#middle school: usually just took a book outside and read
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Take care...
[DP x DC fic]
[Love at first... murder? - part 11]
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Part 1
Ao3
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Their first stop was a small café near Robinson Park; Alysia's Boba Bar & Café. After each of them had placed their order, with Jason paying, saying it was ‘his treat’ and that ‘he had promised he’d be the one paying earlier’, they took their food outside.
They did get some stares from the customers and employees, mainly aimed at Jason who’s wearing his Red Hood gear, but they just ignored them minus some intimidation from Jason from afar.
Though, Jason wasn’t quite sure if Danny actually ignored them or just blatantly didn’t even notice them.
Either way, they were currently sitting on a bench in the park. Jason had taken his helmet off and put it next to him so that he could eat, still wearing his domino mask anyway. He’s also still wearing the watch Danny had gifted him.
And he’s never taking that off, holy shit he loves it so much.
Danny is sipping on the leftovers of his boba, having already scarfed down his sandwich. Jason starts his tour, telling him about Robinson Park and pointing out Gotham Zoo right next to it.
After they’re both done with their food, Jason puts his helmet back on and they get back onto his motorcycle so he can point out important landmarks while driving around.
Jason and Danny proceed to chat a bit during the ride as well, just some basic stuff to get to know one another; favorite color, favorite food, how they would disarm someone with a gun and de-escalate the situation, opinions on otters and how they hold onto each other so they don’t drift away, favorite movies, etc.
And Jason is desperately trying to focus on driving instead of Danny’s arms wrapped around his waist from behind.
---
"Over there is the Iceberg lounge."
Danny’s gaze follows where Jason is pointing, falling on a big two-story building with a sign on the outside reading ‘Iceberg Lounge’.
"It's a nightclub owned by the Penguin, one of Batman’s rogues. It’s mainly just a front for his criminal activities, but the nightclub itself is actually pretty good to be fair. Bit posh though"
---
"See that big tower in the middle there? That's Wayne Tower. It's basically the office building of Wayne Enterprises, the company owned by Gotham’s very own multi-millionaire Bruce Wayne." Red Hood says, sarcasm dripping off of his words at the end.
Danny lets out a small non-committal hum.
“You don’t sound too fond of him” Danny inquiries curiously.
“I’m not“ Red Hood states, not elaborating in the slightest.
Danny tries to lighten the mood a little “Well, as long as he doesn’t try to adopt me I guess he’s still better than another millionaire I know.”
Danny smiles as he hears Red Hood laugh.
---
"Over there’s Gotham City Public Library. It’s one of my favorite places in the city. I tend to go there at least once a week. They’ve got a ton of books and are willing to order any they don’t have at request. There’s also some computers there that are free for public use."
"You like reading?" Danny asks curiously.
"Mhmm. I'm mainly in the classics like Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, etc."
“Oh, nice. I don’t usually read much. English was basically my worst subject at school, but the teacher was pretty good. Kind of ended up being one of the only ones in my corner and he really tried his best, y’know?”
“He sounds pretty nice. Is there a reason you haven’t read much, like lack of interest or…?” Jason trails off questioningly.
Danny shrugs “I guess I never really had the time as a teenager, with an added lack of motivation on top. And now… I guess I don’t really know what kind of books I’d like or where I should start.”
“I could recommend you some? If you want me to?”
“Sure, that’d be nice”
---
"The large building over there is Arkham Asylum. It's basically a psychiatric hospital. Batman dumps all of his rogues here, though they keep breaking out."
"Oh yeah, I’ve heard of this place. My older sister applied to work here"
"Dr. Jasmine Fenton?" Jason questions, even if he was already pretty sure who Danny was referring to.
"Mhmm,” Danny nods, “she recently gained her doctorate and wants to be a psychiatrist at Arkham"
"... I wish her good luck" Is the response Jason decides on.
"I’m sure she can do it" Danny proclaims, somehow embodying the :D smiley face.
Jason considers the possibility of her having similar meta powers to her brother and decides that if she does she'll probably be fine.
Not to mention she has Danny in her corner… And Red Hood now as well.
---
"What's that building over there?" Danny asks as they're driving on one of the roads on the outskirts of the main part of the city.
Jason looks at where he's pointing, spotting the manor.
"That's Wayne Manor. Do you remember that millionaire I mentioned earlier? The one that owns Wayne Tower and WE? That's where he lives."
Danny sounds a little surprised as he asks "He lives in that huge building? All by himself?"
"Well, not really. He has some kids, most of whom are adopted though you wouldn’t believe the field day the press had when it was found out he had a biological son. Besides them, he also has a butler that lives at the manor”
Once again, it seems Danny has noticed Jason’s standoffish attitude at Wayne, as he tries to lighten the mood a little.
"That manor is still way too big for all of them. Like what are they doing with all of that space? Are they hiding something? I bet they have a huge secret basement underneath the manor with some kind of laboratory and some shit. Millionaires seem to love those."
Jason lets out a surprised laugh at how on-the-nose Danny is, making Danny grin at his successful attempt to lighten the mood a little. Though it makes him question for a little bit…
He doesn’t know, right? Or does he…
"You know, I think the manor is actually missing something" Danny speaks up again.
"Oh? And what’s that?" Jason asks with humor in his tone.
"It would look way better TPed" Danny states confidently, bearing a mischievous grin.
Jason barks out a laugh, a sharp grin on his face.
"Let's save that for the next date, Doll"
Danny lets out a slightly giddy laugh, his cheeks red and heart beating just a little faster at both the 'next date‘ part and the unexpected, but not unwelcome, nickname.
---
“And this,” Jason says, as he gestures proudly towards the streets around them, “is Crime Alley, which is my turf in this city. I’m the one protecting this place.”
Jason had brought Danny to Crime Alley as the last stop on their date.
“Oh yeah!” Danny speaks up. “I was wondering about that!”
Jason turns to him questioningly and Danny takes it as a sign to continue.
“Yeah so, why is it called crime alley?” he asks curiously with a tilt of his head.
Say what now?
Jason takes a deep breath.
“Are you serious?” Jason asks genuinely curious, gesturing at the drug deal taking place behind them, the mugger that’s running past, and towards the right where gunshots can clearly be heard.
To his credit, Danny doesn’t falter at all, giving Jason a smile and continuing.
“Yeah, I thought it was called Park Row or something like that. Did it get renamed?”
Jason closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose before letting out a strained “Something like that…”
He takes another deep breath before looking back at Danny, who’s still looking at him with a bright smile.
“Is there really no reason you can think of why this place would get nicknamed crime alley? Not one reason at all? None?”
A small explosion sounds and some metal shrapnel falls in little pieces around them. A car tire rolls past. Danny and Jason don’t look away from one another.
Danny ‘grew up with mad scientist parents, an OSHA-violating lab in the basement, fighting ghosts, causing property damage, evading ghost police, fighting a king, is pretty certain his parents have been committing some kind of tax evasion for their research funding, etc., etc. though none of that was really an excuse as his friends and sister didn’t turn out quite as blind to danger as him.’ Fenton thinks about it for barely a second before shrugging.
“No, not really. Why?”
“This is where the Joker attacked you.” Jason tries pointing out, causing Danny to take a good look around them.
“Oh, that’s right! I was wondering why this place looked so familiar! I gotta say, it looks different in the daylight. But I mean, that attack could’ve happened anywhere, couldn’t it? What’s so special about this place?”
God, how can he be so smart yet so stupid?
Now is really not the time to kiss him, Jason.
“It’s… just a nickname, given to the district by the Gothamites. Poverty runs rampant and the crime rates here are… above average, let’s say, when compared to the rest of Gotham. Only old rich folks still call it Park Row” Is what Jason decides to say.
“So yeah, it’s probably best if you try to avoid this place, especially at night. Though God knows you can handle yourself, considering the way you went at the Joker” Danny snorts at the innuendo.
“It’s still better to be safe than sorry and keep away from this place, unless you’re with me. The people around here know better than to mess with me and the people I’m with, so there’s no need to worry.”
“Hmmm, are you sure the crime rates are higher here?”
On their left, a guy dressed in a gray hoodie with suspicious dark red stains on it runs at a car, gets in, and drives off as fast as he can with the car alarm still going off.
“Yes.”
“Oh, okay! I’ll try to keep that in mind then”
God have mercy.
---
Red Hood had driven them back to Danny’s apartment after their date in order to drop him off. Meanwhile, Danny is still not quite over the fact that he can actually call it a date!
After they both get off of the motorcycle, Red Hood walks him the few feet to the front door of his apartment building, and it’s time for them to say goodbye again.
Do they kiss now? Or should he wait till the next date?
Danny really wants to kiss him right now.
But he’s wearing his helmet so it would be awkward as fuck.
Especially if he had to ask Red Hood to take it off.
No, Danny can’t do that. Just no, he’d have his second death, this time of embarrassment instead of electricity. It’s some variation at least?
“See you later, —”
Danny cuts himself off with a not-so-subtle fake cough, cheeks heating up in embarrassment at what he was about to say. He had almost let out another cringy animal-themed goodbye, just like last time.
Great going, Fenton. Despite not going for the kiss, he still managed to almost fuck it up.
It’s like he’s digging himself a bigger hole by the minute.
Red Hood stops walking and pauses. Seeing this, Danny lowers his head to stare at the ground, his body stiff.
---
Jason can’t quite believe he’s doing this, and if any of the bats heard him, he’d never hear the end of it. But… to put Danny at ease…
“Take Care, Polar Bear”
The sentence makes Danny snap his head back up immediately. His mouth is slightly open, as though he’s trying to come up with something to say and failing.
Not waiting for Danny to answer him, Jason starts moving towards his motorcycle again.
Danny, with his cheeks still slightly red, stares at the leaving figure of Red Hood. His gaze is full of adoration, as he just falls a little deeper for the helmed vigilante.
Jason is thankful the helmet obscures Danny’s view of his blushing face as he gets on his motorcycle. He gives one last wave to Danny before revving the engine and leaving for his apartment.
---
Taglist:
@i-always-say-yea @uraniumwizard @why-must-i-be-like-this @griffinthing
#dp x dc#dp x dc fic#dpxdc#dcxdp#dc x dp#dp x dc crossover#dead on main#dead on main ship#ah the cringy animal goodbyes#it’s becoming their thing ^-^#also#the crimes that are happening around them are a bit of an exaggeration#and usually there wouldn't be this much happening in the daylight and with Red Hood around#plus normally Jason would've probably done something about at least some of it#but i wanted to add this stuff in for the comedic sense of the scene#oh and I know I usually try to keep chapter length consistency#and like i know this chapter is longer than the rest#but I just really wanted to include that last part into this chapter#and I didn't feel like cuttin9 the chapter in half#so yeah#like I've had the last part of this chapter written since like chapter 6#but I just kept adding in more in between scenes to make the story flow a bit better#while writing this chap i was really unsure if it was date-y enough#so let's hope i managed it :)
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Longing (?)
It hadn't been more than a month into the new school year when Draco had decided it'd been enough. Enough of this- well he hadn't even known what it was, only that he knew he liked her and he had a feeling you liked him back. He only felt that he was a fool to only have realized it last year, when he realized that he wasn't nearly as possessive with his other friends as he was with her, that it wasn't normal to be constantly be thinking about only one friend.
When he realized this the first thing he had done was avoid her for a week, or that was the plan, because out of sight out of mind and since he was seeing her everyday and talking to her whenever possible that can only be the reason why she was constantly on his mind. Safe to say it didn't have the effect he wanted, actually it had the opposite effect, he thought about her even more than usual, she even made her way into his dreams. So, by the fourth day, he bought her two books he knew she wanted, and a dozen boxes of her favorite candy to apologize.
Barely into the year the weather was still warm, and so Y/N found herself sitting outside on one of the many benches, reading a book she had bought over the summer but had put off reading. But if we were being honest she wasn't doing much reading, how could she when the weather was nice and she knew the Slytherin quidditch team would be passing by any second.
When she heard the boys talking loudly from around the corner she was quick to act like she was reading, and not waiting for a certain blonde boy.
She heard the boots pass by her but from the corner of her eye she saw a pair of shoes standing right in front of her, still she didn't look up.
Draco cleared his throat, she ignored him, he made another noise and she grinned cheekily and finally looked at him.
His hair was still wet from the showers and his hair hung over his eyes as he looked down at her, his blue eyes twinkled as he smiled softly down at her. "Hello, Draco." She smiled and he rolled his eyes in mock annoyance.
"Y/N" He said, and paused a moment, his eyes raked over her, he swallowed, and he continued, "If I didn't know any better I'd think you were waiting for me." Draco smirked and it was her turn to roll her eyes.
"Well you are known for your profound arrogance." She shrugged, grinning from ear to ear, her book laying face down, forgotten on her lap.
"You wound me deeply." He said dryly and Y/N found her self laughing, and then Draco found himself laughing along.
Once the laughter died down the two were left with a silence, and they looked at each other longingly, lovingly, but it seemed neither could see that, even though it was quite obvious to everyone around them.
"Well-" Y/N's voice cracked and she cleared her throat, blushing deeply, "Dinners starting soon, I should get going and put my things away." She said quickly before rushing off before Draco had a chance to respond, leaving there staring at her as she scurried off.
"Bye." He said dejectedly, even though she was too far to hear him. "Ughhh." Draco groaned, running a hand down his face as he took the spot Y/N was sitting in only moments before.
