have hired yet.”
“You couldn’t have checked my identity before you sent your goon to rough me up?”
“I apologize for that, but it’s just protocol. As you may imagine, my profession leaves very little room for leeway.” Duncan smiles at her, setting his hands on the arms of the chair in the same way that Langdon did mere minutes before. “You do know what my profession is, don’t you (Y/N)?”
“Vaguely,” she says dryly, peeved at how he insists on repeating her name. “I’m not too acquainted with the sort of business you’re involved in.”
“So I heard,” he smirks. (Y/N) tries to steady her thumping heart, which had decided it was off to the races when Duncan’s eyes, which she could see now were varying shades of dark and light blue that created a hypnotic combination, twinkled in the fluorescent light and his smile showed off the slight dimple on his cheek. How pathetic of me, just because he’s cute doesn’t mean he’s not a mafia boss. “You really shouldn’t take shortcuts through notoriously bad areas. You never know what kind of trouble you could get into.”
“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea.”
Duncan stands up straight, allowing (Y/N) to feel slightly more comfortable now that she’s not directly breathing the same air as he is. Frowning slightly, he turns to the security posted at the door and mutters something, the woman nodding and disappearing out of the door. (Y/N) and Duncan remain silent until she returns, a bowl of water and a clean towel in her hands. Taking the supplies from her, Duncan wrings the towel out and holds it out as an offering.
“Either you clean yourself up or I do it for you,” he says when he senses her reluctance, waiting expectantly until she finally gives in and grabs it from him. He watches her closely, examining every wince she makes as she tries to clean the blood off of her already-bruising face. “Hmm, now what do we do with you?”
The blood rushes out of (Y/N)’s face as her heart drops. “What do you mean? You know I’m telling the truth, so let me go.”
“I could do that, but you did witness a murder. Who’s to say that you won’t run to the police the second I let you walk outside?”
She wants to deny it and emphatically say that she would never do that, but they both know that would be a lie. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, (Y/N) thinks bitterly.
“The obvious answer, of course, would be to just kill you.” Duncan looks at her, taking pride in how she doesn’t even attempt to hide the fear on her face. “However, I believe you’ll be much more useful alive than dead.”
“‘Useful’ how?” Everything she’s seen in movies and TV shows about the mafia has her mind racing with the worst possible thoughts.
He ignores (Y/N)’s question, choosing instead to pull himself to his full height in some sort of a power move. “Prove to me that you won’t go to the authorities, and this whole matter will be forgotten.”
“How am I ever supposed to prove that to you?” (Y/N) asks hopelessly.
He shrugs. “We’ll find something that benefits the both of us.” At the horrified look on her face, Duncan shakes his head quickly. “No, nothing like that. I may be the head of one of the most influential families in Washington D.C., but I’m still a gentleman.”
“So then…”
“Think of it like running errands. Collecting dues, running product, gathering information on my behalf. You’d make a good little spy if you had the right training.” He goes to touch (Y/N)’s cheek, and she smacks his hand away belligerently.
“Don’t,” she warns. Duncan takes a step back, holding his hands up to teasingly show his harmlessness before he folds them behind his back.
“My associates will be in touch when we get something worked out.”
“Wait!”
Duncan ignores her call, instead motioning to his security to open the door for him. Before he makes his exit, he whispers something to the male guard. With one last nod of acknowledgement in (Y/N)’s direction, Duncan leaves her alone in the room again. This time, her vision isn’t cut off with a punch; it’s with a black cloth bag forced over her head.
//
Tag List: @sammythankyou @girlycakepops @ultragibbycentralworld @sebastianshoe @nana15774 @queencocoakimmie @lichellaw @grim-adventures58 @dandycandy75 @trimbooohgodplsnoooo @everything-is-awesomesauce @ccodyfern @jimmlangdon @omgsuperstarg @queenie435 @dextergirl12345 @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26 @kahhlo @storminmytwistedmind @1-800-bitchcraft @langdonslove @cuddletothecake @born-on-stgeorges-day @mega-combusken @michaelsapostle @hecohansen31 @venusxxlangdon @idespac @hexqueensupreme @divinelangdon @lvngdvns @wroteclassicaly @venusxxlangdon
#Duncan Shepherd#duncan shepherd imagine#duncan shepherd imagines#duncan shepherd x reader#hoc#hoc imagine#house of cards#ahs#american horror story#michael langdon#michael langdon imagine
301 notes
·
View notes
Text
... 𝓕𝓸𝓻 𝓦𝓸𝓻𝓼𝓮 𝓸𝓻 𝓕𝓸𝓻 𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓻
Grant and Matthew head to John’s house for Nic’s Valentine’s Party, and to share their big news. Considering their dating history, they’re less than sure it’ll go smootly. Grant Lyons/Matthew Rook, John Seed/Nic Raylan
| Pt 1 by @amistrio | Pt 2:
Grant Lyons stared at the double doors of John’s ranch. He and Matthew Rook had rang the doorbell nearly five minutes before, and considering it was mid-February in goddamn Montana, they were close to freezing due to the delay. And the elephant in the room - er, entryway, was getting heavier and heavier. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t a secret, he just wanted to let his best friend know that he was going to be a married man soon, and for once, the excitement was killing him. He sighed and knocked on the door again. “I know it’s Valentine’s, but y’all better not be fuckin’ in there considering you two are the ones that planned this party and decided on this time!” he called.
Matt glanced over at Grant. “... Considering we’re about a third of the police force altogether, if one of us gets murdered tonight do you think Whitehorse is gonna send someone to investigate?”
“No one’s gonna get murdered.”
“Are you sure? Because John-”
“Is a relatively stable individual-”
“Who’s about to have his current girlfriend and her best friend, who’s his ex, who’s dating his other ex, who just got engaged to said ex literally….” he checked his watch. “six hours ago, all under the same roof,” Matthew cut him off. “Hope County is too damn small.”
“I think that’s the hunger talking.”
“And the cold. And the excitement. But seriously, it’s too damn small. Everybody knows everybody. Who thought living like that would be okay?”
“Hey, you chose to stay here when Earl offered you a permanent spot.”
“I was motivated,” Matthew protested, though there was a teasing lit to his tone, and he grinned at Grant knowingly.
Grant paused, then smirked. “That’s really gay.”
“Yeah? Well…” Matthew leaned into him and Grant moved to meet him halfway - but naturally, that was right when the door opened.
Nicolette Raylan was on the other side, and she blanched upon seeing what she had interrupted. It didn’t last long. A moment later, a grin split her face. “Wow, that’s-”
“Grant already made the joke, don’t you dare,” Matthew cut her off before she could continue.
She didn’t miss a beat and immediately pulled him into a bear hug that he returned full force. She tossed an arm around Grant’s neck to pull him into it a moment later. “Hi! You guys are finally here! I missed you!”
“You saw us literally two days ago,” Grant pointed out.
“And I still missed you. Get in here.” She waved them inside, and they followed.
The great room was decked out in all pink, red and silver decor. There were streamers and balloons everywhere, there were streamers on the stuffed animal’s heads, the dining room table had a glitzed out runner with a bunch of plates on it, as did the coffee table, and the railing of the stairs leading to the hangar was wrapped in ribbon.
It had been the most ‘Nic’s influence’ thing they had ever seen in anything that belonged to John. Leave it to her to go all out when it was just going to be the four of them hanging out. Still, there was a strange charm to it all.
Nicolette didn’t let them take in the sight for long. She ushered them over to the dining room table where a bunch of food was laid out- different bread, cold cuts, heart-shaped baked goods that were decorated to the nines- Nic had clearly spared no expense in any of it. Grant took a sandwich and a couple of cookies, and Matt piled on every single dessert option onto his plate. When Grant offered him a skeptical smile, he shrugged. “What? We ate lunch already, and Nic worked hard on these, I’m partaking.”
“I meant save some for the rest of us, I mean damn,” Grant teased. He went for one of the brownies on Matthew’s plate.
Matthew stabbed his hand lightly with his fork in retaliation. “There are like twenty more, get your own!” he countered before he crossed back to the couch and sat down.
Grant did as Matthew requested then sat beside him.
Nicolette came back over to the pair of them. She gave Grant a glass of whiskey and a bottle of coke to Matthew, then sat in the chair adjacent to them.
“Where the Hell’s John?” Grant asked.
Nicolette checked her watch. “Should be back any minute. Had some legal trouble. Apparently, Larry’s threatening legal action against the Ryes because Carmina’s contrails are chemtrails and they’re trying to poison the county or something. He’s apparently trespassing on their property and trying to fiddle with the plane so John’s getting paperwork ready to keep him off the property and such. Kim told me everything.”
“Fucking Larry,” Matthew sighed, and the other two hummed in agreement.
They made small talk after that, catching up on cases, until the great room’s entryway doors opened up again.
John stepped through, and upon seeing the three of them smiling and laughing away. They all turned to look at him, and Grant and Matthew offered a quick wave and a “hi!” He looked back and forth between all of them, then sighed. “This… this is my nightmare. I’ve literally dreamt about this.” When Nicolette popped up from the couch to kiss him, he returned it, though still looked like he was in pain.
Grant scoffed. “Why? We’re all friends, it’s not like we’re killing each other. Or plotting to kill you.”
“Yeah, well, your dream selves aren’t that civil,” John fired back. He huffed and dropped onto the couch.
“Could be worse, could be comparing notes on how you are in bed,” Matthew pointed out.
“You guys could, we didn’t get that far,” Grant cut in.
Nicolette grinned behind her whiskey and coke. “And I already did that with Holly yesterday when we went to get coffee.”
“You what?!” John demanded.
Nicolette grinned. “All in good fun. She’s moved on, she’s with some Barry guy now. I mean, you are the most eligible bachelor in Hope County, you’ve dated what, half the people in the entire place from twenty-five to thirty-five?”
“You make it sound like there’s a support group for people who dated me,” John sighed.
“Well…” Matt shrugged, then looked at the gathered crowd pointedly.
John’s face fell, and Nicolette tutted and tucked her face into his neck. “You’re looking at it, you’re fine. It’s not like we’re much better.”
“Was I that bad?” John asked. When he was met by dead silence and the other three exchanging looks that were half apprehension, half conspiratorial, he scoffed. “Come on.”
Nicolette laughed. “We’re not doing this on Valentine’s Day,” Nicolette objected.
“Well, technically that only means you have to be nice,” Matthew clarified.
“And you started it, so fine, let’s hear it,” John countered.
Matthew sighed, realizing there was no way out of this, so he figured open the can of worms right quick, then weld it shut. He motioned at John. “You’re an overdramatic bitch. Nic can handle it because she’s also one.” He glanced her way, and then when she shrugged and nodded in agreement, he continued. “ I…could sort of deal with it, but had my own shit to deal with, and-”
Grant reached over and squeezed Matthew’s knee pointedly. “You’ve got a lot of stuff that can’t go unchecked and needs a lot of attention, some people aren’t up for that,” he cut him off. “I mean Hell, same with me. I have… a lot of shit to work through, so do you. There’s nothing wrong with that, but everybody deals differently. Hell, when we were a thing, same thing applied. I’ve had too much shit to work through to be there one hundred percent for you. There’s no shame in that, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to expect one hundred percent from me all the time,” he continued. “And then this one and that one came to town. Still had shit to deal with, but they deal better because there’s less to unpack, and they’ve got the personalities to take it head on. Listen, two majorly traumatic messes were doomed to fail. Put a less traumatized mess with each of them, you get this,” he motioned at himself and Matt, then at John and Nicolette. “Worked out just fine, didn’t it? Look at us now.”
John clenched his jaw but visibly considered the explanation, then Nic, the absolute hero that she was, lifted her glass to her mouth before firmly declaring, “Your mom’s a less traumatized mess.”
Thankfully that got a laugh from all of them and diffused whatever remaining tension there was. John, obviously the most bristled of the bunch, having realized that no, everybody’s grievances weren’t going to be aired and had been stuck into a relatively reasonable statement, turned to Nicolette with what had been said in mind. “I suppose it did.” When she squinted at him in return, he leaned forward to kiss her.
When it turned into two kisses, then three, then on, and what the other two thought was probably tongue getting involved, they simultaneously gagged overdramatically.
“Payback for earlier,” Nicolette countered between kisses.
“Oh, Hell no. We didn’t even make contact before. If anything, we need some payback. So,” he grabbed Grant, who had been snickering at the whole thing and yanked him forward into a kiss of their own - and maneuvered so he could toss his leg over Grant’s knees and scoot closer.
Matt was absolutely elated when Grant let out an exaggerated moan to boot to go along with it.
The other two finally broke apart.
“Oh, thank God, we were gonna have to ask you guys to get a room so we could have this party alone,” Matthew pointed out.
“It’s my house,” John protested. “Get your own damn room, you were further ahead than we were.”
“Yeah, where’s the fun in going as slow as you two? You don’t wanna drag the stuff out that much,” Matthew countered.
Nicolette laughed. “Oh, honey, it’s the other way around, do you really wanna ‘wham, bam thank you Man’ Grant after all he does for you?”
“I don’t have a single complaint, actually,” Grant cut in.
Matthew beamed, then flipped off Nicolette- and then stopped short when her answering grin dropped and her eyes went wide. Oh, right, the Elephant in the room.
