#please excuse me i am intoxicated and not on my computer
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✦ 𝟎𝟎𝟏 ✦ 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐚𝐲...
© 2023 Intoxicated-Chan, I do not allow my work to be copied, translated, modified, adapted, or put on any other platform without permission. None of the photos used belong to me! Credits to @/cafekitsune for the divider!!
Series’ Masterlist // Wattpad Vers.
(A/n) // One thing I’m having trouble with is, will this be up to your guys standards? Will you guys be happy with the finally product? When it comes to posts like these, I always think twice and spend more time rewriting everything. But now I am like the final writing and I hope you guys as well. Thank you all for reading, and I thank you all. Also there are Saints Row references.
Content Warnings // The purchase of firearm ammo, guns, photo taking, mentions of scars…
Word Count // 1.3k
It was strange for a gun shop to open so late at night, but it was that time when I stepped in, that night when I finally met him…
“Welcome back.” The worker snickers at the blonde’s tired state, “Another rough night?” The blonde sadly nods as he walks into the employee’s room.
The next time, there was an accident. You were leaving the shop as he came in, you shoulder hit him, “I’m sorry.” You apologize.
“No worries.” He widely smiles.
And the next was when you finally got a better view of him. The worker and him were talking amongst themselves as you searched for a new gun, “So, I’ve already stocked most of the items, all you need to do is keep the ammo stocked up and dust. You didn’t do that last time.”
“Sorry.” He hangs his head in shame and then lifts it. He makes eye contact with you, waving with his prosthesis arm and with his usual wide smile.
You wave back at him. If you looked close enough, you could see a beauty mark under his left eye, he had orange round glasses that complimented his bright red jacket. His left arm seemed to be a prosthesis. There was just something about him that just spoke that this man was the embodiment of happiness.
“Vash!” The worker shook his shoulders, “Are you even listening to me?”
You couldn’t help but laugh when the blonde named Vash came up with an excuse for the last time he didn’t dust, “So, that’s his name. Vash.”
You slowly entered the shop, looking around for anyone but no one could be seen. You should’ve expected that when a small lamp was the only light source the shop had on at the moment. As you walked around, you let your index finger run over the table, collecting the forgotten dust. You rub it between your fingers before wiping it on your pants.
You see old weapons and materials left on shelves. You nearly trip on a plate, it clunks under your food. You pick it up and wipe the dust off it, looking over the design. It was carved into the plate. It was great and all but you were looking for someone.
Swallowing nervously, setting the plate to the side, “Hello?” Your voice sounded like a whisper, “Hello?” You try again, louder this time.
And this time, you could hear objects dropping, someone cursing as they made their way through the confusing placement of shelves. Slowly the voice got louder until the familiar man stood in front of you, “Welcome to Friendly Fire!” He stood proudly, arms crossed, and again, smiled widely, “How can I be of assistance?” Cocking his head to the side.
He radiates positive energy. Almost like a puppy, “I’d just like to buy some ammo.” You answer.
“Oh, then come with me.” He leads you to the register where he stands behind, “What kind of ammo would you like to purchase? We range from pistols to explosives.”
“Just a .44 and .45 Shepard.”
He hastily nods, typing a few things into his computer before looking at you, “May I see an ID?” You hand it to him. He takes a moment to look before handing it back to you, “How many?” He asks.
“Um, three for each please.”
He grabs his keys and opens the glass door, coming back up with the ammo in hand, “Here you go.” Typing a few more things, “And your total comes to $150, will you be paying cash or credit?”
“Cash.” Handing him the twenties and a single ten.
He takes the cash and counts, he pops open the register and places the cash in its place, “Would you like a bag?” Handing you the ammo, feeling his fingers slightly touch yours.
You shake your head, using your small bag to store the ammo, “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He smiles, “Have a wonderful night...” He watches you leave the store, “(Y/n).”
Now, you weren’t gonna say that you didn’t know the guy. It’s more like you come here as a regular, mainly because you have been training a good friend of yours. You only saw him when he was starting his shit, never ringing or helping you out until now.
‘How much of an idiot was I? Today was the perfect chance and I blew it!’
Vash very loudly whined like a beaten puppy. His head hitting the desk in defeat as his courage deflates. He was a fool.
But he perks back up, he’s quick to fix himself. With his head held up high and hair fixed, he’s again determined to try again.