He knew she would be there, she was always there after practice, and for the past three practices he has been trying to get himself to say she can just come and watch, instead of waiting here nearly everyday.
"Fucking idiot." He mumbled to himself.
He needed a plan, he needed to ask her out, soon, because he was getting desperate, really fucking desperate, and if he got to a point beyond that he was scarred he would just blurt out he loved her in the middle of study hall and then run away like a coward before he could hear her answer.
Or maybe he would just grab her while walking in the corridors, pull her into some secluded place and kiss the hell out of her.
The last one seemed much better than the first, much, much, better.
Salazar, he wanted to kiss her.
As she walked away from him Y/N started to cuss herself out quietly, she knew it was always a bad idea to wait for him after practice nearly every time, it was already bad enough that she had budding feelings for him, feelings that she's been harboring for much longer than she cared to admit.
It was stupid of her to just leave like that as well, she felt bad enough for having caught feelings, she didn't need to feel bad about that as well.
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The next day Y/N found herself extra flustered by Draco, and she hated it. Because she felt so obvious about her feelings and Draco seemed so clueless about it, and though she didn't really want him to notice it a small sliver of her hoped he would.
"Can you go and get theeeee-" She dragged out the word as she looked down the potion's list for the ingredient name, all the while Draco stood patiently, waiting for her, when normally he would be blowing steam out of his ears if it were anyone else, "The pearl dust," She looked up at him and smiled softly, "Please?" And added a head tilt for the cheery on top.
Draco's mouth went dry, his lips parted and he felt as though the only thing that might satiate him enough would be to kiss her, her and her teasingly plump lips. He swallowed the non-existent saliva in his mouth and nodded soundlessly, clenching his jaw.
"Thank you." She said, seemingly not have noticed Draco's obvious distress at her mannerisms, and turned back to the potion at hand, humming a tune to herself.
Walking towards the ingredients closet Draco decided he would do something about these ghastly feelings this week. He couldn't take any more of it. It was as though being away from her all summer had only amplified his feelings for her, even though he was visiting her nearly every other day, he still missed her more then he could have imagined.
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The rest of the class was agony, for the both of them. Seemingly flustered easily by just each other mannerisms, and not to mention when it came to testing if the amortentia potion worked neither of them could smell anything, which obviously meant they had made the potion wrong, not that they had just become so used to the others scent they couldn't notice it...
"How did we mess up?" She worried, going over the ingredients and steps from the book, they had followed every step and done everything perfectly, and it wasn't like either of them were bad at potions, they were some of the best students actually.
"Maybe Potter sabotaged us." Draco suggested with a shrug.
"Don't say things like that," She tutted, but Draco couldn't help the smirk that was slowly growing on his face.
"I'm just saying, it's quite the possibility, I mean he probably sabotaged Granger as well, did you see the state of her?" He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, she glared daggers at him, telling him to stop talking about it, so he did. He dropped the smirk and raised his arms in defence, whispering a small, "Sorry,"
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It was just after dinner and Y/N had excused herself from the group early so she could try and make the amortentia potion again, since it had been bothering her all day and she knew if she didn't try at least one more time she would never let it go.
But before she could even get to the dungeons a Ravenclaw boy stopped her and started to talk her under the pretense of charms and tutoring him. "Okay-" He chuckled to himself, blushing, "I was actually hoping you'd go with me to-"
"Who's this?" Said a voice Y/N would notice anywhere, only it was the voice he used when threatening someone, and she couldn't imagine why Draco would need it now. But she wasn't really thinking about that.
Draco has pulled her close to him, his arms wrapped around her middle and pressing her back against his chest and glared at the attempting to ask Y/N out. Leaning down to her ear and repeated himself, "Who's this, dear?" She could feel his hot breath on her neck and she took a deep breath.
"Uhm- this is uh-" shoot, she forgot his name, "Sorry, what was your name again?" She asked sheepishly.
"N-nevermind." The boy stuttered, seemingly terrified by having the Draco Malfoy glare at him, a glare that was a promise for a life of torment, and he scurried off back to where he came from.
Y/N had expected for Draco to let her go immediately, but he made no move to let go, instead he flipped her around so they were facing each other. Looking deep into her eyes Y/N saw Draco trying to decide something, and the his lips were on hers.
Sorry if this feels rushed but it lowkey was. <3
(also dont mind the title, i had no clue what to call this)
#draco x reader#draco malfoy#Draco#harry potter#hogwarts#imagine#not edited#not proofread#draco malfoy imagine#hermione grager#potions#Slytherin boys#theodore nott#theo nott#mattheo riddle#blaise zabini#drabble#oneshot
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Here You’re Safe // Joel Miller x GN! Reader
another platonic gender neutral dad joel moment. TRIGGER WARNING DEATH like of a major character please proceed with caution !!! anyways this took me so long skkshd and the ending is rushed and rlly bad im sorry its 2 am :/ not proofread ALSO!! if i published a poetry book would yall read it :/
—
“Anything bad down there?” Ellie jutted a finger towards an empty hall, lined with lockers.
Outside, the wind screamed its grievances, making the old building creak whenever a particularly cruel gust swept by. It was winter in the middle of the country, and as much as the three of you adored the idea of camping outside, the snow violently pouring from the skies argued otherwise.
Thankfully, Joel found a school building nearby before the storm. A high school, it looked like. On the way in, you saw traces of the treacherous cordyceps roots intertwining through the doorway and walls. But you didn’t have much of a choice with the weather, and they were dry. Hardly anyone lived in the area to get infected anyways, and winter seemed to slow them down; the infected. Not the fungi itself. It grew just fine. Thrived even, in colder climates.
“Just you.” You bit back a chortle as Ellie scrunched her nose, almost peeved.
“You know that joke gets fucking old, Joel. I’m not even in there yet.”
The burly man just shrugged, adjusting his rifle strap as he slowed his steps to a halt, “isn’t a joke.”
“He can’t help it, he’s like eighty. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” You shrugged your pack off your shoulders, setting it on the floor to get situated for the time being. The man just grunted in response, glancing around the building before taking a seat at one of the long tables that littered the room. They were askew; clearly a struggle took place there sometime, but judging by the copious amount of dust that coated the place it couldn’t have been all too recent. Joel was sure it was clear, otherwise they would’ve heard you by now. The school wasn’t all that large after all.
“Whatever,” piped Ellie, rolling her eyes. She reached for your sleeve, tugging you towards the hall. “Cmon! I wanna explore a little!” Giggling, you let her lead you off, throwing a glance back to Joel before the two of you rounded the corner. His brows were deep set, almost furrowed above his eyes, as they usually were; but he looked about as relaxed as you imagined the man could manage.
“Hey!” he called after you. “It’s mostly dry, but you watch your step, understand? Haven’t cleared it completely.”
The two of you hardly heard him, though, distracted instead by the rows of little blue locked cabinets you’d only read about in passing. A lot of the world before was a wonder after growing up in the QZ. It felt like rediscovering a myth.
“This is so fucking cool!” Ellie ran her hand along a row of them, rattling the metal doors against their frame. It was a wonder they weren’t rusted after all these years, but they seemed almost untouched if not a little dusty.
“Didn’t you go to high school? In the QZ?” You didn’t get to. Before Joel and Tess you were a well kept secret, and after that didn’t change much either. They’d let you out as you pleased after awhile but you never went to school; ‘don’t need to be feeding you FEDRA propaganda,’ so they homeschooled you instead. Mostly Tess. Joel quipped in every now and then but he didn’t usually have the best wisdom to impart onto you. Aside from bedtime novels, that was always his specialty.
“Yeah but it was tiny. Just a gym and some classrooms.” Ellie had her head under a drinking fountain, staring at the pipes as she mashed the button. “This stuff is so metal, literally. It’s like your own little room at school!” Abandoning the fountain when no water emerged, she turned her attention back to the paint chipped lockers, “you think they left shit in here?”
“Like corny love letters maybe,” you tugged on one of locks to test it. It didn’t budge, as you’d assumed. Thoughts of life before were so enigmatic. They were more scared of the math test next class then when their next meal was gonna be. It almost made you jealous. It would if they weren’t probably dead. Better to grow up in hell then suddenly get thrust into it.
Behind you, metal squeaked as Ellie got one of them open, “Oh shit! Wait wait wait, Y/N check me out!” You turned around, lips pursed together in a crooked smile when you saw her. She’d found someone’s baseball cap and sunnies. Ellie flipped the bill back and slipped the sunglasses on, forcing a deeper voice as she swaggered in your direction. “Yooo what’s up bro, you going to my place tonight? Throwing a huge party!”
She pressed her hand into the locker, beside your head, leaning in. The moment your eyes locked eyes behind her darkened frames you both burst into laughter. Shaking your head, you took on a dumb expression before replicating her tone, “man, is Britney gonna be there? She’s a total babe!”
Ellie snorted, sending you both into another fit of toe curling laughter. It was all so absurd. You pushed off the locker when you’d regained your bearings, walking backwards as you tugged on the locks to see if any would pop.
“Is that really how they talked back then?”
Ellie shrugged, tugging on locks on the opposite wall as the two of you ventured forth. “Gotta be, that’s how it is in books.”
One of the locks you tugged on gave way, making you grin as you pried it open. Pulling out a binder, you thumbed through the pages before a little booklet caught your attention.
“Here, catch!” She caught it with ease as you tossed the comic book over.
“No way! Batman!” Ellie flipped through the pages with fervor, pausing in her pursuit down the hall. You, however, continued slowly wandering backwards.
You giggled, shaking your head at her glee.
A sickening crunch wiped the smile off your face.
Ellie gasped, staring at you with wide eyes as you muffled a scream. Looking down towards the source of the noise, you see it.
The semblance of a hand disintegrated under your foot. The body it belonged to seemingly dried out long ago, pressed flat against the wall of lockers it clung to.
The both of you stared a moment, as you slowly backed away in relief. Until you saw the tendrils lurking in the undergrowth, reaching towards you. Worse still, the rumbling sound that suddenly emerged from the upper floor made you blood run cold.
Shit.
Ellie saw it too, bolting first but you were quick to follow.
“Joel!” You called, turning the corner, almost colliding with him. “We have to run!”
“Y/N! Ellie! What’s going on?” The man was already ready, bags slung over his shoulder with a look of bewilderment embedded on his features.
Ellie pushed Joel forward, “Not fucking dry!” The three of you ran, making your way back the way you came. The thundering sounds of footsteps hitting hardwood grew nearer. Joel lead the way, rounding every corner with his shotgun raised.
“Why didn’t they hear us when we came in?” You choked out in a panicked whisper. Normally they came bolting at any noise you offered.
“It’s winter, were probably huddled to keep the hosts alive. Mushrooms can take the cold, but the bodies can’t.” Joel whispered back. The timbre in his voice was almost enough to soothe you, he sounded more tired than distressed as he pressed on.
“What do we do?” Ellie piped.
“Gotta get outta here first.” The three of you cleared another corner, sprinting down a hall. A violent thud against one of the classroom doors made you lose your footing, sending you plummeting towards the ground. You gasped as three runners pounded aggressively against the door, piling and clawing at the ancient thing long enough for the rusted hinges to give way.
“Shit!” Somewhere out of the corner of your eye you see Ellie pull out a knife as the three infected tumbled forward. They piled on top of each other, all scrambling to gain their footing and lunge at the nearest person in the room; you. You shuffled panickedly backwards, working to get up and kick the topmost one off your leg.
Ellie stabs one in the head, making the arm fall limp and successively freeing you. You managed to stand upright, the other two still clawing but trapped under the weight of the first. Joel fires a bullet, ceasing another one’s movement as they three of you back away from them.
Before he can shoot the third, the rumbling gets louder.
You’re all sprinting before you can fully gain your bearings. The burn in your lungs was starting to settle in, but the echos of clicks and groans mixed with the pummeling of foot steps filling the halls kept you motivated. Your heart beat so quickly in your chest, you thought it might burst out.
The doors leading out were in sight, though. The wind that bashed against it was less than inviting, but beyond that— the worn mahogany didn’t budge when you shoved. Ellie reached it first, nearly falling as she bodied the double doors. The snow must’ve piled up outside.
A glance and a nod were all you needed before the three of you charged against it unanimously. Once. The doors shook and the sound resounded, seemingly worsening the agitation of the horde heading your way. A second charge made it squeak open, the biting wind flaying your skin as it made contact. The first of the infected rounded the corner, running at you full force before you’d managed a third charge against the doors.
They burst open, giving way to a powerful gust that hit you like a wall. Joel made sure you both got out before he followed, pressing against the wind to get away.
The infected fared worse. Clickers wouldn’t be able to hear with all this noise, and runners couldn’t manage to fight the wind. Most of then fell behind, the few that persisted did so slowly; sinking perpetually deeper in the plush snow in their pursuit.
Fighting against the biting currents of the frigid wind, the three of you paved a way into the tree line. Immersed in forest, the storm felt better. The trees blocked off some of the wind to an extent, and as far as you were concerned no infected seemed to have tagged along thus far.
The ache in your bones was starting to settle as the storm did. You were deep in the woods by then, no sense of direction or time— but with the way the moon hung so high in the sky it couldn’t have been close to daybreak. Joel slowed to a halt, nodding at both of you before you and Ellie breathed a collective sigh.
