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workofheart · 3 years

Text

levi ackerman relationship hcs

some modern headcanons, nsfw below the cut <3 it’s just levi brainrot at this point

definitely the type to follow (stalk) your spotify and check in to see what you’re listening to. if he has the time, he might even listen along and wonder what you’re doing. if it’s a particularly sad song or series of songs, he’ll know to send you a text to let you know he’s thinking of you

on that note, he also stalks your pinterest boards just to see what you’re into these days and (idk abt yall but i save pins of mens fashion) if he sees a cute outfit in your saves that fits his style, he might even try it out. reason being (though he’ll never admit to it) he loooves that kind of attention from you - when he looks particularly good and you can’t stop staring, it might just pull a smirk out of him

once you’re living together, he lowkey acts like a dad. might scold you for not closing doors, not turning off lights, all the like. he means well, honestly

however, doesn’t mind tidying up for you. folds your laundry, clears your plate, takes your jacket off your shoulders when you get home, just because it’s his way of showing he cares. definitely an acts of service kind of guy

really good at cooking! he likes spending days in the kitchen with you while he whips something up or tries something new and you just sit at the counter and talk to him. it’s a good way to catch up as your adult lives can sometimes get busy

if you fall asleep with earbuds still in, he’ll gently take them out for you before you go to bed <3 he’ll also plug your phone in for you if you forgot

occasionally reads aloud to you, especially if you’re having trouble sleeping. we all know he’s not much of a talker, but his voice is so relaxing and he doesn’t mind doing it if he knows it will help

the chillest, coolest boyfriend ever. he’s so mature, honest, and trusting, and you don’t have to worry about those high school dramatics when you’re dating him. when he chooses to date you, he’s serious about it - definitely not the type to just date for fun. he won’t hesitate to deny advances from other people, doesn’t care about what you wear, just fully devoted to you and wouldn’t even think about anyone else

i also think that with that dating in general, you would probably start out as acquaintances or maybe even friends. he needs to have a lot of trust in the person he chooses to date, so only after he’s known you a long time and you’ve made enough of an impact on his life for him to make it hard to let you go would he date you

speaking of, didn’t isayama say that levi would stutter around his crush? i can imagine him stumbling over his words, trying to cover it up with a cough, reaching to scratch his neck all sheepish, just getting all shy. even once you’re far past that stage of your relationship, sometimes you’re so upfront and bold, he can’t help himself :( you just make him so weak

braids your hair for you when you’re too tired to do it yourself - you’ll sit in front of him and his fingers are so gentle with your hair 🥺 he got the hang of it so quickly and has the dexterity to not tangle your hair and it always comes out so nice and clean, even if you’re just going to sleep in them

i peg him as a biiiig cuddler. not a lot of pda besides holding your hand, wrapping his arms around your waist, letting you hook your arm around his, etc., but in private he loves when he can just lay his head on your lap or chest bc then you can play with his hair, which relaxes him

he’s really intuitive and in tune with your emotions. if you’re feeling down, he’ll know, and he’ll also know if you need space or if you need comfort, both of which he is more than willing to oblige

he’s there to bring you cups of tea, maybe some cut up strawberries on the days you’re tired and want to sleep. will definitely tuck you in, and will also lay down with you for a bit if you ask

his go to way of getting you to talk is going on drives. 1) levi is a really good driver and 2) he’ll usually come and find you wherever you may be around the apartment, say something along the lines of, “i’m going on a drive, you wanna come?” or might just give you a look and jingle the keys around his fingers

it might take a little while of rolling through the backroads aimlessly for you to speak up, but when you do, he’s all ears. lets you talk through your thoughts, might prompt you further, offers advice if you ask for it. it’s also how you sort through relationship misunderstandings - they are rare, but all relationships have them, so it would be silly to present your relationship without them

i think that when levi is upset on the other hand, he’ll usually come to you for comfort. he isn’t necessarily looking for advice, but just to calm down and rest. some form of physical touch is good, like cuddling or napping, preferably where he can put his head on your chest so you can play with his hair

i think levi is the type of person to get a lot of intrusive thoughts or memories that he doesn’t really want to remember when they pop up, so having you as a distraction to hold him and let him know it’s alright is something he really appreciates

nsfw below the cut (18+)

unpopular opinion: levi is NOT the hard dom people tag him as. rather, i think of levi as a service top, so while he may be carrying out more of the work, you’re the one in control. getting you off gets him off 100%

considering he is usually very dominant outside the bedroom, he likes the opportunity to let you take control and direct him instead - it takes a weight off his shoulders

slow and smooth kisser. might put up a fake fight for dominance just to make it more fun, but eventually take the lead and kiss him dizzy

hearing your moans makes him unbelievably hard. the sounds you make go straight to his dick

and so: godly at giving head. he might edge you but it’s not to tease or as punishment, he just takes his time because he knows it feels better for you, and at the end of the day he wants you to feel as good as possible. your pleasure is his main priority.

knows how to use his fingers, knows how to use his tongue. knows what you like and picks up on it very quickly. i don’t think he’s that experienced but he’s got a good natural sense of what feels good - do not doubt him, he knows where the clit is

he’s got a very wide range of capabilities for this, too. he can go slow and sensual on a calm sunday morning or absolutely dive in and ravage your pussy for more intense sessions - this is the one time he doesn’t mind making a mess

making you cum is good for his self esteem/confidence lmfaooo he lives to see your flushed cheeks and heaving chest and be told he’s doing well. when you scratch his hair or cup his cheek as a quick thank you, his heart swells and his dick twitches

please kiss his neck, he will absolutely melt for you. especially the next day when he looks in the mirror and notices the little love bites you left him... he runs his fingers over them lightly and his eyelids get a little droopy as he remembers everything, will definitely seek you out for another round

tbh i don’t think he’s that kinky. he likes what he likes, i can’t imagine him comfortably degrading you or hitting you or anything like that. realistically, levi wouldn’t be having sex with someone he’s not in a committed relationship with. he wants it to be special and personal and therefore probably would not enjoy treating you poorly even if just for the sake of sex. if anything, he wants it the other way around bc he could easily be a bit of a masochist in bed

loves when you restrain him and ride the shit out of him, either by tying his hands to the bed or just pinning his arms down. likes when you “use” him to get off. put your hands around his neck and he’s putty in your hands

really loves when you tell him to cum - your voice is music to his hears and to hear it out loud and as a command has him doing exactly that. he’s not one to disobey orders lol.

his brows furrow, his eyes squeeze shut, mouth falls open and lets out a low moan... jesus christ

one more deep kiss, a quick clean up, and then he’s passing out with his head on your chest. after-sex sleep is some of the best rest he’s ever gotten

#levi ackerman x reader #aot x reader #snk x reader #levi ackerman fluff #levi ackerman smut #levi ackerman imagines #aot imagines #snk imagines #levi x reader #levi fluff #levi smut #aot headcanons #levi ackerman hcs #levi hcs #levi headcanons #levi ackerman headcanons

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lacharcutiere · 3 years

Text

ur my favorite drug & my worst hangover [nsfw 18+, terushima yūji]

5,9k words

✯haikyuu!! masterlist✯

winter sem break brings the new year, & a few other new developments too.

smut, tiny bit of angst, fwb, fluff // quit - lil aaron & travis barker. god this song goes so hard

the way all i talk abt is how much i love teru but have nothing to show for it— yeah we’re gonna fix that. man i love him

☾𓆙𓂻

— SOBER

the soft hum of the tv in the background slowly fades into your awareness as you blink blearily awake, almost forgetting where you are for a second.

you’re in yūji’s living room, duh. your semestral break has not been nearly as interesting as either of you’d hoped: instead, you’ve both succumbed to alternating between each other’s childhood homes, binging netflix and random youtube videos and eating chips and tubs of ice cream late into the night, as has been your custom for years.

it’s dim but for the glow of the screen, and it’s kind of chilly in here now, even with you wrapped up in a hoodie. (yours, not yūji’s. you only borrow his in emergencies.)

he’s not next to you now, but his footsteps—you know them by now: quick and kind of heavy but not overbearingly loud—are entering the room again, and you feel the sofa cushions dip a little as he retakes his seat next to you.

“hey,” he says, smiling, “you’re awake.”

“hmmph,” you mumble, sitting upright to stretch your back. “what time is it?”

“uh.” he squints at the digital clock next to the tv. “like one?”

“‘m cold.”

“me too.”

“‘nd tired.”

“you just woke up?”

“i’m tired,” you whine.

yūji groans. “you’re really gonna make me go to sleep this early?”

“you don’t have to sleep, but i will.”

“yeah,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “but who’s gonna keep me company then?”

“i dunno,” you shoot back, “text tetsu or something. he’s probably still up.”

he rolls his eyes but relents, standing from the sofa. “fine.” and he holds out a hand to help you up, which you don’t take.

“i can do shit for myself,” you joke, rolling your eyes.

“right.”

—

it’s not much warmer in his room despite the thermostat supposedly being set to an acceptable temperature, but at least the sleeping bag on the floor next to yūji’s bed is insulated, and he’s given you a couple extra blankets for which you’re grateful. the biting chill of january does not fuck around.

so you nestle yourself into a little cocoon of linens and pillows and pull your hood up, curling into a ball in an effort to conserve your body heat. you hear him laugh a little as he watches you.

“what?”

“nothing.”

there’s the light hum of a phone ringing a few times, and that little beep as tetsu picks up the facetime call.

sleep clouds your senses to the background music of stifled laughter and loud whispers and the occasional static of yūji’s phone speaker.

— BUT U PULLED ME CLOSER

the next few minutes, hour—you have no idea—pass just like that, with you drifting languidly in and out of sleep and the sounds of yūji and tetsurō’s voices audible but incomprehensible in the background.

last you remember, you’re slipping back under again, hearing tetsu through the staticky iphone speaker.

and then you wake up again because you’re fucking freezing and it’s quiet and the lights are off, except for the little reading light mounted to the headboard of yūji’s bed. you sit up on your elbows, craning your neck, and see that he’s still up, lying on his stomach with his phone dimly illuminating his face.

“what time’s it?” you mumble.

“uh... 2:38.” he pauses. “y’alright?”

“cold,” you say.

he locks his phone then, and he just looks at you kind of blankly and maybe a little mockingly? except it must not be mocking; it must be something else, because he’s just kind of... studying you.

you look back up at him expectantly. “what?” you say.

he sighs, kind of rolls his eyes, turns away from the light to hide the little smile playing on his lips. “come on up here.” he scoots over and pats the spot next to him.

thankful for an extra source of body heat and blankets and pillows, you shove yourself up off the ground and shuffle over to the bed.

it’s kind of funny, the way you’re basically adults now and yet your relationship’s still fundamentally the same as it was when you met years ago.

—

duh, yūji hates that. it’s true, that whole thing about how “every one of your guy friends has thought about fucking you at some point.” it’s true, at least for him.

and there’s something electric in how you haven’t slept next to him in months because you’ve both been busy with school, and now you’re back here. back here, where it feels like you belong.

there’s something deep in his chest that’s set aflame by the way you laugh and let him tuck the comforter over you; the way your sweatpant-covered legs brush against his own underneath it.

he wants to touch you.

he wants to wrap his hand around your thigh and pull it over his own; to run his fingertips up the length of your arm and make you shiver; to snake his around your waist and pull your head into his chest.

maybe he will once you’re asleep, he figures. once his pride can’t be hurt because you don’t have to know.

except... except he’d let it be hurt for you. without a moment’s hesitation. he would shatter it himself for you, would let you take him in your fingers and rip him to pieces too small to be puzzled back together.

because maybe he doesn’t just want you. maybe he loves you.

but even he, completely truthfully, doesn’t know.

he’s got a sneaking suspicion that he does, though, because he’s rarely confused and this is an enigma he can’t quite seem to decipher, no matter what he tries.

it’s absurd, too, he realizes laying on his back next to you, how suddenly he’s afraid to touch you. because the two of you have always been touchy, that’s just you. you’re two halves; you’re so similar. you’ve been attached at the hip since childhood—why is it different now, now that he wants that more than anything?

so here he is, spiraling in this conundrum of feelings, when it’s cut short by you, tiredly whining, “yūji.”

“what?” he sort of feigns annoyance.

“‘m cold.”

“and?”

and. and his breath catches because you roll over and latch onto him. and he brings his arms around your shoulders and holds you to his chest.

so close, and yet so far away.

and he shudders as you lay one hand flat on his chest. it belongs there forever.

you nuzzle your nose into his shoulder and inhale his scent and his brain short-circuits.

has she done this before?

and mostly unconscious, you mumble, “—warm. y’re pretty’.” his eyes go wide.

“what?”

your arms tighten around him, and he’d hate to admit it, but it’s setting him off. he’s... a little hard.

a hand settles itself on your thigh, the one that’s draped over his legs, and he pushes it downward a little, so that it’s not resting next to the rising erection in his pajama pants.

god, he wants to fuck you so badly right now, he wants for you to feel him throbbing between your legs as you whimper against his skin. but he also wants you to want him.

miraculously, a little sigh escapes your lips at the touch. so he doesn’t move his hand.

“feels nice,” you whisper.

so he decides to test the waters, and squeezes gently. you giggle sleepily.

inhibitions dissipating for a moment, his stomach leaps to his chest and he snakes that hand up over your hip, consciously avoiding your ass just in case, and rests it on your back, rubbing up and down slowly.

his chest constricts as you snuggle even closer to him. and then your leg moves back up and your thigh nudges his crotch.

your eyes snap open and he inhales sharply.

and then you’re propped up on your elbow, leaning over him.

he curses himself for forgetting to turn off the light; the flush in his cheeks is obvious.

half terrified and half excited, he watches as your face breaks into a wide, shit-eating grin.

“what?” he breathes.

your eyes narrow; a look of mischief he’s so familiar with, one that’s often mirrored on his own features. (it’s not now.)

“yūji,” you say, singsong and bright, “what’s this?”

and—oh, god, oh, fuck—you bring a hand down to rest on his dick, tenting in his pajamas.

he doesn’t know what to say to you.

“i— uhm—”

“hmm,” you hum. “y’ alright?”

he clears his throat, nods. “are— uh, are you?”

“mhm,” you laugh, wide awake now. “yūji...” you pause. he can’t stand it; he needs to know what happens next, needs to know what’s fanning the flames behind your eyes.

oh god. oh god, all he leaves is a breath in between and then you’re throwing your leg over him again and, fuck, you’re straddling him. he lets out a shaky breath, voice tight as he chokes out, “what are you doing?”

the smile is gone from your face now, replaced with something softer, something lustful. your hands move to his shoulders to balance yourself as you grind your hips down, and a low ahh slips out of him.

it’s just like that, just your clothed bodies rubbing together. he comes embarrassingly quickly in his boxers, but he lets you ride his thigh until you finish as recompense.

afterward, he excuses himself and cleans himself off in the bathroom. when he comes back, you’re sound asleep again.

that’s all that happens.

— UR GONNA FUCK ME UP

following that, everything proceeds as it had before. neither of you bother to speak of it, but nothing even seems off between you at all. it’s as if it never happened.

or maybe, yūji sometimes allows himself to think as he touches himself to the memory in the middle of nights when you’re not together, it’s like it was meant to happen.

what a wonderful illusion that is.

because he knows it won’t work, and if you ever thought about him like that, you would know, too.

the two of you have watched each other fall in love—get dumped, ghost people, whatever—several times over the past few years. he remembers your first boyfriend, your last year of middle school: the guy had been a mutual friend that you’d been crushing on for months. and yet, when you’d finally become a thing, it had taken no more than a couple of weeks for you to grow uninterested and dump him.

it’s not like he hasn’t done similar things in the past.

and it’s not like some people who’ve dated either of you haven’t had better luck; there have been several who have been the ones to break your hearts.

but both of you have yet to have maintained a long-term relationship, and neither of you have kept in contact with many of your exes.

he doesn’t want to be another one of those, and he certainly doesn’t want you to be, either.

—

it’s maybe a week after that night when you pick him up to go get takeout and ice cream.

that, in itself, is a pretty normal thing.

but then you’re sitting in your car, and between spoonfuls of mocha chip and hot caramel, you say, “so i saw this thing.”

“hm?” he responds, his mouth still full.

“your aura is striking, dude,” you quote. there’s a pause as you try to suppress a giggle. and then: “can i kiss you deeply, bro?”

he snorts and jokes, “anytime you want.” and he really hopes that you take his tone at face value, but he also knows you way better than that.

so he’s only half surprised when you actually do. half surprised, and wholly in awe.

your hands are in each other’s hair. it’s quick—feverish, but quick—and the first thing you say when you pull back is, “tastes like sugar.”

he laughs again, unsure of what move to make next. “yeah?”

and then you’re... shy? because you look away from him, back down to the cup of ice cream in your lap, and you say, “you feel good.” it’s so low that it’s almost unintelligible. but he hears you.

both your faces are burning when you look back up at him. “should we talk about that?”