‘All right, when I see her, I’ll try again.’
Vash jumps from behind a random shelf, “Welcome back- Oh no!” He catches your falling body but ends up falling with you, on top of you.
“Talk about enthusiasm.” You groan out in pain, hissing.
“I’m so sorry!” He apologizes, still on top of you. But he gets off, flustered and spitting out whatever appears to be an apology, “I-I didn’t mean to scare you!”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Vash helps you stand.
“Um… I’m Vash!”
“I know your name.” You tell him, “I heard your co-worker say it, anyways, I’m (Y/n).”
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yes, yes, you can stop worrying now.”
As you dust yourself off, Vash fixes his hair and clears his throat. Once you finish, “So, are you here to buy more ammo?”
You shake your head, “I’m just waiting for a friend. She went back to the car to grab her ID. She should be here-”
“I’m sorry I took so long!” Meryl pants, holding out her ID, “I got it!” Before she could say anything to you, she saw Vash, “Vash? I didn’t know you were working here?”
Vash awkwardly chuckles, “I told you a few days ago.”
“Like I was saying, Meryl placed a package. We’re just here to pick it up and register it.” You explain to Vash.
Vash nods, now standing behind the register, “Can I get a name and phone number?” You stand back as Meryl tells him the necessary information. After the ID check, he looks through the mountains of packages until he finds the one with her name on it, “Here you go.” Handing it to her, “Anything else?”
“Nope. Thanks Vash.”
“No problem, Meryl.” He clears his throat again, “Have a wonderful night, you guys.”
“You too.” Meryl responds.
4:42 AM - VASH’S HOUSE
It wasn’t everyday Vash found someone he could love, partially due to how much he over-thought everything, which is why his partners never stayed. His brother wasn’t much of a helper, even though he knew Nai cared for him, Nai believed he didn’t need anyone.
Vash tiredly slips off his jacket, then his turtleneck. The predominant scars over his body outlined everything he hated, especially his prosthesis. The second reason no one ever stayed. They found it disgusting, repulsive, even more so since prosthesis was nearly if not his entire arm. They saw him as a liability, nothing more.
But he remembers when your warm fingers touched his, it made his heart race. And if he was being honest, he wanted to spend more time with you, but when he saw Meryl… It wasn’t jealousy, more like it found it strange that she was hanging out with you. But the more he thought about it, the more it made his heart ache.
He falls back on his bed, grabbing his camera, he clicks through the many photos he had taken of you. All of them were of you, not noticing the camera. He smiled, feeling his face heat up.
It made him feel better, afterall, you only lived a few blocks away from him.
Taglist // @themaskismyface ,
#x reader#x female reader#vash x reader#trigun x reader#trigun stampede#trigun vash#trigun meryl#tw stalking#tw photo taking#x you#vash x y/n#vash x you
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graves what if. what if batmna kiss gren lantern.
BAPMAM KEES GRE N LNATERN??????!??!!?!
#please excuse me i am intoxicated and not on my computer#batlantern#asks#answered#apieceofandrewforyou#north.img#north.txt
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What do you Remember
Kaminari x Reader
Word Count: 1944
Happy birthday to one (1) Denki Kaminari
Kaminari says some things and doesn’t remember them the next morning.
--
Denki Kaminari gives you a thumbs up from the hospital bed, a loopy grin on his face. This isn’t his usual ‘I overused my quirk and just need to rest’ look. No, this is the ‘I am loopy on meds’ look. When you had gotten the call that he was in the hospital, you dropped everything and rushed over.
“You the roommate?” a nurse approaches you. With the bags under her eyes, you hope she’s nearing the end of her shift. You flash your hero ID and she checks it with people authorized to take the electric hero home.
“I’m here to take him back,” you say and look at your roommate through the glass door. “Anything I should know about?” The nurse hands you her clipboard and points to the places you need to sign.
“He’s on some pretty strong painkillers,” the nurse shrugs, “He’s going to be out of it for a while. Instructions are on the bottle, don’t let him walk for the day or else he could end up back here. Will you be able to pick him up to carry him?” She checks out your physique and you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes. You’re a trained hero. ‘Can you lift him?’ Please. You could lift three of him without breaking a sweat.
To prove how capable you are, you walk into the room and scoop Kaminari bridal style out of the bed. The nurse raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. She unhooks the last of the monitors from Kaminari and asks if you need a wheelchair to get him out.