Nicolette launched herself across the table so quickly even John looked panicked for a moment. He landed haphazardly on their entwined legs, and Grant scrambled to keep her upright when she nearly fell off the couch. She paid the fumble no mind. She grabbed Matt’s hand and held it up in order to look at the bright gold band that had found a home on Matthew’s ring finger. She gasped, then beamed and turned to Grant, then immediately punched him in the chest. “You ass! You told me you were gonna tell me before you did it so I could get pictures!”
“I - it was an in the moment thing, there was next to no planning,” Grant protested.
Nicolette squinted at him. “Liar. You just didn’t want an audience.”
His response was immediate... and devoid of regret: “I didn’t want an audience.”
She squinted at him, then scooted back so she slipped off of their legs and onto the empty part of the couch before she threw her arms around Matt and kicked excitedly. “I’m so happy for you guys, it’s about time!” She squeezed him harder. “Welcome to the family!”
Matt hugged her back. “Thank you, thank you.” She turned back around. “John! Say something!”
Grant waved his hand dismissively. “Leave him alone, this is probably super weird. We wanted to wait til things slowed down or Nic got sleepy and quiet before we told you guys,” he explained.
“No, it’s…” John sighed. “It’s fine, truly. Congratulations, and if you’d like, you’re welcome to use this place as a venue. As for why I got quiet there, well… why don’t you ask Nicolette why she’s wearing the only shirt she has that covers her collarbone?”
Matthew and Grant exchanged puzzled looks, then frowned at the woman herself, who grinned after a moment.
“Not to step on your moment, buuuut…” she reached down to take the necklace she had tucked into her shirt. Usually, it had the silver Rook chesspiece Earl had given her a few years back, the silver key ‘to John’s heart’ that he’d given her on their one year anniversary, but now there was a ring hanging between the two charms.
Grant looked from it, to her, to John with another grin forming on his lips. “You too?”
John shrugged. “First thing this morning. Must have been something in the air.”
“Congratulations,” Grant replied. “Both of you.” He laughed when Nicolette threw her arms around him again. He took another look at the ring. “That is a big rock.”
“Well, when your house is this big you can afford all that,” Matthew pointed out.
“Stop it,” Nicolette smacked him lightly, then immediately beamed and bounced in place again. “You know what this means, right?”
“We’re gonna get shown up announcing our engagement by you guys announcing it too anywhere we go?” Grant asked, then laughed when Nicolette smacked him.
“No. We’ll stay quiet for a while. Promise. Anyway: Double. Wedding,” Nicolette cut him off from further protest.
“Hell no!” Matthew called. “That’s our day. Again, I’m not getting shown up on our own damn day.”
“What, afraid I’m gonna look better than you?” she challenged.
Matthew promptly opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, then took a decidedly long drink of his coke.
Nicolette sighed dramatically, then leaned against him. “Fine. No double wedding…” she began and offered Grant a conspiratorial wink, to which he put his hands up at. “But promise me I can at least plan most of yours for you.”
“Not all of it,” Grant cut in.
She shrugged. “Suits at least. And color scheme. I’m not letting you guys have a wedding that’s as much of a design disaster as you two are.”
Matthew went to protest again, and when he heard John laugh and then saw the man raise his eyebrows in agreement, he sighed. “Fine. Deal.”
“And in case everything is booked up somehow, or my fiancee here claims it’s not good enough for you two, you’re welcome to this place for the service or reception,” John offered. “I mean, I could just help arrange it at Falls End church. Must look fabulous decorated for a wedding.”
“Where would decor that would fit your guys’ standards fit in that place?” Grant asked.
John shrugged. “Outside? Nice lattice, maybe get some doves, have ‘em fly everywhere.” He paused to consider. “Hell, crows could be a more fun contrast. Would fit you guys more.”
Grant laughed and shook his head. “Sounds like a chintzy disaster. No thank you.”
John shrugged. “Fair enough. Again, if you’d like my house, it’s open to you.”
Matt looked around. “We might take you up on that, on second thought. Grant’s uncles would lose their damn minds over this place.”
“It’s… not gonna be too awkward for you?” Grant asked. “I mean we made the joke about this party being your two exes who are dating and your current girlfriend, but hosting our wedding’s another story.”
John scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. “Contrary to… apparent popular belief, I can handle seeing my exes happy- and judging by how this is going, in the same room. It’s not bad at all, so repeating it will be fine. Despite my apprehension and what I said earlier, you’re two of my dearest exes, so I’d still like to do right by you.”
Grant smiled softly. “That’s mighty kind.”
Matthew nodded in agreement.
“Well, you’re both worth it. Even when you take pride in insulting me,” John answered.
“We love you too,” Matthew replied.
Nicolette looked between them all, then reached over in order to clap Grant and John on the knees. “Look at this, my boys, we’re all gonna be married soon. Oooooh, what if we did a honeymoon together? That would be okay, right?”
“Whitehorse would kill us,” Matthew pointed out. “We already did that joint vacation.”
“Nope, he’s caught in a checkmate because he’s gonna walk me down the aisle. He’s gonna be too giddy to say no to anything for at least a year after that,” Nicolette pointed out. She looked between them. “Pllleeeeeeeeaaaaaaasssssee?” she stuck out her bottom lip.
Grant looked at Matthew, who put his hands up. He made a mental note to stop doing that so Matthew would stop getting it from him. He sighed. “We’ll think about it. That work for you?”
“Yes!” Nicolette flicked his nose, then stood in order to go sit in John’s lap. She reached back and got her own nearly forgotten plate of food and held it so both of them could pick at it.
Grant rolled his eyes, then looked towards his boyfriend- fiance, now, he corrected, and the thought made his chest flutter- and raised an eyebrow.
“No, fuck you, this is still my junk food,” Matthew objected playfully. It took him all of ten seconds to relent and feed him one of the brownies. When Nicolette ‘aww’ed in response, he threw the piece that Grant had missed at her, then went back to eating.
Grant laughed too, then took Matthew’s distraction as an opportunity to simply watch him. He was happy, relaxed- something either of them didn’t get to feel often. He looked at the other two. Nicolette was always outgoing, always recharged by people around her being equally happy, but even John looked more at ease than he had seen him before. Whatever apprehension about having exes and his current love under the same roof had already ebbed away from the good news and energy in the place. It was… beyond nice. He still couldn’t believe it. Four souls in varying states of being lost had found each other, then love had gone and paired them off, but here they were, still strong as a unit- a family in its own right. And he had never felt so at home in his life, just sitting in their company as they chatted away. It was going to be an interesting, exhausting few months or years, however long they picked until the wedding, but with them, he could handle anything- and he’d love every minute.
#Deputy Grant#Deputy Matthew#Deputy Nic#Gatthew#Johnnic#weird tone change bc this started off as The Roast of John Seed#but then they were all too nice#moodboards
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Liars
Spider Stan AU Chapter 5
Hey guys, sorry it’s been a while, I’ve been distracted by other fandoms. Also trying to apply to Grad School again. As such, don’t expect the next chapter until after November.
It had only been a couple of days, but already Fiddleford was about ready to smack these brothers. They barely spoke to each other, and when they did, it was clear they were walking on eggshells. Every so often, either Stan or Ford would take a bitter tone with the other, and McGucket hoped they were on the brink of actually talking about their issues, but each time, it just resulted in a heated argument. Twice now, Stan had driven off in his car, and Ford had stormed out into the woods. Ford came back first, worrying that Stan had left for good this time. Each time Stan had eventually returned, murmuring that he knew Ford wanted to run more tests.
That was another thing that had been bothering McGucket. The tests they’d run the first day had been interesting, to be sure. Stan’s nervous system, his immune system, all of his senses, were faster than any normal human’s. But there was nothing to indicate that his mutation was continuing or that it had any ill effects on Stan. If anything, Stan was healthier than he should have been, considering his living conditions. But Ford insisted on running more each day. Testing the extent of Stan’s strength, his flexibility and reflexes, whether he could see in the dark, how he stuck to walls, anything, it seemed, that Ford could think of. Fiddleford couldn’t help but think this went far beyond just checking to make sure Ford’s brother wasn’t negatively affected by his mutation.
McGucket decided to air his grievances while he and Ford were alone, looking at some X-rays of Stan’s hands.
“Incredible! Look at this!” Ford pointed to some faint lines running between the phalanges and metacarpals, “Normally, in a human being, these muscles are vestigial, useless. But Stan’s mutation somehow enlarged and invigorated them. That must be how he can hold himself up just by sticking to a wall!”
“Well, that certainly is fascinatin’.” McGucket agreed. “D’you think it’ll lead to overcrowding with his other muscles? Arthritis? Carpal-tunnel?”
“Mmm, no. Stan’s hands are rather large and meaty. There should be plenty of room. And it actually lessens the stress on his joints.”
“I see....” McGucket nodded, making a mental note to try and replicate the effect on a robotic joint later. “Ford, don’t ya think this is beginnin’ to go well beyond jus’ lookin’ after yer brother’s health? It’s pretty clear he’s fit as a fiddle, heck, even more fit than yer average athlete!”
“Well… yes, but… there’s still more to do… to, uh, study the long-term effects…”
“Stanford, please, you gotta start bein’ honest with yerself. And with him!”
Ford flinched. “Him who?” he asked nervously.
“Your brother! Who else?”
“Oh. Of course. I-I mean…” the researcher huffed a short sigh. “I know, sooner rather than later, he’ll decide he’s had enough and leave. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can from him until then.”
“Well, he’s already left twice, and ya spent a good hour or so worryin’ he was never gonna come back.”
“Be-because if he leaves, we’ll lose a great research opportunity!”
“But he’s come back each time. Supposedly because he knows ya wanna run more tests on him.”
“Fiddleford, if you’re trying to make a point, would you please just get to it?”
“Alright, fine! You two keep dancin’ around yer issues, pretendin’ like yer jus’ here fer the sake of science, but it’s pretty obvious yer both hopin’ that somehow bein’ in the same place long enough is gonna somehow make everythin’ right. But it ain’t! Nothin’ about whatever bad blood you two got betwixt y’all is gonna get solved unless ya both sit down an’ talk. An’ I mean really talk, not jus’ yellin’ or bein’ passive-aggressive all the time.”
Ford was taken aback by his friend’s bluntness. He spluttered for a solid thirty seconds before finally shouting, “It is incredibly presumptuous of you to make assumptions as to why I choose to keep my brother around, let alone deem yourself qualified to offer me advice on how to conduct my own family matters! And while we may be old friends, I shouldn’t have to remind you that while you are here you are technically my employee. As such, keep your overly-large nose out of my personal business!”
“Personal business!? I’m the one who has to live with both of ya!” Fiddleford retorted, then stormed out of the lab.
“I’m not forcing you to stay here!” Ford shouted after him. “You could get a room at the motel if it bothers you that much!”
McGucket’s raging mood quickly dissipated as he took the elevator back up to the main floor. He hadn’t had an angry outburst like that in a while. He wasn’t nearly as short tempered as those Pines twins, but even the mild-mannered inventor just lost his cool sometimes.
“Good to see I’m not the only one he has shouting matches with.” Stan commented from the chair sitting in front of the TV when McGucket passed. Oh right. Enhanced senses, including hearing.
“How much did you hear?” Fiddleford asked.
“Eh, more the volume than actual words.” Stan shrugged.
McGucket briefly considered telling Stan how much Ford had worried each time he left, telling him exactly what he’d told his brother. But Fiddleford had a feeling Stan would have a very similar reaction, except the con man’s temper was even worse than his brother’s.
Instead he settled for a beleaguered “You two’re gonna drive me off the deep end.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for Ford to regret his words. Sure, he was mad that McGucket would try and wheedle his way into the brothers’ issues when the inventor clearly didn’t understand the complexities of their relationship, or the extent of the betrayal Ford still felt. But the inventor’s heart was in the right place, and he was the one who had to live with the feuding twins. And while Ford had been truthful in telling Fiddleford he was free to leave, that certainly didn’t mean Ford wanted him to go. Just the opposite, in fact.
Stanford had never felt lonely after moving out to the woods of Gravity Falls, oh no. He’d kept far too busy exploring and studying for that. But after Fiddelford had moved in, the researcher found he preferred his friend’s company to solitude.
Of course, if McGucket were to move out now, Ford would not be returning to solitude. He’d be sharing his cabin with Stanley.
Stanford decided he really needed to apologize to Fiddleford.
The researcher hastily put away the x-rays and the other print-outs he’d be going over and rushed into the elevator. He hummed impatiently as it creeped back up to ground level. Once he reached the kitchen, he rummaged around the pantry until he found a can of those baked beans McGucket liked, heated it up over the stove, and began searching for his roommate so he could extend the peace offering.
He found McGucket just as the researcher was finishing a conversation over the phone.
“...Uh-huh. Yeah, I’ll leave as soon as I can. See ya soon. I gotta go sugar.” He said when he saw Ford enter the hall. “Love ya.” He hung up the phone.
“You’re leaving?” Ford asked, trying not to sound hurt. He’d known his harsh words would probably come back to bite him, but he hadn’t expected it to be so soon!
“Uh, that’s right…” Fiddelford began awkwardly. “I jus’ spoke with Emma-May an’--”
“Fiddleford, I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have yelled, and I certainly shouldn’t have insinuated you might be fired, or insulted you. But please, don’t leave!” Ford pleaded. “I’ll admit, the situation with Stanley is volatile, but that’s why I need you here now!”
“Calm down, calm down!” McGucket placated him. “I ain’t leavin’ fer more’n a few days. I was tryin’ to tell ya, Emma-May’s sick, an’, well, she needs me to come take care of Tate ‘til she gets better.”