“‘bout what? kissing? ‘s not the first time.”

it isn’t—he kissed you once in middle school, because there was this other girl that he’d thought was pretty, and he wanted to make her jealous. it hadn’t worked; she’d just thought the two of you were together, and a teacher had scolded you for pda. but at least it had been a fun story to laugh at for a while after.

this is obviously different, though, and you both know that. this kiss wasn’t to make anyone jealous. this one was for yourselves.

and anyway, that’s not what you meant by that.

“no,” you say. “the um... last week. at your place.”

“oh, yeah.”

“should we, um, do you wanna talk about it?”

“d’you?”

you shrug.

“alright,” he says. pauses. “so... what was that about?”

and you almost laugh incredulously. “you’re asking me?”

he stares blankly.

“you’re the one who got a boner when we were cuddling, yūji. as if we’ve never done that before.” you notice the mortified look on his face, and your expression softens and your voice lowers. “you wanna tell me what that was about? you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

and he laughs nervously and says, “no, no, ‘s fine. i was just kinda horny, that’s all. i haven’t hooked up with anyone in a while, y’know?”

you give him a sardonic grin. “and that’s why it only took you, like, three minutes to come?”

“yeah... yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

a moment passes where you stop and think for a little, and then you turn back to look at him. “it was, uh, good, though. like, objectively. it was good.”

it’s his turn to flash a grin at you: “‘course it was. it’s me.”

“and me.”

“shoulda won the sex gods superlative in last year’s yearbook.”

“ha.” another thing crosses your mind: “and now look at us. too busy with school to even have time to fuck anyone.”

yūji doesn’t say anything, so you do it for him.

you start out carefully. “but...”

“but?”

“do you— i mean. we’ve got, like, what? three weeks left before we go back? and we’re stuck here. and— and we already hang out like every single day anyway, and. uh. and it was objectively good.”

“are you—”

“and i’ve known you for years. come on. there’s, like, nothing i could do to embarrass myself around you anymore.”

friends with benefits. you’re suggesting that you temporarily be friends with benefits.

“and it wasn’t weird after last time,” you add. “i think.”

“hm,” he says, “yeah, no, it wasn’t.”

his first instinct is to say no, to tell you it’s a bad idea. but as he thinks about it more, he realizes that you’re kind of right. and anyway, what is the worst that could happen? because he’s pretty sure he’s far gone enough for you that falling a little further wouldn’t change a thing. even if he weren’t, he’d never think of hurting you intentionally.

and, he figures, he’d hardly mind being hurt by you.

—

that is how you end up back in his bed an hour later—his parents are out on a date this evening; you’ve got until a few hours past sundown to fuck and clean yourselves off and make it look like you’ve been eating and talking and watching tv the whole time.

outside of the guise of midnight impulses, it is a strange—but also strangely pleasant—thing to be having sex with your best friend.

there’s no pretense, hardly any need to keep up appearances (at least, for you). you’re not strangers only concerned with your own pleasure; you know each other. despite never actually having done this before, he already knows what you like, and vice versa.

it’s nice.

it’s nice to hear him laugh when you whine for him to stop being so gentle, vanilla-ass bitch, only to have him call you a “horny little—” (to which you respond, no, you.)

and it’s nice to sleep with someone who reads all the cues you give him without you even needing to say anything.

it is possibly the best sex you’ve ever had in your life.

it is possibly the best sex you’ve ever had in your life, and... it might not be just because of the dynamic between you two, or the fact that you don’t have to be afraid to tell him what you like and what you don’t—the fact that you don’t even have to tell him at all.

it’s nice. for you. and it’s hell for him.

it’s hell for him to have to hold back all the sweet nothings he wants to whisper in your ear—he’s restricted to you like that, huh, baby? and fuuuck and god, you’re so fucking tight, and he knows you’re into it, but he wants to be treating you like a princess right now. he wants to call you his, wants to whisper, tell me you’re all mine against your bare shoulders, wants to tell you he loves you.

so... he does love you.

but he can’t say that. he knows he can keep you around, but you’re not his to keep.

—

it continues like that for the next several days: you fuck, it’s good sex, and he’ll touch himself to the memories if you’re not there: memories of how you taste, of the softness of your skin, of you with your legs around his waist and your bare chests pressed together, damp and warm with sweat.

it is so gratifying, and even more painful.

and then, one day, as he’s fucking you in your childhood bedroom—all white walls covered in sketches and colorful postcards you’ve accumulated over the years—something is slightly off.

there’s something about it that feels more intimate than the other times, and it goes slower than before. it’s not all lust and clothes tossed haphazardly on the floor and bodies shoved hurriedly into mattresses.

you kiss him for a long time before any clothing comes off, and you keep pulling him back to your lips as he thrusts into you. you’re not urging him faster, more, harder; you let him keep a steady pace and arch your back into the sheets as you lie underneath him.

it hits him as you come down from your orgasm and writhe in his arms, softly moaning, “god, yūji, i l—”

he stops.

“don’t say that,” he says.

still shaking and catching your breath, you respond, “what?”

“just don’t.” but his tone is casual, and so you don’t think much of it.

—

you don’t hook up every time you hang out, and yeah. you were right. it’s hardly different than before. except, isn’t it?

you’re sitting on opposite sides of your sofa one morning after your parents have left for work—he slept over the previous night, but you didn’t have sex. you’d spent it laughing over the dumbest things and blasting music as you drove around without a destination.

your’re sitting with your knees pulled against your chest, scrolling lazily on your phone while you and yūji eat handfuls of cereal straight from the box between you.

it’s mostly quiet for once; comfortably silent. neither of you have ever really been a morning person.

— BUT U KNOW I LIKE IT

the ice cracks a little when he stops shoving your hand away to grab himself another handful of cereal. you notice, and then you wonder if you always noticed little things like that, because it feels kind of weird to. not that you mind.

meanwhile, yūji watches you, studying the way your hair falls messily around your face, the way one sleeve of your sweatshirt is rolled halfway up your forearm and the other is pulled all the way over your hand.

the living room is bright, surrounded by windows, and you’re illuminated by light yellow late-morning sunlight all around and he feels safe looking at you.

the ice cracks a little more when he says your name softly.

“hm?” you say, confusedly looking up at him.

“nothing,” he answers, too quickly. “i’m just... happy right now.”

you smile, radiant. “i’m glad you are.”

—

in the afternoon, you’ve grown bored and are wandering the streets of your neighborhood, voicing thoughts and pointing out people you pass by.

it’s still early, but it’s january, so the sun is already beginning to set.

when you’re a couple minutes out from your house, yūji goes quiet, and it stays like that for the rest of the walk.

and then, as he stands next to you while you unlock the door, he blurts, “i have to tell you something.”

you freeze. “what?”

it’s silent for a bit. “never mind.”

“yūji—”

“it’s okay,” he says softly.

he wants to shrink away from your gaze as you study him. he knows you know there’s something amiss, and second thoughts have almost always been his own personal hell.

graciously, though, you don’t ask. and it’s like stepping through a portal when you’re back inside; it’s all forgotten and back to how it was before.

—

but: a little while later, you’re lying side-by-side on your bed watching netflix again, and for whatever reason you turn to look at him for a moment and it’s just—

you can’t look away. and you don’t know why.

he can feel your eyes on him and it burns, and he wonders how much longer he can keep this up before he loses his mind.

when he doesn’t turn to face you, you call his name softly.

“hm?”

after an uncomfortable moment of hesitation, you say, “something’s up.”

“what?”

“yūji,” you repeat, and he forgets to breathe for a second. “are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

the mattress shifts under his weight as he sits up, resting his head in his hands. he takes a deep breath and can’t bring himself to meet your eyes.

“what’s wrong?” it sounds less like a question and more like a plea.

“i—” he starts, and then stops himself. “i can’t, i can’t do this to you.”

“can’t do what?”

there’s a painful silence, heavy with anticipation and maybe a little bit of dread.

“i don’t wanna keep hooking up with you.”

you sit up, too.

“did i...? do something wrong?”

he shakes his head and sighs, and he sounds exasperated. “it’s... no, it’s— i think...” and he seems to grow more frustrated as he fails to verbalize whatever it is, this strange cold fire stinging in the pit of his stomach.

“what do you think?” you whisper.

and he stands and walks to the door. his hand rests on the knob and he whispers back, in a voice that sounds precariously close to breaking, “you, when i... y’know. ’m sorry.”

and he’s gone.

and you have no idea what to think, both of what he just said and the fact that it sends an excited buzz through your nerves, even though it probably shouldn’t.

— IT'S HARD N IT'S HARDER TO ADMIT

his words are stuck in your head all night, have you caught somewhere in between laughing and crying.

you want to call him, ask him what the fuck is going on and why you think you kind of like it, but you don’t.

but when you look over at your alarm clock to see that it’s 2:00 a.m. and sleep refuses to let you succumb to it and you relent to the warm emptiness between your legs, it’s yūji whom you imagine is there to fill it.

you think of the way his tongue trails down the expanse of your neck, the way he feels inside you, as you whine into your pillow and desperately try to make yourself come.

it doesn’t even occur to you until later, when you’re waking up to sunlight slicing through your half-open blinds. and then it does, and you text him: i do that too.

he doesn’t text back, but ten minutes later, your phone rings. he sounds breathless.

“be here in ten,” he says.

you pause. “okay.”

and you are. he throws open the door as he hears your car pull up and jogs out to meet you, and all he gives you is a quick, “hey,” before dragging you inside.

there’s no one else home, so he motions for you to have a seat at the kitchen table and takes the one next to you.

“do what too?”

“what?”

“what you texted me.”

you look down, studying the seams of your sleeve and feeling your breathing go shallow.

“do what too?” he repeats.

and softly, you say, “want you.”

yūji stands, pulling you to your feet with him. “want me how?”

your eyes are wide and a little bit sad as you stare up at him. “i don’t know.”

then he cracks a tiny smile. “good,” he says, “i don’t either.

except he does.

he wants you every way, your presence, your time, your body, your fucking soul, all of it. but he doesn’t say that.

when you kiss him, he implodes, melts into your arms as if he’s trying to fuse your bodies together. but he says nothing of it.

the feeling of your wrist in his hand, the sound of your giddy giggles as he leads you to his bedroom—for now, that’s enough.

he takes it slow.

when he’s shut the door and ensured it’s locked, he turns to find you’ve already tossed your top on the floor.

a smile meets yours, gentle fingertips on your cheek, a soft whisper against your hair: “put it back on; i wanna do it myself.”

and you laugh and oblige, shivering at the now-familiar sensation of the warm metal bead on his tongue against your lip as his hand finds its way to your ass and squeezes gently.

“yūji,” you whisper.

“i like it when you say my name like that,” he murmurs into your shoulder, rubbing gently up and down your back underneath your shirt.

“hmm,” comes your contented response.

and then his fingers are rubbing gently against the hem of your shirt, easing it up to reveal your body inch by inch, and you shiver a little under his feather-light touch.

lifting your arms up, you allow him to slip your shirt back over your head, and then his hands are all over you again, squeezing your breasts through your bra and tracing lines up and down the center of your back. the little metal ball on his tongue presses against your lower lip. you tug at the hem of his hoodie, and he pulls it off.

the feeling of his skin on yours is nothing new now, and yet this time, there’s a certain nuance to it that he can’t place.

he wonders how you want him again; can’t stop wondering as you lead his hand down to the button on your jeans, laughing a little as he kneels at your feet to unzip them.

as he pulls them slowly down your legs he lines your thighs with little, butterfly-soft kisses, murmuring unintelligible praises.

when you’re left in only your bra and panties, he wraps his arms around your waist and falls backward onto the mattress, taking you down with him. you sit up a little, so that you’re straddling him, and he lets out a low sigh.

“you are fucking incredible,” he breathes as you suck gently at his neck, leaving light marks that will have faded by tomorrow.

your fingers trace the dips between his abs, tantalizingly, eventually making their way all the way down his stomach to the waistband of his sweats, and then a little further, palming his dick through them and feeling how fucking hard he is.

he groans a little, says, “please don’t tease me,” as you continue to do exactly that, but he doesn’t stop you.

when you shift a little so that you’re positioned right over him, soaking panties rubbing a tiny little wet spot into the tent of his erection, he sits up and gathers your body into his arms, lips and tongue moving against yours as one hand unclips your bra while the other settles itself on your hip, grinding you down against him. you press your thighs together at this feeling of pure need you’re experiencing and he pulls his mouth away and looks you in the eye.

“may i?” he whispers, and you smile and nod, laughing as he rolls you off of him to rid himself of the rest of his clothes and dig a condom out of his bedside table, which he hands to you.

you’re impatient as you tear it open but force yourself to roll it onto him slowly, studying his face as he revels in the feeling of your fingers grazing lightly against his dick.

once it’s on, he flips you over again, laughing, and exhales slowly as he slides your panties down your legs and tosses them somewhere on the floor to be found later. his fingertips ghost gently down the sides of your thighs as he bends down to lick a long stripe between your legs and across your clit.

“fuck,” you breathe as he groans softly against your skin, the vibrations sending an electrifying buzz up your spine.

he presses his tongue flat against you, metal bar circling your clit teasingly, and then he pulls away and groans, “sit on my face,” his words hurried and slurred with lust.

so you let him move to lie on his back and straddle his face, giggling as he wraps his hands around your thighs to pull you closer.

“aw, don’t be shy, i thought that’s the whole point of this,” he says.

and then his mouth is back on you again, tongue flicking slowly and carefully, taking in your every response, and soon he’s got you shaking on top of him, grasping at the headboard and his shoulders and tangling your fingers in his hair.

he keeps going after you’ve already finished, making you writhe and whimper, only letting go of you once he’s satisfied.

he pushes you backward so that you’re still sitting with your knees on either side of him and he sits up, leaning back against the headboard. his lips are on yours, then, and he’s pulling your hips to his, the head of his cock nudging ever-so-lightly against your entrance.

“quit teasing me,” you whine when he grips your waist, refusing to let you sit yourself on his dick.

“i’m not.”

“yes you are!”

“‘m not,” he mumbles, smiling, as he draws his lips down the curve of your left shoulder and back up again. “i’m savoring the moment.”

you huff. “you can savor it with your cock in me.” and yūji does his best not to show it, but the high he gets from those words alone, from knowing how desperate you are for him, even if it’s just for his body, sends him straight to heaven. because regardless of how much of him you want, it’s still only him that you want in this moment, and right now that’s enough.

you allow him to move at his own pace, his movements slow, languid as he holds you to his chest, one hand around your waist and the other reaching up to tangle his fingers in your hair. he lets himself say the things he wants now.

“kiss me?” he whispers, and you oblige happily. you taste like him, and he’s so content he could lose his mind.

instead he loses himself to you, shaky breaths between “god, you’re so good,” and “you have no idea… how long i’ve waited… for you to want me like this.” there’s a single thing he holds back from saying, but he still plans on saying it. he’s just saving it for the right moment.

you’re drunk off of him, your body shuddering against him with every touch of his skin to yours, not knowing what to say and yet feeling as if you know everything you’ve ever needed to. and you say it for him.

“i love you.”

the words are barely there, just a breath against his lips as you kiss him, and it’s too much for him. he finishes with something akin to a sob, taking your face into his hands. “i love you,” he responds. and then, “say it again? please?”

you close your eyes and smile, leaning into him and brushing your lips against his. “i love you, yūji.”

his hand’s on the back of your head, then, pushing you back to his mouth, wanting you closer, wanting more. and you want more, too, fingers tracing lines down his back and arms and stomach, sending waves of light through his skin. this is it, he thinks as you press your body tight against his, this is all there is.

you are everything to him.

— SOMETHING ABT U I CAN’T QUIT

in each other’s arms later that evening, you feel yūji’s chest move slowly up and down with each inhale and exhale, contented in sharing this silent moment with you, and then you know. you know how you want him. you open your mouth to speak, and he does at the exact same time. the two of you share a laugh, just like you always have.

“you first,” you say, propping yourself up on your elbow so that you can look at him properly.

he reaches up and rests a hand flat against your face and runs his thumb lightly over your bottom lip. “i am…” the words are slow and quiet and purposeful. “i am so in love with you.”

your smile widens against his hand. “i want you. everything… about you, with you. i want it all.”

and he mirrors your grin, just like he always has. “i’m yours to take.” his eyes flit down to your lips, his thumb still pressed against them, afraid to look you in the eye as he speaks his next words. his face flushes pink; it’s adorable. “say you’re mine, too?” it’s a request, a plea—not a command.

you reach up to your face and place your hand over his. “all yours,” you say. “don’t even have to ask.”

it’s silent for a bit again, and then he sits up, going a little more serious.

“what?”

“what happens if this doesn’t last?”

you sit up, too, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and gently pulling his head to rest against yours. “after all these years?”