Ellie dropped her bag to the ground, almost falling over. Your knees felt a surge of weakness too. The snow looked so soft you could sleep in it. You bent forward, heaving, hands on your knees. If you were born before the whole thing went down the cardio alone would’ve been enough to kill you, it was much better to be born into the apocalypse, you decided.
Thankfully you didn’t leave too much behind. A sleeping bag and more cans of food than you would’ve liked were lost, but you’d find more food and you had two sleeping bags still.
Everything settled enough for you to hear again. Between gasps of breath you could hear the crickets chirping. It was almost tranquil.
Ellie seemed the first to recover, standing up and stretching her arms overhead before stilling. She stared ahead at nothing in particular, cogs processing the monstrosity you’d just escaped.
“That was fucking brutal.”
You looked up to offer a laugh. Her dry humor in times like these were enough to send you into orbit sometimes; but that was when you saw it.
The lone stalker that lurched for her before you could yell a warning. Before you could think you reacted. Grabbing Ellie by her collar, you yanked her forward and out of its path.
Instead, if collided with your arms pushing against its chest with all the force you had left in you to muster. It was stronger, of course, knocking you down almost immediately as it clawed at you. You screamed as it opened its mouth, long tendrils extending themselves towards you, wriggling morosely.
Ellie was still in the thralls of scrambling up, but Joel took notice. A well aimed bullet made it collapse. Joel rushed to help haul it off you as you screamed from the pure terror and adrenaline coursing through your veins, clamoring as far away from it as your shaken body could manage.
He looked at you with a concern you hardly recognized, not that you even looked to see it. Everyone was still a moment until Ellie said your name.
“Y/N…” she said it uncharacteristically nervously, a shaky finger pointed towards the shining red that stained the snow beneath your palm.
You raised your hand to your face, barely able to see in the moonlight, but the indentations of teeth on your marred flesh was unmistakable.
Ironically, your veins felt icier than the frost covered leaves as you stared at it; shell shocked.
This was never supposed to happen. You’d always made it through before, why now? Not you. It could never have been you.
Ellie fell to her knees, fists bunching the fabric of your shirt as she shook you, tears in her eyes threatening to fall. “Y/N what the fuck! Why’d you do that!”
“No. No no no,” you murmured.
“I’m immune!” She was screaming at you now. “I’m fucking immune! I would’ve been—“
The older man cut her off, pushing her hands off you but not with more force than was enough to make her release her grip. He looked at you with the same shock that gripped your eyes. His hands hovered you, hesitant, but the gentle movement broke your stupor. Looking up at him you quivered under the weight of it all, “Joel.”
He looked at you with something you couldn’t quite grasp. It was pity and shock and hurt and all of it but none of it. Somewhere in the confines of his empathy and loving was a deep rooted instinct to compartmentalize. What was done was done. But you needed him now. The bullet was shot, but the dust hadn’t settled.
“Joel, I’m so scared.” Tears were already streaming, and you knew he couldn’t do anything about it; both of you knew. But as his weighty arms wrapped taut around your shoulders, it was good enough a cure. You inhaled, letting his familiar burnt wood settle in your lungs as it’d done a thousand times before.
“Shh, shh. I know baby, I know.” His hand pat rhythmically against your spine.
It’s over. It’s really over.
That’s all you could think. Behind Joel, Ellie just stared silently. It wasn’t out of anger or guilt or even pity. None of these things ever seemed real, and the three of you had been doing this together for so long. You’d survived so much of it all, and she was the cure. The hopeless, helpless cure. What else could she do?
“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Joel wasn’t one to sugarcoat or lie. So often he said so little, every morsel of information or sentimentality you could pry from him felt more satisfying than a warm shower on a cold day. Maybe it wasn’t because he didn’t know what else to say. You were in hysterics and at the end after all.
But it felt true.
Your hand throbbed, but not more than the feeling of the ache in your bones— something you’d gotten used to after years of running. The air was stiller than it was before, it didn’t hold the bite of bitter wind it had moments earlier. In fact, after all the snow, it felt clear and crisp in your lungs. The birds cooed their grievances to the world overhead, never ceasing their song even in the middle of night. And the stars were so beautifully bright, it was enough to feel enveloped. Here, in this moment, in Joel’s arms, you were okay.
He’d only pulled you closer, almost swaying you with him as he kept the rhythm of his hand against your spine. You could hear how fast his heartbeat, “You remember that toy rabbit you had as a kid? What was his name? Pete? Peter?”
“Percy,” you whispered after a while. Rabbit was a strong word to describe it. It might’ve looked like one before, but by time it got to you it was anything but. Discarded and trampled on as people rampaged out of cities and infectious conjunctions. It was a mottled gray little thing, with an ear and both eyes missing. The other ear consistently found itself, for the better half of five years, securely grasped in your little hands. Regardless, you loved it. You named it the way you would’ve named a real rabbit, if you could’ve had one before all this. You held it the way you would imagine your parents held you, before all this.
“Yeah that’s right,” his chest vibrated against the side of your face as he chuckled. “You used to carry him everywhere, didn’t you? Thought you were gonna kill me when I took him to wash. Would holler bloody murder, it was a wonder the neighbors never complained.”
The wind settled earlier with the storm, and eventually so did the pace of your heartbeat. You smiled at the memory, strangely bashful. It’s almost an insult to Joel and Tess to say Percy was all you had. They gave you food, shelter, company on some days. But for the first few years he was all you had. He was promised and he was yours. Percy was the first you could ever call your own. It felt often like he was all you had. Especially on nights when the two of them were on runs, and the Fireflies would stir fights against FEDRA outside. Percy shielded you from the sounds of gunshot then.
“Course eventually you outgrew him; which was never bad! Used to get jealous of how often you’d hug it and not your old man.” He sounded wistful. You calmed down enough to pull back, now suffering from a bout of hiccups and sniffles as you tried to regain your bearings. Joel didn’t let you go, though. You stayed in his arms. You couldn’t bring yourself to respond, offering a small smile in its place.
How could he be jealous of a silly little rabbit? Percy was all you thought you had then. But you knew better. Joel was all you had ever. He was all you would ever have again.
“Then there was that kid, down the street. Darwin or something?”
Damian. An awkward, lanky, 8 year old boy, with sand colored hair that never lay flat and a tooth that was perpetually missing. Of course, you were 9 at the time and you didn’t want to play with “little kids.”
Joel really sucked with names. You knew that. He was getting on in his years, but even when he was younger— they never stuck for him. People were untrustworthy and irrelevant, it was hard to want to try. So it meant a lot anyways when he halfway blundered the names of your childhood acquaintances. To you what was so fleeting was important enough for him to commit to memory, as cold as he could be. You never thought he’d cared so much.
“Brought you sidewalk daisies for months! Damn near ripped his head off, was about fed up with his yapping and stammering around you.” You smiled at that. Damian’s crush on you was so annoying then, but sometimes on longer days you’d wished someone would love you with the same persistence— even if it was a silly boy a year younger than you. “But you were always pretty, anyone could see it. No one will ever be good enough, though. Or, would be.”
Joel said the last part almost as a whisper. It felt like a death sentence, though you all knew there was no hope for you. A silence settled over your heads, you could feel it in your lungs as you inhaled the air that felt so crisp and clean and clear. Lungs that were still alive and well.
It would be dawn soon. And they had to go. The world was cold and bitter; they needed to get to shelter and then continue to their agenda. They. Joel and Ellie.
And when they went your lungs would still work, and you still breathe in clean crisp air. But they wouldn’t be breathing for you.
So, pulling far enough away from Joel to look him in the eyes you plead wordlessly. They darted between his, begging him to understand their request and praying for him to accept it.
It took a moment, confusion crossed his face before it dawned on him. Though he should’ve known what you wanted.
He shook his head, holding your gaze. It was a cruel thing to ask. To want. How could he when he raised you? When he loved you?
But you just nodded. He had to. It was all you wanted. So the two of you just looked at each other and pleaded. You knew you were going to win. Joel always yielded for you.
Your eyes shifted for a moment to lock with Ellie’s, offering her a small smile. She looked confused, looking between you and Joel as the pieces started to fall into place.
You looked back to Joel again, wrapping your arms around him and hugging him for the last time. Your eyes fell shut and you felt him squeeze you back. It was so warm here.
“Love you, Dad.”
You were safe here.
And that’s the last thing you knew before he pulled the trigger.
—
likes and reblogs appreciated !!
#joel miller x reader#tlou angst#angst#tlou fanfiction#ellie x reader#joel miller comfort#joel miller x female reader#joel miller x gender neutral reader#joel miller x male reader
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Can you do a Malleus ans S/O gn!reader where they go on a ice cream date and watch some movies please? I would like it super fluffy and sweet please.
Heyyyy
Sorry it's been almost a year but yes. Yes I can
Tw:none
Word count: 1048
Note: I did rush it at the end so sorry if that's not what you wanted!
The Sweet and Sour Impact of the Ice Cream Date
A Malleus x gender neutral! Reader
It was the middle of the night when you decided you needed to crack down on studying and the fact you couldn't sleep. Making sure Grim was sleeping from his day of shenanigans, and grabbing some school books, you go outside the fresh air hitting your nose.
You decide sitting down at the roots of a barren tree was a good decision to start studying there. So you cracked open the hand me down book and started to read it, making sure to make notes for tomorrow.
At some point firefly's started to appear near you, you looked up at the flying insects in time to hear a voice "up late again child of man?" Turning your head towards the voice you see Malleus, l.
His lips upturned at the sight of your figure as he approached you. Setting the now forgotten book down, you got up to greet your boyfriend. "Hello, Hornton, walking again?" You question giving Malleus a wave.
"Hm? Yes, it's a wonderful night for a walk." He said, smiling still. "I have something I wish to ask you." Malleus said, having a new glint in his vivid green eyes. "What is it?" You asked tilting your head a bit at the Fae in front of you.
"I was wondering if you'll accompany me tomorrow to town." Malleus said his smile weavering the slightest but as he asked. Your cheeks flushed heating up, "you're asking me on a date?" You asked, feeling your heart beat faster.
"Yes, there is a new establishment I wish to visit with you, my child of man." Malleus voiced, having the same reaction as you. You put your hands into his and smiled like a lovesick fool you both were, "Yes, I'd love to go with you tomorrow Malleus." You say as Malleus nodded his head. You let go of his hands and backed up, "I shall see you tomorrow morning then." He affirmed as he waved at you walking away still having a flushed face.
You smiled softly at his retreating form, as you looked at the phone Crowley gave you, you decided to go inside your dorm at this ungodly hour.
You were the first to wake up other than the ghosts that inhabit your dorm. Carefully untangling yourself from Grim as he snored away, you got out of your bed. As you start your usual morning routine and getting ready for your date with Malleus. You'd also managed to get the ghosts to look after Grim for the day.
There was a knock at the door, you open it and see Malleus.
"Hello, I see you are getting ready, do you need me to wait a moment?" He spoke seeing your attire. You waved him off, "No, I am ready" you say and hook your arm around his, leaning a bit on him.
In the background you can hear Grim's sound of betrayal.
"Ah good, I got permission from Crowley to go with you today so there shouldn't be any trouble today." He says as he starts walking with you.
It isn't long of a walk before the two of you get to the establishment, you realize you hadn't asked him what kind of establishment it was but as Malleus came to a stop you saw an ice cream shop.
The ice cream shop exudes a cozy and inviting atmosphere. The exterior of the shop is painted in pastel colors, with hanging baskets of flowers, and a sign that reads "Scoops Ahoy!" in playful, cursive lettering.
"Ice cream?" You say looking at the shop and at Malleus. "Yes, was this a bad place to take you?" Malleus asked, you shook your head at the Fae, "no! I just didn't expect this, not that it's a bad thing. Just sweet." You say as you look back at the ice cream shop. It had been a while since you had a treat like this.
"Then let's go." He said with a smile as he took your hand in his walking up to the ice cream shop.
As soon as you two enter, they are greeted by the sight of a glass display case filled with a colorful array of ice cream flavors, from classic vanilla and chocolate to more adventurous options like lavender honey and matcha green tea. The air is filled with the sweet smell of freshly-made waffle cones, and the sound of old-timey music playing softly in the background.
The walls of the shop are adorned with cheerful artwork and vintage ice cream advertisements, adding to the whimsical ambiance. Customers can choose to sit at one of the small tables and chairs, or relax in the cozy seating nook with plush pillows and blankets.
You two ordered your treats and sat down once you had them. The staff is friendly and enthusiastic, always willing to offer samples and assist customers in creating the perfect ice cream sundae although they are wary of Malleus. And with a variety of toppings, from sprinkles and hot fudge to fresh fruit and whipped cream, the possibilities are endless.
You two decide to share an ice cream sundae the way you like it.
You laugh with Malleus as you two finish up at the table. You pick up your and his trash and throw it away in a nearby trash can.
"I had a really nice time with you, Malleus." You chirped happily as you two left the ice cream shop. "I did as well." Malleus said before grabbing your waist and teleporting to your dorm's front door. "Oh!" You exclaim looking around. "I am sorry, you looked tired." He said looking at you.
"No, I am. I stayed up too late last night.. Anyways, thank you for taking me out on a date." You said as you opened the door. "Oh wait child of man" Malleus said, getting closer to you. You turn around to be met with your boyfriend's face. "I love you." He said before he kissed you.
