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bugaboo-and-kittynoir · 3 years

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Leather Claws to Human Hands (Love Square Reveal Scenario: Post-Alya Reveal)

Edit: This is now on AO3, link here.

Summary: A scenario where Ladybug and Chat Noir reveal their identities to each other. This occurs some time after Alya finds out Marinette's secret.

Words: 1,763

Chapters: 1/1

Title: Leather Claws to Human Hands

Content: Post-Alya reveal, Chat finds out Ladybug told someone her secret identity, Ladybug and Chat Noir reveal their identities scenario, Ladynoir fluff, Ladynoir angst, Adrienette fluff

“Chat, I have to tell you something,” said Ladybug.

“What is it, Bug?” he said, putting his stick on his belt. She called him here just minutes ago, right before they were supposed to go out for patrol. It was dark out, and they were meeting on a rooftop they both knew well.

“This isn’t easy for me to say, but…” she started. Chat’s expression turned from one of humor to concern. “...I told someone my identity.”

Chat’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “What?”

“I’m sorry kitty, but you’ve seen how bad I’ve been lately. I couldn’t handle it anymore, I had to tell someone,” she said, her cheeks flushing and her eyes watering. It was strange seeing her like this, Chat thought.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. Chat couldn’t help but ask. He didn’t care if the question seemed selfish; he’d always wanted to know her secret identity, and he was hurt that she didn’t think to tell him first.

“I want to, Kitty, but—”

“It’s too dangerous, yada yada, I know the drill,” he said, mocking her with his hands. Ladybug’s brow furrowed. “But you told someone else? Someone who isn’t a superhero? Who could get akumatized!”

“She is a superhero,” Ladybug said. Chat could tell she did not mean to say that.

“Who did you tell?” he said, anger still in his voice.

“Rena Rouge, okay?” Ladybug answered. “It’s Rena.”

“You must know her well then.”

“Yes,” said Ladybug.

“What about me, m’lady?” said Chat, finally letting the hurt he felt escape him.

“She wants me to tell you, too,” said Ladybug.

“I can’t help but agree,” said Chat.

“Are you sure?” she asked. Chat laughed at the question. Of course he was sure. But then he realized that she may be serious about considering it, and that the moment he’s been waiting for since the day he met her might be happening today. Right now.

“I’m sure,” said Chat, turning to face his lady. He held her by the hands. “I’m sorry I got mad.”

“Now you’re just trying to get on my good side again,” teased Ladybug.

“I’m serious. I know you’ve had a rough time lately since Master Fu is gone, and I’m sure there’s so much more that I don’t even know about. I’m here for you, and I’m sorry I got jealous knowing that you told someone else before me. You have a whole other life—I forget sometimes.”

“Thank you, Kitty.”

“So, Rena wants me to know?” said Chat, cocking an eyebrow up at her.

Ladybug nodded. “So do I.”

He couldn’t believe it. This was actually happening. Ladybug said she wanted to know his identity. And for the first time, it seemed like she was actually going to tell him.

“Do I get to tell you too, then?” said Chat eagerly. He couldn’t wait to see Ladybug’s reaction to Adrien. He thought she may laugh right in his face. Or she would be shocked that someone like him could be a superhero, too. He laughed at the thought of her finally knowing that Aspik was also Chat Noir, like he tried so hard to tell her during his grueling three months fighting Desperada.

“It’s up to you,” said Ladybug.

“Yes,” he said.

“Think about it kitty, don’t just say—”

“My answer is yes. I’ve thought about it enough, every day since I met you m’lady. I’m ready,” he said.

“But wait, before we do this,” Ladybug said, holding Chat’s hands tighter. “I just wanna say that, I…”

Her bluebell eyes melted his heart every time she looked at him, no matter how hard he tried to get over her. “I trust you with all my heart, Chat Noir. I always have.”

Ladybug tentatively leaned towards him, and before Chat could begin to relish in her closeness to him, she gave him the softest most tender kiss, right on the lips.

As much as he wanted to pull her back for more, he let her go. It was the simplest kiss, but it told him everything he needed to know.

“Show me who you are, m’lady. I promise I’ll never tell a soul. Chat’s honor,” he said, attempting to bring a smile to her face. It worked and he grinned.

“Don’t make me regret this, kitty,” she said, her cheeks a little redder by the second.

“We should detransform,” he suggested.

“Really? When I told Rena, I just said—”

“I want to see who you are, too, m’lady. I want to see the girl behind the mask,” said Chat. “Besides, what if I’ve never met you before?”

Ladybug giggled and ruffled his hair. Chat’s mouth dropped open again at her affection. “You have, kitty.”

“Really!? But how do you know?” he asked.

“Will I recognize you, too?” she asked, beginning to show some excitement.

Chat chuckled. “Yes, yes you will.”

“I can’t wait Chat.”

Words couldn’t explain how good that felt to hear. “Me neither, m’lady.”

“On the count of 3?” said Ladybug. Chat nodded, taking her by the hands again.

“One,” said Chat.

Her grip on his hands tightened. “Two,” said Ladybug.

For a second, neither of them breathed. They didn’t move a muscle. The world around them stopped.

“Three,” they said together.

“Tikki, spots off.”

“Plagg, claws in.”

Pink and green light filled the spaces around them. Ladybug held on to Chat’s hands tight as she felt his leather claws transform into human hands.

Once the light faded, all they could see was each other.

Marinette.

Marinette is Ladybug.

Of course she was.

And to think, he fell for this girl twice.

Adrien could not believe how he hadn’t seen it before. Marinette was a hero, that he knew, but he didn’t realize that she actually was a superhero, too, the way he was one.

“Marinette,” said Adrien. In his shock, Adrien remembered to study Marinette’s reaction to him. He was such a fool to think they only knew each other from the few akuma attacks where Ladybug saved Adrien. They were best friends. They went to the same school. And he knew all too well that he was fully and completely in love with her.

“Adrien,” said Marinette, her mouth gaping open in disbelief. Her face was bright red, just as red as her Ladybug costume. Her hands, her real, bare hands, were soft on his hands. He realized that he had held her hands so many times before. His lady, the one he’d always been looking for, was right in front of him for so long.

Adrien finally gave in, and tears fell down his cheeks. “Are you shocked?”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,” said Marinette. He noticed that her grip on his hands had loosened. “Of course it’s you.”

“I feel the same way,” Adrien said, pulling their hands towards his chest.

“There is no one else it could’ve been, kitty,” said Marinette. It was strange to see Marinette’s face saying Ladybug’s words. “There’s only one person I’ve ever loved.”

Adrien’s eyes widened. “Did you just say—”

“The boy I loved was you, Adrien,” said Marinette. “But then I fell in love with Chat anyway.”

Adrien could not hide his smile. “You love Chat?”

“Yes.”

Adrien believed her. After all, she was the one who kissed him earlier. “And to think I fell for you twice.”

“What?” said Marinette.

“I love you, Marinette,” said Adrien, not believing how easy it was to tell her that.

Marinette gasped. “You do?”

“I always have. But lately I’ve…”

“The girl you told me about…” Marinette said. “You said there was another girl, is it--”

“Of course it was you,” said Chat. He almost laughed. “And to think I was telling my crush about my crush on her without knowing it was her.”

“You did that another time, too. When you told me about Ladybug, on the roof that one night?” said Marinette. Chat nodded, eyes wide. Marinette scoffed. “And I told my crush about you, too.”

“Wait…that was about me?” he asked.

Marinette nodded. “Yes!”

“I broke your heart?” whimpered Adrien. He remembered that night well. Marinette told him that she had her heart broken, just like he had. He had tried not to think about who she was talking about. He didn't want to use his superhero identity to know more than Marinette cared for Adrien to know. He couldn’t believe his foolishness.

“Maybe I didn’t get to see Adrien like I wanted to that night, but what ended up happening that day meant so much more to me,” said Marinette.

“And what’s that?” said Adrien.

“You made me finally see that you loved Ladybug. And I realized that I…”

Adrien smirked.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, blushing.

“You realized what, m’lady?” said Adrien, pulling Marinette closer to him.

“I realized that I was falling head first for Chat Noir and there was nothing I could do about it,” she said. Adrien couldn’t contain his happiness.

“I love you, Marinette,” said Adrien. “Of course it was you. I fell for the same girl twice. And now that I know you’re the same girls…”

Marinette grinned, their noses brushing against each other.

“...I love you even more.” With those words, Adrien finally did what he’d always wanted to do—he put one hand in hers, the other on her cheek, and kissed Marinette softly on the lips.

“Can we come out now? This is torture!” said Plagg from Adrien’s jacket. Adrien and Marinette giggled.

“Yes, you can come out Plagg,” said Adrien.

“You too, Tikki,” said Marinette as Tikki flew out of her bag.

“Hi Marinette,” said Plagg.

“Hi Plagg,” said Marinette.

“Hi Adrien,” said Tikki.

“Hey Tikki, it’s good to see you again!” said Adrien.

“You two have known for so long, haven’t you?” said Marinette, with a certain sympathy in her voice. “Since we fought Reflekdoll and Juleka got akumatized?”

Plagg and Tikki laughed. “No Marinette, we’ve known since you fought Dark Owl! Remember, you were in that container and you detransformed!”

Marinette and Adrien looked at each other, then looked back at their respective kwamis.

“Oh my gosh, Tikki, I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Marinette.

“You had to listen to me talk about Ladybug all the time when you knew she was right in front of me!” said Adrien as Plagg and Tikki flew closer to Adrien and Marinette, still in an embrace.

The four of them laughed at the whole situation together.

“We really got ourselves into a mess, didn’t we?” said Marinette.

“I’d do it all again, m’lady. You’re worth it.”

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childishfluff · 3 years

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(im gonna be sending a few seperate asks since theyre seperate thoughts/ideas, sorry for any sort of inbox spam!!) ur pet regressor tommy fic led me into a whole wormhole of many different ideas.. esp abt who else is a pet regressor!!

- wilbur (cat regressor!! also very relaxed, he *will* just sleep on phil or techno's lap for hours on end. mostly nonverbal, but will meow every now nd again. mostly communicates through actions. he can purr. doesn't drop often, but when he does, it's due to extreme stress- meaning he can be pretty sensitive while he's in catspace.)

- tubbo (puppy regressor, but definitely more of a relaxed dog aside from the amnt he communicates, especially through barking, whimpering, and soft "awooo!!"'s. loves snuggles. sometimes, he's scared to come of as annoying, so he's hesitant to slip into pupspace, normally needing someone to help him along and tell him that it's ok for him to be a puppy, nd that he's a very very good boy.)

- karl (kitten regressor!!!! he's either really sleepy or really playful/energetic, and he has no in between on that. he meows.. so much.. all he kno is meow meow!! *very* sensitive while dropped, and as such, he needs a lot of validation and love. will get extremely upset with himself if he notices that anyone is even *slightly* mad/irritated by him.)

- nick (sapnap) (PUPPY REGRESSOR 100000%!!! he's very very loud and extremely playful!!! he can be entertained for *hours* w literally anything, especially toys like chew bones. doesn't really drop too often, but when he does, he drops very very far. something that can trigger his drops is when people compare his traits/actions to those of a dog because he just goes yes!! yes me!!!! dog!!! me!!!! also he loves karl *so* much because karl absolutely spoils him rotten when he's in pupspace.)

- ranboo (kitty regressor!! similar to karl, he can be really sensitive while he's dropped. entirely nonverbal, opting for actions instead. he's a mix of both playful and sleepy. when he sleeps, he curls his entire body up into a circle nd kneads at whatever he's sleeping on until he falls asleep.)

- dream (cat regressor!! sleeps a lot when he's dropped, hes just vv tired. mimics patches, and loves to follow her around/act like she does. even bases his catgear around patches, with tabby-colored cat ears and an outfit based off of similar colors. drops very easily, mostly voluntarily.)

those r the ones i can think of now.. id love to know ypur opinions/interpretations of them!! -🌻

OKAY I’M GONNA GO THROUGH THESE ONE BY ONE, AND SHARE MY THOUGHTS+OTHER POSSIBLE HCS/FIC SCENARIOS, SO LONG POST WARNING Y’ALL

1. Cat Regressor! Wilbur

yes yes yes, I wouldn’t of thought of it myself but the idea is absolutely adorable! I’d totally write that, with like handler/cg!niki in addition to those you listed. And the idea of him using it for stress and therefore being sensitive in catspace? like, that’s amazing.

I could imagine a fic where someone pushes him to regress for fun for once, but he feels like it’s stupid to purposely act like a cat when he doesn’t need it? They don’t pressure him, or anything, but he ends up slipping because he feels safe. and he realizes not only does it help with stress, but it just makes him more happy!

also imagine him slipping around tommy for whatever reason, and just wanting to sleep while Tommy’s trying to do something fun. So he’s dragging around a sleepy kitten and waking him up every two seconds, and it’s really soft and adorable and ends up with Wilbur sleeping somewhat on Tommy so that he can’t get up and he’s like ‘you’re so lucky I love you, dude.’ awww I need to write a fic- no promises but y’know

2.Puppy Regressor!Tubbo

someone actually requested a puppy regressors!tubbo and tommy fic that I’m having trouble writing, like it sounds cute but it’s kinda hard bc I’ve never written puppyspace before. I actually decided to start over but I’ma keep trying on that.

anyways, imagine like, Ranboo or Tommy helping him slip over a discord call! Needing help to regress is something that I understand (I age regress, but I haven’t in a while due to this issue), so I could probably write Tubbo in that position well. Needing to be coaxed and told that it’s okay to be a cute lil puppy, like that’s adorable!

3. Kitten Regressor!Karl

tbh I tried to write kitten!karl but I was half asleep and gave up, I need to get back to that hjsiksja. Like I specialize in writing sensitive regressors w/anxiety over someone being mad at them, so I could definitely pull this off.

and the idea of him being a talkative kitty is sooo cute! Like I can imagine something along the lines of this conversation between him and a handler/cg:

“What do you want?”

“Meowww”

“I don’t know what that means!”

“Meow?” (little head tilt and innocent cute eyes)

“Do you want cuddles?”

*excited meows! and he goes and cuddles up in their lap bc yay, they understood him!*

and imagine kitten!karl playing w/Quackity! very very adorable concept

4. Puppy Regressor! Sapnap

okay okay so I don’t watch sapnap really but this is still adorable! Like the whole ‘me, puppy? yes.’ thing is soooo cute! Imagine George or Dream just forgetting that’s a trigger and making a joke about how one of his mannerisms reminds them of a puppy and suddenly! There’s a puppy to take care of!

and karl spoiling him sounds like something he’d do hjsiksjsa. I can’t really add much on here bc idk much about him/his content past the smp but this is so cute! Maybe I’ll watch a few of his videos and attempt writing him bc I keep getting requests for him

5. Kitten Regressor! Ranboo

yes, I was already thinking about this tbh! Like I’ve written him as a little and it’s kinda similar, he’s sensitive, and he’s less verbal the littler he gets. As a kitten, I can easily picture him just being quiet.

I imagine that he’s really pouty because of this, because he doesn’t know how to communicate otherwise, so this might confuse anyone who may take care of him.

“Why are you pouting? Do you want cuddles? Food? Do you wanna play?”

and he just doesn’t reply bc he’s a kitten and he can’t talk so it’s an endless cycle of guess and check until they reach the right answer, and it’s really funny to watch. I can also imagine that he giggles a lot. Like he’s not verbal or anything, and he doesn’t giggle a lot but sometimes it happens! and if you make him giggle while in kittenspace then you did something right!

it makes everyone happy when he giggles and it’s really soft and cute! I definitely think I’ll write a fic with kitten!ranboo in it, at some point eventually, I think!

6. Cat Regressor! Dream

awwwww- I didn’t even consider the possibility of this but awwww. Imagine Wilbur and Dream in catspace together, just sleeping and cuddling while basically all the other kittens are playing and being hyper. And everyone’s trying to get them to play but they’re sleepy! (ofc they end up playing anyways bc their friends are adorable and convincing but y’know)

and I really like the idea of him mimicking patches! I’ve seen a few pet regresors say that they mimick/copy their pets so it kinda feels realistic and likely! and plus, it’s really cute.

and since his regression is voluntary, I can imagine him like one minute, just chillin w/george and sapnap and going ‘what if- what if I just went *cat mode*’ and he tries to hint to his friends that he wants to slip but they’re not getting it so it’s kinda frustrating for him but funny for the readers to see play out bc George and Sapnap are being completely oblivious to everything. Hjsiksja that’d be funny

Thank you for sending this it, like seriously! It was really fun to go through and talk about these, I might make additional headcannon lists once I’m actually awake tomorrow bc I shouldn’t be up rn but yeah, I just wanted to go through and respond to this! <3

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angelicyoongie · 4 years

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desolate (3)

— summary: you just wanted a cute little normal cat to keep you company. so, you're not really sure how you ended up with the grumpiest hybrid on earth that seems hellbent on making your life difficult.

— pairing: cat hybrid yoongi x reader

— genre: angst, fluff, eventual smut

— word count: 4.3k

— tag list: @mrcleanheichou @ladymidnightt @cheese123344 @xanny91 @dinorahrodriguez @best-space-boy @dulcaet @moccahobi @keijaycreates @staytrillswag @xsmilebitesx @serendipityoreuphoria @jiminot7

Part one Part two Part four Part five Part six Part seven Part eight Part nine Part ten (M) Part eleven Part twelve Part thirteen Part fourteen (M)

“We’re still on for tonight, right?” Jihyo’s head suddenly pops up over her computer screen, voice barely above a whisper as she sneaks a few looks around the office. The atmosphere is tenser than normal today, and it seems like your co-workers are almost afraid to breathe every time your boss storms through the open office.

You think you overheard someone talking about a few computers being hacked into from inside the company, but you’re not sure. Either way, you figure it’s a good idea to stay on the low and out of your boss' way as much as possible, unless you want to get chewed up and spit out for literally just existing.

You give Jihyo a thumbs up, eyes glued to your screen just in case someone is watching. The thought of having a girl’s night with Jihyo and Sana definitely brightens your mood enough to make it through until lunch. You already have a few movies picked out that you’ve been meaning to watch for ages, and you can’t wait to just relax and spend some time with your friend and her hybrid.

You and Jihyo both decide to eat lunch outside, braving the cold autumn winds to escape the stifling mood of the office. You find a little coffee shop that isn’t too far away, giving you decent time to eat and talk before you need to head back.

“So, how’s your little black menace doing?” Jihyo asks with a small laugh as she places a few pastries on her plate. You shrug, reacting out for a stuffed croissant. Your sore back definitely seems to point to your kitty warming up to you, considering you ended up sleeping on the couch all night with him curled up on top of your stomach. But then again, he scurried off underneath the couch with a low grumble as soon as you woke up, so you feel like it’s hard to say. You’ve never met a cat before that’s so hot and cold.

“I don’t know,” You admit, moving behind Jihyo in line to pay for your food.

“He seems to tolerate me one second and then hate me the next .. It’s hard to say,” You frown.

“Y/N ..” Jihyo pauses, her shoulders tensing before she continues, “Maybe you should consider giving him back to the shelter? Not to be mean, but you look horrible. You seem sadder than you were before you even got a cat, and news flash, you’re supposed to feel happier - not miserable,” Jihyo throws you a look over her shoulder as she moves to pay, concerned eyes briefly locking onto yours.

You feel the clump in your stomach grow, the anxious feeling you haven’t been able to shake off completely since you brought your cat home becoming bigger. Maybe you aren’t the right home for him. Maybe Jihyo is right ..

“I guess,” You mutter as Jihyo steps aside to let you pay. You can almost feel the soft fur against your fingers as you pick up your plate, uncertainty gnawing away at your thoughts as you both find a table to share.

“But I still need to try a little longer. I’m sure he’s had a rough time before he came to the shelter, stuff like that isn’t cured over night,” You reason, the tension in your body loosing up just a tad. You will take him back to the shelter if it doesn’t get better between you two, but you need to at least try first.

“A month then,” Jihyo proposes.

“If things haven’t improved between you in a month, then you take him back to the shelter. I hate seeing you so down,” She pouts, hand reaching out to squeeze yours before she starts eating her lunch.

You take a bite of your own pastry, mulling the idea over in your head as you eat. A month seems reasonable. It’ll give your cat time to settle down a little, and if he’s still so afraid that he hides from you after all those weeks, then it’s probably for the best to bring him back.

“Alright, deal. One month,” You give Jihyo a nod, your mind already racing to come up with plans of how to make your cat feel more at home.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the workday is just as stiff as the first half.

“I never thought this day would end,” You groan as you and Jihyo step outside, your shoulders aching from how tense you’ve been all day.

“Tell me about it,” Jihyo huffs. Her face lights up as she spots the waiting car, probably eager to get inside and remove those god awful heels the company forces you to wear as part of your unofficial uniform.

“I’ll head off now. Text me what kind of snacks you want me to bring, okay?” Jihyo flashes you a bright smile and a wave before she’s off, climbing into the passenger seat of the car as fast as she can manage.

“I’ll be at your place at seven!” Jihyo yells out of the window as the car takes off, leaving you behind in whirlwind of dust and fallen leaves. You sigh as you turn, beginning your journey home. Your apartment is around a thirty-minute walk from work if you’re wearing good shoes, but with these heels it's probably closer to forty-five.

You would normally take the bus, but since you need to stop by a mart and get groceries, it’s honestly better to just sacrifice your feet and take a more direct route home. Thankfully the mart isn’t too busy when you get there, and you quickly find all the things you need for the dinner tonight, as well as some food to get you through the rest of the weekend.

You pause as you pass by the chicken section; hand reaching out for the chicken breasts your cat enjoyed so much before you even realize what you’re doing.

