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#planet earth is back and it's more impressive and depressing than ever

wendytestabrat · 7 months

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WHAT I THINK THE SOUTH PARK CHARACTER’S BIG 3 ARE IN ASTROLOGY

ok their sun signs are already confirmed in canon but here are what i think their moon and risings are. and btw in astrology your rising sign is your outer shell and how u come across to others on first impression, your sun sign is like your ego and how you think of yourself, and then your moon sign is your deep emotional core. think of it like pulling back 3 layers of an onion with the rising sign on top, then the sun, then the moon.

STAN:

stan is OBVIOUSLY a taurus rising like look at his fucking deadpanned expression 24/7. it’s also why he’s rlly rational and calm compared to the other boys and ik his libra sun makes him like that too but a lot of libras are still fun and enthusiastic people, so his taurus rising makes him a more serious & mature libra rather than a retarded ditzy one LOL. and stan def has that stable and reliable essence to him that taurean people have which is what makes him a loyal friend. stan doesn’t like change it’s why he won’t fucking dump wendy and stays friends with kyle, CLASSIC TAURUS NONSENSE. he can also pop off out of nowhere like a taurus if u piss him off LOL. i’ve already talked abt how stan is a stereotypical libra so go look at that post. and then then when u peel the onion all the way down to his moon stan is DEF a pisces moon like yeah he does come across as a more rational and level-headed person bc of the taurus and libra but i mean deep down stan is still a rlly sensitive af person and he can get depressed easily and throw a huge pity party.

KYLE:

bruh kyle is a PISCES RISING idc what anyone says. ok picking kyle’s rising sign was actually the hardest bc there were a lot i could see him as. when it came down to it, it was a toss up between pisces and virgo for me LOL. like obviously he has virgo traits bc he’s overly critical abt everyone and everything and he overly helps people too much but that’s a pisces trait too and what virgo & pisces have in common and why they’re sister signs bc they both get overly enmeshed in other people’s drama LOL. he’s a pisces rising bc on first glance kyle comes across like he’s all sweet and innocent and wants to help everyone and save the day and he’s EXTREMELY charming, hence why cartman said “kyle you are the sweet one” but then when u get to know him better that uncaring selfish detached gemini part of him comes out LOL. and ofc he has to be a cancer moon bc kyle is literally the biggest drama queen on planet earth and is a big moody bitch. he has the typical mood swings of a gemini but it’s amplified 100x bc he’s a cancer moon duh. and he’s way too overly concerned with everyone else’s problems and he has too much empathy like a typical cancer. i hate it when gemini and cancer placements come together bc it creates the nosiest bitch ever that thinks your problems are their problems. and yeah cartman is a cancer sun, but honestly cancer moons are way more intense bc the moon rules cancer and the moon is abt your emotional side so when that’s in cancer is creates a disaster LOL.

CARTMAN:

ok cartman is a LEO rising there is no doubt about it. literally every bad trait people say leos have is really what leo risings are not leo suns. they’re the biggest attention whore narcissists on the planet. leo suns are dignified and confident (like me 😏) bc the sun rules leo so we don’t need to do that attention seeking crap LOL. that’s why cartman comes across SUPER charismatic and confident. he’s a HUGE leader and loves being the center of attention. he also has a lot of that fiery energy and gets rlly aggressive and childish at times. but yeah peeling back the onion he’s a cancer sun and scorpio moon and is actually just double water. his cancer traits are his love of his home, his mom and his loyalty to his friends etc. his kindness and sensitivity (THAT THE GOD DAMN OTHER BOYS USED AGAINST HIM AND PROVOKED HIM FOR). but yeah if u dig even deeper it’s the scorpio moon that is the true reason for cartman’s vengeful behavior and how he’s so damn good at emotionally manipulating people. cancers have those traits too but he has to have scorpio bc i mean that would explain why he takes shit as far as he does and he’s very persistent & passionate in carrying out his plans. cartman can achieve anything he wants.

KENNY:

yeah kenny is an AQUARIUS RISING the dude wears a fucking parka all day long and is aloof as fuck. PEOPLE THINK HE’S WEIRD, but they also think he’s friendly and nice. and yeah he’s an aries bc kenny just doesn’t give a fuck and will risk his life and put himself into dangerous ass situations that kills him like a typical aries LOL. he lives on the edge and likes to have fun which is why him and cartman get along rlly well. and he’s also a pisces moon like stan bc bro is compassionate and sensitive af deep down. kenny is just a good af & caring friend that will sacrifice himself to help u. he’s literally everything kyle claims to be but isn’t but that’s probably why kyle is just a pisces rising while kenny is a pisces moon LOL. kyle only APPEARS to be that caring self-sacrificing martyr, kenny actually IS.

WENDY:

she’s a gemini rising period. ok wendy comes across SUPER social, smart, & charming. she can talk to anyone and become their friend in an instant but she’s also a two-faced cunt too and she changes her mind and personality in every episode LOL. but yeah when u get to her core she’s actually a sagittarius bc not only is wendy smart, but she’s rlly passionate about her beliefs and will speak her truth even if it gets her in trouble or disliked. which kind of contradicts her gemini rising where she’ll act fake so she will be liked and popular. but yeah deep down wendy is a scorpio moon just like cartman bc she’s extremely intense and you don’t wanna fuck with her. just like cartman she’s extremely persistent and strategic abt something if she wants it. wow i just realized all four of the boys AND wendy are water moons. go figure. they’re all overly emotional sensitive ass bitches.

BUTTERS:

yeah he’s DEF a cancer rising. butters comes across like he’s gonna be an overly emotional victimized turd like cartman & kyle bc he is rlly sensitive on the outside (and he def does have his crabby moments when he does snap), but when you peel back the layers of the onion butters is actually a lot more chill & mature than that. he’s rlly loyal and reliable bc of his virgo sun and always willing to lend a hand (sometimes to the point where he gets taken advantage of) and he can be a bit of a perfectionist. (mainly bc his dad is so damn strict) but yeah u peel back the layers even more to his libra moon butters isn’t rlly an overly emotional turd he’s just this aloof ass airhead that’s overly happy, optimistic, & nice.

#SOUTH PARK #ASTROLOGY #cartman #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #butters #wendy testaburger #kenny mccormick #rising signs are more fun to look at than sun signs #ASTROLOGYSHITPOSTS

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ruminate88 · 6 months

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Finding Peace In Love:

I dated two narcissist back to back, Cody, then Andrew and I dealt with a third narcissist, Jake, who kept hovering over me throughout my 20’s! I wasn’t physically attracted to Jake but he was always so mysterious and flirty towards me. I found my love life was everything but peaceful. I found it hard to breathe and not drown in the waves of depression. There wasn’t a day I woke up that I felt sure of the path I was on or confident in myself and my life choices. I was being lead every day by my emotions and my hormones. I chased the “pretty guys” around wanting them to want me just as bad. They were nothing but teasers. The narcissists in my life all accept one of them, was insanely and physically good looking. I knew both of my exes were “too good to be true”. I would question myself constantly as to, “Why would these very gorgeous men wanna talk to me??” (Back then I knew nothing about narcissism)

That was the most disappointing part of my past is that it was all “too good to be true” and those men CAN have any woman they want… Why would they settle for me?? They’re never going to settle down and be happy with just one, woman or even men too. Cody was bisexual and didn’t limit himself to one gender, leaving me out numbered by a see of hungry and desperate people. I ONLY wanted to have a loving and positive relationship with both of my exes but I’ve found they can’t be either of those things and they certainly can’t ever support me emotionally, financially or even as a friend. In my experiences, they just take and take from me until they’re disgusted by me and already obsessed with someone new.

Prior to the narcissist, I had this grand vision of what love is supposed to be. That is why “the love bomb phase” was hard to detect as “toxic”; even though it all felt intense and a little crazy. I was looking for “crazy”, essentially. I also use to believe my soulmate had to be someone who was so much like me and have everything in common with me! Thats why when my exes were “mirroring” me, it only put me in a delusional and fantasy-like mindset and caused me to fall for their “mask”. I thought I always wanted a partner that was exactly like me but honestly, it became an annoyance to me. Jake, mirrored me to an extreme level that we actually had competition amongst each other and it made me even less attracted to him physically and in general.

After my relationships with narcissists, I was in such a toxic atmosphere and down on myself that I just stopped caring. I was so exhausted from trying to please and impress both Cody and Andrew. I was giving up on finding love and giving up on myself altogether. I threw out most of my beliefs on “love” and “soul mates”. I told myself what I was looking for may not be out there. Of course I STILL wanted a “grand love” but was expecting it less and less. Whenever I met my husband, I had almost no expectations or goals but found my husband to be the nicest guy on planet earth. From our very first conversation; I immediately felt at peace within myself and within my life. That was truly the first time I believed “I was going to be okay.” I had to further investigate this new man whom was more than a gentleman towards me. He was patient, he was understanding and ready to give his heart and love to someone. 🥹

I had only ever dated “takers”. My first real boyfriend, Stewart, was when I was 18 and even though he wasn’t a “narcissist”, he was lazy and unwilling to work or give anything to me. He took advantage of me and my parents for two years. Whenever I met my husband, he was a giver for sure and I felt very undeserving of him but it was the first time I felt truly safe and appreciated by a man. The biggest thing that stood out to me was the peace I felt. That meant more to me than anything else. I had no expectations when I met my husband but he only got better with time. Conversation between us was mostly easy and positive. We even agree to disagree well. I found we don’t have everything in common but we often work to find a compromise when it’s plausible. My husband and I don’t rush to point fingers at the other person or say hurtful words. However, no one on this planet is perfect and our marriage is far from perfect. It’s the peace that I find with him that keeps me with him. Yes I’m attracted to him and I feel mostly safe with him but I’ve come to accept so many differences between us to keep that “peace” that I’ve come to desire more and more of peace. My exes caused me so much grief and drama that I was very unhinged to now feeling “whole” with my husband. I feel more put together next to him and I don’t lay awake questioning his intentions the way I did with my ex, Andrew.

You can learn to work with someone who wants the same things out of life as you IF you’re willing to try. It does take two and no two people ever perfectly treat each other 100% perfectly. My husband has done or said things at times I didn’t agree with or particularly like HOWEVER, I know he doesn’t always agree with me too BUT because we both want marriage and a family, we respect each other and accept what is. The most important thing I think is that we’re both just calm people separately, we always try to defuse any situation that becomes too chaotic for us and we’ve never purposely spewed any kind of hatred towards the other and I believe it’s because we both genuinely want a loving and lasting relationship. We easily can bring up a touchy subject, say our opinions and even if don’t like each others point of view, we quietly keep it to ourselves or else kindly say no we don’t see it that way and let it go. I always tell my husband “you get what you give” and “you can only control your own actions, not someone else’s!” I think that helps us both to be careful what we do and say to each other but I have expected so little based on what little I’ve received prior to meeting him! 😓

The narcs in my past did nothing BUT work to bring me hardship, bring me chaos and stress. Andrew said the most romantic lies to me, only to then disappoint me over and over again. Andrew caused me a lot of anger because his actions were opposite of the promises he made to me. 😞 He did nothing but lie and cheat!! The narcs in my past worked to hurt me over and over again. Constantly getting my hopes up but then making me feel as if I wasn’t good enough or worth their actual time and efforts. I felt they only wanted to use my body but that they could care less about my heart. Having ex boyfriends who only took from me and gave me absolutely nothing, caused me to expect nothing from men moving forward. My husband came as a surprise to me. He was more than willing to take his time out to notice me and to get to know me. My husband talked with me 3 months over just texting and phone calls before I was even comfortable to FaceTime him or jump into another relationship with a man. My husband was the opposite of my exes. He was very forward and open about what he wanted with me and out of life. I felt he had nothing to hide but with my exes, I felt they had everything to hide from me…

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vikema-blog · 8 months

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didn't you think

Didn't you always think time would make everything easier? Life and love and dreams.

Surprise! It didn't. It actually might have made it harder? Leaving me feeling more confused with my life than ever before.

A few years ago I went after a long-time dream of mine, leaving everything to live in Amsterdam, my favorite city on earth, but that went to shit because of my anxiety issues. It was ultimately too intense and too much impressions, I started longing for my safe zone and my family, so I went home after a few months to pick up the pieces of myself back together again.

I've always had issues with body image and the way I see myself. In my early teenage years I remember top-of-the-lung screaming "I am the ugliest person in the world" at myself repeatedly in the mirror. I've 100% used food as comfort throughout my life when feeling sad and depressed. Developed an eating disorder later on, sometimes starving myself, but mostly throwing up food and obviously hiding it. It unfortunately has stayed. Now it is very rarely, but still happens at low moments. My weight has fluctuated. At this moment I'm at a healthy weight, but it has went up and down from 57-75 kg. I've managed to incorporate good and stable routines, like working out and eating relatively healthy and "normal". But the self-hatred is very much still there inside of me every day. When the road of life gets bumpy I still have that voice in my head telling me that I'm never good enough for anyone or anything. When I have a good day or month or whatever, and with good I mean feeling pretty and cute and my love life is in a good place, then I'll forget all about these issues I have. But I can always trust that it'll come back once I feel ugly (and therefore worthless) again.

I think I fell in love for real for the first time this year. But I'm not quite sure what "in love" means, either I'm too undecided as a person or I'm not very good at understanding my feelings or I'm too afraid to admit I'm in love when I actually am. I honestly don't know. I think I was "in love" with a guy for the first time when I was 15, but he was a bit of an ass whom I never really felt I got closure with. He was a real party dude and weed-head and at that time I thought he was THE coolest person on the planet. He was off the radar for years and then I found out that he died earlier this year and that made my heart almost jump out of my chest. I'd spent so many years thinking about this person and wondering what his life was like, hoping to one day run in to him, and now he was dead. I can't even explain that feeling. But back to me falling in love "for real" this year. So, where do I even begin? I think I fell in love with my best friends brother. We had like (from my point of view) an unspoken connection for a few years, but we both had other relationships and I never really saw him as anything else than my friends brother. Then one night made me begin to look at him with different eyes, it made me quite uncomfortable but also kind of curious. We met a few times after that, just listening to music and drinking wine sort of. No kissing, no anything. We continued keeping a very sparse contact over the phone. We kissed for the first time at a New years eve party at my friends house, it wasn't really fireworks for me (haha) but still kept me sort of curious of him. Years flew by, with us still having contact from time to time. Cut to may this year. We started seeing each other for real. Having sex, acting like a couple, kissing around other people. My feelings grew, while his apparantely disappeared. So after two-three months he broke my heart. I've never felt more worthless ever. I felt like all I was, was a big ball of anxiety. I started looking at myself different, like I was 15 years old and screaming in the mirror again. I thought "oh this is my life now, this feeling won't ever go away". But hey, it did. Slowly as FUCK, and still not all better, but it did get better. I can do anything if I can go through that!

Hey, maybe time does make some things a tiny bit easier after all.

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metalandmagi · 3 years

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Winter 2021 Anime Worth Watching!

Since 2020 basically sacrificed itself to give us the most stacked anime season of all time, I’m currently buried under the weight of almost 20 shows airing per week. So for anyone who’s looking for some anime to watch this winter, here’s some first impressions! I’m speed running my list this time by only talking about the new shows...because otherwise this would be my great American novel.

If anyone’s interested, I have master lists for both 2020 anime and 2019 anime, because there’s no shortage of fun things to find.

New Shows!

And before anyone asks, So I’m A Spider, So What? isn’t on here, because CG spiders freak me out.

Cells At Work Code Black: This...less comedic spin off of Cells At Work (made by a different studio) takes the wholesome concept of Osmosis Jones meets cute anime girls and turns it on its head. In this much more depressing version, we follow a rookie red blood cell who works in the body of an overly stressed, alcoholic smoker who puts every strain on the body imaginable. I love Red Blood Cell AA2153 and his co-workers, but man am I glad we get the regular Cells At Work airing this season too, because I need something fun and uplifting after seeing my sweet son go through hell every episode.

*Heaven’s Design Team: Have you ever wondered how God came up with some of the weird ass animals that live on this planet? Like, what’s the deal with giraffes? And why can’t we have dragons and flying horses? Well this is a comedy about the engineers and designers in heaven creating the new animals that are going to inhabit the Earth. That’s it, that’s the show. It’s kind of in the same vein as Cells At Work, having comedy blend with a surprising amount of educational information. If you want something light and funny, this is the show for you (though I don’t think it needs to have full length episodes). I’m just hoping there’s an episode about how the hell the platypus was created. Also it’s the only new one available on Crunchyroll.

Horimiya: A romantic comedy about a girl named Hori who fits the image of a perfect queen bee and a quiet bespectacled boy named Miyamura who never makes an impression at school. When the two meet by chance outside of the classroom, we see that Hori is practically raising a younger brother by herself, and Miyamura is actually a sweet guy who happens to be covered in tattoos and piercings. This show is an exercise in breaking down the images people have of others in their minds, and it’s a concept that really hits home in a fun and meaningful way. Honestly, this has become one of my immediate favorites. The characters have great chemistry, and I can’t wait to see more of them!

Monster Incidents (Kemono Jihen): When big shot Tokyo detective Inugami is called to a rural town to investigate a series of strange animal deaths, he finds a mysterious boy with the nickname Dorotabo who has been shunned by the other children in town. As the detective gets closer to Dorotabo, he discovers that there may be more...inhuman secrets to the boy than he realizes...and Dorotabo discovers that Inugami has some secrets of his own. This is a hard show to sell without spoiling the first episode, but it had twists and turns that kept me engaged from start to finish. I’m really interested to see where the plot goes, because I thought this was going to be something totally different just from the PV and series summary. If it plays its cards right, this could be a great paranormal detective show!

Wonder Egg Priority: A psychological drama about a girl named Ai who starts having dreams about a mysterious egg that promises to give her what she wants most in the world...a true friend. Before long, she begins to see how the dream world and reality are tied together, and trippy antics ensue. It’s hard to say more without spoiling anything, but I had to go back and add this one in because I made the mistake of thinking it was an OVA when it’s actually a full series. And what a series it’s starting out to be. This anime has all the psychological discomfort of a Satoshi Kon product with the beauty and style of something from Kyoani (even though it’s made by Clover Works). It’s really one of those anime you just have to see to understand.

Sk8-∞ (Skate the infinity): An original skateboarding anime from Bones, featuring a typical sports anime protagonist who takes a new transfer student who has never skateboarded in his life under his wing. Together they compete in dangerous races and take the skating community by storm. The character designs rival Appare Ranman’s in outlandish creativity, and I can smell the main characters’ ship dynamic a mile away (considering they’re exactly the same as the protagonists from Robihachi). If you’re looking for some wild and crazy fun with top notch skateboarding animation, don’t skip this!

2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu (Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club): Yes, it’s another volleyball anime. And no, it’s not just a clone of Haikyu. This story follows Yuni Kuroba, a physically built but emotionally weak teenager who finds out his childhood friend Hajime is moving back to their hometown for high school. Yuni discovers Hajime has become an exceptional volleyball player and they join their school’s volleyball club hoping to turn the unknown team into a rising star. If anything, this anime is much more like Stars Align or Free, where the sport is a backdrop for letting the characters explore their personal problems. Or at least it seems that way after the first episode. I went into this show ready to throw it in the trash because how could anything compete against my beloved Haikyu, but I found myself really enjoying the dynamics of the main duo and I’m curious to see what the rest of the team is like.

And speaking of sports anime rip-offs…..I can’t believe I’m including this but…

Skate Leading Stars: The show where the animators clearly wanted to design another throw away idol anime but saw how popular Yuri On Ice was so they decided to make whatever the hell this show is instead. It revolves around a fictional team sport called skate leading, and we follow the world’s most insufferable main character, a former figure skater named Kensei who wants to return to the ice and join his school’s skate leading team after he finds out his childhood rival is going to compete in the sport. Look, this show is just trashy enough to get a certain type of audience hooked, and it mainly has to do with the best boy of the winter season, Hayato Sasugai, the aspiring team “coach” who pulled most of us into watching this show with his punk appearance, snide comments and smug personality. He’s basically the lovechild of Izaya Orihara and Shizuo Heiwajima in a high school sports anime setting. The show treats itself with the perfect amount of sincerity to get away with being absolutely ridiculous most of the time without making you feel like you’re watching it from a dumpster...like Try Knights. You will know after one episode whether this show is for you. All I can say is, Hayato is worth the watch, and I haven’t seen any 3D animation used for the skating scenes (yet) so that’s a win for me.

Honorable mention:

Jobless Reincarnation ( Mushoku Tensei): Yet another isekai where the main character is hit by a car (big surprise) and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world...but he happens to remember his previous life and narrates himself growing up as a jaded adult. I’m only including this because it looked amazing animation wise, and I love the opening where getting hit by a car and dying is actually traumatic. And I love the protagonist’s parents (who are retired adventurers who just want to bang all the time). But honestly...the main character is the fucking worst, and I don’t know if I want to keep watching it because of how creepy and weird he is. Like...he’s the hit on your fantasy mom as a baby kind of creepy and weird. But for anyone who wants a cool looking isekai that had an amazing PV, it’s worth checking out.

Continuing Series!

Because the real gold of the season is in all the established anime getting their next seasons, I’m just going to list some of the things that are also amazing and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already (because I’ve already talked about most of them at some point and don’t know what else to say).

Attack On Titan season 4

The Promised Neverland season 2

Beastars season 2

Log Horizon season 3

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime season 2

Re: Zero season 2 (second cour)

Dr. Stone season 2

Cells at Work season 2

Osomatsu-san season 3 (second cour)

Higurashi New (second cour)

Jujutsu Kaisen (second cour)

Not to mention all the shows I don’t watch that everyone else loves...like World Trigger (which I have seen quite a bit of, but long shounen shows are too much for me now) Quintessential Quintuplets, and Non Non Biyori.

So there’s just some of all the anime airing this season. Hopefully, someone can find something they like. Here’s to a great year...well, of anime at least...

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starshipsofstarlord · 3 years

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All This Hassle, and What For?

Pairing | Loki Laufeyson x reader

Summary | getting taken hostage, along with Loki, is far more amusing than ever intended to be, despite it leaving your captors anything but impressed.

Warnings | kidnapping, mentions of depression, swearing, implied smut, innuendos

Based off this tiktok. All original rights to the plot go back to the creator.

Quick link to my masterlist, if you’re interested in reading more of my crap 😬

Opening your aching eyes, you found yourself to be in a large room, there were plenty of feet stood at your eye level, and such a sight made you frown. You certainly didn’t remember being knocked out, but who would, the exposure to unconsciousness was most likely sudden.

But nevertheless, you raised your head, glaring up at those whom had captured you. As your eyes scoured the room, your eyes landed promptly on the god of mischief, who had his hands bound and shackled in chains, and by Odin, did he look good.

However, your attraction the man who once reigned terror down upon New York wasn’t the focus now, and so you licked your lips, and kicked the nearest guard in the leg. He stumbled, the noise loud enough to draw the attention of all others, and you were pleased to stifle a laugh. Loki frowned at your behaviour, knowing that this was not the way that you were trained to be an avenger, but it was clear that you were no longer on earth, so human pleasantries did not apply here.

“And by the gods, who in the galactic council’s name do you think you are?” The closest asked, wrapping his large hand through your hair, and tugging your face up to stare up at him, wanting you to be treated as the lesser being he thought you as.

“Actually, he’s the god.” Tilting your head, you diverted it towards Loki, who squinted feebly at your answer. “But I think you already knew that, since you have him rattled in metal. Just a word of advice, rumour has it that he likes to be restrained in such ways; really, you’re doing him a favour, and you may just earn yourself a big tip.”

You sent a wink up at the commander, watching with inward joy as he grimaced at your development within your speech. “Quite a nice sight, to see him so vulnerable and at someone’s mercy, so thank you general.”

Sending him a smile, he huffed, whilst Loki tried his darnedest to contain an amused grin. It wouldn’t be the first occasion that you had made suggestions regarding the new troop of the avengers; even when he was around causing mischief, (which he still tended to do), there were always words said that gained the god’s intrigue.

Tony at the time, and to this day, despite him being a part of the heroic team, which Thor was ‘inclined’ to drag him into, thought nothing more than disgust at your meaningful jokes. In his words, ‘you two may as well screw so we don’t have to listen to anymore of this dirty banter, you in regards to reindeer games’.

How you wished right now, preached silently even, that Tony could bare to listen again, so that he could send in the team whom could deal with these aliens that were keeping your imprisoned. But all communications were cut, and that just left you and Loki.

By no means did you doubt if Loki got the chance to escape, he would leave you. It was in his nature to do so, but if you could pose a lack of threat, they may loosen up on their efficiency in guarding you. After all, Loki was the one they wanted, not you. And then, both of you could get away from this galactic nonsense.

“Humans.” The general huffed, causing you to grimace as the stench of his breath wafted through the air, and hit your nose. “You all think that you are so special, but when it comes down to it, those who are not from your planet do not care. Loki here, this god, does not care about you little one. And he never will.”

“That’s okay with me, because I don’t care about him either. It’d called self preservation.” You informed your captor, noticing Loki staring across at you with an icy gaze. Who were you kidding? Of course you cared about the god, but right now, you would do anything to get out of this predicament.

“Aw would you look at that.” The feet moved back towards the main reward of their capture, staring down at the green eyed trickster with mocking eyes. “This woman has attitude just like yours, if either of you cared, I’d call it a match made in Asgard.” A laugh bellowed from the wide chest of the being, finding his own comedy quite humorous.

“Excuse me, I’m way out of his league!” You pretended to be offended, bringing your hands that were free of restraint to your chest. They thought not to tie you down as they did to him, after all, you were nothing but a midguardian. That was their mistake. “What’d you want with old horse shagger over there anyways? Don’t be alarmed, but he actually does some kind of good now, even if it be out of his own self interest.”

A heavy sigh fell on deaf ears, as the protector of space glanced unsurely between the pair of you. “He has the tesseract, and I wish to take it from his slippery hands, he cannot be trusted with such a powerful source of energy.” His words bellowed a laugh of absolute surprise from your mouth, earning a frown from those keeping you hear, and a cock of the head from the god of mischief.

It was clear that not only was he confused by your supple, yet somewhat pleasant burst of amusement, but he was also in the dark about what in the Hela this predominant being was speaking of. Yes, he had had the tesseract at one point , however, no longer was it in his untrustworthy grasp.

Thanos had taken ownership over it, after killing many of the people that he had saved from the events of Ragnarok. It was not just some energy source, it had been an infinity stone all along, tricking the eyes of elders and the young to believe that it was nothing more than a harbouring of power. But it had indeed been the space stone, and it was taken from him, in exchange for saving Thor’s life.

The Guardians of the Galaxy had found the pair of them upon the aftermath of the wreckage, taking them in, amongst plans of taking Thanos down. It had been a failure, up until the avengers went back in time, going to their past that would not affect their future, so that they could reverse the affects the Titan had brought upon earth and everywhere else.

During that time, Loki had nurtured his brother, watching as he fell apart with the responsibility of their people, and collapsed into a spiral of depression. You had also been there for Thor, doing your best to take the drink away from the bulky god, but to no avail did you manage to succeed. And so, during those tormenting five years, you and Loki would sit side by side, both basking silently in your failures.

“I thought you guys’d know everything, but I guess that you and your highness are stuck in one time line; all of them. But for us humans and every lesser being, there are multiple, and that Loki that stole the tesseract, yet I say again, is one much different. And we are on the search for him, to stop his disruption and crossing over of the times!” An exonerated, and audible exhale of air left you after your little speech.

Loki smirked, at the premise of you protecting him with the admission of the truth. But he couldn’t help but feel a feeling of warmth flutter within his immortal insides, it was rather a nice feeling he realised. “He is quite difficult to catch, we have been tracking him since the time heist went sideways.”

“That’s because he’s you!” You pointedly exclaimed, unable to pin some of the blame upon the god himself. Sure, in recent times he had changed, and was much different from back when he wanted all mortals to kneel before him (which you’d willingly do if it ever came to that, though you’d never tell him under which circumstances that would be), but at the end of the day, that had been him once!

The tricks and the lies still remained, but he had found a reason to thrive, and a long and enduring career that he was well at tackling. Often, he made out being an avenger, despite the government’s rouse of concern, to be a bore, and that he had far better things to do. But he stayed, with a light in his eyes, and continued following along with the heroic traditions, breaking a few rules here and there.

“Dear, why do you always have to put the blame upon me? I was not the one who decided to put that green dye within your shampoo, but I’ll have to admit, did you look so enrapturing.” He was running a ploy, dragging out the time that you spent bantering in hopes of something happening.

Unlike Heimdall, he did not have foresight, but it was a requirement whilst the pair of you were on your expediting mission, that you check in with the base, via the comms that had cracked under brutal feet. And so, he spoke, with the promise that you’d return the conversation and leave all others in the room confused with your meaningless discussion.

“I did, didn’t I?” You asked, to which he hummed in reply, lightly nodding his head, as his feline eyes ran up your body, paying ample attention to how your limbs were free, unlike his own. “But I’d say fine sir, that the blame is down to Clint, and if I’m correct, may we kick his ass as soon as we get back home?”

“Of course we can my beloved-“ you froze at his choice of words, and it appears that he did too, suddenly realising his mistake. Gulping for a second he went to speak again, but the commander felt much inclined to but in, and stop the headache that was bubbling in his large head.

“Shut up; the pair of you!” His scolding made you feel as though you were in school over again, it was impossible not to drop your head down and try to contain your laughter. Loki too found such enjoyment in this predicament, sporting a cheshire grin to emit his emotions.

“I’m sorry, can you say that again? Maybe a just a tad louder?” You pinched your thumb and forefinger together to show how much, and it was clear that you were pissing this primal being off. He began towards you, and you were prepared to fight him, you were never one to back down, which was one feature upon the various reasons that Fury had initially recruited you.

Awaiting the first strike, you stood despite the others around you, your eyes wide open as you bravely stared up at your opponent. But before the fight could begin, a distant crash assumed preference in your ears, causing you to turn your head in the direction it had came from. And then, all of a sudden, a ship crashed through the dock, guns blazing from its side.

“What are you waiting for?” The distinct voice of Rocket asked, and obediently you ran through the terror, finding Loki already upon the ship, but then, he appeared behind you also. “Quill, get ready to go!”

Taking glances, you stared between the two practically identical copies, a light frown on your face. Both were restrained, yet the one that was seated beside Groot, whom was playing a game on some nineties device, was glaring up at the pair of you.