“hmm.”

you think for a moment: after all these years. your whole lives, spent together, maybe not as lovers but always as two halves of a whole. it’s him you always gossip to first, whom you always went to after heartbreaks and fights with your parents. he’s the first one you told when you lost your virginity, crashed your car, got into one of your top universities. he’s held your hand through everything.

so finally you say, “i don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

he pulls away to look you in the eye. “why not?”

his nose brushes against yours as you lean your forehead against his and laugh a little. “are you dumb, yūji?”

“i don’t think so?” when you say nothing, just continuing to look at him with that shit-eating grin on your face, he goes, “am i missing something?”

you press your lips to his for a second and pull away, still smiling at him. “it’s us, yūji. always has been.”

231 notes · View notes

hermannsthumb · 3 years

Note

Town council Hermann vs Alien Conspiracy Newt please!!!

THIS WAS FUN!!! inspired both by this tweet and conversations abt a newt/herm AU of that tweet with @k-sci-janitor (who also thought of the funniest sign newt made in this fic, aka the cheekbones one, and what his tats should look like). this is long sorry :/ gets a little spicy towards the end but nothing worse than a high pg13/light M

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The evening of the weekly town council meeting, it pours like nothing else. Which Hermann figures is really quite appropriate. Loathe as he is to soak his trouser legs, trudge through the mud that used to be his front walk, and hold his umbrella for so long his arm aches (for the community center is a mere half-mile walk away that Hermann can't justify substituting with a bus), he can't imagine council meetings happening in any other sort of weather. In fact, they rarely tend to; their dreariness seems to be a necessity, part of the preparation, as if to put everyone in as miserable a mood as possible.

Hermann hates council meetings. He supposes he'd be more sympathetic towards the plights of his constituents—if one can call one's neighbors constituents—if he'd wanted the damned job in the first place. As it is, he feels a bit like he was conned into it. Hermann had been a lowly physics professor at the local community college, passionate about public education and funding for public education and all those proper sorts of things an educator ought to be concerned about, when he suddenly found himself seized with the idea of making a difference. So he ran for a head position on the council. And he won it. Only no one told him that the council deals a lot less with public education and a lot more with noise complaints, cul-de-sac bake sales, and raccoons in dustbins, which makes why he ran completely unopposed all the more obvious.

A fat raindrop explodes against the edge of Hermann's umbrella and splashes his glasses. Hermann grits his teeth and wipes them dry with the cuff of his sweater. Bloody meeting; bloody rain; Hermann just wants to go back home, and fix up a nice pot of herbal tea, and set a blanket in the dryer for ten minutes, and...

"Dr. Gottlieb! Hey, Dr. Gottlieb, wait—!"

A blur in an oversized yellow raincoat hurdles itself at Hermann from the stairs of the community center. Hermann considers pretending he is a different Dr. Gottlieb, one who certainly has no reason to know maniacs in raincoats, or maybe high-tailing it in the other direction. This is the other reason why Hermann loathes council meetings: Newton Geiszler.

The unfortunate thing is that Newton Geiszler was, at one point, a respectable academic type, and in fact one of Hermann's own colleagues at the community college. (Hermann only found this out after the fact—he does not make a habit of intermingling much with the biology department.) And Hermann does mean was. Around a year ago, Geiszler was asked to temporarily step down from his position after he suddenly and unexpectedly went off the deep end. He has not been asked to come back yet. And not without reason. "Dr. Geiszler," Hermann sighs. "I've asked you not to lurk about here like that. It's...unsettling."

"Sorry, man, sorry," Geiszler shouts. He stomps over and makes himself at home under Hermann's umbrella. Hermann's not sure how he's been managing to see anything, let alone Hermann approaching down the sidewalk: his glasses are completely fogged-up and rain-splattered. "Do you mind if—thanks, dude."

Geiszler flips his hood down. He’s short, only coming up to Hermann's nose, with stubble nearly overgrown to a full beard and a mess of wet brown hair. He shakes that hair now, like a dog, soaking Hermann in the process. Hermann growls. "I beg your pardon,” he says.

"Oops,” Geiszler says. “Sorry. Anyway, Dr. Gottlieb, I'm really glad I caught you, there are—there are some things I wanted to tell you about. Before the meeting. They're—hold on." He rummages around in the deep pockets of his raincoat and produces a damp notebook, which he begins to flip through frantically. "It's about—"

"I know what it's about," Hermann says. Geiszler fumbles to push his glasses back up his nose. "In fact, there are some things I need to speak with you about as well."

"You've seen them?" Geiszler says in a hushed tone.

Hermann scowls. "I certainly have.”

They first started cropping up in the forest around the little cabin Geiszler calls home. Then, like dandelions or bamboo, they spread fast and far—to the town commons, in the front lawn of the coffee shop Hermann frequents, in front of his house. Whenever Hermann dashes one down with his cane or hauls one off to a rubbish bin, two more only crop up in its place. It's annoying, frankly. As if Hermann doesn't have to deal with enough already.

3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS IN ONE WEEK - WHEN IS THE COUNCIL GOING TO DO SOMETHING?, the new one sitting in front of the community center says.

It's better than last week's sign, Hermann supposes. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - AND HERMANN GOTTLIEB IS BLIND TO IT.

"You know you need a permit for those, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says. "Or, at the very least, the council's permission. They're a public nuisance."

"My signs are a public nuisance?" Geiszler shouts. Hermann flinches back. Geiszler may be compact, but if he doesn't have the shrillest voice on the whole damned planet. "Open your eyes, dude! A dozen people went missing last month! The only public nuisance is whatever's coming from—" He bites his lip and jabs his finger at the sky, as if saying anything remotely akin to outer space would suddenly send fleets of UFOs pouring down from above. "And you're just letting them walk right fucking in."

“I thought they were flying in?" Hermann says. He raps Geiszler’s shin with the end of his cane. "Do get out of my way, Dr. Geiszler. The meeting starts in ten minutes, and you're welcome to air all of your grievances then."

Geiszler is silent as Hermann ducks around him and ascends the community center ramp. For a moment, Hermann thinks he may have won this small victory, and then he hears the wet slaps of Geiszler's rain boots against the pavement behind him. "Really funny," Newton says. "Real fucking funny, dude. I bet it'll be just as funny when they come for you next!"

Hermann unlocks the door. Geiszler waves a stack of black-and-white polaroids beneath his nose. "I took these last week," Geiszler says, and begins flipping through them as frantically as he had his notepad. Each one is blurry and indistinct, like Geiszler snapped them through a gauzy curtain with shaking hands. Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. "The day that waitress went missing from the bus stop. And two nights after that—your neighbor, the one who went outside to let his cat in and never came b—"

"Enough," Hermann says. He pushes the polaroids away, knocking two to the ground, and Geiszler scrambles to pick them up before they're ruined. "Dr. Geiszler, it is undoubtedly tragic that these people have—er—vanished, as they have, but continuously insisting extraterrestrials had something to do with it, and furthermore—" Geiszler opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hermann raises his voice and pushes on. "—furthermore, that I'm meant to do something about it, is completely—well, it's unhinged, frankly. I'm not law enforcement. Or the mayor. Or bloody—NASA. What do you want from me?"

Geiszler stares at him for a long time. He pockets his photographs. "They're gonna come for you," he says, ominously. "Just like they did for me."

The meeting goes off as expected, which is to say, badly. Hermann gets shouted at by nearly everyone in town, many of whom blame Hermann and his presumed negligence for the disappearances over the past year as well (blessedly, they don't also blame aliens), though many more of them blame him for more trivial things such as the broken water fountain in the commons or the library's slow wireless internet. Hermann can't decide which is worse.

As it is, when the clock strikes eight, he's more than ready to go home. "Right," he announces, standing up and making a show of tidying his meeting notes. They're already tidy: Hermann's notes are always meticulous. He continues—rather quickly, in case someone gets bold and attempts to interrupt him, "Thank you all very much for such a, er, productive meeting. I'll make sure to pass along everything you've said to the appropriate people. If there's nothing else..."

Geiszler jumps to his feet. A few people groan; Hermann has a feeling they're just about as sick of him as Hermann is. "Um, yeah, actually, I want to add something."

"No," Hermann says. “Dr. Geiszler, please, we can talk—”

"When we were outside," Geiszler continues anyway, raising his voice, "you asked me what I wanted you to do. Well, I just want you to listen to me! That's all! I have so much proof—so much I can show you—and you won't even—!"

"Proof?" Hermann says. "Your rubbish photographs?”

"It's not just the photographs! It's other stuff, too! Like—" Geiszler lets out a long, angry huff of air, and actually balls his fists up at his sides. Hermann has never seen him so incensed, not even when he accused Hermann of being an alien himself during a council meeting last summer. "Look, just come to my house and I'll fuckin' show you. Or are you that afraid of being—I don’t know, proven wrong?"

Part of Hermann is convinced that if he follows Geiszler out to his isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the very least, he certainly has no desire to spend more time with Geiszler than he's already forced to. Yet—on the other hand—Hermann does not appreciate the challenge, nor does he appreciate being made to look like a fool by the man who chairs the local paranormal society. "Fine," he snaps, and Geiszler startles in obvious surprise. "Fine, you wretched little man. I’ll let you show me whatever proof you think you may have, so long as you take every single one of those signs down."

"Um," Geiszler squeaks. He clears his throat. "D—deal?"

Hermann seizes his cane and thrusts his chair back under his table roughly. "Well?" he says to the rest of the hall, none of whom have budged since Geiszler began shouting his head off. He scowls at the lot of them. "The meeting is over. You can leave."

It's Hermann's job to shut down the building each week, so he waits for the very last stragglers to toss out their paper water cups, shrug on their raincoats, and file outside before switching off the lights and locking up. He finds Geiszler lurking by a rather worse-for-wear green VW Beetle at the curb, the hood of his raincoat flipped back up over his hair. Hermann desperately hopes that the car isn't Geiszler’s. He is Hermann’s ride home tonight, after all. "I took the signs down," Geiszler says in a rush. "All of the ones around here, anyway. I'll have to do the rest tomorrow." He jerks his thumb at the backseat of the Beetle, where Hermann sees a haphazard pile of some of the 3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS signs. His heart sinks. The X-Files bumper stickers should've been a dead giveaway, really.

"Thank you," Hermann sighs. "Well, let's get this over with."

"The heat is busted, so you might wanna leave your coat on," Geiszler says apologetically when Hermann manages to squish himself into the passenger's seat. The floor is a sea of empty Dunkin' Donuts cups, stacks of pulp science (or, if Hermann were to be less kind, pseudoscientific) magazines spanning back at least half a decade, and a pin-littered linen tote bag filled to the brim with boxed Annie's macaroni and cheese.

"Uh, sorry," Geiszler says. "I had to run some errands earlier. You can just—toss that in the back. Yeah."

The ride is short but bumpy, and though the removal of Geiszler's shopping bag offers Hermann more leg room, there is nothing that can make up for his tragically awful driving and his tragically awful CD collection. Hermann almost bolts from the car when they finally pull up at Geiszler's ivy-shrouded cabin, so relieved to have made it there in one piece that he's all but forgotten that he must now spend the rest of the evening with Geiszler, too. He remembers soon enough: another duo of aggressive signs have been pounded into Geiszler's mossy front path, TURN BACK NOW - ALIEN ABDUCTION ZONE, and a rather good sketch of Hermann beneath WHAT ARE THOSE CHEEKBONES HIDING? "That one's from the summer," Geiszler says sheepishly, kicking down the latter with the toe of his boot. "I keep forgetting to take it down. I don't still think you're an alien, by the way."

"Er, thank you," Hermann says. "I suppose?"

"They wouldn't be that obvious," Geiszler says, emphasizing the they with a meaningful glance up at the night sky.

"Of course not," Hermann says.

He's not quite sure what he expected Geiszler's house to look like. Some sort of—conspiracy nutter's den, perhaps, with aluminum foil hats and deconstructed radios and elaborate photoboards full of thumbtacks and red string. Or the interior of his car on a larger scale, with empty takeout containers and crumpled up papers on every surface. He's...sort of right. There's a noticeable lack of tinhats, but there are plenty of (modestly-sized) corkboards on the walls and multiple coffee cups peeking out of a recycling bin. The rest is merely precisely what Hermann would expect from an academic in his 30s: books, and mis-matching furniture, and a sink of dishes begging to be washed. It's...a bit disappointing, frankly. Though Hermann is rather impressed with the sleek telescope angled in front of the back slider door. Impressed, and envious. It's a very nice model.

"Make yourself at home," Geiszler says, unzipping his voluminous raincoat and tossing it, along with Hermann's, over the back of a worn armchair. He's wearing a pair of torn skinny jeans and a band t-shirt that reveals his heavily tattooed, and deceptively shapely, arms. Hermann tears his eyes away and forces himself to sit down at one end of Geiszler's couch. "I'm gonna make us some coffee. Do you want any sugar or non-dairy creamer?"

"No, thank you," Hermann says. "I don't drink coffee this late. It'll keep me up all night."

"Well, I hope so, that's kinda the plan,” Geiszler says. He rolls his eyes. “The aliens never come before at least midnight. Soy milk or almond milk?"

Hermann thinks, briefly and longingly, of his nice warm bed, the blanket he intended to toss in the dryer, and the herbal tea he won't be having after all. "Almond milk?" he hazards.

Geiszler stares at him in evident disgust. "Dude, I was kidding. You know how bad that shit is for the environment? It takes, like, a fuckin' thousand gallons of water or something like that for one carton of almond milk. It's insane. I mean, I guess it's still less water than what dairy needs, but there are plenty of better options."

"Oh," Hermann says. Hermann drinks skim milk. "I'm sorry. Er. Soy milk?"

As Geiszler fixes them mugs, Hermann begins to poke around some papers scattered across the coffee table. One is a list of names and dates, seemingly random, Hermann thinks, until he recognizes (scrawled in purple ink at the very bottom of the page) that of the gentleman who disappeared from his back porch just down Hermann's street. When he recognizes another—a teenager who worked as a barista at Hermann’s favorite coffee shop—he realizes it must be everyone who's vanished from town in the past year. Another paper has the same dates repeated, though not alongside any names—rather, bizarre little phrases like circling lights and that sound again. "You found my notes," Geiszler says cryptically, and then thrusts a mug out to Hermann.

Hermann takes the mug. A logo on the side tells Hermann it was from some academic conference in California ten years ago. "What are they supposed to mean?" he says.

Geiszler snorts. "Uh, I thought it was kind of obvious. Look—" He sits next to Hermann, far too close, and points at the column of numbers on the first page. "These are the dates when people have been reported missing," he says, and then scans his finger over to the second page, "and these are the dates when I've observed extraterrestrial—or at least, unexplainable—activity overhead. See how they match up almost perfectly?

"Mm," Hermann says. He does not. "So—if I am to understand you correctly—you believe that a, ah," he takes the page back from Geiszler, "a 'weird swoopy sound' from overhead had something to do with that poor young woman disappearing from a bus stop last week?”

"It wasn't just a weird noise!" Geiszler exclaims. "I showed you the pictures. I ran outside when I heard it, and thank fuck I had my camera, because I caught those lights just as they were leaving. And then what do I find out the next morning? There was another abduction, at almost the exact same time I saw the lights!"

"Ten miles from here," Hermann reminds him. "It would've had to have been a bloody fast ship."

"Yeah, no shit, Hermann," Geiszler says. "They're, like, fucking—mega-advanced lifeforms. They probably have the tech to vaporize the entire Earth if they wanted. Of course it was a fast ship.”

Geiszler is still sitting awfully close to Hermann. He runs very warm, unlike Hermann, warm enough to make Hermann warm too—like a scruffy, tattooed, freckled furnace. Yes, freckled, for Geiszler has the lightest dusting of freckles across his round chipmunk-like cheeks that Hermann finds inexplicably charming. He wonders if Geiszler would notice him loosen his collar a bit, perhaps take off his sweater. He really is getting quite warm. "So, I was saying," Geiszler continues, and though he speaks almost directly into Hermann's ear, he sounds as if he's a mile away from him. "Waitress at bus stop—weird lights over my cabin—waitress gone from bus stop. The proof is, like, undeniable!"

"Indeed," Hermann says.

He undoes the top button of his collar. He hasn't touched his coffee yet—he wonders if Geiszler even cares. The tattoo on Geiszler’s bicep, some sort of space tentacle monster, stares back at Hermann. "I'm telling you, man," Geiszler says, "this is no joke. They're taking people, maybe even for good."

They're gonna come for you, just like they did for me. When Geiszler began spouting nonsense about aliens last year, he was not booted from the biology department right away. Mostly everyone at the college, Hermann knows, tolerated his eccentricities on account of his admittedly brilliant mind and popularity among the students. The final straw came when Geiszler's extraterrestrial delusions (for what else could they be?) reached a new level: he showed up to campus in his pajamas one morning, raving that the aliens were not only zooming about over his house, but had actually abducted him the previous evening. "You seemed to fare alright, though, didn't you?" Hermann says. "When you were—ah—taken? They even dropped you back off in time for work. Quite courteous, I should think."