“He’ll probably be angry at me after tonight,” You reason, and food seems like the best bribery for a cat that doesn’t like to be pet.

Your arms are shaking by the time you’ve made it up the stairs to your apartment, shirt clinging uncomfortably to your back from the light sweat you’ve managed to work up.

You quickly unlock your door and step inside, bags falling to the ground with a heavy thump as you turn around. The first thing you see in the dark hallway is golden eyes staring straight at you, the black fur almost blending into the shadows. You let out a startled squeak, hand flying to your chest to calm your racing heart.

“I know I’m late kitty, I’m sorry,” You say after taking a deep breath, a small smile on your face as you try to convey just how bad you feel for delaying his dinner. You see him give a small flick of his tail, the only indicator that he’s actually listening to you as you reach down to bring your bags to the kitchen.

You don't hear him follow you, but you can feel those golden eyes tracking you as you move around the kitchen putting your groceries away. You throw a quick glance at the clock hanging over your stove as you shove the rest of the food inside the fridge.

“Shit!” You only have half an hour until your guests arrive, and you desperately need a quick shower before you do anything else. You rush towards your bathroom, just narrowly missing bumping into your cat that’s peaking at you around the corner. He hisses at the close proximity, and you let a string of sorry’s hang in the air behind you as you hurry inside, wrestling with the buttons on your shirt as you go.

You’re practically out of breath as you wrap a towel around your damp body, holding it in place as you scurry to your bedroom to find some clothes to wear. You don’t remember leaving your door open before you left for work, but you probably just didn’t close it properly. You pay it no mind as you quickly grab some fresh underwear and sweats from your closet, it’s not that big of a deal anyway.

You slip your underwear on under your towel, throwing the pants behind you on to the bed as your search for your favourite hoodie. You frown as you rummage through your clothes, hoodie nowhere in sight. You’re sure you washed it a few days ago, so it doesn’t make sense that it’s just gone. You huff, settling for throwing on a cosy sweater instead. Your hoodie search will have to be resumed later.

You can see a black ball of fur out of the corner of your eye as you tug on your pants, your cat having moved to scowl at you from the hallway, golden eyes narrowed as they watch you get dressed.

“I promise I’m making your food now kitty,” Your cat glares at you before he turns around and leaves, the motion a little weird and eerily inhuman. You could’ve sworn it almost rolled its eyes at you .. But you don’t have time to think about it, the encounter already being pushed into the back of your mind as you hurry to start making dinner.

You get the chicken ready first, setting some aside to cool as you add the rest to the dish you’re making. Jihyo sent you a recipe that apparently Sana loves, and since you figure you’ll probably be seeing a lot of each other from now on, you really want to make your friend’s hybrid like you.

“Kitty?” You call out as you place in the dish in the oven. You hear a soft disgruntled meow coming from the living room, and it’s not that hard to guess where he might be hiding. You only have a few minutes until your guests arrive, but it should be enough time for your cat to finish eating.

You bring the plate out into the living room, placing it down a little further away from the couch than you did last time. There’s a few seconds where nothing happens, the apartment quiet aside from the soft noise outside of your window.

You hear another annoyed meow before your cat emerges, and he practically gives you the cat equivalent of the stink eye as he crouches down to eat. He must’ve realized that you’re trying to coax him out from under the couch, and it seems like he isn’t too happy about it.

You busy yourself with straightening out the pillows on the couch as he eats, trying to make your small living room look a little less cramped and more put together.

“Kitty, you need to be on your best behaviour tonight,” You see a fluffy ear swivel your way as you speak.

“My friend Jihyo and her hybrid are coming over, so please don’t hiss at them, okay? Jihyo seems to dislike you enough already, and I’m sure she’ll force me to give you up if she thinks you’re dangerous,” You grimace as you fluff out the last pillow, missing how your cat’s head snaps up to look at you with wide eyes just as the door bell rings.

“Please behave kitty,” You murmur softly as you pick up the empty plate from the floor, your cat scurrying back under the couch as you drop the plate off in the kitchen. You really hope he won’t react too badly to Sana considering she’s a dog hybrid, but as long as she appears in her human form you’re sure your cat won’t mind it too much.

But of course you should’ve known that was too much to ask for.

As soon as you open the door, a fluffy white ball of fur flies through the opening, Jihyo stumbling in behind it. The little Pomeranian takes off down the hallway, feet clicking against the hardwood floor as she runs through your apartment.

“Sana!” Jihyo calls out, bags of snacks stuffed under her arms as she hurries in after her. You quickly lock the door and follow them, a bad feeling settling in your stomach as the apartment grows too quiet again. You freeze beside Jihyo as you reach the living room, eyes widening in horror as you see Sana and your cat growling at each other near the couch.

Your cat is seemingly furious, black fur standing on edge and teeth barred to mimic the look on Sana’s face. The low hiss rumbling in his chest seem to grow louder and louder, and you see Sana’s posture turning more and more rigid the longer they keep eye contact. They seem to be squaring up to fight, and you have absolutely no intention on letting that happen.

“Jihyo!” You hiss, elbowing her in the side. “Do something about Sana!”

“I don’t know what to do! She’s never been like this before!” She hisses back, not daring to tear her eyes away from the increasingly more agitated animals.

“I’ll grab her,” You say, the dog hybrid too busy growling to notice what you’re saying. Jihyo nods, a nervous expression on her face as you take a step closer. Sana doesn’t see you, but your cat does, and that brief second his eyes flicker to you seems to be enough of an opening for Sana to attack.

You lurch forward, barely managing to scoop Sana up before she has the chance to snap after your cat. You can tell your cat isn’t ready to give up the fight, its golden eyes narrowing in on you and the squirming dog in your arms.

“No kitty!” You give him a glare, but it’s like he isn’t seeing you at all, just the white fluff that seems to be threating his territory. You quickly pass Sana on to Jihyo; bags of snacks falling to the floor as she hurriedly brings her hybrid into your room to separate them. At the sound of the door clicking shut, your cat visibly relaxes, eyes finally seeing you instead of burning right through.

“Kitty,” You warn, voice stern and your hands on your hips as you stare down at him. Your cat holds your stare for a short while before it almost sounds like he huffs in annoyance. He ignores your attempt at a scolding, and instead chooses to lick his paw and clean his face while you watch in disbelief.

“Fine. Why am I even trying, you’re just a cat,” You tut. You feel a little silly, especially since you’re trying to scold an animal that doesn’t even understand what you’re saying.

“Y/N?” Jihyo’s voice calls out to you from behind the closed door. “Can we come out? Sana’s shifted.”

“Yeah, come on out,” As soon as the words leave your lips, the door flies open. You barely get a glimpse of Sana before she crashes into your arms, arms wound around your body so tightly it almost hurts to breathe.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be a bad dog,” Sana buries her face in your chest, tears staining your sweater as she trembles. Jihyo sends you a sad look over her shoulder, a little pout on her lips that seems to be begging you to forgive her. You manage to free your arms enough to wrap them around her, awkwardly patting her back as she cries.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m not mad,” You say, but that only seems to make Sana cry harder.

“You’re so nice! And I’m such a bad dog, I’m so sorry!”

“Sana ..” Jihyo tries, but her voice only makes Sana cling harder to you.

“I just wanted to protect you! I smelled him inside and I didn’t want him to hurt you,” Sana pulls back enough to look up at you with her big glossy puppy eyes, fluffy ears glued down against her light hair.

“It’s okay, he’s just a kitty Sana, he won’t hurt me,” You smile, reaching up to pat her head affectionately.

“No! He’s not! He’s–” A loud hiss suddenly interrupts Sana, the sound scaring her enough to make her run back to Jihyo. She cowers behind her back, cheek pressed against Jihyo's shoulder as she refuses to look at your cat.

You’re about to scold him again for scaring her, but the words get caught in your throat as you feel something brush against your legs. You look down in shock to find your cat rubbing himself against your sweats, tail curling around your leg as he moves around.

“Uhm, does he normally do that?” Jihyo raises an eyebrow, the conversation you two had earlier in the day fresh in her mind.

“No?” You look at her with wide eyes as your cat raises its back, eyes blinking up at you. Does it want you to .. You slowly reach down with your hand, hesitating before your fingers can brush against the black fur.

Your cat doesn’t seem to mind your hand coming closer, but you still hold your breath as your fingers finally touches the silky fur, running a few fingers along his spine in a quick pat. Your cat freezes at the contact, body locking up underneath your fingertips as they run along his back.

“Sorry kitty,” You snatch your hand away, stepping back to give your cat some space. Sana is still hiding behind a dumbfound Jihyo, and you feel terrible that your evening started out in the way that it did.

“Let’s grab some dinner, it should be done by now! I made your favourite,” You smile kindly at Sana as her eyes hesitantly meet yours.

“Really?” You can see her tail wagging slowly back and forth, a small smile spreading across her lips at the thought of food.

“Yeah, let’s eat in the kitchen,” You laugh as Sana starts pushing Jihyo sideways in the direction of the kitchen, using her owner as a shield against your cat the whole way. Thankfully your cat stays in the living room during dinner, but you can see Sana’s apprehension returning the moment you suggest watching a movie. However as you walk into the living room, he’s nowhere to be found. You even sneak a quick peak under the couch, and there’s no kitty hiding there either.

You shrug, quickly getting the snacks the girls brought ready, and putting on the movie all of you decided you want to watch. You and Jihyo have taken over the small couch while Sana has curled up in the chair next to it.

“Sana?” You call out, “You know there’s room on the couch if you want to sit here?” You see her ears perk up, tail wagging as she looks at Jihyo for permission.

“Can I?” She asks, eyes bright at the thought of being allowed to snuggle up to the both of you.

You hear a dull thud from your bedroom, your cat quickly shimmying out between the crack in the door. So that’s where he was, you think.

He bolts over to the couch before Jihyo can even open her mouth, quickly jumping up into your lap and making himself at home. Your hands are frozen by your side, mouth hanging open in surprise as you watch him lie down and start kneading your shirt.

“Kitty?” You ask, but the only response you get is an ear twitching in your direction. You can tell that your cat’s eyes are trained on Sana, golden eyes barely blinking as his claws dig deeper into the fabric of your sweater. Maybe he understands a little more than you first thought.

“Kitty?” Jihyo snaps your attention to her, a questioning look on her face. “You haven’t named him yet?”

You shrug, lowering a hand to gently scratch across your cat’s head. This time he doesn’t freeze up, and your smile grows a little goofy as you feel him snuggle closer to your hand.

“No? I don’t know, none of the names I’ve thought of seems to fit him.”

“Well, it’s not like he’s gonna tell you himself,” Jihyo snorts, reaching out for the popcorn that’s placed on the table in front of you.

“I guess not,” You giggle, amused by how pliant your cat has gone in your hands. You’re practically supporting his head in your hand, and it’s obvious that he’s enjoying the petting by the low slightly broken attempts at purring your hear coming from his chest. But he’s still refusing to look away from Sana, eyes never closing fully despite how sleepy he seems.

“Yeah .. That would be weird,” Sana gives you both an uncomfortable chuckle, eyes flickering between your cat and the TV. You spend most of the movie mesmerized at the black fur beneath your fingertips, eyes hardly straying from the cat in your lap. He seems much nicer and softer like this, and you can hardly believe that it’s the same cat that attacked your arm just a week ago.

As the movie goes on, you often find yourself chiming in a beat too late when the two other laugh, earning you a few weird looks and eye rolls. But how can they fault you for not paying attention when you’ve got a lap full of a black fluffycuddly cat? It would be a crime to not pay attention to him.

The movie slowly comes to an end, the snacks on the table half eaten, and Sana’s ears drooping down sleepily. You’re about to suggest putting on another one, feeling a little bad that you basically ignored the whole movie aspect of a movienight, but Jihyo waves you off before you can even speak.

“We’ve all had a rough day, maybe it’s better to call it a night?” She reaches over to run her fingers through Sana’s hair, a tender smile on her lips that makes something ache inside your chest.

“Sure,” Come to think of it, you are pretty tired yourself. Work was stressful and almost having your kitty and Sana fight definitely didn’t lessen the tension you’ve been feeling in your body all day either. You gently ease your cat off your lap, but despite its sleepy protests it quickly settles down on the couch as it realizes that your guests are leaving.

“I had a nice evening despite .. the little hiccup at the beginning,” You smile, reaching up to ruffle Sana’s hair. A squeak of surprise leaves your lips as she suddenly scoops you up in another hug. She rubs her face against your neck as you pat her head, the dog hybrid really being too cute for her own good.

“Please be careful okay? You don’t know– I-I don’t trust him,” Sana shoots a glare in the direction of the living room, and your building amusement at her distain for your cat dies down as you see the seriousness in her eyes.

“Of course,” You give her hand a squeeze, the tone of her voice making something weird tug in your stomach.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” You give Jihyo a quick hug before you wave them off, a sigh leaving your lips as you lock the door behind you. Sana’s expression keeps floating around in your head, and you can’t seem to shake it no matter how hard you try.

You pause as you enter the living room, your cat blinking sleepily at you from the couch. You don’t really see how he can do anything bad aside from being moody and a little mean, but Sana does have actual animal genes and you don’t. You’re just not sure if hers are extra sceptical because she’s a dog and your cat is well, a cat.

“Night kitty,” You murmur as you turn off the lights, leaving the clean up for tomorrow. You hear a low hiss behind you just as you turn to close the door, a black paw scratching through the crack. Your cat has never shown any interest in your bedroom before, so you open the door, curious to see what he wants.

Your cat doesn’t even spare you a second glance as he prances inside, he just head directly for your bed and curls up in the middle of it. You roll your eyes at his shift in personality, quickly tugging off your clothes to find a shirt to sleep in.

You suddenly feel oddly exposed in your room, like someone’s gaze is watching you intently. A quick look back at the bed confirms that your cat is already asleep, eyes closed and tail tucked up over them, but you still tug on your shirt before you remove your bra, the weird notion not really going away.

You just chalk it up to Sana’s words making you a little paranoid, and you shake your head as you carefully slide into bed.

You end up practically curled around your cat, the position not very comfortable, but you’re unwilling to disturb him now that he's has finally fallen asleep. You guess all those memes about people letting their animals hog their beds had some truth to them after all.

It doesn’t take long for the exhaustion of the day to catch up with you, quickly pulling you under into a restful sleep.

There’s a wet sensation of something cold dragging against your skin, not really enough to wake you up, but it still drags you out of the dream you had. You feel it moving across your neck and collar bones, and your sleep-riddled brain barely makes the connection that it seems to be covering up the areas that Sana rubbed her face against earlier.

You huff, snuggling your face deeper into your pillow.

You’re pretty sure you fall back asleep, because the last thing you remember from your dream is a hot breath spilling against your ear, and a low gruff voice whispering Yoongi.

- - - - Hello! Hope you enjoyed the third chapter of desolate! I know things are building up a little slow, but we're getting there! The next chapter will have some surprises :)

My inbox is always open if you want to chat about the story or just fics or life in general! See you all soon!

#bts #hybrid bts #yoongi #cat hybrid yoongi #bts fanfiction #bts au #hybrid au #suga #yoongi x reader #bts x reader #romance #fluff #angst #desolate masterlist #sana #jihyo #min yoongi

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rockeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy · 2 years

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woo post about the guys' families

this is gonna be pretty long..like VERY long. you will scroll for a while. you've been warned.

cat. 1: the lauritzens.

this is up first because the dynamics i came up with fuck hard Marius Dag Lauritzen --- tord's dad. i based parts of his design off of the lighthouse keeper from the moomins. despite his...very gaudy sense of fashion, he's mostly a quiet man, an engineer- half of where tord got his own hobbies. he's somewhere around 6'4, appearing unkempt if you take a few good looks at him. evidently he is god awful with ponytails. none of his hair will stay in one. his voice is sort of raspy since he doesn't talk much unless you get him going about something. he prefers norwegian but is relatively fluid in english (i mean, it's taught as a second language in norway). even if his keeping to himself and calm tone give off the Smart Vibes, this man is not the brightest, he accidentally made tord the way he is by mistaking Revolutionary Girl Utena for a regular cartoon like the moomins and buying it for him Julie-Anne Lauritzen --- tord's mother. this section is relatively short considering that she's dead and marius wouldn't like to get into a tangent about how she was because he'd start to cry. she was an englishwoman, got to know marius through being pen-pals- actually the same way tord got to know edd- and moved to norway to be with him. she was a florist, more outgoing than him, and to best describe it was the sunlight to his bonfire

julie died shortly after tord said his first word (it was pusekatt (kitty cat). they had a lot of cats around the apartment complex), so marius was most of what tord remembered when he still lived in norway. what he did remember of julie was her singing, usually while he was accompanying her in the garden. marius mostly interacted with his son through bedtime stories, watching shows together, and showing him things he was working on. usually he'd be the one to help tord with small struggles like not having the motor skills to button up his jacket, trying to reach things, etc. he'd usually be the one to teach him about worldly things, such as shops, meteor showers, bug-catching..they didn't talk to each other much but they were good to each other.

now, tord's father was initially not raising him in a very good town. the street was rough, the schools were rough, the people were rough, and he knew as much considering that was all the reason he didn't like to talk anymore. somewhere around after tord's first year of school, he'd raised the money to send him to england; he had positive associations with england, it was where his wife grew up after all. the most vivid memory tord has of his earlier days is holding onto his suitcase for dear life while marius buttoned up his cardigan, one that was several sizes too big for him since it belonged to his father, and then the plane trip after. mostly they communicated through letters while marius was raising money to get to england, and they'd have little meetups on the weekends once he managed to get there.

if you want to read 3 more lore-dumps go ahead but if youve had enough keep scrolling

cat. 2: the goodalls

edd's biological father is not included. he is no longer considered part of the family and his surname has been erased from the records. Tracey Jane Goodall --- edd's mama !! i just kind of winged her design this was the first time ive actually imagined her looks. somewhere about 6'1. anyway she's very much a trooper, she put up with a lot of shit from david- her ex husband- and raised a child she was not prepared for mostly by herself. she's a nurse, though what she aims for is an acting career. she keeps on an often monotone but caring attitude, considering she often doesn't have the time to be strong-emotioned. she's a quick thinker, and seems to know what to do in just about any situation, but her protectiveness clouds her judgement a lot of the time since she and her family have been jostled around quite a bit Simon James Goodall --- edd's stepdad. i mostly tried to steer him as far away as possible from looking like david. 6'4. he works at a hardware store. what does he do there? nobody actually knows. he just runs around carrying stuff and putting it down and it is somehow helpful. he's very upbeat, gets antsy in just about any social situation, and is very very stupid and good.

tracey actually had trouble being around her son when he was growing up, since she was working more than half a week, every week. any time she did spend with him, she made it count, though. she'd try to get him out of the house and away from david as much as possible after an incident with him took out edd's eye at the age of 9. she had to teach him to take care of himself ASAP, because she knew damn well that dave wouldn't do it, so any time they were hanging out she'd basically start just infodumping medical and personal care knowledge to this emo-ass tween during brunch and shopping trips. not much can be said for simon since he only really came into edd's life when he was already moved out and in his early 20s, but he tried his best to do all the Dad Things that david couldn't achieve. cat. 3: the...uh... tom's family.

i am NOT typing all this out. long story short, tom's parents uh... splat. dead. gonezo. i'll make another post about them probably. what tom does have are adopted siblings; they were all taken in by the same lady and just kinda attached to each other. again, i'm not typing all this. tom's guys can be saved for later.

cat. 4: the harlins...es...?

"For most of my life they worked too much to be important memories. Mostly what I remember is one of them having a pearl necklace and the big red truck that used to drive me home from school." matt's moms weren't in a good financial situation. weren't able to be there for him as much as they wanted to. that's probably why he was so mad all the time, he didn't have anyone to go to it is 1:52 am as i am finishing this

#eddsworld #eddsworld au #ew tord #ew edd #ew tom #ew matt #long post

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mc-lukanette · 4 years

Text

Grade for Each Other (Part 7)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]

Luka smiled fondly at his phone, scrolling through his latest conversations with Marinette as he reminisced. Ever since their "study date date," Marinette had made further efforts to spend time with his friends, occasionally sending him pictures or rambling texts about it.

Claudine may or may not have teased him about "stealing" Marinette from him if he didn't take action. He merely smiled, not just because he knew it was a joke, but because Marinette making an effort to know his friends even without him being there made him immensely happy. He found no reason to feel jealous and rather encouraged it. As comfortable as he was letting Marinette rely on him, having more than just him was a good thing, at least if it involved good people.

Plus, their conversation had brought him endless amounts of amusement. She asked for tips and hints as if it were a game she was trying to win, like being friends with his friends was incredibly important and she took it very seriously. He'd insisted that she didn't have to do anything special and she was surprised when that actually worked.

He knew they'd like her. Granted, he was very, extremely biased, but Marinette was a naturally likable person. It would've been weirder if they hadn't liked her, and even then, they'd probably feel bad about it.

Luka snorted at the idea, ignoring the guitar on his lap in favor of continuing to scroll through his phone. The amount that he and Marinette had texted each other had multiplied ever since she joined his class, so there was a lot for him to grin stupidly at.

Then, said "stupid grin" was promptly smothered by a pillow hitting his face. It dropped down in front of him and he looked ahead confusedly to see Juleka standing there, her visible brow furrowed as she shifted uncomfortably. She looked irritated but simultaneously apologetic about the pillow she'd impulsively(?) thrown at him.

Turning off his phone, he set his guitar to the side and got up. "What's wrong, Jule?"

She stared at the floor, rubbing her sole against the floorboards. It took a few seconds but she eventually mumbled, "Marinette..."

Oh.

"I was with the rest of the girls and I saw Marinette hanging out with Roche. Alix figured out the rest later." She glanced up at him, but couldn't hold eye contact for long. "Why didn't you tell me she was in your class?"