“An avenger, really?” The seated one laughed, mocking his once future self, as you felt the ship steer clear away from the scene. Your Loki quirked his brow, smirking at his self that had avoided the wars that he had chosen to fight upon earth.

“Yes, an avenger.” He responded, causing his other to languidly scoff. An ‘I am groot’ came from the tree, and it was uncertain in your spoken languages of what he had said, but either way, you were more intrigued by the conversation that was happening between the Loki’s. “And I’ll have you know, that she is infinitely more brave than you, you cower-some fool.”

“Oh, so we’re going there?” You asked, causing the pair to snap out of their mutual rivalry, and stare haphazardly at you. “No, don’t mind me, feel free to continue.”

“We’re not going to be unable to unbind your until we reach earth.” Gamora cut in, speaking to the Loki that you knew to be the original.

“That’s fine.” He nodded humbly, before casting his attention back at his alternate reflection. “And this woman, is not only an avenger. She was there for your brother when you were not.”

“Aw.” The other Loki smirked, almost cruelly. “So she’s your beloved?” He remarked rudely, and it seemed to break something within Loki, him wishing not to listen to the other version of himself. He decided he did not like him, and understand how you must have felt upon your initial meeting.

“Yes.” You went to speak, but instead, Loki stood before you, powerlessly pulling your face to his own, and colliding his lips upon yours. On impulse, you ravenously replied with much affection, clasping his jaw and allowing him entrance into your mouth. It earned a disgusted groan out of the Loki that had caused all this hassle.

“I hate to interrupt...” Rocket returned, after putting his gun down and having gone to the front of the ship with Quill, so that he could contact Stark. “But these may get those off.” He held a pair of golden pliers, that were far larger than his body. At the sight , you pulled away from Loki’s face for a moment, raising a brow.

“It’s fine, I think I want to keep them on.” You smirked, earning another sound of disapproval from Loki’s identical rival, pulling him back to your face. Wildly, he hummed into the cavern of your mouth, as the pair of you stumbled around on the spaceship.

“Bedrooms are down the hall to the right.” Nebula informed you, her voice monotone, and in turn, you dragged the god towards said direction, finally releasing all the tension that had been pent up through the years.

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@nickkie1129

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 3 years

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HASO, “An Analysis of Humans.”

Guess my brain wanted to write a partial scholarly paper today, so I guess this is what we got. Added in text sources to make it seem more legit. Lol

An Aggregated Summary of Human and Alien Comparisons

By Dr. Krill, Dr. Katie Quinn, and Dr. Adric Dracondi

It has long been known, since humans were first introduced onto the galactic stage, that humans are, arguably, the most powerful sentient alien species in the known universe. These are not simply popular conjectures by nonscientific minds, but the scientific community itself has conducted multiple studies regarding the adaptability and prowess of the human in comparison to other species. Many of these studies have examined, intelligence, hunting prowess, strength, and adaptability as their primary focus, (Diss, A., Wallin, G., and Millard; Wix and Veen). Based on these prior studies, this paper will attempt to summarize the overall strength of a human based on their homeworld evolution, comparison to other species, and their technological interplay.

Humans have existed on their home planet of earth for roughly 200,000 years. In comparison to other alien species, they are rather young, and still within the historical memory of the Rundi, who have existed through two major technology jumps, leaving much of their older historical records lost to time (Keple, J., et, all). Humanity began its life in the Miocene Epoch climbing through trees in the African savanna using both their feet and hands as tools for climbing. During this time they developed the ability to stand upright in order to use their hands for foraging. This gave them an increased ability to forage, and allowed them to share their food between pack members creating, what we now understand to be, the human’s social bonds (Keller, A., Winzer, C, V., and Pellar, Q). Of course, this wasn’t the only reason for human’s increased social bonds. Sometime during this period, the African Savanna went through a period of natural deforestation, reducing the number of trees humans could climb. For this reason, they were forced to turn to the ground where larger predators lurked (Huntsman, J,. Et. Al). At this point in time humans did not have many advantages against large predators, and even as of now, an unarmed human against most mid sized predators is going to lose. Compared to their own planetary predators, humans are not very fast, not very strong and not particularly dangerous when viewed alone. However, one of the human’s greatest advantages was originally their pack sizes encouraging cooperation among members to both protect each other and watch for predators. Predators would be much less likely to hunt a human in a large pack, sut as they are less likely to hunt other animals if they are in large groups preferring to attack those who are alone, weak or sick (Keller, A., Winzer, C, V., and Pellar, Q).

Why then, were humans able to survive at all as they have some serious strategic disadvantages. Humans are slow, have no trees to climb, poor smell , arguably por hearing, and dismal strength in comparison to savannah predators. Furthermore, the transition into humans walking upright caused the narrowing of the pelvic bone, which would become an issue as humans continued to evolve. The answer to this question comes with later iterations of the evolved humans. After thor descent from the trees, humans gained a few important abilities: first of all they lost all of their fur giving them the ability to sweat, their legs were lengthened and their arms were shortened giving them a superior sense of balance for throwing, and their cranial size increased giving them the ability to use and create tools for cracking bone which would aid them in foraging: the increased brain size would later give them the unique ability to speak. These two distinctions being important precursors for sentient life (Wheeler., R, Winter, F., And Nix., L).

The human ability to sweat, coupled with their upright walk gave humans the natural ability to run while carrying tools, such as spears and weapons. Early humans evolved for running long distances. The arches of their feet act as springs which depress and spring back as they run. Tendons in the back of the ankle do the same, while powerful muscles in their lower backs and butts keep them standing upright and provide power. Humans keep their balance using muscles in their shoulders, and the swinging of their arms gives extra momentum and balance. The head is held in place by special tendons on the sides of their necks, while their eyes and brains correct for the bouncing of their gait. Furthermore, while other animals require panting and shade to cool off, human sweat rolls into the skin and then evaporates, cooling them off as they move. In this way , humans are superior at long distance running and often used pursuit predation to run their prey to death before spearing them with tools they made (Dillinger, F., and Walker, P). While many animals on their planet are capable of throwing, humanity’s long legs and short arms gives them the superior balance required to throw hard without losing their balance giving them the advantage of long distance weapons. Coupled with tool making,, humans did not have to directly interact with much of the prey they were hunting.

During this time humans grew more socialized and pack oriented As their brains got bigger, childbirth became more dangerous, and their offspring were forced to be born earlier and more underdeveloped than ever before. Packs grew in size as did family groups. Their ability to speak was probably one of their greatest accomplishments, though ironically, the drop of their larynx into their neck, which supported the transition to speaking, also made them more prone to choking (Huntsman, J,. Et. Al). As the climate on earth gradually began to change, humans moved north using their tools and abilities to survive in colder and colder climates. Different iterations of humanity formed, the Neanderthals VS the Sapiens for a time before the Neanderthals eventually merged with the Sapiens or died out. Humans gained the ability to bond with other animals -- a trick which only the Rundi have separately managed. In turn this sparked the rapid evolution of technology which eventually led them to space travel.

Humans may appear impressive to most outside alien species, but on their planet, domination came about only because of luck, and adaptability. Their evolution to walking on two feet was the catalyst for them being smart enough to out maneuver heavier and more dangerous species.

Now as we examine sentient species today, we can examine a few commonalities between the groups. The first being the ability to speak. No sentient species has evolved without some sort of communicatory language. The starborn can speak telepathically, and most other species vocally. The lumens and the Mikes also communicate based on light frequencies, though these are still translatable into structural sentences if one knows what they are doing. Even the Adaptids have a very base and rudimentary speech which requires the use of smell (Krill, 4020). Another common trait is hands or other limbs used for the manipulation of objects. While some aliens also developed the ability to stand upright on two legs: Drev, Tvek, Finnari, Gnark,lak, some retain that ability only partially: Rundi, Kree, while the vast majority require at least three or more limbs to stay upright using tails to balance or adding extra legs for stability: Tesraki, Vrul, Iotins Burg etc..Regardless of walking upright all of these creatures have the ability to manipulate objects to use tools.

The question now remains. Where do humans and other aliens stack up? The answer seems clear in that humans are not powerful because of their dominance in one specific area, but because humans are generalists where others are specialists. There is a human saying that goes along well with this research. Jack of all trades, the master of none, but better than the master of one. A general knowledge of everything seems to be the precursor for being the best survivalists. Let us examine intelligence first, as we know Rundi, Tesraki, burg and Drev are comparable to humans, which are all well behind Vrul and Gibb in average intelligence, though intelligence is one of the more difficult factors as intelligence is an important prerequisite to space travel (Kisk., Gana., Fuller., and Millward). Humans are not the fastest, that goes to the Rundi, though they are the second fastest, and can arguably outdistance a Rundi in a footrace. Human hearing isn’t as good as a Tesraki, but better than most others just as their eyesight isn’t nearly as good as a Drev, but still much more powerful than others. Drev also take the main spot as being one of the strongest with humans closely behind. Smell is a relatively rare ability among nonhuman species, though the Drev have it to some degree. The Adaptids are known for their superior smelling ability, though it is arguable if they count as sentient just yet. Starborn can survive in space, which is an ability that no other nonhuman species has, accept for humans who can survive for about 15 seconds in the vacuum of space with damage: the only known case of this being of course Admiral Vir, who is as of now, the only human to have attempted this maneuver at all.

The argument we make here is not based primarily on human abilities, which seem second to all, but based primarily about how these interacted with their technological advances. Humans are the youngest species EVER to reach space, and that includes the Drev. In fact most humans still possess instincts which are often lacking in older sentient species, replaced by thought and logic. A human is still said to be able to sense danger before it comes, and can read body language better than any other sentient species currently known, which has much to do with the juvenile nature of their species. Furthermore, human durability is one of the greatest factors.

The average human can stand about 5gs of force without passing out while trained humans can reach up to sustained 12gs. Most alien species on the other hand had to find ways to keep their craft below 4gs at all times in order to avoid passing out. Nonhumans spent much longer developing their technology before reaching space, while humans were busy strapping rockets to tin cans. A similar situation can be noted with the Drev, who can sustain 7 to 8gs if trained. Both of their species were allowed to leave their planet before fully developing out of their more primitive natures, as was common with other nonhuman or Drev species. In general, human and Drev durability have allowed them to operate machinery which would be too dangerous for other species, giving them a time advantage in the race to the stars.

At this point one might wonder if Drev are comparable to humans, after all Drev are stronger, more durable and just as intelligent as humans. This is true of course, but humans do have some strategic advantages, long distance running ability, pack bonding, and superior technology development, which might have been negated if it weren’t for the Drev religion which calls into question the nature of technology as dishonorable. Furthermore, though they can distinguish less colors than Drev, human sense of smell and hearing is stronger, giving them a distinct battlefield advantage in at least once sense as they are able to pinpoint the direction and height of sounds where Drev have trouble.

A discussion about the abilities of humans can go on all day, though the conclusion scientists have agreed upon focuses primarily on human adaptability and generalization skills as the primary function of their abilities, and seeming power over other species. It seems good then that human pack bonding instincts easly travels across species making them relatively easy to make alliances with compared to some other, more stubborn species.

#humans are insane #HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #humans are space oddities

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jawllines · 4 years

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He’s too far in thought, he realizes, when Ellie comes and waves her hand in his face, “Are you okay?” She asks quietly, eyes wide as saucers, “Maisey said you look like her aunt when she zones out and she’s depressed.”

Harry huffs out a laugh, one that expels the air from his lungs as he nods, “Yes, Ellie, I’m okay. What’ve you painted, hm? Can I see it?” She grins, her cheeks pudgy and rosy as she runs back to her seat and picks up the canvas she’d been working on. It’s a sun and a moon, both with rather cryptic looking faces on them, and Harry had never so perfectly had to manage his poker face, “Whoa!”

“I think that might just be the coolest thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” Y/N appears behind him, Oliver more or less clung to her pant leg as she’s reaching over his body to set a box of juice down on the oak table for him to disperse among his campers, while holding her hand out for the canvas, “May I see it, Miss. Ellie Bellie?”

Ellie smiles shyly at her — she always got so shy around Y/N, but never in the way where you would think she’s nervous. No, she gets shy the way you might when meeting an older sibling’s friend and wanting to desperately try to impress them. Harry knew as much, considering he would attempt to perform for each and every single one of his sister’s friends growing up (and each time, Gemma would make a few colorful threats to deter him). No matter how quiet Ellie gets with her though, she’s always the first to ask if they got to play with Y/N that day.

Harry still doesn’t like the other camp counsellors but Y/N’s an exception

part 1

(tw: mentions of suicide)

ii.

Psst.

Harry was typically a heavy sleeper. When he was younger his mum used to joke that he could sleep through an earthquake-induced tsunami if someone allowed him to. An alarm would have to be pretty loud to stir him from his slumber, and unless he was on edge, a mere call of his name would not drag him from whatever dreamland he’d submerged himself within.

Psst.

There had only been two things before that could notably wake him. His mum, who was the sweetest person on this planet yet managed to be the cruelest being on earth when he needed to be up for something, and his childhood cat Molly, who sits on his chest and makes it hard to breathe (which, from what he’s learned, encourages his brain to panic and wake him up so he could fix it). Other than that, he was blissfully unaware of the world for hours at a time.

Yet, there was something stirring him now. A low sound that puzzles him as he toes the line between consciousness and his dreams, aware of the blankets that cover him but still dancing on a stage with his limbs thrashing wildly and people shouting his name.

Psst.

Was it an insect? Maybe he was performing outside then -- a crowd of thousands in an outdoor field to see him for... .what was it that he did again?

Psst.

Oh, he’s dreaming, isn’t he? How deep in his dream is he? He thinks this is the first time he’s ever been asleep and realized that he was asleep...he could probably conjure something up, right? Manifest something that he’s always wanted, try his hand in lucid dreaming. If only he could focus apart from the insect zipping past his eardrum.

Harry, please wake up, we’re being haunted -- or murdered, or something.

Harry’s eyelids flutter like swallowtail wings, his gaze blurry and unfocused as he comes to. He’s confused, piecing together the puzzle that always presents to him when he’s just woken up and has to readjust to the world around him. The whole process of it took nothing more than 10 seconds, maybe 15 if he’s really out of it, but that’s only because thoughts run through his mind at a hundred miles a minute.

What time is it? The room around him his pitch-black apart from a very small amount of light illuminating beneath the curtain covering the window he’s beneath, so it couldn’t be morning. Potentially early morning, but he would say that would be 3-4 AM. Did he need to be up? He didn’t think so, actually, because there’s no alarm buzzing him awake and as far as he’s concerned, he hadn’t signed up for any early morning shifts at the bookstore as of late. The last time he went in at 5 to open up shop while the owner was on vacation and Harry was more or less ran down by a mother raccoon when he’d stumbled upon her babies after getting out of his car -- Harry had been reluctant to go before sunrise since.

Where was he? He knows he’s not at home, that’s for sure. The sheets smell like him but not him enough to be at his own place -- and the bedding isn’t as soft either. He knows he hasn’t passed out at someone’s house because he only does that if the person is close enough to him that he would recognize their scent, or if he was too drunk to get home, but that was usually accompanied by a wicked headache and a sour stomach. No, where he was smelled like wood and generic fabric softener. There was an air conditioning unit that rattled and rumbled from where it was fixed to the wall, he felt a tension in his neck that he only experienced at one place and, yeah, he was at the camp.

He was at camp, in a cabin with Y/N, who slept with the lamp on because she hated the dark, was the owner of the voice that had woken him up in the inky black room.

“Hm?” He hums, brows pinching as he lets his eyes shut again, only to open them a few seconds later, “Wha’s wrong? Why is your light off?”

“I don’t know,” her voice is still just a bit over a whisper, and Harry wonders why she doesn’t just speak up now that she knows he’s awake, “I woke up a little bit ago and thought maybe there was a storm that knocked the power out or something, but I checked the weather and it’s been clear skies all night. I think our power line was cut which is like -- straight out of a horror film.”

Harry sighs, a bit of him regretting the number of horror movies they’ve been watching once they finally got to watch Midsommar (in three days, they’d sifted through six different movies -- two movies a night and each one managed to horrify Y/N more than the last). He begins to press himself from the bed, his eyes adjusting to the dark around them, making out slivers of shadows, “I’ll go check --”

“No! Are you crazy?” He hears her bed frameshift with her as she moves, “That’s just asking for a maniac to come for us. Plus I keep hearing noises and I can’t tell if it’s like...like little raccoon feet or a one-armed hook man.”

“Alright, then go back to bed.” Harry begins to lower back down to the mattress but a sharp whine leaves her throat, “It’s dark when you close your eyes.” It’s silent for a moment, but then Harry feels a bead of guilt dribble through his body. He sighs, reaching up and wiping his hand down his face, “What do you want to do, yeah? If you don’t want me to go out there. Do you want to stay up?”

She’s quiet, Harry is straying further and further from the state he would’ve been in to fall right back into his dreams but he tries to wipe away the irritation the best he could. What he reminds himself is that four days prior, Y/N had trekked out in the forest toward a lake despite her unremitting distaste for the woods in the dark and slapped Jack clean across the face because he was being rude to him. And he was going to ignore her? Fall asleep while she’s frightened? Harry could be a prick, but he wasn’t the bleeding antichrist.

“I...um, well, I don’t want us to stay up, no, we’ll be so cranky tomorrow,” she shuffles in the sheets, “I dunno’, I’m sorry, you can go back to bed, I’ll be okay.”

Harry isn’t sure what to do but in his half-awake state, the next few words that leave his mouth seem like just the temporary fix necessary for them to get the last few hours of sleep that they can, “Do you want me to read you a story or summat?”

She giggles quietly, “No, it’s okay, really, go back to sleep, okay?”

What Harry could have said was I can’t now, knowing that you’re awake and scared, but instead he utters a simple, “No.” He sits back up, patting blindly for his phone in his sheets, slipping his fingers around it, and tapping it awake. His screen blinds him with its brightness, so he lowers it before finding the flashlight. It lights up the floor at his feet and subsequently at its edges, he can make out Y/N’s shadowy figure. She’s sat up, curled in her blanket, wrapped around her head, and giving her a pseudo-nun appearance. She waves at him lamely and he struggles not to roll his eyes, “Maniac be damned, I’m gonna go out there and look for the breaker. Maybe the arseholes broke their vow of integrity.”

He wouldn’t be surprised if Jack or one of the others came around and switched the breaker off, just to be inconvenient for the morning. They’d left them alone for four days sure, but Harry figures that it’s not so much four days of silent reflection and questioning why they feel the need to be such pricks to him, and more so four days for their anger to fester and brew. If not for the fact that Y/N slapped him then made him find laundry detergent and commanded the others to go get his clothes, then for the way she acted like nothing had happened the day prior. Jack’s cheek was still a stingy, red splotch, Oliver and Brandon were straight-faced looking irritated, and Y/N -- well, Y/N had never been more content with her day. She was having a blast with her kids playing bean bag toss, they did their little dance when one of them got it in the hole of the board, and when they were all getting drinks, Y/N offered to grab Harry his. He watched as she went to the cooler around the same time Jack did, they both reached for the last Dr. Pepper, and Y/N plucked it up and handed it to him before grabbing both her, Harry, and Mitch’s lemonades.

He thinks it’s the sincerity that she holds, that would aggravate him had he been in their shoes. Y/N was completely unbothered by the night prior and Harry could tell, just like when he doesn’t reciprocate their maleficent tendencies towards them -- it was digging under their skin.

(She makes Harry laugh when she comes back with their lemonades, handing him one and uttering, “I let the prick have the last Dr. Pepper, and I’m regretting it.”)

And while he’s hoping that they haven’t turned their target to her out of spite, he wouldn’t change what had happened for the world. It had made the two of them that much closer, and in the following day’s Harry had poked and prodded Y/N’s brain a bit more. Especially after what he’d seen on her page, he was intrigued by her. Intrigued by how she saw life, why she came at things the way she did, what built her up to be the person that she was in these very moments that he’s speaking to her. Harry hasn’t asked her about her old college roommate and he doesn’t plan on it either -- he doesn’t feel like he could, or he should.

Harry has lost people before and he thinks the worst thing someone could do was to bring it up unprompted. He knows that it’s probably always on her mind but even then, maybe it isn’t at the forefront of it. Maybe she’s just trying to have a good few weeks, separate herself from the real world for a while, and he would be cruel to dig up something that she may not be ready to just up and chat about. No matter how curious he is about the whole situation, and no matter how much he wonders if she treats him the way she does because of what happened. If the topic was brought up by her he would openly and freely discuss it as long as she was comfortable, but he wouldn’t give her the third degree.

So he minds his business and focuses on trying to get to know her better instead.

He can’t say that it doesn’t change how he treats her a bit though. Harry is much. . .gentler, than he had been. He tries to be less critical of her unwavering optimism and seeks to understand where it was coming from instead. If he’s in the right mood he’ll attempt to match it, which makes for a good day with their groups, who he finds -- despite the small age gap -- have begun to kindle very close friendships. Mrs. Graham had even commented on it one of the days after they had a riveting game of balloon tennis.

“You two make a good team -- putting all these other counselors to shame. And to think you were pouty about having to share a cabin.”

It was true, they did make a good team. Harry thinks that them sparking a friendship had made the whole experience much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

All of this together gives insight into why Harry is willing to stuff on his shoes at 3 AM and go out in the dark, muggy night to check and potentially fix a breaker. And no matter the number of times he assures her she does not have to come out there with him, she keeps hold of her ‘no man left behind’ mentality, pulls on a pair of flip flops, and pads out after him.

Had they been in any other cabin, finding the breaker would have been much easier. They’re typically on the backside in the upper right corner, surrounded by a little cage with a lock similar to that of an animal crate. The struggle with their cabin was that the backside was basically in the woods, so he had to dodge low hanging branches and tangles of ivy to get even remotely near it. He hands Y/N his phone and she shines the light over the metal box, her hand steady despite how she looks back and forth and all around them like she’s making sure there are no red eyes glowing at them. The world around them is silent apart from the chirp and groan of insects, the scutter of an animal somewhere in the far distance makes Y/N huff a weary sigh but otherwise, nothing comes out to attack them. Harry restarts the breaker, they go back inside, and the lamp on its dimmest setting is switched on how they had fallen asleep with it.

They both breath out in relief, Y/N dives back into her bed and Harry flops down atop of his covers, giving himself a second to feel the cool air from the conditioner fan over him.

“Theoretically,” Y/N begins as Harry lets his eyes fall shut, “If there were some creature in the forest --”

“There’s no creature in the forest.”

“I know, but theoretically --” She continues again, but Harry is quick to cut her off once more.

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he tells her, “Go to sleep.”

Once more, Y/N falls silent, but a quiet, “Thank you,” was the only thing to leave her mouth.

. . .

A summer thunderstorm wasn’t abnormal during camp, which is why the recreation center and the art building are beneficial. It keeps everyone preoccupied and entertained with well-insulated walls to mute whatever carnage is taking place outside, which makes for less frightened children and an easier time for everyone involved. Harry liked being active and running around with his campers, sure, but he also really enjoyed a nice, calm, relaxing day trying his hand at DIY projects and abstract paintings. Plus it gave him the chance to wear the camp hoodie that he had spent a pretty penny purchasing, which was made of the softest fabric he’s ever felt and was far more comfortable than the t-shirts that they normally wear.

Y/N had also bought the hoodie, Harry saw as she stepped out in it after her shower this morning, and she seemed to be drowning in it but in the best way. The fabric pools off of her, but she looks cozy, and well-rested despite them waking in the middle of the night. He thinks she looks pretty cute, but he kept the thought to himself and instead asked her if she wanted his extra granola bar for breakfast.

They alternate throughout the day, between the rec center and art building, and on the schedule, it appears that most the day he would be with Y/N’s group (which he prefers) and a few times he’s even with Mitch as well, which is nice. Mitch doesn’t grow to like many people, but he liked Y/N well enough -- he thought she was oddly entertaining (or so he’s told, Harry) and good for a chat. The only times he and Y/N were not with each other were when the activities were age-specific, but even then, it wasn’t like anyone was in a different room. They were all just at different stations within a big room in the art building and the recreation center was more or less free for all.

Harry wondered when he started basing whether or not a day was going to be good by whether or not he and Y/N were able to be around each other, but he decided not to think about it too much. Lately, he’d been a little more on edge with whether they were together, simply because of Jack and the others. He didn’t want them fucking with her, and even though she’d proven that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, he still worried, especially knowing he would be the cause of it.

Y/N doesn’t seem the least bit distressed about it, or as far as she was letting on -- she’d not expressed any thoughts or concerns that they would be spiteful towards her. Hell, the only thing she had told him the night after was that she hoped she didn’t make things worse for him. For him. Why was she so willing to defend him? What did she get out of being so kind?

“I especially like how multidimensional it is — purple and pink stars? Beautiful, I love those two colors together,” she places her hand on Oliver’s head, and it’s then that Harry notices he’s holding something, “Harry, Oliver here wanted you to see the flower he drew because I told him how much you like lilies.” As bashful as he always is, he holds out the paper toward Harry. It was cute — a singular, yellow lily and he could tell that Y/N helped him draw it, but the paint and crayon marks all over the page suggested she left the color duties up to him.

“Oh my goodness,” Harry gasps, looking at the painting, flipping it to Oliver and pointing at it, “You did this?” Oliver nodded excitedly, “It’s gorgeous.”

“I think our groups are the best artists,” Y/N motions to her table, only a meter away from them all working diligently on their projects, “Charlotte is over there doing an artistic interpretation of the both of us, we are not allowed to see it until she’s finished. Mikey is doing his own rendition of Disney world, I see Maisey is creating a beautiful tree -- Noah is that a cowboy you’re drawing?”

Noah barely looks up from his paper, very carefully dragging the tip of the marker in a circle, “Yes.”

“And Noah is drawing a cowboy! Modern-day Van Gogh’s, all of them.” Harry smiles as Y/N drags a stool up beside him, positioning it in a way so that she could watch both her kids and speak with him, “I heard they’re having one of them party things tonight, I didn’t know if you wanted to go or not.”

“Hm, I dunno,” his brows knit together as he lightly scratches a mosquito bite on the inside of his forearm, “Do you feel comfortable with going after what happened last time?”

She suckles her bottom lip into her mouth, gnawing on it as she nods her head, “Mhm,” she looks around them for a second, making sure that none of the kids are paying attention to them before she lowers her voice, “Mitch said that you used to go to all of them last year, and would like -- have a good time. I hope that I’m not ruining that for you.”

“How would you be ruining it for me?” It’s true, Harry hasn’t gone to any of the parties that they’ve been doing since the very first one he’d escorted Y/N away from. Not for any other reason apart from he was just spending time and hanging out with Y/N, or he’d be too knackered to even think about leaving the nice, cool setting of their cabin to be in the muggy heat with drunk college students. He had much more fun not attending, and other nights Mitch would come around and chill with them too. . .he had all he needed then. Didn’t need the booze for a good time.

“I don’t know, I just didn’t know if you weren’t going ‘cos of what happened the first time and you felt like you couldn’t leave me out or. . or something like that.”

Harry shook his head, “No,” he answers, “We can go tonight if you would like, but it’s unnecessary for me. I’m good either way.”

Although Y/N appears unconvinced, they have little time to go further into the topic because Charlotte is running up to them, a big grin on her face, “I finished!”

“Well give it here,” Harry holds out his hand, waving her over, “Let’s see it.”

On the paper are stick figure versions of he and Y/N, with big grins and 12 other little stick figures surrounding them. Above Harry’s stick figure, there’s a pink arrow and a very five-year-old esque writing of HUSBAD (Harry presumes it’s supposed to be husband), and above Y/N’s in the same fashion, she’s written WYFE. It’s then Harry realizes that Y/N’s figure has a veil on and Harry’s has a bowtie, “This is for you twos wedding! So thens when they take pictures you can has this one.” Charlotte chirps brightly and Y/N and Harry both cast each other a disbelieving glance.

“Whoaaaaa,” Y/N is the first to break their silence, a smile pulling at her lips, “This is really good Charlotte! I didn’t know Harry and I were getting married, though.”

Charlotte nods quickly, still grinning at them, her bottom canine missing as she gleams, “Me n’ Mikey thinks you should!”

Y/N turns toward him, nodding toward Charlotte, “Well, the god’s have spoken. Where’s my ring?”

Harry coughs on a laugh as he hands the paper back to Charlotte, “This is really good, Bug. Why don’t you and Oliver go help Josie finish her coloring pages, hm?”

The both of them head the short way back to their table, hiking up on the small stools and Harry makes sure they’re all settled before he turned back to face Y/N, who was biting down on a grin, “Don’t start --” he began but she’s already started, shaking her head.

“Listen, it’s okay to be in love with me, but you should really try to tone it down. . .the kids are starting to notice.”

Harry scoffs before he proceeds to tease her,, “How d’ya know they aren’t basing it off your actions, huh? Giving me love eyes every couple minutes like nobody would see.”

Y/N mocks offense to his words and he tries to keep up the facade, but his sheer delight for getting in a teasing match with her overcomes him and he can’t help his smile. Harry loved teasing people -- loved making them flustered or reducing them to a bashful mess by his words alone. Y/N, however, was much less into flustered gazes and sheepish tendencies, and more so ready and willing to give him it right back. He’d met his match -- if he teases her she’s teasing right back (if she hadn’t started it in the first place), and both of them found mutual pleasure in it.

“You can’t use my love eyes against me, I can’t help but give them to everyone I’ve ever met” she tells him, feigning sincerity before an additional anecdote, “You know my college roomie always told me they’d get me in trouble one day, and she had never been more right, ‘cos they did once at a party. She wouldn’t shut up about it weeks after it’d happened.”

Harry feels his body tense just a bit at the mention of her, and he tries not to let it show on his face that he’s surprised how she so casually brought her up, “Yeah? What’s the story?”

“The little ears around us suggest that I tell that story later,” she checks her watch, before looking back up at him, “Oi, we’ve got five minutes until we’re in the rec center. You get to pick what we all do since I picked the last rotation.”

. . .

This time when they’re on their way to the party, Harry lets Y/N walk in front of him as he directs where she was to go. Opposed to when they had first made this journey together, Harry feels far more protective of her than he originally had. Plus, he’d seen how clumsy she could be and after the earlier storm, the softened dirt and broken off tree branches from the billows of wind made for a much harder terrain to navigate, so he felt more comfortable being able to reach out to catch her if need be.