#malleus draconia x reader#twisted wonderland#disney twisted wonderland#twst x reader#twisted wonderland x reader#malleus x y/n#twst malleus#malleus x reader#twst
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Stopppp that yearbook photoshop is so good she looks so pretty 🥺 I actually really like your idea for a walk to remember au, I like that it happens after college and that Clarke was only a normal amount of asshole in high school and not a giant asshole lol what other things did you think for the au? Like how does their first date happen?
Well their first date would happen after Clarke blows Lexa off.
After a few weeks of her bumming around the bakery daily to read and get a head start on studying for the upcoming semester of grad school (which Lexa has begrudgingly yet graciously been helping her with since, somehow, she seems to have a working knowledge on just about any damn topic Clarke can think of). And so it was an admittedly shit head move when Clarke had been out having lunch with a couple old friends from high school and saw Lexa stop at the same spot. When Lexa had paused when she saw her and took step toward the group to smile and wave. When Clarke had immediately looked away and pretended like she didn't know her, like she hadn't seen her standing there at all. Like she hadn't seen and didn't die a little inside when that lopsided smile broke and shuttered behind a cool look of realization.
Basically when, instead of acting like a decent 23 year old woman with some damn manners, Clarke had acted like it was grade school, middle school, and high school all over again.
And so, she has some making up to do. Because when she slinks back into Gus's the next day, it is to zero fanfare. No warmness or exasperated smile at the sound of the tinkling bell marking her arrival. No usual coffee order already waiting for her. Certainly no free muffin waiting on a well-loved dish that she'd grown quite fond of as of late.
It's all steely eyes and clenched jaw. Lexa barely sparing a glance up from whatever newest book she was reading that day. Just silence soaked in disdain, only broken by the sound of a pointedly flipped page.
And that really fuckin sucks.
So Clarke does what Clarke does best. She turns on the charm. The smooth words and playful banter and the patented Griffin Grin, and and and... and not one single bit of it works.
Shit.
It takes her a bit figure out what to do because honestly she doesn't know if she's ever felt more miserable in her life. Not having her days filled with that humming and those terrible jokes and that voice that is entirely more lovely than it had any right to be. Which weird, because this is Lexa— intimidating, sweet, dorky, brilliant, nerdy, gorgeous Lexa. The one she kind of wants to be around all the time now and hates herself for her knee jerk reaction over.
And so she does the only other thing she can really think of to do.
Make an absolute ass out of herself.
Humble herself at Lexa's doorstep and hope at some point she'll edge the door open and welcome her back in.
And by humble herself, I mean post her ass up outside the bakery every waking hour she gets. Making sad puppy eyes through the window, forehead pressed sorrowfully against the glass. Painting a fancy new chalk sandwich board for the shop and adding more and more ridiculous things onto "the daily specials" in the hope just to make Lexa laugh (while not potentially getting maimed by Gus himself 😬)
It takes a minute but eventually Lexa just gets kinda fed up with it one day and goes outside with every intention to tell her to just go home. But somewhere in her tirade Clarke snaps back too, until they're both glaring at each other on the front curb of Gus's shop. Well... glaring as Clarke backs Lexa up against the display.
More accurately, glaring as Clarke backs Lexa up against the display window, all while telling Lexa that she's sorry and that she's more than proven that she's sorry. That she'll invite every damn friend she ever had in high school there right now just so they can witness her say how much she likes spending time with Lexa, and misses her, and how she's been miserable since the last time they talked because she can't really remember the last time she was as happy as she's been sitting in that cramped little bookstore, listening to Lexa teach her the most random things about the world in between bouts of singing to herself while she stocks.
It honestly is a blessing when Lexa shuts her up with a kiss. Just a little one. Hesitant barely more than a brush of her lips.
And fuck, with how big and hopeful and absolutely terrified those eyes look when Lexa pulls back, the words "Go on a date with me" are out of Clarke's mouth before she can even register them herself
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What's one of your favorite childhood memories?
Hello, friend, good to see you, even if you do hide in the shadows. Hope you are well. <3
Let me tell you about a time I fell in love with storytelling all over again. I grew up on stories; I loved having my dad read to me when I was little (we read Narnia books, the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, Robin Hood, etc. I loved *all* of it). I loved the stories of found families and tight friendships like it was my bread and butter because I hadn't made any friends I could get closed to bc family moved around a lot (a decision I don't resent my family for now, but despised as a kid), and I wasn't really *that* close to my family either due to probably a variety of factors, not excluding mental health issues. I won't delve for the sake of length, you get the point. I was a sad and lonely child and my closest friends were imaginary. Anyway back to more concrete events:
We had just moved from Florida to Virginia, which is about 1000 miles away and over 13 hour drive (for context), and we had just started a new co-op (think like homeschool school, but it only met like once a week, it was one of the ways we'd start building up a new social circle or something). And one of the classes I took in was something music (more likely theater? related but that might have a different semester) and the first week of this co-op I remember they gave us a bingo card with a bunch of famous movie soundtracks and they told us we were going to identify the movie based on the song alone.
I got 2/20 or something bc I hadn't even heard of most of these movies bc i just hadn't been exposed to it. It was things like Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, maybe spongebob- pop culture stuff that I just hadn't seen. So everyone else was getting excited and I was feeling more and more out of the loop and alone.
I swear this turns happy at the end, bear with me, anon. They play the final music track and I don't recognize it at all but it fills me with such great joy and a call for a new adventure that I hadn't even realized music could do that before (we didn't listen to a lot of our own music growing up, it was mainly whatever my parents found appropriate or what my dad liked).
It was How To Train Your Dragon. Test Drive. John Powell. And then like the musical scores, they showed the scene it was from. A boy and his dragon racing, flying through the air. And I fell in love With the characters arcs per se, but I could tell there was a deep lore there and a story of friendship that I craved so much. It was also right up my alley with stories my Dad had read me so there was also that. But like the music was fantastic, I really liked the visuals at the time (i usually hate most 3D animation films, HTTYD is the exception), and I craved the story behind it.
I saved up money from Birthday and Christmas and ended up buying it. And I watched it. And I fell in love even harder. Cause, in some sense, I related to hiccup too much. I was a creative person, like he was, I had very little friends like he did at the beginning, we had similar senses of humor at some points, and he was fascinated with knowing and learning things. And he had a big dragon friend and i again craved that friendship deeply. So he added to the crew of imaginary friends and I went on many imaginary adventures with Hiccup and Toothless and told myself so many stories that I wish I could remember now for writing inspo.
I ended up moving from Virginia to middle of nowhere Midwest US (not saying where in case the Fey Find Out), and I did end up meeting my IRL Toothless. A little bit scary on the outside at firsts, but with an actual heart of a silly, goofy, dragon. (brb, im getting emotional just thinking about it. It'd be about 7 years now? Coming up? I may be bad at math. I feel old and happy and content.)
So yeh, in short it was a very much right place, right time kind of story and film. I still watch it a lot whenever I need a comfort film that's not as long as LOTR or something. I love the soundtrack and all of the things about it. Sorry, this was probably way longer than it should've been but IDK how to describe my love for this story without giving you some context.
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Dessert Island
A weight gain story by Top Tier Teaser
Synopsis: Wilbur Peck, a young scholar of nutrition and anthropology is recruited by a wealthy sugar mogul to uncover a mystery on one of his islands. Set in the late 1930s, this story details Mr. Peck's journal entries as he is recruited and dispatched to the island, where he finds a "local curse" is causing the employees of the mogul to gain weight at a rapid rate. Now, Mr. Peck must race against time--and his own appetite--as his own waistline begins to expand. If he is to escape the island and retain even a shred of his fitness, he must discover what is happening to the once-fit workers and locals on the island so he can stop the curse from wrecking his own body with obesity.
Entry One: May 31st, 1936
The Plump Visitor
He approached me in my office. The recruiter. On my final day of the semester.
One might think that the personal assistant to such a wealthy and renowned mogul of one of the nation’s most prolific sugar plantations would have more consideration than to interrupt a scholar at work, especially when his time was in such short supply. But, of course, the man in question so obviously lacked in self-awareness. Why should he consider the importance of my work?
So, there I was, sitting at my desk, a pastime which I rarely take, usually opting to pace as I did my reading. I have seen other students in my position who have “gone the American way;” young men who would otherwise be handsome and fit, who had indulged too much and sat too for too long and who had accumulated that unfortunate band of fat around the middle.
I would not consider myself a vain man, but others prized my looks. I hardly saw the merit, being far more focused on my recent scholastic accolades that the university had awarded me, but it seemed to draw in the attention of our scholars. Fresh men and women alike who ogled at me as I lectured or wrote on the board or even took a brief pause to lounge back as the professor took the reins. At first, I had found it off-putting, but I had learned to use it to my advantage, keeping my nails trimmed, my hair crisp and cut, using its reddish summer glow to my advantage. Where some professors would struggle to maintain the attention of a class for more than twenty minutes, I was able to wrap these fresh new minds around even the most boring of subjects, so long as I remembered to flick my hair out of my eyes (and to keep my spectacles tucked away in my back pocket) from time to time.
But it was the end of the year. The students had packed and retreated to their summer homes, the coast, the less fortunate had gone back to their slums and farms to await the return of school. And I had taken time to hole up at my pocket of an office, just outside the library. It was more of a closet, really, cramped and—thanks to me—packed with books on anthropology and plantae and the history of human nature. But it had a window and even a radio and its proximity to the books next door made the place irrefutable to me.
So I took the time that I never had, sitting on the hard wooden chair, flickering through pages. I knew I could only take as many books as I could pack and I still needed a suitcase for clothes. So I was rifling through the pages, taking notes and logging chapters I would return to next autumn, when I heard the knock.
“Come in!” I called, expecting it to be Professor Remora, with next semester’s schedules. He had been attending multiple hearings in front of the board, hoping to get me my own class soon. The university valued my research and they valued my brain even more. And of course, it helped to have a professor who was nice to look like. If he was here, it was to share information that I already knew. So I didn’t bother to give the door more than a cursory glance, noting the warped shadow against the frosted glass, before returning my eyes to my texts.
The knob rattled as the intruder opened it. I could hear the floorboards give a strong creak. Silently, I cursed the professor. Didn’t he know my time was limited? Didn’t he want me to get a head start on my research over the summer break? And since when did Remora have such a heavy tread?
I fought to keep my attention on the pages, but the distractions only worsened. I could hear an odd huffing, the sound of struggling whimpers, but still I gazed only at the books. This wasn’t Remora. Perhaps it was a student, a straggler who wanted to get on good terms with me? Well, unless his grades were well above his peers’ I wasn’t in any rush to grant favors, especially anyone who didn’t know better than to disturb my studies.
“Ah-ahem,” struggled the voice. Unmistakably, it was a young man. No doubt in my mind then that it was a student. “Mr….Mr. Peck, I presume?”
At last, I dog-eared my research, flicked the paper into a neat stack, and removed my spectacles so as to take in the visitor.
He was nothing remotely like what I expected.
I had known the voice was on the younger side. About my age, maybe twenty-three, twenty four. A scholar, like myself. Or a professor’s assistant. Clad neatly in a rundown suit.
All that was proven true, but as I first looked up, I was stunned by the sight of a big, swollen belly protruding dangerously-close to the trinkets and papers on my desk. The stomach was taught, clad in fabric that was being stretched nearly past its limits. I had seen fat men before, of course, but very few so young. Very few who should have been in their prime. And frankly, very few of the fat men I had seen would otherwise have been so handsome and so vibrant. For the head the rest of the chubby body was attached to was actually rather becoming.
He smiled nervously, his plump cheeks shining in the light. He had innocent brown eyes and dark, well-groomed hair. In fact, everything about the young man was well-groomed, from the short layer of scruff on his still-sharp jaw to the nails on the end of his pudgy fingers, which clung tightly to a briefcase, a jacket draped over his thick arm. The curious nature of this plump man, standing at my desk kept my realization at bay. Was this young man attempting to use his briefcase to hide his body? If so, the thing was too small to cover more than his chest, which I assume now was softened by the additional poundage that covered everything but his head.
“Can I help you?” I asked in the most measured, polite voice I could manage.
“Mr. Peck,” the man made his best attempt at a smile before reaching out a plump hand to me. “My name is Jacob Szeroki. My employer is seeking your services for the summer. I hope we haven’t caught you at a bad time.”
I looked a moment at the man’s hand, using my best Rochester breeding and giving it a shake. I found it to be surprisingly-comfortable, as the man didn’t try to crush my fingers like other men our age. He probably didn’t have the strength. He retracted his hand quickly, planting it firmly at his side.
“Your employer?” I asked. “My services?” I seemed unable to form a sentence. I resolved to compose myself, straitening my back, clasping my textbook shut. I would not become flustered by a man who so obviously couldn’t control his appetites.
“Yes, Mr. Peck,” said the flustered man. “My employer, well, Mr. Foster, he’ll want to articulate the mission—I mean, the assignment—himself.” Foster…I knew that name. I was searching my mind for its origin when I noticed the man ogling the lone, wooden chair before my desk. Its use was predominantly reserved for students who hadn’t studied a lick and wanted to blubber to me to change their grade—a fate I had little power to change. But those students were an easy hundred-pounds lighter than the man who stood before me. I feared, if this man were to sit, if the chair would survive.
“I…I’m sorry Mr. Peck,” stammered the fat man…Jacob Szeroki. He glanced again at the chair. “It was quite a walk through the campus. And I had to stand at the train station for over half an hour! Would you mind if i…?”