He frowned. He supposed this conversation was inevitable, but it still hurt to see his sister so upset. He stepped towards her, placing his hands on her shoulders and bending down to be just slightly below eye level with her. "It wasn't something for me to tell you, and I never talked about it with Marinette. Things are easier for her with us and I wasn't going to pressure her to let me tell you if she wasn't comfortable with it."

"So I messed up?"

"You—" He shook his head. "Jule, there were a lot of things going on in your class. It was just too much for her. You definitely weren't the main reason, okay?"

She let out a neutral sound, acknowledging that he was probably right but still feeling bad anyway.

"Jule..."

"Does she still want to do stuff for Kitty Section?" she asked hopefully.

He knew she wasn't being selfish about it; it was just her way of asking if Marinette was still willing to see her or if any guilt should be had if she didn't.

"I'll ask her." He could promise that much at least. "As soon as it's all behind her, I'll ask."

She nodded, accepting that. He let go of her shoulders as she walked past him, her expression not fully happy and rather conflicted. In a way, he considered it a good thing; Juleka reflecting on why Marinette had left would make her think more about everything that'd happened.

Especially with that liar and all of Marinette's former friends.

Her former...

Realizing something, Luka returned to his bed, leaning over it to retrieve his phone. He navigated back to his conversation with Marinette, checking her most recent messages. After all, if Juleka and Alix knew that Marinette was in his class, that meant that the rest of the girls probably knew as well. He didn't know them well enough to even guess what they wanted to do with that information, but he just had to make sure that Marinette was okay.

There was nothing, not even a bunch of, "I'm sorry! They found out!"s. He sent her a few vague texts asking how she was (not wanting to tell her something important over the phone), but after waiting the usual amount of time for a reply, there was nothing.

...He had to go see her.

He reached for his guitar, but rejected the idea and simply pocketed his phone. Glancing Juleka's way, he told her, "I'm going to check on Marinette," before heading for the doorway.

"Should I come?" Juleka mumble-asked, her voice sounding apologetic, and confused all at once.

He halted, turning to her but holding back his immediate reply. Giving her a smile, he replied, "You thinking about it is already something, Jule. Don't worry about what to do until you're sure what happened."

She went back to quietly staring at her desk, allowing him to slip out of the room and start to head out. Anarka had shouted some comment after him about "braving the storm," but he was too distracted to reply properly.

——————

Tom and Sabine were busy with customers when Luka entered the bakery, meaning that he wouldn't have to brace himself for another hug from Tom. It felt wrong to enter from the side door of the house considering that he wasn't invited, so he was prepared to wait in line to talk to Sabine if he had to.

However, Tom noticed him first. "Ah, Luka! What brings you here?"

A few customers glanced back to look at him. Luka ignored them, focusing on the matter at hand.

"I wanted to see Marinette. But, she didn't invite me, so if—"

"Oh, you can just head on up!" Tom insisted, apparently laughing at the politeness on display. "Just be sure to knock! Don't want to surprise her too much!"

Luka opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. He really just wanted to see Marinette.

He passed by Tom and Sabine, then made his way upstairs. He hadn't been there that often and was always led around when he was, but he knew the layout anyway.

A song where the lyrics stuck in one's head even with just a couple listens, he supposed.

Once he was in the living room, he headed up the stairs and hesitated for a few seconds before knocking. He listened closely, but silence was the only response he got. He didn't know if his voice would be louder than the knock, but he called anyway, "Marinette?"

A sound followed, like Marinette was scrambling to stand up. "Luka?"

He heard footsteps and waited for her to open the door. She looked utterly confused to see him there and he felt a little sheepish at how unbothered she looked in the moment; she was clearly okay, like nothing had happened.

"Hey."

"Hey!" She smiled despite her confusion, gesturing for him to come in if he so wished. "What are you doing here?"

He went into her room, watching her close the trap door behind him. "I thought you'd heard about Juleka. You weren't answering your messages so I got worried."

"Oh!" She covered her mouth. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to—I didn't even hear—" She paused, expression shifting. "W-wait, what about Juleka? Is she okay?"

"She's fine," he reassured. "She... found out about you being in my class. I think all of her friends did too."

Marinette frowned, approaching him anxiously. "Did she get mad at you? I'm sorry, I should've—"

"No." He was quick to correct. "She was mostly confused, that's all."

"...Oh."

Suddenly, all the anxiety left her. She let out a breath, placing a hand to her chest. "That's a relief."

She turned away, returning to the table on the other side of the room. "I hadn't even thought about telling anyone, especially not lately. I didn't even think about it causing problems."

So she hadn't even been worried about anything that happened? Only that it may've caused trouble for him?

Luka blinked, then let out a steady breath. He found himself taken by how much Marinette had changed ever since she'd gotten into his class. It was subtle at first, but now it was obvious that she wasn't as stressed or panicked as much even with the mention of old friends. To say he was happy was an understatement.

"I'm still sorry about not answering your texts though," she said. "I really didn't see them—I mean, I know you know that because they're probably not marked as 'read', but... I got really into working on this and I guess I didn't hear my phone."

He saw her start to reach for an object on her table, but she stopped as her gaze was drawn to her phone. She hesitated, then picked it up, tapping a few things and then typing.

Luka heard his own phone beep at him. Pulling it out, he noticed that his recent messages were now on 'read' and she had replied to them as if they weren't currently in the same room together.

She blushed, explaining sheepishly, "It would've bothered me forever if I didn't reply properly."

He giggled. She was too cute. "Thank you."

She turned her attention back to the object and finally picked it up, letting out a sigh. "I guess it's just like me to accidentally ignore someone while I'm making something for them."

He perked up, approaching her. "You made something for me?"

"Yeah," she admitted, voice only slightly shyer. "It was kind of an excuse to hang out with your friends—"

"Our friends," he offered gently.

She didn't hesitate to "correct" herself, but was clearly touched. "To hang out with our friends one on one, but they all told me the same thing anyway: that I knew you and shouldn't worry about a second opinion. It's actually been done for a while, b-but I might've gotten carried away with making it look as good as possible."

She held it out to him. It looked like a beautiful music-themed notebook at first - the kind with rings to allow the removal, addition, and replacing of pages - but as soon as he took it and opened it up himself, there were—

"Staff lines?" He glanced at her, eyes wide.

She shifted in place, but nodded. "I always noticed you tapping away melodies on your desk. I don't know how easily you remember them, but it seemed like such a waste not to let you get it down right away."

The obvious and appropriate reaction was to thank her, but he found himself at a loss for words. The notebook was extremely beautiful and would simultaneously look so natural for him to have. If a teacher saw him with it, they'd probably presume that he was just using it to take notes.

While opened, the pages actually didn't reach to the left and right edges of the book. The extra space was taken up by things like a pencil holder (that held two pre-sharpened ones just in case apparently) and thin colored sticky notes, presumably for marking a page if he needed to.

It was too much. He couldn't stop feeling the darn thing. He'd gotten a handmade gift from Marinette before in the form on his Kitty Section costume, but this was different. It was something just for him, because she'd just casually thought of him and wanted to do it.

He looked at her and opened his mouth, but couldn't manage eye contact and averted his gaze. He was feeling too many things and looking at her didn't help. He was legitimately worried that he was just going to rush to impulsively kiss her if he stared at her for too long.

"I love it," he said quietly. He was briefly worried that his low volume didn't make it sound sincere, but she was beaming immediately. "Thank you so much, Marinette."

"Thank you," she whispered in return. She stepped closer, her hands coming up to rest upon his. "It's not a thank you gift - I felt like that'd make it seem too obligatory? - but still. You do a lot for me."

"I—"

Her fingers went up to stop him from speaking. She pouted at him. "And I don't want to hear about how you've done nothing and that's it's been all me, or how it's no big deal because you're just being yourself and it's easy to do that because w-whatever nice things you were about to say to me, okay?"

He nodded. His mouth was still covered, but his soft gaze hopefully got through his feelings in the moment.

Her fingers moving away from his lips, she smiled. "I just... feel really lucky to have you and I wanted to make this for you."

"Thank you," he repeated, now less for the book and more just for her. "I'll cherish it."

"I know you will." Though the sentence was confident, her voice was filled with the elated notes of someone whose hopes had been confirmed.

They didn't say anything else for a moment. He was still on an emotional high while Marinette seemed thoughtful.

Her eyes went to him, then his hands. One of her hands was still over his own, her fingers sliding steadily along the back of said hand. Her lips pursed, one brow lowered as she seemed to consider something.

"...Luka—"

"Dinner's almost ready!"

The trap door swung open, Marinette leaping up and clutching her chest in shock as Tom and Sabine popped in. Luka knew they hadn't been doing anything strange, but the moment itself felt so intimate that he stiffened, almost embarrassed.

"Oh! Luka?" Tom asked. "You're still here? We must've forgotten about you!"

"Sorry if we startled you at all," Sabine said, completely and deceptively innocent. "Would you like to join us for dinner, as an apology?"

Calming himself, Luka carefully closed the book and hugged it to his chest with one arm. It seemed rude to refuse their offer - they were so obviously doing this on purpose - but he wasn't just going to agree either.

He turned to Marinette, about to ask if it'd be okay, only to be surprised when she seemed less horrified by their intrusion and more... offended? Her face was turned away, her cheeks were pink, and she was pouting.

Leaning in, he whispered so as not to be heard by her parents. "Marinette?"

She met his gaze, pouting more and nearly sulking. Under her breath, she replied with a huff, "T-that... that's what I was going to ask ."

He gaped, then couldn't help breaking into a happy flustered chuckle. This entire family was going to kill him and he welcomed it.

Standing straight, Luka walked past Marinette to place his gift on the table, then turned to Tom and Sabine with a smile.

"I'd be happy to."

[Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10]

#multi chapter: Grade for Each Other

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snowdice · 3 years

Text

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 34]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Just going to be casually researching today since I finally have my head above water when it comes to school! Yay!

Chapter 13

The room stopped shaking after a moment. “Ow,” Pat said. He seemed a bit stunned but was still moving at least. He carefully maneuvered himself into a seating position. “Ouch. Owie.” He reached up to poke his own nose. “Ow!” Janus slapped his hand away when he got there. A bit of blood was already trickling from his nose and there was a small cut over his eye, but it wasn’t bleeding too much.

Janus pushed him so he was leaning slightly forward and produced a pack of time appropriate tissues from his pocket. He pulled one out of the package and offered it to him.

He took it and pressed it up against his nose to try to stop the bleeding. He seemed mostly alright though Janus imagined he’d have plenty of bruises down the line. The power in the museum flickered and Janus looked up. Now that he was listening, he could hear people panicking in and out of the museum.

“We should probably get off of the stairs,” he suggested.

“Yeah,” Pat agreed. Janus helped him to his feet, and they climbed back up the steps. Janus looked around and found an employees only sign a few feet away. Usually he’d not risk that as it could get him into trouble he didn’t want to be in, but considering the earthquake that had just happened, he could probably play it off as panic.

He ushered Pat into a small room and found a chair and table. He had Pat sit in the chair and pulled out another one of the tissues to dab at the blood coming from the cut over his eyes. “Here,” he said. “Hold that there. I’m going to go see if there are any bandages about.”

Pat took the tissue with the hand not already holding one to his nose. “Thanks,” he said.

Janus nodded and got to his feet. The lights flickered once again but didn’t stay off for now. He didn’t know how long that would last.

He couldn’t see anything that might hold bandages in this room, but there was a second door. “I’ll be right back,” he told Pat, exiting through it.

The lights flickered once more as the door closed behind him and he cursed. When they came back up Janus’s eyes immediately fell on a man. They both froze.

“Remus!” Janus hissed the second their eyes met. “What are you doing here?”

Remus blinked at him for a moment. “Hi. Janus,” he said. “I… come to France for… tea sometimes?”

“There isn’t any tea back here.”

“So, there isn’t…” he said. There was a moment of silence. “Uh, so I actually cannot talk to you right now.”

“What do you mean?” Janus asked. Remus grimaced in a way Janus had never seen from him before. It immediately set off alarm bells in Janus’s head. “Oh my god,” Janus said. “Oh my god. You’re not from the same time as me.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Remus mumbled.

“Holy shit, you’re looping?!”

“It’s… not looping if I wasn’t here the first time.”

“Remus, we spend more than 12 hours a day together most of the time. The only thing worse than this is if I looped back to this time myself.”

“…Yeah. Anyway, I need to leave now.”

“Please do.”

He turned to go, but then stopped. “Oh, and,” he reached into his pocket and tossed something at Janus. Janus caught it.

It was Band-Aids.

“Oh, shit,” Janus spat at the clear use of foreknowledge. “I hate this. I hate you. I’m going to kill you the next time you see me.”

“Sure, Jan.”

“Go.”

He did, slipping into the next room while Janus took a deep breath and then turned back to the door behind him. He schooled his face before Pat looked up. “I found some Band-Aids.”

Pat nodded and Janus came over to squat next to him.

Janus opened the box and Pat looked down. His eyes lit up with sudden joy so intense that Janus felt like he’d just gotten a punch to the gut. “Kitty Band-Aids!” he exclaimed. Janus bothered to actually look at the design on the container, only to note the cartoon cats on the front. Pat was almost vibrating off his seat. “Look they’re all so cute!” He grabbed the container from him to inspect the different designs printed on the back with glee even as a bit of blood was still trickling from his nose.

Janus took the box back gently and guided the wad of bloody Kleenexes back to his nose.

“Which would you like?” Janus asked.

“Oh, they are all so cute,” Pat cooed. “Um, how about that one!” he pointed. “Or that one! Or that one!”

“Pat you only have one cut.”

“But they’re all so cute!” Pat said, tongue tucking into his cheek. He contemplated the box again. “Let’s do the black one,” he finally settled on.

Janus selected one of the Band-Aids with a black cat wrapped around a pink ball of yarn and staring back at them with wide green eyes. The think looked like it had partaken in one two many doses of catnip, but Janus didn’t mention that.

Instead, he just carefully unstuck the backing from the Band-Aid and motioned for Pat to remove the tissue from his forehead. He smiled at Janus as he drew back.

Janus cleared his throat. “How’s the nose.”

“It’s slowing down,” Pat replied. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Janus replied. They met eyes for a second before Pat looked away back at the box of Band-Aids.

“Oh,” Pat said. “There’s a grey one. I didn’t notice.” He pointed to it. “I should have used that one.”

“Do you like grey cats?” Janus asked.

“I like all kitties,” he said, “but one of my roommates loves grey cats. He had one when he was a kid and thinks of them as good omens. Seeing one always brightens up his day.”

“A friend of mine has a grey cat,” Janus said. “She’s much more tolerable than him.”

Pat laughed a bit. “Don’t be mean,” he said.

“Oh, he deserves it, don’t worry.” Janus considered him for a moment. “Here,” he said, pulling out one of the Band-Aids with the grey cat on it. It did, actually, look a lot like Diesel Fuel.

“But I don’t…”

Janus just shrugged and stuck it on his cheek where there was no wound. Pat giggled and touched it with a finger. Janus stood back up.

“Can I have another tissue?” Pat asked.

“Sure.” Janus handed a tissue over to him and he crumpled up the bloody ones in his hand.

“I think I’m good to keep going,” Pat said, putting the new tissue under his nose. “The nose will stop soon.”

Pat got out his iPhone and directed him back out of the room. They checked the second floor and didn’t find anything and so went to the third floor. The second they arrived in the room that Pat’s phone was directing them too, Janus knew that it must be right. There was a strange, distorted whirling sound and the entire room was shaking slightly like they were standing next to a railroad track.

“I’m guessing this is it,” Pat said.

Janus nodded and looked over his shoulder at the screen. They both cautiously walked towards where the little dot was on the phone.

“Is that it?” Pat asked, pointing at a small device on the center column in the room. Janus reached forward to flip the switch on it. The whirling stopped and the room settled. Janus’s time piece vibrated as it came back online. They waited for a few moments. “I assumed… time distortions would be more…”

“They are,” Janus said. “This one is artificial.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a simulation,” Janus said. “It causes similar symptoms to a time distortion, but it’s not actually fracturing time at all.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Pat asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said. He took the piece of tech of the wall and carefully stored it in his pocket, “but someone’s trying to get our attention.”

Chapter 14

Janus didn’t feel comfortable leaving France 2027 just yet, still weirded out by the strange turn of events. So, he and Pat ended up sticking around for a couple of hours. They looked through the art museum for a bit, but Janus was having trouble focusing on the pieces, and Pat eventually suggested they get some air. Janus agreed considering the museum would close for the night soon anyway.

They wandered around the downtown for a bit. The people seemed to jump back from the strange weather and earthquake that afternoon rather quickly, and there were plenty still about to blend into.

Pat was snapping photos every so often like a tourist which Janus shook his head at but allowed because even with the outdated phone it almost made them blend in even more. It also might stop any questions about Pat’s weird way of speaking French. They could just say he was an overeager tourist who watched too many old movies.

“Ooo!” Pat said. “We should get crepes.”

“Why?”

“You can’t go to France and not eat crepes.”

“I assure you, you can,” Janus said dryly.

Pat shot a pout at him and the next thing he knew he was in a small crepe shop.

For Janus, choosing something was easy. He just ordered the first thing he found on the menu which seemed to be a standard one with ham and eggs. Pat on the other hand seemed to be struggling greatly, and Janus had to gently push him to the side to let some other customers order first.

“What should I get!?” Pat asked. “They all look so good! I could do strawberry preserves or maple syrup or just sugar!”

“Or you could get one that is actually food,” Janus suggested mildly. “I don’t think you need any more sugar judging by how you are acting.”

Pat rolled his eyes. “You sound like Lo.”

Janus made a note of the name ‘Lo’ even though it surely was a nickname.

“But, since you’re insisting, I’ll get something healthy. I’ll have the strawberry one. That’s a fruit!”

“It comes with a cream cheese filling,” Janus pointed out.

“And it’s fruit!”

Janus shook his head and stepped up to the counter. “One ham and cheese and one strawberry preserve, please,” he said to the cashier as he was not allowing Pat to order in French and accidently say something stupid. He forked over some euros.

“You don’t have to pay for me,” Pat protested when he saw that.

Janus glanced back at him. “I was afraid you’d try to pay in francs,” he said dryly.

It looked like Pat was about to stick his tongue out at him, remembered that Janus had criticized him for that earlier, and then just scrunched up his face in displeasure as though that was any less childish.

They waited for their crepes to be finished and then went to eat them outside near a water fountain.

“I can pay you back for the crepe,” Pat said after they sat down. “I do actually have euros.”

Janus waved him off. “It wasn’t that expensive.”

Pat hummed. “Well, in that case. I insist on paying for a wish for you.” Janus raised an eyebrow. “In the fountain!” Pat clarified.

Pat set aside his crepe to dig in his pocket for a couple of coins. “Here!” he said handing one over.

Janus glanced over at the fountain. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” Pat beseeched. “You have to want something. I’ll even throw it in for you, but you have to make a wish first!”

“No.”

“Please!”

Janus sighed. “Fine.” He popped the rest of his crepe in his mouth. “I wish for a crepe,” he said after swallowing.

“You just had a crepe, silly.”

“But I liked it, so I want another one.”

“We can go back and get you another crepe.”

“Ah, but I’m not hungry anymore.”

Pat crossed his arms. “You’re just being difficult on purpose.”

“Not me,” Janus said putting hand over his heart. “I would never do something like that.”

Pat glared at him, but then snatched the coin out of his hand. “Fine!” he said. “One crepe wish coming right up.” He hopped up with the two coins and darted over to the water fountain. Janus turned to watch him go but then happened to catch sight of something out of the corner of his eyes.

Pat’s phone.

He didn’t pause in his movement, completing the turn, but as he watched Pat close his eyes, presumably to focus on his own wish, Janus snuck a hand out and grabbed the phone without looking. He slipped it into his own pocket.

Pat came back over after throwing both coins in the fountain and didn’t even seem to notice that his phone was missing, picking up his crepe to take another bite. Just to make sure, though Janus decided to distract him. “What do you think of your crepe?” Janus asked.

“I like it! It’s sweet, but not too sweet. There was a crepe place across the street from my apartment in college, but they always put a bit too much sugar in the dough, I think. I’d still eat them, but these are much better.”

Janus nodded and kept up the light conversation until Pat was finished.

21088

“Well,” he said then, getting to his feet. “It seems that nothing else is going to happen regarding the time distortion. I should be getting back.”

Pat hummed. “I should too. It’s movie night!”

“I probably should arrest you,” Janus noted.

“In the middle of all of these people?” Pat asked mildly.

“Touché,” Janus said.

Pat gasped and pointed at him. “Pun!” he said. Janus blinked at him. “Because we’re in France! That’s French!”

“…Goodbye Pat,” Janus said, turning to walk away from him.

“Goodbye… wait I still don’t know your name!”

Janus stopped to look back at him for a moment. “Like I said,” he replied. “Elvis.”

“Fine,” Pat said. “Au revoir, mon chéri.”

“You never stop, do you?” Janus asked.

Pat giggled. “Considering I don’t know what you mean, I imagine I’m just getting started.”

Janus actually left then, walking off towards the alley he’d first arrived in. In some ways, the mission had been a bust, but in others it had gone very well.

He felt for the weight of the phone in his pocket before pulling up the display screen on his timepiece to go back to the TPI.

It had gone very well indeed.

Chapter 15

The first thing Janus had done when he’d returned to the TPI was hand over the timebomb to Khalid who sent it to forensics. Within the hour, forensics got back to them that it was the same timebomb as 2999 and that it had never exploded, but simply been diffused. Which meant, blessings on blessings, everyone got to go home that night.