Harry was wary of going to the party tonight but Y/N had been borderline insistent that they attend, “Mitch says he misses you at these things and Niall told me he could only stand Shaun theorizing about the universe and us not being the only life form so many times before he snaps. I say we’re needed.” Harry never minded free drinks, and a potential fuck at the end of the night, so he wasn’t all too worried that he would be having a good time. He just hoped that the others would allow Y/N to have a good time. And he knows he’s being paranoid, because they hadn’t necessarily targeted her for anything prior to or after the lake incident, but he still worries. . .he can’t help but worry.

But he wouldn’t hover. Once they got to the clearing, he helped Y/N get her drink and she sought off after Niall while Harry went over to Mitch, the two of them promising to meet up again in a little bit. He didn’t hover, but he did watch semi-closely, eyeballing Jack and the others, making sure they were staying away from her. Apart from a few less than friendly looks thrown in his direction though, they seemed to be keeping to themselves which Harry was ultimately very thankful for.

The night goes by as these nights usually do -- he and Mitch drank, had a laugh, gabbed about music for a while, some of the drama going on around the camp (Y/N had an ear for gossip and eyes that could make anyone tell her anything, so Harry’s had a door to all the melodramatic events happening throughout the counsellors). It was a bit weird when Stacey -- one of the counsellors he’d only ever briefly spoken to -- had come up to them, and a little weirder when she borderline propositioned him for something more than a chat in the woods, but Harry politely declined. Told her that he was pretty exhausted after a long day and was probably just going to have a few more beers and retreat back to his cabin.

He passes it off as a fluke. . .maybe he’d been making eyes at her and hadn’t realized it. But then Mia makes her way toward him and Mitch, and this time Harry’s brows furrow when she starts chatting him up. This one he entertains for a little while before eventually ebbs away from the conversation, because he and Mia had a fling once, but Jack convinced her and the free world that he was a prick, so she called it off. He didn’t necessarily understand why she would want to start that up again, or what “little birdie” put a bug in her ear that he still thought about her (as she said one did).

It was after Cara had finally left after coming around to chat with him, that Mitch began to chuckle lowly at his side, shaking his head slowly, “Jesus Christ,” he tilts the nozzle of his beer against his mouth, and when he pulls it away, his lips are shiny from the liquid, “She really is working hard.”

“Huh?” Harry feels desperate for an explanation as to why three times he felt as if he were being propositioned for a romp in the woods when he was not actively pursuing one. He had a feeling that it was the others trying to get him alone so they could enact some sort of piss poor attempt at fucking with him without Y/N spotting and tearing them a new one over it, “Are you in on something that I’m not, ‘cos m’feeling pretty fucking lost here, man.”

Mitch nods his head, and Harry follows his gaze to Y/N, who is speaking with her brows dipped inward to Cara, “A few days ago she’d been asking me and Niall what you were like last year, and we told her just the same, jus’ a lot more ‘fornication’ is how Niall put it,” he smirks softly with a shake of his head, “And she seemed all concerned, asking us if we thought she was holdin’ you back or something. Personally, I told her if you wanted to sleep with someone you would have whether she were around or not but she didn’t seem very convinced.” A snort leaves him as he motions towards her again, still as amused by her ideas as he had been when she’d first explained them, “Guess she’s trying to set you up.”

“Oh fuck me,” he exhales so forcefully, it whips the delicate plumes of smoke from Mitch’s cigarette into a misshapen huff. Why was she so concerned with it? Harry hadn’t once expressed any avidity in needing to spend time with someone in that manner -- he could go without sex for three weeks. . .did she not think he could? Was he exuding nymphomaniac tendencies? He surely hadn’t thought he was -- a few quick handies in his nightly showers typically tide him over just nicely for a bit of a dry spell. And what was her business that he hadn’t slept with anyone since they’ve gotten here? Why was she speaking about him with the others what she could as easily ask him? What she had as easily spoken with him about, albeit leaving out a pretty large portion of it.

For the first time since they had begun getting along, Harry was irritated with her. He’d never been one to brood, however. He liked things to be up front and honest as soon as possible if the situation allowed for it, to stop his mind from taking an idea and running away with it. He held little interest in playing mind games with people.

Which is why he hands Mitch the rest of his drink, fixes his heavy cardigan around his shoulder, and sets off in her direction. He dodges many bodies, avoids an empty cup on the ground beside what he could only presume to be a sticky puddle of liquor, and narrowly makes it past a playful fight between Oliver and Brandon who were wrestling one another. Y/N doesn’t realize that he’s making his way to her until he’s just a meter or so away, when Niall catches a glimpse of him and attempts to be inconspicuous in the way he pinches her side. She gasps from the way his nails had accidentally bit into her skin, flinching from the pain before her gaze had settled on him, “Harry!” She cheered but his face doesn’t soften as it usually does when they see one another, which alerts her to his disapproving gaze, “Oh, what’s wrong?”

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” He inquires, motioning out past the trees. Enough trust had been built into the foundation of their friendship for her to not question him. Instead, she passes her drink off to Niall and follows Harry into the woods -- he wouldn’t go so far that they wouldn’t be able to see one another from beneath the curtain of leaves shielding away the moon, but just far enough that nobody would be eavesdropping. In any other situation he might wait to bring this up until they’ve made it back to the cabin, but Y/N’s intentions had been clear that the person he was taking home tonight wasn't supposed to be her.

She pauses with him at a particularly thick tree trunk, and places the arch of her foot against one of the jagged roots that carved its way through the earth, “Is everything okay?” She balances herself with a hand against the bark, wincing when it jabs into her skin, “I was keeping an eye on Jack n’ them I thought so they wouldn’t try messing with you, but did they say something?”

That does melt him some, Harry was strong enough to admit that. Just as he had been concerned with her wellbeing, she was just as much concerned for him, and he appreciated that. And while it does threaten to soften him down to his core, he still had questions that needed answers, and he wouldn’t let up until she responded to them.

“Why are you sending girls over to me?”

Her brows raise, but less in shock of learning the information, and more so with wonder how he’d found out she was the one sending them their way. The surprise dissolves into embarrassment quickly, her shoulders slump and she casts her gaze deeper into the forest, “Dammit,” she doesn’t hide her disappointment from being caught, or even feign confusion to try and pass the blame off coincidence that every girl who had come up to him had subsequently talked to her prior, “I was hoping you would be less observant.”

“Y/N.” He says her name sternly, and her shoulders drop dramatically further as she steps down from the tree root.

“Listen, in my defense I just felt awful!” She admits, waving her hand toward the party, “Jack had tried telling me a few times about how you just fuck people and leave them, blah, blah, blah, right? And I wasn’t paying any attention to him, but it made me curious to what you were like last year, so I asked Mitch and Niall. You came to these things all the time and you had fun -- then I come ‘round, ruin the first one, and you’ve been hanging out with me since. I just. . . I wanted you to be able to have fun and not feel like you have to worry about me, y’know?”

A ‘v’ sits between Harry’s brows, “What is it your business what I’m doing, hm?” He fixes his cardigan from where it slumps off his shoulder once more, “If I wanted to sleep with someone then I would. Do you think I can’t set something up myself?”

“No, of course not, I just thought --”

“You didn’t think,” he cuts her off, and Y/N’s arms curl over herself instinctively when a cold brush of air rolls past them, “You should have just came to speak with me about it, I could have told you that I didn’t need anything like that, and that would have been that. Don’t go behind my back trying to orchestrate things for me, okay?”

He wanted to say it -- he needed to say it, because Harry wasn’t some sex driven lecher that everyone at this camp tried to make him out as. He thought Y/N had known that too, but he guesses he was wrong.

But he wasn’t expecting her to look so fucking defeated by it. A guilt weighs on his being when she nods, tipping her head down, “Okay, yes, I won’t anymore. I’m sorry,” her fingers dig into her bicep, as she breathes out, a shiver rattles through her that she tries to be inconspicuous about it, “I wasn’t thinking -- I wasn’t thinking how it would look.”

Harry sighs, peeling his cardigan off of his arms, revealing his bare arms to the chill but he ignores it in favor of holding it out to her, “Put this on,” he wiggles it some, “I know you’re cold.” She takes it from him carefully, looking up, brows raised slightly as if to ask if he’s sure, “Go ahead.”

“I really am sorry,” she tells him, pulling the patchwork cardigan over her arms, it hangs off of her, and Harry swallowed thickly. She’s. . .cute -- Harry had always been able to admit that. Her face is sweet, her eyes exudes nothing but understanding, kindness, and such a soft glow that Harry couldn’t quite explain. He finds that those eyes give him great comfort and warmth, because now when they’re tinged with the contrition she feels and Harry feels cold.

“I know,” he murmurs, he holds out his hand for her, and very carefully Y/N slides her hand into his own, “Do you want to go get pudding?”

A small smile pulls at her mouth.

“Yes please.”

. . .

Niall lets them use the key after a few dozen promises to be careful with it. They trek the familiar way, mindless chatter fills the air around them until they get to the cafeteria and their voices quiet in case the security guard is looping around. Y/N reveals her hand from the shield of his cardigan sleeve, Harry watches as the fabric pools around her arm, toward her elbow, and produces the key (that Niall only trusted her with). They creeped into the kitchen, pulled open the large refrigerator door, and the pudding sat in rows on the bottom shelf.

They both choose vanilla this time, having tired themselves out on chocolate, and they sit at the spot they had last time, across from one another. He can tell, despite his peace offering, that Y/N still feels upset about what had happened earlier and it sullies his mood. She’s still chatting but not with as much heart as she typically has, and Harry couldn’t stand it. He just wanted her to giggle as she teases him again, without feeling like she’s tip toeing on eggshells around him.

“Hey,” Harry starts, dragging her attention towards him where it had previously been scooping the sides of her pudding container, “Would you stop being so. . .tense? Is this about earlier?”

Y/N clears her throat, opening her mouth and furrowing her brows like she was about to deny it, but she relents, shoulders dropping, “A little. I still feel bad about everything,” she shakes her head, dragging the edge of the spoon around the plastic, “About everything, not just that you aren’t able to sleep with someone. I came in late, ruined you having your own cabin, woke you up with my alarm, made you get out of bed ‘cos I’m afraid of the dark and -- I just feel like this massive burden. I feel like this massive burden on everyone.”

Harry is alarmed by this sudden confession, but his body ultimately rejects the notion that she could ever be a bother, “How are you a burden to anyone?” He inquires, shaking his head, “You’re such a ball of light that just swarms through rooms. The thought of you being a burden is akin to the thought of Satan being a saint. . .it doesn’t sound right.” Harry sets his pudding down, though he keeps his hands fixed around the cup and the spoon, “Don’t know what gave you that idea, but the last thing you are is a burden. Who gave you the impression that you were?”

She wipes tiredly at her eyes, “Nobody in particular, it's just,” she shakes her head, “Even now, I wanted to make your night good, and then I fucked it, and now you’re here with me instead of having fun at the party. I just feel silly.”

“Don’t.” Harry tells her simply, “I like to spend time with you, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

The tension in her shoulder releases, “Thank you for this, I’m sorry m’just saying the same thing again and again. Back at home it feels like everyone is just. . .so hyper aware of me -- they’re always being so careful, or overly concerned and I always wonder if it feels like a heavy weight on their shoulders, like I’m forcing a piggyback ride.” She shrugs her own, reaching for the second pudding cup, “It’s just shit, so I overthink everything all the time to try not to be a burden, but I keep making it worse. Or at least that’s how it feels.”

Harry tilts his head to the side some. He’s not usually someone who pries and probes people for information, but he’s never been more curious about Y/N than in this moment. When he thinks of Y/N at home, he thinks of sunshine pooling in the hallways through casement windows, her spinning around the kitchen in a dainty floral dress that billows around her as she stirs homemade jam. Harry imagines her amongst woodland creatures who coax her to the forest with songs, escorting her there as she gambols freely.

He could not imagine her going home and feeling like a burden. Hell, he would have thought that she considered everyone else a burden -- that maybe it was draining to be the absolute light of everyone’s life. Yet here she stood, seeming worn, and broken.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why is everyone hyper aware of you at home? You don’t have to answer if you’re uncomfortable.” He says it delicately -- he means it. . .if she didn’t want to share this with him, then he wouldn’t force her, but he wants to open up the possibility. He wants her to know that he’s an open ear if she so chose to utilize him.

“Um,” her gaze does shift downward -- she suddenly appears so small, “Are you sure?”

Harry nods.

“I just -- it's not that I don’t like bringing it up, I just don’t want you to treat me any differently than you would knowing it, yeah? I think that’s what I hate the most.” She notes, “So do you promise that you won’t -- you won’t start tiptoeing around me?”

“You’ve got my word.” Harry vows, but he has a feeling he knows what she is to say.

The sleeve of his cardigan covers her hand as she brushes the hair from her face, “In freshman year of UNI, my roommate was Mrs. Graham’s daughter, Penelope.” She straightens out in her seat, “We didn’t like each other much at first but we had grown very close -- um, once she threw away my fruit snacks and so I dunked her toothbrush in the toilet, but I felt guilty and went out to buy her a new toothbrush,” a laugh leaves her at the memory, as she rolls her eyes at herself, “That was what we had going for a while, but a late night heart to heart kind of made us closer. She told me things that. . .she’d been through a lot that nobody should have to go through, you know? She was bullied a lot growing up—in high school it was bad, people used to always gang up on her over stupid shit.” Harry hums, encouraging her to continue, and she stirs the pudding around mindlessly, “And we were just close after that. We had a flat together sophomore year and most of junior year, she’s my best friend,” she swallows thickly, “I didn’t realize how sad she was. . .I didn’t realize what she was still holding onto, and she -- we went home for Christmas break, and she never came back.”

Harry feels his stomach sour as her eyes bead with unshed tears, “Oh, Y/N,”

“It’s alright. I’m okay, I’m fine as I can be -- I’ve -- I’m mourning and I miss her, but I’m trying to be strong. Most days I am, but everyone at home just expects me to be this fragile thing, y’know? The days I’m happy, and chatty, they think I’m faking it. And some days I do, yeah, but. . .it’s just disheartening when everyone pretends to know what’s going on in my head.” She plants the pudding directly in the center, leaving it there and retreating her hands to her lap, “Mrs. Graham told me she felt the same. That’s why I came in last minute -- I’ve got all my volunteer hours settled and everything but she said it might be nice to get away.” A slow, easy sigh leaves her lips as she blinks the tears away, not one drop trickled down her cheek, “It is nice, but I still worry that I’m a strain on people around me, even if not for the reason I am at home. And I’m sorry to like, info dump all this on you,” she laughs a little in spite of herself, “You can’t ask me things, unless you want an hour long explanation.”

Harry reaches out his hand for her, for the second time that night, and once again she slowly slips their fingers together, “Thank you for sharing that with me, I know it must have been hard,” he squeezes her hand, “But I understand you a bit more now. I’ll keep my promise, I won’t treat you any differently, but before that --” she blinks at him, waiting, “I think you might just be one of the kindest, strongest, most caring people that I have ever meant. I know you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me or add stress onto my life, so you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to try with me. We can just exist together, yeah? We’ll exist without burdens and without worry.”

The look in her eyes, was one that Harry had never seen before. One that makes him melt in her touch.

“I would like that.”

. . .

“I can’t swim.”

Harry was crouched down to Maisey’s height, fixing purple mermaid floaties around her arms. The day was not unusually muggy, but there was an additional itch to jump belly first into the cool watered lake. He had woken with a revitalized need to pry a star from the morning sky as it shifted from an inky purple to an early, dusky morning blue -- and give it to Y/N. He had decided after their conversation last night -- after they’d gone to bed and Y/N fell asleep cuddled in his cardigan -- he had an overwhelming, and an all encompassing want to hold her.

Which made it hard to part ways this morning, but he managed. And maybe he played out an image in his head where he pressed a kiss to Y/N’s cheek before they went to wake their respective cabins, or maybe he didn’t (but if he did that’s his own problem). He is quick to convince himself it was because she’d shared a piece of herself with him that he doesn’t think she lets many people see, and Harry always develops a bit of a platonic crush on his friends at some point or another. He questioned whether or not he was in love with Mitch for a solid four days once. . .sometimes he just let his heart get carried away.

He had been enmeshed in these thoughts as he got his campers ready for their time in the lake. At first glance, a ton of children in the lake seemed like a horrible, and faulty idea, but they took precautions so that everyone was safe. Every child wore floaties and/or life jackets no matter how proficient their swimming abilities. There was netting about ten meters out so that the children and counsellors couldn’t float out toward the middle, and they worked it so that only three children could be in per counsellor at a time, so that they could keep an eye on everyone. Harry wasn’t so nervous because he was a strong swimmer, and his kids were a little older, but he could tell Y/N had been a little jittery about it. It’s why Harry told her that while she was out in the lake with her little ones to let him know, he would come out with her to bring her some additional comfort that even the floaties could not provide.

Harry had been pretty sure all of his kids were excited to go to the lake and he was grateful for that, until he looked up to see the nervous, large blue eyes of Jackson, downcast after he had spoken the words. The unprompted admittance confused him as he turned to face him, “That’s okay, buddy, we’ve got floaties for that.”

Jackson did not seem convinced, shaking his head fiercely, “No, I -- I can’t swim.”

“J.J. is afraid of the water,” Noah exposes the truth just as easy as he takes a sip from his juice box, equipped with his own blue arm floaties, “He didn’t want to say though ‘cos --”

“Noah!” Jackson cuts him off, betrayal laced within his features.

“--’cos he didn’t want to seem like a wimp, but he almost drowned when he was little.”

Jackson looked as if he could cry, and Harry shook his head quickly, “Hey, hey, hey, c’mere buddy,” he motions him over, and he comes easily, stepping before Harry who had not bothered to leave his already crouched position, “Explain to me what’s going on, yeah?”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, a frown prevalent on his mouth, even as he speaks, “When I was little little, my big brother pushed me into the pool and I went under the water and my mom had to come in and get me because I can’t swim good.”

Harry pulls his lips back, reaching out to squeeze Jackson’s shoulder, “I’m sorry to hear that buddy. I won’t force you to get in the water if you don’t want to, but I do want to tell you that if you feel more comfortable, we could try a life jacket instead of the floaties? It’ll keep you more buoyant -- more bouncy in the water.”

“Aren’t those for little kids?” Jackson inquires, brows pinched, but Harry shakes his head and points toward Y/N, never more glad in that moment that she had the age group she did, along with her views on not making them do, wear, or say anything that she wouldn’t herself. She’s got the life jacket swung around her arm as she clips Oliver into his own.

“Y/N’s going to wear one too, and she’s not a little kid. I’ll wear one as well if you’d like.” He promised him. Albeit looking reserved, Jackson nods softly with his hands in little fists, worrying his lip between his teeth. The poor thing, Harry thinks -- he used to be afraid of water too. Nobody wants to conquer that fear suddenly, let alone with a group of people that may or may not poke fun because they’re kids and kids are jerks sometimes.

Harry finds him a life jacket -- a cute one with a shark on it, that he helps him clip on, and fits it to his body with the straps. Next, he needed to find one for himself, but he wasn’t entirely sure where they kept the counsellor life jackets, so he called for Y/N where she’d been a few meters away and she popped her head up from where she was like a meerkat. Her eyes softened when she realized who had called her, and a gentle smile pulled at her mouth, “Hey hubby,” she greets him, much to the delight of Charlotte, who claps giddily, “What d’ya need?”

“A life jacket, please. Where’d you get yours?” Harry tries to be decent -- tries desperately to keep his eyes to himself, but he finds that this is surprisingly difficult when Y/N is in her swimsuit. It wasn’t obscene in any sense of the word -- in the pamphlet they get when they sign up, it is very clear that speedos and bikinis were not appropriate, and therefore not allowed. If a child couldn’t wear it, then you shouldn’t bring it -- was the apothegm that they chose to live by in reference to dress code.

This, however, doesn’t mean that Y/N’s swimsuit didn’t suit her well. It was fitted in a way that wasn’t too tight, yet wasn’t too loose -- like it might have just been made with her in mind. A simple one piece of nylon and lycra colored a powder blue, that barely showed off that much more of what she wears to bed, and yet his mind still flutters elsewhere. To unwise places, that he drags himself from before clearing his throat and forcing himself to look around the lake so it appeared his eyes were just scanning everything.

“You’re in luck,” Y/N jogged the short way from where they stood, back to where her kids were all gathered, playing happily in the sand. Beneath what Harry had assumed was just a cluster of towels, another life jacket was hidden beneath the fabric. She hands it toward him with a triumphant grin, “This was the last one. I grabbed it for you in case you just wanted to float rather than keep your legs kicking -- you had a big lunch, didn’t want you to get a cramp.”

Harry hates how his heart balloons in his chest. There was no reason to be a melt because she had thought of him -- that she had him in mind, so she snatched the last life jacket, and hid it beneath towels so nobody else could have it. No reason to feel all mushy from the way that she unfolds it for him, a silent prompt that she’s going to help him pull it on. And there was certainly, absolutely no good reason for how stupidly affectionate he feels when she strokes her finger along the heart tattoo on his forearm mindlessly, before murmuring, “You make me wanna get covered in them. Maybe I’ll just go and get all of yours.” She looks down at the ground, “Maybe not the toe, my feet are ticklish -- think I would kick the artist.”

He recruits Y/N for the process of easing Jackson into the water -- Noah and Elinor are floating and bobbing about happily at their sides, while Charlotte and Mikey playfully kick and float close to their older counterparts (if not practically on top of them). There was a chill bite to the water when they had first stepped in, but as they walked out further and sunk a bit deeper, the cold eases up. The cool air soothes them from the sharp bite of the scorching sun, Jackson holds his hand so tightly Harry thinks his fingers may go numb, and he figures Y/N is feeling the same way, if her soft, “Loosen your grip up a bit, Sweetheart, you’re gonna take off my hand.”

Eventually, Jackson relaxes. He finally understands that the life jacket will keep him afloat and holding onto Y/N and Harry wasn’t a necessity. Once the idea of this settles in his brain, he is more willing to let go and enjoy himself. It feels wonderful to see that he’s having fun, and even better when he sees the smile on Y/N’s face from this small victory. Last year, he hadn’t felt this parental over the children last summer, but something had changed. . .something that made him feel like he was a bit of a parent.

It has to be Y/N. There was something about her that just oozes mother figure for these kids, even if she wasn’t intending to do so. She kissed the bandages over their wounds to take away the hurt, she praised the ground they walked on, picked them up if they asked, danced with them, encouraged them, treated every single child as if they were her own. Harry believes she’ll be a beautiful mother one day, if that’s what she’d like, and whoever the father or mother was she had chosen to spend her life with, they were unbelievably lucky. He just hoped they would understand that.

Y/N floats into his line of sight, “Are you okay? Ellie said you look like Maisey’s aunt again, whatever that means.”

Harry snorts, before nodding, “Yeah, I’m fine. A bit tired.”

An understanding gleam overtakes her, “Y’know, I did think you seemed a bit snoozy,” she reaches out for him, squeezing his shoulder softly, “D’ya want to have a sneaky nap? I could watch the kids.”

“But I like having you both,” Jackson whined, shaking his head quickly, finding their hands once more, reassuring that his grip was tight as ever, “Please stay.”

“Yeah,” Noah splashes over to them, sliding his arms around Harry’s neck, wetting his hair with the water clinging to his life jacket, “You two are fun together! We always have so much fun -- Brittany said her counsellor always yells at them when they ask her to play with them.”

Elinor was quick to add, “And Ro’s counsellor falls asleep during art days! He doesn’t even help them stay in the lines, and they’re little like Oli, and Charlotte.”

Y/N’s bottom lip juts out in the prettiest little pout -- Harry finds himself wanting to pluck it with the pad of his thumb, “That’s silly, isn’t it? I have so much fun with you guys, I couldn’t imagine not playing. Right Harry?”

Nodding his assent, he reaches up, settling his hands around Noah’s arms and bring him along with him as he kicks them closer to Y/N and the other three, “It is silly. Some people just aren’t as fun as Y/N and I, Bug, it’s proven fact. They did the scientific method and everything.”

Oliver gleefully pushes himself up on Y/N’s shoulders, flopping back into the water and bobbing, “I love yous!” He chirped brightly, “Yous guys are my favorites! I love yous.”

The sight is adorable, especially as Y/N wriggles around and holds her arms out so they could hug, which Oliver happily accepts, “I love yous too, button.”

They have fun -- for hours, as they switch out which kids are in the water, spend time on the beach with all of them, making sandcastles, burying one another, chatting and playing. It was very freeing; Harry could easily tell that he and the others were having far more fun than any of the other groups were -- Mitch and Niall had gravitated their groups closer to them when Y/N and the kids began to pour sand over the top of him. Even Cassidy came around with her kids after they had heard them all giggling and laughing and wanted to know what was going on. Harry was having fun, and maybe he was just mushy, but he credited it to the joy Y/N was exuding. It was hard not to be in a good mood when he was around her.

By the time the sun sat a little lower in the sky, casting the shadows of trees over the sand and cooling them to the point of chilling. The kids washed their feet and hands beneath the rush of water from a yard hydrant, wrapped up in towels, and headed toward the dining hall for their dinner. There was a taco bar today, and Harry found that Y/N and he had a mutual love of tacos as a whole. She showed him how she adds feta crumbles, even let him have a bite of hers to see if he would like it so he could decide whether or not to put it on his own (it was delicious, she was right).

Once dinner was finished, everyone was exhausted. They all gathered around the campfire, one of the counsellors strummed a song on his guitar, they all had s'mores and then they dispersed. Not even the rush of sugar from the chocolate and marshmallow gave any of the children an umph in their step; they were all so sluggish and slow, dragging their feet through the dirt on their way to their cabins. Harry’s group barely kept their eyes open as they stalked to the showers, washing off the lake water and sand that had been clinging to their bodies. After they brushed their teeth, they all but face planted in their beds and snores soon filled the quiet air of the cabin. They only made him realize how exhausted he was from the day spent baking in the sun, floating and kicking in the water.

He trudges back to his cabin, where he finds Y/N had already showered off. She was face down in her pillow, her back slowly rising and falling with each gentle breath she took. She hadn’t covered in her blankets -- no, instead she used his cardigan as a makeshift cover over her body, and Harry thinks it might just be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. The patchwork swallows a good portion of her body, the sleeve flopped limply by her head. . .he could imagine her crawling into bed. Could imagine her putting her knee up first, dragging the cardigan that had been lying limply over the post with her and just letting it drape over her body. She probably wasn’t thinking she would fall asleep. . .probably thought she would just lay there for a minute before gathering the strength to get beneath her covers.

It’s adorable -- Harry hates how adorable he finds it, actually. If he could crawl in beside her he would, but instead he ambles to the bathroom, starts up the shower, and climbs in.

The water his hot -- boiling drops pelt his skin, washing away the grime and sweat that felt as if it’d been caked onto his skin. It felt good; to cleanse and scrub himself free of the lake, massage shampoo into his scalp, soften his curls with the conditioner, and just allow himself to revel in the feeling. Showers feel wonderful - a renewal that he deemed necessary by the end of the day. And when he gets the temperature just right, it soothes the aches and soreness in his bones, turning his muscles to softened jello. By the time he slipped out of the shower, he was practically boneless and thought he’d be lucky if he made it to his bed before dropping to the floor and falling asleep.

He expects Y/N to still be asleep when he leaves the bathroom, but he’s surprised to find her sat up in her bed, his cardigan pooled around her body and a deep frown on her face.

“Oh!” He’s started some -- he really thought she was out for the night, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“It’s morning?” Her face further turns to that of distress and Harry bites down hard on a chuckle.

“No,” he responds, “It’s not morning. Only about 10PM, so you’ve got plenty of time to rest still.” She looks around groggily, rubbing at her cheek with one hand while she fisted his cardigan in the other, pulling it closer around her body, “Why don’t you get beneath the covers, Babe?” He asks her, and she’s quiet for a little while. The only inkling Harry receives that she even heard him was how she tries to shuffle and wriggle the covers down with her still stretched out on the bed, stuffing her legs into the blankets first, then sliding the rest of the way smoothly. All the while she clings to the cardigan, holding it tightly, resting her cheek on it. Harry doesn’t know if Y/N’s just far more affectionate than he had even thought prior, or if she was just half awake and doing things she wouldn’t do if she was fully conscious. Vaguely does he remember her saying something about typically cuddling with a teddy at night -- how she stuffs her face against it because it always smells like her fabric softener.

He wonders if that’s why she snuggles with it -- he wonders if she likes the smell of him, so she buries her nose in the fabric and breathes it in as she rests.

Harry hates this. He hates how inconceivably soft he’s been feeling, but he can’t help it. Y/N had found him worthy enough to poke inside her brain -- she opened up to him in a way she expressed she’d not been opening up to many people about. It made him feel closer to her.

But he told her he wouldn’t treat her any differently after finding out. And if he suddenly started expressing more affection, he fears she would think he was only doing it because of what she told him. He just wants to be. . .he just wants to be gentle with her. Doesn’t want her to ever think that she’s a burden to him, because the anecdote had made him question and second guess how he’d been treating her their entire time here. Of course, he was never intentionally cruel, but some of the situations he thinks about the two of them in, and how he responded, makes him cringe.

He switches off the overhead light, her dimmed bedside lamp and muscle memory guide him to his bed. Harry climbs in, shivers as he adjusts to the warmth beneath his covers, and breathes a soft sigh of relief to have finished with the day.

“Harry?” Y/N’s voice startles his eyes open, which he’d not been aware he’d closed.

“Hm?” He hums -- he had thought she’d fallen back asleep already.

“You’re okay?”

A soft smile plays at his mouth -- she asks him every night before bed, he’s noticed.

“Yes, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

She nods, “You did really good today,” her voice is muffled from her cheek mushed against his cardigan, “The kids had a lot of fun, they were telling me. I had a lot of fun too.”

“Yeah? Me too,” he reaches to thumb the hairs of his eyebrow down, “And thank you. You always do really well with the kids.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and once more, Harry thinks she must have fallen asleep, but the shift of the mattress tells him she’s changing position and Harry notices once more that his eyes have closed, “I’m glad you’re my roomie.”

Harry utters the words, that two weeks ago he thinks he would have spit at.

“Yeah, I’m glad you’re my roomie too.”

. . .

Harry was drunk.