“I’ll be fine,” you smile. Kaminari’s blown out eyes widen when you walk out of the hospital.
--
“I live with the best people ever!” Kaminari grins.
“Mhm, we know,” you nod. Kaminari had been rambling the entire ride home, his words a stream of unfiltered thoughts. He had already told you how pretty the trees looked when covered with blossoms. Five times.
“And I have the best partner ever too!” Kaminari gushes as you settle him on the couch. Sero watches this with amusement from the kitchen.
After graduating from UA, the three of you had found a cheap apartment while you all figured out how to navigate the world of being full-fledged heroes.
“Yup,” you dismiss his words and focus on keeping anything and everything the man could want in the next 24 hours. His job was to stay on the couch, but knowing him, he would probably try to walk around in the next 15 minutes. “You and Sero make a great hero team.”
“Nooo, not Sero!” Kaminari frowns, “I’m dating Y/N!” You drop the TV remote in your hand and turn to face him.
“E-EXCUSE ME?” you sputter. Dating? I think I would know if I was dating someone.
“Oh this is gonna be good,” Sero says and pulls out his phone. You can only assume he started recording Kaminari because he asks rather loudly, “Kami, can you tell me one more time who you’re dating?”
“Yeah!” Kaminari’s face lights up in delight and he props himself up on his elbows, “I’m dating Y/N! They’re super sweet and they make the best pancakes on the weekend.”
“He’s right, you do make good pancakes,” Sero interjects. You look on in mute horror, wondering what else Kaminari will say.
“An’ I love ‘em so much!” Kaminari flops back onto the couch. Maybe he could recover in his bedroom instead of the living room where Sero could harass him for more information.
“OKAY I think it’s time someone went to bed,” you say.
“No!” Sero groans, “I want to hear some more from our esteemed roommate!” The shit-eating grin pasted on his face irritates you to no end. Kaminari barely knows what he’s saying, this wouldn’t be stuff he’d normally say. Hell, he wouldn’t even say this if blackout drunk.
“Sero, turn the camera off,” you say and pick Kaminari up in another bridal style scoop. A shutter clicks and you glare at Sero. Narrowing your eyes, you have a silent conversation conveyed through looks with the black-haired man.
“Fine,” Sero says and pockets his phone.
“You’re like a Greek god,” Kaminari stares up at you in wonder.
“Yup, sure I am, Kami,” you sigh. If only the morphine could wear off faster. Maybe it would have been better to leave him in the hospital for a while longer.
“You’re super strong. Can you bench press me?” Kaminari continues, his hands trail up and down the muscles on your arms. You try to ignore how pleased you feel from the praise.
“I bet I could.”
“Yeah, don’t you want to bench press him?” Sero snickers, getting ready to pull his phone out again.
“No, and don’t you have work to get to or something?” you ask pointedly.
“Nah, who else is going to take care of Kaminari’s bathroom needs?” Sero shrugs. That had already been agreed upon. Sero would take care of bathroom things and you would be in charge of keeping him from messing up his leg even further. Sero’s idea of taking care of him would probably include taping him in place which… would that honestly be so bad?
“Fine,” you huff, “Just keep your comments to yourself.” Sero mock salutes you and starts picking up the things you placed around the couch for Kaminari.
You spend the rest of the afternoon keeping the blond entertained. For the most part it’s easy, but the few times Kaminari tries to leave the comfort of his bed, you had to coax him to stay there. Sero, true to his word, stops trying to get Kaminari to say outlandish things and ends up leaving the two of you alone.
By ten o’clock, you’re exhausted. Your body aches to be in the comfort of your own bed, and not on a well-worn computer chair.
“Alright, Kami,” you sigh, “No getting up now or else I’ll have to stay in here.” Kaminari shoots up in bed at your words. His eyes are wide and he almost looks… panicked?
“No, you can't do that. If Y/N sees you,” Kaminari looks around the room and his voice drops to a whisper, “They’ll think I’m cheating on them.” Cheating? What is he talking about? Does he know that I’m right in front of him? “I could never do that! I’m not a cheater. I don’t know what I’d do if they left me.” Kaminari tries to get out of bed and away from you.