“O-oh.” Ford squeaked out once his mind processed what his friend was saying. McGucket was leaving, but it wasn’t because he was mad, it was because of a family emergency. That was almost worse. Ford could try and apologize or talk his friend out of it if he was mad, but the researcher couldn’t, wouldn’t, try and stop his friend from taking care of his family.
“What’s goin’ on?” Stan peeked into the hall, checking to see what all the commotion was about.
“Oh, uh, I was just tellin’ Ford I gotta head back home to help take care’a things while my wife’s sick.”
Stan scrutinized McGucket carefully, taking in his expression and stance, before glancing at Ford briefly. “Uh-huh.” the con-man grunted.
“So, I’ll be leavin’ soon as I get packed. Are… are you gonna be fine here, just the two of ya?”
“Sure, mom.” Stan rolled his eyes.
“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” Ford folded his arms defensively.
“That’s not really what I’m worried ‘bout.” McGucket muttered under his breath. “Oh! Are those baked beans?” He exclaimed, like he’d only just noticed the pan Ford was carrying, “I think I’ll go eat these before I pack.”
With that, the inventor made his way to the kitchen, leaving the two brothers alone, with the fact that they were about to spend a lot more time alone together hanging over them.
Stan shook his head. “He’s a bad liar.” he said as soon as McGucket was out of ear-shot.
“What!?” Ford spluttered. “He’s not--”
“Just callin’ it as I see it.”
“He’s coming back!” the researcher insisted, even as his own thoughts doubted “He wouldn’t just leave…” He wouldn’t just leave me like this.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough.” Stan agreed. “But his wife ain’t sick.”
“Oh, and is that another thing your ‘Spider Sense’ can detect?” Ford asked sarcastically. Ever since Stan had interrupted one of his visions with Bill, the researcher didn’t have a high opinion of that particular ability.
“Nah. You lie enough, and you get pretty good at tellin’ when other people are doin’ it. If his wife was really sick, you’d think he’d be a lot more concerned. I mean, you’ve mentioned he has issues with anxiety, but he doesn’t seem all that anxious about it. He did seem keen on gettin’ out of here before we could ask him more questions about what’s wrong with her.”
“I think that if you lie enough, you start to assume everyone else must be lying too.” Ford said icily. Although he couldn’t help but remember a time a few years back when Fiddleford had gotten news his mother was sick. His poor friend had been so worried, he’d barely eaten the day he got the news.
“Whatever.” Stan harrumphed and turned back down the hall. “Honestly, I can’t blame the guy for wantin’ a break from all of this.” He gestured back and forth to himself and his brother. “Anyway, I’m gonna go see if there’s any of those baked beans left.”
* * *
That night, Ford had a hard time falling asleep. Stan’s wrong. He kept telling himself. But a part of him couldn’t help wondering, But what if he’s right? What if all this tension with Stan is driving Fiddleford away? What if he doesn’t come back?
When he finally did fall asleep, Ford was glad to find Bill waiting for him. He could really use a little help from a friend right now.
“HUH, YOU’RE LATER THAN USUAL. I DON’T THINK YOU’VE HAD THIS MUCH TROUBLE FALLING ASLEEP SINCE THE HAUNTED CABIN.”
“Sorry, I’m just really stressed right now, what with everything that’s going on with Stan and McGucket.”
“HEY, I WARNED YOU BRINGING YOUR BROTHER BACK HERE WOULD BE BITING OFF MORE THAN YOU COULD CHEW.”
“It’s not.” Ford said defensively, “I mean, yes, I’m a little more stressed than usual, but I can handle it.”
“OH SURE.” Bill rolled his eye, “THAT’S WHY YOU’VE KEPT WORKING ON THE PORTAL, OH WAIT! YOU HAVEN’T! AND NOW THE GUY WE NEED TO ACTUALLY START THE BUILDING PROCESS IS LEAVING!”
“That’s unfortunate, yes, but it’s not McGucket’s fault. His… his wife’s sick.” Ford explained, although there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“YEAH, NO. YOUR BROTHER MAY BE AN UNTRUSTWORTHY LEACH, BUT HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING. FOUR-EYES WAS LYING TO YOU.”
“Hey, Stan’s not--”
“OH, ARE YOU SAYING I’M WRONG? ME? THE ALL-SEEING EYE?”
“No, of course not!”
“HERE, I’LL SHOW YOU!”
Bill’s yellow bricks flickered like a television screen, and suddenly Ford was watching McGucket’s conversation on the phone earlier, from the perspective of one of the many effigies of Bill he had hanging in the house.
“Hey sugar, it’s me!” Fiddleford began the conversation. “Yeah, things’re, uh, things’re goin’ great here. But, you’ll never believe what happened last week! We were in Portland, doin’ some, er, some research, an’ guess what? Stanford ran into his twin brother!”
He paused and listened to her reply. “Yeah, he don’t talk ‘bout it much. They ain’t seen each other in over ten years. Anyway they, uh, need some time to re-connect, So I’m gonna head home, jus’ so’s I can give ‘em some space fer a bit.”
Another pause. “Aw, naw, Ford said it’s fine! I don’t think it’ll be a problem! And besides, this way I’ll be home fer Tate’s first spring break!”
“...Uh-huh. Yeah, I’ll leave as soon as I can. See ya soon. I gotta go sugar.” He said when he saw Ford enter the hall. “Love ya.”
Ford shook his head in disbelief. “I-I don’t know what to say…”
“WHAT’D I TELL YA, FORDSY? I’M THE ONLY ONE YOU CAN TRUST!”
On one hand, he was hurt that his friend would lie to him like that, but on the other, it was clear that poor Fiddleford just wanted to spend some time with his family, and Ford could hardly begrudge him that. All the same, there were those same thoughts that had been keeping him up earlier, only here in the Dreamscape, they echoed around him in surround-sound.
It’s my fault. I’m driving him away, all because I can’t get along with my own brother!
“AW, DON’T FEEL SO BAD, SIXER!” Bill patted him on the back comfortingly. “IF THIS IS ANYBODY’S FAULT, IT’S YOUR DUMB BROTHER. HE’S THE ONE WHO BARGED BACK INTO YOUR LIFE JUST WHEN WE WERE ON THE BRINK OF CHANGING THE WORLD.”
“I know you don’t like me spending so much time studying Stan’s mutation. But it’s so incredible! We’ve only just scratched the surface of what he’s capable of! I know with just a little time and training, he could even help us build the portal!”
Bill didn’t look convinced. “FORGIVE ME IF I’M NOT SOLD ON BRINGING THE GUY WHO SMASHED YOUR SPIDER HABITAT TO SMITHEREENS INTO CONTACT WITH THE DELICATE WORKINGS OF A TRANSUNIVERSAL PORTAL.”
Ford frowned. “I know, but… but ever since I learned that Stan’s the Spider Man, I’m beginning to think… maybe he’s changed.”
“HA!” Bill laughed sharply. “I NEVER TOOK YOU FOR A SENTIMENTAL FOOL, STANFORD!”
“I’m serious!”
“I KNOW! THAT’S WHY IT’S SO HILARIOUS!” But Bill noticed Ford wasn’t taking this not-so-good-natured ribbing well. “HEY, DON’T LOOK SO SERIOUS, IQ, IT’S JUST THAT YOUR HUMAN SENTIMENTALITY IS SO FAR OUTSIDE MY PRIORITIES. IF YOU’RE SO DEAD-SET ON IT, GO AHEAD AND INCLUDE YOUR BROTHER IN ON THE PROJECT. EVEN IF HE DOES MESS THINGS UP AGAIN, YOU’VE GOT ME FOR DAMAGE CONTROL THIS TIME.”
“Thank you, Bill, I’ll do my best to make sure Stan doesn’t cause too much trouble.”
* * *
Once again, Stan woke in the middle of the night, his Spider Sense twinging. He was really getting tired of this. Not wanting another wild goose chase like his first night here, the conman tried just sitting quietly and concentrating on the unfamiliar sensation. It was so unlike his usual Spider Sense, and yet… somehow he knew it was the same sense.
Maybe this was a newly developing power, like Ford had predicted. Unfortunately, waking Ford in the middle of the night seemed to have ticked him off so much that now Ford didn’t want to hear anything about the Spider Sense. And McGucket had left earlier that evening. So Stan was going to have to figure this out on his own. Ha. That wasn’t any different from his other powers.
As Stan sat focusing on the strange sensation for a few minutes, he finally though he could place a direction to it. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, but there was definitely one direction where it was the strongest. It was coming from downstairs.
Stan followed the sensation as quietly as he could, which was pretty darn quietly. It led him to Ford’s bedroom.
“Oh no, we’re not doin’ this again.” Stan muttered to himself. Ford had been mad enough the first time. Twice in one week, and he was sure to be kicked out. But still, he couldn’t help wondering what was going on. Was Ford in some kind of danger? Or maybe… Ford was the danger?
“Great, now my Spider Sense is trying to protect me from emotional harm.” Stan grumbled to himself as he climbed the wall back up to the attic.
* * *
Dbae’k rwou se apfleqnx dtirj. Swt tyw xwrv jpisff ew gvl cqd fx sqm. Sme pon lz oek Ktfei lz bhigh bhzk mqg Dsnseiww jatc tvtf lsm svs?
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Peter Parker x Reader in College would include
Reader x Peter Parker in College would include ! (For sake of this the rooms in said dorm are like apartment style)
•okay so y’all live in the same dorm bc coed!dorms for the win
•he like lives on the floor above you and you always hear a window open and a loud thud in his room at night anywhere from 12 am-3 am
•so one day u go to like air out ur grievances or whatever bc u were TRYING to study for an exam or whatever and this was the 5th night in a row this shits happened, and at this point you’re not really so much mad as concerned? with the person who lives above you and it so happens to be peter who is a super cute boy in ur principles of chemistry class who sits 2 rows in front of u
•anyways so like you go up there and he apologizes for being noisy and introduces himself and then like a week passes and
•one day ur like asleep or whatever and all of the sudden you hear a window open and a thud, and you think it’s coming from above you until you realize that it’s YOUR window and you think someone broke in or something? and scream but then you realize it’s Spider-Man? Without the mask...wait it’s PETER?
•simultaneous “WHAT THE FUCK” and “oh no mr. stark is going to KILL me” followed by a “you can’t tell anyone!”
•”so you’re spider man.... I always wondered why you would be sneaking in to your dorm room at 3 am ya know with the lack of curfew and parents and all...”
•anyhow u ask him all about his superhero alter ego and he goes on and on answering all your questions because at this point what does he have to lose
•anyways you two form a sort of friendship and sometimes he’ll see that the light in ur room is on and come and hang out w you and you guys just stay up for hours talking about nothing
•you guys hang out a lot and do chem homework and complain because frick chemistry ur professor is the actual worst, but peter makes cute little science puns all the time that u pretend to hate
•y’all start hanging out outside of ur dorm room like u go on cute little “friendship dates” and your friends become his friends and his friends become your friends
•so like u and ur friends have little mini parties in the dorms on the hush hush because y’all aren’t 21 yet and there is alcohol bc like college
•so during one of these parties you’re all drunk from playing endless rounds of flip cup/kings/etc. and you go to get peter another drink and he goes “Ned if I die...it is 100% y/n’s fault....I expect lawsuits!” (This is an actual quote from one of my friends) anyhow continuing on
•peter spills his drink on the counter “it kills the germs off, if anything im doing this counter a service!”
•anyhow
•y’all are just some sexually frustrated college kids and like you both obviously like each other, at least ‘obviously’ to everyone around you
•so like one day ur hanging out doing hw together in ur room and peter is needed to be spider man and it’s like a really bad battle and he comes back pretty wounded and u just like lose it because he could have DIED and u inform him of said information
•and ur all frantic or whatever and then he grabs ur face and tells you it’s fine and he’s there and he’s alive and then u just say fuck it and kiss him bc he’s literally holding ur face like how could you not seize the opportunity
•he kisses u back OBVIOUSLY
•y’all decide to start dating but keep it on the DL from ur friends just too see how long you can keep it a secret
•only lasts 2 weeks
•you’re all hanging out having one of ur mini parties and peter comes like 30 min late and ur sitting on the couch and peter just pecks u and u both freeze and everyone just stares at you
•”surprise?”
•no one is shocked....they all start talking about the bets they made on how long it would take for u to get together
#peter parker x reader#peter parker imagine#tom holland imagine#tom holland x reader#peter parker#tom holland#imagine
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Lena Luthor x reader (I think I was made to love you; tell me it’s true)
Request: " you touch her , I kill you " and " you act like you're the bad boy , but you're not " with lena
a/n: y’know what this apparently calls for?? PINEY CHILDHOOD FRIENDS TO LOVERS TIME. BECAUSE I’M IN THE MOOD FOR LIKE, the smallest amount of angst and I just wanted to suffer through it. Because like, imagine Lena interacting with someone who has just as much of a guilt complex as she does... HOPELESS.
I was definitely in some sorta mood... really couldn’t tell you why. I shall take this prompt and run with it! It’s a little cute and dumb. I was like, probably at the half-way mark of this before I looked at it all and went wtf are you even talking about? LOL, but I’ve finished it, so I’m definitely happy about it. I figured there’s not enough campy, YA-esque romance stories starring you as the useless protagonist, so I just HAD to do this... there was no other way lol. This one’s a bit of a monster. Hope y’all like it, and I hope the wait was worth it!! Thank you so much for reading :D
- - - - -
Throughout most of your formative years, you were always underestimated. Your teachers would first look at you on the first day of school every year and even at your young age, you could tell they were eyeing you with some level of wariness and suspicion.