Not that Janus went home, no, he ended up falling asleep on his desk somewhere between 3 and 4am, but at least he wasn’t sharing his space with anyone. He’d been trying to hack the cell phone all night to see if it had anything he could use, but he honestly had no idea what he was doing. All it seemed he could do was play some annoying song over and over again about never giving someone up. At around 2am, he’d finally broken and sent off an email, though, he’d continued to try to mess with it after that.

He got woken up by Lena coming into the office at 7am, and noticed he already had an email response asking when Janus wanted to come in.

“Now?” he sent back.

“…Do you sleep?” was the immediate response. “And yes.”

His wrist buzzed as an appointment in 5 seconds downloaded to his timepiece. He selected the coordinates and landed at Cultural Outreach. The receptionist blinked up at him and then back down at the screen on his desk. “Oh!” he said. “I didn’t see this appointment. I think Professor Eran is in his office.”

He didn’t stand to escort Janus this time, so Janus went ahead and went down the hall to Virgil’s office himself.

He knocked on the door and while he was waiting for Virgil to open it, the infernal contraption once again started to play the same stupid song.

“I didn’t even touch you!” he spat, getting it out and tapping on the screen.

“Jonas Brothers dude again?” Virgil asked causally upon opening the door.

Janus shoved it at him. “Make it stop.”

Virgil took it and fiddled with it for a few moments before it stopped with the song. “Oh my gosh,” he said scrolling through something on the screen.

“What.”

“What maniac sets a custom alarm for every 30-60 minutes for a week that just plays ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’? Oh, and one ‘It’s Not Unusual’ on Saturday. He’s mixing memes at an alarming rate.”

“Can you. Just. Make it not happen. Anymore?”

Virgil smirked at him. “Maybe.” He turned around to go back into his office.

“Virgil,” Janus growled following him in.

Virgil just laughed. “What do you want to know about it?” he asked. “Just a fair warning… the song means he… likely was aware someone would steal it.”

“Of course, he was,” Janus groaned.

“But I’m sure we can still get something out of it.” Virgil started tapping at the screen again. “Okay, let’s see. It’s an iPhone 5, and someone jailbroke it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Tampered with it so they could install non-company approved software,” Virgil explained.

“Well I figured that since he was using Google Maps to track time distortions,” Janus grumbled.

“I think I have something,” Virgil said to himself while digging through his desk. “Ah ha!” He held up some sort of cord. “This will let me hook it up to my integrator.” He slotted the cord into the bottom of the iPhone and then crawled under his desk to fiddle around with some other things. “There we go,” Virgil said popping back up. “It might take a few minutes. Running the program any faster might overheat the phone.”

Janus nodded and sat back to wait. Virgil grabbed the phone and started to play around with it a bit even as it uploaded all of its information to his computer.

“Weird,” Virgil said after a moment.

“What?” Janus asked, sitting up straighter.

“There are exactly two contacts. Fewer than I’d anticipate for a regular phone from the 2010s. More than I would expect from one clearly not being used as a phone.

Virgil glanced to the side, and it must have finished the download because he unhooked it from the computer. “I have a 21st century phone network adapter,” Virgil said. “It transfers call back to whatever date the phone says. Do you want to try calling one?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Janus replied.

Virgil dug back into his desk for a small device that he plugged into the same port he’d plugged the earlier cord. “Okay, which contact do you want to try first?” he asked. “One has ‘Ro’ with a crown, red heart, and a gold star emoji. The other has “Lo” with a book, blue heart, and Milky Way emoji.”

“He mentioned a Lo,” Janus said. “So, try him first.”

Virgil nodded. “I’ll put it on speaker.” He pressed some buttons before setting the phone on the desk between them.

The phone rang three times before with a bit of a crackle, it was answered. “Salutations,” a voice said, voice sounding a bit scratchy as though he had only just gotten up.

Virgil motioned with his head for Janus to speak. “Are you ‘Lo’?” he asked.

The man hummed. “To some people.”

Janus… didn’t quite know what to say to that, or even what questions he should ask.

“I’m assuming you’re the man that stole my associate’s phone.”

“Your associate?” Janus fished.

The man made an amused hum. “I believe you were calling him ‘Pat’ on your last adventure.” Janus could hear something being placed down on the other end of the phone. Before Janus could respond, he heard what sounded like an old keyboard being typed on. “Now,” Lo said. “I have to admit, I am surprised you were willing to oblige me so thoroughly by plugging the phone into your system. Let’s see…”

The screen on Virgil’s lit up bright blue all of a sudden. “…shit,” said Virgil.

“Well,” Lo said, “it seems you were clever enough not to plug it into the TPI system, which is disappointing, but…”

There was more clicking on the other end. “Hmm, interesting music tastes for the 4000s,” he said.

“I’m an anthropologist,” Virgil spoke up.

“Ah, yes, I can see that,” Lo replied. “Virgil Eran, senior professor at Silver Mountain University, a vetted member of the Cultural Outreach program, and searched the phrase ‘How to eat sushi without making a cultural blunder and making everyone hate you and losing your job because what kind of shit anthropologist doesn’t know how to eat raw fish right’ which you then shortened to ‘How to eat sushi’ and proceeded to search 52 times in the last 48 hours.”

Virgil went a bit scarlet around the ears. “Dude, did you really have to out me like that?” he hissed at the phone.

“My apologies,” Lo responded. “From my personal experience, don’t dip the rice parts in soy sauce, and don’t add too much wasabi. Overall, most people will be understanding of mistakes, and you will certainly not be fired or ostracized for handling food incorrectly. As long as you are not acting intentionally disrespectful, and I image you will not be considering your clear anxiety over whatever outing you are planning to attend, you will be fine.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Good point, but counterpoint, what if you’re wrong and everyone hates me forever?”

“Is it the lunch meeting today at 11:30am?” Lo asked, “because I can see that a Professor Boris Laden has attended the event multiple years in a row. Considering he is a philosophy instructor, has no Japanese heritage that I can see, and I have found a photo of last year’s event wherein he has placed his chopsticks vertically in his rice, and he has yet to be fired or ostracized, I would postulate that your fears are unfounded.”

“Yeah but… okay, I really don’t have an argument for that one, except maybe I’m a piece of shit and everyone is looking for a reason to hate me.”

“Considering your many impressive accolades in your field, I would argue that ‘a piece of shit’ is not a good descriptor of you. Not to mention the fact that you are often a highly requested member for different committees in your department and outside of it.”

“Oh, but is that because people like me or because I’m an anxious mess and make sure events go off without a hitch?”

“From experience, disorder with people you enjoy the company of is far more tolerable than order with people you do not. Which explains my current living situation and the lack of finished dishes in my sink. Therefore, I would assume the former.”

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“A lot of assumptions,” Virgil commented, but he was smiling slightly.

“Assumptions based on data,” Lo argued back lightly.

“You really came in here, hacked into my computer and smacked my anxiety in the face, huh?”

“Glad to have helped.”

“Y-”

“Are the two of you finished?” Janus interrupted, finally getting sick of the two of them.

“Not nearly,” Lo said. “I have gained access to an entire network of a very large university and will be sorting through the data for a long time.”

“Ugh, right,” Virgil groaned, “and you got access through my integrator.”

“I doubt they’ll be able to trace it back to you if you don’t tell them.”

“Nice try,” Virgil said dryly, “but not likely. I’m telling them about you immediately so they can work to kick you out.”

Lo laughed. “Fair enough, but I’ve already gotten plenty of information at this point. Including the fact that you work with the TPI and scheduled an appointment with an Agent Janus Picani this morning set to start a few minutes before this phone call. So, hello Janus.”

“Bastard,” Janus shot back.

“And goodbye Professor Eran. It was a pleasure.” He hung up.

Virgil sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “This is going to be fun to explain to both of our bosses.”

Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

“Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

“…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

“We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

“He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

“So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

“Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

“Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

“Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

“What?” asked Pat.

“Either I put on the wrong jewelry this morning… or my timepiece isn’t working.”

“Well, then I’m guessing we’re in the right place,” Janus said. He turned to Pat. “Your stuff still working?”

Pat brought up whatever device was on his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like something is just starting.” Just as he said it, there was a violent crash of thunder.

“Well,” Janus said. “We should probably find the source and soon. Which way?”

Patton glanced around himself and then motioned with his wrist. Suddenly there was a 3D display of the church in front of them.

Janus could see immediately where the problem had to originate. There was a swirling mass of some sort of energy centered at the top of the bell tower of the church. As he watched, he saw the picture of the church glitch out a bit. He had a bad feeling about that.

“Is there something wrong with your display?” he asked, or more hoped.

Pat shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so…” The room seemed to shift suddenly underneath their feet. It felt a bit like time travel, but also wrong. The picture on the display flickered harder, part of the building fracturing and dissolving before appearing back in place. The room settled after a moment, but Janus’s stomach did not.

“Whatever is going on,” Janus said, “We need to stop it right now.”

Pat nodded. “The quickest way up would be that way,” Pat said pointing. The display closed as he did.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

The world was eerily calm as they all started off in the direction Patton had pointed out. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

“Where’s the nearest window?” Janus asked when they came out on the second floor.

Pat glanced at his hand. “There should be a couple a few feet that way.” Janus nodded and left them standing there. When he glanced out of the first window he came to, it appeared to be night. Yet, when he walked to the next window, he saw daylight.

26606

“Time is fracturing,” Janus informed them. “We need to be careful.” This time distortion was much more intense than any of the other ones the agency had been tracking down over the last few months. It had also come on much faster. Usually there was some time between when the time distortion began and it started having extreme effects on the environment. He was suddenly very glad that he and Remus had not split up today. He was even glad for Pat’s company, no matter how aggravating he may be sometimes. Not to mention, he was glad for the man’s technology that seemed to circumvent whatever was blocking Janus and Remus’s timepieces.

He backed away from the windows and returned to the others.

“Whatever you do,” Janus said. “Don’t let anyone be in a room alone.”

“I know what time fractures are this time,” Pat promised.

“It was as much for the idiot as it was for you,” Janus said.

“You accidently bring a bubonic plague infested rat to 900BC one time and you never live it down.”

“I’d say I should put a leash on you, but you’d twist it into something disgusting.”

“Probably,” Remus agreed.

“Where next?” Janus asked, ignoring him.

“That way,” Pat said.

They walked together to the door he’d indicated. “Please don’t be bullshit,” Janus prayed. He opened the door and immediately got bowled over by a stream of salt water.

#not writing #study break stories

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animegenork · 3 years

Text

Sorry to interrupt regularly scheduled ignoring my random, but I wanted to put these somewhere, so I figured I’d put him here on my blog!

Basically, I wrote these short drabbles for each LI from @andromeda-six some number of months ago (I have no idea what time is anymore, but I think this was in July), around the time when Episode 4 was still blowing my mind. I did it as a sort of comfort thing and to do something nice for some friends, but I actually kinda liked them? So I figured I’d share, if that’s okay... If not you can just unfollow me like a bunch of people have been doing LMAO

All below the cut! :D

For my fellow Damon stans

If Calderon Hadn’t Cockblocked in the DLC

"Yeah..." he says. "Stunning."

I realize he's not talking about the fireflies anymore as I turn my head to see him staring at me. My body starts to hum with the attention he's giving me; of course, he's looked at me before, but something about this is... different.

"Traveler," he murmurs, his voice quieter than I've ever heard it. He's not one to be quiet, I realize. It's either silence or full volume with this one.

My breath stops in my throat as his hand lightly touches my chin, as he has many times before. As he leans closer, I feel the logical part of my brain trying to push me away. He's bad news, it says. You shouldn't get involved.

Screw logic.

His lips touch mine, and I feel something inside me melt. It's like he's some sort of poison, tearing me apart from the inside out. But somehow, that's good in this case. I decide I like poisons named Damon.

Briefly, he pulls away, searching my eyes for any signs of protest, though I can't imagine ANYONE'S ever protested a kiss from him. Except maybe Calderon.

"Was that stunning?" I nearly choke out, and the smirk that creeps up his face makes the stupid joke worth it.

"In a way," he replies, leaning in to kiss me again.

I should volunteer to do the laundry more often.

------

For the Bash-ers (wait no that sounded wrong WHAT I MEANT WAS--)

Stars

Bash is waiting for me outside my room. He's in the process of hanging up one of his outrageous doodles, but he smiles despite being caught in action. "Sleep well?"

"Ehhh," I reply, though my nonchalance is definitely offset by the dark circles under my eyes. It's hard to sleep when you have the weight of a galaxy resting on your shoulders.

He studies my face for a moment before grinning. "Alright, come on."

Grabbing my hand, he drags me through the hallway to the loading bay, until I can see the stars out the window, like I did the first day I woke up on the Six. A smile lifts the corners of my lips. The stars, as always, bring some sense of comfort to me. Looking at them, it's like there's nothing that could bother me.

I smile up at Bash. "Thanks, Bash."

"Oh, come on." I look up at him quizzically, and he wraps his arms around me, lifts me off the ground, and spins me around. "SMILE WIDER!" he practically screams, and I laugh at how weird he's being about something as simple as a smile. But that's Bash, I suppose. That's just the way he is.

He stops spinning me and looks up at me with his gleaming green eye and glinting yellow one. This time, my smile is more genuine. "Thank you."

Setting me down gently, he kisses me on the forehead, which surprises me and delights me all at once. "Anytime, Traveler."

It takes all my willpower not to melt to the floor in a puddle as I blush myself silly.

------

Now Juuuuuuune (baby boy)

Hold My Hand

At first, I was just determined to meet June's lizard. Then, I find him in one of the storage closets, frowning at the wall as if it had just insulted him. "June?"

He doesn't answer, not at first. Then, slowly, he turns, and from the haunted look in his eye, I can tell he was just in a dark place. That wasn't this closet, that is.

"Traveler," he says hoarsely. He steps out of the closet and closes the door behind him, leaning heavily against it. "What's up?"

I can't possibly ask him about his lizard right now. "I, uh... just wanted to say hi."

June manages a weak grin. "Hi."

"Hi." We're silent then, and I see that something is still weighing on him. So I do something a bit drastic.

I hold out my hand. "Hold my hand, June."

"What?" He shoots me a questioning look, but, seeing the look on my face, he obliges and gives me his hand. Unsurprisingly, it's a bit calloused and rough, and a part of me just wants to hold it there and pretend time isn't passing around us.

But no, this isn't about me. This is about June. He's hurting, and I want him to feel better. It's not right for such a sweet man to be hurting this much.

I lift his hand to my lips and kiss his palm gently. Then, I close his fingers over his own hand and look up at him. "If you need someone to talk to, I'm here, June."

A light blush is spreading across his cheeks, but his weak smile softens as he murmurs, "Thanks, Traveler."

He wraps his arms around me in a hug, and I embrace him back. Sometimes, we all need to remember that we're not alone in this fucked-up universe.

------

For Cal-ers? (Was that funny? No? Okay I thought so)

Lynch the Cal-y Cat

Pushing Calderon's buttons shouldn't have been as amusing as it was, and yet, it continued to amuse me. Perhaps Damon and Aya were rubbing off on me too much, or perhaps a part of me had always been this mischievous.

I wasn't quite sure what possessed me to do it, but I acquired a pair of cat ears, yellow, like his hair, and I was trying to sneak them onto his head without his noticing. As I tiptoe up behind him, I realize with a sudden clarity that there is no one else around, and so, he is that much more likely to hear me coming. Dammit.

And indeed, he turns around before I succeed, a scowl upon his face. I have a split second lead on him, so I slip the cat ears on his head before he can protest.

"What the hell?" he grumbles, rolling his eyes up, as if he can see the top of his head by doing so.

I start laughing uncontrollably, doubling over and practically not breathing anymore. He watches me enjoy his annoyance with a dark expression on his face. Even if he's pissed, the sight of him with kitty ears is priceless.

After a few moments, his face softens into a more neutral expression. I glance up at him, still shaking with the force of my laughter, and ask, "Cat got your tongue?" I bite my lip before I start rolling on the floor.

"You're smiling."

What? "Huh?"

Calderon looks away, as if saying something like this was a nuisance. "You're not moping around anymore. It's good to see you out and about."

Had he been WORRIED about me? Well, that was all sorts of embarrassing. "Uh, yeah, um, thanks, I guess...?"

He gives me a curt nod and continues down the hallway. "Oh, and Traveler?" I turn and raise my eyebrows at him. There's mischief gleaming in his eyes, and I'm not sure what to think about it.

"Be prepared for my payback." And then he leaves.

Oh, man. Why does that make me smile wider than I was about the cat ears?

------

Now for Aya <3

So About That Pole...

It's weird to consistently think of a sorta-sexy pole dance a friend of yours did just for fun, right? Right.

But I was undoubtedly thinking about that pole dance all the time, and I knew I wouldn't be able to look Aya in the eye until I'd had some semblance of a normal conversation with her again.

So when she surprises me at my room, I think perhaps karma or something is out to get me.

"Traveler! So Bash and I are planning this latest prank-" she begins, and then she sees that a blush is spreading over my face. "Are you sick? Should I take you to Ryona?" She puts her hand on my forehead, and I can't believe I haven't completely lost my shit yet.

That pole dance is on fucking repeat.

"You were saying?" I grit out, ignoring my clammy hands.

Aya cocks an eyebrow. "Oh no, you're not getting out that easily." She leans forward and rests her forehead against mine, and I stare, wide-eyed, into her eyes. Such proximity is really not good for my heart, considering how much I've been thinking about her.

Finally, she narrows her eyes. "Wait. What are you thinking about?" I don't answer, and she starts to grin. "Don't tell me after that dance, you've fallen for me?"

I blush.

She laughs, lacing her fingers with mine. "I'm flattered, Traveler. I'm sorry I didn't prepare you for that." With a kind smile, she winks at me. "But hey, lemme know if you want a repeat show."

Of course, my language skills return at that moment. "I just like that you were having so much fun."

Aya's eyes glitter with some emotion I can't read, and she leans in and whispers:

"Good. Because I have fun when I'm with you."

It's a miracle I don't drop dead on the spot.

------

Ryona, darling heart

Kiss to Make It Better?

I walk around the infirmary, marveling at all the plants Ryona has placed around the room. They really do give the room a homey touch, much better than I assume most infirmaries must look. At least, my perception of them has been anything but this.

Behind me, the door opens, and I turn to find Ryona, eyebrows raised. "Traveler? What's wrong?"

Now was my chance. I hold up my finger. "I got a bad cut."

Silence.

Ryona starts to chuckle, and I grin awkwardly as she comes over and inspects the cut. "How did this happen?"

"I was practicing with the knife Damon gave me--"

"Say no more."

Okay, good, cuz there was no way I'd admit to Ryona that I kinda-sorta did it on purpose.

But of course, she somehow knew anyway. "You didn't do this to yourself on purpose, did you?" She looks up from the cut to my face, raising a stern eyebrow and pursing her lips. I swallow. How is she so good at that?

So I tell the truth. "I wanted to see you." Wait, shit, I didn't mean to be so blunt about it--

Her chuckle returns as she begins wrapping a bandage around the cut. I watch her nimble fingers work, fascinated by how efficient they are when I can barely do any similar activity without messing up at least once. Which is why I thought it would be believable that I hadn't done this on purpose.

When she's done, Ryona smiles at me. "Need anything else?"

It's childish, but surely she won't mind...? "Maybe a kiss will make it better?"

Ryona's blue skin flickers a bit as a reddish tinge spreads across her cheeks. Nevertheless, she lightly kisses my bandaged finger, and I grin triumphantly. "Does it feel better now?" she asks tightly, as if she's trying not to melt in a puddle like my heart already has.

"Yes. Thanks, Ry," I whisper, leaning forward and resting my forehead against hers. We smile at each other. At my side, my finger tingles.

------

And now we have reached Vexx-point! (Was... was that a pun? I don’t know...)

Don’t Worry, I’ll Save You

It's hard to watch someone you love suffer, even if that someone broke your heart not too long ago.

Maybe it was pointless for me to keep my hopes up when it came to Vexx, but I knew, from the moment he told me he hadn't cared, that something was up. Even if it had been all an act, I knew that what we had was something, and it certainly wasn't nothing.

So as I sit here, watching him sleep fitfully in the room where we're keeping him prisoner, I can't help but wonder what that manic look in his eye is all about. What did Zovack do to him? How can I fix it?

Suddenly, Vexx's face crumples into a forlorn expression, and I can't just sit by him anymore. I scoot over to him and put his head in my lap, stroking his red hair. Then, a thought occurs to me, and I take out my music box and open it, letting its lullaby soothe Vexx, even in the midst of his nightmares.

I can't help myself; I lean down and gently kiss his forehead, knowing he won't remember it when he wakes up. "Don't worry, Vexx. I'll save you. I promise."

Though he can't hear me, his lips turn up slightly in a smile, and I have a feeling his bad dreams have shifted to something better.

It's up to me to make that a reality for him.

-------

Wow I forgot how short that last one was, I’m a bit embarrassed ;w;

But anyway, if you read these, thank you for the taking the time! <3

#andromeda six #a6 #a6 damon #a6 bash #a6 june #a6 calderon #a6 ayame #a6 ryona #a6 vexx #a6 drabbles #i had fun with these while i wrote them #visiting them again was really fun too <3 <3 #can't wait for episode 5 so my mind can be blown all over again!!!