"That's—" Geiszler begins to shake his leg up and down, nervous energy radiating up his body and through Hermann's. He spills some of his coffee on the carpet. "That was—that was dumb. I got lucky. I think I was one of the first ones, you know? Because the disappearances didn't really get bad until, like, a month after that? I was in bed—and, and it wasn't like how it is in movies, I wasn't sucked up in a giant beam of light or anything like that, one minute I was there and then the next I wasn't, I was somewhere...else. And—uh. I don't really remember what they looked like. I tried to—sketch them out, but it was like trying to remember a dream, all the specific details about them just faded once it was over. But, um." He rubs the back of his neck, and Hermann is surprised to see him blushing. "Well, if I'm being honest, I think I kinda freaked them out."

Hermann can't help but snort. "You what?"

"I'm serious!" Geiszler shrieks. "I freaked them out. I was just really excited about it all. Like, dude, come on, I was abducted by aliens. How fucking cool is that? I just kept asking a bunch of questions, like, are you gonna probe me? are you gonna take me back to Mars or Jupiter or, like, I don't know, fucking Gallifrey? do you even understand what I'm saying, how do you communicate? and then the next thing I knew, I was landing on my ass in the school parking lot. They must've been observing me like I was observing them, like, they maybe knew I worked there? Anyway—" He shakes his head. "I tell you what, I'm real glad I decided to not just wear boxers like usual to bed that night. That would've been really embarrassing."

Bombarded with the sudden mental image of what Geiszler usually looks like in bed, Hermann (feeling rather warm again) tugs at his collar and clears his throat. He has certainly seen more than enough for the night, and if his mind is straying to something as prosaic as what does Dr. Geiszler look like half-naked?, it likely means it’s time for bed. "Er, right. Dr. Geiszler—"

"Just call me Newt, man," Geiszler says.

"Newton," Hermann concedes. It gives him a private little thrill. No one calls Newton Newton; it’s always either Newt or Dr. Geiszler. "Newton,” he says again, “this has been a very—illuminating—evening, but it's getting rather late, and I think you ought to drive me home before—"

And then Newton begins to take off his shirt.

Yes, a small part of Hermann's brain whispers traitorously, yes, yes, yes, even as Hermann recoils and stammers out, "Newton, what—?!"

"Oh, calm down, I'm not coming onto you," Newton says. He drops his t-shirt on the floor and jabs a thumb at his chest. His bare chest. "See, look. Proof."

Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. The giant Godzilla tattooed over Newton's pectorals? The flying saucer tattooed above Newton’s belly button? Newton’s nipple piercings? Hermann thinks he understands what an overheating computer feels like, an influx of too much information with processors unequipped to handle it. "I," he says. Newton’s belly button is not pierced. Hermann’s not sure why he thought it would be.

"Look at my chest, dude!" Newton says, tapping his skin insistently.

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to pull his eyes away from the nipple piercings. In the dead center of Newton's chest, spaced perfectly between his pectorals and right over the nostrils of Godzilla, is a strange, almost luminescent glyph of a language Hermann can't begin to recognize. It's raised from Newton's skin, more like a brand than a tattoo. And...well, when Hermann says luminescent, he really means it. The squiggle seems to glow blue. "This was on me the next morning," Newton says. "I think they marked me. Like you'd tag a lab rat?”

Hermann can't help himself: he reaches out and touches the mark. "Strange," he murmurs. Compared to the heat of Newton’s body, the glyph is quite cool. Frigid, in fact, like metal, and yet as soft as the rest of his skin.

He's close enough to Newton to hear the hitch in his breath when they make contact, and as he traces his fingertips over the glyph, he can feel Newton's heart pounding beneath them. Strange, indeed; Newton has been such a thorn in his side for so many months, and yet all Hermann wants to do now is touch even more of him. He trails his hand lower, down to the flying saucer on Newton's soft abdomen. Newton inhales sharply. "Um," he says. "Should—should I put my shirt back on?"

"Do you want to?" Hermann says.

"Not really," Newton says.

He stares at Hermann, eyebrows knit together behind his glasses, like he can't seem to make sense of him. His confusion is very much warranted; Hermann can’t seem to make sense of himself right now, either. Then, to Hermann's supreme annoyance, the pieces seem to click into place in Newton's mind, and he grins. "Oh, duh," he says. "No wonder. You wanna fuck me, don't you? That’s why you’re so obsessed with me.”

That would certainly explain the strange warm feeling that comes over Hermann sometimes when he thinks about Newton in the dead of night that he has, up until this very moment, attributed to bouts of temporary insanity and/or a latent murderous desire. Nothing so dramatic as all that, then—just regular human biology. Urgh. How disgusting. And for Newton, of all people. “Obsessed with you?” Hermann sniffs, desperate to retain some element of propriety even while he begins to tug at Newton’s button fly. “Newton, you have spent thousands of dollars on yard signs just to invite me over for a coffee.”

“Uh, yeah, and it worked,” Newton says.

He curls his fingers in the front of Hermann's sweater, thumbing over one of the buttons.

“Even when I thought you were an alien,” Newton says, “I still kiiiiinda wanted to fuck you.”

Delusional or not, Newton looks terrifically good with a beard.

"Wait," Hermann gasps some time later. "Newton, stop a moment—"

Newton pulls away from him, frowning. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "What is it?" he says. "Did I hurt—?"

But Hermann pats at his shoulder frantically, pointing beyond him at the back slider and the dark of the forest beyond that. Newton cranes his neck around. "Only I'm sure I saw something. Lights, or…” Hermann feels a small twinge of embarrassment. The night is dead silent, and dead still. “Well, now I'm not sure."

“You probably imagined it," Newton says. He slips back down to press a kiss at Hermann's jaw. “It’s too early to be them.”

Not even ten yet. Newton kisses behind Hermann’s ear. It feels very nice. "Yes," Hermann agrees slowly, his eyelids flickering shut. He smooths his hand up and down Newton’s back. "Yes, I suppose you're right." Newton’s stories must have left him on edge. Which is of course ridiculous, because they’re all a load of rubbish—there may be extraterrestrials somewhere out there in the great wide universe, but they’re certainly not swooping down and plucking up hapless test subjects from Earth, let alone their small town, every other day. Hermann has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like how it feels when he threads his fingers in the soft strands of Newton’s hair, or the sound Newton makes when Hermann digs his nails into his skin, or how wonderful kissing Newton is...

And, unobserved by both of them, the three lights hovering above Newton's cabin blink away as quickly as they'd come.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag

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leejeongz · 3 years

Text

fluffy a-z JUNGWON (enhypen)

requested: yes, by @babyjungwonenhypenrascal

🔅ahh enha first win AHHHH i’m so proud of them :(🔅

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

little to no PDA, especially when you’re around strangers. if it’s just friends then sure, linking arms would be cute but that’s pretty much all. when you’re in private he’s practically begging you to hold him (taken from my enhypen as boyfriends post)

when you’re sitting on benches or sofas, in diners for example, and he’s sat beside you, he’ll make you jump sometimes by placing his hand on top of yours that was resting on the seat. when you get startled, he’ll just flash you a gummy smile and giggle a little leaving everyone around you questioning what you pair are giggling at. ugh and he loves to do that thing where you high five and then hold hands afterwards just so casually, and he smiles at you while the pads of his fingers rub over your knuckles.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

more likely to have a best friend that isn’t in his immediate friendship group. you spend time together alone rather than with other people since you’re the only people on that wavelength lmao. you are rarely ever seen together, but people you’re best friends, like they just know.

his advice would be top tier. sometimes, you didn’t follow your friend's advice, but if it was jungwon’s, you followed it because you knew it was absolutely the right thing for you to do. he cares a lot about you and thinks about your situation deeply, eventually coming to a conclusion on what exactly you should do in order to resolve your situation and most of the time it works.

you sass each other out like no one else can. like they can try, but no one makes jokes about the other in the same way that you two can, just because you know each other so well.

on your birthday, he posts all the embarrassing videos and pictures he has of you on his stories along with some sarcastic message about how you’re becoming old but it’s kinda cute and always leaves you in tears.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

he's not that much of a cuddler but when you do,,, he’s the little spoon whether you like it or not 😡 he wants to be held, it’s like a safety thing for him. when you hold him, he likes to tease you too, like he’ll flick his hair around jokingly to get your attention or to stop you from falling asleep. when you’re cuddling face to face, he likes pouting at you or doing his little “🥺” face to get you to kiss him. when you finally kiss him he’s like “bruh wth was that ew” but tickles your sides to let you know that he does actually approve. oh and he’s very giggly when you cuddle early on in your relationship. like he’s relaxed but he can’t help but giggle cos it’s so cute, you’re so cute.

when you guys watch a film together on the sofa, he likes to slowly bring his head to your shoulder and let it rest there for a while before you throw your arm over him and bring him closer into your side while his hand rests on your thigh/knee. when he looks up at you, again, all “🥺” and whatnot, he knows that it melts your heart so he giggles and invites you into his arms instead so you can rest on him for a bit.

it’s not really cuddling, but while lying next to each other, he always initiates a little playful game of footsie just to annoy you and get you to focus on him, and hopefully eventually cuddle him.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

his cleaning and cooking skills could do with some improvement, but it’s okay he gets the job done hehe. he’s confident when ordering take always on the phone and that’s more important than his cooking skills anyway 😭 he likes to do jobs around the house and thinks of his jobs as just part of life, something he has to do, so he never complains about them or does a bad job.

he’s still very young, he’s not thinking of settling down any time soon. sure meeting the love of his life would be great, but he’d still keep the relationship pretty innocent and non-serious until he got older. he’s definitely dating to marry, not for any other reason. he’s not just looking for fun to pass the time or for someone’s heart to break, it’s just it’s not that serious right now.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

i don’t think he’d struggle that much doing it face to face. he definitely couldn’t do it by text or by phone call, the only way he would break up with you is face to face. the reasoning would probably be along the lines of “we’re still young” or “this is too much for me right now”. he really doesn’t want to break your heart so he goes about it in a mature way. he explains his side of the story, listens to your side and finally reiterates his point just so that you know that it’s nothing wrong on your part, but it’s still over. i don’t see him being friends with his ex after the split to be honest, if he breaks up with you that’s it. but that’s not to say you guys can’t rekindle an old flame at a later date.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

wow wow wow marriage? that’s a little bit much. he’s a kid, don’t scare him with such a big commitment until you've been together for at least 5 years and he’s a little bit older. he’s excited to propose to you and he does occasionally think of how the moment will go down, but it’s never serious enough to actually do it just yet.

obviously, he wants devotion, it’s love after all. commitment is a huge part of any relationship and he wants you to know from the get go that he’s looking at you and only you.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

with his own emotions, he’s not that gentle unfortunately. there’s not much that can break this boy, probably because he’s been forced to grow up so quickly (i get big sad myself thinking abt that oh god) and so he doesn’t let things get to him in the way that others would. he doesn’t like to let other people see him cry, he rarely cries anyway so letting other people see him when he does is a big no no, even if they’ve known him for a while. i think something that does upset him is failure, whether it’s him or someone he’s close to. he doesn’t want to see anyone fail when he knows how much work they’ve put into something, so that upsets him a lot.

with you, he’s very gentle, he wants this to last so he naturally does everything in his power to make sure that he’s giving off this gentle aura. he’s forever smiling at you, whenever you make eye contact he flashes you a small little smile just to let you know that here’s there. he’s there to laugh with you when you need it most, and trust me, he knows when you need someone to laugh with. he listens to you well, he takes on board your concerns and brings back to you practical advice without making you feel condescended. he’d love to be able to help you out more than he already does, but he’s just too busy. any free time he has, he spends it with you, and you do the same too, but it just seems like there’s not enough hours in the day for him to help you with everything that he wants to :(.

this may not seem gentle, but jungwon will tell you what you need to hear. it’s not always what you want to hear, but it’s from the heart. he’s always honest with you because it’s for your own good, he only wants the best for you.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

when he’s tired, the only place he wants to be is in your arms. he stumbles through the door and stands there for a while, waiting for you to come and hug him so that he can rest his head on yours or on your shoulder. he likes it when he can stroke your hair while hugging because you hum into his shoulder and it’s like music to his ears.

when he sees you standing alone at home, often looking like your in a trance, he’ll wrap his arms around you from the back and almost jump on you to scare you. he’ll climb off you and land back on the floor, loosening his arms and expecting you to turn around so he can kiss you on the nose as an apology.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

he doesn’t say the words lightly. when he says them to you, he really means it. he'd make a big deal out of saying it even thought he just drops it into conversation, he might even cry (which i already said, he doesn’t do that often) because he’s just so pleased to have met you and started this relationship with you that he hopes will last forever. he will drop it into a casual conversation, making the atmosphere become intimate and deep, he likes that he can do that and that you’re not phased by it (despite getting a little flustered, but that’s only natural and he wants you to react in that way hehe) he’d be sat there explaining to you how you make him feel, how secure and comfortable he is with you and why he loves you, tearing up as he speaks because it’s really coming from his heart.

he’s actually not that anxious to say it, and that’s probably just because he truly means it and that it’s a very natural thing for him to say given the circumstances.

he doesn’t tell a lot of people that he loves them, so you must be really special to him.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

his silence is a great tell of whether he’s jealous or not. he’s likely to give you the silent treatment if he feels you’ve done something to make him feel jealous, or will sit in silence around you and whoever is making him feel jealous. he’d just sit and stare at you both, it’s a little intimidating but easily mistaken for him just looking at you after a small disagreement so no one ever questions it. it’s basically over to you to resolve the situation because he doesn’t want to mess things up on his own. he trusts you enough to make a sound judgement on what to do when he’s jealous and there’s got to be a reason why you’re still together, right?! because you always know how to make things right with him.

he doesn’t like it when you get jealous though. like he gets it, everyone gets jealous sometimes, but he can’t really see why you’re jealous at times, leaving you to figure out your pettiness on your own. he wouldn’t be afraid to tell people to back off and makes it known that he’s in a relationship anyway, he respects you a lot and hopes that other people do too, so there’s no real reason for you to get jealous.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

cheeky little kisses while you’re talking just because he can. brushing that annoying bit of hair out of your mouth then kissing you because he can. kissing your forehead then pulling away and giggling just because he can. he kisses you all the time, just because he can :) (taken from my enhypen as boyfriends post)

he gets kind of shy when he has the opportunity to kiss you in front of others. like he really wants to, but he always feels like the kisses you share have that “first kiss on the playground at school” kinda vibe with everyone’s watching on lmao. so for that reason, he doesn’t kiss you regularly in front of other people, but he'd rather save that intimate treat for just the two of you anyway.

sometimes, when he’s feeling like cringing you out in the most ironic way, he’ll kiss your hand and smile at you, waiting for your reaction to his silliness.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

too busy crying over their cuteness to interact, give him a sec.

actually, he’s surprisingly good with kids. other than the fact that he had to take breaks to go scream about how cute they are, he gets along with them and the kids warm to him a lot. he gets what they want, he just knows, and he can always supply.