You’d always taken great pleasure in proving them wrong, proving to be not the troubled delinquent they thought with unfailing frequency you would surely be, nor no more than the above-average student either.
You simply just were, and for so often in your life you merely drifted through and participated when it was really demanded of you.
As such, your parents and whoever else decided to give a damn whenever they so happened to remember you would comment on your penchant for underachieving, would state their desire for you to do more, to do better, and this was a surefire way to antagonize you more than you’d care to show.
It was the principle of the thing, really - to think they’d know you well at all to make such valuations like that, as if they had any real sway in shaping you into the person you are now; that annoyed you to no end.
The only thing you could say with confidence that any significant person in your life contributed to your personality was your disgruntled irritation at most figures of authority.
You attributed your affinity for letting most things simply wash over you to them as well - you’ve spent a good portion of your life letting half-baked words of love and affection fall on deaf ears, the pressure and expectation of achievement and this sole importance it held with your parents, and their legacy, and the shame that you weren’t as invested in doing good for the family as they wanted you to be was just begging for you to deflect with cynicism.
You wouldn’t say it made you apathetic, you would rather say it made you jaded and pragmatic. If you could achieve things in a way that was the total opposite of your current disposition and act out of the sheer force of spite rather than deflate with self-sabotaging indifference as is your natural reaction, you would certainly have chosen that instead.
All things considered, this surely lent itself to the ever-evolving mystery that was your entire relationship with Lena Luthor, and you always wondered just how it was you landed yourself into a role in her life; even more so, you wondered just how it was you even got to call yourself anything of hers at all.
Lillian hated the idea of you, that much was clear to you as you grew into your teenage years, and you think this was part of the allure of you that drew Lena in instantly.
Despite this, you didn’t mind at all, even when so often people using you for whatever reason or another that aggravated you, you could say with startling certainty that you have not once in your life harboured anything close to animosity when it came to Lena.
Somehow, it was just different when it came to her, and though you knew you started off a little bit as a pawn in her teenage rebellion, it came to the point where you ended up being so much more than that anyway, and that’s what counted to you.
You always knew where you stood with Lena, and you appreciated that. For all her antics and her mind games to vex her mother, you still knew who you were to her, and you took comfort in your part.
You’d spent most of your afternoons with her the summer before she left for boarding school, watching as she swung herself on the swing at the park and leaned backwards to look at your mildly confused expression.
She laughed when she called out to you, telling you to join her and watch the clouds do gymnastics as she flew upside down.
You grinned then, not able to resist the amusement evident on her face so you sat yourself on the other swing and pushed yourself, rushing for momentum to catch up with her height, but she was always just a little bit higher than you.
Your protests and grumblings chased after her; her wonderful, youthful laughter ringing through the park at your grievances and sure, you may have stared a little bit too long at her head tilted back in glee, laughter tumbling from her lips like an untamed musical score.
You hadn’t admitted it then, but as much as the rippling, afternoon sun warmed your skin, there was something about her smile that did the same to your heart.
She was infectious, and you smiled whenever Lena laughed, and back then that didn’t cause you much alarm.
And so it was, somewhere along the way you gave Lena much of your heart, and whatever she felt, you felt too. So when she cried that last week of August before the inevitable week of radio silence enforced by her mother as the last-shot attempt to reign Lena in, you got a little misty-eyed too.
She’d hugged you at the park that last day and held onto you like no kids your age should have any right to; with the level of desperation and unnamed fear in her eyes that now, you think was unfair for her to ever know then.
She stayed in your arms and sniffled into your sweater, tears wetting your shoulder as you kept her there and stood only at a slight loss for words. And with the expected passion and fervency of any daughter of a Luthor could muster, she demanded your staying presence in her life, made you promise explicitly to keep in touch, and she in turn would write to you always and, you’d better write her back!
Lena had asked, and she’d cried, and she’d muttered soft mumblings that were muffled by her tearsoaked solace in your shoulder, and you think that alone was her covenant.
She’d asked you and made you promise, as if you would make any other choice that would lead you away from her; you matched her ardour with your own promises, and reassured yourself as you reassured her.
Even after you watched her walk away to the big Luthor manor on her own - knowing you couldn’t accompany her - you felt a little bit taller, a little bit like a giant, and you’ve resolved that it made a little god out of you.
You puffed your chest out and walked back to your house with your head held high, only letting it fall when you laid to rest, and only in some muted prayer as you ducked your head at your desk that night, already writing the first letter to her in the dimmed lighting of your bedroom before she was even gone.
(You couldn’t sleep; you couldn’t fall asleep without writing first, and you think in a way, it felt a lot like talking to her before you closed your eyes, and you quite liked that very much.)
So that’s what you did; you wrote to Lena everyday. For every day of your high school life, as inconsequential and trivial as the day could have been or for as eventful and triumphant, you told her everything, refusing to forget anything.
But as much as she was just as happy to reply to your bulk of letters in one giant reply of her own, you think she may have been holding back, and honestly how could you have blamed her?
Somewhere in your sophomore year of high school, you stopped hearing about all the other girls at Lena’s boarding school or of her excitement of the things she’s learning and found yourself reading her description of the sky as she saw it at that very moment, somehow able to hear her voice and how her mouth might have ticked upwards in a little smile as she wrote about the pretty colours of dusk, or like how quiet her voice gets when she’s on the tail end of some poetic rumination and it’s one of those things you let slide, opting not to tease her about the things she says this time.
She talked about what was around her often, and you took notice of the way she nearly stopped describing her own life or her experiences in a way that was once candid and earnest that she did when you were together, but you figured that was just growing up.
You liked the way Lena described her world; you thought as you read her gradually contemplative paragraphs that she’s really grown up, and you were happy for her.
In junior year, you got a letter from her - the first one in two weeks - and it stuck with you as a defining moment for reasons you hadn’t understood then and are only beginning to realize now; it was a distinct turning point in your young life, and it was just one of many crossroads in your path in which you could have walked the other way, but did not.
You had become privy to the demands of life; you understood that life had its moments and you were demanded to be present for them - with this knowledge, you were still just as excited to be receiving anything from Lena at all as you were the very first time you’d gotten your first letter from her.
In her letter, she’d described a book she was reading for her English class, and said nothing much of it apart from mentioning how she thinks you’d have loved that book, that she knows you wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it even after you’d left class, and it was in that moment - with all the years you’d spent in high school - it was in that moment when it really struck you just how much you missed Lena.
So it went, you wrote to her and she wrote back. You graduated senior year and you were set to go off to National City University. You’d left home without much fanfare - it was what was expected of you, after all, and you spent the drive there with your parents in silence and spared one quick goodbye before they left you to your own devices seemingly for real this time.
Throughout your time in high school, you wrote to Lena every day. You told her nearly everything you were willing to admit - there were some letters you just didn’t send; they didn’t feel right, there was something missing, always it felt like the entire thing was off, and it was another day passed until the next time you’d get to hear from her.
You didn’t think you’d forgotten to mention anything, but you felt a lack of something integral in the words you were saying, and you’d stopped trying to figure out what exactly it was and just didn’t say them at all.
As often as she’d write to you and reply to your long-winded ramblings and excited rants, you think she may have been holding back, and could you really have blamed her?
You were holding back too.
You tried not to think too much about how much less Lena seemed to be when she wrote to you. You don’t think about how quickly the thought comes to you that you could read her so easily in the words she’s written and the things she hasn’t said.
You tried not to think about how it might have been a long time coming, how it may have started somewhere in high school, and you really think to sift through your hundreds of letters from her to define the exact moment she started seeming dimmer, but you don’t do it.
Somehow, with those flimsy sheets of paper in your hand, she seemed heavier, and you didn’t know how to broach that with her... so you didn’t.
You didn’t hear from Lena about her relationship with Jack Spheer - who were you to demand that expectation from her?
You loved Lena enough to take what she’d give you, and you’d never asked much from her.
You heard it first from a gossip column; oddly enough, you stumbled upon it in your Twitter feed seemingly accidentally, and you felt neither the sting nor the ache of ignorance; it just was what it was.
It was in one letter you figured it out, screaming out at you from within her neatly scrawled sentences.
Lena told you excitedly with the same determination and invincibility of sheer will you’d only seen in your childhood and so seldom the past few years of your young adulthood that she was going to find the cure to cancer, and that a boy named Jack was working with her to do it - it was at this very moment that you finally understood that she was in love.
You got it, dear god, did you get it. You remembered your fondest memories of Alicia, a past girlfriend from your second year of university who asked nothing of you but for your own happiness, whatever it may have been; she compelled you to become a better man.
She made you feel both parts resolute and infinite; you could have walked to the ends of hell and back just to be good for her.
For the entirety of your relationship with her until the very end, Alicia made you feel impossible. She made you feel like you could do anything. And in the irony of it all, you couldn’t be what she needed you to be.
She taught you everything that you didn’t know had to be taught; she showed you how to fight well and how to make up just as well. She taught you how to apologize and how to comfort someone who didn’t cope in the way you were so familiar with. She taught you things you just couldn’t know on your own, and you figure that’s just why you’ve come to the end of your learning with her.
You’d hoped you taught her just as much - she’d said rather often how you were a stabilizing force in her life. She was a girl who loved life and she never kept anything to herself; whether it was her love, her goodness, or her fury, everyone around her would feel it and know about it.
Alicia was a girl who was so into her world, and she loved everything with unparalleled passion as much as she fought with that same level. You hadn’t thought much of it then, but in retrospect, you think you grounded her. You calmed her in a way she may have been wary of before you, but you think now, she can take that bravery with her long after you.
You loved her, and you broke up mutually one late Thursday night, crying in each other’s arms and flitting back and forth from ending it to just hanging on a little bit longer, back to ending it again.
Hours had passed and you both finally accepted the end for what it was; it was too late for her to go back home and neither of you were quite ready to say goodbye - you let her sleep in your bed while you curled up in the loveseat at the corner of your dorm until morning.
And so you thought, if Alicia did the impossible and showed you that you were a man who could be a worthy partner, that you could be someone who was just as meaningful as an individual as well as a second half of a relationship, that you could be expected to do things that weren’t in your own interests and not at all feel as small as you often did when you were around your family, then Lena Luthor could very well cure cancer.
In no uncertain terms, you thought about how fantastic it was that she had something, that she was revived with the excitement you were convinced had been lost to her, and at the same time you tried so ardently to ignore how messy and selfish you truly were in your reluctance to concede to her statement, that she was going to cure cancer.
You tried in vain to ignore how the simple innocence of her admission felt a lot like a stab in the gut - there’s meaning in her words where it may not have been intended to be at all, maybe you were reading into your feelings too deeply and were overreacting to her seemingly flippant behaviour at the veiled confession.
Any way you put it, you were still the world’s biggest asshole for reacting like shit when Lena, your first and longest friend, tells you she’s going to cure cancer, and you were the world’s biggest asshole because the only thing you took from the pure goodness of her noble intentions is that she was in love, and you wondered why you were being such a dick about the whole thing.
You tried so hard to ignore the ugliness of your feelings; how mixed and troubled and menacing they were. You tried to ignore the poetic implications of Lena’s words and thought nothing else of the matter.
You wrote your letters to Lena, and she wrote back to you. You became less excitable about your routine of checking your mailbox, thinking you would hear less from her then.
And even still, surely as your luck would have it, it would be that very moment in life where she’d begin writing more to you unprompted and with growing frequency again, and who could have blamed you if you were just the slightest bit happy to fall into your anticipation of her letters - that she actually wants to talk to you and is seeking you out?
You passed your classes with high seventies, maybe mid-eighties if you were really trying to work hard, you had your casual dalliances with girls who expected nothing much from you, and with whom you expected nothing less.
It was easy, and it didn’t require much thinking on either of your ends and there were very minimal feelings to be dealt with. All the girls were such pleasant, different characters, ones who you knew for a fact will find an equally lovely person to take home to their parents eventually; and you took comfort in that, in the definitive lack of commitment.
You found the years you spent at university flew by somehow, even with your degree in hand, graduated with honours from the English program at NCU, you couldn’t truly wrap your mind around the fleeting reality of time.
It all came to a screeching halt when Lex Luthor was finally put up for 37 consecutive life sentences for his incessant rampage against Superman - mass casualties of citizens lined up to fill vacant graves. Metropolis had become a city fraught with an internal war, and everyone had something to say about the political, cultural, and emotional implications of the entire debacle.
You heard nothing from Lena throughout the ordeal. You thought you ought to reach out to her, and how badly you wanted to say the right thing - how much you’d scrapped, drafted, rewritten, and tossed out your endlessly rephrased sentiments of the same iteration: I’m here for you if you need me.
How utterly small and useless it seemed - the mere simplicity of your words and their very real, profound candour felt nothing more than a Hallmark greeting card whenever you felt resolved to send it to her... and you hated it.
More and more time passed you as you struggled with something of significance to tell Lena in the face of her darkest hours. You’d stopped getting letters from her a long time ago, and it was entirely out of the question to just text her your heartfelt sentiments right under your previous thread of text messages that saw you two bickering over the question of peanut butter and bananas as an actual sandwich.
You thought it was beyond reason to send her an email, how impersonal and disturbingly intrusive you ought to be to send such a personal, earnest remark to her inbox - so you didn’t.