As gently as possible, you push him back onto the bed. Kneeling at the side of the bed, you hold Kaminari’s hand. “Kami, Kami,” you say. Kaminari tries to yank his hand away from yours, sheer terror written on his face. “It’s me! It’s Y/N.” When you say your own name, Kaminari stops struggling and looks at you. As if seeing you for the first time, the tension in his body melts away and a goofy grin takes over his mouth.
“You’re here!” he says softly and tugs your hands towards himself. You’re pulled into an awkward position over Kaminari’s lap. Slender fingers cup your face as he pulls you into a kiss.
Your lips tingle from the brief amount of contact, but it’s an intoxicating feeling and you can’t pull away. When Kaminari releases your mouth, he sighs and flops over on the bed. Soft snores fill the room, and you’re left frozen over him wondering what the hell just happened. Your whole body feels like it’s been electrocuted, but is that from Kaminari’s quirk or your own reaction to the kiss?
“Did he go down alright?” Sero asked when you left Kaminari’s room.
“W-What?” you ask, your head still in the clouds.
“To sleep,” Sero says, “Did you have any trouble getting Kaminari to fall asleep?”
“Oh. No.” you say and robotically move towards your room, “I’m tired though. Night.”
--
“Good morning!” Kaminari chirps and walks out of his bedroom. It’s a bit early for him to be walking, but you don’t have the energy to tell him to sit. After the kiss last night, you don’t want to carry him anywhere and make things awkward.
“You would not believe the dreams I had!” Kaminari continues, “There was a Greek god and- What?” By now he notices you and Sero staring at him.
“Kami, what do you remember from last night?” you ask slowly.
“Uh, to be one hundred percent honest, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s my imagination,” Kaminari scratches his head nervously.
“I have some grade A entertainment for us to watch,” Sero grins.
“Don’t you dare,” you snap.
“He already said it, might as well fill him in,” Sero shrugs. Your eyes narrow and you internally beg for Sero to stop.
“Or,” you hiss, “We can let things drop and pretend it didn’t happen since he clearly doesn’t remember it.” Kaminari eyes dart between you and Sero.
“You’re making me nervous, what happened?” he asks.
“I can’t do this,” you mutter and stomp out of the room. Sero’s voice floats through your closed bedroom door.
“Ah, c’mon! His reactions to it all are part of it!”
You bite your nails and wait to hear Kaminari’s reaction. After a minute of silence, Kaminari screeches and Sero howls with laughter. Kaminari’s voice takes on a tint of anger. You can’t hear the words being said, but you can tell it’s a tense conversation.
There’s a tentative knock on the door and Kaminari pokes his head in. A deep crimson blush covers his face.
“So, uh, I guess we need to talk?” he breaks the ice.
“Do you really feel that way about me?” you ask. Kaminari avoids your eyes and slips into your room. He stands with his back against the door, about as far away as possible from you in the small space.
“I mean, yeah…” he admits. There’s a heavy pause as he thinks of what to say next. “Look, if it’s going to make things awkward, I can crash with Mina and find another place or something. You were the one who found this apartment for us.”
“There’s one thing Sero doesn’t know about,” you say. One thing that I alone know.
“What?”
You beckon him closer. Kaminari edges forward slowly. You wait until he’s directly in front of you. Tugging his shirt towards you, he bends and his ear is next to your mouth.
“You kissed me.” You pull him towards you and he topples on top of you. It’s reminiscent of last night, except this time you’re the one who’s going to make a move. Golden eyes meet yours as you whisper, “And I kissed you back.” Softly, you pull him into another electrifying kiss. This time you’re sure that it’s your heart and not Denki’s quirk causing the sensation. The rich, earthy scent of the ground after it rains for the first time in a long time surrounds you.
“Wait does that mean that you like me too?” Denki asks as you pull away.
“No, it means I like kissing random guys whenever I can,” you say sarcastically. Before he can say anything or take your comment seriously, you add, “Of course it means I like you!”
Denki pulls you in for another kiss. It’s slow and you greedily take as much as you can. Before lightheadedness can set in, you both break apart.
“You know,” you say nonchalantly, “You’re not supposed to be walking for a while longer. Maybe you can stay here and we can cuddle or something?” Denki flops next to you and pulls you close.
“I think I can do that.”
--
A/N: instead of starting a Denki multichapter thing, I went through my WIPs and found an idea I hadn’t touched in a while :x
@kiliakit @redbeanteax @burnedbyshoto @hisoknen @secondhand-trash @bratwritings @ttamaki @tomurasprincess @bakugous-forehead @jojosmilktea
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The Flowers Always Know
Description: When a mad scientist uses you as an experiment while you’re on holiday, the Heroics only just manage to save you. And in your recovery you become very close to the leader of the group.