“Please,” I said, meaning anything but. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Was I evil for wanting to laugh internally? My inner humor was quickly replaced with terror as I watched the man attempt to lower himself into the chair. It was like watching a pig attempt to wriggle from the door of its pen. I must have watched the man’s pathetic attempts to wriggle into the chair for about five minutes. I was mesmerized, I’m embarrassed to say, by the sheer amount
of jiggling his midsection did. His hips and ass were clearly too wide to fit between the arms, and yet, the man was determined. And finally, after much whimpering and apologizing, and far too much creaking of the poor chair, Szeroki was seated.
He gave a huff, removing his hat from his head and coiffing his hair. Then, from his shirt pocket, he retrieved a handkerchief which he put to good use, patting the sweat that had accumulated over his handsome face.
At least the face was nice to look at.
“Oh, I apologize, Mr. Peck,” said the man. I furrowed my brows. “I’m still getting used to all this new…” he glanced down at his body, then at me, as if shocked to see both were there. “Well, never mind. My point,” he gave a scoot, causing the chair to groan painfully. “is that Mr. Foster—my employer if I didn’t mention—has a proposition for you. You don’t have to give a definitive yes until he has explained the assignment. But he is offering…” and then the obese young man did something I was embarrassed to witness. He lifted the little briefcase and propped it up on his belly, which jiggled like jello with the additional weight. Huffing and puffing, he unclasped the edges of the briefcase. “…this in exchange for your visitation. Whether you choose to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
I leaned in, my embarrassment waning as I surveyed the contents of the briefcase. And inside was more money than I had ever seen at one time. it was enough to cover my rent for the entire summer and to pay for next semester’s tuition. And there would still be enough leftover to upgrade my wardrobe. No more patchy jackets, a new hat, some fresh shoes and ties! Groceries for months! All in exchange if I chose to meet him.
“All this, just for a meeting?” I asked, befuddled.
Mr. Szeroki nodded his head, offering the first glimpse of a double chin that I had seen on him. “Yes, Mr. Peck. All this, for a single meeting. Though, I should inform you, the pay would be substantially more if you agree to Mr. Foster’s proposition.”
I weighed the opportunity.
“Well, I do have some packing to do. And I have a train to catch tomorrow.”
“Oh,” said Szeroki, smiling for the first time. “Your apartment is being packed as we speak. And your train tickets were cancelled and rerouted for the day following tomorrow. Should you choose to return home.”
“And my books,” I glanced down at the desk.
“Will all be placed in the archives and will be untouched until your return.”
I looked at the chubby man. “How do I know this isn’t all a hoax?”
The man smiled slyly. “Mr. Peck. I, using this body…” he jiggled his figure. “crossed several acres of concrete, walked up two flights of stairs, and spent five minutes attempting to fit into this chair. Do you think someone like me would go to this trouble, just for a hoax?”
By early afternoon, I was dressed and waiting at the airport—a place I never thought I would have the luxury of stepping foot in—in a new hat with two brand-new briefcases. We were nearly ready to fly. Only first, Mr. Jacob Szeroki needed to get himself a snack. “To settle my stomach before the flight,” was his excuse.
#teaser#fatty#chubby#fatass#gay bhm#bhm weight gain#bhm wg#fat belly#feeding kink#gaining weight#adventure#travel
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Beau Idéal [Chamber x F! Reader] [2]
Heya, welcome back!
I swear writing Chamber dialogue is SO HARD. He's like a greek sculpture in text form, he NEEDS to be perfect in every way shape and form! Also physical, but you know, haha...
Anyway, this one's a bit short, but I might be kinda having some problems irl and I'm trying my best to keep writing. If I suddenly stop posting or my writing starts to lack, now you know why!
Sorry in advance!!
❤ฺ·。
Chamber x F! Reader
Part 1 - Part 2
Genre: Fluff, but only if you squint really hard.
CW: Emotional manipulation, mental warfare, Geneva convention? Who's she?
Synopsis: Behind his poise façade lies an ocean of inhuman thoughts. This is the first time Chamber let his mask slip. And unfortunately, as the only witness; you happen to have a front-row seat.
。+❤ฺ·。❤ฺ·。+❤ฺ· +❤·。❤ฺ·。+❤ฺ·
It only took a few minutes, and here you were, standing at the entrance to his office. Light peeked through underneath the metal door, but only barely. You felt dread perk up from within.
Knocking would flatten your knuckles, given how dry your soil was. You pressed your fingers against the sensor next to the door, your ‘fingerprints’ being scanned by the machine. Of course, it didn’t allow you entry, but it sent him a notification that someone was outside.
And just as quickly, the door slid open. The scent of his cologne entered your nostrils and easily outweighed the coffee.
“Come in.”
He spoke up, his voice deep and husky. It matched the heavy atmosphere around you. However, not letting this bother you, you simply walked in with your usual smile; coffee in hand.
“Hey, Chamber! Fade wanted me to deliver this to you.”
You found him sitting on his rolling chair. Legs crossed, arms resting on the flat drafting table littered with bright blue schematics, pens, pencils, erasers, and post-it notes. He held a book that he was halfway through.
But instead of speaking, he resorted to silently tapped on a specific spot on his table, still reading.
Obeying, the coffee was set just a few inches away from his finger, before you took a few steps back. And still, he remained soundless, hardly even acknowledging you.
With only a handful the lights turned on, the one that grew more prevalent was the one that sat on his desk. Its strong yellow rays that contrasted the dark setting left you uneasy. It morphed to dread when coupled with his behaviour.
All your time here, Chamber’s never acted this way. Quiet, and relying on gestures. It felt condescending, but then again, he was in the middle of reading something.
Right? Or maybe you shouldn’t be giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Just as you thought that, the book slammed shut with a thump, before he set it on the table and turned to face you. Fingers interlaced with a smile, the familiar aura returned with the elegance and subtlety of a bus that ran you over.
“A/N, a pleasure to see you. How have you been?”
Even his tone switched to his usual upbeat one. You crossed your arms, weirded out by the sudden change.
“What’s going on? You’re acting weird.”
“Ah, pardonne-moi, I was in the middle of reading something. A good book takes me to a different land, I simply cannot help it.”
<Ah, forgive me,>
“‘Takes you to a different land’? There’s no way a book can do that. Last time I read, it was like going back to school all over again.”
He politely chuckled, fixing his glasses.
“Simple, perhaps you have not found the right author.”
“Did you find the right author?”
“Of course. Konrad Lorenz is a lovely choice if you are interested in animals.”
You peered at his desk, noticing that he was indeed reading a book by whoever the hell that man was.
But Chamber, the suave marksman reading about animals? You thought he was reading about guns, funnily enough.
“You like animals?”
“Oui, I find them helpful for– to unwind. After a long day… incredibly therapeutic, if I do say so myself.”
<Yes,>
Chamber uses animals to unwind? He could’ve told you that he was the president of America and you would’ve been less shocked. But the idea of him scrolling through pictures of cute puppies at three in the morning was hilarious.
You stared at him for a moment, before shrugging.
“I’m good, watching documentaries is more fun. You could see them instead of reading them, right? And what else?”
“Perhaps. Have you tried reading up on soil? That could be beneficial.”
You stifled a giggle in fear of coming off as rude.
“Having dirt powers doesn’t make me care about it. If I had a choice, it would def be something like Jett. Wind’s more awesome.”
“I see. My point still stands.”
“I’m good.”
He smiled. The lights above him bounced off of his golden tattoos once he slightly shifted, giving it a hypnotising shimmer.
“Is that so? By chance, I do know a little about it. You could use lighter weapons with less recoil so it does not break up your fingers. And perhaps make clay out of your arms and make it stick together. Ah, I digress. You seem disinterested.”
“Wait! Wait, uh–”
Just as he turned to his desk to grab his book, you stopped him in his tracks. Though he wasn't looking at you now, you could sense him waiting for you to continue.
Fade told you to give him the coffee and leave, but… the conversation was getting pretty interesting. He’s giving you free important tips, it would be moronic to pass them up.
You awkwardly smiled, playing with your auburn side braid.
“Now that I think about it, dirt suddenly sounds really interesting when you explain it… so, anything else?”
He deeply chuckled to himself.
Oh, that's cute.
#valorant#x reader#fanfiction#chamber x reader#valorant fanfiction#valorant oneshots#chamber#female reader#chamber x f reader#chamber x female reader#valorant chamber#valorant x reader#valorant imagines#vincent fabron#valorant chamber x reader#valorant chamber x f reader
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Just Betty: A Wadlow Sibling Fic
happy betty centennial! this special fic took 4 days to write (april 22nd to the 26th) and it was fun to focus on betty for her special day! enjoy! :D
the wadlow siblings have something special about them... except for betty. is she more than just the youngest sister?
Betty Wadlow smiled as she played the final notes of I Will Sing of My Redeemer. The hymn sounded nice on an organ, but there was something special about hearing it on the piano.
“That was wonderful, sweetie,” Addie told her. “You’ll do amazing at the recital on Tuesday.”
Betty blushed. “Thanks, Mom. I think I finally got it memorized!”
“Indeed you do!” Addie touched her youngest daughter’s soft blonde hair while giving her a kiss on the forehead. “You’ve been working quite hard. Why don’t you go out and have some fun!”
“Alright. Just one more thing…” Betty played the first verse of the song, going faster than usual. “Yep, I’ve definitely memorized it!”
She closed the piano lid and ran to her room, where she picked up a new book she had gotten. She took it outside to the backyard. It was a pleasant March afternoon. A little breeze ruffled her bangs as she sat under a tree. She cracked open her book, which was about a girl living in the middle of a big family.
I couldn’t imagine having nine siblings, Betty thought. Four is enough for me!
The girl found it hard to stand out, so she ran away to the circus. She was so happy to be recognized for her talent!
Betty grinned. That’ll be me at the recital. My very first solo!
She had done a couple readings before, but they had been with other people. Now she would be on her own!
Not long after last month’s reading, she had wandered over to the organ. The church was empty, so she figured no one would hear her. She had played one of her piano songs..
“How nice that is!” someone had remarked.
Her Sunday School teacher was coming out of the back room!
Betty blushed. “Thank you. I didn’t mean to start playing…”
“I’m glad you did! We’re looking for someone to play at our next recital. You’d be perfect for it.”
“Really?” Betty had asked in surprise. “All on my own?”
The teacher nodded. “Indeed! Would you like to participate?”
“I’d love to!”
Ever since then, Betty had diligently practiced the hymn. She enjoyed crafting such a pretty song, but she was glad to take a break.
As she finished up the first chapter, she heard a bicycle bell outside.
That must be the evening paper! Betty thought.
She got up from her cozy spot and unlatched the gate leading to the front yard. Sure enough, the newest edition of the Alton Evening Telegraph was leaning against the bottom brick stair leading to the porch. Betty took the paper to the backyard, sitting on her book as she unrolled it.
On the first page was a photo taken a few days before Robert’s eighteenth birthday last month. It showed Robert standing next to a tree, his hand on the trunk. The siblings surrounded him.
‘Robert Wadlow, the boy giant, with his siblings. Beside him are moody Harold Jr., talkative brother Eugene, violist Helen and younger sister, Betty.’
Betty frowned and thought, Everyone else has personality traits… and I’m just the younger sister. Why isn’t there anything special about me?
She thought back to the day of the photo. Harold Jr. had been upset because he wanted to play with his trains, Eugene had been talking about something that had happened at East Junior High, Helen was practicing for an upcoming test, Robert had been answering the reporter’s questions and Betty had quietly watching all the commotion.
The paper could’ve at least called me mild-mannered, not wanting to get in anyone’s way, Betty thought. But all I am is a younger sister. There’s nothing to differentiate me other than that.
...
Betty buried herself in her book for the next hour. By the time she finally raised her head, her siblings were home.
“Hey, Betty!” Robert called. “Why don’t we all go to Block’s? They’re having a special on double scoop ice cream cones.”
Betty grinned. Ice cream was sure to make her feel better!
...
Ten minutes later, the siblings were walking down College Avenue. Betty ran past the rows of buildings with Harold Jr. A string of three stores were made of reddish bricks, but the one next to them was tan and taller.
“It’s you, Big Brother!” Harold Jr. told Robert, who chuckled.
“Yeah, because he definitely looks like Mr. Danvers.” Eugene joked.
“I don’t think I’d be good at selling paint,” Robert said. “Those cans are so small in my hands. I might spill them!”
“Yeah, I’d rather work at Block’s.”
Helen smirked at Eugene while saying, “You’d be too busy eating to work.”
“It’s not goofing off, it’s trying samples for customer satisfaction.”
Helen rolled her eyes.
“Decide on what you want, everyone,” Robert told the siblings. “We can’t keep the server waiting like last time.”
“I couldn’t decide between strawberry or peach,” Betty said. “And I still can’t! They both sound good.”
“I want mint!” Harold Jr. spoke up.
“I think I’ll get my usual chocolate,” Robert said. “Giant, of course.”
Helen smiled. “That’s just regular for you. I’ll probably get vanilla.”
“Sure, get the blandest flavor,” Eugene told her. “I’d much rather go for a chunky rocky road.”
“You’re a chunky rocky road.”
“No, you are!”
And I’m just bland vanilla, Betty thought with a sigh. Maybe I should get that instead!
She cheered up upon seeing Block’s Ice Cream on the corner.