Eventually, you opted for the most singlehandedly stupid solution you could have possibly chosen and resolved on saying nothing.
You, selfishly, thought to yourself that Lena should know you well by now, that she should know that you would be there for her and that you’ve always been there for her and surely, always will be, and that you weren’t going anywhere if she needed you.
Lena, being tasked with the impossible task of mindreader from your emotionally stunted, painfully useless ass, said nothing in return, and you took the easy way out and took this nothingness as affirmative to the truth that she didn’t need you.
You don’t bother her then; whatever you heard on the news is what you got, just like anyone else.
Lena Luthor was nothing more than a familiar stranger to you. And still, you think that’s no better than anyone else in National City either, how they all seem to have some opinion about her - you were no different from anyone else.
You thought you were definitely to blame in some small part to this great disservice to the world - you asked for this after all. You were the one asshole who reacted nothing short of affronted and childishly at Lena Luthor striving to cure cancer. It was you and you alone who channeled your inner monster and couldn’t find it in your heart to just be happy for her that she finally had someone, finally had something when you barely had your own shit together.
You carried that with you alone, as you should - no one should have to know about the guilt you felt about robbing the world of Lena’s love, her passion, her dedication, her heart - they need only know about your complicity in its taking.
Lena may not have needed you then, may no longer have need for you, but the real fact of the matter was that you should resolve to stay far away from her, to shut yourself away and temper the wrath of your greed - this was the very least what she deserved, and it was entirely what you deserved.
It didn’t make it any easier, or difficult; it shouldn’t make you anything at all. It was merely what set you on the path to finally doing something good for Lena for once.
You gleaned what objectivity you could possibly tolerate from the news; she relocated to National City and took over as the CEO of LuthorCorp. You thought nothing at all about what this meant for you - it means nothing, it means nothing, it means nothing.
You thought you did a pretty good job of convincing yourself - you only experienced the irrational, truly terrible idea of dropping by her office only once every so often, and you felt the impulse to send a letter to her new office even less frequently.
You masked the magnitude of each of your follies whenever the mere contemplation of visiting Lena again, of seeking her out on your own volition reared its ugly head and demanded your action. You did anything to forget the fact that you once knew her at all; you found it in the form of self-sabotage and a deep, senseless brooding that should have no right being appealing in a young 20-something man, yet you found it attracted a certain type of girl.
You fell into your old habits of university; just as much, you turned a blind eye from the bar TV relaying the latest LuthorCorp - now L-Corp - gossip, put your headphones on to tune out the droning of inane accusations coming from the loudest voices of National City’s citizens for this news hour.
It was just over a year into your imposed self-exile of sorts when the unthinkable happens, and Lena shows up to your work much in the same way she entered your life - tearing up the fabric that is all the things you thought you knew and creating new worlds where there weren’t any; impossible but real.
You’re alone at the front, your manager being the only one who was with you at work but he was off doing his own thing since there was really nothing to do around the store.
This time, you had no excuse to not talk to Lena - after all this time and you were still very much the same; speechless and rendered useless by the girl standing in front of you.
You think she’s grown into her personality; she’s really matured into something great, and you marvel at just how little you really do know of Lena anymore.
There’s a confidence about her, a certainty that is unwavering and sure, and you realize it’s the same fortitude you’d always seen in her and that which you really loved about her.
All things considered, she still seems hesitant when you lock eyes again and she’s the one who breaks the silence.
“Hi,” is all she says.
Somehow even in her stumbling over a singular word, in her hesitancy and her shakiness, you think it’s the most brilliant thing you’ve ever heard.
You not so much feel as you hear the ricocheting of your blood tumbling against every immobilized limb of your body, your blood trumpeting underneath your skin as everything crashes down on you, and you can only widen your eyes just the slightest bit more in shock and stand there as you continue to do absolutely nothing.
Lena opens her mouth and begins to say something, but stops herself before she says anything and there is question clearly written on her face now when you’ve still yet to say anything at all to her.
“You know, yeah, this was definitely a bad idea, just forget-” she turns to walk away and she’s made several steps before your reactionary gut instinct to the idea of Lena leaving again is to tell her no this time.
“Wait, no-” you choke out clumsily on top of a bated breath. “No, that’s not- how did you know where to find me?”
Easy steps first, you think. This is territory you could both work with.
Lena gives you a small, meaningful smile - there’s the slightest flash of a grimace there and you barely have time to wonder about it.
“It would be too forward to admit I’ve had to seek you out with a little bit of help, wouldn’t it?” she mutters as she ducks her head in embarrassment.
That particular trait is new; you’re absolutely baffled seeing Lena so bashful.
“I, uh-”
“I suppose I should have figured,” she states in amusement, more to the effect of self-deprecation than at your expense.
“No-” you rush to interrupt her. “No, it’s just... really? Why me? Don’t you have... things... to do?” you finish uncertainly.
She gives you a look and furrows her eyebrows in a way you think looks vaguely disapproving. It takes her another prolonged moment of regarding you carefully before she answers you.
“Really? ‘Why you?’ Do you really want me to answer that right now, (Y/N)?”
You blink silently at her response before you let yourself smile just a little bit, huffing at her quickness.
“Nah, I guess not.”
The conversation splinters into silence again and you and Lena do nothing but watch each other, simultaneously waiting for someone to do something and also content to just soak each other in.
You see her eyes fall onto the tattoos on your biceps and upper arms, and when you watch the trail of her gaze, there’s a look of question on your face.
“So, uh...”
“I know this is probably completely out of the question and I have some audacity to even ask you this but I’ve started now and I can’t just stop so I’m just going to ask it, I’d really like to catch up with you,” Lena spills out in one breath.
Your eyes widen again at her admission, and with all that you’ve gleaned from the exceedingly unpredictable turn your day has taken, it’s taking you even longer time to process your options.
“Is that- you wanna do that?” you muster.
With me? goes unsaid; you barely resist and only do because you’re beginning to realize how needy and obnoxious you sound.
Lena gives you a look that clearly says ‘of course, I asked didn’t I?’ and you wince internally at your ineptitude - even now, Lena still has you the same she’s always had, as you’ve always been with her.
“You’re my only friend in National City, if I can even call you that at this point...” she says instead as if it were explanation enough, and you think in a way it really is - you give nothing away in your expression that could tip her off to something akin to pity; she doesn’t need that right now.
She gives you an apologetic smile as you watch a mistiness pool in her eyes, and the nagging, muted thought in your head that’s screaming at you that this is Lena needing you now, she’s reaching out, isn’t she?, marches to the thunder of your riotous heartbeat.
“Of course you can,” you say, and then, “nothing’s changed.”
You shift your eyes to anywhere but Lena, stubbornly refusing to meet hers when you feel the heaviness of her gaze on you.
You steal a glance and see the softness her expression has taken. In that moment, you really see how much she’s grown. You’ve spoken to Lena somewhat consistently for several years, but you haven’t properly seen her in just as many.
Her face is slightly more defined, taking a certain sharpness where her cheeks were once a little chubby. There’s still the eternal inquisition in her eyes despite the vaguely dark circles below them, and you think the years have been so good to her.
Her voice is quiet, seeming to mull the idea over thoroughly in her head as she parrots you.
“Nothing’s changed...” and then, “you’re still you,” she states more to herself as an after thought.
You feel something in your chest dip, suspended and holding on to nothing but the threads that have kept you together all this time.
You’re both silent for another pause longer, watching and testing and risking.
Whatever moment you two are in, Lena is the first to break out of the reverie and even shakes her head imperceptibly, snapping into the pretense of composure.
“Right, well, I should give you my number then. All my contact info has changed, though I won’t bother to give you my work one.”
She takes a napkin from the counter and scrawls her number with a pen she’s taken from her bag - you watch her and have to tear your mind away from the notion of Lena writing to you and how different she must have looked then than she does now.
You instead wonder what it is you’re supposed to do with this information. You use the number, naturally, should be your first thought, but instead you’re left malfunctioning to the highest degree.
“Do you have my number?” you ask her suddenly - the question is reasonable enough.
“No, I don’t,” she mutters sheepishly.
“Well how is that going to work out?” you reply as you roll your eyes good-naturedly at her. You move to take a napkin of your own and write your number on it.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Lena says as she watches. “You don’t have to use it, I just wanted to give you that option.”
“Nuh-uh,” you say decisively as you take the napkin in your hand and wait for her to take it. “We won’t be doing any of that- you’re going to be just as hopeless about all this as I am. I see you trying to put all the pressure on me.”
You can’t help but smirk as you watch her reaction morph into something of alarm.
“No, that’s not- that wasn’t my intention,” she sputters. “I just... I wanted to make sure you knew you still had an out and you can take it whenever you want.”
You regard her seriously now, the implication of her remark sobering you.
“You’ve said that before, you know that?” you say, and then, “You don’t need to be so easy on me, Lee, I can make my own decisions.”
“You’re right... I’m sorry, it’s just been so long, I don’t know how to... be anymore.”
You scoff in agreement, “you and I both.”
Lena smiles at the remark and you feel a little bit lighter.
“So, we’ll just handle this then. Give it a few days, give it another go after patting ourselves on the back for this first of many stumbles. Ball’s in the middle of the court, we’re just gonna have to pick it up.”
“Of course.”
You both know you’re overdue for a conversation, and if you were being truly honest with yourself, you felt no matter how much you denied it or tried to deprive yourself, your curiosity for Lena’s life was always rooted in your profound care for her.
“So, I should get going.”
“Yeah,” you nod with the sneakiest hint of reluctance - you hope you’re not too obvious about it.
“I’m so glad to see you again, (Y/N).”
You give her another smile, definitively aware of how genuine and unrestrained it feels than you think it’s ever been.
“Yeah- yeah, I’ll see you around, Lena.”
You spend the rest of your remaining hours at work wondering just what the hell exactly happened, and what possibly did the universe have any business to do with pitting you and Lena together again?
You almost forget that you not only saw Lena again, in person, but that you also exchanged numbers as if nothing interrupted your last year of absolutely no contact with each other - if not for the inexplicable heaviness of the phone in your pocket that’s demanding your attention, telling you something is missing, you wouldn’t think this entire day was real.
You gingerly take the napkin with her number on it into your hand and study it like a missing artifact from the past, dug up from the grave you thought you’d effectively buried it in and to see it make another reemergence into your life.
There’s history there, and it’s yours, and you feel like nothing will be the same after this day.
You think back to your earlier conversation, the first time you’d ever talked to each other in a year, and you think, ironically, Lena wanted to give you an out but all she’s done is captivate you again as she always has.
The entirety of your night, you remain at a total loss, sitting in a meditative contemplation as you stare blankly at your TV.
For all your talk with her earlier, you hadn’t realized then the magnitude of the conundrum you built for yourself. You’re torn between the reality of Lena finding you again, of her seeking you out, of her needing you - you wonder if it makes you an asshole to let yourself care for her, or if it makes you an asshole to do as you’ve always done and to shut her out for her own good, to protect her from you.
I’m a big boy, I can make my own decisions, you repeat your previous words mockingly. You’re an idiot. How is it that you think you’re going to walk around and decide things for Lena when you’re the one telling her to not do that?
It’s all messy, you realize. For all your gross, petty handling of Lena seeming to have a life outside of you, of having someone else who meant more to her than you did, that alone is reason enough for you to distance yourself from her. But in you punishing yourself, you face the very real certainty of letting her down when she needs you.
When it comes down to it all, you’re either a self-fulfilling prophecy and watch as you possibly disappoint her over an extended period of time, or you get to be the jerk that breaks her heart just a little bit by abandoning her.
You wonder then about just how good of an idea it is to entertain this new development your life has taken, to just let it happen and not think too much about it. Thinking, as is so evident now, takes you nowhere, and so you brace yourself for impact.
You’ve already inputted her number into your phone, now all you have to do is message her, and you’re in the midst of a very weak opener of “hey how are you” when you realize at some point, both of you are going to have to talk about all this, you’re going to play catch up and you’re either going to dance around the subject or you’re going to keep avoiding it until it eats one or both of you alive.
It’s only a mild freakout you’ve induced in yourself, you toss your phone away like the truly offending object it is and cower into the other side of your couch as you mull over another hazy future that you really wish you could see clarity in.
Even with all your need to complicate things, to overthink and to brood and to martyr yourself, Lena always makes things simple, always does things that in spite of everything you may think or do to suggest the contrary, makes everything feel so easy.
It’s she who messages you at around 11pm that night, not too late to point to the startling realness of a vulnerable hour, not too early either to seem too eager - enough to give both of you plenty of room to make your mistakes and have your incoherent screaming before you compose yourselves again, and she’s asked you about a time and place you’re available if you wanted to chat over coffee.
So you do what’s necessary in your natural, instinctive compulsion to be whatever it is that Lena needs you to be, and right now that is to be the person she meets with for coffee.
It’s elementary enough in its request, and you almost forget the deeper implications of this meeting right up until the point you sit across from her in your uncomfortably stiff chair and she says nothing but, “so, tattoos now?” in question and somehow, it’s enough to open the floodgates of everything you both missed throughout the years leading up to this point.
Admittedly, you chug your coffee in a relative desperation, and you regret the thing entirely when you start buzzing with pent up energy as if the fact that you’re having an actual face to face conversation with the girl who, for the longest time, was nothing but a pen pal and a vaguely familiar face to you wasn’t enough to cause some hysterical distress in your mind.