Typically, he didn’t allow himself to get very drunk at these little parties. He trusted the others so little, he had no doubt in his mind that any moment he was slightly impaired in some way they would take it upon themselves to prey on his weakness. This means he only ever gets mildly tipsy -- drinks enough to feel good but caps himself when he thinks he might start stumbling.

But he just didn’t cap himself today. Not for any reason in particular -- their day hadn’t been difficult. They helped their kids through a mildly strenuous obstacle course throughout the morning, cooled down with them drinking juice boxes and eating popsicles and by 2PM they were inside doing little DIY projects. Harry burned his finger with some hot glue, but otherwise it was a pretty easy smooth kind of day that they didn’t get often. He and Y/N hadn’t gotten to spend much time together, which he wouldn’t admit loudly was a disappointment, but he and his kids had all agreed that they missed her.

(And when they had seen her and her group walking into the art room, the lot of them had erupted in cheers, Noah, Eli, Maisey being the loudest of them.)

They had a pasta dinner that was surprisingly filling, they told “spooky” campfire stories and ate s’mores, he got his kids ready for bed and he went off to the cabin. He and Y/N were going to one of the parties tonight, not because they had such spectacular luck with a good time before, but because they were coming up on some of their last nights here at camp. It was a bittersweet feeling -- Harry remembered being more than ready to flee last year, counting down each day, each hour dragging on longer than the last. This time, it felt like it was coming too quick. He would miss the kids, he would miss the busy days some. . .and sure, he was happy to go home and take a shower that stays hot longer than five minutes and rest on his soft, cozy bed, but he would miss not having Y/N right across from him.

That was what he was having the most trouble coming to terms with, he thinks. The idea of them not having to spend every moment of every day with one another after doing it for three weeks almost sounds wrong. It's the same feeling he gets when he knew he and Mitch wouldn’t have such easy access to one another once they went back home. Being at this camp sort of felt like being stuck in a time loop where the outside world doesn’t exist, so it’s very easy to forget that they all have lives outside of here. They all go to class, go to work, go home, study, eat and sleep.

He and Y/N live relatively close to one another -- only about a ten minute drive up the street with only one turn and it's into her apartment building -- but he wonders if they’ll utilize it. He wonders if their friendship is tied to this camp and if that’s where it will remain, or if she even wants to be friendly with him after. Harry hadn’t considered that maybe she was only putting up with him because they had to live together and she didn’t want it to be miserable. Had he questioned if he was even enjoyable to be around? How does he ask her that without sounding entirely too desperate or needy?

So partially, he drinks to ease some of the worry in his mind. Harry doesn’t think he would “break down” or something like it if they weren’t able to continue being friends -- like a forgotten summer love that he might think about throughout the fall, and message her to see how she was doing -- but he certainly wouldn’t be delighted if that’s how it ended up. Harry thinks there’s so much more to Y/N that he would like to see, and know, and hear. Three weeks isn’t enough time, Harry decided, but in the same breath he wondered if she had thought it was more than enough.

Harry knows she cares for him, at least a little bit. He knows that he cares for her and her wellbeing; he was fond of her. From what he knew of who she was fundamentally, down to her core, Harry knew she was selfless and kind -- it was hard to find people like that, who were that, without it being cakey or clouded by something else. She was transparent in who she was and her feelings regarding most things, and Harry valued her honesty.

And she was just so damn fun. Every moment with her he spent, the air filled with laughter; she brought a slice of sun in her pocket wherever she went and Harry was consistently being warmed beneath it.

The fact of the matter is, Harry doesn’t know how he could meet someone like Y/N, and get used to the idea of her not being in his life after three weeks. If he could refuse it he would, but what was he going to do? Kidnap her and take her home with him?

He’s sat on the tree root, opposed to standing beside it like he usually is, with his back pressed against the bark of the tree and he ignores the jagged, uneven trunk against his skin. Mitch was beside him, leaning lower than he was with his jacket bundled up and stuffed behind his head, his legs kicked out as far as they would go and because of this, his foot rested against Niall’s lap. Niall was pleasantly gone himself, a bit louder than normal but also zoning out every so often.

He was a good guy, Niall -- he had good opinions, and he chatted him and Mitch up about guitars often (he was typically the camp’s go to for an acoustic guy if they ever wanted campfire songs). Harry thinks they could probably be really good friends, if not for the fact that Niall was so barefaced in his crush on Y/N.

It was obvious, Harry thought. He’d thought it was obvious from the first moment he spent a prolonged period of time with both he and Y/N -- his cheeks got rosy when she touched him, he stuttered over his gratitude if she complimented him, and if she went out of her way to do something (like when she’d stuffed her hand into a thorn-bush for his guitar pick that had flung from his fingers, and subsequently got all scratched up), he would look at her how someone might stargaze.

Harry doesn’t know why he doesn’t just ask her out, if he likes her so much. It almost irritates him how skittish Niall seems to get at the prospect of it; to run away from those warm, nice feelings that she provides is silly. It reminds him entirely too much of himself and he loathes it.

Tonight had been no different, only Y/N was dancing back and forth between them and a few other counsellors (Harry only recognized one of them , who was called Rosie and had been in his first year maths). Harry watched her most of the night, in the least obnoxious and creepy way he could, just because. . .well, she was nice to look at. He liked how her body animated as she spoke, or how she nodded her head as someone was speaking to her -- it was an encouraging nod, and her eyes locked onto theirs like they might be telling her where the fountain of youth might be located, or the secrets to the universe.

She was cozy today -- it was cooler out than most of the nights that they had experienced, with a chill breeze that had even stirred goosebumps on Harry’s arms (and he was all but swaddled in his hoodie). Y/N had a light fitted sweater that she sometimes slept in -- not heavy enough to shield her from the icy terrain that winter would provide, but enough to fight past the harsh summer night breeze that threatened to help a storm roll in within the next few hours. Loosely, he let the images of her cuddled close to him invade his brain. What it might feel like, how the knit would brush against his skin, if she would hide her face in his neck or spider around him as the big spoon and burrow against his hair. Y/N struck him as someone who liked to do more of the cuddling than being cuddled herself.

He would miss her when they had to leave. Harry worried who would just exist with her, like they had been doing. He worried about her going back to a place where she felt like a burden -- he would be around, wouldn’t he? If she allowed him to, he could be there for her, but he doesn’t want to seem pushy. By all definitions, they had really just met -- Harry had known Y/N for approximately 17 days, but it felt like so much longer. He wonders if he had known her in a past life, or if it was the fact that they spent almost every day all day with one another for at least 15 of those 17 day -- he finally understands how everyone in the Love Island villa always goes on about how a day in the outside world feels like a week where they are.

It’s not like he’s professing his love to her, for fuck sake. He just likes her -- whether it be platonic or not, Harry thinks Y/N is just delightful.

“Your little girlfriend’s not with you?”

Harry had forgotten how Jack’s voice sounded how grating nails against iron pipes might make someone feel, mostly because they hadn’t spoken in quite a while. After Y/N had slapped him, he had kept to himself, resorting more to disgruntled glares and probably pissy comments he was murmuring to his mates about him. If someone asked Harry, he would say that him and his friends were afraid of Y/N -- she posed a good threat to them. Sure, they hadn’t understood the extent of her words that night (like how and why she knew Miss. Graham), but they were enough to rattle them. No matter being in university, or within the range of 20-23 years old, nobody wanted to be scolded by a woman in her 40s, nor did they want to be kicked out of a camp counsellor position, or to have their volunteer hours revoked.

So they had left him alone, which Harry thinks may have been such a strain for them he would be surprised if they hadn’t popped a blood vessel. Even if they wanted to, he was always with Y/N -- they never really had the chance, and if they did, they didn’t really take it.

Which is why he is both surprised and incredibly annoyed with Jack’s sudden appearance.

“Piss off.” Harry responds, nursing his beer bottle closer to him.

“You’re always so ill-tempered,” Jack leans up against the tree, “Just wanted to have a chat. Like why Cassidy suddenly wants to break things off after chatting with you and Y/N. Got any ideas?”

Harry’s brows dipped in confusion, “What? What are you on about?”

“Don’t act like you don’t fucking know,” Jack rolls his eyes, “Cassidy and I are doing just fucking fine for six months, but we come here, she starts chatting with you and now all the sudden she’s ready to break up. What the fuck did you say, hm?” He nudged Harry’s side with his foot, “Fucking Y/N wasn’t enough, you had to fuck Cassidy too?” He kicked him this time, harder than before.

Harry, who did not take too kindly to being kicked, rolled his eyes and pushed himself to a stand, “Dunno why you’re so fucking insecure that you think me being around has anything to do with Cassidy finally seeing what a prick you are, but this needs to stop,” he handed his bottle to Mitch who took it wordlessly, “I’m not fucking Cassidy, I’ve never fucked Cassidy, so if you could just grow the fuck up and recognize that maybe she broke up with you, because you’re awful to be around, that would be great.”

Jack, which Harry had expected, took more of a physical approach, giving a shove to Harry’s shoulders, and Harry’s back slams against the tree behind him, “Fuck you,” he spit, “You all holier than thou ‘cos you’re dipping your dick in Miss. Rainbow Bright? What do you know about me, hm? You’re just a dumb fuck who has to be here because you’re a no good druggy fuck with anger issues. How does it feel knowing you’ll amount to nothing after UNI?”

There isn’t a lot that could get under Harry’s skin. A lot of people could say a lot of shit that he brushes off and lets go, but there are two things that he really just can’t. One of them is when people try to speak poorly of his mum, and the other, was when someone pretends to know his situation when they don’t have a fucking clue. Who was this trust fund bastard to tell him he was a druggy fuck? That he would amount to nothing after UNI? Harry worked two jobs to set himself through school and keep himself fed, with a roof over his head, just so that he could live the life he wanted to after university.

Maybe it was silly to punch him, but it felt good to. Harry reared back his fist and it collided with his jaw, making Jack stumble backward, his hand flying to his face, “You fucking --” he swung in return, only he catches Harry’s shoulder because Harry moved out of the way in anticipation. Niall narrowly dodged being caught in the crossfire as he rolled out of the way.

The fight didn’t get too far, however, because when Jack was gearing up to swing again, Y/N appeared and easily wormed her way in between them, “Are you serious right now?” Her brows were furrowed -- she looked legitimately pissed off, and, well. . .it made Harry take a step back at least, “Thought we had a chat about this, hm? You were going to leave him the fuck alone -- no, look at me, not him,” she grabbed at his collar, giving a sharp tug when his angry gaze had flittered back toward Harry, “I’m not an angry person, Jack, I don’t like being mean, or cruel like you seem to be so fond of, but I can and will be if I need to and I promise you that. Don’t you ever speak to someone like that again, yeah? What you were saying was just awful.” She lets go of his collar, taking a step back and sighing in a sharp huff, “I can’t speak for Cassidy, but if I had to guess she probably cut things off because you’re a jealous bastard who questions every interaction with another person and try this alpha male persona to scare other people away. It must be exhausting.”

Jack shook his head, “We were fine --”

“You thought you were fine. Things aren’t always what they look like, alright? The sooner you understand that, the easier your life will be.” She nods toward the center of the clearing they were in, “Go get some ice from the cooler, and go the hell back to your cabin. You’re not a fun drunk.”

Albeit reluctantly, Jack follows her orders and slinks his way to the cooler. The others around them had grown quiet as they had watched the confrontation unfold, but they soon all lost interest once they realized nothing more would happen. Y/N turned to face Harry, the anger on her face immediately dissolving, as she shakes her head, “What a dick. I’m so sorry he spoke to you like that,” she takes ahold of his wrist, the hand that he had punched Jack with, running her thumbs over his reddened knuckles, “I told him -- after the lake, I told him that he needed to leave you alone or I’d do something about it. Dunno what I was gonna do, but I was going to do something -- I will --”

“Hey, hey,” he cuts her off, “It’s okay -- it’s okay, come on, let’s. . .let’s go to the cabin, yeah? Should we go back to the cabin?”

Y/N looks at him like he was batty, “No shit we’re going back to the cabin! I’ve got to give you like a full medical look over. He slammed you into the tree, and honestly, you bruise like a peach.”

They make the trek back to the cabin, relatively quiet, Harry still attempting to process what had happened and what Y/N had said. Had she really spoken to Jack after the fact and threatened him if he messed with Harry again? The softest, probably sweetest person he knows, had taken Jack off to the side and told him if he didn’t leave Harry alone she was going to do something about it. Not only that, she grabbed him by his collar and told him off in front of everyone. It made his heart race, the thought of it, and his cock twitches in his pants at the moment on repeat in his mind.

Once they get back to the cabin, Y/N has him take his hoodie off with her in the bathroom so she could visualize his back and shoulder. Jack may be short-tempered and smaller than Harry, but his punches still packed a great deal, so a nice, reddening bruise was forming quickly around his shoulder. On his back there were scrapes from the tree bark, Y/N tells him, and a ton of little bruises that had begun to form as well. She makes him stay still as she retrieves the first aid kit from their medicine cabinet.

“Y/N,” he started, and she hummed to encourage him to continue, “When did you speak with Jack privately?”

She clears her throat, plopping the first aid kit down on the sink counter and unclipping it open, “The morning after the lake,” she answers without hesitation, “I wasn’t trying to like, fight your battles or anything, but I needed him to know I wasn’t bluffing when I told them I would rat them out, and worse if the situation allowed it. I hate bullies,” she pulls out a small tube of bacitracin, tutting her tongue as she squeezes it out on the tip of her finger, “And I hate how they treat you. I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

“You didn’t at all,” Harry remarks softly, jolting when her fingers very carefully graze over one of the tender areas on his back, “Thank you, actually, for sticking up for me again.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I think I’m pretty scrappy when I need to be,” she giggles to herself, “Like, if need be, I would take on the Queen for you. Might be an uneven match though, she’s pushing 100.”

Harry spins around to face her though, “Y/N, I mean it,” he tells her seriously, their gazes locking, “Thank you for everything. For dealing with my attitude, for sticking up for me, for helping with the kids, for making this experience bearable, for being such a positive light,” he sighs, “You’re amazing, you deserve amazing things.”

Y/N looks taken by his words -- he wonders if she’s as lost in his eyes as he is in hers. Her mouth falls open gently, like she may be searching for what to say back to him but can’t come up with anything. He worries that he’d said too much -- that he freaked her out or something. He wasn’t trying to, he was just so grateful for her, he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to express it.

He is about to apologize for being too forward, when Y/N pushes the short distance and connects their lips together.

Harry’s confused for a moment as his brain registers what’s happening, but when he feels that she might pull away, his body finally seems to wake up. His hands find her face, cradling her jaw in his hands as he reaffirms the kiss and lets the butterflies in his body take over in hoards. He’d given thought to kissing Y/N, sure, but he’d never thought it would happen. Not only that, he’d never thought it would feel this nice. She tastes like the pineapple wine coolers she’d been sipping on that night, her lips still a bit sticky from the residue of the alcohol on her soft lips.

She’s gentle in how she kisses, like Harry would have guessed -- careful too, and cautious with how her lips parted from him only to fix back together. A pool of heat had formed in Harry’s lower belly and rose to his chest, stirring his heart in flutters when her tongue slid into his mouth and met her own. Harry hadn’t realized just how badly he wanted to kiss her until their tongues are sliding against one another, and his hands are slipping down from her jaw, caressing the delicate skin of her throat, skating down her chest to her hips. He squeezes her sides and pulls her closer to him, feeling the knit of her top rub against his bare torso. It was as soft as he’d imagined it’d be.

Had she been wanting to kiss him for as long as he wanted to kiss her? Normally, Harry could tell how badly someone wanted to kiss him by the act alone, but with Y/N he was so caught up he couldn’t focus. She was calm and soft, but the longer they kissed, the more ardent she became. It was the tiny moan that had left from her mouth into his own, that made him lightheaded. He had to pull away to breathe but his forehead pressed against hers as he breathed in, “Harry?” Her voice is low, she says his name like a secret, “Was that okay?”

His response is to press their lips back together, but this time only for a moment, before he withdraws. Harry loops his fingers around her wrist and brings her with him back into the main room, flopping onto her bed since it was the closest and urging her to climb into his lap. She straddles him, and just as soon as she’s within reach, he slides his fingers at the nape of her neck and pulls her back to his mouth.

It was good -- it felt so fucking good, Harry couldn’t begin to describe it. He held her close, and tried as he might to stave off his cock from ruining the moment, the longer they kissed the harder he got. How she was positioned at first made it so she couldn’t really feel him, but when she tried to get closer to him, she scooted her hips forward and rubbed up right against him. A gasp leaves her as she parts from him, looking down, having lifted her hips, “I’m sorry,” she apologizes and Harry gives a startled laugh.

“I’ve got a stiffy, and you’re apologizing?” He chuckles with a shake of his head, “I’m sorry, Sweetheart. I’ve got a pretty girl in my lap kissing me, s’kind of hard not to get hard. We can stop if you want.”

“I don’t want to stop,” she answers with no delay nor doubt, as she lowers back down, resting her front on his prick and with this she gives an experimental roll of her hips. Harry hisses in a breath as she does it again, her own little moan slipping from her mouth. She was only in a thin little pair of shorts, and Harry had chosen sweatpants for the night, so there was little fabric truly separating them. Harry was thankful for it as she continued to roll her hips against him, sponging kisses from his mouth, down his jawline, to the curve of his throat. She fixed her lips there, lulling her tongue over the skin before she started suckling at him and Harry’s hands danced along her back, stroking up and down it, feeling her, holding her closer. Each roll of her hips made him harder, and he was desperate to know if she was wet. If he pushed his fingers into her shorts, would they come back slick from her arousal? Would she watch him as he slid them into his mouth to taste her? Would she let him split her thighs and lick straight from the source.

His mind was overcome with filth, smutty images entangle once innocent thoughts as she brought the blood to the surface of his skin. When one of his hands left where it had latched onto her hip and slowly maneuvered around to her front, she paused, but left her face dipped in his throat, “Are you wet for me?” He asks her quietly and she nods through a little shiver, “Yeah? Bet you soaked through your little panties,” he murmurs as he slides his fingers past the elastic bands of her shorts and underwear, but left his fingers just past them, “Answer me.”

“Yes,” her voice trembles, she swallows thickly and the muscles in her abdomen contract beneath his fingers.

Harry hums low, slipping his fingers down further and he dips between her slick folds, “Oh, Sweetheart,” he presses a chaste kiss to the side of her head, “Is this your first time getting wet for me?” She shakes her head, “Hm, really? So you’re like this often? Do you take care of it?”

“I -- yeah,” she stutters over a moan as the pads of his fingers roll over her swollen clit slowly, feeling it flick beneath them, “At night, sometimes I will in the shower if I can’t. . .if I can’t wait anymore.”

He feigns a gasp, “Oh my goodness,” he speeds up the slow lull of his fingers, “Your showers are always so fast, doll, you’re really that quick to cum?”

Harry may not be able to see her face, but he can hear the pout clear in her voice, “It usually isn’t that fast! Just with you, it is -- when I think of you, it’s always quick.”

He thought it would be impossible for his cock to be harder than it already was, but her words make pre-cum bubble at the tip, and when he dips his fingers back into her slick little hole, he gets even harder. Gliding his fingers from her panties, he draws them up to his mouth and presses them past his lips as he’d wanted to. Y/N has withdrawn from his throat, watching him do it with glassy eyes, her hands resting on his shoulders, digging her fingers into grape sized dents at the muscle. Her mouth falls open as he sucks her juices away, his eyes fluttering and a groan torn from his throat.

“Get on the bed,” he instructed and Y/N followed without question, crawling from his lap and lying her head on her pillow as Harry stood, and repositioned himself. He takes a hold of shorts and drags them down her legs, wriggling them off her ankle and tossing them elsewhere. His lips finds her ankle first, before he’s peppering and sponging kisses down her leg, the parts that he had tended to throw over his shoulder. When he gets to her thighs, he makes the kisses slower, softer -- he suckles and nips at the supple skin until he’s right before her center, only to switch to her other thigh and push kisses up and down the length of it.

Y/N’s whole body trembles with each shaky breath she gives. She’d spoken no words until he was positioned right in front of her core, looping his fingers in the waistband of the little cotton pair she had on, pulling them up toward her hips so the fabric stretched out over her. He could see her pussy beneath it, made out the outline of her swollen lips and engorged clit -- it made his mouth water.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want,” she tells him, and his gaze is pulled back up to her -- she looks apprehensive.

“What?”

She shrugs, “I know some guys don’t really like to so --”

“Do you want me to eat your pussy?” Harry asks her bluntly, and he revels in the way her eyes widen, and how bashful her face turns as she looks away, “It’s a yes or no question, honey, if you don’t want me to, I can come back up and kiss you while I make you feel good with my fingers. If you do want me to, I’m g’na pull those panties to the side and make you cum on my tongue -- either I’m good with.”

“I -- yes,” she answers, her voice meek, “Yes I want you to.”

Harry smiles softly, “Poor thing, How many stupid boys were refusing to eat this sweet little peach?” He runs his thumb up and down her slit, visualizing where the wet spot had grown and soaked her panties so that the fabric thinned. Leaning in, he nosed at her clit and she inhales, “God, I’m so excited — you’re okay with this? You’re okay with me eating this little pussy out? Need you to let me know because once I start sweet girl, I’ll be in heaven.”

“Yes, please, please lick me.”

“So polite,” he suckles a kiss at the very innermost part of her thigh, before licking one, long stripe up her center through the fabric. She moans, pushing her hips down toward his mouth as he drags his tongue over it again, and again, and again. He soaks it with his spit, teasing her — he wanted to pull her panties to the side and suckle and slurp between her lips until she came — but he wants her to beg for him. Wants to hear that she wants him just as much as he wants her.

He smiles against her as he hears her getting impatient, little huffs between each moan. She whines, her hips bucking up against his tongue — he looks up to her, watching as her chest rises and falls quickly. The fingers of one hand are dug into the sheets beside her, while the others rest between her teeth. Her brows were tilted, lips pouted, whimpers come more frequently the longer he suckles and laps on the fabric, drenching it.

“Harry,” she finally works out, shivering when he pauses just over her clit and flickers his tongue over the top of it, “Oh, please just -- please.”

“Hm?” He hums against her, jolts, inhaling sharply, “What is it, baby? You’ve got to use your words.”

“Please stop teasing me,” she tells him, “Please take them off.”

And Harry may love to tease, but he wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t a bloody monster, was he? So he slides his index and middle finger in between the fabric and her core and tugs them over to the side -- he didn’t want to waste any time wiggling them down her legs. No, instead he dips his tongue in between her lips and slides it flat and straight up to her swollen clit. The groan that leaves her is sinful -- it makes his cock twitch in his pants, his heart slamming against his sternum as he suckles and her fingers find his curls. She digs her fingers within the strands, rocking her hips up to meet his mouth, and for a moment, Harry just leaves his tongue out and flat for her to grind against. Harry thinks, if he could spend the day just strapped to Y/N’s bed, willing, ready, and waiting for her to come use his mouth how she pleased -- he would be inconceivable happy.

Eventually he wiggles his face back into her, sliding his tongue back and forth before he latches his lips back around her silky folds. The swollen little button crying desperately for his attention was where he spent most of his time, lapping, or lulling his tongue in circles around it. She keens, her heel digs into the mattress and begins to slide down but Harry grabs a hold of her thighs and pushes both of them up, so her knees are to her chest. The new position makes her cry out his name raggedly, and Harry was teeming with carnal desire, and so horny he thinks he would barely have to hump against the mattress to cum.

“I’m close,” she warns him, mewling, “I’m g’na cum, I’m -- oh, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Harry doesn’t think he’d stop if he was paid to do it. He doubles his efforts, sucking harder, sliding down to tongue at her hole while his fingers wrapped around and spun little circles into her clit. His other hand he reaches up with and slides his thumb into her mouth and she accepts it graciously, as it muted her moans that grew louder and louder the closer she got.

When she cums, it’s beautiful -- Harry wishes he would be able to see it on repeat, how her back arched upward and her hips bucked loosely as she pulsated around his tongue. Her mouth hangs open around his thumb, her eyes squeezed shut, the fingers in his hair tighten and her other hand wraps around his wrists and holds him tightly. The initial lurch of it subsides and she melts into the mattress, trying to catch her breath, her chest heaving beneath her sweater.

After he thoroughly cleans her (until she’s twitching and jumping away from his tongue), he crawls up her body, pushing her sweater up over her breasts, “Can I fuck you, Darling?” He asks her, a small smile on his mouth when she leans her chest closer to him so he can reach behind her and unclip her bra. Tugging the cups away, he grabs them carefully, thumbing over her nipple, “If you don’t want to, that’s okay, don’t feel bad about it, just let me know.”

“I want you to,” she rushes to tell him, nodding, “Do you have a condom?”

He dips his head against her chest, breathing out a sigh, “Fuck me,” he utters, shaking his head, “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

He usually does -- Harry always keeps a few on him, but he remembers very vividly he and Y/N had blown his last one up just a few nights prior and drawn a face on it. For a moment he feels hopeless, a sad pit forming in his stomach because the thought of fucking Y/N sounded like paradise and he only brought one bloody condom that he wasted.

“It’s okay, we’ll do it next time then,” she tells him, and Harry feels a joyful spike in his overall demeanor. Next time -- she wanted there to be a next time? And if she wanted there to be a next time, then they would have to see each other after the camp. . .they would spend time together, Harry could learn what she was like in her normal day to day. He was eager and delighted, and not even just at the prospect of pushing into her (which he was also pretty damn excited for), “I mean, if you wanted to do this again, then, yeah -- right? We’ll hang out after camp is through?”

A smile threatens to split his cheeks, “Of course we will,” he tells her, nosing at her jawline, “And not just ‘cos you promised to let me fuck you. I was hoping we would see each other still but was worried that you might be sick of me.”

Her brows pinch, “Sick of you? Dummy, I thought you would be sick of me!” She shakes her head, rolling her eyes at the both of them, “We’re so stupid, we ought’a communicate better.” Y/N presses at his abdomen, “C’mon then, I’ll spin around and you can fuck between my thighs. I did it once with a boy -- I just shaved in the shower last night too so it should be soft.”

Y/N flips over, scooting her bum in the air for him as she cuddles a pillow to her face, her ankles locked in place and her thighs squeezed together. Harry wiggles out of his pants and boxers before he lets a glob of spit fall onto his stiff cock that had soundly slapped up against his stomach, slicking it up nice and wet so the glide between her thighs wouldn’t be too dry. One hand he lays palm flat to her bum, stroking the skin there with his thumb while the other hand navigates his prick, tipping it down and fitting it between her warm, soft thighs.

It felt good; Harry groans wantonly as he pulls out and sinks back in, watching himself disappear between them. She wiggles her bum at him and Harry playfully swats it, chuckling when she squeals and giggles, “You’re so fucking cute,” he coos before bending over, stretching himself over her so his chest was pressed to her back as he started steadily fucking in between her thighs. One hand he uses to cup her breast and tweak at her nipple while the other he slides down to her pussy, finding her swollen little button and rubbing it.

Harry’s skin prickles as she moans, her legs falling open just slightly but he tuts his tongue, “Keep them nice and tight for me, baby,” he murmurs, and she nods, tightening the channel for him once more. He won’t last long, he knows it -- he can feel that pool of heat crackling in his lower belly. His blood buzzes in his ears as he fucks his hips forward, their skin slapping together sound in their little cabin. Her breasts bounce with each thrust he gives, she’s beginning to cum again from the ministration of his fingers, and Harry’s nearing the end of his rope.

“You feel so fucking good,” he’s just a breath away from her ear, “You’re gonna make me cum.”

He nibbles at the shell of her ear and lets his eyes flutter closed, his senses on overload. All he can hear, and taste, and smell, and feel is her. Dizzy and overwhelmed, Harry feels as if he may burst at the seams.

“Cum,” she murmurs, “Please, I want you to feel good -- I want you to cum.”

That’s all it takes -- the little push of her words has his hips stuttering as he cums, spurting long stripes between her thighs, some catching her skin, some landing on her sheets below them. His world fizzles out, static splinters through his body as warmth rushes through his veins, and his toes curl hard enough to lock up. As he comes back to, he giggles, the last of his orgasm drooling from the tip as he pushes a kiss to the back of Y/N’s head, “Stay still, lemme go get us a rag.”

His legs feel like jelly when he stands, fleeing arse naked to the bathroom and returning moments later with warm, wet rags. He cleans her first, careful in how he works her underwear down her legs before he pats gently around her thighs and at her center. She’s sensitive, so a few times she twitches and flinches from him but eventually relaxes as she holds tightly to the pillow. He wipes himself off a bit haphazardly, more concerned with getting Y/N somewhere to lie down as he gently tugs on her arms, “C’mere, poor thing, I came all over your bed.”

“Yeah, you jerk,” she says puckishly, letting him guide her over to his bed, climbing in and immediately snuggling beneath his covers. Harry is not too far behind her, and at first she snuggles up close to him, she hisses and squeals before trying to shuffle away, “Why are your feet like ice?” She asks him, her words accusing, like he’d come in the bed with intent to freeze her.

Harry shrugs, “I dunno’ I usually wear socks to bed to keep them warm.”

“Socks? To sleep?” She slowly wiggles her way closer to him, despite the words that follow, “I don’t think we can share a bed, you’re batty.”

“Guess you’ll have to go sleep on the jizzy bed then.”

Y/N laughs, and Harry feels it vibrate through his body as he holds her close to his chest, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. They’re quiet for a moment, as they both settle, taking deep, slow breaths, allowing themselves to slip towards sleep.

Before Harry could get there, Y/N murmured his name.

“Thanks for being my camp ‘husbad’.”

Harry smiled to himself, and held her a little closer before he teased her.

“You can say thank you next time with an 18 carat diamond.”

#WRITING #WOOOOOOOOOOO #I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT #YAHTZEE :D #IT WAS FUN TO WRITE #IM GONNA DO A SMALL PART 3 TO TIE THINGS UP IN A LITTLE BOW #HAPPY READING #harry smut

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oftenderweapons · 3 years

Note

Can you write a drabble about jealous taehyung with lace? Ty 🥺

So... I had to brainstorm with my dear mate abt this one since we never really saw Taehyung as someone who could be openly jealous or would even consider the feeling, since we see him as a confident person, and even more than that, we think that he and Lace are very open about trust and loyalty. We think that both of them would be happy with introducing a third party in the bedroom — not on a regular basis though. Lace is a sucker for Taehyung — and Taehyung alone; he knows it, and he also knows that he has a beautiful girlfriend who is bound to attract people’s attention and make them believe that they can flirt with her. Still, Lace gives the cold shoulder to anyone but her man.