Next door was Ross Hardware. Its door was opened by a guy carrying a bucket of nails and another guy with a piece of wood under his arm.
“Hey, look, it’s the tall guy in the paper!” the wood guy exclaimed.
“You’re right!” the nails guy realized. “Wow, I can’t believe it!”
Robert gave a thin smile. He didn’t like it when people noticed him, but he grinned and bore it.
“You guys go on ahead,” he told the siblings. “I’ll catch up.”
“Say, why don’t you snap a photo of us?” the nail guy asked.
“Yeah, I brought my Riga!” the wood guy agreed before taking out a little camera. “Could you hold our stuff?”
The men handed their things to Helen and Eugene.
“Oof!” Eugene exclaimed once he held the heavy nail bucket, which made Helen snicker. “Here, you try it.”
Helen took the bucket and nearly fell over! “Woah!”
Harold Jr. kept the bucket steady for her.
Betty sighed. All I can do is watch. Just as I always do…
The men stood next to Robert, smiling as Eugene snapped a photo.
“Thanks, kids!” the nail guy said.
He and his pal took their tools and left.
They didn’t even notice me! Betty realized.
She set aside her hurt feelings as the siblings went into Block’s. The strawberry and peach ice cream was delicious, but the sweet treat tasted a tiny bit sour thanks to her cloudy troubles.
...
At dinner, Harold asked, “What was everyone up to today?”
“I got a nine out of ten on a pop quiz in English.” Eugene declared proudly.
“The store!” Harold Jr. exclaimed, making Addie smile.
“I helped Alice carry supplies to her Home Ec Club.” Helen said before taking another bite of meatloaf.
“I had quite a time in my Biology class,” Robert said. “The microscope was so hard to adjust… and I nearly broke it! I was glad when one of the other students helped me out.”
“What a time indeed!” Harold agreed. “What did you do, Betty?”
Betty looked up from her meatloaf and potatoes, which she had absentmindedly been stirring together. “Huh?”
“What did you do today?”
“Oh, just… the usual. The same old boring usual.”
“She practiced her hymn after school,” Addie spoke up. “It sounds so beautiful. She worked hard today.”
Harold smiled. “I’d love to hear it, sweetheart.”
Betty gave a thin smile in return. “Maybe tomorrow. I’m feeling a little tired today.”
The siblings looked at each other. She’d usually be happy to share her songs! Something was up with her…
...
From inside the sisters’ bedroom, Betty heard a knock on the door.
“Betty?” a deep voice asked.
Robert cracked open the door. Moonlight from the window was slanted over the bed, where Bettty sat. She was mostly in darkness, her knees drawn up.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Helen asked, rushing over to her.
“I’m wrong,” Betty replied quietly. “And it’s not okay at all.”
“You’re not wrong, Helen is.” Eugene said.
Helen gave him a glare. “I think Eugene’s the wrong one.”
The siblings squinted at each other.
“You’re not wrong at all,” Betty said. “You’re notable. All of you are,” She looked at each of the siblings while saying, “You have your viola and your stories and your cuteness and especially your height! What do I have? Nothing. No one ever mentions me for anything. I’m just the younger sister.”
“You have that solo coming up.” Helen reminded her.
“Who wants to see a nobody perform?” Betty asked with a sniffle. “I’m just Betty.”
She buried her head in her knees and cried.
Robert sat on the bed. “Oh, Betty…” He wrapped a big, comforting arm around her. “You’re not nobody, you’re somebody! There are lots of notable things about you. You’re creative, for one thing.”
“Yeah, you always come up with the best Halloween costumes,” Eugene said. “That ghost princess thing you tried last year was neat.”
“And you’re always willing to lend a helping hand,” Helen added. “Like when you helped that dog at the park get a thorn out of its paw.”
“And when you helped my boo boo!” Harold Jr. chimed in.
“And you always keep an optimistic spirit,” Robert added. “Not to mention you’re a spectacular piano player and reader.”
Betty raised her head, those moments and more flashing through her mind. “You’re right… I’m just Betty,” she realized. “Creative, helpful, cheerful Betty! I’m so much more than the younger sister,” She grinned at her siblings. “And there’s no one I’d rather be.”
...
A few days later, Betty was surrounded by applause as two boys finished reading a Psalm. Eugene gave her a nudge, signaling that it was her turn. Her stomach instantly fip-flopped. She hurriedly went to the altar, where her Sunday School teacher rolled a piano and chair out. Betty gave her a thin smile of thanks and sat on the soft seat. Her fingers hovered over the piano keys as the crowd hushed. She looked at her family, who sat near the front row. They gave her supportive smiles.
Feeling reassured, Betty played I Will Sing of My Redeemer. Everyone listened in awe, letting the soft and gentle melody wash over them. Addie wiped a tear from her eye. Betty was better than ever before!
When the song ended, applause reverberated through the room. Betty rose from the seat with a grin before curtsying. She rose, delighted that people now saw her as more than just Betty!
#robert wadlow#robert wadlow trash#senpai fic#betty centennial#fan fic#a story with bangs betty! ;D#it was fun to give her the spotlight! :)
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The Rain Review (Finale)
If you’ve been with my blog for the past week or so, You’ll know I’ve been reading a childhood favorite webcomic of mine, Rain by Jocelyn Samara. And you’d probably be wondering what happened to my review of the comic Year-by-Year. The answer? I went on a road trip for a few days and couldn’t help but read the whole rest of the comic. So today I’m here to talk about my overall thoughts.
For the uninitiated, Rain is a slice-of-life webcomic that started in 2010. It’s about a transgender teenage girl of the same name navigating her senior year at a Catholic high school. There’s a LOT of romantic and gender-related drama. Friends are made and lost. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll see yourself in the characters somewhere along the line.
My experience with Rain prior to this project only goes up to about 2014. I started reading it in middle school on Smackjeeves.com. Y’all remember Smackjeeves? I miss it every day. Apparently it redirects to a shitty webtoon clone now. IDK where I’m gonna find peoples’ sprite comics produced in 2013 now.
Anyway, I bring this up to say that I had stopped keeping up with Rain even though she was a major part of me accepting who I was. When I found out that her story had come to a close, I had a real need to find out how.
This time, there won’t be a plot summary because this comic ran for 11 years and it takes me long enough to do just 1. That and, if I may spoil my final opinion, I really want you to give it a read for yourself.
ART
I want to get this one out of the way because it’s a very common critique that even I hold to some extent. The art in Rain is a clear indicator of the era its artist hails from. In 2010, anime and manga had just hit the American mainstream. Everyone was reading those “How to Draw Anime” books and took a lot of notes from them. To showcase, here’s a page from Chapter 1, the first color page in fact.
This page is actually one of the busier pages in terms of art. Jocelyn doesn’t usually do background details much, if at all. Usually, backgrounds are depicted as solid colors that are associated with specific locations. Grey for the apartment, sky blue for outside, light green for school, etc. But the way Rain is drawn here bears a striking resemblance to the styles a LOT of people were using at the time.
While Jocelyn’s style stays rooted in, shall we say, American who got really into anime, her techniques evolve over time. Especially in terms of displaying what’s going on with limited background detail.
As an example, I really enjoy this scene. Rain and Emily are, in universe, speaking over the phone right now. But neither of them are holding their phones to their ears. They’re looking at each other as if they’re in the same room. Jocelyn uses a gradient background to signify that the two of them are NOT in the same room, but as they get closer during their conversation, they get physically closer in the panel as well.
This page is taken from 2014, about 4 years into the comic’s run. You can see that Jocelyn’s brush choices have changed. Everything is far smoother than it was toward the start. While the overall style is as simplistic as year 1, her technique has changed a lot.
That comfort with her work only continues to grow. Below is a panel from a bonus page that released after the comic’s conclusion. The line work is the cleanest its ever been.
STORY AND CHARACTERS
Now this right here is the REAL meat of the comic. Regardless of any feelings I had on the art, the characters really endeared me. And this being a slice-of-life teen drama, they had plenty of time to learn, grow, and clash against one another.
The majority of the conflict in Rain comes from people being set in their ways. Rain’s whole gaggle of queer friends is hiding from the school’s principal, who refuses to acknowledge that maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a little gay. One of the most compelling ongoing threads in the comic centers around Rain’s brother and sister trying to understand and accept her. These personal stakes were a really enjoyable break from the kind of thing I usually read. In Rain, there is no world to be saved or villain to defeat, but there IS a prom to go to. Sometimes, that’s all you need to tell a good story.
The comic has this small-town vibe I care for a lot. Sometimes, a character will exit another’s life and you’ll never expect to see them again. Then they’ll end up dating Rain’s aunt or something. Word spreads fast in Centerville. People are gossipy. Sometimes, you tell someone something and it reaches ears you didn’t want to hear it. That gossip is what makes things so dangerous for Rain. If the wrong person finds her out, then EVERYONE finds her out. The same goes for all her friends.
There’s all kinds of flavor of queer in this comic in a way that mirrors real life friend groups. We have a tendency to find each other like that.
With all kinds of queers being hormonal teens, things get messy FAST. There’s a lot of things that happen in this comic that I feel like baby gays need to see. There’s a point where a gay boy and a trans girl start going out because... this just happens sometimes. Nobody is “the villain” in this scenario. They both just tried to explore themselves and found mixed results.
That’s one of the big themes of Rain. Self-exploration. Every chapter, we’re learning more about these characters as they learn more about themselves. Nobody stays in the same headspace for too long. They’re constantly evolving.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Rain is ABSOLUTELY worth the read. It’s actually a really easy read. I was able to finish it in about 2 weeks, so I’m sure it won’t take up too much of your time. But, it’s a really heartwarming story that I’m sure a lot of us can relate to. Thanks for going on this journey with me. And be safe, Rain Beaus.
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Hello! I saw your requests were open so I wanted to send one if you don't mind ^^
If you are uncomfortable with writing this, it's alright! If you do, thank you in advance 🥰
Hmmm how about a Fluff Rogue Cheney x Fem! Reader, the classic childhood sweethearts going to the same school together and how they confess?
Once again, don't force yourself to write it! Thank you ❤
Interrupted
Rogue Cheney x Fem!Reader
Warnings: Slight angst
Thank you so much for this request Anon! I was so excited to write for Fairy tail. This did end up becoming kind of a School AU so I hope you still like it! ❤
Y/n still remembered how she met Rogue. They were kids, only about 7. The two were placed in the seats across from each other in their class. While Rogue was more reserved and quiet at the time, Y/n had no fear in approaching him. She often struck up conversation when conversation shouldn’t have happened, resulting in her parents needing to speak with the teacher on multiple occasions for talking during class.
It never stopped her though. She was intrigued by the young boy. She wanted to get to know him and found every way she could to try and talk with him. Oh, a new worksheet? She needs to ask him for help, even if he didn’t seem to know any better. Reading time? She would sit next to him and try to whisper questions about his book while the teacher wasn’t looking. Lunch time? She would plop herself right next to him and ask him about what he packed that day. Recess? She was relentless. Would follow him around, talking about things that went on at home.
Rogue never had an argument against it. He had to admit he had a small crush on her from the moment she first made her presence known. And he didn’t mind the company. He could see how proud Y/n would be with herself when he would start talking to her more and more.
Eventually, they were inseparable. They grew up together, finding a tree that was just outside the forest that they hung out around a ton, Y/n dragging him to go window shopping (mostly because she couldn’t actually buy anything with how broke she was), and countless amount of study “dates”.
~~~
Rogue, now 14, took his usual seat under the tree, their normal hang out spot, while Y/n was climbing it. She pulls herself up onto a branch, sitting on it and looking down at the dark haired boy.
“Don’t you need to prepare for a test, Y/n?” Rogue questions without looking up at her.
“But that's so boring.” She grumbles before turning around and letting herself fall back, her legs hooked around the branch. She stares at her best friend while hanging upside down and he finally gives her a small glance before a smirk graces his face. “How was your day today?”
“It was good. I met a new kid.” He answers.
“Was it a girl?” Y/n tries to seem excited while asking that but was hoping it wasn’t.
“No.” He laughs at her, which causes a blush to brighten her cheeks. “His name is Sting.”
“Oh, wait. I think I saw him. Was he nice?”
“He was intense. Seemed a little like a class clown. Nothing I’m not used to.” He chuckles as he watches her reach up for the branch, holding it as she tries to pull her legs off and get on the ground. It had rained that morning, making the branches slick. Y/n loses her grip and falls, knowing it wasn’t a long fall but would hurt nonetheless. Her bottom hits the ground but her head is supported to keep it from smacking off of the ground underneath her. Rogue had placed his hand under her head to keep her from a potential concussion. “This is what I meant.”
Y/n laughs a little while pushing herself up so she was sitting upright, “I guess I am a little klutzy.”
“A little? What about the time I had to steer you away from the wet floor sign you almost tripped over because you weren’t paying attention?” He tries to conceal his laughter.
“We were in the middle of a conversation.” She scoffs.
“And when you tried to walk to your backyard and ran right into the screen door, breaking it as you fell onto your deck?” Y/n crosses her arms, giving him a playful glare. “And what about the time you proved that slipping on a banana peel was not just something in cartoons?”
“Okay, okay.” She holds up her hands as the two of them laugh. “I guess I don’t exactly pay attention all the time.” She runs a hand through her hair.
“Not anything wrong with it. I just had to always be your knight in shining armor until the day we die.” Rogue smiles.