If Lena takes notice of your nervous shifting and general internalized freak out, she says nothing and instead looks at you periodically in silent question, both parts asking you wordlessly and wondering how much you’re able to take and when to raise the white flag.
You’re both in new territory, testing the waters of whatever this is between you, navigating the reality of life after your no-speaking sabbatical and also seeing each other fully and truly for the first time in a significantly long while.
It’s moderately easy, but it’s new, and you’re both gentle enough with each other and are forgiving of each other’s slip us and the justifiable tension.
You think you’ve taken a sledgehammer to the progress made in conversation when you ask about Jack, Lena telling you she’d ended the relationship before she got to National City, right when her family life went to shit, and you snap your mouth shut and try not to watch her reaction.
She’s calm enough, wistful but not entirely regretful, and the sadness there is something you think you’ve seen before - the inadequacy of not being able to provide, to not be the person one needs you to be? You see it in the mirror all the time.
You merely soften at the contemplative expression her face has taken, the shadow of whatever guilt or bitterness you once harboured completely shut out when you understand just how much you feel for her, and you know without a doubt there are all the strings of what ifs that are still coursing through her mind, forever an alternative universe and never a real happening.
She asks about you, then; are you seeing anyone? It’s casual, but there’s a weight there you refuse to acknowledge. She knew about Alicia, but not enough in depth and you try to remember if you’d held back then or if you’d simply just missed mentioning most things about her to Lena.
The conversation diverts soon after, perhaps a bit too eagerly, and you both discuss work without mentioning the big stuff, like Lena’s brother or why exactly it was you’d lost contact with each other.
Eventually, enough of these coffee dates repeat themselves. A lot of the time, your interactions with Lena involve learning new things about each other that vary from small surprises to mind-boggling revelations.
Lena is absolutely dumbfounded when she finds out one day that you smoke - casually, you emphasize; you’ve quit cold turkey before and you don’t need to smoke, you just do (to which she’s even more utterly bewildered and you just shrug with a small laugh) - you learn that she has some life or death reliance on caffeine and you more often than not comment on her nearly hourly need to have a fresh coffee, to which she just purses her lips at you and stubbornly steers you two into some cafe to get her fix.
You wonder just how it is Lena’s convinced you to join her at one of her L-Corp galas, but you do, and you’re dragging your feet about it just a little before you’re genuinely enjoying yourself as you watch her interact with and very clearly be superior to the businessmen she speaks with, and you have a little bit of fun pulling their leg and making teasing underhanded jests at them that could be seen as innocent enough, though Lena knows better and gives you a warning look and a shadow of a smile every time.
You’ve grown into the role you have in Lena’s life; somehow, you seem to have lost sight of what it is exactly that made you so sure that distancing yourself from her was the only plausible choice. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you still have the nagging thought that you don’t really deserve this, that you don’t deserve to feel happy around Lena, that you’re merely obliging in your loyalty to her and that should be it.
Sometimes, you think she can feel you pulling away, and she gets that look on her face that reminds you too much of what you so often felt like when you were much younger, how so often the quality of ignorance took stock in your child mind and made you wonder why you weren’t enough for the people who should have loved you unconditionally.
So you temper the wailing nature of your musings for a moment longer, enough to reassure Lena in some half-assed way that she’s okay, it’s not her and it’s just you being all up in your own head.
You don’t think much about it - you really don’t want to think more about it, lest you really fall deep into shit - but you think Lena’s a lot touchier with you; you don’t recall her being so with you or in general when you were younger.
You wonder what changed, and you try not to think about what or who it might have been that inspired this new characteristic in your old friend.
True to your unfailing track record of being shockingly terrible at handling your emotions, the first time Lena ever puts her head on your shoulder when you’re watching a movie at your place is to just stare at her from the corner of your eye with rapt intensity, long enough for her to turn her head and look up at you, and see the look of utter shock on your face.
Somehow, your mind thinks it’s a great idea to scoff nervously and roll your eyes, and even though you’re trying to reign in the smile that’s threatening to form, Lena just huffs and rests her head more forcefully on you as if to make some point, and you actually laugh this time.
She does that often - you react absolutely moronically to something she does (anything, really) that threatens the very fragile grip you have on your composure around her, and she makes a point to do it even more, and you begin to understand that pushing each other’s buttons is just a little game you two have come up with.
If there was any doubt in your mind that Lena is truly something special, all pretense is eradicated entirely when she lets herself be pulled into your idea of an easygoing night out - rounds of drinks and good conversation in between watching a game at the bar near your apartment.
You feel like perhaps you really could not have chosen a more obnoxious place to be, it’s entirely your fault if the sports bar is full of young varsity athletes and bro-types, and it is entirely on you when Lena inevitably gets hounded at some point even when you try your best to dash any of the stupid looking boys’ ideas with her, if the way they were eyeing her was any indicator.
You realize the folly of your misgivings the moment you step out from the bathroom and see one of them talking with Lena, his arm nearly on her as he leans close to her.
She doesn’t look too bothered, just a mild annoyance despite the politeness her face seems to have taken. Her forced smile tips you off though, and when the boy doesn’t relent, he puts his hand on the back of her stool so that he’s practically looming above her, and she leans further away from him.
You stride briskly to them and make a show of taking your seat on the stool beside Lena, turning your entire body so you’re facing both of them. You clasp your hands in front of you and rest them between your legs as you lean back slowly, making sure the boy’s attention was drawn to you and how your face is nothing but an unimpressed, uninhibited expression of repulsion when you level his stare.
“Problem?” you finally say with a tick of your eyebrow.
You glance over to Lena quickly before you peel your eyes lazily to the intruding boy again.
“Didn’t realize this was a date. Could have fooled me, seeing as though a woman as fine as this shouldn’t be seen out in public with a shmuck like you,” he says with the terribly unironic voice of an intoxicated frat brother.
You shrug noncommittally, making a pointed effort to ensure all your movements convey the total inconvenience this boy’s hassling is causing you and Lena.
“Well, I don’t know about that. Lena here makes her own rules. Far as I know, she’s made it pretty clear she’s said no to you but you don’t seem to be taking a hint. But I guess that’s to be expected from a shmuck like you,” you reply slackly.
The boy puts his foot on the footrest of Lena’s seat, his leg moving inches close to her and she actually recoils at his movement, trying to move farther from him.
“I don’t know why you have to make this so hard, buddy,” he says slightly delayed as he shifts and almost falls into her. “I just wanted to talk, is all- don’t you wanna do that? Ditch this guy, we could have more fun, I promise-”
Suddenly, you raise your voice and enunciate every word menacingly, “you touch her, I kill you.”
Your voice is loud enough that several patrons turn to the commotion and the bartenders eye you two tensely.
“One more misstep, and I haul your ass outside to handle you properly.”
He glares at you one last time before his friend pulls him away by the scruff of his shirt, practically stumbling back to his table and you think at least his friend has the decency to look slightly embarrassed.
You watch them return to their table and you keep your scowl fixed on them. You see them look up again and they divert their eyes immediately, attempting to turn their backs to you and huddling away from you.
Content that you’ve finally made your point, you scoff and snap your eyes immediately to Lena, immediately your face softens and takes an expression of concern and you don’t even get to ask her how she is before she’s asking you the same thing.
“(Y/N)? Are you alright?”
“Me? What about you? Do you wanna get out of here?”
Lena looks at you guiltily and ducks her head a little, “honestly, yeah, I think so.”
You say nothing else as you leave your bills on the counter, opting to leave any change as you walk Lena out by your side.
The walk to your apartment is spent in relative silence. You shift your eyes to look around you and tap your belt to feel your knife and sheath still there. It’s not needed, however, as you make your way to your floor, only acutely aware of the fact that you two have just silently agreed on your apartment as your destination.
Still, you two have opted to continue having drinks on your couch in defiance of a moderately soiled night.
It’s in her second glass of wine that either of you finally mentions anything about the night’s occurrences.
“You act like you’re the bad boy, but you’re not,” Lena says, her speech taking only the slightest slur that’s entirely endearing to you.
“Yeah, well, I realize that could have been a bit of a dick thing to do. I probably could have just reasoned with the guy, but I don’t think-”
“I’m not talking about just tonight,” she says with a marked decisiveness. You wonder if she might be a little tipsy, but you’re proven wrong when you realize Lena is just as sharp as ever.
“I’m just saying... you always have been, that’s just you. You have this, this attitude. Not an attitude actually, just... just this mentality that’s always in the back of your mind and it makes you think you have to be a certain way. You’re not the bad boy- you just think you have to be and so that’s what you become.”
“I don’t know if I follow where you’re going about all this, Lee-”
“You sell yourself short too often, do you know that? For as long as I’ve known you, you always have,” she turns to face you and you move your head to look at her.
“You’re talented and you’re grounded and you’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met... You have one of the kindest hearts and I think deep down, you’ve got a poet’s soul.”
You look at her in silence, still not sure you know what she means by all this.
“I just know you. But I also want to know why you feel you have to hide behind whatever bad boy caricature this is that you’ve made for yourself. You’re a good person, (Y/N).”
“I’m damaged goods, Lena,” you reply.
There’s an expression of question on her face, prompting you to continue.
“There’s a reason why I haven’t kept a relationship that lasts longer than milk does,” you comment half-jokingly.
“You’re not- have you even tried? Do you even want to?” she asks, and you don’t question Lena’s sobriety anymore when she looks back at you with startling focus.
“For whatever reason you think it is that girls haven’t stuck around, whether you force it to be that way or not, it’s not just because there’s something wrong with you. Maybe it’s because they don’t know a good thing when they see one, maybe it’s because you don’t see the good in you. You’re not damaged or broken or whatever else you may think because of it.
“You are, though, when you punish yourself and feed into this self-sabotage I know you always have and push people away who don’t want to be pushed away. You deserve good things but you don’t let yourself have them.”
You match your gaze to Lena’s and remain speechless, watching the furrow of her eyebrow as she regards you in silence.
“I loved you, you know. You were my first friend- you were my best friend. Even when we may have fallen apart from each other sometimes... even when I needed someone to talk to when everything with Lex was happening... maybe I might have shut you out, I don’t know... but not hearing from you hurt. I forgave you a long time ago though. I think I always will.”
You stare stunned at Lena, your jaw slightly slack as you try to process everything she’s said.
“I didn’t know what to say,” you mutter quietly, entirely lost in the stunning revelation of Lena’s words.
“Yeah... me neither,” she amends.
“I missed you a lot,” you say after a moment of silence. “Like, a lot. More than what my young mind could have put words to back then. I still probably couldn’t explain how much I did.”
You ponder your oldest memories, the ones you’ve kept forcefully stored away in the deepest recesses of your mind in the name of ‘coping’.
“It was a lot though- enough to be scared by it. There were so many... there were just a lot of feelings I had. I was scared- I was scared of what I was feeling and I was scared of watching how I was becoming less important in your life.”
You see the shift in Lena’s eyes, how much softer and defeated she looks, and you rush your words in assurance.
“No, but it was really stupid and selfish to even think like that. But, I don’t know... it’s hard as a kid. You get a lot of these grand, unheard of feelings that you’ve never experienced before and you have absolutely no damn idea what to do with them. And the thing is they stuck, Lena. I think I knew I loved you long before I even knew to call it that. And then we got a little bit older and tried holding onto something that is constantly evolving and changing and it grew and changed with us, and life gets in the way and it is what it is, but we had something different. We had it and had no idea just exactly what it was except that we did have it, and I didn’t learn how to handle my shit and I still haven’t learned how to.
“I was scared of all the change and I was scared that I was losing you... so I just forced myself to push you away because I was deluded into thinking it was my choice. I thought I’d be protecting you, but I was only trying to save myself,” you scoff sardonically at yourself, inhaling deeply as you ignore the incessant pounding of you heartbeat against your chest.
“You could never lose me,” Lena says softly. “You never did.”
“I didn’t know that,” you mutter defeatedly.
“Do you know that now?”
You merely glance at Lena, a tight-lipped, apologetic smile forming in reply and Lena takes it for an answer.
“Why did you even say yes to that first coffee date at all? If you don’t think you deserve to be happy?”
“Who says I’m not happy?”
“Just answer the question, (Y/N).”
“Because you needed me.”
“So I did. What if I still need you?”
“Then I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, don’t do it just for me.”
You take a deep breath, looking away in some last ditch attempt to run away but you’re pulled back into Lena, Lena whose eyes look imploring and she’s watching you like everything rests on whatever sentences you decide to utter next, and you think in a way they really do.
You shift on the couch so you’re facing her. Suddenly, you become very aware of everything - you feel the presence of your entire body, the simultaneous heaviness and lightness of it; you notice the verdant iciness of her eyes, mesmerized by the lack of definition you could ever hope to name that very colour and are only left with one notion: divine.
You become very aware of the tragedy of her beauty; how entirely breathless she’s rendered you as you watch her love you still, love you still even when your best intentions only left her in hurt, love you still even through the ugliness, the helplessness, the lack of knowing.
You become aware that even in this lack of knowing, she has been the only consistent in your life even when you so blatantly refused it for the gift that she was, she has been the only clarity you’ve had in your life even if it took you so long and so many detours to figure it out.
You steady your gaze as you look at her, the entire weight of the universe suspended between you as you sift through these delicate moments.