(Slow burn)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Language.
Link to Masterlist
Comment: Another day of side-effects where my head really hasn’t been in the game. But a little fun stuff to pass the time has managed to crop up.
So sorry for the tease ending... I blame the headaches.
Chapter 27
The Chef, Greg, had personally brought you extra leftovers during the five weeks you were living in the cell, training and learning about your abilities. He knew about your abnormal energy-consumption, and had become concerned when you never ordered more than a double portion of food, no matter how exhausted you were.
So, he’d come to give you the leftovers one evening, and you’d explained that it felt like you’d be stealing from others that might need it, if you ordered six or even eight portions.
After that, he’d begun saving all the leftovers every day, and bringing you that for the extra portions you otherwise wouldn’t have ordered.
“I may have to make Greg my Best Man.”
“He’d probably decline. He’s nice, but he does have standards.”
“Ouch…”
“He doesn’t know you, Cujo.”
“Okay, seriously, what is up with that?”
“It’s just an accurate description.”
“I am not a fucking dog.”
“Yes, you are. It’s just that, ordinarily, you’re a puppy. You just have that lovable puppy-face, with the eyes and the grin that can melt the coldest of hearts. And then, you bare your teeth and growl, and you look fucking terrifying.”
“I do?”
“Um – yes. Unequivocally – yes. It’s amazing.”
“Wait… you like my Cujo-quality?”
“I like that you have that side, when you need it. I like that it comes out almost exclusively to protect the things you love. And I have to admit that I like the fact that even the remotest possibility that William actually had tried something, elicited that kind of a response from you.”
“I was a little shocked at how strongly I reacted to that. Just the thought… I would’ve killed him, if he had. Not because you… belong to me. But because you were weak and unable to stop anyone that might have tried. Thank god William’s even more of a puppy than I am.”
“Will is more of a Greyhound.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you know – sleek, effective, streamlined.”
“Okay, let’s just drop the whole dog-topic already.”
“And, just for the record – of course I belong to you. Ass-hat.”
He practically beamed at you.
“Ditto. Mama bear.”
You’d been talking while walking back from lunch, and when you got back to your office, Anita was there. Just standing in the middle of the room, with her signature scowl in full effect.
“Hi, mom. Wow, you’re actually in the office, it must be serious.”
“Fifty noise-complaints in the last hour – is serious.”
You both stopped smiling, and threw a nervous glance at one another, but she just huffed and turned to you.
“Have you had yourself checked out by medical, yet?”
“No… why would I…?”
“Because human beings don’t possess the biological imperative to breed, to the point where their libidos take control of their bodies.”
You had actually checked both your offices for cameras and microphones a good while back, and found nothing. And there weren’t any fucking flowers in your office!
“How the hell do you know that? Seriously… How?”
She just rolled her eyes.
“Get your ass down to medical. Now.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“Whatever it is, I feel fine now, which means they probably wouldn’t be able to detect anything abnormal, so I’m gonna finish my work for the day, and then I’ll go to medical.”
You walked over to your desk as you spoke, and as you sat down, you remembered something.
“And by the way, where you in charge of selecting my substitute while I was gone?”
“Yes. Petra wasn’t ideal.”
“You don’t say. If I’m ever gone for an extended period of time again, no one sets foot in my fucking office. Got it?”
“Did you just try and give me an order, loco?”
“I’m not trying anything. I’m telling you. No one.”
She threw you a kinda skewed smile and then turned around to leave. But as she crossed the threshold she stopped and looked back at you with pure steel in her eyes.
“4pm. If you’re not at medical by then, I’ll drag you there by your ear.”
“Try it. Please.”
She left and you sighed and looked at Marcus, who had sat down on the couch again, one arm draped over the backrest while he’d watched you take on Máma.
“Are you absolutely sure you feel fine? Because I’m all kinds of hot and bothered right now.”
“50 noise-complaints, Marcus. That’s half the damned building.”
“And like I said: fuck ‘em.”
“Please go away so I can think.”
“Only if you promise to call me the moment you feel any amount of craving. I’m serious.”
“You think I want to feel like that again? Of course I’ll call, and you’d better pick up. I don’t care if HQ’s on fire.”