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solecize · 4 years

Text

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘. the boy you meet in detention, felix, doesn’t see colours. you want to gift his eyes with the kaleidoscopes and the rainbows of your world. the palette of your love story is supposed to bring together a work of art, but calamity lies beneath the canvas. 𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆. felix x reader 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒. swearing 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓. 4.8k 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒. do i actually ever proofread anything that i write? also yes this is really late oops anyways i’d appreciate any and all feedback, comments, speculations, etc. i just wanna hear that u guys are actually enjoying this <3 pls and thank you

ORANGE. | PART II - “THE BEACH”

you lived that sweltering summer to the tune of jim morrison and the taste of ocean breeze kissing the tip of your tongue. those moments played back at the back of your mind like a film reel, the rainbows and glimmering lights of it all with felix. before that, though, a dark shadow loomed over and stood firmly in your way. the first challenge you were forced to tackle before embracing your newfound freedom, was tackling graduation.

everyone hated graduation, save for their own few moments of spotlight, before they were rushed off the stage and reduced to trying to not doze off for the rest of the ceremony. it was an event for the parents of said graduate, rather that the newly finished student themselves. maybe that’s why some people made such a big deal out of prom, claiming it as “their night” and the “pinnacle of youth” or whatever other bullshit your classmates wanted to spew out in order to convince themselves that spending hundreds of dollars on one night was reasonable. obviously, you had skipped. that also meant that today really was a true goodbye to the last four years of pure lunacy.

“don’t you want to take pictures with your friends?” your mom had asked, after you finished posing for what seemed like an hour for pictures at the front of the school.

a myriad of graduates and their families teemed along the sidewalks and the parking lot and even just a few feet away from yourself at the entranceway. there were the mandatory pictures with the parents, maybe some with a favourite teacher, as kids held up their awards and flowers with stretched grins plastered upon their faces. you weren’t one of them, though you did get one decent award and a bouquet of forget me nots to show for it.

you shrugged. “nah. it’s okay.” at that, your mom proceeded to shrug and was distracted momentarily by a fellow pta mom, as they engaged in conversation about the terrible speeches that they were forced to sit through.

the four or so people consisting of people you once considered your “group” were taking pictures in the other direction, doing the stupid jumping in the air pose, as one of their boyfriends was dragged into capturing the moment on someone’s hello kitty cased iphone. you rolled your eyes at the sight. they were crying, something about how they were going to be friends forever.

“what a bunch of saps.”

whirling around, the one thing that wasn’t forced that day was the bright smile tugging at the corners of your lips upon the sight of felix. the chances of finding him before the ceremony were slim, as you had overslept and were basically heaved and yanked and hauled into your parents’ minivan to make it to the graduation. when you finally met once again, your heart began to stumble and leap.

even despite finding the entire occasion a snooze, you felt a little bad about sleeping right after you were handed your diploma. you missed felix crossing the stage and receiving his own. however, no such disappointment shone in his eyes, which were smiling at you.

you snorted in response. “tell me about it.”

giving him a once over, felix looked. . .good. you never saw him outside of school and thus, never saw him outside of the ugly polyester uniform that he had no intention of actually wearing properly. he’d abandoned his cap and gown at some point, just left in a grey button up and black slacks. his over the ear headphones still hung around his neck.

“congratulations,” felix said, shyly shoving his hands into his pockets.

you couldn’t help but smile wider. “same to you.”

the two of you had yet to cross paths again since that day in detention. it was almost as if he’d begun skipping class as much as you begun to do so towards the end of the year. maybe a little part of you tried looking for him—you weren’t going to ever admit that—when you poked your head inside the detention room some days hoping to see him or lingered around paradise ice cream a little too long.

but, you didn’t see him. felix came and went as he pleased, like a ghost. nothing was haunting about that smile, though, as you melted a bit under the sun because of it. you’d never met someone so genuine.

felix leaned against the wall, peering over at the crowd forming in the parking lot. “you’re not going to that beach party everyone’s talking about?”

he really did listen. you, on the other hand, had no idea about it. frankly, you didn’t care and felix caught onto that quickly with your silent, indifferent shrug.

“your mom?” he questioned and pointed towards her. it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance, as you took after her well.

you nodded in response. “where are your parents?”

“oh, they went back to work. always busy, they were only able to leave for a few hours.” that situation tugged at your heart slightly, trying to imagine what that would’ve been like for him. at least felix didn’t have to go through the mushy traditions.

a stuffy dinner party was in the works for you later that evening, with your mother calling up just about every relative within two hours away to come and celebrate your milestone. you wanted no part in it, preferring to jump face first back into bed and waste the rest of the day away watching tiktoks. felix made a confused face when you mentioned that.

“i can see why you don’t feeling like celebrating,” felix said, glancing around the streamer decorated walls, trying not to feel tiny underneath the intimidating ‘congratulations graduates’ banner hanging from wall to wall. “when you’re stuck around this place for so long, you’re just relieved enough that you made it out of here.”

you blinked at him and after a pause, let out a soft chuckle. he’d hit it right on the nail. you didn’t even realize that yourself.

“honestly? i can’t stand being here for another second.” you sighed, trying to cool down the blood beginning to boil. your patience was ticking and it seemed like your mom wasn’t going to tear away from her conversation with the other ‘can i see your manager?’ pinterest-loving, wine-drinking moms.

“so don’t.”

biting back a snort, it was obvious that felix was used to just not being somewhere if he didn’t feel like it. however, he had no idea that he sparked an imaginary lightbulb to shine above your head. your eyes darted over to your mother, as your confirmed her lost engagement in her conversation. she wasn’t going to budge anytime soon and that gave you an idea.

felix noticed the flicker of change in your expression and raised an eyebrow. “what is it?”

a grin spread across your lips. “say, felix.” you dug into your mom’s purse, which she had abandoned for you to hold while she left to talk to the other mothers. it didn’t take long for you to find it and you giggled when you came in contact with the cold metal. with a swift pull, you dangled the keys to your mom’s minivan in the air.

“uh, yeah?” he cocked his head slightly.

“you got your license?”

in retrospect, felix never actually answered the question. he only said that it’d “been a while” since he was behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop you from suddenly leading the way to the honda odyssey with scratched on the rear from your practice driving from when you began doing so. maybe you should’ve caught on that he either never had his license or was warning you of how fucking bad of a driver he was. but you didn’t feel like getting in the driver’s seat in favour of controlling the aux, so you gave him that responsibility.

“let’s go for a drive. you got nowhere else to be, right?” it was probably a little cruel to guess that felix was not invited to the aforementioned beach party, but you’d already spoken the words.

felix gave a mirror of your indifferent shrug and you grinned wider.

“you know how i feel already about those guys. drinking cheap beer around a campfire isn’t really my idea of ‘having the time of our lives,’ yeah?” he replied.

you weren’t sure what exactly took over and possessed you to basically steal your mom’s minivan with somebody you barely knew. maybe it was because of that feeling, the carefree feeling that zipped and danced through your veins like a breeze the last time you hung out with felix. it was unlike anything else you’d ever felt before.

a hint of hesitance painted over his face. “um, so where are we going?”

“you go out often?” the question was blunt, but you couldn’t help but ask, considering the surprise he wore when you invited him out after detention.

felix smiled bashfully. “no.” that was all he said, as the two of you made your way over to the old odyssey. “will your mom be okay with this?”

“huh? oh, hell no.” yet, you still unlocked the car with a click and gave an under hand throw of the keys to him.

the wash of uncertainty lingered on felix’s expression, as you opened the door to the passenger’s seat. then, he met your eyes and something shifted within his muscles and energy. warmth formed at the eye contact, gifting him with confidence to proceed.

time was ticking and you knew that the two of you had to back out of the parking lot as quickly as possible, in order to remain unseen and undetected by your mother. you reiterated this to felix and suddenly, you were wishing that you didn’t.

“watch out!” you hissed, as felix reversed and almost ran over a former member of the hockey team. the said male began cussing at the car, which only prompted felix to get out of the parking lot in even more of a hurry.

swivelling and swerving around some stray individuals and other cars like a madman, it was a wonder that the two of you made it out and onto the street in one piece. it felt as though your heart dropped to the bottom of your stomach and was threatening to burst out of your throat. your breathing paused for the entire time.

worse than a goddamned rollercoaster.

“oops?” was all felix had to say, as innocently as possible.

you allowed yourself to breathe, finally. the car was on the street and you were alive. hysteria bubbled at the back of your head and you began to giggle uncontrollably. felix looked over at your, eyebrows knitted together, before he, too, burst out into laughter.

the car stopped at the first red light and you nodded at something in the distance. “straight ahead and then onto the highway.”

“where exactly am i going?” felix gave you a side eye, as you began fiddling with my phone. he glanced at it and raised an eyebrow, watching you scroll through your favourite early 2000s throwback playlist.

“take the exit for the beach.”

felix’s eyes nearly leapt out of his skull. “uh, are. . .are we gonna crash that party?”

you froze midway through your motions and began laughing once again, uncontrollably. but, felix didn’t react and you realized that he was being serious. you cleared your throat and paused.

“no,” you responded, in awe that he thought you were that rebellious. frankly, it wasn’t just that, but you were never going to carry those kind of guts. “screw that party. i know another cool spot on the beach, it’s kind of like my hideaway.”

and like that, felix shrugged and returned to his usual carefree demeanour. you thought about how much you dug that about him. then, you promptly shut that thought down because it came out of absolutely nowhere. plus, the two of you were still sitting in silence. not for long.

you turned on “ms jackson” by outkast and the two of you sung along to it. every. single. word. at some point, someone rolled down the windows and the wind began roaring in your ears and through your hair, but the only thing you could hear were your voice, straining to be heard at the top of your lungs.

as the opening notes of “get ur freak on” began, you looked over to felix. the curiosity you felt must have been pronounced because he cocked an eyebrow at you. you continued staring at him.

“why are you here? you’re awfully trusting,” you chuckled, as you caught eye of the upcoming exit you were meant to take.

he made the turn. “i’m bored. like you said, i don’t have anywhere else to go.” felix’s tone was light, but you felt bad about the comment. “plus, i’m the one behind the wheel. if anything, you’re the trusting one, putting me in this position.” you managed to snort at that.

“what, i’m not scary enough that i could be leading you to some crack house?”

felix smirked. “aren’t you the girl who volunteers before school hours to help the lunch ladies? the one who exclusively wore pink butterfly hair clips for two years straight? the one who wrote valentine cards for everyone in homeroom last year? the one with a pikachu—”

“okay, shut up. that doesn’t mean shit.” you scowled and he laughed at that. you didn’t realize that he noticed all of these little things about you, considering you’d barely spoken for four years straight and you tried to ignore the butterflies taking flight in your stomach as a result.

he said, “senioritis really killed your soft side, huh?”

“just a little,” you admitted. or maybe you were tired of being the good girl that everyone wanted you to be. something in you must’ve changed, like felix said, after ditching your long time friends and beginning to do things like skip class and warrant detentions. at this point, you were in way too deep and clearly, you no longer cared. high school was a chapter finished and you were perfectly okay with that.

the next song that drowned out your surroundings, just as the smell of sea salt filled your senses, was “we could be so good together” by the doors. the song was definitely not on this specific playlist as far as you knew, perhaps it was slipped in by accident when you were downloading your music. regardless, you kept it playing and you saw the way felix began drumming his fingers against the leather of the steering wheel.

“your influence, by the way,” you revealed and he smiled just a little brighter, if that was even possible.

he said, “you remembered.” of course you remembered the way he lost himself in this band that day in detention on his stupid first generation ipod. how could you forget?

eventually, the beach emerged closer and closer in your line of sight. the traffic grew heavier, as the sound of trap music overcame the bluesy twangs of the doors. you rolled your eyes; the rest of the kids from your school had caught up.

“take the left here.”

“isn’t it a dead end?”

you shook your head no, they had long since expanded the street a few years ago. thankfully for you, the extended pedestrian way gave access to one of the best hidden gems in town. he didn’t argue and followed the direction.

felix turned up the music a little bit louder, even though you were now a little bit farther away from everyone else now. “i’d never thought i’d meet anyone as annoyed by everyone else at school until you.”

“yeah—wait, turn onto this path there, don’t worry about the trees—aren’t we just quirky and different?” you snorted.

although it was still a path nonetheless, it was a little bit cramped for the heap that was your mom’s car. a wrinkle formed in between felix’s brows and you tried to relax the atmosphere by continuing to mindlessly sing to the music. he nervously hummed along.

he blinked rapidly. "it looks like there’s no end. . .”

lush trees stood firmly on both sides of the path, dangling branches over in a wispy pose. sunlight weaved in and out of every open spot, creating a storm of sun on your surroundings. the taste of sea salt continued to dance in the air, though, dispelling any thought of suddenly finding yourself in a mystic forest. in the distance, underneath the voice of jim morrison, the sound of ocean waves commanded your ears. the car lurched up, tilting ever so slightly up to indicate the uphill drive.

“why are you avoiding your parents?” felix asked out of nowhere, glancing at you and trying to not appear nervous at the path.

“because today sucks. i don’t get the big deal.” you shrugged. “and honestly, i’m just a little bit overwhelmed.” your life had been moving in the fastlane for so long and upon the sudden closure, you ached for just a moment of relaxation.

felix responded, with a thoughtful gaze to the distance. “yeah, i guess you’re right. same thing every year, just a new class of idiotic seniors forced out into the world on their own.”

eventually sunlight transformed from small dots leaking in from the weaves of branches and leafs into a full glaze from above. darkness disappeared and you were treated with a kiss of the bluest sky your eyes had ever laid eyes on. the tranquility came to an abrupt stop due to felix’s unpolished brake. he was in shock and that sacrificed your back because the two of you hurled forward in the sudden movement.

“sorry,” felix said, but neither of you chose to make a joke about his driving when this beautiful of a distraction presented itself in front of you.

the engine was killed and the music paused in one swift second. felix wanted to drink up his surroundings as much as he could. the two of you were perched on the top of a small hill, overlooking the rest of the beach from the height. even though you still remained on the same earth and balance as the people down there, it felt like you were far above.

he managed to sputter out a low whistle. you grinned in response and hopped out of the car, trying your absolute best to refrain from stumbling in your heels. upon meeting the fresh air, you took a deep inhale.

“where the hell did you find out about this place?” felix looked around, eyes wide as he took in the view.

you were not going to expose the fact that you were taken here the first time by a boy that wanted to hook up with you. he’d parked at the top of the hill, just as the two of you had just done moment before, hoping to get lucky before you swore at him and demanded that he brought you home. oh, freshman year.

“i have my secrets,” you exchanged that embarrassing memory for what you hoped was a mysterious smile. “it really is beautiful, though, right? i feel like i’m on top of the world. the sky is clearer from up here and the ocean is, like, so goddamn blue. . .”

it was then when you remembered who you were with and your jaw snap shut after those words.

he couldn’t know how blue the ocean was. felix probably wouldn’t have even noticed if it weren’t for your sudden reaction, but he only shook his head with a smile at your sheepishness. “it’s okay. don’t be embarrassed, people forget.” a lie, you guessed, as he’d mentioned so few people knew about his sight.

a weight of gloom settled at the pit of your stomach, but you pushed the feeling aside. he trusted you with the knowledge of his condition and you forgot to consider it. you bit your lip, raining down on the apologies, to which he just waved off.

the male kicked a loose stone off the hill, watching it fly across the air and rocked into the deep, icy waters. “it’s really is beautiful, anyway. thanks for bringing me here.”

“actually, you did the driving,” you grinned. “but, this isn’t all. you still trust me?”

felix looked at you with a questioning regard and you took that as an answer. you had to swallow some fear down and the next thing you did surprised even you. you held out your hand and after a beat, he took it and intertwined your fingers with his.

his hand was warm and molded with yours to perfection. his skin was soft and pillowy, as if they’d been waiting for you for years to grasp. upon the grip, your hands became one and you wished to the clouds that you’d never have to let go. you took a glimpse of felix’s expression and you wondered if he felt the same way, trying to read the small small forming on his face and the light tint of pink glowing on his ears.

then, you remembered what the hell you were doing and snapped out of your daydream. he locked the car for you and you led him down the hill, just a few feet back from where you were parked. there, you tugged him towards the smallest of entryways in between two trees, having to duck underneath some branches and step over some bushes to get through.

the path from there was clear, as shades of creamy corn coloured sand roughened up against your shoes and you dared to not sink into the ground with each step. it was one, steep trail that led straight into the land below, with waves just about stirring up against the sand. there was not much room to walk and you had to walk in front of felix for the two of you to fit.

“hold on,” you said, as you wiggled out of your already dirty graduation gown, which you realized you should have abandoned at the car. you left to to lay on the ground, losing interest in it.

felix gave you a once over. “that’s a nice dress.” did he just check you out?

when you woke up that morning, almost afternoon, you were ill prepared for the day ahead of you. you jumped into the quickest shower of your life and nearly broke your fingers trying to braid your hair in record time. there was no room for daydreaming about what you were going to wear and you figured that it was going to be hidden underneath your graduation gown, anyway, so you grabbed the first thing in your closet, which was a yawn of an orange bridesmaid dress from a past wedding. it was a boring, floor-length with a sweetheart neckline and a semi-modest slit running up the leg. you’d ripped off the hideous bow on your way down the stairs, after not bothering with any makeup and from there, was hauled into the old minivan because you were already late.

“what?” you laughed. “i hate this dress. i put on the first thing i saw and unfortunately, it was this abomination.” you thought your tone dripped with hatred, but felix didn’t look convinced.

you climbed up onto some large rocks that marked the end of the path and tried to keep your balance. felix helped you steady yourself, hand still grasped in his and the other holding you by the waist. at that point, you’d also kicked off your nude pumps in favour of actually being able to stand.

felix helped himself up on the rock, following your motions, and hopped over the rocks with you. you grabbed a handful of the tangerine fabric and pulled it up, at least caring enough to make sure that it didn’t get wet. the two of you landed together, just before a darkened entrance into a cave. the entry was concealed from the main beach, far too tucked away at the corner at every angle and only visible from hopping over the rocks.

“what colour is it?”

the question was sudden and you gaped, as if you forgot how to speak. “huh?”

“your dress. what colour is it?” felix wasn’t even focused on the cave, his eyes still locked on you.

“it’s orange,” you told him. he nodded, his gaze not leaving, as if he were trying to memorize the sight. you frowned and put your free hand to his arm, beckoning him to continue following you.

squeezing inside of the compact entryway, the two of you were introduced to the interior of the same golden sand that brushed against the waterline in a narrow opening at the very base of the cave. another gap was framed higher up, a bigger outlet that allowed most of the sunlight to stream in.

“wow. just wow.” his hand squeezed yours just a little bit tighter, even there was no need to hold each other, now that you arrived at your destination.

you couldn’t help but notice the little things now. there were little fragments etched into the walls of different mineral colours, from the deep maroons and the slate greys and the rare navy blue. the small waves rushing in shone just a little bit differently depending on where you stood, just a little bit brighter or darker either way. even in the sand, there were bits of ivory for every handful of gold. they made the sight all the more gorgeous and felix couldn’t experience that.

he noticed your sudden daze, staring off into the larger outlet and your mind miles away. that’s when you were hit with a wall of cold water, hand released from felix’s and your entire left side endured the splash. you gasped, whirling around to see him with an mischievous glint in his eyes. with the addition of a soaked arm sleeve.

“felix!” your jaw dropped and he responded with yet another splash.

this escalated into a full on splashing match, until the two of you were completely soaked. your hair was dripping wet and felix’s sneakers were probably ruined.

you also somehow also ended up tackling him to the ground.

that resulted in the unexpected position of being on top of him, as the two of you gasped to catch your breaths in between your hysterical bubbles of laughter. it took at least five minutes minimum before the two of you were able to inhale properly again.

that didn’t mean you moved from your position, though. neither did he. felix wore a lazy smile and brushed a piece of wet hair out of your face.

“you ruined my dress. not so pretty now, huh?” you teased.

felix replied, “you said you hated it, i was just tryin’ to help you out.” he then paused for a moment, stumbling over his words. “plusimeantthatyoulookednice. notthedress.”

you weren’t sure if you were normal because you managed to actually understand his jumbled up words. you laughed off the blush heating up your cheeks and finally pulled yourself up, trying to hide it. sitting up, the two of you gazed up at the sky through the main gap in the wall.

for the nth time that day, you decided to say “fuck it” and swallowed down your nerves. felix sat up, awkwardly running his hand through his grown out hair. he looked at you, seeing that it appeared as though you were struggling to say something.

“what’s wrong?”

you managed to choke it out. “can i kiss you?” some sort of monster, one that was definitely not you, had overcome your being because you were in shock that you actually just said that.

felix nodded without hesitation, which put you into even deeper of a shock. you didn’t even notice that you were already slowly leaning in and he, too, as he reached out to lightly touch your cheek as he did so.

from a distance, the sound of music and laughter dallyed and with every passing second, a new wave of water rushed in. the smell of salt and summer lingered about. your orange dress was doused and at some point in the psudeo fight, your once tightly wound braids broke free into loose waves. none of it mattered when felix pressed his lips against yours. they were just as soft as his hands.

#lee felix imagine #lee felix scenarios #stray kids x reader #stray kids imagines #stray kids au #stray kids fanfic #stray kids scenarios #lee felix x reader #— COLOUR THEORY.