“I convinced myself I didn’t deserve you. I felt like I could only be justified if you outright said you needed me. But that’s the coward’s way of doing shit. I shouldn’t have left it all up to you. I should have tried harder when you did need me. I should have put my pride aside for once. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. But that’s what I did, even when I did every single thing I thought was right to make sure I didn’t do exactly that.
“I’ve made some stupid mistakes and did things that could have been costly- things that could have ruined my life... but I’m hoping they haven’t ruined too much now. No matter how I’ve acted or whatever I’ve said or haven’t said, I have never once regretted loving you. I just wish I knew how to love you properly... to love you the way you deserve.”
“You’ll never know unless you try.”
“Will you let me?”
“If you really think you still have to ask that after all this...”
“No, Lena, I need to know this-”
“Yes, (Y/N). Even if I could help it, even though I can’t help it, I want you to try and I want to try too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
You and Lena are facing each other, Lena sat cross legged in front of you as you lean your side into the back of the couch.
“Okay,” you repeat again. You turn to face the TV and Lena repositions herself so she’s comfortable when she moves to put her head on your shoulder.
“Can I kiss you?” you blurt suddenly, feeling just a little guilty about jostling Lena in your abruptness.
“Yes.”
You stare at her when she looks up at you, and you feel entirely blank - there is nothing, and you feel nothing, and you’re a wholly mindless state and you just are, and you know you feel yourself closing the distance between your lips and hers and even when you feel her pressing against you, there’s nothing.
It’s when you close your eyes and start seeing without looking; when you take that first deep breath in that kiss and feel her so close to you - closer than you’ve ever been, that’s when you finally realize it’s real.
It’s at that moment everything becomes solidified in reality, the exhalation of breath that you make in profound wonder at the very fact that you’re kissing Lena - it’s then that you’re beginning to understand what it was you were missing for such a long part of your life.
This is your reality now, and for so long, it seemed nothing but an endless musing of some universe not meant to be yours.
You kiss her, and you feel yourself get pulled in, or maybe she’s melting into you, and that touch of contact on this groundbreaking new territory is historic and momentous.
Your breaths are shaky, you admit - you think you’re even being a little sloppy but Lena sighs into your lips, and it’s when you two eventually pull away and open your eyes that you feel like you’ve learned something new for the first time.
Lena’s eyes look a little glassy, something so mystifying there like a deep body of water long after it’s been disrupted and it’s just the after-echoes of the ripples lingering; you don’t know how it is you never really noticed how much you could see there, how much Lena said with so little.
Her jaw is slack like yours, both of you looking at each other and you wonder what it is going through her mind right now.
You wonder if she feels anything that you feel; like having just read the last page of your new favourite book and you’re left contemplating how you never once suspected it to be so life-changing, save for the little hints left between the sentences.
Lena, you realize, is your new favourite thing - something you never once suspected except in retrospect, yet something you were meant to love all along. She is your meant to be, your has been all along, your until we no longer can.
“That felt nice,” is all you provide, and you can be absolutely relied on to articulate the most insightful comments, undoubtedly.
Lena, for her part, laughs wonderfully at your remark - the special kind you’re reminded of from your countless afternoons at the park, and you think how astonishing and extraordinary it is to feel relief in its whole, unadulterated form.
Like a new chance at life, you grin, turning to face the TV again to figure out what trivial thing exactly is on at this very moment, taking in another deep breath to regulate the erratic short-circuiting of all your mental and physical functions.
“Nothing’s different, but everything’s changed,” Lena says quietly as she nestles into you and drapes the blanket over both of you.
“No, it’s always what it has been. We just had to figure it out.”
“No more hiding, okay? We actually have to talk now. We can’t just fix our problems by not talking.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re right.”
Neither of you say anything else after. You watch whatever channel it is you’ve skimmed and landed on. It’s as seemingly mundane as it could possibly be - you’re not at all surprised Lena breezes through most Jeopardy questions, but Wheel of Fortune is something you two bicker over and you think she’s loathe to admit you’re pretty good at it.
For all the guessing and wondering you’ve done throughout your life, it’s not so anticlimactic to be sitting in silence with Lena after a night out and sharing your first ever kiss with her.
For as long as you’ve known her, you’ve loved her, and you don’t need to integrate her into your life - she’s always had a place with you, and she has staying power.
You think by the way she dozes off on your shoulder after her third and a half glass of wine and snores lightly that she might think something similar - that you’ve always been a part of her, something familiar and inevitable.
You think finally, you’ve allowed yourselves to admit that very sentiment and not feel anything but a comfortable steadiness about it - finally, you can say you love her; simply, entirely, and surely.
#lena luthor x reader#lena luthor#lena luthor imagine#lena luthor fic#katie mcgrath#lena luthor fanfic#katie mcgrath imagine#dating lena luthor#katie mcgrath fic#katie mcgrath fanfic#supercorp#supercorp fic#supercorp fanfic#supercorp fandom#supercorp imagine#supergirl imagine#lena luthor x you#supergirl imagines#lena luthor imagines
386 notes
·
View notes
Note
Prime example of Daesung fans keeping discontent to ourselves is @mshinju on twitter, who when D-day was released agreed with a long YT comment that outlined all the grievances Dae fans have with the fandom and outside of it. She said she wished she could say such things out loud, as well, and is freq angry at the way Dae is treated within the fandom, but reigns in it b/c she's received backlash whenever she's dared to mention it in the past. cont'd
She’s in a tricky position b/c she’s such a prominent JVIP whom many fans rely on for translations, but she does hit her limit and I’m glad she does voice her displeasure at those times. Like when she said it’s tiring for her to always hear complaints about a lack of Korean activities whenever she translates news about an upcoming release from Dae or when most fans are concerned about GDYB’s tight schedules bf the dome tour but don’t know or care that Dae will be coming off his own packed tour.
Good point about Daesung coming off his own packed tour. He’s done, what, around 40 shows over the last 2 ½ months? Of course, I am keeping in mind that these aren’t exactly your typical full-length concerts… they’re like “mini” concerts with talk and game sessions sprinkled throughout. It’s a great setup, I think, because otherwise I would have some very serious concerns about whether or not Daeung’s voice could hold up to putting on so many shows over such a short period of time. I’m sure that was taken into account when planning the tour.
Anyway, full-length concerts or not, his schedule is keeping him very busy– heck, some days he does two in a row! Plus recording in-between and appearing on TV shows (Yasutomo). But I rarely hear talk of his activities come up outside of Daesung-focused circles (then again, I don’t often venture beyond those circles lol). And honestly, I’m just like… whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s nice of course to see your fave getting the recognition he deserves, but you can’t exactly force it on anyone. I’m not even asking that people love him like we do, just… please acknowledge him for his hard work. Respect him. Respect all of them!
In the meantime, we’ll be over here in our corner enjoying our fave until the day when they’re all together again. Because as much as I care about Daesung and his personal (solo) success, that is what I’m really looking forward to. OT5, y’all. I fell in love with them as a unit first, as individuals second. Seungri said it best: “Five is better than one.”
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
Holla Jesu Christe
[TW: Suicide]
Standard mom stuff: If you’re thinking about suicide, please call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.
So here we are again. I’m back staring at this screen. For a second there, I thought I had written my last entry.
This post is a couple of things, which I’ll get to assuredly. This post is going to be the realist shit that I’m likely to share to a public audience ever again. By the time I’ve hit post here, I’ll still be alive. Thankfully. But I’ll be metaphorically naked in front of all of you. I am baring it all. What it’s not… is a cry for help, a ploy for attention, or an invitation to post a reply such as “I’m always here if you want to talk.”
Does that seem rude? It’s not intended to be. I know it’s what you say when you want to say something but you don’t know what to say. I just want people to know that I’m not the type that typically reaches out in that kind of way. The people who I reach to already know who they are.
I am not posting this for my own good, but in the hope that it helps someone else pull the proverbial panic cord, pump their brakes, call a timeout, or whatever metaphor you find works best. For the people who don’t suffer from some sort of mental illness, maybe it brings better understanding.
Throughout the post, I’m going to reference things that I’ve taken away from the Biodyne model of suicide assessment and prevention. I shouldn’t have to disclaim this, but of course, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a mental health professional. I’m just a person who struggles with her own mental health and who also sees others around her struggle with their own. Beyond that, the people who are left in the wake of disaster, the warm blanket of oblivion ripped rudely off of them in the night. With that said, onward and upward, shall we?
Starting sometime during the week of June 12th, thoughts of suicide started to creep into the forefront of my brain. They’re never far away, always lurking somewhere in shadows, waiting for a chance to seize the day. Waiting for the chance to become the all consuming thing that you can’t avoid, until they succeed in making you another statistic, a hash tag, a sad story. Or you “pump the brakes” and slow down long enough to take a look around.
By the end of last weekend, it was more than a passing thought. It had taken up residence right in front of me. It was all I could see. I had entered what they refer to as Stage 1. This is not unfamiliar territory to me. I’ve been there a number of times, it normally passes pretty quick and I move along, sending a passing email to my therapist saying something like “Hey, this happened, I’m okay but I wanted you to know.” Then we could talk about it at my next session.
“Everyone has dark times — a story held in secret..”
Of course, this time, I didn’t do that. I didn’t send any emails. On the outside, I don’t think anyone could see the big black dog named depression that was following me around. Hell, I even went out and danced, something I don’t do, with random Lyft customers turned friends on Saturday night. I had fun. That’s the thing about depression. It’s not all sitting around, sulking and listening to Brand New and The Get Up Kids.
By Tuesday, I had swiftly exited the ideation phase and was actively planning the end of my own life. I started putting together certain documents, keys, passcodes, passwords, blank checks and other things that I knew people would need in the wake of it all. I started on my “note.” What it ended up being, near as makes no difference, was a 4100 word of drivel. A long, sad tale that ranged from my own failings to the perceived failings of others. At times a scathing, no-holds-barred airing of grievances that only one other person has read at this point. I intend to keep it that way.
Throughout my planning, I was even taking smaller details into consideration. Things that a stereotypical suicidal character on a Lifetime made for TV drama wouldn’t. I knew that more than anything, I didn’t want my kids to find me. I know that Grayson can sometimes be anywhere between 2-10 minutes faster than Megan to get inside my house. He doesn’t knock. Additionally, I didn’t want someone like the fire department to have to kick in a door. Someone would have to fix that later, right?
I even made a playlist. I’m not really sure who it was for. I think it was for me than anything. It started as 33 tracks and eventually I whittled it down to about 17. About the perfect length for a mix CD, 73 minutes. Of course, I didn’t have an optical drive in my laptop, and Spotify wasn’t going to let me burn it anyway.. but there it was.
This happened all throughout the course of Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. The only thing that really kept me out of the third and final phase was that I didn’t have a time frame for when this was all supposed to go down. I had a mental to-do list of the things I needed to accomplish before I could even get to scheduling the end of the end.
Tuesday evening, I went to dinner with Brian. We had wings and beer, as customary with the two of us.. I had been texting with a friend intermittently throughout the day, and as I understood, she was having a shitty afternoon. I invited her to come down and have a beer. She politely declined, as I expected. “Maybe next time,” I replied. It felt hollow, because I wasn’t expecting there to be a next time. A day late friend, I mused to myself.
My short term memory is so bad, I don’t remember what I did Wednesday morning. I know at some point, I went to Home Depot to pick up something I would need. Utility knife blades. Then I went next door to Tumbleweed and had lunch by myself. I ordered my usual burrito and a beer. I sat at the bar alone. Both in physical presence and mentally. The mix of even a really low dose of Klonopin, only a sixth of what my former psychiatry nurse practitioner had prescribed, and the beer apparently was a bad choice.
As soon as I got home, I passed out. When I awoke, later that evening, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep. Through out the night, I cried all the tears I had out as I worked on the playlists and the note.
Around 5am, the sun was rising and I felt satisfied with what I had written. I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before and had been living off Coca-Cola and loud music. I got dressed and went to Waffle House by myself. I sat in a dirty booth that no one bothered to wipe down after the previous guests had departed. As I sat in a dirty booth, eating my breakfast, I started beginning to have a moment of clarity. I paid for my half-eaten meal, got back in my car and pulled out onto Bardstown Rd, thinking about all that had happened in the last 36 or so hours. I considered certain contradictions in what I was planning. My jaw and head ached from clenching my teeth throughout the night, having foregone any additional Klonopin to ease the anxiety.
I pulled into the parking lot at Kroger, and went inside to buy some Ibuprofen. I couldn’t seem to locate the bottle at my house. Assuming either we had taken it all, or that it was sitting in a box somewhere in Rhode Island.
As I exited the store, I realized that I hadn’t bought anything to drink to actually take the ibuprofen with. Sitting in my car, with the engine idling and the transmission in park. I considered going back inside to buy a coke. I felt to numb, too out of sorts to even bother. I opened the bottle and took two pills, swallowing them dry.
Then instead of putting the car in drive and heading home, I pulled out my phone. I opened the app that I use to communicate with my doctor and I typed out the following message:
Ok,
I’m officially pulling the fire alarm. This dizziness, lightheadedness, vertigo thing that I’ve got going on is starting to get out of control.
More importantly, certainly more time critical, is that I’ve passed through stage 2 of the biodyne model of suicidal thoughts. I know there’s nothing worse than having a Graduate of the Google School of Medicine for a patient, but I found this page:
And by my own self-assessment I’m at the completion of stage 2, entering stage 3, but not quite in what they call the “Auto pilot” mode. I considered going to the emergency room, but I haven’t, because well it seemed a little scary.