(i don’t really wanna talk about or even think about him having kids bc he’s still a minor so i’m sorry if that’s what you wanted from this part :/)

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

he never wants to get up. he literally wants to lie in bed forever, especially if you’re there with him. he complains when you try and get him up, no matter how awake he is at the time, he does not want to leave the bed and will in fact tangle himself up in the sheets.

on work days, you two just have separate morning routines at different times. you usually only bump into each other when he’s showering and you wanna brush your teeth or something. you once caught him washing his face with your hairband on and he got all embarrassed and giggled about it awwweee. but when you both have the day off or it’s a weekend, you stay in bed until mid morning and then get up and go to a cafe for breakfast/brunch. on a different note, he has yet to go a day without laughing about your bed head or complaining that you snore too loudly in bed even though you definitely do not do that.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

LAUGHING! night time is the only time you get to spend together since you have no plans other than to spend time together. he also likes it when he can spend the evening talking to your family or when you talk to his before going to bed because 🥺omfg that’s the cutest shit in his eyes. he likes to learn more about you, or when you get to learn more about him and he could listen and laugh to their stories all night long.

he likes to play board games/card games with you and then think of a punishment for the loser (but you end up both doing it anyway). you tire yourselves out too much with getting extremely competitive so when you head to bed, you basically fall asleep straight away. one time, you were too tired to even brush your teeth and wash your face before getting into bed so he came and did them for you ahh he’s such a cutie.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

at first, he’s quite closed off with you, he’s definitely got a guard up no matter how much he tries not to. conversations aren’t that deep initially, he tried to gauge how well you two connect just from small talk (even though he hates small talk because he has no idea what to say to you without getting too deep) and he’d know pretty quickly if the vibe’s there or not.

it takes him three dates at least before he starts opening up about himself. the conversations aren’t as deep as they could be, but he’s still talking to you on a level that you weren’t doing at first. he starts to tell you about his life, his past and his family at this point, things that have made him into the person he is and what he’s looking for in a relationship.

only once you get into the relationship officially will he tell you everything. his worries and concerns, his insecurities and his struggles. it’s difficult for him to open up about this stuff to anyone, so when he does so, he just wants you to listen. he would welcome any advice, but will only start taking it seriously after like a year of being in a relationship (not because he didn’t trust it before, just that he thought only he knew what was best for him), by that point, he truly believes that you know him better than he knows himself.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

he doesn’t really get angry. his anger is suppressed most of the time, he knows when the right time to express it is, when it would be valid to do so. if a petty situation angers him, he can just hold it and stay silent because he knows it would be worse if he kicked off. he likes to stand up for what he thinks is right though, if someone said something political that he didn’t agree with, he would get angry and start a rather heated debate with them until they were too intimidated to continue.

when it comes to you, he’s not the angry type. fake anger when you do something small, sure, just for the bants. for example when you play a game and things are getting a little too competitive he’ll go to flip the board or something. but never real anger unless you did something very wrong. even then, he’s less likely to be angry, more so upset and disappointed.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

he keeps important dates and such logged on his calendar with a week’s notice so he rarely forgets them. he really doesn’t want to forget them so he checks his calendar like every day just to see if his phone was not sending him notifications lmao.

most of the stuff you tell him, little details, he remembers since he already feels like he doesn't know you as well as he should. he wants to know anything and everything about you so he makes a point of remembering them. if he ever forgot something about you, he’d laugh it off in front of you and then go and break down over it because he can’t believe he forgot something about you.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

the first time he heard you sing 🥰🥰

you were just doing some tidying up in your room, forgetting that your boyfriend was there too, when you suddenly started singing along to your playlist. he didn’t say anything, he just smiled to himself. that was when he realised that you must be comfortable around him. when you saw him besides you, you jumped out of embarrassment but he just giggled and was like “don’t stop, you are really good” no matter how good you really were. you actually both eventually ended up belting out a full on duet while tidying together, not caring who heard. it was actually very wholesome. he brings it up whenever you sing around him now and is all nostalgic about it.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

he trusts you entirely. he never really sees a need to protect you in everyday life. if other guys flirt with you, he just expects you to deal with it since he knows that you’re capable. he doesn’t want to misread any conversations you have with other people either, so he thinks it’s best to not intervene.

he gets protective of you around guys who don’t know their place though. walking past gangs of guys, just people who make you uncomfortable in general in fact, he would wrap his arm around your waist. it’s like protectiveness, almost anger (cos he’s disgusted by the way these people make you feel), but mostly for your comfort.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

he’s either really sweet with his gift giving or so bizarre you can’t even comprehend how he managed to come up with the idea. he’d buy you something small, cute and sentimental for important events like a little figure/ornament or a necklace. when it's a less important time, his gifts are like,,, useful but strange asf (jays bday present is a perfect example of this lmao). he’d get you an alarm clock with your celebrity crush’s face on it and hand it to you like “so you start to hate them since they’re the one waking you up”.

oh BOY your anniversary is always romantic. he treats you to dinner at a restaurant in the evening, you get dressed up all fancy, that’s when he gives you the necklace that he bought for you and puts it on for you. people think it’s strange because you’re so young, but it feels so right and he can’t wait to do it for the rest of your lives.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

as friendly and lovely as jungwon is, he can sometimes come off as a little cold and withdrawn to people who don’t know him yet. he tries his hardest to make connections with everyone and seem genuine while doing it, but he can’t help but put up a guard around people he’s not yet comfortable with. he doesn’t want to welcome people into his life that he doesn’t want there. it’s not exactly a bad habit, but to those who don’t understand his reasoning it may come off that way.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

it's not the first thing that comes to his mind when he thinks about his own beauty. he’s a big believer that beauty comes from within and would rather work on his personality and emotions than think about his appearance. sometimes, when he notices people are mentioning something about his appearance regularly, he becomes a little concerned about it, even if what they’re saying is good, and he’ll try to change it but in the end he decides against it because it really doesn’t matter what other people think. he does like to make himself look good, but it’s not something that he’s particularly concerned about.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

you bring out a side of him that he would never have been able to show anyone else. he’s so thankful that you understand him and aren’t always expecting something from him. if he had never met you, he could never truly be himself around anyone, and so for that reason, yes, he would feel incomplete.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

this boy loves when you let him put jewellery on you :(. like every time he sees you struggling with your necklace or a choker he’ll be like “you want help with that” and he’ll do it for you. it’s an underrated form of affection for him, his hands so close to your neck in the most adorable way. and the fact that he gets to help you with something that you’re struggling with is a (subconscious) boost for him and fills him with so much joy, hence why is wants to do it again.

not just necklaces, bracelets in the same way, but also rings too. he’ll slide them off your finger just so he can put them back on again. he’ll do that thing where he presses his thumb against them too to “secure it in place” uh cute.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

immaturity. sure, immaturity to some extent is good for your mental state, but he’s not gonna have time for people who are excessively immature and do not see an issue in it. immaturity as in those always start unnecessary drama and are self centred, defensive and never own up to their own mistakes. a big one for him is wanting to have deep conversations. immature people wouldn’t be able to talk with him about the things he wants to, hence why he’d avoid them. he finds it hard to relate to people his age due to his maturity and mind set. he tends to struggle with small talk with them despite the amount of effort he’s putting in to adapt to their personality. this is why i think he’d know pretty early on if things were gonna work out or not.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

the twitching 😭😭. okay so we all saw him “popping” in his sleep lmao, i doubt anything would change even if someone was sleeping next to him. he might accidentally knock into you on the odd occasion but he’d wake up straight after he did it and apologise and be all like “omg i’m so sorry it wasn’t me i didn’t mean it please don’t hate me”. doesn’t happen every night, but is still noteable lol.

but other than that, he’s pretty calm. he likes it when you hold him while he sleeps :((.

#jungwon #enhypen #jungwon fluff #enhypen fluff #enhypen imagines #enhypen fanfiction #jungwon imagines #jungwon fanfic #enhypen fanfic

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inkykeiji · 2 years

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babyyy💕 i need to know!! do the characters in bmb AU have social media?? does reader post her lavish gifts and expensive trips online?? does tomura show off his bby in his ig? or are they concerned abt their safety? does dabi spend hours on his phone going over reader’s pics? is daddy tomura controlling over what the reader posts? UGH THE ANGST POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS😭💕💕

love you lots, stay safe💕💕💕

honestly anon this is such a brilliant question oh my god

tomura is not an instagram—or social media—type. he doesn’t understand the point and, quite frankly, he thinks it’s a total waste of time. he has more important, more interesting things to be doing than mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds. he limits his princess’s time on social media as well, claiming it’ll rot her brain if she spends too long on there. admittedly, he does think it’s really fucking cute, the way she gets so excited to post all the pretty presents and splendid trips and ornate dinners he spoils her with, but he definitely does need to approve every single post, and even masquerades as an anonymous follower, just so he can keep tabs on her (and yes, he has her notifications on).

despite his great fashion sense and keen aesthetic, dabi’s social media feeds/timelines are a total mess. they’re a combination of kitten videos, dudes wiping out during extreme sports (snowboarding and skateboarding in particular), and good looking people. originally, he was really just on there to kill time when he was bored, only using it for a quick laugh and rarely spending more than an hour or so total on any given app for the day. if he’s being honest, he still doesn’t understand the point of a ‘theme/concept’ or brand for your social media, and he actually didn’t post to his accounts until he started hanging out with reader (before this he had no desire to post shit esp when he has no friends on there anyway and is cautious about safety). but then, one afternoon while they were lounging around lazily in the sun, she asked, soft and shy with excitement toying with the corners of her lips, if he had an instagram and if she could follow it. and suddenly, he felt like posting more. it felt like a way to communicate the feelings he so desperately couldn’t put into words, sharing certain songs that said it all so much better than he ever could on his stories, or giving her a glimpse into who he his, into his mind and his life, by posting about his favourite sci-if novels and films, knowing that they’d spark the start of a conversation the next time he saw her. eventually, social media becomes a way for him to document the time he spends with her, snapping photos and filming cute videos, all under the guise of it merely being ‘instagram content’. but truthfully, he really likes collecting these memories, and he keeps them all safe and sound in a cherished folder hidden deep within the recesses of his phone. he definitely always gets giddy when she posts something with him in it, or something that is clearly an inside joke between the two of them, even tho he'd never admit it <3

reader loves social media and has a solidly curated feed. it’s one of her hobbies, more or less; she genuinely enjoys taking the time to carefully craft it all together, from setting up the photographs to editing the pictures to arranging her posts in an aesthetically pleasing way. she definitely does delight in showing off the gorgeous gifts her Daddy buys her and, thanks to the luxurious and expensive content and her decent photography skills, she has a fairly large following. being fawned over by complete strangers is such an ego boost, and she’d be lying if she said she doesn’t receive a little jolt of pride with each ‘luckyyyyy :(’ and every ‘you’re so pretty!’ comment. however, like dabi, she also thinks of her instagram as a place to chronicle her life; a place where sentimental memories and special moments are preserved forever <3

#thank u so much for asking!!!!!#SUCH a fun question oh my gosh #SORRY DABI'S IS SO MUCH LONGER LMAO #he went through a sort of growth in terms of his social media usage ahahahaha #i hope ur doing wonderful anon!!! have a great day and please stay safe + hydrated!!#ily lots!!#bmb universe #inky.bb #clari gets mail

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thetriggeredhappy · 3 years

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yo whats good @engiespyweek this is a day late but like dont worry abt it

day 2: hurt / comfort

(warnings for injury, specifically from burns. takes place around Robots Time)

Back before the robots, they were expected to work regular hours. Normal days. Practically a nine-to-five, plus a couple of hours most days, but never too long after sundown—and unless they had a mission off-base, they’d get weekends off. It was the most organized war any of them had ever been a part of, to be honest. And it was taxing, sure, the pain and bloodshed, but at least according to Scout it still beat working in food service.

And it wasn’t even all that scary half the time—before the robots, the team was invincible in most senses of the word. It would take some extremely particular situations to kill them, situations they were rarely anywhere near. A doctor on staff, bars in town and a full liquor cabinet on base, a pay grade that few of them even dreamed of, it was a good place to be in their lives. They considered themselves lucky, most days.

But that was before the robots.

The sun was setting over wherever the hell they were. They were going on their second day here, which was usually about how long they spent in one place before they had to move again, following some fickle change of the wind to intercept the next few waves of automatons.

They were exhausted. They didn’t have breaks, truth be told, and only sometimes got to sleep—mostly on the drive to their next destination, sometimes woken up during the night by the distant metallic clanging that functioned as the trumpets of war. Modern era, and all.

Medic was truly running on his last legs. He half operated his infirmary out of the back of one of the trucks they used to transport their equipment, not seeing reason to bother unpacking most days. Soldier was in a tizzy himself, constantly checking and rechecking their supplies, inventory being the only job left out of the multitude he’d had on base before and therefore being one he did near-constantly, and his consensus seemed to be that they were running low on... well, everything. Raiding abandoned warehouses for ammunition and guns just wasn’t cutting it anymore. They’d started to send some of the mercs out hunting for scrap metal when they had the time, and the Engineer was left to work practically around the clock trying to feed it to dispensers and restock to have at least enough to be prepared for battle, and Heavy tended to take over when he absolutely needed to sleep.

But then there were the mercenaries who didn’t have much to do but sit and stew. Sniper mostly took to perching alone somewhere he could watch for the distant dust clouds kicked up by the tanks. Scout ran laps around the perimeter of wherever they were posted up, and on a couple of occasions the two of them were the only warning the team got before the robots showed up. Pyro fretted, for the most part, would sweep by the busy members of the team with something to eat and a supportive pat on the arm. But even then, it was obvious the rest were going stir-crazy. Wanted to help, to take some of the weight back, to help share the load if they could.

This was about the only way Spy could help.

Engineer was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but the fatigue fought against his need to eat the tin full of... something. Meat, some kind of sauce. Spy had cooked it, since they apparently had a stove squirreled away somewhere in this particular warehouse, rations, and the team needed something ‘real’ to eat by his measure. The Engineer managed to keep awake, keep shoveling food into his mouth. Distantly, he understood that it tasted very good, and it overcame the nausea he’d been increasingly plagued with ever since all of this started.

The food was one comfort. The warm weight of Spy leaned against his back was another, the man leaned against him as he ate. Outside there was a particularly vibrant sunset happening, that was a third one, the way the light poured through the window briefly driving away a sort of bone-deep paranoia about darkness. About fear. Apparently that was one reason his father always tried to work with the big garage door of the shop open—being in the sun from time to time was important for all types of health. Or, as Spy put it, he needed to get out of his terrible little machinery lair from time to time or else one day the team would find he’d begun transforming into some sort of mole man.

It made him laugh. He missed laughing, he realized.

Once he had some food in his system, some calm, some time to sit in a position other than bent over a drafting table—and, hell, maybe the sun helped too—he started feeling remarkably more like a human being, started relaxing in increments. Started noticing little things. Dust mites lingering in the last light up above their heads. Distant talking, the distinctive laugh of Demo, Soldier barking something in reply. The sound of Spy taking a pull from his cigarette, quiet enough that he’d only really hear it this close. Quiet motion, like fiddling almost, which struck him as odd. Spy wasn’t much for fiddling and fidgeting. Broad, sweeping, dramatic gestures, those he did every time he got a good excuse—but not fidgeting. It was enough to draw his head up from where it was hanging, casting eyes back over his shoulder.

Spy wasn’t looking at him, apparently focused. “What’re you up to, there?” he asked, suddenly made aware of how rough his throat was. Probably from the near-constant full-volume shouting followed by stretches of silence he got up to these days.

“Simple first aid,” Spy said entirely too casually. So casually, in fact, that it took the Engineer a few seconds to realize what he’d even said.

“What?” he asked, turning more fully to look at Spy, at which point he blanched.

Spy had shed his jacket and rolled his sleeves up neatly a short way past his elbows and taken off his gloves and watch, and appeared to be almost done cleaning up and bandaging his left arm, having not started yet on the right one. All up and down his visible skin, and in particular across his palms and wrist, there were a series of mild to severe burns, speckles of dark red and black patching up his forearms, and the Engineer could immediately identify them as being electrical burns, not heat ones.

“How the hell did that happen?” he asked, deeply startled.

A huff of a laugh from Spy. “Mon ami, I go onto the battlefield and am expected to attack mechanical men with a metal blade,” he said, a note of amusement in his voice. “Electrocution is par for the course, I’m afraid.”

“You really oughta... find some way around that,” the Engineer said carefully. “Rubber hilt, or...”

“Most often I can only even tell I’ve caused enough damage to take down any given robot when the shock happens,” Spy shrugged. “It is not terribly painful, especially compared to gunfire. They simply begin to stack up after a while.”

A careful nod from the Engineer, even if it didn’t quite sit right with him. “Want me to help treat those?” he asked, nodding at where Spy was clearly having a bit of difficulty with bandaging his wrist one-handed.

“Our medical supplies are being too regularly depleted even besides superfluous healing of minor injuries, and as much as I would appreciate a moment sat beside one of your dispensers, I’m afraid it would not be very much in the spirit of teamwork to accept your offer, Laborer. If the remainder of our dreary little group is not allowed to accost the dispenser unnecessarily, neither am I, oui?” Spy asked, tone light.

That was one thing he’d started to learn about Spy, especially as of late. Lying and stealing were things he was well acquainted with, but never for something he considered important. To get on other people’s nerves, to get information maybe, but not something important on a whim. Getting on everyone’s nerves was a different beast than intentionally sabotaging them.

“Well,” the Engineer said, still not quite feeling right about it all. “If not that, I can at least lend a hand with wrapping those up. I know a thing or two about getting shocked. Ain’t a fun predicament to be in.”

Only a moment’s hesitation before Spy shrugged, turning to face him, and the Engineer picked up the salve and bandaging and set to work.

This was more his element. Practical problems. Practical solutions. None of the overarching dread, the waiting for the next disaster, the not quite knowing what to do with himself in the miliseconds before the next chore, the next job, the next drive. Just wrapping a wound. Just fixing a problem.

Distantly, there was the sound of something clattering, Demo cheering. The sun was now out of view, and he heard the sound of lights buzzing to life across the area. The light was getting low, and cold was starting to settle into place, more than welcome after yet another sweltering desert day. The smell of hot metal and sweat faded with each breeze that passed through, leaving only the smell of chilly night air, fresh and welcome. By the time it got dim enough to start making him squint to see properly, and he started to wonder whether he should just push through or get a light from somewhere, he realized he was done.

But instead of a twitchiness, an itch to find something else, the urge to keep moving and to find the next thing he needed to work on, he just felt satisfied. Clean bandages, neat wrappings. A vast improvement over before. And when he looked up to see how Spy felt about it all, the man was smiling, just a little, just enough to see even in how dim the room was.