HOWEVER

We found out a potential loophole.

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x reader (nicknamed Lace)

Wordcount: 1.5k (sorry, I got carried away)

Genre: angst/smut/fluff

Rating: 18+

TRIGGER WARNINGS: uhm, there are dirty thoughts in the middle (mild) and smut at the end (mention of oral male receiving, female receiving, rough penetration, biting). Possessive!Tae. Takes place a few weeks after Love Talk and mentions a few events in Illicit Affairs (which should — hopefully — come out soon).

As you walked down the long corridor of the small gallery, Taehyung tried not to notice — or better, not to care about — the young artist waiting by the door, walking several steps behind you.

Taehyung’s hand twitched before he shoved it in his pocket. He wanted to touch you.

Having that... that vulture staring at you... It made his stomach sour.

Maybe it was because this was your first date after having you all to himself, after knowing how you taste and how you moan, how your breasts flush when you’re about to cum, how good it feels to grip your hips while you ride him, to feel his fingers sink in the flesh of your ass.

He took his hands out of his pockets and joined them behind his back, cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders in an attempt to calm down.

You stopped in front of a picture, observing it for a moment. It was a hyper-realistic painting of a watermelon sculpted into a cube, placed there in the middle of the white canvas. It was truly the game of a virtuoso.

“Impressive.” You said, before turning toward the man about a metre or two away. “How long did it take?” You asked nicely, still impressed by the amount of details: the seeds, the small veins, the grainy texture of the watermelon.

“About three months.” He replied. “I had started it as a still life, but I changed my mind and redid it with a more... Surrealistic approach.” He explained.

Taehyung raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his annoyance at bait, licking his lip before biting it. “Good job.” He said, trying to be grateful even though he wanted to rip the man’s eyes away from his skull.

The only thing holding him back was that he didn’t know how you would react to that. And if you would ever love his fingers as much after seeing him perform such a crude act.

You smiled at the artist and took a few steps to the next painting, this time a basket of cherries — only barely visible from behind a lace curtain. It was alarmingly realistic, truly breathtaking in the amount of precision poured into every small thread making the see-through effect. “Wow.” You commented under your breath.

Taehyung thought about how different his style was from these pictures. Sure, they were very good and they showed great talent, but that didn’t mean that he would want one in his own house.

“I was in Greece when I made that one.” The artist explained. “Beautiful country. Have you ever been there?” He asked.

You turned, making your light summer gown twirl in the motion, exposing more of your calves and the soft skin of the inner side of the knee as the slit parted, the plump, soft flesh of your thigh still protected by the row of small buttons that ran from your belly button to your knees.

Taehyung thought you were too beautiful for this universe. Nevertheless, as he stared at you and the artist there, right in front of his face, he felt actually menaced, for the first time. Something ugly slithered around his chest, tightening and tightening as your calm, composed voice said: “No, I’ve never been to Greece. I’ve only ever visited Jeju once, and I’ve travelled to Japan a couple times but normally I don’t get the chance to travel much.” You explained, blushing.

He would take you all around the world, Taehyung thought. He would spend Christmas with you in the Alps and make love to you in Amsterdam for your birthday, and of course, he would take you to Greece, feed you grapes and cherries and damn watermelon too. He would have you in white, light clothes and take pictures of you standing by the sea, your bright, flowy skirts contrasting with the deep blue of the sea — like the one he saw in Malta. He would rent a small house away from anyone and watch you sunbathe naked, with no one interrupting him as he drew you again, and again and again, until his hand could draw you with his eyes closed. He would leave the windows always open, the long white curtains flowing in the breeze as he would wake up from his afternoon nap and wrap his naked body around yours, kissing you and rubbing against you until you were nothing but two bodies melting into each other, like an embrace could naturally slide into passionate lovemaking. He couldn’t even think about nights. Nights were something he was too weak to think about.

Lost in his musings, he didn’t even realise your visit had come to an end, the gallery empty just like it had been when you had arrived, booked for a private visit for Taehyung and you alone, for safety and viewing pleasure.

“Thank you for visiting,” the artist said, bowing to Taehyung.

“Thank you for guiding us,” Taehyung replied. “I’ll let you know if I find any of the pictures fit.”

“Of course.” The artist said, kindly.

Taehyung nodded and was ready to leave the moment he heard the artist speak again. “Excuse me, miss, I’d like to ask... I’ve been working on portraits for my new collection, and I would be extremely pleased if you would pose for me.” He said. “I don’t usually... I usually book professional models but I thought someone with your looks could be really interesting to portray.” He explained. “I can leave you... Uhm.” He rummaged in his pocket and offered you a small piece of paper. His business card. Stealing a pen from the entry table, he wrote something on it. “I’d be honoured.” He commented, offering you the card.

You raised your eyebrows and smiled. “Thank you. I can already tell you I don’t think I’ll accept.” You looked at the floor. “I don’t have much spare time and I’m a bit too uncomfortable when people stare at me.” You chuckled embarrassedly. “Plus, I don’t think my boyfriend would be very happy with it.” You said, giving him a hint.

Taehyung was furious, still he kept all his inner turmoil to himself. Until you reached the car. The moment you sat at his side on the passenger’s seat, he started the car and began driving silently.

“Are you upset?” You asked, looking at him, keeping all the enthusiasm about the exhibition to yourself. You were more than capable to divide the artist from the person behind it. He was talented, maybe a bit sleazy as a person — and a bit too flirty — but still, talented. Plus, Taehyung hadn’t made it clear that he was with you as your boyfriend.

Taehyung tutted. “No.” He replied.

“Did he make you uncomfortable?” You could feel his mood poison the air in the car like dark waves of black oil covering the surface of the sea. It reminded you of a scene from Howl’s Moving Castle, when the young, beautiful wizard gets depressed and all his house starts getting covered in green slime.

“I’m okay.”

Catching his free hand, you placed it on your thigh pulling it toward the inner side.

He couldn’t resist, his thumb immediately drawing slow, lazy circles on the smooth, tender skin.

You noticed him taking the route to his apartment. “Aren’t we going out for dinner?”

“Mh.” He noted, counting the minutes until he could claim you all to himself.

“Do I need to un-book?” You asked with a mischievous grin.

He looked at you, his mouth forming a slow, insecure smile before he nodded in reply.

The rest of the night is a fuzzy memory of his mouth hungry and his hands grabby on the lift on your way up to his apartment, the shape of him hard in your palm as you entered the door, your attempt at offering him a blowjob, already lowering yourself to one knee before he pulled you up.

“That’s generous of you but I need inside.” He growled as he walked the both of you to his bedroom.

You didn’t even remember anything of him undressing you, it was all a whirlwind of limbs until you found yourself with your legs spread open and his mouth on your clit, his fingers stretching you before he stood on his knees and grabbed a condom.

You remembered his groan as he slid inside, your walls welcoming him with their tight embrace. “Dammit Lace, love this pussy.” He spoke through gritted teeth, your hands landing on his butt and pulling him toward you, inside you, harder, faster. “That’s my pussy.” He said, ramming in. “All mine.” He said, slowing down only to get the right angle. “My girlfriend.” He said, biting your breast, and giving the most precise jabs to your g-spot, suckling your tit, tugging at it, stretching it with his mouth before letting it fall back heavy to your chest. “My nymph. All mine. Mine.” He said again, your body too tense for speaking. Your high reached you as his fingers started toying with your bundle of nerves, rubbing it furiously until both you and him were nothing but two desperate beasts fucking each other.

“I love you.” He said, as soon as he was back to planet Earth, his body heavy on top of yours, his cheek glued to your chest with a mix of drool and sweat. “Love you, my precious dove.” He said again, rubbing the outside of your leg. “My love.” He repeated as you patted his head and reassured him yourself.

“Only yours.”

#kim taehyung x reader #kim taehyung smut #taehyung drabble #taehyung imagine #taehyung x yn

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etirabys · 3 years

Text

Downbelow Station, a fanfic summary

I’ve been writing fic for this tiny book fandom and have at least a few fandom acquaintances who want to read my fic but don’t want to read the book. This is a summary of what happens in the novel, whose heart, to me, is the relationship between a mindwiped ex-slave and a cross-cultural married couple who take him in under their protection.

The premise

People are in space, since the Earth Company started establishing space stations around increasingly distant stars for manufacturing/trade. There are several types of people:

Stationers stay on one station – stations were originally established by the Earth Company but have since gained de facto independence because Earth is so far away

Merchanters live on ships and trade – family very important to them, so is family name, regularly deal with Stationers as part of their life but find settling down very foreign. More sexually opportunistic than Stationers, possibly less monogamous.

Earth Company Fleet soldiers live on ships; originally under the control of Earth Company, as of novel start have gone kind of rogue, will continue to go even more rogue over the course of the novel

Citizens of Union, a... nation in space that grew in the deepest reaches, furthest away from Earth's influence. Union is currently trying to annex everyone else. Earth Company is trying to resist this through their Fleet. However, Earth Company is not very enthusiastic about this war and have been drawing out; the Fleet thinks it's important to keep fighting and keep doing dipshit moves like impressing Merchanter ships and ?? maybe looting stations a little bit to keep going.

Azi of Union – a genetically engineered underclass specific to Union. Basically designer subs. I believe the word azi is never brought up in Downbelow Station, but it's very clear a character is an azi, and what that means is explained in Cyteen, which takes place in the same universe. Union citizens use 'tapes' casually and at-will for fast learning and entertainment and conditioning, but starting later in life. Azi grow up on tape – their psyches are designed to be good at whatever they were designed to do, whether that's soldiering or psychologizing or childcare. Azi require varyingly regular check-ins with a Supervisor, who is an assigned person who tells the azi they are Very Good and On Course With Their Lives and give them tapes to keep them aligned with their values and mentally stable. Azi have normal human names but also an ID that looks like AO-1234, where the first alphabet character indicates what ‘class’ you are – an Alpha-class azi is probably far smarter than your average citizen and is more capable of functioning independently. Azi can win citizenship, but so far the only people onscreen who’ve done so are Alpha-class azi.

The cast

Damon Konstantin is a head of Legal Affairs on Pell Station, and the son of the Stationmaster, which is apparently a hereditary position. Despite the hereditariness Pell seems to have the most familiar culture to me, a 21st century American expecting democracy and rule of law. Pell Station is special – it orbits a human-livable planet called Downbelow, and there are only three such planets under human control. This means the planet can be used as a base for ‘bioform production’ (a vague category encompassing everything you can grow on a planet but not a space station) and makes Pell strategically valuable. The other two livable planets are Earth, under the control of the Earth Company Fleet’s nominal masters, and Cyteen, the base of Union operations. Pell is neutral, as many star stations try to be.

Elene Quen is a Merchanter who stepped off her ship to marry Damon. They’ve been married for four months at novel start. Her formal role is liaison with Merchanters.

Joshua Talley is a soldier of Union who was captured when Union forces sabotaged (blew up) a station called Mariner Station. He was tortured for information on another station – Russell’s – whose inhabitants feared the same fate for themselves. He had nothing to give them – he was a medium-level technician/soldier, an ‘armscomper’, which I think means he was the person pressing buttons to fire on targets or programming the weapons to fire on targets. During his interrogation Russell’s station was also sabotaged, ensuing in a mass evacuation.

Signy Mallory is one of the ~10 captains of the Earth Company Fleet. She is commanding and very deadly, commands fanatical loyalty from her soldiers. She’s also a sexual sadist. When she comes to evacuate Russell’s Stationers from a failing space station she finds that they have a Union POW who is very pretty, and takes him into her personal quarters for their journey to Pell. It is not said how she rapes him but it was a lot. Joshua thinks of this part as worse than the previous interrogation.

The events from there

When the Fleet arrives at Pell Station, they are convoying huge ships full of thousands of refugees from stations sabotaged / fallen to Union. It has been weeks or months since they started out. The ships were overpacked, many inside are dead, the culture of the ships has quickly turned anarchic/violent.

Angelo Konstantin, master of Pell, says "wtf, we can't take all these people, we don't have space. We literally cannot do this." The Fleet says, “You better,” unloads the highly upset and sick refugees, and leaves. Pell Station clears out two sectors of their station and makes it the 'quarantine zone', later shortened to Q. Conditions are very bad in Q and what to do with the violent, desperate people inside, many of whom cannot prove who they were in their past lives, when Pell doesn’t have the capacity to relocate them, is an ongoing problem throughout the novel.

Before leaving, Signy Mallory also said, "in addition to the refugee crises we unloaded on you, here is a Union prisoner of war we transported separately because the refugees would have killed him", and dumps Joshua on Pell leadership.

Around this time, Elene Quen finds out that her ship was destroyed when Mariner Station blew up. She now has no blood family, and Merchanters put great cultural emphasis on having clan and name. She decides to have a kid, talking Damon into it.

Joshua Talley is extremely depressed and keeps asking for a mindwipe so he can live as a normal citizen on Pell rather than being indefinitely detained. Mindwipes are used on stations as a consensual way of rehabilitating criminals. His captors are reluctant – it’s tantamount to execution. Damon Konstantin is the final permission-giver on the issue and gives it in the end. The process of mindwipe (or Adjustment) necessarily causes the person to regurgitate their whole life. This is recorded. Due to this, he discovers only after the mindwipe is complete that Josh was tortured on Russell’s with mindwipe drugs (presumably for the same regurgitating-your-whole-life property) and then raped on Signy Mallory’s ship on the way to Pell, and that wanting to wipe out the trauma was the real reason he wanted a mindwipe.

Damon feels really bad about this. He checks up on Josh Talley a lot when he's recovering from the mindwipe. He and his wife Elene decide to 'sponsor' him when he's rejoining normal society on the ship. Elene does so through some personal resistance – Josh once belonged to the military force that wiped out her family. They check in with a guy who doesn’t remember much of anything but definitely has abandonment issues and is afraid of emotional entanglement with people.

Josh Talley quietly converts much of his internal body mass into gooey loyalty.

Plot chaos. The station comes to be formally occupied by the Fleet, who wants to use it as their new base of operations, and a Union saboteur named Gabriel who talks to Stationmaster Angelo Konstantin’s main rival and conspires to bring him to power instead...

There’s a part I really really want to summarize here where Josh tries to fall on grenade for the Quen-Konstantins – literally, trying to take an action that would end in his death but keep them safe from the Fleet – and they show up and say “you idiot, never do that again” and bring him back to their apartment and say “while the Fleet is suspicious of you, you are living HERE, so everyone knows you are under our protection. Forget your old job, we’ll find you something working closely with Damon every day – while you’re in sight they can’t get at you.” But I can’t find a non-confusing way to relay it, sorry.

Soon after that, the Union saboteur succeeds. Angelo Konstantin is assassinated. His rival, Jon Lukas, takes his place, and starts enacting subtly Union-friendly policies. I think this somehow happens concurrently with the Fleet still using Pell as a base of operations. It’s highly chaotic. Elene flees the chaos on a Merchanter ship whose family she knows. Damon and Josh, fearing whoever assassinated Angelo, hide within the more bad and chaotic parts of the station (I honestly don’t believe the author when she says they managed this for months – Pell has tens of thousands of people, that’s not a lot! You could close each sector at a time and sweep everyone!). This part feels like big missed opportunity to me – they spend their time moving from hiding place to hiding place, coming up with hopeless schemes that they know they’ll never enact. One infers they got much closer, but the author doesn’t go into that either. The one delight that comes out of this sequence is that Josh becomes more assertive and competent than we’ve ever seen him – being in hiding, under danger, brings out submerged training. He’s not a dependent anymore – arguably in some places he’s in lead.

In the middle of this, Josh makes contact with the Union saboteur, Gabriel, who hails him as a colleague and informs him that they’re of the same kind. They have the same training. The story Josh gave Russell’s interrogators, and Pell, that he was a mid-tier technician, is an implanted set of memories that automatically flushes his real ones when he was under duress.

This means, although the author never explores it, that Josh was probably integral to destroying Mariner Station, and concomitantly responsible for Elene’s family’s deaths.

Josh asks Gabriel for safe passage to the planet Downbelow for both himself and a companion. Gabriel acquiesces, but is shocked when the companion Josh brings to the meeting is the Konstantin heir. He starts to say, “Well, well, what a useful person you have brought me –” and then gets shot by a Fleet soldier who’s following reports of a suspicious person. (My fic Half-Silvered Mirror diverges from canon at this point, and asks what would have happened if Gabriel had his way.)

Now in the hands of the Fleet, Josh and Damon meet with Signy Mallory again. Josh isn’t what Mallory remembers – as a rape victim he was passive, inward-turned. This Josh is articulate and emotional and loyal. Damon isn’t what she expects, either – he manages to jab at her conscience about what the Fleet has become, lawless and unmoored from any democratic interest. She plans to execute both of them the next day.

Due to convoluted plot reasons, she doesn’t. She turns against the rest of the Fleet, which for their own reasons is headed back towards Earth – to conquer. Her ship, Norway, enters a standoff against Union warships over Pell. Which isn’t on course to go well for her, until someone broadcasts at both of them that Pell is now under Merchanter claim. Elene, while out in space, has been convincing Merchanters to form an unprecedented coordination bloc. She demands Pell for the Merchanter Alliance and informs the Union military leader, Azov, that if he doesn’t acquiesce all Merchanter ships in her fleet will refuse to trade in Union space.

She wins. The scene when she docks at Pell and walks in, pregnant and victorious, to kiss her husband, is one of the most visually !!! scenes.

In the aftermath, Azov tries to take Josh back for Union. Damon says nope, he’s ours. Josh, what do you want? Josh says nothing. Looks at nothing. But when Azov and the other Union soldiers leave, he stays.

And afterwards, he goes to Signy Mallory – whose ships now constitute Pell’s militia – and asks, sincerely, to work as crew on her ship for a while. He says he can’t live on a station comfortably. That the stationers know him, and his past. (Not sure how true this is.) Mallory says it’s nothing another mindwipe can’t cure, and he says he doesn’t want to forget. “I’ve got something. The only real thing. All that I value.”

“So you go off and leave it?”

“For a while.”

Comments

There’s... so much I want to write about and explore.

Did Elene know when Josh left that he was probably responsible for her family’s death? (My fic Awarding Damages is about one way they could resolve this)

What did Signy Mallory do to Josh? Can he handle working under her?

Damon and Elene are so parental to Josh, and they're also embarking on having a family in a dynastic way where having a clan is their way of asserting that they exist and are rooted in the world. And of course Josh is going to feel really weird about how he fits into that – he's only watching it happen because he's a charity case, of course he's going to have no involvement in that project – what place is left for him anyway, he has no one and is nothing. I want this man to have feelings about family and how he doesn't have one and then HAVE A FAMILY I want him to hold the baby and go "OH. You are a biological composite of the two greatest people in the world. I cannot hold it against you that you are now going to push me out of my current living situation with the two greatest people in the world"

Due to the amount of mindfuckery Josh has gone through, it’s unclear to both him and the reader how many his memories are real. What does that do to a person?

From what I know of azi from Cyteen, Josh has psychological needs – again, he’s like a bred sub – that non-Unioners aren’t going to understand. Can he get them met? How does he negotiate that?

#rambl #downbelow station #cj cherryh #small book fandom pitch

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borisbubbles · 3 years

Text

ESC 2021 Preshow: 08. France

Barbara Pravi - “Voilà”

Autoqualifier

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France going from 3rd last on my ranking / likely last place in the finale to 8th place in the ranking / probably top 3 in the Grand Final. 😍 WHAT A GLOW-UP.

So, “Voilà” is epic, obviously. Yeah I will skip the theatrics, each and every one of you know this song and we all know it’s probably the best French entry in ages.

Funnily enough, I didn’t care for “Voilà” when I first heard it lmfao. It felt similar to the song Patricia Kaas went to Eurovision with and while “Et s’il faillait le faire” has its fans, I was never one of them. Worse, the internet immediately resorted to refering to “Voilà” as a “masterpiece” which is probably the pretentious statement you can make about Eurovision songs. Guys, it’s an Edith Piaf-inspired tribute act. Calm the eff down. Still, even at this early a stage I was instantly charmed by Barbara’s introspection and pluck even if I didn’t care for the music at first. After all, Barbara was the mastermind behind jesc HITS “Bim bam toi” and “J’imagine” and if she wants to bring a song that puts HER SELF at the forefront, she’s perfectly entitled to do so. About fucking time. On top of that, I thought the ending was sublime, even in studio version. “Why can’t the entire song be like that”, I thought. And then, E:CVQD arrived and Barbara SERVED, OUTSOLD, SLAYED, etc every superlative under the sun.

So remember when I aired my critique regarding Gjon? “Tout l’Univers” is an “Objectively Strong” composition in that it employs music theory to conjure up a song that sounds impressive on first listen. But behind that academic skill lies virtually nothing of interest. I cannot connect with it beyond a base level because what does it tell me about Gjon or his story? Technique without a heart or a soul is merely pretense. But I suppose it can sound sophisticated to someone who doesn’t know what “sophistication” is.

Barbara, however. Her personality just SPRINGS FORWARD on an approachable level from the first note. “Voilà”s’s technical expertise and Barbara’s own perfomance talents carry this vibe, this SERVE of personality, through the full three minutes without ever getting boring or tedious and they leave me craving for another listen. ALL OF THESE ARE AMAZING TRAITS IN A EUROVISION SONG. And this is just from the studio version, the live stage show makes it even better.

So yeah, homeboy’s got his work cut out for him because if this is his competition he’ll have to graft hard for his victory.

NF Corner - C’est Vous Qui Décidez

In what would become a running theme amidst countries this year, France led the charge in a personal project called #OperationForget2020, in which every trace of last year would be subsequently memory-holed. To acheive this, they revived their NF, gave it a new name and pretended it was ~The First NF of Its Format~ (so basically doing what Lithuania did last year when they rebranded Atranka into PiN).

INCIDENTALLY, this would also wind up the best NF of the year, pretty much by default because France had the most to win. Even though Barbara was the obvious winner from the instant the songs were revealed, the French had some excellent back-up options in their arsenal. Let’s rummage through them shall we?

LMK - “Magique”

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R&B Trap wench <3 “Magique” starts off pretty and cute for fifteen seconds, before whiplashing hard into kick-ass tropical house territory. Her Slovene spirit mothers Raiven and Lea Sirk are so proud of her <3 She definitely deserved much better than the result she got (being NQ with the audience O_O), but lol it’s France, they ain’t NEVER crowning a sexually confident sassy woman, let’s not kid ourselves.

Céphaz - “On a mangé le soleil”

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This Hat God had me at that title. “We have eaten the sun” 😍😍😍😍. More songs should adopt a fatalistic environmental angle by using consumption-related metaphors à la “we’ve devoured out planet :burp:, MOAR”, and then set this suuuuper cynical and depressing text to an upbeat and optimistic soundtrack <3 The “Hey ya” tease of it all. 😍

Amui - “Maeva”

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So cheerful it turns a surly cretin such as myself into a blundering mass of uwu. It’s like a nillies Eurovision semi NQ’er suddenly wandered into the set, so derivative and repetitive and tacky but SO fun and happy-go-lucky <3 The entire premise of “Maeva” is basically like: “VISIT FRENCH POLYNESIA, WE ARE THE MOST HOSPITABLE PEOPLE ON THIS EARTH” <333 using this message in the middle of a worldwide viral pandemic <33333333 Normally fun-trash like this would be murdered at first sight by any jury, but whoops “Maeva” turned out a massive televote hit HEHEE 😛 and finished third in the televote despite being last or second last with the jury. Those Tahitian diasporia votes coming through <3

Adriamad - “Allélujah”

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TACKY EUROTRASH <3 Lol when I think of it, did I like this NF because it was good or because it was so fun-trash. Anyway, this display of diversity would normally be on my shitlist but it’s honestly SO OTT in its ~People Of The World Of All Colours Are Equal~ message it circles back into funny. The eye gimmick, the hammy choreography, the obnoxious fusion of several cultures into a nondescript ethnotrash hodgepodge, the fucking LYRICS everything is so funny and so entertaining it’s giving me LIFE. 😍 I’d say it deserved better but “Allélujah” stranding in the demifinal (not a typo) is honestly a much, much more satisfying result <3

Predicted Journey - France

Barbara is going on that Mahmood trajectory, I see. Early fave who gets near unanimous critical acclaim, rules solely on top until the other contenders show up and is then put on the backburner because she’s an autoqualifier and therefore isn’t a part of the “who will qualify?” discussions. Then, the rehearsals will happen and everyone will remember “hey, that French chick we almost forgot about is actually REALLY good” allowing her to pick up momentum again, catapulting her into the top five. So it is written, such it shall be.

The question is... Can she win?

The answer is: yeah, possibly? At this point we have three potential contenders: Gjon for Switzerland and Destiny for Malta are the main rivals and I’d say Barbara has one big advantage over Gjon and Destiny: She already has a great live performance to back up her potential winner status. In fact, Barbara is a fave to win because we know what she’s going to bring in Rotterdam. Gjon and Destiny could theoretically still bomb if their staging is off (and both are getting theirs done by Sasha Jean-Baptiste, soooooo) and their contenderness is based on things such as hype and expectation. Barbara meanwhile already had her baptism by fire when she competed in E:CQVD, which she handily won.

The problem though is Gjon Muharremaj. For the average eurofan, France and Switzerland have similar entries and it will result in a tug-of-war between which of them has the better song. Either could win this televote bout, and whoever does could beat Malta.. .but that would require Malta to have a disappointing televote result and with each passing day this is starting to look less likely. (Jury results matter less because they’re probably the top 3). Personally I don’t really have a preference between Barbara OR Destiny as a win for either would push Eurovision in a better direction (A Gjon win though... I am TERRIFIED that may result in a 2022 contest filled with Vincent Bueno’s and Vasils), but if these three are indeed the top three, Barbara’s position is the most secure although she’s probably also the least likely one to actually win. Pray that I’m wrong though and we can all meet at her flat in Montmartre for a covid-proof afterparty.

Projected placements:

> Grandfinal: 1st-5th (predicted Runner-up)

THE RANKING:

01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. FRANCE - Barbara Pravi - “Voilà” 09. BULGARIA - Victoria - “Growing up is getting old” 10. LATVIA - Samanta Tina - “The moon is rising” 11. GREECE - Stefania - “Last dance” 12. SWEDEN - Tusse - “Voices” 13. IRELAND - Leslie Roy - “Maps” 14. CROATIA - Albina - “Tick Tock” 15. MOLDOVA - Natalia Gordienko - “Sugar” 16. ITALY - Måneskin - “Zitti e buoni” 17. ALBANIA - Anxhela Peristeri - “Karma” 18. UNITED KINGDOM - James Newman - “Embers” 19. LITHUANIA - The Roop - “Discoteque” 20. ESTONIA - Uku Suviste - “The lucky one” 21. FINLAND - Blind Channel - “Dark side” 22. AZERBAIJAN - Efendi - “Mata Hari” 23. the NETHERLANDS - Jeangu Macrooy - “Birth of a new age” 24. CZECH REPUBLIC - Benny Christo - “Omaga” 25. DENMARK - Fyr og Flamme - “Øve os på hinanden” 26. SLOVENIA - Ana Soklič - “Amen” 27. SWITZERLAND - Gjon’s Tears - “Tout l’Univers” 28. ROMANIA - Roxen - “Amnesia” 29. SERBIA - Huricane - “Loco loco” 30. POLAND - Rafał - “The ride” 31. ISRAEL - Eden Alene - “Set me free” 32. GEORGIA - Tornike Kipiani - “You” 33. PORTUGAL - The Black Mamba - “Love is on my side” 34. SPAIN - Blas Cantó - “Voy a quedarme” 35. NORWAY - Tix - “Fallen Angel” 36. CYPRUS - Elena Tsagrinou - “El Diablo” 37. AUSTRIA - Vincent Bueno - “Amen” 38. NORTH MACEDONIA - Vasil - “Here I stand” 39. GERMANY - Jendrik - “I don’t feel hate”

#Eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #Eurovision 2021 #ESC 2021 #ESC2021 #France #Barbara Pravi #Voilà

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melancholydreadfuldream · 4 years

Text

broken melody, lullaby of pain

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: 12th Doctor x Reader & 13th Doctor x Reader

Summary: The Doctor thought you died along with everyone and yet here you are under the clutch of the Master.

Warning: ooc, angst, obsession, mention of mental abuse, plot holes as usual, etc.

After saying goodbye with her fam, the Doctor made her way toward the matrix chamber where the deranged Master and his CyberMaster are, bringing with her the weapon of destruction that she intend to use on them and herself in the process.

She thought of the telepathy she shared earlier with the Master and how he said he has one last surprise for her. Knowing him, she need to be on guard because it will definitely be unpleasant.

But she never thought that the surprise he mentioned would be...you.

As she entered the hall where she supposed to meet the Master, she saw a young woman standing alone in the middle of the room. She felt like she was punched in the gut when the woman turned around and revealed herself.

"(name)?" She called out hesitantly.

You didn't reply at first. You look terrified. Your eyes are glassy as you glanced at the Doctor.

The Doctor blinked her eyes a few times as if trying to make sure what she saw is not a figment of her imagination. Though if it is, she has no idea why it would show her you. She raised her hand as if wanting to reach out to you.

You took a step back away from her, making her confused. You looked almost afraid of her.

"(name), it is me, the Doctor...." She said softly in placating manner as if you are an injured animal need extra handling.

You shook your head as tears fell down your cheek. "I didn't know where you were. She was the only one there. I didn't know what to do...so I just did what he told me." You said in a hoarse and trembling voice.

The Doctor is confused, trying to make sense what you are saying before she realized that you are talking about Missy back in the mondas ship. Her mouth dropped open in horror at what you are implying.

7777

You first met the Doctor when he was in his eleventh incarnation. You are Clara's best friend. Clara had told you about the Doctor when you accidentally got involved in an incident with alien.

The Doctor took you on a trip to show off time travel. You were awed by the Tardis and the weirdly energetic Time Lord.

As the Doctor invited you to stay for a few more trips, you quickly realized that both the Doctor and Clara addicted to danger and excitement. You weren't like them. The trips started with fun and safe and then quickly turned into lot of running and try not to get killed at. It wasn't your cup of tea. You love the part where you see wonder but you dislikes the next part.

You didn't stay full time on Tardis, prefering to stay on Earth where life is boring but safe. You couldn't keep up with the glee of the unknown trouble that the Doctor and Clara shared. And you were fine with it.