“I won’t complain.” Y/n shrugs, returning his smile. Rogue meets her eyes and reaches over, fixing her hair before resting his hand on her cheek. Y/n could feel her heart pick up its pace as her thoughts began running wild. He leaned in enough that she knew exactly what he was doing. And she couldn’t believe that it was going to actually happen.
“Wow, is this where you hang out, Rogue?” A boy's voice interrupts the moment and the two pull away, clearing their throats and acting like nothing was about to happen. Y/n stares at the boy with complete shock. It was that new kid, Sting, and not only did he ruin a moment but he was intruding on her and Rogue’s spot. Granted it is a public space but it felt a little invasive.
“Sting? What are you doing here?” Rogue practically choked on his words, still trying to regain himself.
“I heard you two talking about this place at lunch today. I got bored and figured I would meet your other friend.” Sting shrugs as he walks over. Y/n tried to put on her best face but she couldn’t help but be angry at Sting. Not only is he invading this private moment but he eavesdropped on their conversation. Sting takes a seat with them and Rogue sighs with a nod.
~~~
Y/n didn’t hold it against Sting for long. She understood that he was new and looking for friends. But ever since he became a part of the group it felt almost impossible to get Rogue alone. Two years. Two years of Sting interrupting any attempt Y/n tried at getting to hang out with her best friend alone.
She tried offering to go to her place.
“Hey, Rogue, I was wondering if you wanted to come to my place and study?” Sting slung his arms over their shoulders.
“Study hangout at Y/n’s place? Let’s do it!”
Suggested the library.
“Maybe we can go to the Library during lunch?” She suggested as she shut her locker. Rogue had agreed but of course Sting was bugging them the minute they were in there. They actually got thrown out for him being too loud.
Hell, Y/n even tried the note in Rogue’s locker, offering to meet at her house without Sting being able to heat her asking. But when Rogue opened his locker the note fell out and onto the floor.
“You got a love note, dude!” Sting is quick to grab the note from the floor and opens it up. Y/n groans and places her forehead against her locker door. “Oh, no. It’s just Y/n asking you to meet at her place. Y/n, come on. If you wanted us to come over you could have just asked.” Sting looks at her while laughing. She gripped her locker out of anger before slamming it shut and storming away from the two boys. “What’s got her panties in a twist?”
“Don’t talk about her like that.” Rogue shakes his head, shutting his locker before walking after her. She had already left the school though. He knew where she went. He heads to their normal hang out spot just outside the forest. She was leaning against the trees with her legs pulled to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. Rogue approaches her, setting his bag down before sitting across from her.
“I get he just likes spending time with us but it’s completely affected our friendship.” She mumbles.
“What do you mean?”
“Me and you. We never hang out without him anymore. I don’t hate having him around, he’s a great guy, but I miss hanging out, just us. He always invites himself everywhere.” Y/n finally tears her eyes from the ground and looks up at Rogue.
“Have you tried talking to him?” He asks.
“Do you even feel the same? You could have talked to him.” She huffs, turning her head to look away from him.
“Y/n-”
“Found you guys. Knew you would be here.” Sting begins approaching the two of them. Y/n rolls her eyes, grabbing her bag, preparing to stand up. Rogue holds his hands up and he stands.
“Just wait here.” He begs before walking to Sting, pulling him away. Y/n doesn’t listen and pulls herself to her feet, slinging her bag on her shoulder.
“Listen, man, you need to give us a little space sometimes.” Rogue tries to explain. Sting goes to say something but Rogue stops him. “I get you wanting to hang out with us but I think it’s upsetting Y/n and I wouldn’t mind time alone with her.” Sting attempts to talk again but Rogue doesn’t let him. “Listen, I really like her. I have for a while and I have wanted to tell her but I can’t do that when you are always here.”
“Rogue!” Sting raises his voice, shutting Rogue up. “She left.” He points to the tree, causing the dark haired boy’s turn around to see where she was just sitting to be empty.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner!” Rogue hurries to get his bag.
“I tried. You wouldn’t let me get a word out. You know all you had to do was ask me to not bug you two.” Sting chuckles. “Go on and get her.” Rogue heads off into the direction of Y/n’s house. This was the path they always took on the way back. He knew she couldn’t get far if he ran.
He was right. Not too far ahead was Y/n who was walking toward her house. He keeps running which causes Y/n to turn around at the sound of footsteps coming up quickly behind her. She seemed startled but calmed as she saw it was just her childhood best friend.
“You scared me.” She mumbles. Rogue was quick to stop in his tracks, seeing her face. She was crying and there was no hiding it. She wipes her face with her sleeve, realizing he noticed.
“Y/n…” He tries to catch his breath. “I talked with him. Sting. He said he understands.”
“Yeah, you only talked with him after I said something.” She scoffs with a slight laugh of anger.
“I know. And go ahead and be mad at me.” He steps closer to her and places his hands on her shoulders. “Because I have been so stupid.” His voice becomes more quiet.
“It’s whatever.” She shrugs.
“It’s not. Y/n, I need to tell you something I have wanted to tell you for so long.” Rogue sighs as he moves his hand up her neck and places it gently over her cheek. She looks at him with hopeful eyes as her heart begins to pound in her chest. She wanted to be angry but how could she? One look at him and she was swooning.
“Go on.” She nods.
“I think I love you. I think I have for a long time. And I really really want to kiss you right now.” He whispers as he holds eye contact with her.
“Really?” The corners of her lips tug up into a smile.
“Really.” Rogue wipes her face of any tears before leaning down to capture her lips with his, which ridded her of any anger she still felt. Her arms drape over his shoulders as their smiles are unable to be contained and they have to pull apart.
“Promise me that we’ll actually get time alone again?”
“Of course we will.” He chuckles.
Masterlist
#fairy tail fandom#fairy tail fanfiction#fairy tail x reader#fairy tail#fairy tail rogue#rogue cheney#rogue cheney x reader#rogue x reader#fan fiction#fanfic#fandom#fan fic ideas#writing#fanfiction#fan fic stuff#fan fiction writing#fanfic writing#writers#fanfiction writer#fanfics#rogue cheney fanfic#sting eucliffe#fluff#angst#x reader#fairy tail x you#school au#fanfiction prompts#fic update
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helloo! I'm here asking about match-ups again bsgsvsbsjd– I'm Not sure how much of this is actually helpful, but thanks in advance and please take your time💞💞
I'm an INTP-A fashion design student, smart and creative as fuck but very stubborn and self-demanding on the downside. I spend most of my time on either assignments, passion projects or scholarship tasks (it's writing short interviews + articles and organizing a small event this year), while reading and watching stuff as recreation. I'm usually perceived as either 'cultured' or 'independent' by outsiders, but actually get really bubbly and talkative whenever I like someone. my current goal is to earn enough to be able to retire to the countryside someday.
on that note, I'm not much into dressing up and have a rather urban style (stylish jeans + oversized top) that's easy to wear when carrying baggage around. I have a dislike for anything overly classy or glamorous, and am pretty non-becomingly clumsy too. physically, I have a small frame and moderately active lifestyle.
I ship you with : Yuma !
• Yuma appreciates your creative side, and whilst he doesn’t exactly share your interests per say, he’s interested in watching you do your assignments, and appreciates the hard work that goes into them
• Yuma thought you seemed stuck up at first and compared you to the Sakamaki family, however once getting to know you better he saw your true personality
• He was surprised to hear how enthusiastic and talkative you could get
• He soon wanted that energy to help him in the garden
• He knew you could pull your weight around as he’d seen you carrying many bags, multiple books, and whatever else you carry for your projects
• Yuma was honestly shocked how much you could carry despite your height
• Yuma too has a dislike for anything too fancy, and prefers simple / non glamorous things
• He likes your style, nice and easy to pull off, as well as suitable for helping in his garden too
• Your first date was a picnic in the woods, Yuma has treated you to some delicious food from his garden, though he does expect your blood in return
• It’s here on your date he learns about your retirement dream
• When he learns your dream is to retire in the countryside he’s grinning ear to ear
• He imagines the two of you, a little cottage in the middle of the woods.
• His brothers not too far from yourselves if they’re not already living with you guys.
• Wild flowers and berry trees growing naturally around your small , cosy home
• A very large garden full of fresh fruit and vegetables, and some beautiful flowers native to the demon world
• The garden is Yumas second greatest pride, after you!
You and Yuma met at school, he was watching you from afar thinking you were pretty cute, but decided to not talk to you thinking you seemed too uptight. It was later that day he saw you carrying a ton of things like a champ. He was honestly so impressed he wondered if you were supernatural! He waited until you were carrying more things and took the opportunity to bump into you, all your work scattering on the floor, along with yourself. Yuma pretended your height was the reason he couldn’t see you, and you put it down to being clumsy. You apologised for not seeing where you were going (typical Yuma not taking blame 🫠). Yuma helped pick your things up and offered to help carry them, you said you didn’t need the help and Yuma knew you didn’t either, but he insisted. You too slowly walked along, talking about your projects, and just making general talk. Yuma brought you an apple he grew to school the next day, and from then on he was stuck by your side.
Hope this okay! Feel free to request more if you’d like :)
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[ christopher briney, cismale, he/him ] - was that LAWRENCE ‘LAURIE’ CAMPBELL i saw by the lighthouse today? i heard that the TWENTY-FIVE year old who has been in nightrest for THEIR WHOLE LIFE and works as a/an CERTIFIED NURSE ASSISTANT has a reputation of being LOYAL, but also SELF-DESTRUCTIVE. they reside in ASHMORE & people in town usually associate them with late night games that stretch to 3 a.m. best friends, cigarette smoke out an open window, ripped jeans and baggy t-shirts of musicians you love, anger and grief often masked as cold and uncaring, a feeling of love that you don’t know what to do with or how to say, a love for your sisters that you don’t know where to put, and trying to find the better version of yourself that people need you to be. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next.
full name — lawrence 'laurie' campbell
nickname(s) — laurie
name meaning — god has helped
age — twenty-five
date of birth — august 31st
place of birth — salem, massachusetts
star sign — virgo sun, aqaurius moon, virgo rising
current location — salem, massachusetts
gender — cis-male
pronouns — he/him
sexual orientation — bisexual ( repressed )
religion — atheist
occupation — certified nurse assistant
education level — cna school
family — ted campbell ( father ), karen campbell ( father ), tracy campbell ( sister ), holly campbell ( sister, deceased )
finances — upperclass / personal finances: help
spoken languages — english, spanish
character inspos: lip gallagher ( shameless ), zuko (avatar: the last airbender), eve polastri (killing eve), cristina yang (greys anatomy), kaz brekker (shadow & bone), kat stratford (10 things i hate about you), will hunting (good will hunting), mike wheeler ( stranger things ), elliot alderson (mr. robot), scott summers (x-men), chandler bing (friends), rosa diaz (b99), jess mariano ( gilmore girls )
tw: absent parents, deceased sister, grief & mourning
if life were a movie then laurie would be the background character that says one funny line before absolutely ruining the scene. in fact, he’d say that his lines were probably cut because they just weren’t good enough. born from an upper class family laurie is unoriginal and there’s nothing that really screams, brilliance. if he were to give that title it would have been to his eldest sister, tracy, but the star that shined in their lives would have been holly.
he’s young when holly was born, young and had no idea the kind of weight that she would place on the family–and holly died too young to understand that she had been the thing to keep the entire family together. she was the glue. all of the words that he could say but it would never be enough.
it hadn’t been an easy run up of affairs. laurie was the perfect example of the middle child, too volatile to handle on best days, had his head devouring books on any piece of science that he could get his hands on. when he was asked as a kid what he wanted to be he said things like a doctor, and then an astronaut. he liked physics, quantum science, engineering. he liked knowing that there were things that could be definite, how a problem could always be fixed if he just had the right amount of calculations and even better hypotheses.
he was the captain of the science club all throughout high school, went to science camp once before he asked his mom to come and pick him up, he had a group of best friends that he loved, who came over on weekends to play games in his basement, he liked making science experiments in his backyard, he tried to be on the track team once before finding that he was better in a classroom than out in the field. his father took him hunting but gave him when he noticed his song reading a book. laurie was good at a lot of things academically, but never much so when it came to talking to other people outside of his bubble.
he liked a boy growing up but never said anything and by the time the moment came where he should he didn’t. for most of laurie’s life he always felt different from his family and what he was supposed to be. he could have been anyone, surely he was never the smartest in the room but he knew things, he could have dated people if he had just said something, he could have had more opportunities if it wasn’t his own self-preservation getting in the way. being different was dangerous—people say things, and it hurts, and it’s worse because they always mean them. it’s easy being different and hiding in the shadows than being brave and getting your heart broken.
by senior year his sister went missing, and then she died. laurie stopped caring after that. when he was a freshmen he had already planned on going to m.i.t, it was the dream school to get the dream job. he could be all the things he said he would be. but by then it didn’t matter. laurie started getting in fights, and headed down a path where he never thought he’d go. he thinks the worst part is that his parents hadn’t noticed. they only cared by the time that laurie got suspended, and acted as if laurie had become a different person overnight. when he got that m.i.t letter holly was long gone and he said that he never got accepted in the first place.
the past couple of years have been hard, and laurie has gotten all kinds of odd jobs until his mom got tired of laurie just laying around and doing nothing with his life. he thinks that it’s the first time that his mother has tried to be a mother to him. he knows that its the bare minimum, but for the moment it was nice, as if she was doing a kindness to him instead of acting out of embarrassment.