“...What’s the smirk about?” he asked, feeling a bit embarrassed, as if he was missing something.

“Nothing,” Spy said easily, “I suppose I’m just glad you seem to be feeling better.”

A pause, during which the Engineer realized Spy was right. The tension was gone, the ache in his head was fading into a simple weight, and the nausea had settled into nothingness, leaving him relaxed, steady. He blinked.

“Apologies if I’ve overstepped my boundaries,” Spy said after a few moments of that stunned silence, searching his face. “It’s just that for the last several weeks you’ve been stomping around with the third most sour expression I’ve ever seen on you, and it seemed as though nobody else was going to bother stepping in any time soon. I thought that perhaps food and fresh air and polite company may remedy things somewhat, and you seemed determined to only interact with us when you deem it productive.”

“You burned yourself just to get me to sit in one place for a while?” he asked, taken aback.

“Oh, no, non, these burns are truly fairly standard by now,” Spy waved off easily, carefully pulling back on his gloves and watch over the bandages, “I simply prefer to tend to them on my own, the majority of the time. Non, simply a convenient excuse to need your help.”

A pause. “Of all the ridiculous things,” he marveled, blinking at Spy.

In the darkness, he could only barely make out the way Spy’s mouth ticked up into a smirk, watching as he rolled his sleeves back down neatly and reached for his suit jacket. “Well, believe it or not, Laborer, I have been known to stoop to such lows as doing what you call ‘ridiculous things’,” he said, doing his jacket up in an easy motion in the same moment that he rose to his feet, “when I find them to be the only way I can possibly break through to ridiculous men.”

He only had time to sputter over the comment for a second before a gloved hand found his chin, tilting his head up just enough for Spy to lay a kiss soundly to either cheek, and only had time to sputter over that for a second before Spy was snickering and cloaking, a puff of smoke in his wake as he disappeared into the increasing night.

His face felt hot, and he felt that restless energy again, but for an entirely different reason than before, because he wasn’t positive, but he was fairly sure cheek kissing was the sort of thing you greeted someone with when you only meant it in a friendly sort of way, and his brain was far too scrambled to remember it properly just then.

Well. Now he had something to think about besides the robots, at least. Damn shame it couldn’t be a nice, neat, practical problem, but despite his best efforts, he really couldn’t find it in him to mind.

Oh, damn it all.

#engiespyweek21 #engiespy #napoleon complex #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #my fanfiction #here's hoping this formats right fingers cross

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1dfangirls35 · 3 years

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The Language of Your Soul

An enemies to lovers Ballet AU in 5 Acts

Masterlist

Act I

A/N:

First of all, thank you so much to @booksncoffee for the absolutely gorgeous banner!

I am so excited to share this story with you all! Inspired in part by a night rewatching Center Stage on Netflix and from years of ballet classes, I hope this AU brings a new twist on Harry fics (and maybe even helps you gain a new appreciation for the world of ballet). Please note, while I have used my own 10+ years of classical ballet training in addition to research on this topic to hopefully make this as realistic as possible, this is still a work of fiction- and some details may have been changed to better fit the constraints of the story. The companies mentioned in this fic are real, however this story and its characters are entirely works of fiction. On a more personal note, while I have chosen to publish this story now and believe I will be able to maintain weekly updates to its entirety, I am preparing to take my boards in less than four weeks. Should I not update as scheduled- please be patient and know that an update is only a few weeks away! :) Thank you so much for reading!

Warnings: This story will contain language, mentions of emotional abuse from a parent and eating disorders. Please read at your own discretion.

Ten Weeks to Opening Night

Albert Einstein once said, "dancers are the athletes of God." Giselle Mason certainly doesn't feel like pne of God's athletes at the moment. Not with the way her muscles are screaming with every movement that she makes as she stretches before class, not with the way her right hip cracks as she lifts her leg onto the bar, and certainly not with the way her feet sting as she tapes up yet another blister on her toe before shoving her foot into her pointe shoes for another day full of torture.

Giselle stands, sticking one last bobby pin into the bun of her nearly ebony hair and finding her spot at the front of the barre in the center of the studio. She grasps the wooden cylinder with her left hand before releasing her body in a forward bend, taking a deep breath in and then a deep breath out. There is a familiar ache in her hamstrings as she begins to stretch, which loosens ever so slightly with every breath.

And so begins her daily morning routine in the studio. Fifteen minutes of stretching before company class begins. Relaxing each hamstring, hip flexor and spinal muscle until a sense of calm washes over her body. Letting her mind drift into a thoughtless focus, preparing itself for the waves of choreography that would be coming in minutes. Typically, this time is quiet; the only melody present the rhythmic breathing of company members preparing for class. But today, the studio seems to be filled with an underlying buzz. And Giselle doesn't have the slightest idea why.

"I heard he slept with the artistic director's wife, so they kicked him out of the Royal," she hears one of the new corps de ballet members murmur.

"I mean have you seen him, I don't blame her for getting her hands on a piece of him," another girl giggles.

"Did you hear, G?" Caleb, Giselle's friend, whispers as he slides into a spot on the barre behind her, adjusting the black bandana keeping his signature black curls in place across his forehead.

"Hear what?" Giselle asks, removing her leg from the bar before reaching down to adjust the black leg warmer that had fallen down her calf.

"They've hired Harry Styles- you know from the Royal," Caleb adds as if Giselle hasn't heard of Harry Styles. Everyone who was anyone in the ballet world had heard of Harry Styles. A good chunk of the non-ballet world might even be able to point him out as that 'sexy male ballet dancer' from the Sports Illustrated nude edition.

Harry Styles was a rare kind of natural talent. The type of person that was put on this earth to dance ballet. His talent had landed him the honor of being the youngest person to be named a principal in the history of the Royal Ballet. And if the rumors were true, that talent had also landed him the reputation of one of the ballet world's most arrogant. Giselle had heard several stories about how the male dancer had been a terror to work with- demanding, rude, uncooperative. Giselle didn't doubt it- people of that skill and fame rarely developed without some sense of entitlement.

"Why would we hire Harry Styles, we've already got Viktor?" Giselle questions. This isn't the first time a rumor has circulated through the American Ballet Theatre company, and it certainly won't be the last time.

"Rumor is they want Viktor to retire," Caleb shrugged before stepping back to his place behind Giselle as Mistress Ivanova claps to gain the class's attention.

Giselle couldn't believe the rumors. Viktor Dmitri retiring from ABT? He was practically the face of the company. The man had been dancing for the American Ballet Theatre for over a decade. He'd been the principal ever since Giselle had joined the company as a corps de ballet member five years ago.

Giselle knew that retirement came early for a ballet dancer. Her own mother, the famous Natalia Korsakova, had retired at the age of 33 after a knee injury. Viktor had just turned 35, but he'd shown no signs of slowing down. She refused to believe that he was calling it quits. Or to believe that the board would be stupid enough to bring in someone with Harry Styles's toxic reputation into the company.

She shoves the thought aside. Viktor is in his usual place at the back of the studio and Harry Styles is nowhere to be seen. This was simply another piece of gossip threatening to distract everyone from the Swan Lake auditions tomorrow afternoon, and Giselle won't lose her focus. The auditions are too important.

Giselle Mason has dreamed of playing the role of Odette/Odile ever since she first watched her mother on stage at the age of four. It was one of her earliest memories of the theater- her mother twirling about in a bright white tutu that at that time Giselle could only dream of wearing. In fact, Giselle wasn't sure there had ever been a moment where her dream hadn't been to be a principal dancer at ABT, like her mother. She'd been in ballet shoes from the second she could walk, wore a leotard and tights more often than she'd worn pajamas, and didn't recognize herself in the mirror if her hair wasn't pulled back into a bun. She'd ate, slept and breathed the art form. But she supposed that all came with having a prima ballerina as a mother.

Natalia Korsakova was a ballet sensation. "One of the greatest to have ever danced," according to the New York Times at the time of her retirement. The world had come to watch her dance and she'd traveled it performing: Russia, Australia, London, Paris. You name the location and Natalia Korsakova had danced there.

When Giselle was growing up, she was constantly told how lucky she was to have Natalia as a mother. To have seen the shows she's seen, to have met ballet royalty, to have traveled the world. But Giselle never felt lucky. Not when she was the accident that put her mother's career on hold for almost a year. Not when her mother was gone for months at a time performing, missing recitals, parent days and school concerts. And certainly not when an injury forced her mother into retirement, shifting her focus from her own artistic talents to turning her daughter into her next protegee.

Much to her mother's dismay, Giselle was not the younger version of her mother. She was good, great even, but she was no sensation. Giselle made soloist in her fourth year at ABT, which was a feat all on its own, unless you compared it to her mother's two. Giselle lacked the raw, natural talent that her mother possessed. Instead of her mother's high arches, she had her father's averagely flat feet. Instead of her mother's uncanny ability to match the music, Giselle had spent hours counting eights in her head to get down a rhythm. Instead of looking effortless the first time she ran through a routine, Giselle spent hours in the studio after rehearsal, running through the choreography until it wasn't possible for her to get it wrong. Giselle had gotten to where she was because of her hard work, not her natural talent- something her mother would never let her forget. To Natalia Korsakova, Giselle would never measure up.

The Swan Lake auditions are Giselle's first real shot at landing a lead, especially with principal dancer Anna Elliot out with a back injury for the foreseeable future. Giselle wants this role more than anything. To prove to herself that she is capable of following in her mother's footsteps. And to prove to her mother that she is just as capable a dancer as she. For once in her life, she wants to hear her mother say not that she'd lost her spot or forgot to point her toes, but that she was proud of Giselle. Four words- that's all Giselle really wants.

"And will start first position, demi, demi, grand, demi and port de bra. Repeat in 2nd, 4th and 5th and then balance in fifth position arms in fifth," Mistress Ivanova barks, before gesturing to the pianist to begin.

Giselle focuses on her movements as the music begins. She tightens her core, elongates her neck and reaches her fingertips to the edges of her silhouette. Her legs quiver slightly as she bends her knees into the first grand plié, her mind focusing on maintaining her turnout.

"Relax that face Giselle," Mistress Ivanova corrects, as she makes her way around the room. "I don't want to see that this is work."

Giselle takes another deep breath, this time releasing her lips from their concentrated place and focusing on her breath. She lets the downtown Manhattan studio disappear from the background. Gone is the distant honking of impatient taxi drivers maneuvering their way through the New York City traffic. Gone is the light shining in from the full-length windows looking out at the city skyline- well what you could see of the skyline behind the crumbly brick building neighboring the school. There was nothing but the dancer, the barre and the music flowing gently through her veins.

"Beautiful lines Teagan, thank you," Giselle hears Mistress Ivanova say from across the room and she fights the urge to roll her eyes. Giselle has known Teagan Davidson since she was fourteen years old, when Teagan had moved from California to New York to join the ABT school. Over the course of a decade of competing for roles, partners and teacher's praises, the two had developed quite a rivalry. To Giselle, there was almost no better feeling than snagging a role that she knew Teagan also had her eyes on.

Giselle uses Teagan's praise as motivation to work harder, feeling the burn in her inner thighs as she pushes further into her grand plié in second. The role of Odette/Odile was hers, Teagan would have to settle for understudy.

The class is in the middle of their balance, Giselle's focus locked in on a spot just at the edge of the window at the rear of the studio when a loud bang reverberates through the room. Dancers drop their balance and turn their heads, looking to see who has caused such a commotion with their entrance.

"Mr. Styles, you're late," Mistress Ivanova snaps.

He is taller than Giselle imagined, and even from this distance she can see the definition in his arms through the black tank top that clings to his body. His hair is slightly disheveled, curling at the top. His face plastered into some cheeky grin, dimples present on both cheeks, like he knows exactly what he's doing, interrupting class like this. Almost like he's enjoying the attention. He throws his black messenger bag to the side before grabbing his ballet shoes and scurrying over to an open spot at the barre near the front of the studio.

"My apologies," he replies in a thick British accent. His tone sounds anything but apologetic.

"Damn, he's even better-looking in person than he is in magazines," Caleb mutters under his breath, eliciting an eye roll from Giselle.

"Well, I suppose after that entrance," Mistress Ivanova sighs, stepping to the front of the class. "Now is as good of time as any to announce that Mr. Styles will be joining our company as a principal dancer."

Gasps fill the room, and Giselle turns her head to look at Viktor, whose face is stoic after Harry's entrance. A low chatter fills the studio, everyone trying to figure out exactly what is going on. Would he get the lead in Swan Lake? Would he be understudying Viktor?

"Silence!" Mistress Ivanova shouts. "This chatter can wait until after class is over!" She turns to face Harry, her lips turned into a stern frown. "If you'll find a place at the barre Mr. Styles, we will continue our class."

Giselle watches as he slides into a spot at the front of the room, shooting a grin at the young company member behind him. Giselle rolls her eyes, returning her focus to the mirror in front of her. Two minutes with the company and she was sure Harry Styles was exactly who she thought he would be.

Giselle tries to forget Harry Styles is in class with them. Instead she focuses on her breathing, her turnout, the rhythm that comes from the pianist in the corner of the room. She watches the early morning New York City sunrise reflect off of the mirrors, leaving little spots of sunlight over the gray Marley floor. Everyone else in the company could focus on Harry Styles all they want, but she is only focusing on one thing- and that is landing the role of her dreams tomorrow.

But Harry Styles wasn't the type of person whose presence could be forgotten so easily.

********

Harry Styles isn't scared of a little attention. In fact, he typically thrives on it. That's why he is a performer after all. To Harry, there is no better feeling than knowing all eyes are upon you, that you are the center of attention, the focus of the room. Maybe that is a prideful and egotistical thing to say, but it is true. Everyone wants to feel important, valued, admired- and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

But the attention Harry has been getting since he walked into the American Ballet Theatre studio a little over twelve hours ago has not been the type of attention he necessarily sought out. He knew there would be rumors, leaving the only company he had ever been a part of during his dance career was sure to draw up the best of them, but something about this felt different. It was the whispers. The stares. The way some members of the room were staring at Harry as if he was a god and a few wouldn't dare look in his direction.

Harry doesn't know what's come over him- this wavering self-confidence. Maybe it's this new place. This new country. Or maybe it's the fact that in the words of his agent, if he "doesn't get his act together" he will never dance at this level again. And if he's not dancing on the world's biggest stages, well, Harry might as well not be dancing at all.

Harry grabs his phone from the side pocket of his black messenger bag, connecting it to the Bluetooth speaker he found in the corner of the studio and presses play on his hip hop playlist. He needs something to drown out his thoughts, and classical music just doesn't cut it. As the beat begins to fill the studio, Harry lets the music take over his body and begins to dance.

Giselle tries to focus on her music, but there's the noise of a pounding bass in the background interfering with concentration. She's always the only one at the studio this late at night- that's why she comes- to be alone and without distractions.

She tries to ignore it, focusing on the one and two of the music as she fouettés. One and two, three and four, five and... a boom from somewhere in the building breaks her concentration and she falls out of her turn, letting out a groan. This could not be happening to her the night before auditions, and if she found out that Teagan was here trying to interfere with her practice...

Giselle makes her way down the hall, guided by the incessant bass that sounds like it belongs in the backseat of a teenager's car and not one of the most prestigious ballet studios in the world. When she turns the corner to enter the studio, it's not Teagan she sees but Harry Styles.

But he's not dancing. He's laying on the floor, wearing nothing but a pair of black athletic shorts that show off the god-like definition of his thighs. His signature butterfly tattoo stands out on the middle of his chest, beads of sweat dripping towards the center of his stomach, the bass vibrating the mirrors around him. He doesn't notice her at first. How could he with the music so loud?

"Excuse me," Giselle says loudly in an effort to get his attention. His body doesn't even flinch.

"Excuse me!" she yells this time.

Harry looks up. In the corner of the studio, towards the door stands a girl. Her almost black hair is pulled tightly back into a bun. Her thin arms are crossed like she's about to lecture him, and her lips are held in a tight line that looks anything but happy. The corners of Harry's mouth curve upwards in a grin, entertained by the fury that was seeming to come from her tiny body.

She taps her foot impatiently, like she's waiting for something. Harry realizes that she is- she's waiting for him to turn off his music.

He sighs, reaching over to his phone beside him and sliding one sweaty finger across the screen to bring the rhythm to a halt.

"Yes?" he asks expectantly, not bothering to move his body from his reclining position.

"Other people in this studio are trying to practice, you know. It's kinda hard to do that with this," she gestures into the air, as if trying to find an appropriate adjective to describe the torture that had been gracing her ears over the past half hour.

"Not a fan of my music?" Harry smirked.

"I'm not a fan of someone disrupting my rehearsal." Giselle spit back.

"Rehearsal? It's bloody 11pm."

"I know what time it is, and like I said, your music is interfering with my ability to practice." Giselle stares Harry right in the eyes. He doesn't intimidate her, and she's not going to back down until he agrees to turn down his music.