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ovvnwords · 3 years

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* finn cole, non binary + they/he | you know howard sellier, right? they’re twenty two and they’ve lived in irving for, like, six months? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to useless by i know leopard like, a million times this year, which makes sense ’cause they’ve got that whole blatantly ignoring someone calling your name, the same 4 outfits on rotation, being that person and waiting for someone to tie their shoe while others keep moving thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is november 1st, so they’re a scorpio, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

hello it’s mackenzie with howard ( HOODIE ) .... this is long ( tw for ABANDONMENT, CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, SHOOTING / INJURY, ADDICTION, OVERDOSE, DEATH ) . won’t lie i’m tired and i originally played them in a different group so i had to rework things if they don’t make full sense i’m sorry i’m sleepy and also lazy so the ending sucks anyways . will add conenctions to my post asap. bye

it never bothered them, either, but it did set them apart from the rest of the kids in their classes in a way that most obvious to themself ( and made them more self conscious before they even know what that feeling was ) . sometimes there’d be backhanded comments or just straight up rude questions, but they’d never truly cared. them and their uncle had more of a father-child bond anyways, and they were treated as such by those who didn’t know the actual dynamic.

this is the one piece of his birth father that hoodie has, and they still doesn’t know who it is to this day. there’s not really much of a want to find out, because their mother obviously didn’t want them to go to the father for a reason, so.

growing up it was pretty lonely ; yucca valley only has about 20k residents, but it is located in the mojave desert , which means hot and spacious. there is such a distinction between this area and las vegas, which is only 2 hours away.

uncle nick is a ranger on the mojave national preserve , who mostly was someone that just acting as security. for hoodie, this meant during their younger years, there was a lot of roaming around the preserve and trying to find some of the abandoned mines, lol.

the relationship between uncle and nephew is a strong one during this point of life ; howard isn’t older than 10 when a showdown between criminals and the rangers happens. crime is a big thing in the desert and nick had done his best to keep hoodie away from it all, keep the kid sheltered as much as possible.

CRIMINAL ACTIVITY ? TW // it happens on an overnight shift and hoodie is with their neighbor. due to the large article of land the preserve is on and the vast amount of cars that pass through every year , it makes for a perfect spot to do various crimes ; there was a group of individuals who decided it’d be a good idea to dump unsolicited and illegal substances onto the property, including a soon-to-be abandoned car to hide other criminal activities that happened in other areas. las vegas is only two hours away, and it’s a commonly used spot to dump illegal drugs and other things.

GUN / SHOOTING TW // this group, however, didn’t like that they’d got caught ; they were stupid and left their tail lights on by one of the roads, and it’s suspicious to be out that late at night, doing some shady looking shit. naturally? the rangers approached, and were attacked ; uncle nick was shot, just once, in the abdomen. he lived, but things were different.

ADDICTION TW // he lived, but nick changed after - it’s no secret as to why, that would scar just about anyone not just physically. nick became addicted to the pills prescribed to manage the pain after the injury, and hoodie didn’t know what to do. they were still just a kid. this was the only adult in their life who seemingly gave a shit about them, who is just distancing himself further and further away. it hurts.

during this time, hoodie began to spend a lot of time with the other neighborhood kids. wasn’t exactly popular, but they didn’t care - and they taught them to skateboard, and how to be their standard of cool.

the more his uncle became distant, the more hoodie sought for refuge somewhere else. this place would be their neighbors house. the thatcher family was one that became like their second family, hoodie knowing full well that this is the kind of life he was supposed to be living

DEATH + OVERDOSE TW // when howard was 20, came home from work to find uncle nick passed out on the couch, blue in the face. they were alone in the world ---- and turned to the thatcher family, who took them in. natural as could be.

the move to irving came a few months after that ------ the thatcher child ( wc ! ) wanted a fresh start, and pulled hoodie alongside them.

OTHER INFORMATION ....

only answers to hoodie — call them howard and they will quite literally ignore you. howie is ok, depending on who you are. if u call hemt howard and they doesn’t throw up a fist you’re special <3

got the nickname in elementary school - even during the hottest days of the year, wear THE signature black hoodie. we get it you’re emo. it kind of stuck, and is a lot better than howard.

also will never introduce themself as howard unless it’s like a teacher or something DKCKLSDCKLSD

treats the hoodies like a security blanket ; feels safest under a hoodie that’s too big.

frankly not very comfortable with themself, in just about every aspect

probably skates around town and does tricks. no i know nothing about skateboarding but it’s still happening so i’ll play tony hawk ig

aCTUALLY played tony hawk pro skater on that shitty playstation 2 from a goodwill? yeah and so did i

also dresses like a cartoon character ; hoodie x5 in the same color, same shoes, same looking pants. pack it up greg heffley

loves the cat more than anything ; charlie has one eye and a short stumpy lil tail. king.

found charlie on the side of the road one day coming back from work and yes they is a softie sometimes, so they picked up the lil kitty and brought him home. they’ve been friends ever since and it’s also cats > people

YES is a cat person

probably listens to the chainsmokers. i hate. also stans ariana grande in secret

loves comics ( dc only bc i’m a dc bitch )

has a very problematic touch aversion. like. will allow it if it’s them touching someone else first, but anything else? they’ll flip out internally, not externally

a listener, not a talker. didn’t talk to anyone for a week just after their uncle’s death what they had to. probably won’t talk to you unless you talk to them first or if they really like you

#irvingintro

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marinetteplztakeabreak · 4 years

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snake!Nino AU

this is a bullet fic rewrite of Desperada featuring my love for Nino (I’m not anti-Luka by the way I just like the potential softness of this AU, I have like.... I have like... twenty-fi... 25,913 different takes on Desperada and this is just my newest one)

—Nino is on board the Liberty with everyone else just chilling and vibing with Luka because he loves music too; he plays the violin because I said so and he’s just in the background tuning it and looking low-key sad while the whole “Luka flirts with Marinette and teaches her guitar” thing happens.

—When Kagami and Adrien show up, Nino is just absolutely ecstatic that Adrien was finally able to get out of the house, and he LIGHTS UP and is like “omg!!! You’re here!!! Is this Kagami!!! It’s so nice to finally meet you, you’re my sibling now, no take-backs.”

—And Alya is like “hey Adrien can I talk to you for a second,” so he stays there while Nino just drags Kagami off to show her his instrument and talk to her and she’s like “omg this guy is A LOT” but you can tell she’s happy that someone is paying attention to her

—Meanwhile, Alya is just trying so hard to get Adrien to talk to Marinette, and she’s just like “hmmm is someone a little jealous of Luka?” And Adrien is just like “no lol I’m fine with just playing piano, different people have different skills, I’m happy for him that he knows how to play the guitar.” And Alya is like “facepalms”

—Meanwhile, Marinette is still just panicking as she frantically glances back and forth between Luka and Adrien and Kagami and is just internally keysmashing

—so at this point, we’re only like 2 minutes into the episode, it all happened fast and Marinette hasn’t had time to react

—All of a sudden they’re interrupted by the sound of arguing above deck

—Which is, of course, Jagged Stone begging Anarka to play guitar for him

—She refuses, and Jagged sees Marinette and asks her if she knows any guitar players

—Marinette’s still just panicking and Nino is like “oh no my girl is having an anxiety” and so he just kinda gently steps in like “hey Jagged, I don’t play guitar but I can DJ and help mix music together if that helps”

—and Jagged’s like “you know what, what the heck, sure, I’ll take it, you can be my new partner” and Marinette is still just trying to cool down and stop panicking

—When, whoops, Desperada shows up out of nowhere, and is like “Jagged Stone!!! I can’t believe you’re trying to replace me!!” And she tries to zap Nino into dust, but Kagami, being an idiot who bonded with him already, just leaps in front of him and gets turned to dust instead.

—Cue the chaos where she tries to zap everyone who has an instrument, including Luka and Anarka, while also specifically going after Nino

—and Nino being a dumb self-sacrificial idiot sees Desperada almost get Alya (who’s trying to get footage of the Akuma battle of course) so Nino just starts playing his violin to get Desperada’s attention

—she almost gets him, but Adrien tackles Nino to the ground at the last second (the violin breaks and it’s very sad) and then helps him up and pulls him behind a corner, Alya sees them and starts sneaking around and shows up beside them a few seconds later

—Ladybug, who just transformed, spots them and hurries over, helping them make their way safely to the sewers, but Alya’s an idiot and is like “gotta stay and film” so it ends up being just Nino and Adrien down there

—Ladybug calls up her Lucky Charm and it goes like canon, she realizes she needs extra help so she runs over to Fu and picks up the snake miraculous (though she does seriously consider the turtle for a second because a shield would be nice, she’s not sure if 5 minutes would be enough time to figure out how to defeat Desperada, and then they’d be out of luck

—meanwhile, Adrien is like “hey Nino you should hide in here I’ll totally hide for real too” and Nino’s like “are you stupid I’m not going to hide in a locker, Alya’s in danger up there, they got Kagami who’s my sister now, I don’t make the rules”

—but the thing is, Ladybug just went get a miraculous for backup, and Nino is also trying to avoid suspicion and be like “Hey Adrien, you should hide down here though, it’d be a good idea if you were out of the way and safe and I was alone with Ladybug for a brief amount of time for NO REASON don’t ask questions”

—so they’re still just having a very dodgy argument in the locker room when Ladybug shows up and is like “screw it I’m not gonna come up with an excuse. Adrien, here’s the snake miraculous, congratulations”

—And Nino is like “aaaaAaaAaA oh my gosh!!! Adrien, you’re a superhero now!!! This is so cool!!!” And just fanboys his little heart out and Adrien is like “haha yay” but like it’s hard to be panicking about this when Nino is so happy

—Plagg doesn’t even get a chance to argue because everyone is in the room at the same time; Adrien just transforms into Aspik and they start going

—and things go similar to canon BUT Nino keeps being dumb and trying to sacrifice himself for Adrien because he’s stupid like that and I love him, and also, Nino’s presence gives Marinette something else to think about so she’s slightly less flustered because Nino is at least a normal person, (also it stops Adrien from flirting with Ladybug as much because not only is he like “Ladybug stop dying” he’s also like “Nino ST OP” because Nino just gets disintegrated every time he takes his eyes off of him

—so because Marinette is panicking less she’s also spending a lot more time being like “where the H E C K is my dumb kitty cat, where I S he?”

—So Adrien’s still suffering (TM) but he realizes a lot sooner that this isn’t working and he needs to just detransform to talk to Plagg because he’s having anxiety because so many things are happening all at once (oh also Alya shows up in a couple of loops and gets vaporized a couple of times too)

—So anyways he finally restarts the loop and is like “I’m done, I can’t do this, being a hero is Too Much Stress for me I guess,”

—and of course, he hands the miraculous off to Nino, because 1) it’s Nino 2) Adrien feels like Nino’s been doing a better job of paying attention to Desperada and protecting them during time loops than Adrien has (which isn’t necessarily true but Adrien is a self-deprecating idiot) 3) Nino is the only other person there

—So Nino is like trying to hug Adrien and tell him it’s going to be okay because Adrien is crying actual tears but Adrien’s like “nope gotta go be elsewhere whoops”

—Marinette’s like “hey Nino I guess you can be the snake, your FIRST MIRACULOUS EVER WINK WINK and Nino’s like HAHA YEP NEVER SEEN ONE OF THESE BEFORE IN MY LIFE

—Adrien runs off and apologizes to Plagg and Chat Noir shows up a moment later

—Nino notices how much less flustered Ladybug is by Chat Noir than by Adrien and is like "oh worm?" and probably brings it up with Adrien at the end of the episode

—they all fight side by side

—Nino realizes that he needs to provide a distraction so Ladybug and Chat Noir can take Desperada by surprise, so he uses his DJing skills to start blasting music over the liberty’s speakers

—They win,

—Ladybug is like “I couldn’t have done it without you Chat Noir I love you I mean haha nothing”

—Chat Noir fanboys over snake!Nino and is like “you’re my hero omg”

—epic three-sided “pound it”

—Marinette uses the miracle cure to put everything back to norma

—Adrien shows up soon and Nino just RUSHES over to him to say that he definitely did amazing and just showers him with love and support and Adrien just showers compliments back at Nino and asks for his autograph

—Kagami shows up again a few minutes later and is super awkwardly like “what do I do now” and Nino is like “come over here you’re one of the bros” and they just chill and have fun and Nino just starts showing them his SoundCloud

—Marinette still feels guilty for panicking earlier in the morning and is like “I gotta fix this” so she talks to Jagged and is like “btw Luka is a very good guitar player, you should talk to him”

—Vivica (aka desperada) gets her job with Jagged back and she and Luka end up talking because of it and they start bonding over their love for guitars and Vivica offers to let Luka be a guest in their performance and to give him more professional guitar lessons and he’s like “holy hecking yes”

—Marinette is like “problem solved I guess but now what do I do? Oh no, Adrien and Kagami are being happy together over there”

—Alya is like “go talk to them” and Marinette’s like “I can’t what if I panic” and Alya’s like “fine I’ll talk to them first” and she just flops down next to Nino and starts joking along with them

—Marinette follows a little bit later and immediately Kagami is like “Marinette you’re so amazing, I didn’t know you were friends with Jagged Stone? Adrien was telling me you designed his album cover? That’s incredible I wish I could be as talented as you” and Marinette’s just like “omg Kagami is not evil?? Who knew??”

—The episode ends with Marinette trying to act as normal as she can around Adrien and then Alya’s like “hey Kagami I gotta show you the photos I took of the Akuma fight. Nino, you should come too” and she just winks at Marinette and Marinette’s like “oh no I am alone with Adrien”

—but then Adrien is just like, “I wish I could be part of the Ladyblog, Ladybug is so cool *dreamy face* and Marinette just dies immediately

—they're all happy and everyone gets love and support; the end

#miraculous ladybug #ml #desperada #nino lahiffe #adrien agreste #kagami tsurugi #alya cesaire #marinette dupain cheng #fic tag #i guess this counts as a fic lol

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shadowthrone-ammanas · 4 years

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I finished Nyakuza Metro and thought of this request! In the middle of Empress stealing all of Hat Kids time pieces, she goes to Subcon to unwind because she's upset about the whole thing and Snatcher sees upset Hat Kid and is just: Excuse me Kid, I'm the only one around here who's allowed to make you upset what's going on? So she tells him and now Snatcher has to go meet this Empress and let her know that bullying Hat Kid is His job. (It's not that He CARES About her! Nooo!! That's Ridiculous!)

First off, isn’t the ending of Naykuza Metro the single most disappointing ending since Mass Effect 3? I am so salty about it, I wanted to fight the Empress, it looked like we were going but nope we get a stupid cop out instead (and if that pun was intentional on Gears For Breakfast’s side then it’s not funny >:( ). Second, thank you for the request!

Good Kitty

Something was up. Hat Kid was in Subcon Forest but she wasn’t bothering Snatcher or seemingly even looking for him so she could. Instead she was just meandering down the path, her head hung low, hands in her pockets and idly kicking a stick along. She looked upset about something. What though? Well only one way to find out.

Snatcher teleported to pop up in front of her. “Boo!” he shouted loud enough to make her jump a little.

She gave him a disapproving look as he laughed at her fright as mild as it was. “Hello to you too Snatcher,” she said, her tone borderline annoyed. That wasn’t like her. Whatever was bothering had to be pretty serious.

“Hey kiddo,” he said grinning down at her. “What brings you to my forest?” He’d long since given up trying to tell her that their business was concluded, it only ever seemed to make her want to stick around more often and longer.

Hat Kid shrugged, kicking at the stick on the ground again. “It’s just a nice place to walk around and stuff.”

“Uh… ‘nice’? It’s a haunted forest full of dead things. What part of that is nice?”

“The haunted part.” Now she did smile up at him, only a little though. “It’s also the only place I can walk around aimlessly where there aren’t a lot people.” Implying she probably wanted to be alone, giving Snatcher a perfect opportunity to just leave her to it but…

“And why would you want that?” He was curious. What could’ve possibly brought her down. “Don’t you normally make a habit of annoying as many people as you possibly can?”

“Yeah but uh… I’m just really frustrated right now. And I hate it.” She stomped a stick, breaking it in half with a snap. “The stupid pecking Empress is sending her stupid pecking peck-neck goons to take my Time Pieces every time I find one in the Metro. And I can’t do anything about it because she’s got like I don’t even know how many goons, certainly more than I can take on by myself. If it was just her, I would beat the living shit out of her and make her regret ever crossing me. But I can’t and it’s not fair.” Her eyes were filling with tears of frustration now.

Snatcher grimaced. “Whoa kid, calm down there. No need to start crying or any of that.”

“Sorry.” She sniffled. “I just… really hate it and don’t know what to do. But I have to do something because I need my Time Pieces.”

“Well… good luck with that.”

“You’re not even going to offer to help me?”

“Nope, the fact that you thought I might is honestly offensive. I don’t care about your stupid problems and I certainly didn’t ask you to spill them to me. So yeah, good luck with that kiddo.” With that he teleported away.

The Metro was bustling and busy with life. What little plant life there was, was all heavily manicured to match an aesthetic. Obnoxious neon lights were everywhere. And the place smelled horrible; a mix of trash, unwashed bodies, cats, trains, and the various food carts scattered about the place. Snatcher hated it.

He was half tempted to pop out his Hat Kid disguise – complete with dweller mask to hide his ghostly features – and raze the whole place to the ground. But that would take too much time and effort to be worth it. Besides he wasn’t into expanding his territory, he just wanted to keep and protect what he had. Taking over more would both make that harder and be pointless. So, grateful the mask would also hide his sour expression so he didn’t have to control it, he started wondering around to listen to conversations.

The more he walked the more he hated both the Metro and the very sensation of walking, especially on concrete. How did people stand this? It made him want to pull his hair out. He was never coming back here once he’d finished his business. Mercifully, the Empress was a pretty popular talking point amongst the cats wondering about the place and they all had a tendency to gossip just a bit too loud - possibly due to hearing loss from being around and in the trains making all that horrible noise all the time – so it wasn’t too terribly long before Snatcher knew where and how to find the Empress. Which was all he needed.

Once back in the central area, finding the jewelry shop didn’t take long. Hanging around outside were what was obviously members of the Empress’ gang. Most likely there were more hidden around the place too. Not even Hat Kid could take on that many opponents. Snatcher could, he could take down everyone in this Metro if he really wanted to – as long as no one had a way to make him vulnerable anyway. But if things went according to plan though all he’d have to deal with was the Empress herself.

Inside, the Empress was standing at the counter. She looked up as Snatcher strode in. “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” she said, fooled by the disguise and mask. “But that’s fine. I just got word of another one of those hourglasses in Pink Paw Station. Go find it for me.”

“Hmm… I don’t think I will,” Snatcher said, using Hat Kid’s voice but changing it a little so that it would sound just wrong enough to give most sane people chills. “Instead I think I’ll…” Grinning wide under the mask, he lifted a hand to snap his fingers.

The door slammed shut hard enough to rattle the whole store. Next, he made the lights flare bright before bursting, shattering glass everywhere. He timed their bursting with pulling the Empress into his pocket dimension, surrounding them both in a void of dark purple. And to top it all off, he teleported to float behind her and took off his mask. He kept the Hat Kid form though, he needed it.

When she inevitably turned to face him, already rattled she hissed and back pedaled, her fur puffing up the rest of the way. He’d morphed his face so he had bunch of misshapen eyes, covering the entire top half of his face. Only two of which actually worked, the rest were for show.

Still using Hat Kid’s voice and altering it to sound wrong, he giggled. There were few things creepier than a little girl’s laugh especially when it wasn’t quite right. To add a little bit extra, he made it sound like it was coming from all around the Empress, making her glance around in fear.

“What are you?” she asked with an angry hiss as she turned her eyes back to glare at him. Her claws were out now too, they looked sharp.

“It doesn’t matter what I am, what matters is you.” He pointed at her. “You’ve been awful mean to a friend of mine and I don’t like that.” It grated to call Hat Kid a friend but for this little act of his, he didn’t have much choice. “I’m sure you’re smart enough to know who I’m talking about.”

The Empress hissed and lunged to claw him. It did nothing though so Snatcher just giggled again.

“Oh, silly kitty, that won’t hurt me. There’s nothing you can do that can hurt me. I don’t think there’s even anything on this planet that can.” Hat Kid was an alien so he was going to pretend to be one too. He needed to make sure no one ever connected this whole thing back to him. “So save yourself the effort and don’t try. Just do as I say and maybe you’ll get out of this alive.”

The Empress still looked angry but her fear was evident in the way her fur was still puffed up on its end, her tail curled. “What do you want?” she forced out through clenched teeth.

“I want you to give my friend back her Time Pieces, don’t interfere with her collecting any more, and once you’re done with that don’t ever talk to or have anything to do with her again.” To minimize the chances of her spilling the beans on this conversation. “I of course don’t expect you to do this just because I told you to so how about a little motivation?” He teleported to hover behind her shoulder again.

Before she could fully turn around, he pulled out her soul to hold in the palm of his hand. She froze solid for half a second before clawing at him again, more with desperation than anger this time. He ignored it.

“If you’re a good kitty and do as your told, I’ll consider giving you your soul back. If not, I know a guy who likes to eat souls who I’m sure wouldn’t mind being gifted one.” As he spoke, he bounced her soul up and down in his hand as if playing with a ball. “So is that enough to convince you?” He would’ve preferred a proper contract but other than snatching souls, contracts were what he was most well known for. And Hat Kid would certainly know it was him if he used a contract. This way even if she did find out about this, there should be some doubt about who was responsible. Her even suspecting it was him would be awful because then she’d think it was because he was her ‘BFF’ and that he cared for her or something when it truth it was because if he failed to make Hat Kid miserable no one else was allowed to either. That was his job and he was going to find a way to do it properly one day no matter how much she wanted to insisted they were BFFs and she loved spending time with him.

The silence stretched as the Empress glared at him, defeated but not yet wanting to admit it. But finally… “Fine,” she said. “I’ll give the brat back her hour glasses and then leave her alone.”

“You’ll order your goons to do so as well?” Snatcher wasn’t going to give her any loopholes. “As well as anyone else you might pay to deal with people you don’t like?”

She growled but… “Yes.”

“Very good. Now, after my friend has all her Time Pieces back, including the ones not yet found, I shall give you your soul back. If you break your end of the deal, I will not hesitate to give you soul to a certain soul eating ghost.” Meaning he’d eat it. “If you try to break it after you have your soul back, I will make your end a painful one and feed you soul to the Snatcher just because I can. Deal?”