“You have my word, famb.”
“You know, your list of nicknames is getting a bit ridiculously long.”
“Oh, I haven’t even started on the real one’s yet.”
“Real ones?”
“Prometida, esposa, amada, mi corazón…”
“Okay, okay, have as many as you like, jeez.”
“Which one’s your favourite?”
“You already know.”
He got up from the sofa and came over to kiss you before he left. His lips lingered long after the kiss ended.
“Hermosa…”
He was intoxicating. You put a hand up on his chest and pushed him away gently.
“Get out of here, gorgeous. Mama’s got work to do.”
“Oh, that’s mean. You know how I love it when you talk all husky like that.”
“I’ll call you if I need you.”
He walked away looking disappointed, but also kind of expectant, like he was looking forward to getting you back later. You smiled and shook your head after the door closed behind him.
You did get a lot of work done after that, and even if you were still miles behind from catching up to where you’d been 7 weeks ago, it still felt good to have gotten back on track. Especially on what had been possibly the weirdest day of your life. Which was saying something.
Your libido stayed calm and behaved for the rest of the workday, but you did see Anita’s point in getting yourself checked over, and so you were planning on going to the med-bay.
But at 3:30 you were working on your computer, looking up rare metals for an upcoming build, and you sort of stumbled over a site for wedding-rings.
You were just gonna take a quick peak, scrolling through the various options, and getting progressively more worked up as you saw the price-tags.
You were just about to leave the page and go back to work, when an ad in the corner popped up.
Wedding-dresses.
Fuck.
You clicked.
“If you thought I was kidding about the ear, you were sorely mistaken.”
You startled at the sound of her voice, and a puff of energy escaped you, sending papers flying everywhere.
“Thanks a lot, Anita. Why don’t you give me a heart-attack while you’re at it?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not my fault you were so engrossed in that screen you didn’t notice me. What were you looking at, anyway?”
Had half an hour already passed? You just clicked on that ad a second ago… And why was she looking at you like that?
“Just research.”
“Mhm. Let’s go.”
“Alright, just let me get these papers off the floor.”
As expected, since the event seemed to have passed, the medical exam didn’t reveal anything, and Anita seemed unnecessarily peeved about that.
“What are you so upset about? What exactly did you think they’d find?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Never mind, my ass. You all but dragged me to this exam, and now you’re disappointed. So, spill. What’s the deal?”
“I just hoped that maybe… you increased enthusiasm was…”
“Was…?”
“Alright, most women experience increased sensitivity when they’re pregnant. I just wanted to be sure.”
You sort of half froze midway through pulling your pants back on, and your hands involuntarily went to your abdomen.
“Oh… I never even considered…”
“I’m sorry, niña. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, I’m not upset. God, I don’t even know what I am.”
You finished dressing and sat down on a chair, letting your head fall into your hands.
“Eight months ago, I was just a designer, going on a fucking vacation. Now, I don’t even know what the hell I am anymore, much less what to do. Every time I think I’m starting to get a handle on things, something else happens and I’m lost again.”
She tapped your leg with her cane, ushering you to look at her.
“What you are, is my son’s fiancé. My granddaughter’s adoptive mother. You’re smart, highly capable and stubborn, kind and caring, but abrasive when the situation requires it. You’re everything you need to be. And that’s all you ever really need to know about yourself.”
You drew a deep breath.
“Do you think he made the right choice? With me?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Thank you.”
You called Marcus to let him know how the exam had gone, and he was just about to pick up Missy, so since you had your own car you told him you’d race him home.
But you decided to stop by Amanda’s house on the way. You wanted to talk to both of them, but her place was closer.
When you walked in at home, Missy was in the living room playing a video-game with Noodles, A Capella and Wild Card. It had been a while since she’d had any friends over, and you smiled when you saw how much fun she was having.
“Hey, Alma! Wanna see me crush these guys for the second time?”
“Any day of the week, angel, but I gotta talk to your dad right now.”
“Okay, suit yourself!”
You laughed and walked into the kitchen to find him opening pizza-boxes and distributing slices onto plates.
“Hey, sweetheart, sorry, this wasn’t planned, they just spontaneously asked if they could come over as I was picking her up.”
“Honey, why are you explaining yourself?”
“I don’t know… it’s just, with the weird day you’ve had and how you seemed a little down after the exam, I thought that maybe you weren’t quite in the mood for a house full of teenagers.”