"Wasn't aware you were the owner of this studio," Harry taunts.

"I could say the same about you." Giselle moves her hands to her hips. Just agree to turn off the damn music, she thinks to herself, even though she knows at this point, it's not worth the time it will take to warm back up to continue practicing.

Harry sits up, grabbing a blue towel from inside his bag and wiping the sweat that remains off his forehead. "Fine, music's off. Continue your rehearsal. I'm too jet lagged for this shit," he stands, wrapping the towel around his neck.

"Thanks," Giselle says under her breath, before making her way back to her studio, where she knew she would be gathering her own belongings.

Harry groans, grabbing his bag from the floor and sliding it over his shoulder. You could travel halfway across the world and still run into the same entitled ballet brats who thought they ran the place. It's those type of people, company members and otherwise, that were precisely the reason he had left the Royal. Well, not that he had necessarily had a say in that scenario, but they had been the cause of all of his problems.

You just have to dance, Harry, he tries to tell himself. But Harry knows that as much as he tries, there's a lot more too it than that.

**********

“Gi!" Caleb exclaims, bounding down the hallway towards her without concern for anyone in his way. "Cast list is up."

Giselle gulps. She isn't sure that she is ready for this. The look of disappointment on her mother's face if she doesn't land the part. The list of corrections that her mother has come up with from watching Giselle's audition. "Now you see there, you've lost your center. You're never going to make that triple if you don't hold your center Giselle." The reminder that "you only have so many opportunities to prove your worth, before they move onto the younger, better version of you." It didn't matter to her mother if Giselle was the youngest soloist at ABT by five years. It didn't matter if nearly every other soloist had previously understudied for the role. Everything but a lead was a disappointment to Natalia Korsakova.

"C'mon," Caleb exclaims, and before Giselle has a moment to collect herself she's being pulled down the hallway by her arm.

And there it is. The thin, white piece of paper that holds the fate of her next ten weeks in its hands. When she looks at it at first, she thinks she must be dreaming. Because her name has never been on that spot on the list before. Not since she officially joined the company five years ago.

Odette/Odile- Giselle Mason

Sigfried - Harry Styles

She feels frozen. Like she's in a dream and she's paralyzed. It's what she's always wanted-this role and yet, suddenly it feels like a whole lot of pressure.

"You did it Gi," Caleb exclaims, lifting her up and spinning her around before Giselle even has a moment to look any further down the list. Giselle laughs, giddy with excitement. "New York will have never seen a more beautiful Odette."

Giselle rolls her eyes at his comment. Caleb, her friend since joining the American Ballet School at the age of six and partner for many years had always been her biggest cheerleader. In a way, he made up for what she didn't have in her mother.

"And you Caleb?" Giselle asks, realizing in her excitement that she had forgotten that her best friend also had a role in the this ballet.

"You're looking at the newest Benno," Caleb says with a grin. Giselle often wondered what it would be like to be like Caleb. To be happy with any role. To not care about his place in the company. To simply want to dance. Caleb had always been like that- relaxed, calm- the antithesis to Giselle who was always high strung and anxious. Perhaps that's why they'd always been such good friends, because they balanced each other perfectly. Giselle pushed Caleb when he needed some extra motivation and Caleb- albeit not always successful- tried his best to keep Giselle out of her own head.

Giselle watches as Teagan makes her way over to the board, her long black hair swinging from the ponytail at the crown of her head. She grins in slight satisfaction as she sees Teagan's face turn into a frown. Giselle turns and gives Caleb her best, "what did she get?" eyes. He exaggeratedly mouths, "UNDERSTUDY".

As if sensing that she is the topic of conversation, Teagan looks over at the two. "Congrats Giselle," she says, her face moving in a way that makes it seem like the words taste disgusting leaving her mouth.

"You as well," Giselle responds, to which Teagan only scoffs and storms off.

"You know she's going to make your life living hell as your understudy don't you?" Caleb said with a laugh.

"Ugh, I know," Giselle groaned.

"It will be worth it though. You are going to be dancing the role you've always dreamed of." Giselle smiled. "Plus," Caleb begins, leaning down so his mouth is next to Giselle's ear. "You get to dance with the greatest male dancer of our generation. Think of all the hours you're gonna get to spend looking at that GORGEOUS body."

Giselle groans. Her perfect moment temporarily ruined by the realization that she would have to dance with Harry Styles. Sure, he may be talented, a great dancer, and likely a great partner. But his entrance yesterday and their encounter last night told her everything she needed to know about Harry Styles. And she was sure that working with him would be anything but easy.

"That GORGEOUS body," Giselle imitates Caleb with an exaggeration of the word, "Doesn't make up for the fact that the guy's an asshole."

"Okay, okay, point taken. Now can we go get some lunch?"

Giselle nods, but she already knows she's not hungry. Instead, all she can think about is how she's going to get through the next ten weeks of rehearsals with a man she already loathes.

**********

Giselle slides into the rehearsal studio with extra joy in her step later that afternoon. She's so on Cloud 9 that she doesn't even realize Harry standing at the barre doing pliés as she hums the opening notes of Swan Lake aloud.

"Sorry didn't know anyone else was in here already," she apologizes quickly, standing and stretching out her feet.

Harry looks at her, his face hard and eyes sharp. If he recognized her as the girl who interrupted his jam session last night his face didn't show it. "And who are you?" Harry asks, his voice laced with condescendence.

"Odette," Giselle smiles, the words feeling foreign leaving her mouth.

"Obviously," Harry scoffs, and Giselle feels her confidence waver. "Who are you?"

"Giselle Mason, soloist."

"Doesn't ring a bell," the corners of Harry's mouth turn up at his comment, like he gets satisfaction out of reminding others that they aren't the household name that he is.

Giselle wants to say something back. Something sharp and witty to show him that just because he was one of the greatest dancers in the world and she was still trying to make her way into the spotlight didn't mean that he could treat her like a nobody. She was going to be his partner after all- whether he liked it or not. But then Gregory Alexander, ABT's Artistic Director, enters the room, clapping his hands and tells them they are about to begin on the Act II Pas de Deux and Giselle doesn't have a chance to say otherwise.

"As new partners you will need to put in the time to understand each other. Build trust. Anticipate the other's movement. Portray to the audience that you are a swan and a prince in love." Gregory moves his arms in the air theatrically, as if he isn't wearing a designer suit.

"Now I understand that the ten weeks we have to prepare before our season debut isn't an ideal amount of time to form a relationship with a new partner. But in this case, it simply must do." Gregory's face turned serious, the wrinkles on his forehead more defined as he furrows his eyebrows. "I expect that the two of you will put in the time outside of your scheduled rehearsals to work on this chemistry. Anna and Viktor will also be assisting with rehearsals and my hope is that they will also be able to assist the two of you with this transition."

"Gregory," Harry interrupts, then as if realizing he'd made a mistake, he corrects himself. "Sir."

Gregory nods.

"I'm not sure what the concern is. I've danced with hundreds of partners in my career, I'm not sure how the other principal's would have much more experience than me?" Giselle thinks Harry is meaning this as a question but it comes out more like a statement.

Giselle watches as Gregory's eyes narrow again. He looked irritated, and why wouldn't he be? Harry had been here all but forty-eight hours and was already questioning the artistic director's decisions.

"That may be the case, Mr. Styles," Gregory paused. "But when the two of you step onto Metropolitan Opera House stage in ten weeks, I expect the audience to believe that you two have been dancing together for years. Have I made myself clear?"

Harry nods, this time remaining quiet.

"Now then, I'd like us to start with the Act II Pas de Deux. The very beginning- with your entrance Harry."

It's an hour into rehearsals when Giselle hears the echo of heels clicking down the wooden hallways. She doesn't even have to look up when the steps stop as they reach the studio floor. She could recognize that walk anywhere.

"Aahh, Natalia!" Gregory exclaims. "So glad you could stop by," Gregory reaches over to embrace Giselle's mother, his grey hair brushing the sides of her face as he kisses each cheek.

"Mr. Styles, I'd like to introduce you to Natalia Korsakova, former ABT principal and member of our board."

Natalia Korsakova looks as put together as always. Her dark brown hair pulled tightly into a neat French twist. Her tight black dress and coordinating pumps show off every bit of the dancer's body that she still maintained. Giselle watches as her mother's mouth curves to form a polite smile.

"A ballet legend. It's an honor to meet you Madame," Harry says offering his hand.

"The pleasure is all mine. I'm so glad you are joining us here at ABT. And what a joy it will be to watch you next to my daughter," Natalia gestures towards Giselle, with a polite smile plastered on her face that was generally reserved for generous donors and patrons of the ballet. It is all a show. That's all Giselle's mother ever did was put on a production. She was a performer after all, how could anyone expect her life to be anything but a crowd-pleasing performance?

"Your daughter?" Harry turns to look at Giselle, raising an eyebrow. His eyes narrow, as if he's caught Giselle in a lie. As if she'd snuck her way into this position and was just hoping that someone wouldn't notice she wasn't the real deal. "Why that makes this even more special."

Giselle fights every urge to roll her eyes from across the room. It is clear that Harry Styles is every bit as much of a performer as her mother. Just minutes before he was looking at her as if he had been paired with an amateur and suddenly working with her is 'something special'?

"I'm going to watch rehearsal for a bit," Natalia announces, making her way over to a stool next to the pianist. "Carry on." The pit in the bottom of Giselle's stomach grows as her mother takes a seat next to Gregory in front of the mirror.

"Odette makes sense to me now," Harry whispers into Giselle's ear, as he slides behind her to resume practice. It takes everything in her to keep her face stoic as Harry's hands settle once again on her waist.

Rehearsal goes badly. Giselle can't seem to get her leg into the attitude position that Gregory wants, she losing her balance on her penchés, and Harry almost drops her on several promenades. Giselle says almost, because someone as experienced as Harry Styles would never let his partner hit the ground, but she should have, because she surely wasn't holding her weight quite right. And then there's the fact that Gregory pronounced that Giselle "looks at Harry as if he is the villain of the story instead of the prince she's fallen in love with".

Giselle wants to say that's because he is the villain. The villain of her story anyways, the person that is somehow going to turn her dream role into somewhat of a nightmare. Why couldn't she be dancing with Viktor? He was so patient and kind and he would never look at his partner as if she deserved to be in the audience instead of on stage with him.

After yet another failed run through of the first half of the pas de deux, Gregory announces that they are done for the day, but that he expects to see them in the studio bright and early tomorrow morning to work on their timing. Giselle's never been so thankful for a rehearsal to be over, and as she sits down to remove her pointe shoes, running her hands over her swollen feet, she watches Harry leave the studio without saying a word.

"I hope you realize how big of an opportunity this is Giselle. It's not one you should take lightly," her mother's voice startles her, as Giselle had almost forgotten she was there. Almost.

Natalia stands above Giselle, one hand on her hips and the other on her forehead, as if watching today's rehearsal had been exhausting for her. It probably was exhausting for her, keeping tally of all the things that Giselle had done wrong for the past two hours. Natalia's voice is shrill as she speaks again. "There are thousands of ballerinas around the world that could only dream of getting to dance with Harry Styles. And here you are dancing with him in his first show with ABT. That's an enormous responsibility, darling. This performance with him will set the stage for his entire career with our company. One that the board is hoping will last until his retirement."

Giselle nods. That's all she can do when her mother begins one of her lectures- nod. She thought maybe this would be the time that her mother told her congratulations. The time that her mother did what she'd watched countless other mother's do during her time as a dancer, wrap their arms around their daughter and express their pride to them. But instead, today is like any other day, and even with a lead role in an ABT production, Giselle still hasn't done enough to make her mother proud.

Giselle shoves her shoes into her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she stands.

"And Giselle?" her mother adds, as she makes her way towards the door.

"Yes mom?"

"Might want to hit a few more cardio classes this week too, my dear. Got to make sure you are going to be an easy dancer to partner with."

And with that comment Natalia Korsakova clicks away, leaving Giselle standing in the middle of studio wondering if her biggest dream has suddenly become her biggest nightmare.

#it's here!#let me know your thoughts #writingby1dfangirls35 #harry styles #hs #harry au #ballet harry #harry styles fanfic #harry styles au #1dff #one direction fanfiction #harry fanfiction #enemies to lovers

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cryptvokeeper · 2 years

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Genuine question, can you tell me a bit about the cup people you've been reblogging recently? The art and comics are always cool but I have no idea what this is from lmao. If you're busy, no worries! Hope you're having a great day 💛

ASDFGHJKL yeah sure! its like past midnight tho so this will not be coherent at all;

so thats cuphead and mugman from the indie game cuphead by studio mdhr which is a whole cool story on its own cuz like the studio was literally started by two brothers who one day were like "hey wee should make a game" and then took like 10 years to make it but it was their passion project and it grew and grew and when it finally released it was a huge success and has ports on like every console and has some dlc coming soon and also a Netflix show which we will get to and is honestly just such a feel good game development story which is so rare in the video game industry so yay ^_^

but anyway so the basic gist of the game is that its an extremely difficult bullet hell/run and gun game thats made with completely hand drawn animation in the rubber hose style of early cartoons like the fleischer brothers. all the music is also recorded by a live band which is rad. The plot is that the two brothers, cuphead and mugman, gamble with the devil and lose, so now they have to collect all the soul contracts of the devil's runaway debtors or theyre the ones who'll lose their souls. It came out in 2017 so its a couple years old at this point (almost 5??? holy shit) and you can definitely find plenty of playthroughs online. as I said it was notorious for being very hard and got called like "the dark souls of ___" which, eh, like I haven't played either cuphead or dark souls but I know for sure that their gameplay is NOTHING alike theyre both just really hard.

I used to think the game was really cool but never really got too far into the fandom because it got popular very quickly and it came with a fast and inevitable backlash of getting called cringe. but now im a tax paying adult woman who doesnt CARE about cringe and I do what I want and have been having a great time! The animated series came out on Netflix last month and I finally watched it and fell headfirst back into being into cuphead cuz its really good. It is a little different, it doesnt follow the game but its a fun time in its own right. I was struggling earlier to describe it cuz I wanted to say its low stakes but that isnt right, cuz its still get the premise of selling your immortal soul to the actual devil its just like...low impact? Like its not one of those cartoons like Steven universe or she ra or something with a heavy epic story with deep emotional beats its just like goofy looney tunes fun stuff yknow? with some plot thrown in for flair but never gets too serious which is a breath of fresh air honestly, I needed something light. the most you get is one dream sequence moment which is a little more serious but not too much, and just cuz its not super serious and deep doesnt mean its low quality in the slightest the animation is GORGEOUS it looks really great and reminds me of hand drawn animation even though its not Done that way like the game. really smooth, I like it alot.

im sorry this doesnt tell you alot abt like the characters themselves but honestly thats cuz there isnt that much to them? like theres plenty of head canon and aus and stuff you can extrapolate from the text (any and all of which I can absolutely talk abt if u want me to but this is already very long and I dont want to bore/overwhelm you) but the game itself is very light on story. the characters never actually talk and the show has some more characterization but its pretty simple so far especially cuz its only half of the firsts season (12 eps) and you probably got the gist if you've seen what ive reblogged; cupheads the dumb goofy one, mugman is also dumb but more of a straight man to balance his brothers impulsivenesss, that sort of thing. You may have also seen king dice, the casino owner working for the devil, the devil himself, and Ms chalice/legendary chalice, a character who in the games is a ghost that gives you new powers and is gonna be a playable character inn the DLC, and in the show, well, they haven't shown too much of her but she's implied to have got some secrets goin on.