“Deal.” Oh, no hesitation this time either, the Empress was a brave one as well as smart.

“I will see you later then. Remember to be a good kitty for your own sake. Buh-bye.” Snatcher lifted a hand to wriggle his fingers in a wave before transporting himself elsewhere, leaving her back in her jewelry shop.

For this drabble event.

#My Writing #Ahit #A hat in time #snatcher & hat kid #Hat kid & the empress #Snatcher & the empress #Snatcher is a tsundere noodle

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duhragonball · 4 years

Text

Oh, Shit,I Just Remembered Pete Wisdom.

I started looking into Warren Ellis a little more, to see what he accusations against him were, exactly. So much has come out about so many people that it’s hard to keep it all straight, but I’ve been a comics fan since 1993, and Ellis has been in the industry for about as long, I think, so I wanted to know more.

The quick version, from what I can tell, is that Ellis would offer to mentor fans who wanted to break into the comics industry, and with the women, he would start to segue that relationship into something more physical. It would get to the point where he’d want to have sex with them, and they felt like they couldn’t refuse him, since he could torpedo their careers before they could get off the ground. A few women must have spoken out about it, leading others to do the same, and eventually it started to become clear that there was a lot of similarities in their stories.

As I was thinking about this, it suddenly dawned on me that I first heard of Ellis from his work on Marvel Comics’ Excalibur, where he introduced Kitty Pryde’s love interest, Pete Wisdom. And then a bunch of stuff started to make a lot more sense in hindsight.

The X-Men franchise is overrated trash, but probably the wankiest, most usless, most overrated part of the X-Men mythos is the spin-off series Excalibur, which was basically a splinter group of X-Men operating in Great Britain. Fans loved this book, I think because it featured popular characters like Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler, and the book (mostly) managed to steer clear of the mega-crossovers that dominated the rest of the franchise in the 80′s and 90′s. When I finally sat down to read my X-Men collection in 2015 and 2018, I did so confident that I wouldn’t need to bother with Excalibur, because it rarely had anything to do with the main books. The message Marvel sent me with this book was that it doesn’t matter and it never did.

Anyway, around 1995 or so, Warren Ellis took over as the writer, and he introduced a new character named Pete Wisdom, who quickly became romantically involved with Kitty Pryde. This was somewhat controversial for a few reasons:

1) When Kitty was introduced in 1980, she was stated to be only 13 years old. “Thirteen-and-a-half”, to be precise. They actually threw in the fraction, just to make her seem even more like a little kid, if that was possible. Comic book time moves slower than real time, but it wasn’t entirely clear to anyone how old Kitty was by the time she relocated to England and met Pete. Later stories by other writers would attempt to set Kitty’s age as being 16 or 18, which makes Kitty’s relationship with Pete a continuity error at best.

2) In spite of Kitty being very young, people had been shipping her with Colossus for years, and it annoyed them that there was yet another obstacle for their extremely problematic-but-much-desired relationship.

3) People accused Pete Wisdom of being a Mary Sue, since he seemed to just pop in out of nowhere and work himself into the team, win the heart of the most popular female character, and he’s supposed to be this super cool secret agent type. The implication here was that Ellis only invented Pete as a self-insert OC for the purpose of getting it on with Kitty Pryde.

I think there were two schools of thought on how Kitty was supposed to be portrayed in comics. The first was that Chris Claremont had insisted on keeping her eternally 16 or whatever, this plucky kid prodigy who was always too young to get into these kinds of relationships. Ellis’s supporters felt that this was too restrictive, and it was foolish of Claremont to think that other writers would be beholden to his wishes, especially after he left Marvel Comics in 1991. Ellis seemed to be allowing Kitty to grow and mature as a character, and it didn’t matter if it messed around with “comic book time”, since no one knows how that works exactly anyway.

For my part, I always thought Pete Wisdom was a fucking tool of a character. He was yet another government spook riding on the popularity of “The X-Files”. Plus, the conventional wisdom among comics nerds in the 90′s was that U.K. writers were better somehow, just because they liked to write snarky dialogue and deconstruct the superhero genre. Pete Wisdom was a mutant, and he joined the Excalibur team, but he wasn’t gonna wear any poncy tights, innit? No, he went into action with a suit and tie, smoking cigarettes and constantly drinking shots, because that’s more bloody realistic, mate. Ellis gave him an eyepatch in 2001, because of course he did.

The point I want to make here is that Ellis came up with this big idea in the 90′s, and fans ate it up because they were X-Men fans and had no taste. You have to understand that in the 90′s, the big overused cliche was giant guns. The second biggest cliche was nostalgia references to the 1960′s. So when someone trotted out “Fox Mulder, but he’s sarcastic and British”, people actually thought it was kind of fresh by comparison. Surely this bold new concept could only take Kitty Pryde into amazing new directions...

But no, Excalibur got cancelled in 1998, and they moved Kitty back to the X-Men. Did they even break up Pryde and Wisdom on panel? I have no idea. All I know is I read a bunch of her post-Excalibur appearances and she barely mentions the guy, probably because a lot of people in Marvel probably wanted to forget the time she got aged up just enough to sleep with a skeevy-looking older man.

Looking back on it, I always sort of assumed that Ellis only did the Pete/Kitty thing because he was just looking for something interesting to do with the characters, and he wasn’t going to let tradition or continuity stand in the way. But in 2020, the whole thing starts to feel more autobiographical, since this resembles the sort of thing he was doing with young women through his online community. Ellis’ “apology” states that he didn’t notice the power imbalance when he was involved with these women. “I have never considered myself famous or powerful.” I find this insulting to my intelligence, since I used to see fans worship every stroke of his pen like he was some kind of genius. News would come out that Warren Ellis would be taking over the writing duties of a book, and fans would say “Good, they finally fixed it.” They just trusted him to do right by whatever project he was given. So I can only imagine how overwhelmed they might have felt when they signed up for his mailing list fan club thing and he would offer to help some of them become professional writers.

So maybe the critics had Pete Wisdom figured out from the beginning. Whether Ellis realized it or not, Pete was his power fantasy, an older guy just impressive enough to get the attention of a (very) young woman and take her under his wing. And he teaches her how to drink whiskey and smoke and how to know all this black ops horseshit, and-- well whaddya know?-- they’re having the sex.

And to a point, maybe that’s human nature. I always wanted to be a writer because I liked the feeling of power it offered. Imagine being the guy who could put words in Captain Picard’s mouth, or decide exactly what kind of music Superman likes. And yeah, if I could make a name for myself in that kind of field, maybe the ladies would start to notice me, and then I’d be doing pretty well for myself.

The thing is, I eventually learned that writing for comics is a real bullshit thing to get into. You can’t just submit scripts, and there’s no set of steps to follow. I remember reading stories of writers breaking into the comics industry, and they were all different, usually involving some improbable meeting with someone who was already there. A comics writer I respect once wrote that it takes some creativity to figure out how to break in, and if you can’t find your own way, then maybe you’re not creative enough to be in the business in the first place.

And that’s how these women got pulled into Ellis’s nonsense, I assume. They had similar aspirations to my own, and at first he seemed to be offering them a lifeline, but then it led to something they hadn’t bargained for, and what could they do? If they refused to have sex with him, they might have to start from scratch.

Which sort of confirms my suspicions that writing for comics is just a bullshit job, because maybe it’s only hard to get into because of all the gatekeeping that goes on. Why bother accepting submissions and hiring based on merit, when a handful of writers can just vouch for friends or fans willing to do anything they ask? All I know is it’s relatively straightforward to get a job in chemistry. I got a degree in chemistry, and then I sent out some applications, went to some interviews and they offered me a job. Maybe if Marvel worked the same way, guys like Warren Ellis wouldn’t have the sort of unfair influence they have over their fans.

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rogueninja · 4 years

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Okay so we all know who your top ships are... who are your unpopular ships? Or obscure ships? What characters from what series do you think about often in either good or bad ways? Who is a character that you hate that others love? If you could rewrite a story or part of a book, what would it be and what would you do differently?

Ok I am digging through my brain right now bc if I’m not able to hyperfixate on something then I tend to forget I even liked it. Ok buckle in bc this is gonna be long af. YOU ASKED FOR THIS, REG.

I’m putting a readmore so as not to torture my followers lol

Thinking about Veronica Mars. About Veronica/Logan. Do they have a ship name?? But I love that show and i was THERE for them. They were kind of a surprise ship for me, in that when they got together I was like, wait, WHAT? Like I was totally caught off guard. But there first kiss is, like, sooo romantic to me haha. It’s my fave scene in the show. But Logan is suck a prick sometimes. And they break up like every five minutes. And every season Logan gets accused of murder which of course he ends up not being the murderer. And they get back together eventually and I’m like really? But deep down I am rooting for them lol. I really enjoyed the new season of Veronica Mars that came out last year, actually. The ending made me SO SAD THO.

I also used to watch Supergirl and I thought Kara and Mon-El were adorable. He was very Carswell Thorne-esque, RH, I *think* you would like him. I never watched past season 3(?) though, and he shoots off into space and I never caught up so a few months ago I actually googled what happens and [spoiler] he ends up marrying someone else in the future or something so I was like, ok I’m not investing any more time in this show lol. (Also I had to google Mon-El’s name just now bc i forgot which is a bad look BUT I WAS REALLY RIDE OR DIE FOR THEM FOR A WHILE lol). Also I loved Martian Manhunter in this show, he was my favorite character. But the CGI for him was awful, omg. He had practical makeup at first, they should have just stuck with that.

Speaking of Martian Manhunter, I also used to watch Young Justice and loved Miss Martian/Superboy. Am I basic??? lol oop. But I love basic love stories. Anyway, I thought they were super cute. In season 3 though they’re kind of on the rocks. I haven’t watched season 4. I also loved Artemis/Wally West, but of course that had to end tragically.

Also, let’s talk about Nightcrawler. Allow me to set the scene. Little Kat is 13 and just rediscovered the cartoon she saw a few times as a kid called X-Men: Evolution. And thus, a weird obsession with the German, blue demon boy began. I loved Kurt Wagner. In the cartoon he starts a relationship with Amanda Sefton and I thought they were a-dor-a-ble. She accepted him for who he was, and they had a really nice healthy relationship. A lot of ppl shipped him with Kitty too which i am honestly all for idec I JUST WANT THE BLUE BOI TO BE HAPPY.

Can we talk about A:TLA too??? Like, obviously Zutara, amiright? Power couple. Like, Kataang is.. fine, but its probably my least favorite part about the ending, haha. Also, consider: Tokka. Toph is bae and can get anyone she wants, and she clearly had kind of a crush on Sokka and I think they could have been awesome. It actually kills me that they never say who Lin and Suyin’s father is in LoK. I had a whole theory that it was that kid The Duke from Jet’s band based on like 2 scenes from the series. There’s a tumblr post I made about it somewhere in the ether lol.

I also just remembered Tahnorra (Tahno/Korra) from Legend of Korra. It’s hard for me to explain this one. It’s a weird combination of being hyperfixated on the first season of the show when it came out, and I think I stumbled upon some fic or something???? And I thought Tahno was hot or something??? And FUN FACT, he was voice by Rami Malek BEFORE HE WAS COOL. So like before Rami really got big I knew who he was. He also basically played the Avatar in Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and I thought that connection was hilarious. It was kind of a problematic crack pairing but there was one author in particular whom i follow to this day hoping she’ll update her Tahnorra fics…. *sigh*

Okay one last ship…. I used to be ride or die for Outlaw Queen in Once Upon a Time (aka Regina/Robin Hood). Like, before TLC, I had a personal tumblr renaissance for that ship alone. My only existing published fanfic is for that ship. Taylor Swift’s 1989 came out that year and I related every dang song to that ship. I loved Regina so much and I just wanted her to be happy. That show is a dumpster fire, though, and spat all over my hopes and dreams. *sigh*

Also, lightning round for obscure pairings I ship and/or never talk about:

Frank Castle/Karen Page (The Punisher) ok this one isnt that obscure but I never talk about it… but the pining, oh god the pining

Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth (GoT) THEIR 5 SECONDS TOGETHER ARE THE ONLY WORTHY PART OF SEASON 8. everything after that never happened

I already listed Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye (FMAB) as a top pairing previously but I feel the need to mention it again bc it was for real my OG OTP… LIKE U WANNA TALK ABOUT PINING…. *sobs*

Percy/Annabeth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) This used to be my fave book series and i loved how their relationship developed over the course of the books

Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter) ok can we TALK ABOUT THIS??? They were both badass misfits and they were perfect for each other. But noooo JKR has to announce they marry some nobodies…. this is the only change the last movie did right

Midna/Link (Zelda: Twilight Princess) I honestly have no explanation for this lol

Qui-gon Jinn and Shmi (Star Wars) CAN U IMAGINE if anakin had a proper father figure and didnt have to abandon his mother to slavery

Obi-wan/Satine…. (Star Wars: The clone Wars) we know whats up

OK, to answer some of your other questions: character I hate that others love. HMMMM…….

This one seems too easy/obvious but Professor Snape? Like obviously there’s already a ton of discourse surrounding this but he was gross, mistreated his students for years, committed atrocities, couldn’t get over his high school crush, and we’re supposed to believe he’s a hero in the end and HARRY WOULD NAME HIS SON AFTER HIM….. uh no. “Always” is gross.

I’ve literally been wracking my brain for days and I can’t think of any more characters for this. OK I did some googling and I remembered some LOL.

Ross from friends…. I literally can’t stand him. He’s so entitled and just the worst. He tries to act like he’s the nice, sensitive guy, but really he is so full of himself. Joey on the other hand is portrayed as a womanizer but is actually super sweet and I love him

Archie from Riverdale… I have only seen the first 1.5 seasons ish but he is the worst…. we’re supposed to believe he’s some easygoing musically gifted football player but instead he manages to pull off being bland as heck and actually kind of a terrible garbage person

Nick from chilling adventures of Sabrina. I hate characters that are like hitting on the main character even though she has a bf and are like dark and broody and sexy blah blah blah…. I liked Harvey way better. I never finished season 2 tho

Emma Swan from Once Upon a Time? Idk she was fine she just got old after a while

If you could rewrite a story or part of a book, what would it be and what would you do differently?

HM. First, Harry would name his son Remus Rebeus Potter LOL. Ok but real talk there was a headcanon floating around forever ago that Harry should have become a professor at Hogwarts instead of an auror and I am 100% on board

Ok, ok….. what abouuuttt…… OK, is star wars when Han and Leia get together. I like them as a couple, but the entire first half of the movie Han is being such an ass. And when they kiss the first time, he’s being SOOO creepy. It’s like so quintessentially 80s romance. and HERE’S THE THING. They actually filmed (or maybe just wrote?) a version of that scene that WASNT CREEPY. And i’m like WHY DIDNT YOU USE THAT?!? So I like to pretend that’s the version that actually happened.

This part is way harder than the shipping portion. If I think of anything else i’l dm you. I HOPE YOU ENJOY READING THIS NOVEL LENGTH POST OF ME RAMBLING ABOUT MY FIXATIONS OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS. If anyone actually read this far, you deserve a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket

#regolithheart #ask #answered

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miraculouscontent · 5 years

Note

Did you ever give your thoughts on Gamer 2.0? If not, would you mind sharing?

I haven’t given my thoughts, no, and I wouldn’t mind sharing!

(Firstly, just throwing this out there: I have no comment on the fact that we’re clearly missing an episode, so “sad trombone akuma” being there doesn’t strike me in any particular way. I complain about the order that episodes are released in, but I don’t feel that an episode being aired “out-of-order” should count towards what I view as its quality.)

(Also going to ignore Marinette’s much more intense love of gaming because it makes more sense than what she had in “Gamer”. I don’t mind retcons if they’re doing so to make more sense.)

(…though I do wish this had been the episode where Sabine gets into gaming rather than her already liking it)

Anyway, Gamer 2.0 is certainly… something. It asks the question of “what if each villain-of-the-day could duke it out with each other?” It also shows us how Ladybug and Chat would use them if they could take control. Seeing these guys come back in an interesting way (even though some akuma have an inherent disadvantage due to the battlefield, which is admittedly kinda dumb) is very interesting (also adore some of the references there).

I also like the ending, where Marinette brings Max to her parents and they literally drag him away to go play video games together. Her parents getting all excited and the hilarity of Max just being helplessly dragged off was funny. Max also gives up his akumatized object willingly (after Ladybug nails yet another lucky charm), which was a good moment (Chris doesn’t even remotely count for me because they were threatening to destroy his robot).

…That said, I really don’t like the rest of this episode. Now, admittedly, part of it is me judging the episode for what it isn’t rather than what it is, but I’ll get there.

[Level 1 - Max Attack]

Alright, so… Max.

Like, look, I get it. Max is hurting because he put all this work into this game and no one has time to play it for him.

But at the same time, this is one of the weakest akumatizations I’ve ever seen, at least in terms of the set-up.

For example, characters like Kim didn’t establish that they’d be gone for a long time. All Kim said that he was going to the pool. His activity would take the rest of the day at worst.

It’s the same with Kitty Section, who are only planning to try on Marinette’s T-shirts (by the way, completely unrelated, but having that happen before this scene and giving them a different excuse would’ve been way better considering that Kitty Section could’ve suggested Marinette because they know she’s been stressed, but I digress).

If Max is so invested in this game, he can just do small touches while he waits for someone to be free, whether it’s Kim or Kitty Section. It’s one thing to be really excited about it, but it’s another thing (especially for Max) to not even consider asking people when they would be free, because then he could just excitedly work on his game while he waits for that person to be available.

Now, if people had to keep bailing on Max due to obligations, continuously saying that they’d do it but having to cancel due to getting wrapped up in other things, that’d be different. It would be a frustrating (however understandable) situation for Max, where he can’t exactly be angry at his friends, but he has a right to be disappointed.

I simply just don’t buy that he spent maybe an hour asking everyone and then got sad enough to be akumatized because they had prior arrangements they’d already agreed to. If asking people to play with him was just to playtest his game, then he can simply continue working on it while he waits.

Heck, if he made this whole game himself, why not talk to people about design choices instead, which takes up a lot less time? Surely he has beta designs or things he wasn’t sure about. I can’t imagine many of his friends minding if he just showed them some concepts and asked for their opinion, which would only take a few seconds. If he’s aiming to make his game the best it can be, then–

…I’m getting too deep into this.

*ahem* Point being, his game is likely not perfect yet and it would’ve been more believable for his disappointment to be built up more. It’s great that he was a good sport when Ladybug beat him fair and square, but when the episode prioritizes his problems over Marinette’s (which I’ll get to), I want to understand the feelings he has when he gets akumatized, and I don’t.

Even if one were to say that it was Chloe’s insult who caused it…

Max, think for half a second.

Chloe is a bully who lies just to rile people up, and if Max honestly believes that his friends are lying to him (which makes zero sense, since Marinette verified what Kitty Section Minus One™ told Max without him asking), then he needs to have a little more faith in himself and his relationships, because yikes.

[Level 2 - The Pavement of Predictability]

People who have been following me for a long time know how much it irritates me when an episode lays out its plot from the word “go”. I definitely filled my sarcasm quota for the day–for the week, really–as this episode hammered how stressed Marinette was and how much she had to resist gaming, followed by someone being akumatized with a gaming theme.

Like, gee, I wonder what will happen?

I wonder if Ladybug will try to go through this as quickly as possible.

I wonder if her usual gaming skill will vanish when she does so.

I wonder if none of this will be blamed on the fact that she’s likely lacking sleep (she fell asleep during her test even though she managed to fill it out), is stressed beyond belief, and needs a freaking hug.

I wonder if that schedule Adrien mentioned will go completely disregarded as Chat is unbothered skipping out his obligations because being a hero is “fun” for him, further making this all pointless considering that Adrien doesn’t care about his schedule and Marinette does because most of the things she’s doing are things for people she cares about.

I wonder if Chat will continue goofing off as he practically ignores the fact that Ladybug told him that she had things to do, only worsening Ladybug’s mood.

I wonder if Ladybug will be mocked viciously just because she’s in a hurry.

This entire akuma fight played out exactly how I thought it would, right down to Chat purposefully throwing himself off the edge to let Ladybug deal with the final battle alone. The only thing I was happy to be right about predicting was Ladybug’s win over Gamer 2.0, which was legitimately awesome of her as usual.

The problem with this whole fight (more the conversations during the fights, really) is that it’s standard. It’s too easy to see where it’s going, and where it’s going isn’t pleasant.

Marinette wanted to play with Max. She didn’t maliciously deny him or try to lie her way out of it. She just had too many things to do.

And for that, she’s punished by being forced to play a long, drawn-out game with him.

She didn’t do anything to deserve this happening to her, but the narrative is clearly setting this up for comedy because anger is often seen as more funny than sadness and Ladybug is mostly frustrated and nothing else.

But, in this situation, I don’t think that either would be funny, and Gamer 2.0 being a smug akuma who makes fun of Ladybug when she loses just pours salt in a wound that he caused.

Even if the mocking is a punishment for how Ladybug is unable to handle the situation well, it doesn’t work because I can see how she’s not taking it well. She is fourteen years old and has the burden of a miraculous placed upon her without her asking for it. She struggles to say “no”, she still has to go to school and do well, and she has friends and celebrities who unintentionally request things for her at the same time.

And it’s not like this whole “punishment” thing hasn’t happened before. There have been episodes like “Antibug” where Marinette has to learn a “”””lesson“””” because she snapped at Chloe for interfering with her job, and now it’s just the same thing but Marinette how dare you be busy alongside everyone else and how dare you not ignore your obligations to have fun instead.