“No matter how I feel, Missy’s entitled to enjoy herself with her friends. I would never wanna deprive her of that.”
“No, I know. I just worry about you.”
“Yeah, I do too, sometimes. But that’s usually when I remember I have you, and it all feels better.”
He smiled and asked you to help him carry out the food to the living room, and once you’d done that, you sat down at the dinner table to eat yourselves.
“So… I may have googled wedding-dresses today.”
He beamed.
“Really? Did you manage to narrow down any preferences? Don’t give me any specifics, by the way.”
“I did, I think. Or, at least, I found a lot of stuff I didn’t like, so I guess that helps. I don’t know, I feel like I need to see them, touch them, to actually get a sense of what I like.”
He beamed even more.
“I really like the sound of this. I’m sure Amaire would come with you if you asked.”
“Yeah, I kind of already asked them to, this weekend.”
He was fucking radiating joy at that point. He got up and took your hand, leading you to the bedroom and closing the door behind you.
Then he reached into his pocket and fished something out. His smile turned just a hint of insecure, as he held up the ring he’d chosen for you.
It was gold-plated steel, with a single row of small diamonds sunk into the centre of the band all the way around. A sturdy and solid piece that wouldn’t break or lose its shape.
While you admired it, he started trying to explain his choice.
“I know you’re not much of a jewellery-girl, so I figured we’d skip the whole engagement ring plus wedding-band. You can wear it right away if you want and then just take it off before the ceremony, or you can wait and put it on then, either way is fine with me. That is, if you like it? If you don’t, we’ll take it back and you can pick something else. It just felt right as soon as I saw it. You’re not the frail silver band type of person, and I know you’d only get annoyed with a big rock getting in the way and getting caught in stuff. You work with your hands and so I figured something sturdy but elegant. I have a matching one just without the diamonds. Please say something before I pass out from oxygen-depravation…”
“I love it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
You both beamed.
“Can I put it on you?”
“You better.”
He slipped it on your finger and it fit perfectly. And for the first time it really sunk in that you were gonna marry this man. The love of your life.
It felt like a really long time until the kids went home and Missy went to bed, with her headphones on.
“I totally forgot, we need to go bed-shopping, honey.”
“I don’t know, a mattress on the floor might be preferable until we know the extent of your ‘heat-situation’.”
“Mm. Good point. Although, breaking in a new bed is always fun.”
“Hermosa.”
“What?”
“Stop talking and get undressed. I’ve been waiting for this all night.”
Authors’ Note: I love criticism, don’t be shy to let me know if there’s anything you like/don’t like/have questions about.
@blueeyesatnight
@farfromjustordinary
@allmyspideys
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#marcus moreno#marcus moreno x reader#marcus moreno fic#we can be heroes#we can be heroes fic#pedro pascal fanfiction#pedro pascal characters
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Faking, Falling > Part 7
Harrison Osterfield x Reader (Fake dating! Unrequited love switcheroo!)
Word count: ~1.5k words
Warning: Swearing, angst but...
Summary: Never miss the opportunities that have fallen on your footsteps.
<< PART 6 [ MASTERLIST ] PART 8 >>
"So, mom thinks you're my boyfriend." You said, pressing your lips in a thin line.
"Yeah, I can definitely understand that. But why, instead of correcting, you are leading her in this misunderstanding?" Harrison scrunched his brows, looking sharply at you.
"Umm... It's because... You know... Well... umm..."
"What? I can't understand!"
"Okay okay," You nodded your head deciding to give him an explanation, "So, the thing is. I know my mom well. She is hellishly impressed by you and now if I say we both aren't together, she's gonna keep pushing me to literally do something that we both start dating. And you can understand, it's a terrible idea." You said holding your head by your finger pretending as if you were getting a headache. He scratched his head at the reason, still unsatisfied.
"So why don't you tell her, you aren't in good terms with me? It's no doubt you hate me..."
"Of course, I hate you. But..."
"But what?"
You groaned this time, pressing your temples by the pads of your fingers.
"I know my dad well too. If he comes to know all the terrible things you did to me, you have no idea how screwed up, you'll be. I am just doing this in order to save your ass." You said, rolling your eyes. Harrison licked his lips as his eyes roamed across the room.
"He's just a bit protective over me, so basically if he knows, you're in danger," You repeated.