over the course of seven years he always thinks that he sees his sister somewhere. he didn’t feel the snap of her being gone, as if she were a tether to him in some way on his heart. that first year he kept telling people that she was still around, he would have felt it, to anyone that believed him. it seems unfair that his sister was here one day and then just disappeared. he remembers the way that people looked at him, when he tried to do his own investigation of her disappearance, and how sometimes he looks throughout his town still for remnants of her.
his family might have been fractured, but it just didn’t seem fair that their glue, and the one of the only people that listened to laurie and his hopes and dreams just didn’t exist anymore. he would have felt it. and the worst part, he thinks, she would be disappointed in the choices that he made after she was gone.
life goes on. laurie’s life is repetition. he doesn’t really dream anymore.
more fun stuff:
listen ,, he might be smart but he is also very Bad when it comes to people he is my cringefail son -- if you were ever friends with him he has never said i love you. not once.
honestly i'd label him as a burn out but like he's a cna but he's also like. a burn out. he could be doing more he just doesn't. and he doesn't see the point.
looking for a weed dealer :// ( it makes him anxious but that doesnt stop him sdkfnsd idiot )
honestly looking for his old bffs that he let go Due to being a Bad Friend ( not intentionally he just... doesnt deal with Things Well sighs )
still v sad abt m.i.t ngl asdkflnds he thinks abt his life as Before and After and thinks where he could have been , always assumed he'd move out of this state and Be Someone. with all the recent deaths he's Going Through It
#nightrest:intro#━━ ❛❛ // LAURIE CAMPBELL ! ¦ i’m not afraid to disappear i know the end is near . 「 about ! 」
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8 10 orvie
HII ELISEYY my friend. thank you for the ask! and sorry it took so long the sleepies and school and etc. I HOPE COLLEGE IS GOING WELL FOR YOU BTW!!!!!!!
this got so long sorry you know how it is with novels. but hey before i read more the rest of this guys if anyone else wants to send me hater asks you still can... i only got one 🥲 does nobody else want to send asks to their friend nico? i've actually been so dead lately guys that is on me. but i still love you all.......
anyways um 8 is "common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about" and 10 is "worst part of fanon" pretty similar really going for the haterisms here okok. hmmm i honestly don't even interact with the orv fandom that much like most of the orv posts that aren't just art that i see are mine and my few orvie mutuals' which i usually respect i don't see a lot of posts from outside of this orv echo chamber i've created for myself which i'm ok with tbh. but something i see a lot that i don't like is the depiction of kdj as a scammer type like the breed same as cale tcf and others? i haven't read regression instruction manual but like he's a common comparison and such. and it's true that they're all from the similar mold of like "isekai/fantasay coming to real life but i have an upper hand because i read the book it came from nyeheh" and in that specific aspect yeah kdj has his moments where he takes advantage of his knowledge but it seems like some people attribute him being a liar an unreliable narrator etc to that part of the story also and i don't totally agree with that. he's not an unreliable narrator because he's trying to be sneaky and smart the dude is depressed. he's been so depressed since he was like 13 and he's a grown ass man now it's totally changed his outlook and makes him unable to see the world and his interactions with others properly for what it is. he didn't lie to our faces about smiling when he was actually crying because he was trying to be smart and sneaky it was cause he's sad as fuck and can't even recognize it because he's lowkey wanted to kill himself since middle school. i do agree that cale is similar in that he downplays how insane he is almost dying all the time and getting hurt forever but not caring and driving all his friends up the wall with it without even realizing and like he's also depressed as fuck but when people group them together for being self sacrificing bastard scammers or whatever i just feel like it's different a lot of the time. we aren't seeing the same thing there.
i guess that's my soapbox for 8 umm for 10. the way yoo sangah gets pushed aside so often peeves me for sure. she's so everything where did you put her....? and the kids too the kids are so important to me and to kdj but they're never given justice i feel. honestly i think all of kimcom doesn't get enough love most of the time or maybe i've just been bad at finding content that actually does them well it just feels like there's so much joongdok yaoi and not enough friendship and mentorship and everything. jihye and joongdok are so everything but i never see the two of them together ever. heewon and hyunsung also. even if you're not the biggest fan of them romantically like i respect the lesbian heewon grind don't you care that they're the sword and shield.......? and of coures sys and yjh have a lot of interesting potential but no one ever does anything with it. and there's never enough lee gilyoung anywhere i love you gilyoung. yes that's my fanon complaint. too much yaoi focus... there's so much love everywhere it's a main theme but the story ain't a romance there's so much more out there. take my hand we can discover friendship together
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Lúcia Já-Vou-Indo [Lúcia I-am-Coming]
I had this book when I was a kid and I read it many times. It's been on my mind a lot lately. It's funny how something theoretically so small can leave a mark and impact your life so much for so long.
I was a pretty slow kid. As far as I'm told, I developed all the expected skills very early, but I took my time performing activities.
I was slow to eat (apparently, it was common for my plate to need to be reheated in the middle of a meal). It took me too long to follow games with my cousins. It took me too long to copy things from the board at school. I took too much time to do my homework, to clean my room, to complete tasks… I never even necessarily realized it, I just did.
One thing that's important to say about my family is that everyone in it seems to be a damn powerhouse. No one can wait even a second for anything, ever. My mother can read 700 page books in two days, she and my aunts clean up an entire house in less than two hours, cook a full meal in 20 minutes, it's scary...
This week, I wanted to make a special dinner, I really wanted to eat a Mexican chilli with quesadillas. I found out a couple of years ago that I don't like to cook. This came as a shock to me as well, because most of my family has a passion for cooking and I love food, but cooking simply takes too much time and work to be worth it. But I wanted the damn dinner, so I started cooking at 4 pm so I could have dinner at 7 pm. That's probably not a reasonable amount of time for a regular person to spend making this meal. It's definitely not the time I would have available with my family.
When I worked at translation companies, we usually had goals to hit. If the goal was that a person could do 50 pages a day, my best, in general, was around 20 to 30.
The thing is, people always thought I was quite smart and capable. As I said, I even developed all my skills earlier than expected, so I don't know if in their minds they thought I was unwilling or what, but there were so many people my whole life disappointed that I was not “reaching my potential”, and so many people around me doing things so quickly and "easily" that I started to convince myself that I must be doing something wrong after all.
Maybe, there really was some lost magical potential out there that I couldn't reach...
This book that I mentioned in the beginning, Lúcia Já-Vou-Indo, I think it could be a really cool book for children with ADHD, autism, learning difficulties, among many other things that make them, like me, a slow child.
The story is about Lucia, a slug who, as expected of her species, is quite slow in getting things done. Because of this, she always misses parties and important events with her other insect friends, because she is very late and cannot arrive on time.
The book's narrative, in my opinion, is a bit unkind, (but I might be biased and I'll explain why), but overall, the message is nice. Lucia is trying her best all the time, she's not negligent, she doesn't miss her friends' parties because she doesn't care, on the contrary. When she's invited to the dragonfly party, she starts getting ready a week before and even so, she only arrives at the place the day after the party, when everyone has already left.
In the book, the other insects "encourage" her to go faster along the way and feel sorry for her when she doesn't make it, but still, the ending is cute, because the solution they find is to have a party at Lucia's house so that she will definitely be there this time.
I think I liked this book the first time I read it. Maybe even a few more times after that, but it developed an increasingly bitter taste for me over the years, to the point where I wouldn't be able to see the cover or name of this book for decades without having an intensely emotional and, from an outside view, disproportionate reaction. And why, you would ask me?
The thing is, the book itself was already a little difficult for me to deal with because, despite having a "happy ending" it also has a lot of frustration and Lúcia suffers a lot with something that I also did (and do). She spends that entire book doing everything she can to get to her friend's party and it's not enough, she doesn't make it.
And the fact that she got a party all to herself in the end isn't going to change that. That party that was "the greatest ever" will be forever lost, as will the wedding of a couple of her friends to which she arrived so late that they had already had a child. Those things are gone and won't come back. Why didn't anyone think of helping Lucia before? Why didn't she have the necessary accommodations?
And the other thing, and certainly what most impacted my relationship with this story, was the way the rest of my family "understood" it. I don't think any of them got the message because I spent the next several years of my life being called Lucia in a derogatory tone every time I was slow to do something. If I took too long to do something, I would hear my cousins, my aunts, my mother saying "I am cooooming".
With that, a story that could have been about acceptance, became a reinforcement for ridicule and I spent years hating Lucia and thanking God this book wasn't very well known and doing what I could to keep people from knowing it, lest I have more people using it to make fun of me.
I've been thinking a lot about all this. Part of accepting the fact that I am a disabled person is accepting the fact that I. Am. Slow.
That's not a bad thing. I don't need anyone to tell me I'm not, I don't want anyone to tell me I'm not. It took me a long time to come to terms with that fact and I'm still trying.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but today I think I wanted to apologize to Lucia. You didn't deserve the contempt I had for you throughout the years, you deserve people who understand you, respect you, and want you around enough to make an effort.
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do you have some dumb shalashska sibling stories? or like funny moments of them
so, funny thing, i’ve switched stuff around!
now it’s toby, xander {xavier}, and terra are all siblings and cousins to ein {zack’s side} and technically jay {aphmau} but the gats wanted to keep in touch with sylvanna so they spent more time together :) also, terra is the half-sister to toby and xander, terra’s mom is in her first marriage with the boy’s dad and it’s his second marriage
but i’m sure i’ve got some family stories :)
so toby is the oldest, xander is the middle, and terra is the youngest
xander hated growing up in public school with the “oh you’re toby’s brother? how funny is that!” stuff and was obviously uncomfortable and wanting out of the situation
terra loved it, though, and would take pride in it and always make ‘my brothers gonna beat you up’ jokes and already be on good terms with teachers
xander was the closest in age with ein, so they spent the most time together
at one of the family get-togethers, they decided to pour milk down the toilet and not flush. they were like 5 or 6 and came back giggling, and after their grandmother found out what they’d done, they got in trouble {ein got in more trouble than xander because zack and elizabeth were not made to be parents}
terra was close with jay, they constantly had sleepovers in middle school despite their schools being hours apart
when jay was homeschooled terra would try and keep them up to date with what was going on in her school, leading to the misconception of school even more than if it was just anime since terra loved making up stories and forgot to say which were made up
sylvanna was happy that her little girl wasn’t going to be lonely during homeschool and would thank jacob and kristine, who waved it off and said they were glad terra had someone with enough energy to keep up with her
toby would try and help ein once he was old enough to see what’s going on, but ein had already shut himself off from the world. instead, toby kept in contact with him over the years through online games and they loved playing tf2 together
when xander and jay were little, they got on each other’s nerves and would ‘play fight’ as sylvanna called it, but xan’s father would call it wrestling. eventually when they lost their first teeth on separate occasions they had to stop
neither of the kids remember this, just that they lost their teeth while family was over
sylvanna told this story to eric and that’s how jay found out about it, who immediately called terra and told her about it {didn’t have xander’s phone number}
terra loved to be outside in summer all of the time, mostly during sunny days. she would get toby and xander outside too, but terra would forget about sunscreen and get burned
xander used to torture her when she got sunburned, but stopped when he was a tween
toby would usually be the responsible one and bring out water/snacks for all of them, their parents would either read outside as the kids had fun or sing/dance inside
xander was the one who gave terra her tattoo idea, toby took all of them to the parlor when it was getting done. terra doesn’t have great pain tolerance, and her brothers ran in as she waved them off going “everything’s good, just a baby” and wiped a tear away
toby tipped the guy directly for an apology, they laughed and said it was okay and that if it was their family, they would’ve done the same thing
terra understood where ein was on being the half sibling and would try to cheer him up when they were little by making drawings of the gats, marin-filla, and filla family
he forgot that it’s in a box in storage, but remembers her smile and gets happy
they also connect over their half-aquatic sides and always worked together on ocean-themed coloring books
terra was ecstatic to learn that her and jay were going to be roommates in college, and gave a lot of ideas for them to hang out and watch netflix and pizza parlors
jay is allergic to pepperoni, so they’re mostly stuck with cheese, but terra doesn’t mind
there was a running joke between the two that terra would put a slice of pepperoni on what food was hers
jay met, and found out about, ein through toby. after she agreed to be the carrier for aaron and lily’s baby, since her second pregnancy would put her in danger, aaron mentioned toby who introduced the hald-siblings
jay was pissed that sylvanna didn’t tell her about ein and elizabeth, as sylvanna explained everything from her side jay asked what terra saw and got that side and put everything together
jay and ein don’t treat each other as siblings, more like strangers on decent enough terms
jay would be more likely to ask terra or toby to look after levin, malachi, and gabriel if zoey is out of commission
i should probably mention all of the schools everyone went to oopsies
terra, toby, and xander went to falcon high, decent public school
jay went to phoenix drop highschool, fluctuating private school
ein went to scale high, bad public school
jay, xander, and terra went to falcon claw university while toby went into military service and met aaron, ein did online college
#toby gats#xander gats#terra gats#ein marin#jay filla#sylvanna filla#elizabeth avisa#zack marin#irena's sticky note#irena's afterthoughts#hope you liked these! ^v^#jacob gats#kristine gats#aphmau#mystreet#phoenix drop high#falcon claw university#irena's answers
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