It’s cruel, plain and simple. It’s the “working-on-actually-important-things” Ladybug versus the person who got akumatized because everyone had too many obligations one day to playtest his game.

Just… whyyyyyy.

[Level 3 - Chat Cove]

We’re gonna have to have another “look, I get it” moment here because… look, I get it, Chat’s character is there to be the goofball while Ladybug is a lot more serious.

But Chat here absolutely cannot catch onto Ladybug’s mood, and the only reason he’s helpful at all is because he likes gaming.

Let’s look at the facts, scene by scene.

Firstly, the one thing I did like, which was him being concerned about Gamer 2.0 laying a trap out for them when Ladybug was clearly stressed and perhaps not thinking straight. Good moment, bravo, and all that, because Chat should be ready to have a little restraint to cover for Ladybug when she doesn’t.

…But then all of that is immediately thrown out the window by the time they step into the game itself.

Here’s what happens: Ladybug picks the Mime for one of her fights. While she’s busy, Chat makes a teasing (or perhaps semi-serious) comment to her, which Ladybug replies to and thus loses what she’d been miming.

Chat then feels the need to tell her that she loses what she mimes if she talks.

…Well then maybe you shouldn’t have said anything that warranted a reply, Chat.

Chat also is aware that Ladybug is stressed (she basically said it to his face), yet when it’s his turn to play the game, he waffles around as he tries to decide on which character to use, cracking jokes about using Copycat but it being “too easy if it’s basically himself” until Ladybug gets irritated by this. He then picks Mr. Pigeon and continues goofing off.

Am I meant to be annoyed that Ladybug snapped at him? Because I’m not. I don’t mind if he’s still his jokester self but he shouldn’t be wasting time when Ladybug stressed how many things she has to do. What he did as Mr. Pigeon was legitimately funny, but the fact that he seems to almost intentionally waste time despite what Ladybug said makes it frustrating.

Theeeen we get to Gamer 2.0’s comment on Ladybug’s rushing and Chat trying to teach Ladybug a lesson.

First, Gamer 2.0, because the problem is not that Ladybug is trying to rush. I mean, speedrunning is a thing that exists. The problem is that she’s not thinking due to intense stress and an increasing lack of interest.

(Not only that, but why is Gamer 2.0 smug and not sad/annoyed by this? That would be actually INTERESTING if he was trying to make the game as fun as possible and was disappointed that Ladybug was just irritated by it. This is supposed to be HIS game, so how can he be satisfied with someone not enjoying it(he’s even glad later that she’s enjoying herself, but he’d been enjoying her frustration, so…???)? And regardless, no self-respecting gamer would get smug at winning because their opponent wasn’t trying or wasn’t into it.)

Second, Chat, and this bizarre lesson of “it’s not about not knowing how to play, it’s because you’re not having fun!”

Like, okay, it’s great that he asked her if she was alright instead of being upset that she lost multiple times, but to then turn around and give her non-advice?

Yeah, no. Just no.

Firstly, knowing how to play IS actually important (can’t believe I have to say this) and whether someone’s having fun or not doesn’t matter.

On the contrary, some people have fun regardless of if they win or not. Some people may not even try to win and just do whatever they want. If two people have the same amount of skill but one of them has more fun, then yes, theoretically the fun person could win, but they could just as easily lose if they’re not focused enough due to having too much fun.

The advice should not be to “have fun;” it should be to remain calm and focus on a plan, because that’s what Ladybug does best at.

Chat is applying his own logic to Ladybug, which only works because plot. Chat and Ladybug have two completely different styles and Chat is only thinking of himself and what he does. It’s as if Chat doesn’t even understand Ladybug or how she works.

Heck, this episode could’ve even been a compromise! Maybe Ladybug is too stressed and Chat goofs off too much, so they’d have to find a happy middle-ground where they’re focused but still having enough fun to not be stressed.

The only reason Chat is on any sort of high-ground here is because this is a game. I mean, we all remember “Stormy Weather” where he was so nonchalant with the akuma that he got flung fifty feet in the air and slammed his face into a car, right? His tendency to have fun and goof off is just convenient here and only here.

Anyway though, back to the actual episode, Chat then feels the need to sacrifice himself so that Ladybug can fight Gamer 2.0 which, coming right after Chat’s so-called “lesson,” just makes me think that he has no communication skills whatsoever (not that it doesn’t make sense, but the show shouldn’t present him as doing the right thing).

The fact that only one of them can face Gamer 2.0 isn’t the problem, because that’s logical given that Gamer’s failure the first time around was due to him going up against two people (since Chat manned the controls while Ladybug dealt with the real Gamer inside the robot).

The problem isn’t even the fact that Chat has sacrificed himself before. I mean, yes, not all of those sacrifices were necessary, and yes, it puts undue pressure on Ladybug every single time. That’s a reasonable frustration and I will never deny that.

The problem then is that Chat failed to convey his sacrifice to Ladybug. They have all the time in the world to talk and Chat is hardly there for a few seconds before just being like “lol bye i trust you.”

This is what I mean when I talk about Chat’s communication problems. I have no issue with him throwing himself off the edge, but only if he and Ladybug had agreed on it.

Ladybug is the planner. She usually gets the akuma. It makes perfect sense why she’d be the one to face Gamer 2.0.

But why did Chat have to be so dramatic about it? Ladybug felt horrified and pressured at his sacrifice because he decided to do it without her consent. All it would’ve taken is a “let’s be real here, you’re the most qualified to do this and neither of us want to fight each other, so is it okay if I just knock myself out of the ring so you can do that, or do you have a reason why I’d be better at fighting this time?” and that would be it.

It’s just an unnecessary way to create drama/tension while needlessly making Chat look bad.

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, the narrative has Gamer 2.0 mock Ladybug over Chat’s sacrifice because she was the one who said she wanted to get the game over quickly.

Seriously? She’d been having fun for the last few rounds and the narrative still wants to get on her case for having obligations that she wanted to take care of? She gets told a phony lesson, manages to work with it, and then still has to be criticized for something that isn’t even a factor anymore.

(Also, I simply do not believe that the Gamer 2.0 who mocked Ladybug relentlessly and was unbearably smug during this whole thing would be so respectful and nice after Ladybug beat him.)

There’s also Chat’s line after Ladybug asks him how he manages to have fun between his superhero and civilian life, which he again brushes off in a very Chat-way.

It’s yet another situation where Chat doesn’t know Ladybug enough to give her advice. Chat simplifies his answer to “I have fun when I’m being a superhero” yet fails to mention that he has fun because his life is boring (due to his schedule) and he enjoys the freedom that being Chat Noir gives him.

Also, it’s a non-answer considering that Ladybug had also asked more specifically if he’s afraid that he’ll have to give everything up to be a superhero someday. Chat clearly isn’t thinking as seriously about his answer as she wanted and their situations aren’t comparable.

Adrien’s obligations are things that often annoy him since they disrupt his plans with others, so I can see why his immediate reaction would be “oh, you mean getting away from my father, never having to do photoshoots again, and being able to spend all my time with you? Heck yeah, sign me up, I’ll sacrifice all of that!” (I know that sounds bad considering he’d be giving up his friends too, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt and say that he’s only thinking about his obligations and trying to say something flirty to Ladybug at the same time).

But Marinette’s obligations are typically things that she wanted to do.

She wanted to make Kitty Section T-shirts.

She wanted to make Jagged Stone a poster.

And she also wanted to have time to play a game with her father.

Chat’s answer doesn’t apply to her, because Marinette’s happiness doesn’t come from being Ladybug. The show tries to present Chat’s line as something romantic, but ignores the fact that it doesn’t help her.

And, y’know, the fact that Chat “enjoying his time with Ladybug” often involves him throwing himself into danger and falling under an akuma’s influence, further stressing exactly why Ladybug can’t find enjoyment in fights at times.

Just… what did Ladybug do to you, show? Did she spill hot coffee on the lap of one of your writers or what?

Geez.

[Level 4 - I’m Already Sick of Making Level Names And This Episode Doesn’t Understand Focus So Why Should I Bother?]

Okay, so here’s where I talk more about what the episode isn’t, and it all comes back to how the show is portraying Marinette’s struggle and how the characters around her react.

Marinette has a “thousand” things to do. Her week is chock full of stuff and she’s miserable over it. Tikki is helping however she can (kinda), which is something, but what does Tom do?

He gives Marinette non-advice. Like, I legitimately don’t know if this man understands his daughter whatsoever.

It is far too late to talk to Marinette about having “too many cakes in the oven,” and even if it wasn’t, has Tom honestly forgotten the thing that we learned in the first episode ever?

Marinette struggles to say “no.” It’s a character flaw of hers. Whether she knew she had “too many cakes” is pointless because what likely happened is that Marinette knew that she was overloaded and could not control herself when she agreed to “more cakes.”

Tom and Sabine are utterly useless when it comes to Marinette’s conflict. Yet again, they babble about things that aren’t even remotely going to help their daughter (with Sabine focusing more on making Tom feel better than thinking how they can help Marinette). They have no idea of the struggle she’s going through, nor do they try to understand.

They just bury themselves in video games while Marinette suffers. Tom saying something to her is a step up from “Weredad,” but it’s a similar situation to that episode when Tom and Sabine talk to each other about it and then proceed to not do anything.

I’m not asking Tom and Sabine to completely solve Marinette’s problems. Obviously, that’s impossible. A lot of what Marinette needs to do can’t be done by another person.

But, they don’t know that Tikki exists. They could’ve offered to help her with her history. They could’ve offered her advice on how they remembered things when they used to be in school (which doesn’t solve everything but that’s kind of the point when they appear so early in the episode; they also could’ve been busy in the bakery at the start and then gave Marinette better advice later instead).

But they don’t, and that shows a huge problem in the episode. The moral of this episode is garbage because it’s not offering Marinette any actual solutions to her problems.

Some activities are just not fun. That’s an inevitability. “Making things fun” is a worthless, meaningless concept that waffles around the issue and ignores the fact that “having fun” could very well mean that Marinette could slip up by not focusing enough or being too relaxed in the situation of needing to get a lot of things done at once.

And, yet again, the show says that Marinette has a problem without actually giving her a solution.

Where are the people trying to give her strategies for time crunches? Where in this episode do people actually offer help concerning Marinette’s issue of being unable to say “no”? Where is the person who swoops in at the end to at least give actual advice on the issue (which I honestly thought they were going to do with Luka when I first saw that he was strangely absent from Kitty Section; it had nothing to do with me wanting Lukanette, I just thought there was a reason for him not being there)?

Heck, Max is even in the episode and is the focus in terms of getting akumatized and getting his freaking problems actually resolved in the end. With how smart he supposedly is, why not have Max care about Marinette’s problems and offer solutions based on facts and logic instead of something that Chat “feels” is correct?

Maybe he knows the exact time to take breaks and how long to take them so to both avoid burn-out and also refresh Marinette enough for her to remain at her best working speed? Maybe he could’ve even suggested a schedule that would show her how long each activity would realistically take given her usual speed, and how much she would have to work/relax based on that?

Like, just saying, I would hope that the students would want to help their “everyday Ladybug” (I know that phrase is meaningless now, but roll with me here) in any way they can.

Tom sings when he makes bread. He could suggest that Marinette sing/hum while doing her projects to help her relax.

Kitty Section (again, minus Luka for some reason) could all be productive based on music (Rose is even wearing headphones in “Reverser” while she’s in the art club), so each of them would offer Marinette the type of music they use to help them keep calm while still working hard.

Just something. Even on Marinette’s issue of saying “no,” maybe Sabine could suggest that Marinette use a handheld schedule to show all her activities and, when someone asks Marinette to do something, Marinette would check her schedule and “inadvertently” show it to them so they’d be able to see how busy she is. It won’t stop everyone from insisting that she still do it, but it would at least make some people be like “no, it’s okay, I see you’re busy” or “I can wait” while Marinette works on being able to say “no” right to their face (so it’s at least a minor solution to her problem while she works on the major solution).

But no. Marinette helps with someone else’s problems while her issues are brushed aside.

Again.

By the end of the episode, her issue is brushed away with “Well, surely her obligations can wait a while! She can go play with Max, it’s fiiiine! It’s not as if she said that she was overloaded and that breaks were absolutely not an option or anything! Surely, this was just a scenario where Marinette overreacted and it’s all her fault for freaking out so much instead of taking a break!”

This episode isn’t about helping Marinette. It’s about watching Marinette be miserable for minutes on end with no one able to actually help her. For a show that’s supposed to teach lessons, it’s woefully pathetic about it, preferring to make up solutions that don’t actually help anyone.

Just… ugh. I’d rather watch the original “Gamer”, and that’s saying something because I don’t like that episode either. Seeing the akuma fight was cool but it’s just not worth it.

#((I'm a little snarky/sarcastic this time around lol))#category: critique #category: long post #word count: over 4000 #episode: Gamer 2.0 #other: ask and answer

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qualquercoisa945 · 5 years

Text

But We Can Dance The Way We Did (Part 1)

AO3 Link

Title Inspiration- Secret by The Pierces (Story) and Heaven Knows by Five For Fighting (Chapter)

yeah it's a multi chapter but at least it's not a 6 parter. sorry y'all, love doesn't discriminate will take a while to be done on a different note, this is a two parter named Two Can Keep A Secret If One Of Them Is Dead. i know most of the fandom thinks the queens just popped up in the 21st century, but the idea of the queens having lives in the modern world is too good for me not to work with. that said, i hope you enjoy this look into kitty and cleves's lives

tw warnings- fears of abandonment

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"The things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect." -Luna Lovegood

Kath was fifteen when she’d first had to confront a part of her past she actually missed.

In hindsight, a dance class was an awfully fitting way for it to happen. Even if hip-hop was a far cry from the dancing styles from back then.

She’d always been a dancer- music in general was one of her passions, and she’d found herself trying out just about any style she had a chance to.

Dance studios were some of the few places her anxiety seemed to ease up a little. Even now, sat in a corner while watching people interact, she couldn’t help but feel that pre-dance excitement, even if, she conceded, it would’ve been better if she wasn’t on her own.

“‘Scuse me?” Those two words, spoken in an accent that, while she didn’t hear too often in this life, she was all too familiar with, snapped her out of her reverie and brought her to look up. She was met with a tall girl, she’d guess maybe a couple of years older than her, with short black hair and gentle brown eyes that held a familiar friendly gleam to them-

No.

It couldn’t be her.

Could it?

She shook herself out of her train of thought when she realised she had yet to reply. “Sorry, yeah?”

The girl gave a broad grin, sitting down beside her. “Name’s Anna,” shit, “nice t’meet you. Are you here on your own?”

Kath gave her a soft, slightly anxious smile. “Yeah, first class ‘n stuff. I’m Katherine, but most people just call me Kath or Kat.”

“Pretty name.” Anna mused, and for a moment Kath thought she sounded wistful, almost nostalgic. But then she kept going, back to her previous casual tone. “First class for me too. You wanna be partners if we gotta do dances in pairs?”

Kath watched as Anna held her hand out for a handshake, and for a moment she almost refused. There was still a chance she wasn’t her, and if it wasn’t, things could be come awkward really fast.

But regardless, and perhaps against her better judgement, she shook her hand. “You’re on.”

Anna gave her that same broad grin, one that was becoming increasingly familiar for the (maybe) second time, and Kath couldn’t help but smile softly in response.

But then the teacher came inside, and their conversation was cut short as they started warm up.

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

The first thing Anna did upon getting home was to race to her bedroom so she could flop onto her bed and scream into her pillow until her throat felt hoarse.

It was only once she’d had to cough because of how bad her throat was getting that she stopped, flipping around to lay on her back instead of her stomach.

The third thing she did was reach for her phone, haphazardly thrown on her bedside table, and call Bessie- the one person she’d told about everything, since she would be the only one who get it. At least, at the time, she was.

As usual, she picked up within a couple moments. In the background, she could vaguely make out the sound of a zipper being closed, and then a familiar voice with the barest hint of a German accent. “Hey Anna, just finished practice, I’ll be heading home soon. What’s up?”

“Can you try and hurry?” Anna surprised herself with the vulnerability in her voice- she sounded nothing like the usual calm and slightly-arrogant personality she wore, instead sounding anxious, almost fearful.

And by Bessie’s tone, she’d noticed too. “Did something happen?”

“Kind of? Nothing bad, but it was still a lot and I just, need someone here right now.”

“I’m on my way. Do you want me to keep talking to you?”

“No, I’ll be alright, I think.” Anna promised, sitting up and pulling one of her blankets tight around herself, effectively cocooning herself in it. “Just keep an eye on your phone, yeah?”

“I got it. I’ll be there as soon as possible, I promise.”

“Thank you.”

Click.

Anna let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding once the call was over, pulling the blanket tighter around herself as she reached for her laptop, putting on the first video that popped up on her Youtube feed and mildly interested her while her mind wandered.

She couldn’t help but worry that Bessie would think she was just imagining things. They’d stuck by each other’s sides since they were kids and Anna was showing Bessie around their school after she had moved there from England, being there for each other when no one else was. And considering neither of their parents were particularly present anyways, the moment they’d turned 18, they’d both moved to England, sharing a flat. Bessie was more family than her parents ever were, and the mere idea of losing her support was utterly terrifying.

Yet at the same time, she felt so dumb for ever doubting Bessie wouldn’t support her. And it turned into even more of an emotional conflict with the newest addition of (possibly) Kitty being back.

Because Anna would be lying if she said she didn’t still hold a stupidly large amount of guilt for what had happened to the girl she was now (hopefully) able to call a friend again. She wished she could’ve satisfied Henry, she wished she could’ve stopped the marriage, she wished she’d been able to help Kitty more, to protect her-

But wishing doesn’t get you anywhere. That was something she was more aware of than she would’ve liked.

She snapped out of her reverie by the sound of the door closing and a soft call of her name. “In my room!” She called in response, pausing the video and letting out a soft sigh as she waited to Bessie to come in.

That wait was just barely a few moments long, and soon Bessie was in her room, a bag full of snacks on one hand and her leather jacket pressed tight to her stomach. “Oh, Anna…” Her voice was soft, a drastic contrast to the usual sarcastic tone it bore, as she set the bag down by the bed and sat down beside Anna, letting the latter lean back against her with her head resting on her shoulder as she wrapped her arm around her waist. “Now, why don’t you tell me what happened, yeah?”

Anna gave a soft sigh. “So I started hip-hop classes today, right. And I get there and there’s this girl sitting in the corner by herself and I just-”

“You thought she was Katherine.” Bessie completed softly, pulling Anna closer when she nodded. “Oh, liebling, I’m sorry-”

“But here’s the thing, her name’s actually Katherine!” Anna finally let out, shifting to look into Bessie’s shocked eyes. “And- and I know that’s a weak connection in and of itself, but she sounded and acted and looked so much like her and I just…” She let out a tired, defeated sigh, leaning back against Bessie. “I think it might actually be her. And… you know how I feel about what happened, Bess, what if I’m right? Because, I want to be, I want to be with her again, but at the same time… I could’ve done more, I should’ve done more, I dunno if she would want me to be ar-”

“‘Nough of that.” Bessie’s light squeeze and soft yet firm words caused Anna to stop in her ramblings, looking at her. “I get it. We both have regrets on her past lives, and wished we could’ve done more for people we cared about back then. But it’s done. It’s all over, so dwelling on it isn’t gonna do anyone any good. If you are right, and I do hope you are, then all you can do is be there for her, if she wants you to.”

“But what if she doesn’t?”

“It’ll suck ass,” Bessie conceded, reaching up to lightly trace patterns on Anna’s back, “but you’ll just have to deal with it. Not much else you can do about it, I’m afraid.”

Anna let out a soft sigh, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I guess.” She mumbled out, pausing for a moment before pressing herself closer to Bessie. “Thank you for watching out for me.” She added softly, the barest hint of a smile passing by her face.

“Always, meine schwester.” Bessie promised with a soft tone, before it turned playful as she shifted to meet Anna’s eyes with a playful grin. “Now, how does a movie marathon and snacks sound?”

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

Later that night, Bessie found herself laying on her back, staring up at the ceiling as memories from that afternoon raced through her mind.

For as long as she could remember, her and Anna had been there for one another. One of her earliest memories had been Anna showing her around in their kindergarten, speaking in an English that wasn’t quite fluent, which, in hindsight, was to be expected when it was just her second language and she was barely even 3 years old.

And as the years went on, they stuck by one another’s side. With their parents nearly always on business trips or filming somewhere, they were often left to be taken care of by other people, and kids at school weren’t always genuine in their attempts to befriend them. So they were each other’s anchors, the only constants in the whirlwinds their lives were.

And then they each realized who they were the reincarnation of. With Anna calling Bessie in a near panic as she went on and on, and the realization dawning on Bessie herself not long after. If anything, the whole ordeal had brought them closer- as far as they were aware, they were the only ones who understood.

And now, there was a chance that Katherine Howard was back.

She’d heard of her, of course she had- her and Anna had been close in their past lives, so it was to be expected, and she knew Anna wanted her back more than anything. And she’d sworn to herself to never wish against Anna’s happiness, but… She couldn’t help but hope for Anna to be wrong, even with the gnawing guilt she felt upon those thoughts.

Because she knew Anna loved Katherine, and she couldn’t help but fear that maybe, just maybe, Anna would let go of her for Katherine. And that scared her more than words could say.

She shook her head for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon, sitting up and letting out a soft huff. She should know better than this, damn it! Why was she working herself up over stuff that was so incredibly unlikely?

With a quiet groan, she flopped back onto the bed, shifting onto her side and curling up around herself. It was going to be a long night, she could already tell.

#katherine howard #anna of cleves #bessie on the bass #elizabeth bessie blount #two can keep a secret if one of them is dead #six the musical #six the musical fanfics #six #six fanfics #writing

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