Once in a while though, Clara did convince you to take some time off and travel with them for one trip to a special place that she knew you would have love to be part of or when you are feeling burnt out with your daily life, you would phone Clara and asked her to come pick you up.

You got along quite well with the Doctor. He was a funny man and he likes you enough to let you join him and Clara for trips to see the wonder of universe.

You felt like third wheel though whenever those two started their flirting-not-flirting thing. You asked Clara about it and she admitted that she fancy him but she was unsure how to go about it. The man is practically an immortal alien and she is just a human.

You found out about Clara's echoes eventually and she had explained that she splintered herself to save the Doctor by jumping into his timestream.

You weren't there when the Doctor regenerated. But when you did finally met the new Doctor, you know you are in trouble because his new appearance caught your fancy. You always have a thing, a weakness for older gentleman and the new Doctor could almost pass for one if one could ignore or manage his rudeness.

Oh and Clara know all about your little crush on the Doctor and teases you mercilessly. You were not pleased especially considering that your best friend has dibs on the Doctor first.

To your surprise, Clara give you the go ahead to try and woo the Doctor, not that you would. He is an immortal alien, remember? Same issue still applied in this case. But you were surprised with Clara's revelation about how the new Doctor has basically sit her down and said he was not her boyfriend. Ouch. That made you more determined to never acted on your stupid crush.

It was awkward at first trying to interact with the new Doctor as you were so used with chin boy, Clara's nickname for Eleventh Doctor. But with a few more meeting, you would eventually grew fond of him. You didn't know what he think of you but he might be tolerating you for Clara. You thought you were in your best behavior around him. You never flirted with him or provoke him.

Clara is truly his best mate, able to keep him on his toes, rein him in when he deliberately being cruel. As much as you have a bad crush on him, you couldn't handle his rudeness.

Clara eventually dated a man called Danny Pink. When the Doctor found out, he was livid. He materialized Tardis in your living room and proceed to complain about it to you of all people.

You tried to calm him down and convinced him that if he care for Clara, he should be happy for her.

Then come the fight. Clara told you about what happened with the moon and how the Doctor abandoned her alone. You were helpless to try to console her as she made a decision that she was done with the Doctor.

Of course, not long after Clara left, the Doctor came to you, babbling about how he didn't understand what he did wrong to Clara and so you set him straight. He was genuinely afraid now that his impossible girl will truly left him. So you suggested one last hurrah between them in hope in that one trip they could find a common ground again.

Later on, Clara remained with the Doctor, apparently they have made up nice. You were glad for them.

7777

Clara is inconsolable. Her boyfriend died. She was mostly numb. You tried to comfort her but she mostly ignored you.

Desperate, you turned to the Doctor for help eventhough you know he is socially awkward. But Clara is also his best friend so you demanded that he did something for her to help her.

"What she need is time and space to mourn." The Doctor said.

"But I'm worried for her. She is not eating or sleeping well. She is not grieving properly."

"There is a proper way of grieving?" He raised impressive eyebrows at you mockingly.

You rolled your eyes. "You know what I meant."

It was then he received a call from Clara which make you panicked as if you are receiving a phone call from a crush much to the Doctor's amusement.

You glared at him and told him to drop you home before he goes to Clara.

"What happened to comforting her together?"

"You are her thing."

The Doctor look insulted. "I'm not her thing!"

You almost laughed at how insulted he look like. "I just meant you and her are...have this bond, you know, special one...and this trips on the Tardis are always yours and hers. And she obviously need you more than she need me. So..."

The Doctor looked uncomfortable, probably has no idea what to say to you so he dropped you home without more fuss.

Next thing you know there were red alerts as citizens are told to stay at home away from the street. From the news, you realized Earth is invaded by alien...again. You recognized the cybermen. You are worried for the Doctor and Clara.

You were relieved when the day after Clara contacted you, apologizing for not keep in touch with you. She told you the Doctor has gone, returned back to Gallifrey, his home planet.

As months passed with Clara withdrawn and depressed, you contacted the Doctor, leave a voicemail telling him that Clara need him and that she still didn't cope well with the loss of Danny.

You didn't receive any reply. But a week later, the Doctor suddenly show up during your date night with an older gentleman that is your type and the Doctor made a mess of the date. You were furious with him.

"What do you mean that Clara didn't cope well with the loss of PE? Danny is back, isn't he? Clara told me so!" The Doctor approached the table where you sat with your date without any greeting and started babbling urgently.

"Doctor? What are you doing here?" You hissed furiously. "Danny is dead, remember?"

The Doctor started talking really fast at you before stopped and noticing your date. He then ruined it by asking if the man is your father. You really wanted to drop your head on the table right at that moment.

Uncomfortable with the Doctor, your date politely asked if they can reshedule their date in another time but you know he wouldn't ever call you back now. The date is going well too and now thanks to the Doctor, it is now ruined. At least, your date still paid for dinner despite your insistent to let you pay everything. You apologized to him and watched him left with a sigh before glaring at the Doctor.

The Doctor shrugged innocently and grinned sheepishly at you.

You sighed in resignation and led him back into his Tardis where you both talked about Clara. The Doctor admitted of lying about Gallifrey.

You rolled your eyes at him. "You are both idiot. It is obvious you miss each other. Don't be stubborn and go to her, Doctor, tell her the truth, tell her you know Danny is not back."

The Doctor said he will think about it. He seemed to think Clara is better without him. You wanted to slap him so much for his stupidity.

Eventually you learned that Clara is back traveling on the Tardis with the Doctor. According to them, santa claus made them do it.

7777

The Doctor now dressed like a rock star and he show off his ability to play electric guitar to you and Clara.

He was kinder now, less rude. He no longer complained too much whenever Clara or you hug him. One might say he is a bit affectionate toward the both of you.

You still refused to be his full time companion like Clara. You would take a trip or two for every two weeks or whenever you felt like you need a time out.

The Doctor is currently at the console, playing a tune on his guitar while talking about some sci-fi stuff that completely beyond your understanding.

You stared at him with fondness.

Clara noticed it and teased you about it later on. She asked whether you need her help to woo the Doctor to which you replied you are not the Doctor's type. She is. Which promptly shut her up.

During one of the trip, you noticed how careless Clara is and you talked to the Doctor about it but he brush you off, telling you that he won't let anything bad happen to Clara...or you, he added as afterthought.

You were touched that he care about you enough and said so to him to which he replied that he consider you as friend too. You were so happy that you hugged him and kissed his cheek.

He stared at you blankly as he touches his cheek.

You giggled as you suddenly felt bold enough to actually start flirting with him. But later on, you felt like you wanted to crawl under a rock for being insane enough to do that especially since he didn't seem to know how to deal with your affection.

Clara laughed at you when you told her about it much to your dismay.

7777

Clara is dead. You got a phone call from Clara's father. Her body is found on a street. They had no idea what is the cause of death. From Rigsy, you found out the truth.

You were unable to cope with her death and you wished to talk to the Doctor but you couldn't even contact him. According to Rigsy, the Doctor was taken to somewhere else, presumably by an enemy of the Doctor.

You are worried for the Doctor but there is nothing you can do about it. You contacted UNIT and spoke to Kate but even she has no clue what is going on.

There is nothing you can do but to help with Clara's funeral. You tried to be brave for Clara's family. After the funeral, when you are finally alone and realizing the loss of Clara, you broke down crying.

You now understood how Clara felt when she lost Danny. You just wanted to be left alone, not wanting to do anything at all.

Then, Clara reappeared in front of you in a waitress uniform from a Tardis that resembles a dinner. She was there to say goodbye and to tell you to take it easy when next you met the Doctor. She told you the Doctor has no memory of herself now.

You wonder if the Doctor would even bother to come for you as the one connecting you to him is always Clara.

"He considered you as a friend too, you know. He likes you. Not many people can says that." Clara reassured you. She made you promise to help the Doctor eventhough you have no idea what you could possibly offer the Doctor. You are not her.

"If he comes for me, I promise I will help him to the best of my ability." You made that promise, fully aware that the Doctor is unlikely to come for you despite his words before about considering you as a friend. He didn't strike you as the type who keep a regular contact with those he called friends unless they were his current companion.

You and Clara had a teary goodbye and you watched her Tardis vanished before your eyes. You never saw her again.

As you predicted, the Doctor never come for you. You weren't surprised but it still hurts you. You tried not to take it personally. You tried to move on with your life.

7777

It was merely an accident that you met the Doctor again. You were accompanying your slightly younger cousin to check out St. Luke's University. Your cousin is thinking to apply to that university.

It was there you overheard a bunch of students talking about their eccentric teacher, the one called the Doctor.

Curious but also dreading to meet him, you decided to look for him. And you did find him.

He was playing his electric guitar at his posh office. You saw his blue box on the corner of the room.

He glanced at your arrival. He didn't seem to recognize you at first.

You slapped him. You didn't meant to but when you saw his indifferent face, you kind of loses it.

He was taken aback by the sudden assault but before he could say a word, you slapped him again and then hit his chest repeatedly with your fists as you yelled and cursed at him.

He gripped both of your hands to stop the assault on his person. His eyes softened as he whispered your name. He apologized to you as you broke down crying in his arms.

"It has been 2 years, you bastard! You left me behind without any explanation for what happened to Clara! You promised me she will be safe even after I told you she was reckless! And then she died and you don't even have the courtesy to show up and explain everything! I had to heard it all from Rigsy!" You yelled at him.

"I know." He looked remorseful but you are still so mad at him.

"I know that you no longer have any memory of Clara but surely you remember me? You said you considered me as friend but you abandoned me! Friends don't do that, you jerk! Stupid eyebrow!"

The Doctor remained silent in the face of your fury. After you calmed down, he offered you tea much to your bewilderment.

You told him about how Clara told you what happened to him, being trapped in a confession dial, almost breaking the rule of time for the sake of Clara and also about the promise you made to her. So, after all of that, you asked him how he is holding up.

The Doctor admitted of being ashamed of himself for what happened to Clara and can't bear to face you especially since he couldn't even remember Clara at all.

You and the Doctor talked about Clara a lot. Through you, the Doctor is able to put a face on Clara. You told him the brave tale of Clara Oswald and her Doctor.

You forgot about your cousin until she called you. You had to leave the Doctor but you were reluctant. You asked him if he will be at the university for long. He said he will be stuck in there for a long while.

You smiled softly at him. "Can I come see you again?"

He glanced down at you with fond smile. "If you like."

You hugged him and he, at first, was hesitant to hug you but he did eventually.

7777

After that day, you spend at least a few hours to visit him in the university and you have valid excuse because your cousin did apply there.

There were rumour floating around that you were the Doctor's girlfriend but you and the Doctor ignored it.

The Doctor introduced you to Nardole and Bill. Bill is curious about how you know the Doctor and she recognized that you did indeed still fancy the Doctor and teases you about it.

The Doctor eventually told you about the reason he was stuck there. You had heard about Missy before from Clara and her warning that she is pure evil. You have no interest in meeting her.

Knowing the Doctor stuck there, you tried to cheer him up by asking him out. He was confused whether you are asking him out on a date after Bill's teasing about him having a date and he asked you about it.

You were embarrassed and cursed Bill for bringing that up. You told him it was a friendly outing. Though, of course, you sort of wished for more but this is the Doctor. He is dense when it come to romance. Also, you have no idea if he even feel the same, probably not.

One day, the Doctor asked you out for a date night in some foreign planet. He claimed it was for ruining your date night years ago. You laughed at the date night he mentioned. You remembered that night when he asked your date of the night if he was your father. He eventually admitted he was asking you out because Bill wouldn't shut up about how you fancy him and how lucky he was to have someone like you waiting around for him.

Your face reddened as you muttered about killing Bill.

He smiled kindly at you which made your heart flutter around like a trapped butterfly inside a jar. "Spare Bill your wrath, she was just concerned for you and I. Apparently, she ship us."

You nearly choke on your drink when he said that with a flat face. You felt like you are not nearly drunk enough to survive this humiliation. Overall, it was a successful date night. You have fun. The Doctor is surprisingly good at planning a date night.

You remembered that Clara once told you that he was married to River Song but she was deceased. You wondered what kind of a woman she was to have caught his fancy. She must be someone amazing. You didn't dare to ask him about her but you saw the picture he had on his office. You even asked Nardole about her. You realized the Doctor is still hung up on her and Clara to some extent even if he didn't remember her.

You sighed, hating yourself for being insecure. You knew the Doctor is out of your league and yet here you are, falling under his spell again. You didn't know whether to hug Bill or hit her for plotting against you like this. You were, in the end, grateful for a chance to have a memory of being on a date with the Doctor. Though, the realization that according to the Doctor, this is somewhat a pity date, ruined it for you.

After that one date, you avoided the Doctor like a plague. It was Bill who come to you and knock some sense into you.

"This is the Doctor we are talking about. He doesn't know what even a pity date is. So, please, (name), just come back. You are miserable. He is also miserable. He blames me, you know, for taking my advice and takes you out on a date. He thought he did something wrong to you. Now he thought he had lost you too." Bill said.

You narrowed your eyes at her. "You are lying, aren't you? There is no way the Doctor acted like that merely because I'm not there."

"Well yeah he didn't pout as much, mostly he tried distracting himself with teaching and traveling in the Tardis, but he is very grumpy, more than usual. Ask Nardole if you don't believe me. Ask his students, they thought you broke up with him and that made him become no fun anymore."

So, yeah, like the fool you are, you decided to come back and have as Bill put it a 'grown-up' talk with the Doctor.

What the hell...you decided to tell him the truth and see what happened. If he didn't feel the same, well, that's a problem that you will have to deal with anyway sooner or later. Better just do it and get it over with now. Rip the band-aid so to speak. Maybe then you can properly move on and erased your feeling for him to make room for new feeling for someone else.

You had a long talk with the Doctor. You found out Bill is right about the date being not a pity date. He had even told you that if he didn't like you, he would never took you out on a date.

"I can't promise you forever." The Doctor eventually said.

"I never would ask you that. I know that you can't do that. All I ask, if you are willing, to be with me for as long as we can."

"Then you shall have me for as long as you want to, (name)." The Doctor said.

You were surprised and felt elated by his words. You took his hand on yours and beamed at him.

He glanced down at you with soft smile and kind eyes. You loved him more for it.

7777

The Doctor took you on dates many times after that. He is taking care to make sure there will be no crisis need averting during the dates but that did not always work.

You should have known the Doctor is definitely a trouble magnet despite his effort. During a date night, the place where the Doctor took you with was invaded by a hostile group.

Of course, you were taken hostage as the Doctor along with a group of people that apparently genious in their own right were forced to solve some chess puzzle with life or death at stake.

Thinking the Doctor need more incentive, they put you into some death trap where one wrong move during the chess puzzle will end with your death.

You were properly scared especially after you saw the person before you died in agony when someone else before the Doctor is forced to solve it.

The Doctor is enraged by this hostile group who put you in this situation.

You couldn't help the tears that flooded your eyes as your body trembled waiting for the pain of death even as you glanced up at the Doctor, trying to put up a brave face.

He told you to shut up when he realized you were trying to say goodbye, believing that you will die in that death trap.

It was a close call but he eventually able to cheat the game and freed you. You were so relieved as you fell into his arms weakly.

The Doctor however is angry especially when he learned that the trap is plotted by someone called Gus. He eventually told you he know a Gus, one responsible for the incident of the mummy in orient express back when he was with Clara.

You remembered Clara told you about their supposed last hurrah on orient express. You wondered if Gus has some grudge against the Doctor or he just enjoy sickening games.

You could tell the Doctor felt guilty for putting you in danger. You were afraid that he will change his mind and left you behind. You grabbed on one of his arms, putting your head near his chest and whispered to him that you are okay and you will try not to scare easy, that you will do better next time.

The Doctor looked sad when you said that.

7777

Feeling guilty after what happened at the last date, the Doctor took you to have some fun. He assurred you the place is safe.

The Doctor took you out to some alien bazaar in some orange planet but he accidentaly took you to the same place where he once as his eleventh incarnation took you and Clara.

You were stunned when you saw past Clara, wishing you can come to her and give her a hug.

It was Eleventh Doctor who notices you and he was confused because he was sure he left you with Clara.

You blinked at Chin Boy and took a look at him. You still found it hard to believe that he is the same person as Eyebrow.

It was then your Doctor appeared and he put his hand around your waist as he started talking about some attraction that he thought you would like. He didn't seem to notice his past-self at first.

It was kind of funny watching Chin Boy pieces it together your relationship with his future-self. He spluttered in surprise and waved his hands around like a deranged giraffe.

When your Doctor finally recognized his past-self, he didn't look at all impressed or happy seeing him. They started to insult each other, whether it was about his past chin or his future eyebrow.

You stifled a giggle as both Doctors glared at you.

After Chin Boy left, you were wondering if that meant he always know that they will ended up dating but he said his past-self would not retain any memory of meeting you and him.

As you watched past you and Clara having a laugh together, you couldn't help but felt sad. You glanced up to see your Doctor staring at Clara too. You could tell he is trying to remember her, anything about her, but he couldn't.

You took his hand and led him away from the scene. You kissed his cheek and asked him what he need right now.

The Doctor glanced down at you with soft smile. You could almost believe that he loves you at that moment.

7777

You and the Doctor are officially dating now. Bill and Nardole knew about it. Your cousin knew about it. The whole university knew about it.

His students like to ask the Doctor about your relationship during his lecture much to his dismay. He even told you that your cousin attended his lectures too and asked about the nature of his relationship with you.

You stiffled a smile and promised him you would tell your cousin to stop teasing him.

You were reluctant to travel with him full time, prefering to be safe on Earth, letting him, Bill and Nardole instead playing the hero game. You were grateful that the Doctor didn't think less of you for wanting to stay safe.

7777

You were so afraid for the Doctor upon finding out he is blind. You were angry at him for keeping it a secret from you. You refused to leave his side, wanting to make sure he is safe even if it meant you have to get down and dirty with any crisis headed his way.

You were so grateful for Bill for she is the only one in position to make a deal with the Monk to save him. You were with the Doctor but on the wrong side. You couldn't help him at all. You thought you would lose him for good this time. But then Bill saved him.

After he regained his eyesight, the Doctor set out to figure out a way to get the monks off the Earth.

That was the first time the Doctor took you and Bill inside the vault where you laid eyes on Missy for the first time.

You didn't like her at all. As Clara told you before, Missy is cruel with her words, not afraid to strike anyone down with her pouting lips. But the Doctor seemed to manage her well enough.

The Doctor said he was trying to rehabilitate her and he thought it was working well. She seemed to start showing remorse.

After the monk fiasco is over with, the Doctor told you and Bill about his plan to give Missy a test run to see how she deal with a crisis.

Missy is curious with you upon realizing you are dating the Doctor, teasing him about what a pedophile he is for taking a very young human to be his fuck buddy. Her words is crude and very insulting. You dislikes her even more. But you got the feeling she couldn't careless whether anyone likes her or not, except maybe the Doctor.

You got a feeling that maybe there were deeper history between her and the Doctor. You wondered if they ever become lovers in their past but that is not something you can ask him. Come to think about it, you still don't know much about the Doctor except from what Clara told you which is a lot but still not enough. You tried to respect his need for secret. You know he is just indulging you in your desire to have him as your lover. He didn't owe you anything more than he want to share.

7777

Everything fall apart during the first test run for Missy. For once, you agreed to go with them but you remained on the Tardis with the Doctor while Bill and Nardole play the part as Missy's companion.

Worried for Bill, the Doctor immediately got outside but he locked you inside the Tardis against your wishes. He wanted you safe.

Before he could get Bill to safety, she got killed by the blue alien who is afraid of the things inside the ship who only come when there is human nearby.

After Bill was taken away, the Doctor eventually allowed you out of the Tardis after he knocked out the blue alien.

"Bill is my friend. I won't just sit there inside the Tardis."

"There are creatures down there who goes after human. You will be in danger." The Doctor said.

"I don't care! We stick together, Doctor, no matter what."

He relented and allowed you to come with them. You ignored Missy mocking you, prefering to listen to the Doctor and Nardole instead.

You and the Doctor found out Bill has been turned into a cyberman, a mondasian cyberman. And of course Missy had to betray you both when her past incarnation revealed to be behind the entire plot.

You were so sad for Bill especially once you found out she is still aware of herself inside that cold steel. The Doctor lied to Bill about being able to fix her but told you the truth that he can't.

He told you he should have made you stay inside the Tardis.

"It was my choice, Doctor, to stand here with you. I am scared but I won't regret you." You said.

The Master mocked both you and Bill. You wished you could hurt him right back. The Doctor pulled you and Bill away from him.

7777

You were in one of the room at the house, alone, trying to calm your nerve. You were really bad at handling crisis. You wished you could offer some help for the Doctor. You wished you were a companion he can depend on but you know you are not.

While you were feeling sorry for yourself, the Doctor entered the room, watching you from the doorway. You were still unaware that he was there.

"Are you okay?" The Doctor spoke up suddenly, making you jump in surprise.

You were nervous, that everyone probably can tell. You forced a smile as you sat down, desperately trying to put on a brave face.

He sighed. "You don't have to pretend. It's okay to be afraid."

"Fear is superpower?" You lightly said.

The Doctor smiled solemnly. "I'm guessing Clara told you that one too..."

"She was my best friend. We have no secret with each other. She was your best friend too." You said as you looked down at your lap, fingers gripping at your skins. "I wish she was here. She would be able to help you more."

The Doctor sighed. He sat beside you, put one hand over yours. He took your hand and kissed it gently.

You turned toward him slightly as you tried to smile but instead your eyes were wet with unshed tears.

"I love you, Doctor." You whispered. "I didn't need you to say it back. I just want you to know." You lied, of course, it would have been nice to hear him says it but only if he meant it. You put your hand over his cheek. "Thank you for letting me stay with you."

The Doctor didn't say anything, only glancing down at you with a look you can't decipher. He pulled you close to him and kissed your forehead as you rest your head on his shoulder.

That night, you sleep in each other arms or at least you were. The Doctor watched over you sleep. You only know because you were restless in your sleep. You clutched one of his arms, fully aware of how clingy you are but he has not yet rejected your touches so maybe it was okay.

You shared a smile with the Doctor as you finally gave up to try to sleep and just laid there, staring at each other.

"Whatever happen next, I'm with you. And even if I...don't survive this, please don't ever blame yourself."

The Doctor looked like he want to object so you covered his mouth with your palm.

You switched into a seating position, staring at him solemnly. "I meant it. Don't you dare regret me because I didn't regret you. Even if today is our last day, I would be happy because I am with you. So, don't even think of sending me away." You said, remembering what Clara told you about how the Doctor send her away from Trenzalore.

He pulled your hand away from his mouth as he moved into a seating position too. He sighed in resignation. "As you wish then, (name)."

You stared at him suspiciously. You did know the Doctor enough from Clara to know the Doctor lies. You could only hope he would not lie to you.

7777

Things has gotten dangerous as more cybermen attacked the settlement. The Doctor, Missy and the Master worked together before the Master decided it was a lost cause and intending to leave.

It was heartbreaking watching your Doctor begging Missy to stand by his side and was rejected.

You could tell this is one of those time where the Doctor can't save everyone. Your heart aches for him, watching him wreck his brain in an attempt to save everyone. You were a bit glad for last night with the Doctor, because you get to say everything that need saying to him. You tried to make your peace with what happening.

You were angry though when later the Doctor forced you to evacuate with Nardole and the other passengers. He said he had a plan, that everything will be okay. He promised he will come back for you and Nardole soon. He was convincing enough that you did go with Nardole. The Doctor stayed behind with Bill.

As you left with Nardole, you felt something is wrong. Against Nardole's warning, you returned back to find the Doctor.

You never find him.

7777

You were desperate to try to find the Doctor but you couldn't find him, instead you found Missy.

She was dying. But so is the Master. Against your better judgement, you decided to help Missy. She was always mean to you but she did help the Doctor and Bill before today.

Missy was surprised to see you and even more when you helped her up and away from there. She guided you to the path where the Master's Tardis is hidden.

She told you to take her to the med bay and instructed you of what to do with her fatal injuries. You were shaking but follow her instruction. You gave her some sort of injection.

Next thing you know she was glowing and exploded. The force of her regeneration knocked you hard as you crashed into some medical cart. You were on the floor, neck bleeding from some accidental stabbing by one of the medical instruments.

You gasped as you put one hand over your injury, hoping to slow down the bleeding but you were too weak. You blacked out just as you saw a man emerged toward you, staring at you coldly. Your last thought was you wish you didn't help Missy if this is how she repay you.

7777

You were surprised to find yourself still alive afterward. Your neck is bandaged properly. You felt so ill and weak.

"You are awake."

You almost jumped as you heard that voice.

A man in purple suit emerged from the shadow. You have no idea who he is. You were with Missy before, weren't you?

You gulped. "Missy?"

He chuckled. "Call me Master."

You flinched at that. The Master, the earlier version, was so intimidating and cruel. You don't know what to make with this one. But he did save your life, so there is that. You were not comfortable around him.

"I...where are we now? The Doctor..."

He scoffed. "The Doctor is gone, he has abandoned the both of us."

You glared at him. "You are the one who abandon him first." You probably shouldn't poke the bear.

He stared at you curiously. "Still he did abandon you. Everyone on that ship died but him while he fly away in his Tardis again. He didn't even come back for you."

You flinched at that. But you tried to take comfort at the fact that the Doctor survived. You hoped to reunite again with him but you are unsure how to go about it. You were practically under the Master's mercy right now.

You wondered why he still keep you around, not that you are not grateful. You were afraid he would abandon you into some foreign planet with no way to contact the Doctor.

"What are you going to do now...to me?" You tentatively asked.

He raised an eyebrow at you. "Sounded like you expect me to torture you or something..."

"So am I free to go then?"

"Are you going to run back to the Doctor?" He asked.

You were unsure what the correct answer would be. You were afraid the wrong answer will set him off. "I...I don't know..."

He hummed. "He thought nobody survived in that ship. He probably thought you died too." He chuckled. "For once, the Doctor can not save everyone."

Your heart ached at the thought the grief the Doctor must be going through right now. You hated the Master for finding it funny that the Doctor failed to save everyone.

"I want to see him." You whispered. "Can you...will you take me to him?"

A dark expression crossed his feature. His cold answer chilled you to the bone. "No."

7777

The Master imprisoned you on board of his Tardis. He was mostly courteous with you.

You showed the same courtesy, mostly because you were afraid.

But when one day he landed in Victorian London, you tried to escape, hoping to find Madam Vastra and Jenny so that they can help you reunited with the Doctor.

The Master foiled your plan and got really mad at you.

"Why are you still wanting to be with him? He abandoned you!!" He roared at you, making you so frightened that you could only whimpers.

He made you so very afraid when he cupped your face as he put his forehead over yours and invaded your mind. The brutal attack on your mind left you weak as a kitten. You were completely under his mercy.

After that day, you were to afraid to disobey him and just do what he told you...mostly. He is up to his usual chaos and you refused to be a part of it, especially when you realized he was plotting against the Doctor.

He was harsh with you and have no qualm to attack you mentally until you submit to him.

You prayed that the Doctor will come and rescue you. He laughed at your thoughts and showed you the Doctor from his hidden camera.

That was the first time you were told that the Doctor has regenerated...into a woman. She has new companions with her. She called them her fam.

Your heart ached at the thought the Doctor you know and fell in love with is gone, replaced with this woman. Part of you though recognized that she is still the Doctor. You were glad though that she found new companions and that she is not alone.

The Master is displeased with you whenever he caught you thinking of the Doctor. You didn't understand why he insisted to keep you around.

He told you he had plan for you. You dreaded whatever he plan for you. But you were hopeless, you couldn't even save yourself. You hated your weakness.

With each passing months, you lose hope to ever reunited again with your Doctor. Is she even still your Doctor? Will she still even want you back? You don't know.

The Master kept taunting you, making you cry like a baby. He sometimes look at you with disgust and yet he continue to keep you. You have no idea why.

7777

The Master showed you Gallifrey. He was proud to show his homeland. And then he locked you back into his Tardis.

When he returned, he was in deranged state, making you scared and very jumpy as he raged at the console and at the world.

7777

You were mute now, hardly talk at all. The Master had forced a telepathic bond with you after he experimented with you. It was scary and painful, making you wish for death instead.

You hated him but even all of your emotions slowly muted into defeaning silence.

One day, he told you that he has set his plan for the Doctor in motion. He curiously observed you to see your reaction.

You stared at him blankly.

He seemed satisfied. He cupped your face. "You will be my last surprise for the Doctor." He said as he caressed your cheek gently. "If everything going as I planned, you will soon see her."

You didn't say anything.

7777

You finally get to reunite with the Doctor. The Master even dressed you up for the occasion.

For the first time, as you laid eyes on the Doctor, some of your emotion resurfaced.

"I didn't know where you were. She was the only one there. I didn't know what to do...so I just did what he told me." You said in a hoarse and trembling voice.

You must have been with Missy when she regenerated. Had she left you under the Master's mercy all this time? The Doctor thought you perished in that ship like everyone else. Like Bill. Like Nardole.

Her hearts ached as she recalled the Testimony Project and how she got to meet Bill and Nardole, even Clara one last time. But she never did met you. At the time she thought you were simply mad at her previous version for lying and refused to show yourself to him.

She recalled the look Bill and Nardole exchanged when he asked them about you. Did they know that you survived?

"Where is he?" The Doctor asked you.

"Right here." The Master appeared with his CyberMaster in tow.

The Doctor realized she was surrounded.

"How do you like your surprise, Doctor?" The Master gleefully asked.

The Doctor glared at him. "What have you done to her?"

The Master turned to you and smiled. "Come here, (name)."

To the Doctor's horror, you obeyed him without hesitation.

"See? I take care of your pet, Doctor, the one you abandoned for death." He said as he cupped your chin playfully. "We even saved each other. It was all very...poetic."

The Doctor flinched with guilt at the thought that she did abandon you without a thought that you could possibly survive.

The Master then started bragging about his CyberMaster which he fully intend to use to conquer Earth.

The Doctor showed him the trigger for the death particle that she is fully intend to use to stop the Master and his army.

"Would you really use that?" The Master taunted. "Even if it meant you will kill her again?"

The Doctor flinched again at the mention of you. She glanced up at you and at the lost expression on your face. Her hearts ached for you. She long to envelop you in her embrace, to take you away from the Master and back in her Tardis to keep you safe. But she knew she had to stop the Master first and foremost.