I’ve backed away from the proverbial ledge, but I’ve been up all night and realized at about 6am that I’ve amassed more than just a note, it’s 4100 words.
I’m safe right now, but I’m going to reach out now, in the interest of full disclosure, for better or worse.
Call, text, write. Love y’all.
–Addison
Then I went home and went to sleep and waited from a call from them. I was in contact with them throughout the day, as they checked in on me and went over my medications. I should back up a bit and explain..
At the beginning of the month, I had visited because my fatigue was so bad that I couldn’t do anything productive. The doctor came up with a treatment plan, because she advised the combination of drugs he had prescribed had significant risks, including seizures. She tried to do it in such a way that the side effects of withdraw would be minimized, but still told me to stay close and let her know how it was going. Once I was tapered back to a safe dosage, we would reassess my treatment options. That appointment was/is scheduled for the first week of July. However, the side effects had continued to get worse, the more I tapered down on the medication that was being eliminating. Even yesterday, I was still feeling disconnected and kind of dizzy. Like things getting to my brain were being passed through a wah-wah pedal first.
Today is the first day in a long time, that I have a sense of clarity. I’ve got a touch of a headache, but at least I’m not clenching my jaw in an attempt to grind my teeth into a bloody pulp. It’s scary that I could have been a day too hasty in giving up.
The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson - Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
So there it is, my week. Why I’ve not been at work. Why I’ve been acting distant. Why I’ve been a bitch to a couple people, namely my mother. A lot of things. I quoted the verse “Let me tell you what I wish I’d known when I was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” from the Hamilton musical. For today, I’m still at the helm, I still tell my own story. However, I came close to the edge.
I think I now know where the edge is, but as Hunter S. Thompson famously penned, “The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still out there.”
Holla Jesu Christe was originally published on TransVentures
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
HTGAWM’s become greedy in its pursuit of formative and dynamic dramatic content and even when successfully achieving those, the show somehow manages to waste it all in pursuit of Even More Pain and Suffering, undermining the conflicts it already has, making the story pointless and asinine, end up turning the characters incompetent, and demanding the audience to simultaneously pay attention but also to not give a shit.
[There’s quite a bit of rambling nonsense on here and but I’m pleased to say I was able to refrain from reiterating things I’ve already ~complained about ad nauseam by making this post a sort of Throwback sort of review regarding post-Murder Night resolutions.
It works because the issues I have with the show a season and a half ago still provide the same annoyances/ grievances I have now and it’s really fucking annoying.]
Remember when I said I wouldn’t be able to handle writing HTGAWM? Well I just might have to soldier on given the opportunity to do so because I know how to fix this mess they’ve created and I’m so annoyed because it’s right the fuck there, the solution to center the story line to what’s actually it’s all about (which How the Hell To Get Away With Fucking Murder Goddammit).
You've got your tools and your resources right at your fingertips and yet you keep floundering and trying to be all Extra with it. YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THAT NOWA/L/K. You can FIX this there's no need to do some MAGIC TRICK or whatever because what you have and what you've given yourself are ENOUGH to make something cohesive and even manage to cater to some GENIUS if that's what you're really so thirsty for.
You’ve got Delfino at the forefront of this ‘Free Annalise’ brigade for a crime he may or may not have committed which is pointless because there’s already that significant CRIME FROM THE VERY FIRST SEASON that started all of this mess.
He killed Lilah.
If you’re going to make AK’s life difficult by having the DA conveniently have all these cases (Lilah, Sam, Rebecca, Emily, even Caleb too FOR SOME REASON, and Wes) against her, only to make Frank try to take the blame to “save her” then why are they trying to pin this ONE MURDER (Wes) we don’t know for sure he did when there’s that OTHER MURDER (Lilah) we actually know he’s guilty of and that murder is actually what started all of this and we could even argue that yes for sure there is a KEATING co-conspirator but the one in prison isn’t it you fuckwit lawyers / detectives / criminals.
Then there’s Winterbottom talking about ‘providing closure’ for the families of those whose deaths are unsolved cases which is a stark example of one of this show’s worst sins: the murders eventually end up being forgotten and I loathe that Rebecca’s narrative that got SIDELINED in the first place is now being revived in such a convoluted and flawed manner when we all know that the show did to make sure her death (caused by Winterbottom herself) never got closure by making her brother magically disappear and then fucking killing off the one other person who might give a fuck; her neighbor, WES GIBBINS.
I had that sad revelation about this #UnderTheSheet mystery after the fall finale and I hate being proven right in this but it’s really not going to matter. By virtue of who the victim is and the circumstances of his life right before his death, Wes’s final story line doesn’t get to be his own narrative. Because this isn’t even going to be about him for the most part it’s about Annalise’s freedom, Laurel’s emotional turmoil, the Murder Twin’s story arc together and with AK, the Keatlet’s evolving/devolving dynamic, and yes of course those are all important but it’s so goddamn disingenuous to have these people still alive (including those who may or may not have caused his death, those who actively antagonized him when he was alive, and those whose actions made for goddamn sure that his life sucked every step of the way) flounder and try and fail and grieve which does nothing to resolve the conflicts they already have.
All of this drama exploded (shitty, insensitive, pun intended) for the Keating Family with Wes at the epicenter and yet they somehow manage to sidestep his character entirely by turning his death into this thriller/mystery and ending up with something far from cohesive because they have all these subplots that the story tries to bring back up with no plan to resolve them. They’re just there to push the narrative even deeper into its own mess.
In that episode they brought up practically everything that they could have used to clean up the shitstorm and yet ignored all that in favor of more character drama that only serves to exaggerate the already glaring dynamics of the Keating Team so why make it worse? (What is this Nate/Frank/Laurel circle-jerk for when their current commonality is Wes yet their interactions are all about Annalise? What is this Bonnie/Frank/AK mess all about and why aren’t they making use of the parallel the story’s provided by killing off Wes, his dad, and revealing Frank’s role in the death of Annalise’s son? Whatever.)
The show’s acting like it needs more reason for the characters to explore their relationships with each other and that what they have aren’t good enough incentives or catalysts to propel these lawyers / criminals / detectives into some form of competence.
It seems like it should be ironic but it isn’t. It’s fucking crass and bordering on desperate. Yes we know y’all like to go wild with the plot but can’t you at least try to remember the story you already have and pull something cohesive out of y’all asses?
This is the way it’s already been and when you killed off Wes there was an acknowledgement that the Murders these knuckleheads keep getting away with don’t actually matter and the insistence that that will have to change. YES OKAY GOOD but you’re going about it in a way that you’re throwing all of them under the bus (INCLUDING WES) for the sake of those still alive and you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to undermine the past two and a half seasons for your characters now to keep the shock value and the stakes high.
They already have been. This whole time. The plot’s own trajectory is what’s driving it into its own miasma of seemingly pointless conflicts and exaggerated/underrated issues. What is the fucking point of bringing up those unresolved cases when it’s not deemed important enough to keep the story afloat for more than 2.5 minutes and when there’s already this ONE MURDER right now that’s already tremendously significant it actually tips the scale for the Dramatic Content the show keeps salivating for.
Y’all either have something groundbreaking planned to level off the story with how high up you’ve shot your load (that’s what she fucking said) or y’all don’t give a shit about the material you’re sitting on in favor of .... whatever it is y’all think you’re serving.
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
spoiled
Ever since the start of high school, people have pointed out that I am spoiled. I denied it a lot but in the last years I’ve allowed myself to realize that yes, I am deeply spoiled. I never really complained much about my family to people, at least not to just anyone. I only shared my grievances with those I knew would actually listen, because I knew I would have heard from anyone else “how can you be so angry about your bulldozer of a father? So what if your mother is an alcoholic? You can’t be depressed and suicidal because y’all have money!”
I admit, I’m used to nice things. I’m used to big houses and drive ways, I’m used to having weekend homes, fancy cars and spontaneous vacations. I’m also used to seeing my mother get abused, I’m used to overreactions to minor offenses, I’m used to being controlled and confined, and I’m used to walking on eggshells in my own home. I always felt uncomfortable when people would say “you’re rich”, because it’s my dad that has the money. My dad has money, that doesn’t mean it’s ours too. I never got an allowance, my dad never gave me money just to give it to me, I always wore hand-me-downs from my sisters, we all got one pair of shoes a year and if we grew out of them or they got ruined then tough luck, so now when I buy shoes I always think “these have to match everything in my closet”. It’s why I keep wearing all of my old shoes until they are completely unwearable. If I throw them out, what a waste. I babysat for years because I had to start buying my own school clothes and supplies in the 6th grade. I got a real job as soon as I could so I could make sure my little brother got to have the clothes and things he liked, so he didn’t have to feel ashamed to be wearing worn out clothes from years before. I also didn’t want him to be worried about how he was going to come up with the money to pay for anything like his lunch or his backpack. Looking back maybe I shouldn’t have gone overboard, I bought him an $80 backpack because he wanted it so bad and I just couldn’t say no to him.
I always felt so bitter because, we’re “rich” right? Why was I having to pick up so many shifts and closing every night and working 35+ hours a week at 16 just to spend all of my money making sure my brother got what he needed? Why did I have to keep pestering my dad to buy my brother new shoes because he had grown out of his old ones and it was making his feet bleed? We were rich.. so why did my brother and I spend every night crying and telling each other how unhappy we were? We’re rich so I can’t be angry about all the atrocities my dad got away with, or how my mother made me an accomplice in hers.. I can’t talk about how my sister’s ex boyfriend was going to take my mom and my brothers and I away to some mining town up north. I can’t talk about how I have a younger half brother out there, or that I saw him at my grandma’s church on thanksgiving. I can’t talk about how I wanted to get him alone and just talk to him and hug him, to know him but I couldn’t because his older sister, my cousin was with him and I could feel her eyes on me. Her eyes telling me to stay away. I can’t be upset that I’ll never know him because we have money.
I got to drive my dad’s BMW for about a year when I first got my license, I loved that car but I was always ashamed of it. It sounds stupid I know that, but I just felt like a jerk for even being in it. I remember I had just started talking to my now ex boyfriend and we were going to meet, he asked me what kind of car I drive and what it looks like. For whatever reason I was so afraid he would think that I was a spoiled bitch so I didn’t tell him what car I drove. I just said “I’m in a black car” and I played it off as if I didn’t know much about cars. That probably made me look worse but that’s what I did. I made sure everyone who asked knew that the car was not mine, it was my dad’s and he was just letting me drive it. I don’t know what I was so afraid of with that car, maybe because I felt like I didn’t deserve to be driving it. I was used to nice things but I wasn’t used to them being mine or my responsibility, I think that’s why I was so persistent in letting people know that it was not mine. I’m spoiled because of the place my dad has us in, because I get to experience the things he buys himself. I’m spoiled because once in a while he’ll feel generous and buy everyone something really nice. I’m spoiled because I always had a roof over my head. I think I denounced all of our nice things because I didn’t want to people to think that the materials were who I am. I’m not a picky person material wise, as long as something works I’m happy. I kept my old phone for five years, until it was unusable and started crashing. I don’t want a big house, I never have. I just want a livable space that I can be happy in, I’m cozy in small spaces because I worked so hard to take up as little space as possible and I feel like in a big house I would just disappear.
I said at the beginning of high school because before then, I didn’t know we had money and neither did anyone else. I remember as a little girl in grade school I dressed like a tom boy, not because I wanted to but because clothes like that were more durable and it was my sisters’ old clothes, also since I only got one pair of tennis shoes a year I couldn’t exactly wear a dress with them. I wanted to wear dresses so badly, i wanted to be pretty like the other girls but I wanted my father’s approval more. So I said things about hating pink and only liking jeans to try and make him happy that I was happy even though I wasn’t. When I wanted things my dad always told me “no we don’t have enough money for that” or “do you know how much this costs me?” I heard things about money a lot as a child, I always heard about how everything was expensive and we never had enough for things. We never had food in the house either, grocery shopping was sporadic and the only constant was our canned food. We always had big cans of peas, I remember my dad looked so confused because he walked in on 8 year old me eating a soup bowl full of peas. I remember I told him “It’s comforting to eat”. My grandma use to buy things for me from savers in secret. She bought me a pair of dressy boots for picture day and we had to lie to my dad about where I got them. When I was in middle school I had sleepovers with a group of my friends, they never said anything then but when we got older I told them how I grew up thinking we were poor and they laughed because they thought I was too. Specifically they said because we never had any food in the house and everything I had was old and used. It’s a funny story now but when I was little I used to lay awake at night scared we were gonna lose our house.
I was always so ashamed of the things my dad has, because I guess I didn’t want people to ask me “why does your dad have this but you don’t have that?” I don’t know. I hated being called spoiled because I didn’t feel like I was, but I am. I was given a childhood that was free from financial struggle even if I didn’t know it, I’m lucky. I was ashamed because I didn’t think I deserved the place I’m at with my family but I do. Maybe I didn’t purchase it but I paid for it in the scars on my skin, my mental health, the surgery I was forced to undergo, the patron bottles I had to empty, the secrets I’ve had to keep, the silence I was forced to give my counselor, shielding my brothers as much as I possibly could and all the pain I was put through. I know that others have had it worse, and I know that others were not lucky enough to have such a transaction but I paid for it. I did. I’m spoiled because I paid.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
jblair-4
Untitled
aarnejuice
Aarnesan
chiomaokoroanene
Untitled
phillip3-g-l-4-a-s-s
e a t a c i d,s e e s a t a n
galakteon
urrahhh!