#sorry this is long but also you aksed #so now you get to suffer my ramblings hehehe #srsly tho ty for asking ily kind stranger <3 #thank you for putting up with my bullshit #I literally found one blog that just happened to tag all their cuphead content from like four years ago and spent the last week scrolling #because like so many people deleted their content cuz they grew out of it #which is valid!#but alot of it was really good and its a shame #so much cool stuff lost to time #it was a trip #also there are not enough fics for this fandom #lots of ask blogs! but no fics #and the pics. they do have are a good 45% incest which EW #RETCH #theyre CHILDREN #I just want funny cup men content

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wordstro · 3 years

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omg okay so here are yeosang’s and wooyoung’s more indepth backstories in the hero/villain au because in between working on my wips I’ve been thinking about this universe as a whole a LOT lol. this also includes everyone else's powers (the backstories aren't as in depth yet) as well just a little worldbuilding establishment:

yeosang’s powers are persuasion. he was always a quiet, shy boy who liked to keep to himself. he wasn’t always quiet though, not until the day he activated his powers. when he was 13 years old, he’d been upset about something he didn’t even remember, that’s how insignificant it was, and he screamed and shouted at his parents. his mother sighed, and his father crossed his arms over his chest and said stop being a brat and tell us what happened. ironically, yeosang hated being told what to do. he stomped his foot in anger and shouted, “leave me alone! go away!”

then he turned and stomped up the stairs and slammed the door shut. when he emerged from his room hours later and tiptoed to the kitchen in search of food. the apartment was eerily quiet, the tv still running and the lights still on. he’d gone to sleep peacefully that night, unknowing that his parents would never return.

to this day he did not know where they were.

he’d lashed out a boy prodding at him during gym class, still reeling from his parent’s abandonment. he remembered the boy’s insult. you’re so useless and ugly. no wonder your parents left you, he’d spat. yeosang saw red. he hissed, “go jump off a bridge, asshole.” the boy’s eyes went blank and he turned away. yeosang stared after him in confusion but the bell rang and he was herded back to the school. the next day he learned that the boy jumped off the highway bridge still dressed in his gym uniform.

that’s when yeosang knew what he could do.

he did not speak and kept to himself since then, festering in guilt, always on the look out for his parents. in high school, he met a boy with a big smile on his face and mischief in his eyes. he witnessed one of yeosang’s bouts of anger, when he cornered some bully behind the school where the CCTVs were broken and kids came to smoke and skip class and he told him to forget about his victims and leave them alone, to focus on his grades and family and stop bullying innocent people. he’d owed one of the bully’s victims for her help with keeping him from failing math. jung wooyoung witnessed it all. the boy’s blank eyes and listless nod, yeosang’s test afterwards, everything. before yeosang could persuade wooyoung to forget, wooyoung flicked a finger and blue flames sparked to life at the tip of his fingers.

yeosang suppressed the relief and a sudden onslaught of tears at the sight, the knowledge that he was not alone anymore.

wooyoung used it to light his cigarette and wordlessly offered it to yeosang. yeosang grimaced.

i hate smoking, he’d said. me too, wooyoung replied with a grin, tossing the cigarette to the ground and grinding it with his heel. he swung his arms over yeosang’s shoulder and the rest was history.

yeosang spoke again and wooyoung helped him control his powers and outbursts. yeosang promised he would follow wooyoung to the ends of the earth. and he did, to the hero-villain alliance where he acted as a villain, to the underground meetings, to the coup, to his fights with a team he’d come to love just as strongly as he loved wooyoung. he followed wooyoung through everything and he would do it again and again. still, why did he feel so guilty? why did he feel so much regret?

wooyoung can control fire. his backstory was nothing horrifying. it was kind even compared to the others. he’d simply lost control one day, overwhelmed by emotions as teenagers are, and he burned down his house with his family still in it. he’d left severe burns on his mother and brother, but no one died. when the police came to investigate, his parents covered for him.

his mother reminded him that she loved him and stroked the tears from his face, reminded him that he’d made a mistake and she forgave him for it.

his brother said he forgave him too, but the fear in his eyes remained and wooyoung saw it. he worked to remove it but he saw it. it stayed with him. the fear changed him. not death nor hatred, just the way people looked at him when they found out what he could do, even when he played a hero.

when he and yeosang joined the hero-villain alliance, he’d basked in the kindness in their eyes and though he told himself that he would stop being soft, that he only cared for the people he cared for and that’s it, just his parents who were too old and exhausted and his brother who feared him and yeosang, the team wormed their way into his heart. he loved them. he really did.

they taught him to embrace his softness. they taught him to care. he’d been chosen as a hero by management. but he saw the injustice done to his kind. he despised the fear the public felt towards his villain counterparts, his best friends. it angered him.

because it wasn’t fucking fair. though wooyoung was soft he never agreed with peaceful protests. he believed in fighting and sacrificing for the greater good. peaceful protests rarely changed anything. the ends justified the means. always. so he staged a coup. he had to. for his people. for the world. for the greater good. he betrayed the people he loved most in the world and he would do it over and over again. for the greater good.

jongho’s powers are invulnerability/absolute durability. he has indestructible skin. it’s said he could withstand a nuclear bomb, but no one lets him try it no matter how many times jongho asks. jongho likes danger. it’s the only thing that keeps him entertained and gets him through the numbness he feels every single day. they made him a villain and jongho wondered if they knew that he feigned his optimism. he wondered if they knew how much he despised himself. he wondered if they knew that he used to beat people up just to feel something.

san’s power is intangibility. he can phase through objects by vibrating his molecules to pass through objects. recently he learned to phase his body parts so when someone tries to attack him, they fly straight through him. he tries to learn the science behind it but frankly he doesn’t care. jongho asked once if he could make his molecules turn into a nuclear beam, eyes alight with hope. san would always scold him, but he could see the sincerity in jongho’s eyes. san joined the hero-villain alliance last, plucked from jail for petty theft and given a second chance.

he loved too deeply, and he grew attached too quickly. it was a fatal flaw of his.

so when they betrayed him, yeosang and wooyoung especially, he grew so angry, he was terrified of the force of it. he never knew he could hold so much resentment, but he figures that if he could hold so much love, he could hold just as much hatred too. he fought with a vengeance with anger, but more than anything, with deep, deep hurt.

mingi’s power is light manipulation. he can manipulate light, blind people, create burning heat from it, and even create entire illusions by fracturing light particles. he’d blinded people with his power and he casted an illusion of himself, forever living in his hometown, suffering the consequences of a crime he should have been, and he fled. he’d met yunho on the streets before the hero-villain alliance and they quickly became best friends, brothers even.

hongjoong’s power is dimensional storage. he can store objects and people away for safekeeping. he’s been told that if he trained hard enough, long enough, he could advance his skills. he could manipulate space itself, erase people from existence, create wormholes and paradoxes, warp reality. it would be hard for him.

wooyoung spoke of the possibilities with twinkling eyes.

hongjoong couldn’t admit that his powers terrified him. he still couldn’t bury the guilt of what he did when he couldn’t control his powers. he still didn’t know which dimension he placed his hometown in, whether they were still alive, and it’s nearing twenty years since the accident.

that’s why hongjoong advocated for peace, for treaties and regulations. he hoped for the best in people because that’s all that kept him going. he didn't want to fight. he advocated for his team every single day. he loved them.

that’s why he ignored the signs that wooyoung was up to something until it was too late. every day since then he fought to bring them back, to right his shortcomings.

bonus:

technically this ateez hero/villain au takes place in the same timeline as the astro hero/villain au i have on here on AO3. so the juxtaposition between how fluffy and how much of a fun time astro/the ioi unit/etc are having vs ateez shows how much public opinion of people with powers changed over such a short period of time. especially as super powered people began emerging in droves.

astro’s stories take place when people with superpowers just started emerging. and villains and heroes hated each other but it wasn’t ever as serious as it now is. superheroes were a commodity. no one was extremely afraid of ppl with powers to the point of murder and villains only stole for the paycheck. that’s why they were all best friends. but as the government began to start regulating people with superpowers and ppl began to protest their existence, more government-run academies opened up and all of astro joined the hero-villain alliance as a team. that’s when they joined the biochemical weapons sector. at first it was fine - they didn’t work out on the field often but they hoped with their research they could help their kind and learn more abt themselves. until the experimentation got worse, more invasive, forced. eunwoo was the sole survivor. he lost his shit, but they managed to contain him at a high security facility. when jongho broke him out, eunwoo swore he would avenge them.

#ateez #ateez scenarios #astro #astro scenarios #hero/villain au

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papers4me · 3 years

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Fruits Basket, Se03. ep 5,(part 1)

In part 1 of this post, more than analyzing, I want to understand few confusing things first. I’m not annoyed or angry, I’m just confused & trying to piece things together, so, kindly don’t feel off with my usage of (!!!) & (???). lol. I’ll ONLY discuss two things here that confuse me a lot. ( Real ep review/ analysis will be in part 2)

1- Momiji’s romantic love for tohru (the real love triangle). What?!!!!!

I’m so shocked that momiji loves tohru romantically! So, in order to understand ( where did this come from!!) I re-visited his scenes with tohru since se01 & trying to see if I missed anything! Below is my speculations:

Is it love at first sight?!!! When Momiji first met tohru he kissed her on the cheek. I’ve always thought lightly that in the eyes of the reserved Japanese (bowing is greeting), all Europeans (kissing on the check is greeting). hence, Momiji’s kiss, he’s half Europea. However, perhaps it is a Kureno/ Arisa type of love at 1st sight/kiss?! kureno nearly kissed Arisa on the lips on their 1st official meeting. But Kureno/Arisa kiss was meant to be romantic/sexual with adult kureno’s “ I wanted to taste her lips”. but Momiji’s is a peak on the cheek & he was a child, so... I don’t think he’s struck by love before he’s officially introduced to us the audience.

Is it gradual growing love like kyo’s ? in all Momiji/ tohru eps, he always just wanted to play with her, visit places & spend time together. (hot spring & beach vacation) are his own ideas. But momiji didn’t want tohru exclusively. He intentionally invited both yuki & kyo to the hot spring & even was begging kyo to come. He invited all zodiacs to the beach & wanted all to spend time together. I believe that the hot spring ep especially showed momiji as this playful, innocent & naive kid, wanting to share tohru’s females’ hot spring section. I don’t think momiji was madly in love at that time. He was a child going “ waaaa~, kyo hit me” & jumping here & there.

So, summer vacation? but then again, Momiji slept with the children & tohru doted on them all. He defended tohru but they all defend her & love her. he said to kyo that he “selfishly wanted to be with tohru” but I didn’t catch any romantic hints from that. Was it really that time?? they all wanted to spend time with tohru. Yuki said “ I’ll kidnap you”, kyo agreed to go to the beach right away, kisa was glued to her to the point of annoying hiro! So, when? & why not let us as the audience know abt momiji’s feelings.

Is it related to opening up to tohru abt his family issues? He confessed to tohru abt his dad, mom & momo. She cried for him & hugged him. I never got the feeling in all those scenes that he was in love! it seemed to me like friendship love similar to hana’s/Arisa’s or siblings love substituting his nonexistent relationship with momo.

Is it just me?? I always saw momiji as this baby in toddler clothes, jumping, laughing & a ray of sunshine! A child but with the most mature heart & mind. Tohru didn’t help momiji, he was already helping himself first & reaching healthy conclusions abt how he should deal with his own traumas. So, perhaps (Me) not seeing him as a teenager stopped me from seeing his romantic love? but they showed me hiro/kisa’s love. Elementary school kids! so?

Regardless of when he fell in love or how, the point is, this is heart-breathtakingly tragic! cuz (a) tohru never saw him more than a child at first, then as a precious friend, (b) she’s intensely in love with kyo, which brings us to tohru’s core issues. (Tohru loosing yet another loved one). Tohru’s own issues aren’t fully explored yet, but her love for kyo has been blatantly hammered to us since se01 finale! this is because kyo being locked in the cat room equals (death) which parallels her mom’s (death). Tohru will be living her tragic trauma again but this time, kyo replacing kyoko! Thus, giving tohru a room for growth & character development.Tohru’s intense love for kyo was shown in by the drastic change in her attitude in se01, ep.24, chasing firmly after him even when he pushed her & refusing to let go until he’s back home cuz she wants to! then yuki blatantly saying “ she loves him, too, the way she looks at him“ im se02, ep22 & “don’t worry, tohru, he won’t accept (the other girls confession)” in se02, ep 17 & all her scenes with kyo in that ep where she’s scared he’ll let go of her & other scenes throughout the 3 seasons.

...so why momiji’s impossible & unrequited love is introduced?

I believe it is to push kyo to not let go of tohru. To throw kyo into this internal conflict between selflessly letting go of tohru so she could be happy (like hatori did with kana) & selfishly wanting her to be his lover ( like haru). Kyo himself expressed these two conflicting thoughts in se02, ep, 9 “ I hoped we could always be together somewhere far off (selfish love) & “ I don’t want to take anything from you (selfless love). So, momiji is challenging kyo in a way making him realize that selfish love might not be bad afterall & selfless love could be harmful! cleverly reversing the two concepts. So, I get why this love triangle was introduced. but whyyyy momiji! T_T.. choose someone else, Writer-San! poor Momiji we learned abt his love the same ep we learned it hopeless & he can’t pursue! T_T. couldn’t you at least put the two scenes far away, so I get time to grieve his broken heart! T_T.

2- Yuki/Machi ( Yuki is in a such hurry!!!!)

You could use the analogy of yuki’s starting the story as a (baby/child) taken cared by his mother (tohru) who taught him to be a person (all se01), Yuki took this knowledge as a (kid/teenager) & formed friendship on his own with (kakeru) in (se02). it is not after yuki became a true equal friend to kakeru, chocking him & equally teasing him, that Machi was allowed to talk abt her self as a real character with agency & thoughts (se02, ep24), now yuki must be a (teenager/Man) & fall romantically in love, hence (se03, eps 2 & 3). All this is amazing. So, I kinda expected the following:

yuki won’t take as long as kyo in confessing/ realizing romantic love since he/machi don’t have a shared baggage nor obstacles from the past.

he won’t be as fast as haru’s “ i love you/ kiss/ make love”. But then again, Haru & Isuzu have already known each other for years & are already in love, they just put a name to their desires & went on with it.

So, yuki should be in the middle, noticing, knowing abt the person, crushing, then realizing love & wanting a future together! Cuz yuki is this type of person who values taking time thinking thoroughly, right??

I’m confused as yuki wanted to confess the curse & to be with machi romantically right after the machi background scene? I know not everything should be on-screen & him falling slowly in love could be off-screen... the flower is a yuki/machi “ noticing her stage”, her fighting with him over the red leaf is “ noticing him stage” for her. but there’s only ONE intimate scene of them together! Her raw tears when he comforted her in her flat (the chalk scene is bonus). but.. I never expected that yuki is planning to confess his curse & feelings this early!!!!!! yuki! are you SURE she loves you? ( I mean we the audience know 100%) but how is HE sure?? yuki going this big stage so soon felt a bit un-yuki. but then agin, perhaps that’s part of the new changed confident yuki? I duno, I mean Machi was never given a proper time to prosper, but yuki was always given all the time there is to explore his feelings & even other ppl’s feelings! He’s there in kyo/tohru ‘s story to tells the audience they’re in love, he’s there in Isuzu/ haru to mend their gap. I mean yeah there gotta be more scenes abt them for sure, we’re in ep 5, but I never expected a the intruppted confession now & this soon!

perhaps it’s just me, again?! Maye I’m so invested in yuki & accustomed to him always taking time that I kinda expected more before he’s thinking of confessing. I really thought that confessing his curse/love is yuki/machi’s own story climax compared to kyo/tohru’s story climax with kyoko & Isuzu/Haru story climax after breakup, oh well. I’m positive we’ll see more of yuki’s journey with machi as yuki is rarely absent in any eps. More scenes to come!

That’s the end of my headache! XD. I apologize for giving you headache if you were kind enough to read all this. kindly, don’t spoil future scenes or sub-plots to me. I’m just expressing my shock at how fast the plot moved! just few eps ago, I was watching motoko love journey that survived 3 seasons! Hands down Motoko wins in furuba! XD. Jokes aside, Can I say we’re officially where “the plot thickens?” Is it going down? This ep felt like a bullet train!

Side Notes:

I never liked the “children in deep love theme” that hiro has as children shouldn’t suffer the romantic pining & suffering as teenagers & adult ppl, so, I really appreciated that Momimi altho was 15 when we 1st saw him, lived his childhood without the “oh my! I’m so in love~ pining~ suffer”.

The story introduced ( momoiji in romantic love) the same ep Momiji got tall, so making it as sth he expressed once he hit puberty like most boys his age. He even said it “ I’m a man now”, which is again sth boys feel once they get taller & experience other feelings.

Momiji never catches a break! T_T. My son is denied the types of love he wants (parental love, sibling love & now romantic love! ).

I don’t picture momiji/tohru together as a couple cuz it wasn’t built that way in the story & most of their moments weren’t romantic/sexual tension. to me it was the ultimate friendship!

I wish my son finds love on-screen! If Moyoko/Nao gets on-screen love, give my boy on-screen love, too!

Nah~ forget that~ I’m just sad for my son, I don’t want to see him paired with any character quickly to compensate him not having tohru. This is not doing momiji justice. So, I get the ED art of him with Momo.

If kyo has someone who loves him one-sidedly (Kagura), tohru now has someone who love her one-sidedly (momiji).

The kagura/kyo confrontation was heart breaking, but it had to happen cuz kyo knew she loved him & had to stop her. I hope Momiji never confesses to tohru, I wouldn’t be able to survive seeing tohru turn him down.Tohru & momiji are just too kind for such sad situation.

So, does this mean that the two characters with unrequited love are Kagura & momiji? they’re the only characters with no romantic partner in the ED.

Hana is without a lover in the ED, too! XD. Thank God! I love her crush on kazuma, cuz hello~ who won’t crush on this hunk! & teenage girls can crush on grown up men rather than boys (I know I did, but it was just my girlish crush). I’m thankful it is just a crush & teasing kyo tactics & not true romance! don’t give me another Arisa/Kureno, plz. lol.

#Fruits Basket #Anime Only #confused paper #momiji sohma

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