"I can't risk you to lay waste on the universe." The Doctor said firmly as she gripped tight the trigger.

The Master looked ecstatic at her answer. "Do it then. Do it. Come on and do it. Save the universe."

You remained silent throughout the exchange between the Doctor and the Master.

The Doctor eventually dropped the trigger, unable to follow through.

The Master look disappointed, promising to lay waste the universe, thanks to her weakness.

He turned toward you. "Come along, (name)."

You flinched. You stared at the Doctor longingly before hesitantly took a step toward the Master.

The Doctor moved quicker to try to stop you. "Leave her here. You have no use of her."

The Master look amused. "Is that so? I'm actually quite fond of her. After all, she is the first face this face saw. You know how it is, Doctor, she is mine now."

The Doctor glared at him. "She is not yours!"

The Master rolled his eyes and commanded you to come to her.

At the time, Ko Sharmus suddenly appeared, picked up the trigger.

The Doctor quickly grabbed you as Ko Sharmus stepped toward the Master showing that he will pull the trigger.

The Doctor pulled you into her arms and ran as Ko Sharmus told her too before pulling the trigger.

7777

You and the Doctor were inside a Tardis but not the Doctor's.

After she flew the Tardis to safety, she turned to you to check you for injury. She smiled elatedly at you but the smile slide off her face immediately.

You couldn't believe that you had escaped the Master. As you glanced at the Doctor and saw her slowly smile adorably at you, you blacked out.

The Doctor barely able to catch your fallen body. She pulled her sonic screwdriver to scan you. Dread filled her hearts as she realized you had fallen into a coma.

7777

In the Tardis medbay, the Doctor stared at the result of your medical scan. There is nothing physically wrong with you.

The Doctor had no choice but to go inside your mind without consent to investigate what's wrong with you.

She was horrified to know that you were bonded to the Master. The Master had made it so your mind can't function if you are too far from him.

You were sealed within the deep corner of your mind unable to get out, unable to do anything but hover in the corner, afraid and lost.

The Doctor couldn't get through you at all. But she saw the remnant of message from the Master.

"Did you really think I would let you have a happy ending, Doctor?" The Master said cruelly. "She is mine. If you want her back, you simply have to give her back to me and she will be good as new."

The Doctor scoffed at him. "You are insane if you think I would let you anywhere near her again."

"You can't keep her from me, Doctor. I have make sure that she could never hid from me."

The Doctor realized the truth in what the Master said. You would never be safe from him. So there is only two thing she can do.

She will have to forcefully break the bond between you and the Master which will hurt both you and the Master a great deal but at least you will be safe from him.

Also, she will have to fix the damage in your mind courtesy of the Master but the damage is too much and she has to wipe your memories of the Master and of everything pertaining the Doctor.

The Master must have known that the Doctor would do exactly that. "Typical. You won't even give her any choice, would you?"

The Doctor glared at him in fury. "You are the one who did this to her. You hurt her. You broke her." She yelled at him. "I will not let you get to her anymore."

As she made up her mind, she focused on psychic attack on the bond. She winced as you screamed in pain. The Master also screamed but mostly cursing the Doctor.

She muttered apologies to you over and over again as her eyes shimmered in tears.

She put her hands over both side of your face and started to erase everything about the Doctor and the Master.

Tears fell on your cheeks as the Doctor purged the last memories of the person you love from your mind.

7777

The Doctor had you covered in long coat covering yourself from head to toes. She waited for someone patiently as she carried you in her arms. You were still unconscious.

"Doctor."

"Jack."

"Love the new face. You look good, Doctor."

The Doctor didn't reply.

"Is that her?"

She nodded. "Keep her safe, Jack. Give her new identity and take care to make sure that she will have everything she need."

"Of course."

The Doctor glanced at your sleeping face mournfully. "She is not safe with me or anywhere near me. The Master is after her."

Jack's eyes widened. "The Master is alive?"

The Doctor nodded.

"What could he possibly want with her?"

"The Master is insane as you know. He has obsession with her because she saved him before he regenerated and she is the first face he saw after he regenerated." The Doctor said. "I had to erase everything she know of me and the Master. It was the only way to keep her safe."

Jack glanced at the Doctor, noticing how miserable she look. "Don't worry, Doctor, I will personally make sure she will be safe."

"Thank you, Jack. I owe you."

Jack took you in his arms gently, careful not to wake you.

The Doctor released you reluctantly to Jack. She took one last look at your face before steeling herself. She turned around and left without looking back.

You were half-awake as you saw a woman walking away from you and for some reason, your heart ached but sleep took over you again and with that, you forgot.

#12th doctor x reader #13th doctor x reader #twelfth doctor x reader #thirteenth doctor x reader #doctor who x reader #doctor who fanfiction #shiefenwrites

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elisaphoenix13 · 3 years

Text

Look To The Stars

This takes place far on the future of the Supreme Family Chaos series!

She wanted to scream. To cry. But she couldn't find it in herself to do so. She had to watch her mother die in front of her and couldn't do a single thing about it. Stephen came through a portal mortally wounded with Athena and had just enough strength to tell her that she still had Quill and Hunter. He used a spell that would alert them to the situation and said his goodbyes to Valerie before breathing his last. Athena, Stephen's ever loyal wolf, had been connected to the sorcerer's lifeline and died with him with her head on his leg. It was almost poetic.

The rest of her family and the team had died a long time ago, and she was left alone in the tower that was far too quiet. She remembered a time when it was always chaotic and full of love, friends, and camaraderie. Now it was desolate and cold with no one to fill the silence. The Earth's Sorcerer Supreme finally fell to a greater being after decades of defending this reality and it was when Valerie truly hated the gift of longevity she was born with. Her parents were gone, her siblings, her aunts and uncles...all gone. She was alone and scared with no idea if her Uncle Quill got Stephen's message. So she did the only thing she could think of.

She stayed with her mother's body and cried into his shoulder even long after he had grown cold. Valerie didn't know how long she stayed like that. Time was inconsequential to her like it had been for Stephen for quite a while. Diana would have stepped up as the next Sorcerer Supreme but she had fallen in battle years ago. Everyone had been a fighter but Valerie and that's why she was still alive. She stayed out of harm's way.

"I don't know what to do Mama...I'm scared...so scared. I don't want to be alone."

She cried for days...and cried harder when a spell that Stephen had cast on himself and Athena finally activated and turned their bodies into a swarm of blue butterflies. One by one they disappeared to return to the magic in the world until finally none remained. Her mother was truly gone then...and was what got her to scream in despair. Days passed with seemingly endless tears and no hint of a celestial coming to get her, and she finally cried herself out at the end of the first week.

She felt nothing after that.

Valerie just went up to her room and laid down to wait for whatever happened first. Starvation... sickness...end of the world? She didn't care anymore. Valerie just curled up into a ball. She didn't have to wait long though. The next day, the eighth day, she heard voices in the tower since she had left her bedroom door open. Heavy footsteps raced up the stairs to her room and the next thing she knew, she was looking at green eyes full of worry and sympathy.

"Oh baby girl…" Quill whispers before getting up from his crouch and sitting on her bed to gather her into strong arms. Fresh tears of relief and sadness spilled from her eyes as the god held her close to familiar warmth. "Pack up her stuff. Clothes, necessities...whatever. Get it all and put it on the ship."

Valerie didn't pay any more attention after that. She was completely exhausted and finally had someone familiar taking care of her and let herself fall asleep with that knowledge.

=================

Quill sighs and rubs the back of his neck after he silently closes the door to the captain's quarters. Valerie would stay in there for now until they got back to the bigger ship that was home to the Ravagers he led, and there he would have to open up a room by his. One word and the crew wouldn't touch her but Quill would still want her nearby.

"Dad."

The celestial looks up at his son who had put the last box full of Valerie's belongings aside in a storage room. "You got everything?"

"I think so."

"Alright. Stay and keep an eye on her while I go...close up shop."

Hunter nods and Quill exits the ship to go back up to the penthouse and looks around once more. Just after grabbing Valerie's stuffed cow and teddy bear from the couch, a couple of things she never grew out of, he turned and stopped immediately. There in the corner by the elevator was the cloak of levitation floating listlessly...almost like it was depressed. Well, it did lose its most recent master.

"What do I do about you?" Quill asks it. "Do you want to stick with Val?" Levi perks up at his question and he smirks. "Alright. You can come. Friday...initiate Celestial Protocol after we leave."

"Yes, Mr. Quill." The AI responds softly.

Quill leaves the penthouse and takes the elevator back to the hangar and reboards the ship with Levi. The Celestial Protocol would shut down the tower completely and activate a defense barrier that only Hunter or Quill could deactivate in case they came back to Earth. It was one of the last protocols Tony made before he passed...before Scott was…

The god shakes the thought out of his head as he sits at the helm on the flight deck and takes off toward space. It only took about twenty minutes to leave the planet's atmosphere and dock the Milano on the home ship, and Hunter started taking Valerie's things to the room she would be staying in once Quill told him which one. For now, he would take her to his room until she was feeling better and starting to adjust. So he retrieves her from the bedroom on the Milano and takes her to the much bigger Captain's Quarters on the Ravager ship and gets her tucked in before sitting beside her on the bed.

Hunter joined them a couple of hours later and sat on Valerie's other side so that she was safely between the two of them.

"I'm going to have to talk to the crew." Quill finally says after about half an hour of watching TV in silence.

"You mean you're going to threaten them."

"Nah. They can be assholes but they know how to treat a girl. If I ask them to treat her like a princess, they will. No questions asked." Quill sighs and gets up. "Keep and eye on her while I go talk to them."

"Sure." Hunter nods and fixes the heavy blanket over his friend as his father leaves the room.

Quill gathered all the Ravagers and asked them to treat Valerie with respect, and he didn't get a single protest. In fact, they seemed determined to keep her safe which came as no surprise. He told them story after story about his life on Earth, and when he got the notification of Stephen's passing, he told them all about the girl. The god told them of her kindness and her timid nature, and that she was not a fighter. It would probably take time for her to warm up to them, especially after losing someone so dear to her, but they seemed to understand.

They actually went out of their way to make her feel at home when Valerie finally decided to explore the ship. They gave her directions to areas she might enjoy, and if she looked lost, they dropped everything and helped her find her way. They treated her like a princess and Quill never actually used that term. In a way, she was their princess. They taught her about space food and when she had a good idea of what everything was and how the kitchen in the mess hall worked, she even cooked for them.

Not only did it bring some life back into her eyes, but their usual cook was practically banned from the kitchen. Valerie had always been an amazing cook and it carried over to foreign space food. Even Quill was impressed. He and Hunter took her to planets they deemed safe, and she enjoyed looking at all the different types of wildlife and foliage. When she was on the ship, she enjoyed sitting with Flynn and Emir who were both still alive and kicking after so many years, thanks to Quill. She supposed Flynn still nibbled on Quill's fingers, and Emir got a few bites in whenever they rough houses.

Poor Emir though, he had the same sadness in his eyes that Quill had. Scott had been his human and the man was gone. The tiger took pride in protecting and comforting Scott when the god was away, and that behavior seemed to redirect itself to Flynn and then eventually Valerie. It wasn't uncommon for her to wake up and find both animals and Levi surrounding her in a warm and safe cocoon. Those were the days that made it feel like she was back at home sometimes.

Having Hunter around helped as well. They'd always been close and they were the same age so they had a lot more in common. He did his very best to make her feel at home too and usually his presence was more than enough. The two always had a special bond. One formed over years and years of growing up together. It was a shame Hailey didn't inherit Quill's celestial gene like Hunter did. They both missed her.

Valerie did feel better over time. Something she had plenty of. She never put herself in danger, and if she ever found herself in any, she was always herded away to safety whether it was by a Ravager, Quill, or even Hunter. If they were going to a dangerous planet for a job, she stayed on the main ship and usually Hunter stayed behind with her just to keep her company. There were times he went with his father to help though.

Now was one of the times Hunter stayed behind. They were sitting in the observation deck looking out the large domed window at the stars when Valerie sighed.

"You okay?" Hunter asks softly.

"It's... really beautiful out here but at the same time...it feels cold and lonely." Valerie says.

"I guess it would if you're stuck here." He replies. "It's why we try to take you with us on some planets. Even we can get tired of all of this."

"I guess I can kind of see why uncle Quill didn't want to bring your dad and Hailey out here."

"He didn't want to bring you either, but more than that, he didn't want to leave you alone."

Valerie lays her head on his shoulder. "I don't want to be alone. I hate it."

"You won't be." He wraps an arm around her. "Never again."

#valerie stark strange (oc)#hunter harris quill (oc)#peter quill #mama bear au

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thelordofdarkreunion · 3 years

Text

Magnificent Scoundrels- On the Great Journey

Another faction intro, this time from Halo. It should probably be noted that, obviously, I do not own Halo.

A note on timelines: This takes place in 2552, in between Halo 1 and 2. This is after the destruction of Instillation 04, and before Regret’s invasion of Earth.

Halo Galaxy

Earth, Capital World of the UNSC

The room was much like any typical human conference room throughout almost any galaxy. Plain. Utilitarian. Very, very grey. The table, too, was a sleek grey, matching the walls, and the chairs strung around it were typical of almost any high-class office building. Black, comfortable enough, and with wheels. Many an alien had and still has noted with some amusement the human fascination for chairs with wheels on them. Even the most hardened of generals and politicians always seemed to choose them over regular chairs. Most curious. But none of the aliens of this galaxy had ever noticed the subtleties of humanity. No. Here, there was only war between humanity and the theocratic alien empire known simply as the Covenant. This war was the reason for the meeting in this seemingly plain conference room.

Master Chief John-117 sat silently in a chair suitably enlarged for his massive frame. If one were not aware that there was a man beneath his heavy green armor, they might have mistaken him for a statue. He had been sitting like this, back perfectly straight, for exactly one hour, one minute, and forty one… forty two seconds now. He had arrived first to the meeting, as a good soldier should. The rest of the participants trickled in between then and half an hour ago.

He was currently playing a game in his head, one that he had come up with a long time ago. The nature of this game was simple: who is everyone at the meeting? What, or whom, do they represent? What do they want? For despite the fact that Master Chief had not moved in one hour, two minutes, and ten seconds, his mind was always alert. Always searching for threats.

The man at the head of the table was the easiest to know. An old face, wrinkled but still incredibly sharp, coupled with a crisp, white dress uniform and rows upon rows of medals made him a soldier. If one was more familiar with the current state of the UEG and UNSC, one would also instantly put a name with the face. Fleet Admiral Lord Terrance Hood, chief of naval operations and the de facto leader of the war effort, and thus humanity as a whole. John liked Lord Hood. Helpful. Practical. A soldier through and through.

The next was another old face, wearing the white uniform of an admiral. However, this woman did not have the reassuring eyes of Lord Hood. These eyes were old, cold, hard, and incredibly calculating. While Hood might have been in charge, Admiral Margaret Parangosky was probably the most dangerous person in the room. She was the head of ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. Master manipulator, master spy. She probably had enough information to destroy anyone else in the room. Cold, calculating, and ruthless, she was nevertheless a curt and professional leader.

The next, and the last one the Chief recognized, was another older woman. Greying hair framed a wrinkled face and pure blue eyes, still glowing with intelligence. Doctor Catherine Halsey, creator of the Spartan-II’s. Creator of Cortana. Scientist extraordinaire. The only thing even close to a mother figure he ever had. Yes, she was the one who kidnapped him from an unknown family and turned him into a living weapon… but she was still a mother figure, in a way. Master Chief suspected he had Stockholm syndrome. It didn’t really concern him. It was just one more problem on a list of many. Anxiety, depression, sociopathy, paranoia, violent PTSD. He had it all. He ignored it. The only thing that mattered was the mission.

All of the other members of the meeting could fit into three groups: the soldiers, the politicians, and the spies.

The soldiers were the easiest to understand. Either Army or Navy, they were no nonsense (for the most part) and practical. Soldiers. People he understood. They had a duty, and they did it.

Spies were, as they probably should be, the hardest to understand. They were all from ONI, and were, by far, the least trustworthy in the room. Hated and feared, they were the ones who oversaw much of the UNSC’s secret projects. It was their agents who had kidnapped him as a baby for the Spartan program. Lord Hood didn’t trust them. Dr. Halsey didn’t trust them. Master Chief didn’t trust them either. Too concerned with power plays and secrets. It was in their nature to be untrustworthy, just as it was in Master Chief’s nature to be blunt.

The third group were the politicians. While they might normally be the most problem faction, these were extraordinary times. The United Earth Governments had no power. The United Nations Space Command had taken full control under material law to repel the Covenant. The politicians technically had no say-so, but they were still kept in the loop so as not to cause any problems. No one wanted a rogue politician talking too much, and here Admirals Hood and Parangosky could keep an eye on them.

None except Hood, several of the diplomats, and Parangosky were actually required. Most, from Dr. Hasley, to the ONI spies, to the politicians were here either as precautions, in case something came up that would require their expertise, or so that they wouldn’t cause any problems. Hood and Parangosky were crafty enough to realize that snubbing people was probably not the best idea for fostering a united war effort.

“And now, Master Chief John-117, please present your finds,” asked Parangosky. Oh, shit. This was the part he had been dreading. He absolutely despised talking to people, but this time he really didn’t have a choice.

“Yes, ma’am.” His gravelly voice rang clearly through the room as everyone went silent. “I met with the group you told me to. Their dossiers are in my report. They seem nice enough.” He wasn’t quite sure if he was doing this right. He didn’t have much practice talking to other humans. Parangosky looked at him with an annoyed expression, but Hood held up a hand to forestall any comments.

“I know you don’t particularly like to do this, Chief. However, we need to know where everyone in these new galaxies stand.” The politicians and various lower ranked officers gave sycophantic nods.

“Yes, sir.” A holoprojector sprang to life, displaying the various symbols of different inter-galactic powers. “Most are either peaceful inter-species coalitions or human-supremacist empires. From what Cortana has told me, the more human-supremacist and militaristic, the more likely they are to stand with us.” The table broke out with murmuring.

“Now what?” asked one of the Admirals. “Who exactly is going to help us? Can we actually trust them?”

“The people I’ve seen are trustworthy,” responded the Chief. If slightly bizarre, and, on several instances, slightly insane. “Whether or not we can trust their governments is another problem.” Thankfully, not my problem.

“What about their weapons?” questioned an ONI agent.

“Everything I’ve learned about their weapons is in my report.” Honestly, what was the point of writing reports if no one was going to read them?

“Can we get any of these weapons?” pressed the agent. Why are ONI agents so annoying?

“While the individuals I’ve met want to keep their own weapons, at least one is willing to sell them,” replied the Chief gruffly. He hadn’t, and wouldn’t, tell them about Drake’s gift. They would want to get their hands all over it, disassemble it, and he’d never get it back. It was put to much better use in his hands. At least it was in his opinion. Although, Drake would probably be perfectly willing to sell anything from laser weapons to WMDs if the price was right. The ONI agent began whining again.

“All the “militaristic” powers are fighting other things! All the peaceful ones wouldn’t want to get involved in the Covenant War, and all the other ones would probably want to screw us over.” Like you wouldn’t do the same thing if you were in their place, Master Chief wanted to say. Bloody ONI.

The Chief looked appealingly over to Hood, the question evident in his eyes. Hood gave Master Chief a nod.

“Thank you, Chief. You can sit down now,” he said. Thank God. John slumped into his seat. He would much rather take on entire platoons of Covenant soldiers instead of doing even the most miniscule of talking, especially to these types of people. Oh, well. Sometimes being the greatest soldier in history had its drawbacks.

High Charity

Capital and Holy City of the Covenant

High Charity was an utterly massive, near planetoid-sized space station, and the floating capital of the alien empire known as the Covenant. Hundreds of kilometers in diameter, and home to billions of individuals, it was the Covenant’s religious center and practical homeworld. High Charity was larger than moons, and more impressive than most planets, including most of those ruled by the UNSC. It was here that, just like many a government, the leaders of the Covenant sat to discuss the current situation.

The room itself was rectangular, and looked largely like some gladiator pit made of stainless steel. In the “stands” were the members of the High Council, the legislative body of the Covenant. Made up of only Sangheli and San’Shyuum, the two most respected species of the Covenant, it was their job to pass laws and rule the empire as a whole. Lower down, at the edge of the “pit”, was an elevated dias, on which were three chairs. The true rulers of the Covenant, the Hierarchs, sat here, in magnificent gravity thrones. They were the High Prophets of Truth, Mercy, and Regret. The religious leaders, and, due to its nature as a theocratic empire, the political leaders of the Covenant, it was their duty to guide the various races along the Great Journey. Now, it was their duty to guide the Covenant into these new galaxies, to the ultimate goal of ascendance. At the present moment, it was all they could do to keep the Council in order.

“What of the trial of Thel ‘Vadam?” shouted members from the stands. The entire room was in an uproar, yelling at each other, yelling at the Prophets, yelling at the guards, yelling at anyone that would listen. In fact, several of them were yelling just to yell, certain that no one really cared, but determined to add their weight to the conversation. If, of course, the orgy of disorder could actually be called a conversation.

“Yes! What of the trial?” cried another.

“Nay! The trial is of limited importance now! What of these new places? What happens there? We must know!”

“Indeed! This is a pressing concern! We must discuss this new development! The trial can wait!” shouted someone else.

“No! The trial is of immediate importance! It must happen now!” called another Council member.

“What of the humans? How are they affected by this? Does the Covenant exist in these new galaxies? Does humanity? Do the Forerunners?”

“Enough! There will be order in these chambers!” the shrill and somewhat warbling voice of the Prophet of Mercy called from his gravity throne.

“Indeed! I am ashamed of this behavior!” added the Prophet of Truth. The voices died down to barely audibly muttering, then vanished completely as the Prophets looked around the room.

“Good. Now, on to the business of this session. The High Council has convened for a special session. While originally supposed to be for the trial of Thel ‘Vadam, it now takes a new purpose: we must discuss these new places and what exactly they mean for our future,” said Truth. The Prophets of Mercy and Regret nodded along with him. The voices swelled once again, murmuring, then threatening to break out in a crescendo of noise.

“Order!” yelled Regret over the din. The babble died down once more. Despite the Prophets being San'Shyuum, a species that looked largely like bipedal worms with oversized craniums and were about as physically threatening as the description suggests, they were the religious leaders of the Covenant, and so their word was law. Though the Council could technically oppose them, it rarely did so. Those who called for the trial to take place immediately were gradually silenced, and the chamber came to order.

“As it should be,” muttered Mercy crossly.

“Now, on to business.” The ‘again’ in that sentence remained unsaid. “Due to still unknown reasons, several other galaxies have appeared beyond the borders of ours. We know not what they are. We know not what they want.” The Council started to murmur again.

“Therefore, to make certain no one interferes, it is our duty to start down the Great Journey as soon as possible. Thel ‘Vadam and his fleet, while unable to prevent its destruction, found one of the Sacred Rings. It is but a short time when we find another.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Regret. “We have located a Sacred Icon, needed for the firing of the Rings, on a human world.” The Council broke out in shouting once more.

“We must retrieve it immediately!”

“Yes! The Heretics have no right to hold such an artifact!”

“Silence!” roared Truth once more. He looked around at the assemblage, then continued. “We shall retrieve this Icon as soon as possible. The trial of Thel ‘Vadam shall happen, a fleet shall be prepared, the icon retrieved, and the Rings fired.” The murmurings became positive.

“Good. Onwards, on the Great Journey, for the glory of the Covenant!”

And there we are. As always, if you have any comments, questions, concerns, criticisms, or requests, feel free to ask!

#writing #magnificent scoundrels #my writing #story #fanfic #crossover #halo

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multiverseforger · 3 years

Text

The young Devil Dinosaur was nearly burned to death by a tribe of Killer-Folk, hostile beings native to his planet, but was rescued by Moon-Boy, a young member of a rival tribe, the Small-Folk. Exposure to the Killer-Folk's fire activated a mutation in the dinosaur which gave him powers greater than others of his species and turned his skin from olive green to flame red.[10] Devil's early adventures on his home world include encounters with extraterrestrials and a brief teleportation to modern day Earth.[11]

Later, Godzilla rampages through the Marvel Universe (Earth-616). In an attempt to stop the monster, S.H.I.E.L.D. shrinks Godzilla with Pym Particles and attempts to teleport him via a time machine to the prehistoric past. However, Godzilla's radiation apparently distorts the time machine so that he is transported to the alternative universe of Dinosaur World instead. While there, he briefly unites with Moon-Boy and Devil against a common foe before being pulled back to the main Marvel continuity.[12]

Member of the Fallen AngelsEdit

After Ariel, an extraterrestrial mutant with teleportation powers, teleports the Fallen Angels to Dinosaur World, the group convinces Devil and Moon-Boy to join their team and return with them to Earth-616. During his time with the Fallen Angels, Devil Dinosaur accidentally kills "Don", the super-intelligent mutant lobster on the team by stepping on him. Devil and Moon-Boy return to their own universe when the Fallen Angels eventually disband.[13]

Dinosaur World againEdit

After their stint with the Fallen Angels, the duo's life back on Dinosaur World is interrupted numerous times by events occurring in the main Marvel continuity:

During a conflict between Slapstick and his time manipulating foe, Doctor Yesterday, Devil and Moon-Boy are briefly teleported to Earth-616.[14]

In the midst of a tussle between the Technet and Lockheed inside Excalibur's lighthouse, Devil is once again briefly transported to Earth-616.[15]

Young Celestials transport the Hulk back in time to combat Devil.[16]

A renegade Skrull flees to Devil's planet and uses his shape shifting abilities to impersonate the late leader of the Killer-Folk, Seven Scars.[17]

Due to the manipulations of the interdimensional traveler Access, Devil Dinosaur's world briefly merges with the DC Comics Universe where he encounters Anthro, a Cro-Magnon man.[18]

In the midst of a battle with a Kraken, Hulkpool and his unwitting companions accidentally time travel to Dinosaur World where Devil Dinosaur, Moon-Boy and the Small-Folk help destroy the kraken. During Hulkpool's effort to return to his own time, Devil and Moon-Boy are briefly teleported to the American Old West in the year 1873. While there, Devil attempts to eat a cowboy's horse.[19]

Stranded on Earth 616 in modern timesEdit

New York CityEdit

Some time later, the sorceress Jennifer Kale, in an attempt to return Howard the Duck to his homeworld, inadvertently teleports Devil Dinosaur and Moon-Boy into her New York apartment. The disoriented dinosaur rampages through the city before being subdued by Ghost Rider.[20] Stranded in modern-day Earth-616 after their teleportation there by Kale, the pair is hypnotized into joining the Circus of Crime. After being rescued by Spider-Man, Devil and Moon-Boy are relocated to the Savage Land.[21]

The Savage LandEdit

The Heroes for Hire mercenaries go on a mission to retrieve Moon-Boy from the Savage Land and encounter Devil Dinosaur in the process. Devil is found fiercely guarding a nest containing a clutch of eggs that apparently he himself has laid and the dinosaur abandons Moon-Boy to ensure their safety. The discrepancy between this development and his previously presumed male sex is noted by the mercenaries, who can only speculate as to the cause of the change.[22] After returning to the U.S. the Heroes for Hire disband and group member Paladin leaves alone with Moon-Boy to collect the reward from the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists who hired the mercenaries.[23]

Devil and Moon-Boy SeparatedEdit

Moon-Boy would remain under the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D. for some time, which drove Devil Dinosaur into a sort of saurian depression. Refusing to eat, or defend himself, he was in danger of dying. However, Stegron, the dinosaur man, became worried about the survival of the Devil-Beast due to it being the last known of its species. Leaving the Savage Land without the permission of Ka-Zar and building an army of reanimated dinosaurs, Stegron marched across the U.S. attacking S.H.I.E.L.D. base after base, until he was eventually stopped by the Fifty State Initiative. However, the group discovered the motive behind Stegron's plan and, though he was arrested all the same, the Initiative recruit Reptil smuggled Moon-Boy back to the Savage Land, where he was reunited with his companion.[24]

Reunited in the Savage LandEdit

Reunited in the Savage Land, the companions' adventures continued:

When the Roxxon Energy Corporation attempts to extract vibranium from the Savage Land, the inhabitants of the Savage Land including Ka-Zar, Devil Dinosaur and Moon-Boy enter into battle to save their home. Roxxon's forces are soon subdued.[25]

Devil Dinosaur meets the Pet Avengers when they are accidentally transported to the Savage Land. Out of shock and anger, Devil attacks the group. Eventually, the group of animalian Avengers are able to return to their own world.[26]

An ancient entity attempts to conquer first the Savage Land, then the world. Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur fight to defend innocent Savage Land citizens endangered by the entity. They are joined by many other heroes, some lost in time. The entity is killed by Zabu.[27]

The Savage Land Mutate, Brainchild, creates an army of cybernetic dinosaurs and steals Devil Dinosaur's eggs in order to experiment on them. Spider-Man arrives and helps Devil and Moon-Boy defeat the cybernetic dinosaurs and rescue the eggs. At the end of the adventure, one of the eggs hatches revealing a red baby Tyrannosaurus.[28]

Adventures with Moon GirlEdit

In the Savage Land, a group of Killer Folk got their hands on the sacred Nightstone. Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur fought to reclaim it, but Moon Boy died as the Killer Folk were sucked into a vortex through time with the Nightstone. Moon Boy's dying wish was for Devil Dinosaur to reclaim the Nightstone and to avenge him.[29]

Going through the portal, Devil Dinosaur ended up in New York City. The Nightstone had fallen into the hands of Lunella Lafayette - a genius 9-year-old - who deduced the Nightstone was actually a Kree Omni-Wave Projector. Lunella had identified the Inhuman gene within her own DNA and feared being transformed into a monster due to the changes brought about by Terrigen Mist. Due to several Terrigen clouds that had been drifting around the city following the Inhumans' detonation of a Terrigen bomb, she took drastic action and intended to use the Nightstone to find a way to remove the Inhuman DNA. With Lunella refusing to give up the Nightstone, Devil Dinosaur was forced to bring her on his rampage through the city as he searched for the Killer Folk. Although Devil Dinosaur fought the Killer Folk, they managed to escape with the Nightstone.[30]

Lunella ended up harboring Devil Dinosaur in her laboratory that she had built in the depths of her school, growing more and more frustrated that she was stuck with the "big red dummy" but found him useful when he helped save the lives of her teacher and class during a fire.[31] However, the Hulk (Amadeus Cho) arrived, seeking to apprehend Devil Dinosaur for his earlier rampage and accused him of the fire. Lunella refused, declaring that she needed Devil Dinosaur and, growing frustrated with Amadeus patronizing her and undermining her intelligence, drew out a few homemade weapons to fight him, but only accidentally ended up knocking out Devil Dinosaur.[32]

Lunella, feeling responsible for Devil Dinosaur's arrest and, feeling kinship to the beast stuck in a place he did not belong, broke him out under the moniker of Moon Girl, a nickname the other students used to bully her.[33] After the Killer Folk - who had conquered territory previously owned by the Yancy Street Gang - failed to kidnap Lunella from school to be their blood sacrifice to the Nightstone on a full moon, Lunella decided to end things. She and Devil Dinosaur fought the Killer Folk once more and won, reclaiming the Nightstone. Lunella hoped she could finally use it to ensure she would not transform into an Inhuman, but at that precise moment she was caught in a Terrigen cloud.[34]

Devil Dinosaur took Lunella's cocoon to her lab and watched over it for several days until she hatched. Lunella was at first relieved she had not changed physically, but was dismayed to learn her Inhuman power caused her consciousness and that of Devil Dinosaur's to switch. Devil Dinosaur proceeded to make her even more ostracized at school due to freaking out in class and attacking other students whilst Lunella rampaged through the city. Eventually though they returned to normal.[35]

Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl's next opponent came in the form of Kid Kree - a misunderstood Kree boy who had failed to enter the academy twice, who sought to capture an Inhuman to impress his father and make a name for himself on Earth as Captain Marvel had - who disguised himself as a new student, Marvin Ellis, in Lunella's class. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur fought Kid Kree several times,[36] once being separated by Ms. Marvel, who recognized their fight as the childish squabble it was, but still entrusted Moon Girl with a device to contact her if things ever got out of hand.[37]

Lunella is then approached by Hulk, who gives her the Banner B.O.X. (Brain Omnicompetence Examiner), and is surprised when she solves it in mere seconds, proving that Lunella is the smartest person on Earth. After consulting experts, Moon Girl, Hulk and Devil Dinosaur encounter Mole Man, who was attacking the city with a group of monsters. The next day, at her lab, Lunella ends up having a vision of herself in the future, where she is approached by Earth's smartest heroes. After school, she is approached by the Thing, who takes her for a walk when Hulk appears. When the two start fighting, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur manage to contain them while protecting the civilians, until both of them are left unconscious. Meanwhile, Doctor Doom is surprised to discover that Moon Girl is considered the smartest person on Earth and vows to prove himself superior.[38] During science class, Lunella is attacked by robot drones until she is saved by Riri Williams. They follow the drones to a nearby alley, where Moon Girl encounters Doctor Doom. After Doom escapes, Moon Girl and Ironheart go to Moon Girl's secret lab, where they discover that the energy signatures of the drones are mystic in origin. While tracing Doom's location, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur arrive at the Sanctum Sanctorum and are found by Doctor Strange.[39] Waking up from a dream, Lunella is reunited with Devil, who was shrunk down by Strange. While walking back home, Moon Girl and two of her classmates are attacked by Doctor Doom and his Doombots. Moon Girl uses an enlargement potion on herself to help Doctor Strange fight Doom and his robots. A few nights later, while installing an energy sensing probe, Moon Girl is found by five members of the X-Men.[40] Arriving at an abandoned mall, Moon Girl reengineers a Cerebro helmet with the Omni-Wave Projector to locate Doom, only for her and the X-Men to travel back to the 1980s. Once there, Doctor Doom arrives with an army of Doombots. The X-Men and Devil fight the Doombots until Moon Girl takes off the helmet, sending them back to the present, where they discover that Doom is actually a Doombot. Lunella takes the Doombot to her lab to analyze it.[41] Lunella later makes a major discovery about her Inhuman power: it only activates during a full moon. She then encounters an army of Doombots, along with Thing, Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, Doctor Strange, Kid Kree and the Killer Folk, who went to her aid after being recruited by Lunella.[42]

Lunella then receives a call for help from an alien girl named Illa and, after building a spaceship, goes to space with Devil and crash land on a moon. While exploring, Lunella discovers that Illa is the moon.[43] She soon realizes that Illa is lonely and wants company and does not understand Lunella at all. After a brief fight between Devil and some giant bugs, Lunella leaves, despite Illa's objections. Unfortunately, in the process, she is sent to a parallel universe where she meets another version of herself and Devil Dinosaur. Meanwhile, the Doombot head creates robotic versions of Lunella to avoid suspicions of her absence.[44] After fighting their counterparts, Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur, Lunella and Devil get back on their spacecraft and return to Illa who tells them that they'll never leave her. Back home, the Doombot head begins to have problems with one of Lunella robots. Moon Girl and Devil manage to find Ego the Living Planet and reunite him with Illa, while the Doombot discovers that the Lunella robot is acting independently.[45]

Meanwhile, the Doombot head has created multiple Moon Girl replacement robots who to his surprise are acting like real little girls.[volume & issue needed] He tells them that they will be obsolete when the real Lunella returns.[volume & issue needed] While up in space Lunella has united Ego and Illa as a family.[volume & issue needed] On the way to Earth she uses the Omniwave projector to tearfully return Devil Dinosaur to Moon Boy in the Savage Land where she thinks he belongs and then returns to New York where she tosses it away in the trash.[volume & issue needed]

Admitting she was wrong MooN Girl brought him back as she, Ben Grim, and Johnny Storm reformed the Fantastic Four and even gave Devil his own uniform.[46] Afterwards while Wilson Fisks's daughter Princess is enrolled in her school Moon Girl decides to turn Devil into a human boy and enroll him in her class to tone down his destructive accidents. Taking attention away from princess causes her to begin focusing her and her father's negative attentions on the two.[volume & issue needed]

During the Monsters Unleashed storyline, Devil Dinosaur was with Moon Girl when she was studying the different Leviathon attacks.[47] Later, Kei Kawade demonstrates his abilities to the heroes present by summoning Devil Dinosaur, though Moon Girl was also brought along during Devil Dinosaur's summoning.[48] When the Leviathon Servitors attack the Baxter Building, Kei Kawade summons Devil Dinosaur to help fight them.[49] Moon Girl, Devil Dinosaur and other heroes later encounter other monsters until the Leviathon Queen is defeated by Kei Kawade and his new creations.[50]

During the Secret Empire storyline, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl join up with Daisy Johnson's Secret Warriors. After rescuing Karnak from a prison camp, the Warriors encounter the Howling Commandos after falling into a trap. While driving West, the team is found by the X-Men. After escaping New Tian, the team meets Dark Beast, an evil version of Beast, who's tortured by Daisy and Karnak on information of an Inhuman who can help them. After receiving their information, the team encounters Mister Hyde along with Hydra's Avengers. After a brief fight, the team is captured until they break out when Daisy uses her powers to destroy the Helicarrier they were in. While trying to break Devil out of his cage, Moon Girl meets Leer, the Inhuman Karnak mentioned, who knocks her unconscious when the Helicarrier crash lands. Fortunately, Moon Girl and Devil have switched brains just in time, enabling Moon Girl to lead the Warriors to an Inhuman prison camp. There, the Warriors plan a jailbreak with the imprisoned Inhumans when the Underground resistance arrives to help them. It's later revealed that Leer is Karnak's son and that Karnak had sold him to Mr. Sinister to help activate his powers.[51]

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just-jammin · 4 years

Text

Relighting

Word Count: 2024

Summary: The obscure yet infamous game of Sburb has probably caused some trauma & all-around bad times within the Chaos Family.

Their resident Protector can tell you all about it, and about how this predicament can be solved...

So. It’s been a while.

Not in the sense that I haven’t spoken to anyone in a while, just that I haven’t written a journal since... yeah, it wasn’t that long since I did that, but my point still stands.

Look, this whole Sburb thing is crazy ever since I first knew about it, but this is just outright ludicrous. The world-ending meteor shower, trying to process the abstract concepts & lore within the game, witnessing death itself... it’s not my cup of tea when it comes to first-hand experiences.

All of this reminds me of... something. It reminds me of a story that I’ve heard once while participating Mass, in a Homily. I can’t help it but think that it’s so much similar to our situation as of now.

How? I’ll tell it here.

>> —^— <<

In a dark, quiet room, there were four Candles.

Peace, Faith, Love, & Hope.

These four elements are very important to the story, as it is related to the people’s thoughts & actions. The Peace within the group, the Faith of triumph & joy, the unconditional Love for each other, and the Hope fueling our will to go on & go forth.

It’s all present in this session, as the Chaos Family. Even though we never formally met each other until the game started, and somehow one of us was accidentally sucked into it, we still have some camaraderie with each other.

And that’s when things started falling apart.

>> —^— <<

While talking to each other, the Candles noticed that Peace was melting.

You see, we never had proper Peace. We’re all about Chaos, right? But this is our kind of Peace; knowing that everyone is having fun & laughing along to our antics is our kind of Peace. It means that every single member is getting to know each other more.

Yet somehow, when we entered the Medium, things got serious. When I thought setting up a Zoom call tutorial thing for the extremely confused members was a mess, I didn’t expect our problems to be worse when we got our own Planets.

Don’t get me wrong, all of our Sprites did say that our Planets’ purpose was to strengthen ourselves. But all I could feel was insecurity. Scared of moving forward. And I bet the others felt that too.

Basically, our first impressions of our planets are outright Hell.

I think this is why fights started breaking out whenever we talked to each other. Whether it was a memo in Pesterchum (which we had to download), or just meeting up in one of the Planets, arguments are thrown here & there. Unfortunately, it escalated to rowdy fistfights that we had to have a hard time to let them struggle & break it up.

To be fair, sometimes I was in those fights. It was... rough.

Needless to say, this was a different kind of Chaos. It wasn’t the one we’re used to, nor the one that brings people together. It was the kind of Chaos that tears relationships apart and basically destroys everyone, inside & out.

When Peace had been standing in its final moments, it cried out, “Oh, what’s the use of me being here?! Everybody has been making a fool of themselves by causing nonsensical conflict!

“That’s it! I’m done here!”

There’s no Peace in there. Not anymore.

Its light flickers out.

>> —^— <<

There were three left.

And it had been for days.

Until one time, while the Candles were talking, they noticed that Faith was melting.

Faith. It’s hard to say when it was there in the first place.

I mean, to be fair, a lot of things are difficult to see in this Family, or the rest of Tumblr, actually. (Heh... I miss Tumblr...) But Faith comes in small things, like the friendships of others. And even full-on relationships. Little things like that can let us keep on believing that we can do better for ourselves.

That was... unfortunate.

Although entering the Medium was a win for all of us, there were also some losses for a handful of us.

It included our friends outside the Chaos Family. And even some of them in the Family.

Almost everyone not participating in our session is dead.

Dead. Gone forever.

It was a hard one to take in. Some of our real-life family relatives in our houses are still alive, but our Tumblr friends impacted some of us the most. People were crying. Like real tears.

And for some reason, I didn’t.

Almost all of my friends are here, my brother is here, and honestly, I didn’t have much back on Earth. Sure, my parents and relatives are gone, so that’s... depressing. But I can cope with them here. They’re the reason why I’m thriving.

The others? Not so much.

Faith had shouted while getting weakened, “Look, my own Faith is dwindling too, y’know?! They’re moping around in their own disbelief!

“I’m out!”

I guess I’m the only one who had more of it. But only by a smidge.

Its smoke wafts away in the dark.

>> —^— <<

And then there were two.

Unfortunately, Love was next to melt.

Ah, Love. This one is somewhat different from the story I’m telling than the source material.

You see, our Family’s Love never dwindled. We all still care for each other, no matter what happens to any of us. Through thick & thin, we helped each other to get ourselves up & going.

Heck, some of them got together romantically. Not that I’m too envious of them, but to be honest, they’re really cute with each other. A handful of them loved those outside of the Family, but you know what happened...

It’s just that we talked to each other less over time, either because of the missions we were given or because we just didn’t feel like talking to each other. It’s ok, I do respect their reasons, whether good or bad.

However, it just made me more concerned. I bet the others feel the same about that, but I think it’s been taking over my brain recently. I even tried talking about it to the closest people I know in the Family. No responses were made.

It doesn’t help that I have to literally build my way up, going through a complicated labyrinth of temperature-changing caverns filled with walking & talking thorny devils that hate me so much they shoot blood from their eyes at me.

Not to mention that I only have my annoying older brother with me, who only set my issue aside when I tried telling him. It sucks.

So no, our Love never dwindled.

It just became more isolated.

And yet, Love sobbed out, “Come on! Why am I not strong enough for them?! I thought I can keep all of them together!

“I can’t take this anymore!”

It just... feels like before. Numb all over.

Hehe, shit. I’m too familiar with that...

Love’s warmth faded away soon.

>> —^— <<

Only one was left standing.

The Candle of Hope.

Hope...

Well, that’s the only one that’s actually relevant to our session, huh?

It’s one of the main Aspects of Sburb, so of course it’s relevant! According to my Sprite, Hope is the embodiment of all positive emotions & beliefs, including Hope itself. It’s a pretty nice Aspect, in my opinion.

Anyway, Hope’s the one that got us through all our shit. Yes, even the very bad times. It’s basically a lifesaver for the Chaos Family and the rest of Tumblr. It can be distributed in many ways, from simple things like compliments, to posts like those ‘One Note a Day’ ones and a bunch of others like that.

But this, this is what I thought we were lacking the most at the time.

By that time, a little girl came running inside the dark room.

She noticed the other three Candles, melted & burnt out.

“Peace? Faith? Love?” she tried to call out.

I... didn’t think it was there when we started the session, nor when the fights started to break out. Not even when... when my friends started struggling with themselves.

Heck, some of them wanted to let their lives go to get to God Tier... or for worse intentions...

Shit, everything sucked.

The girl started tearing up, calling the other Candles repeatedly.

“Why?!” she finally sobbed. “Why aren’t you still burning?! You’re supposed to stay till the end, right?!”

At least, that’s what I thought... before, uh, that happened.

You see, it was one day while I was struggling to find my way through the Land of Rumors and Elements when someone stood in a distance away from me. When I tried to process who it was, they somehow got to me in quick speeds & punched my glasses off of me.

I was at a disadvantage by then. I tried to use my two knives (alchemized ones; they looked cool & they were more fit for fighting) to get them, but my eyesight is pretty crap. I missed my slashes so many times.

Then I felt them getting one of the knives, and it turned into what was basically a very inconvenient sword-fight. It went on for a long time, trying to injure free spots before getting parried repeatedly.

I then noticed a sharp pain on my right side.

When I turned my head towards the feeling, my right arm was on the ground.

Bleeding. Aching. Hurting.

Fading.

I faced the person one last time, and I only see a silhouette. On their head is a mint-colored circle with three wisp-like appendages... a symbol...

The next thing I knew, I was lying on stone. I was... weak. And tired.

On my side was my Sprite, a golden retriever with water buffalo horns & a fedora. She had a mournful look on her face.

I closed my own eyes & took a deep breath when I realized.

I was dying.

“RIGHT?!?!”

She cried out before falling to the ground, practically drowning in her own tears.

Then I felt as numb as I could ever be.

>> —^— <<

Then she heard a voice.

It said, “Worry not, child. I’m still here.”

She looked up to see the remaining Candle in the room.

“Why should I not worry, then?” the girl questioned.

It replied, “I can relight the others if you truly acknowledge my presence.”

She perked up at the response she was given. Crawling closer towards the Candle, she followed up with, “And why is that?”

A soft chuckle came out from it.

“Well... isn’t my name Hope?”

>> —^— <<

I didn’t expect to feel a burst of cool air from where my arm was cut off. At least, I didn’t expect it to be the first thing I felt since I died.

Then I felt something on my back, pushing me up & up until I recognized it as floating in the air. Little by little, my senses came back to normal. The numbness had subsided, replaced with what I think was... power.

My lungs breathed air again; I can make sounds; I can see, smell, hear, feel...

I’m human again. Alive. Awake.

Unfortunately, living again came with having to deal with pain. Remnants of the aching on my right arm arrived, so naturally, I let my left hand clench where it hurt. There was a scar on where I was touching, but I can unusually feel the rest of my arm...

Yep, I got my arm back. Nice, I guess. Let’s set that aside for now.

One other detail I noticed was that I was wearing a mostly yellow outfit: a sleeveless shirt, some leggings, and dark green boots, along with long fingerless gloves. I then took a look at a puddle to see that my reflection has a superhero-like mask on my face.

I did not know how the fuck they got on me.

Yet one thing’s for sure: I’ve ascended and went to God Tier.

And my role?

I relight our Family’s bond & trust with the help of Hope.

With shining eyes, the girl picked the Candle up and lighted the other three.

Peace, Faith, & Love.

All together, alight again, in the dark room.

>> —^— <<

I am the Rogue of Hope, the one who distributes Hope to others.

#hOOOOOOLY FUCK THIS MIGHT BE MY WORLD RECORD-#I STARTED WRITING THIS YESTERDAY #OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM SO HAPPY & PROUD RN #homestuck #sburb #sburb au #sburb session #fan session #[Homestuck AU]#chaos family!#just writing some bullshit #(yes that’s a tag now)#chaos & conflict

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lassieposting · 4 years

Note

Tell us about Lucifer’s depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and past abuse. I mean I can see the self harm, both the obvious In cutting off his wings and the like as well as the unhealthy self medicating, and the abuse - which honestly comes across as a murky gray area, like some verges on abuse but isn’t quite- but the other things... I need them pointed out to me.

GLADLY, ANON

okay so, to cover my ass: this is just my personal take as someone with trauma & suicidal ideation who self-harms. other people with different trauma and different relationships with self-harm/suicidal ideation might see this whole thing completely differently. This post could be triggering, please pay attention to the triggers in the tags. I am not a professional psychiatrist, and if you are struggling please seek professional help.

i’m gonna break this down into sections bc, surprise surprise, it got rly long

THE ABUSE:

Now, you’re absolutely right that this is kind of a murky grey area, because at this point we really only have one side of the story: Lucifer’s. And obviously, he’s biased.

the family dynamics:

But let’s take a look at the family dynamics we see in-show. We’ve only seen a fraction of Lucifer’s family, but it’s still fairly obvious that the ways they interact with one another are unhealthy and tend towards abusive, especially when aimed at Lucifer.

We have Amenadiel, who:

Is obedient to his Dad on an almost brainwashed level until he falls.

Blames everything - including his own actions/failures (i.e. saying Malcolm killing humans is Lucifer’s fault, even though Amenadiel himself raised Malcolm from Hell) on Lucifer.

Does not know how to respond to affection or praise, even though he clearly appreciates and enjoys them (i.e. when Trixie hugs him and says she thinks he’s good). This is the son who’s in God’s good books. And he still clearly doesn’t receive affection or praise often.

Openly competes with Lucifer for Dad’s attention/love, to the point of rubbing it in his face when he discovers he’s the favourite

Is complicit in Lucifer’s abuse - taking him back to Hell (thereby isolating him), threatening him when he doesn’t want to go, and cutting off any attempt Lucifer makes at reaching out to connect with humanity - for billions of years to try and win his Dad’s approval.

Straight up tries to have Lucifer killed.

Says he’d love to go to war (with Lucifer, and presumably with Hell as a whole).

We have Uriel, who:

Takes it upon himself to enforce what he believes is his Dad’s will; he had no instructions from God when he came to Earth.

Delights in getting the opportunity to beat up Amenadiel, and gloats about it.

Threatens - and harms - the first good thing Lucifer has had in his life in eons as a way of bullying him into doing what Uriel wants.

When Lucifer complies, Uriel decides to kill both Goddess and Chloe, purely out of spite because Lucifer was “being difficult”.

(There is an interesting meta here on Uriel’s potential motivations that I really like, but this is looking purely at his actions.)

And we have Goddess, their mother, easily the most manipulative and emotionally abusive of the lot. She:

Admits to destroying things God cared about - attacking humanity with plagues and floods etc - out of malice and to get his attention.

Happily releases Azrael’s blade into human hands, hoping for widespread human deaths, to get her ex to get back in touch.

Plays Lucifer and Amenadiel off against one another like a pro for her approval.

Only ever touches her children when she’s trying to manipulate them - there’s a good meta on that here. The one exception to this that I personally believe to be a genuine attempt to comfort (both him and herself) is when she hugs Lucifer after he’s just killed Uriel.

Doesn’t actually care about what Lucifer wants - he’s told her outright that Earth is the only place where he feels wanted and respected, and she knows he has a life he enjoys and a woman he’s falling in love with, but she expects him to abandon Earth and go back to the Silver City with her regardless - to the point that she actively tries to dismantle his human life and kill his loved ones to leave him with no ties to Earth.

The picture this paints to me is of two incredibly narcissistic parents who see their children as extensions of themselves rather than as people in their own right. If you compare Lucifer - who’s an asshole, but fundamentally a good man - to his siblings here, you can see that the two who stayed in Heaven have caught fleas from their parents - and part of Amenadiel’s redemption arc is him realising how toxic and damaging his family is, giving himself a damn good flea bath, and doing his best to be a better big brother to Lucifer and a better son to his mom (and, later, a better father to Charlie than his Dad was to him).

angel life cycle

So apparently in canon, angels were created as adults. My personal headcanon is fuck that, baby angels, but we’ll go with the canon explanation for this, because honestly it still lines up with my theory.

Even if you’re “born” with a mature adult body and adult-level speech ability etc, you still won’t have an adult’s wealth of life experience, or maturity, or social skills. You’re still going to have to grow and learn and experience situations to learn how to cope with them.

Now, Tom Ellis has said in the past that he plays Lucifer as essentially having the emotional maturity level of a teenager, which I think is honestly perfect. For an immortal being - or at least a being with a lifespan of many, many billions of years - it’s actually fairly believable that the angels are (depending on the age gap between them) either still in the “adolescent” life stage or emerging into the “young adult” one.

Lucifer says that he’s spent “most of his life” in Hell. If he’s only a young adult now, at ~11 billion years old, that means he’d have been a juvenile (in terms of life experience/emotional development, even if he was “born” with a fully mature adult body) when he was sent to Hell, and the reason he was sent to Hell is because he wanted free will and started “acting out”.

Even if your 12-year-old is the most unpleasant, rebellious little shithead on the planet, you don’t kick him out of the house and spent the next decade sabotaging every attempt he makes to connect with people or improve his life. Because, you know. That’s your kid. You signed up to have him, that’s normal shitty teenager behaviour, and the chances are he’ll improve with age. God and Goddess went scorched earth on Lucifer because he was behaving in a completely normal way for a kid beginning to mature into a grownup.

lasting trauma

Lucifer’s parents’ treatment has left some crazy deep scars.

He uses a neglectful broken home as an analogy for his celestial family. And he does so incredibly smoothly; this is clearly an analogy he’s thought about before. Chances are he’s seen this dynamic on TV and identified very strongly with it.

He talks about his mother abandoning him as his “lowest point”. Not his Fall. Not any of the horrific things he’s seen in Hell. The point where he realised his mom doesn’t love him enough to protect him.

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong. God punished Lucifer harshly for wanting to control his own life, because narcs often see their children’s developing independence as a threat to their own control over their kids’ lives. Obviously He wouldn’t see it like that, but he’s clearly never explained to Lucifer why what he did was “wrong”. This family has a chronic communication problem.

He’s paranoid as fuck. He constantly suspects God of having a hand in the events happening around him, and any time it seems He is involved, Lucifer immediately sees whatever’s happening as an attempted manipulation. It never occurs to him that creating Chloe - someone immune to his powers who can really love him without any kind of supernatural influence - could be an olive branch or an attempt to give him what he actually needs. He doesn’t believe his Dad would ever do something positive to/for him.

He’s so badly traumatized by his childhood that he reacts like this to being called by the name his Dad gave him. And he’s clearly doing well in therapy - he might not know the word for it, but he knows he’s being (unintentionally) gaslit here. He doesn’t handle it well, but he doesn’t put up with it either, refuses to accept being told to see his Dad’s abuse as a sign of love.

He believes he’s unloveable. When Linda gently suggests that maybe Chloe kissed him purely because she likes him, he tells her that’s impossible and reminds her his powers don’t work on Chloe. He doesn’t think there’s any way someone could love him for who he is, unless he’s either giving them something or using his mojo on them. And it’s his family that’s conditioned him to think that way - look at Amenadiel alone, how many times he tells Lucifer he’s evil throughout the show, as casually as if he were telling him that his hair is brown. This is just a fact of the universe in that family: water is wet, leaves are green, Lucifer is irredeemable garbage.

He doesn’t for a second hesitate to believe that his Dad wanted to kill him. Or that he would kill him given the opportunity. He even thinks Chloe is his dad’s attempt to get him killed for a bit.

THE SELF HARM

the wings:

The blatantly obvious one - and the most deliberate - is when he cuts off his wings. Now when Lucifer talks about this, he frames it as him taking back agency over his own life, freeing himself from his Father’s control, and making a statement about his intention to stay on Earth.

But when you look at him, he doesn’t look victorious, or like he’s looking forward to starting a new life. Physical pain aside - and an amateur amputation would be agonizing - he looks almost like he’s grieving, gritting his teeth through something he feels he has no choice but to do.

Someone did a fantastic meta that I thought I’d reblogged at some point that says something like “this isn’t the devil in his moment of triumph against god; this is an abused boy mutilating himself to spite his father”. I wanted to link it, but I haven’t been able to find it again (if anyone finds it, please let me know so I can add a link).

the self-medicating:

I don’t think he realises this is a form of self-harm, and I don’t think he does it to hurt himself deliberately. But he comes to Earth to overindulge in all the things he can’t have in Hell, all the things he’s been cut off from.

Touch and affection, which he gets through sex. Oblivion, which he gets by drinking. Euphoria, which he gets from drugs. Socialisation, which he gets from being surrounded by people at all times and partying it up 24/7.

It doesn’t matter to him that the touch is from a stranger, it doesn’t matter that the affection only lasts one night, it’s something and that’s more than he’s getting in Hell. He buries himself in those things to forget that he has to go back. He can bury himself in the next line or the next shot or the next attractive body and, just for a little bit, he can forget who he is.

Sending Lucifer to Hell in and of itself is cruel. Angels are clearly social creatures, and he’s been in solitary isolation for billions of years - it’s a miracle he hasn’t gone insane. Yes, he has the demons, but they don’t interact with him by choice and he’s not safe with them. Hell denies Lucifer everything a young person needs to grow into a stable, healthy adult.

the self-sabotage:

We also see that he’s got a tendency to sabotage himself when he’s on a downward spiral. This usually comes out one of two ways - either:

He tries to chase away the people who care about him. This comes from being so terrified of being abandoned and rejected again that he’d rather run them off himself than wait for them to inevitably (in his mind) decide that he’s Not Worth It and leave him. For example:

He tries to push Linda away when he’s grieving after killing Uriel.

He punches Dan in the face and gets himself thrown off the case by Chloe - she’s already warned him she would bench him if he didn’t pull himself together.

He throws Chloe’s initial rejection in her face when he’s on his self-hatred bender in S4.

He’s absolutely vicious to Amenadiel in this scene, when Amenadiel is trying to communicate that he loves Luci and wants to support him.

Or he talks shit about himself. You can always tell when he’s having a bad time; he’ll start coming out with shit like, “I’m the devil, remember, I’m evil.” His real view of himself will slip out from under the mask of confidence and vanity. Chloe cuts right to the heart of this in S4; he’s been told so many times that he’s responsible for all evil that he now believes it. He blames himself, even as he vehemently denies having ever made anyone do anything.

THE SUICIDAL IDEATION:

Jesus fuck, it’s a good thing Lucifer is in therapy.

The first time we see him actively attempt suicide is in 1x13 when he’s being framed for shooting the street preacher. It’s a case of “the straw that broke the camel’s back” here - he’s been having a really rough time lately:

Groups of zealots are cornering him in the street accusing him of murders he didn’t commit

Being accused of things he didn’t do is already a trigger for him

His own brother tried to have him assassinated.

His bodyguard and oldest friend betrayed him.

He’s just found out the detective makes him vulnerable.

He knows Dan - and therefore probably other work colleagues as well - think he’s got something to do with the satanic murders.

And now Chloe is turning her gun - and apparently her back - on him. She’s no different from anyone else. He was stupid to ever trust her, etc, etc, and now he’s spiralling.

She was the last rock keeping his head above the ocean at this point, and when she goes to arrest him, he goes under. We see that mania come out very quickly; he starts laughing hysterically and tries to goad an inexperienced uni into shooting him. He pretends to have a gun, knowing the cop will fear for his life and instinctively shoot. Since Chloe’s right there at the time, and he now knows he can be hurt around her, that’s attempted suicide. He wants to die. He even admits to Amenadiel he was trying to achieve “a good death…or at least a nice and messy one.”

No one ever addresses this bloody hell why

And then there’s the case with the shooter in the hospital. Lucifer’s grieving Uriel at this point, and he’s up to his eyeballs in self-loathing. He killed his brother. He really is the monster everyone believes he is. He’s spent the entire episode up to this point trying to make people punish him. He’s riled up Chloe at a crime scene and she’s told him off. He’s punched Dan, and Dan didn’t retaliate. He turned down Linda’s offer of continued therapy in a way that’s almost a challenge; he wants her to snap back at him. And when none of these little punishments are enough for him, he escalates and escalates and eventually he steps in front of the sniper’s intended victim and, again, goads him to shoot. He goes a bit further this time, though; he outright begs the sniper to shoot him, and reams the guy out when he says he didn’t think Lucifer deserved it.

Again, he knows Chloe is there. This is a suicide attempt. He even admits to Chloe that he didn’t care about the intended victim, he was just trying to get himself killed. She doesn’t believe him. And it’s never addressed again, and I’m salty.

Anyway I hope this clarifies some stuff for you anon? and I’m sorry it took so long to finish I rewrote this so many times for Maximum Sensitivity and kept including stuff and taking stuff out and it got SO LONG and i had to condense it and i have A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OKAY I HAD A LOT TO SAY

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer on fox #netflix lucifer #lucifer morningstar #tw suicidal ideation #tw self harm #tw child abuse #tw narc parents #tw attempted suicide #a+ celestial parenting #celestial family #lucifer meta #i dont think ive covered everything but fuck it im posting anyway bc if i rewrite this again im gonna scream

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