"Okay?... But what about Simon? What if it creates confusion and trouble in between your relationship?" Harrison asked, his gaze falling to his shoes as he absent-mindedly taps his foot on the floor.
"What has Simon had to do with this? And what relationship?"
Harrison's head shot up, his forehead puckered as he spoke, "Aren't you both dating?"
"No. Why will I date a jerk?" You rolled your eyes again, hands folded to your chest as your eyes concentrated to the side.
"I don't understand. I mean before that... message... you guys were going on a date, right? So, it didn't work?"
"It did even after your 'message disaster'." You looked at him, rolling your eyes for the third time.
God, where did you learn that? Nevertheless, you continued, "He literally stole my designs!!! I was almost on the verge of being tagged for plagiarism for my own work!! But thank god, I had a 'dated' folder on my computer proving the originality. So of course, I broke up." You sighed dropping your arms to rest on your waist, sighing remembering the struggle of getting out of that mess.
"Oh. I tried to warn you about this but..."
Your eyes went wide at his words.
"About this? How would you know?"
"Yeah. He has previously used his senior's work in the wrong way." Harrison answered.
"So why the fuck, you didn't tell me?!" Your eyebrows scrunched, your tone was sceptical.
"I wanted to but don't you remember Simon said you won't believe and I didn't have proofs and you hated me---"
"Oh. My. God... Wow, Harrison." You fake laughed.
"Listen---" He tried to defend himself but you didn't give him any chance, immediately cutting him off. Your laughs subsided only to be replaced by bitterness.
"Stop making excuses! This is terrible! You're just trying to transfer the blame on me. Like it was my mistake that I hated you and all. It's not a valid excuse. It's not even an excuse!!" The pitch of your voice was on its highest for sure and you hoped Harrison would get submissive by your behaviour but instead, he got angry.
"Excuse?!" He repeated the word as if he was hearing it for the first time.
"So, you're pretending you would listen to me and believe me? Really Y/n? Because the only last thing I remember is you literally slapping me across my face when I wanted to apologize and explain!!!" His voice was way louder than yours but you didn't let yourself suppress under his words.
"Oh wow. Now you want me to apologize for that slap?"
"What the hell! You are making things up. I never said that. It's you who always—"
"Look again you're blaming me!" You puffed out air, sounding irritated.
"What! I am not blaming you. Look, see-see, you're still not ready to listen!!!" He said throwing his hands up in frustration.
"Why would I listen to you anyway? What have you ever done to make me trust your words? All I know is you're a fuckboy, who never cares about anyone's feelings! All I remember is you thinking everyone else is absolutely inferior to you! Why would I listen to an asshole?!" You said louder.
"I JUST DROPPED YOU HOME!" He yelled back.
"Wow. Now you're counting this. Great. You know what Harrison, I don't need your help at all. Take your money, I don't want to owe you anything!" You took the wallet off your pocket and grabbed a handful of bills but before you could divert the money in his direction he held your wrist. You squirmed your wrist in his tight grip only for your wallet and money to drop on the floor.
"What the hell?! Do you think it's about money, Y/n?! Am I this low?! BLOODY HELL!" He dropped your hand and took a step closer to you. You took a step back to each step he took forward only for your back to hit on the wall and he was standing just an inch from you. His eyes felt like blaring flames and you could feel yourself squirming under his intense gaze.
"I was just trying to be nice!!! I am trying to genuinely change. I am trying to change my attitude, my personality, everything you described me with, BUT YOU AREN'T ALLOWING ME TO DO SO!!!" His voice was at the loudest of what you have ever heard. You flinched at his words and immediately he took two steps back.
"Sorry," He mumbled, afraid that he made you afraid. Tears pricked at the corner of your eyes. And maybe he noticed them.
"Please, Please I didn't mean that. I---" He said trying to get closer to you, only for you to make a cold 'don't' gesture by your hand. You clenched your jaw trying hard not to let the tears spill. Your nails dug into the flesh of your palms as you exhaled deeply.
"I will tell my mom you have an emergency and can't stay. I will make up something after. Whatever, you can leave." You said moving your head to the side.
"Please listen---" Harrison tried to softly grab your hand but you swat it away looking much more furious than ever.
"We don't want it anymore. Why waste time?" You said. Before Harrison could even make out your words, you had moved out of the room slamming the door behind. He heard you calling for your mom.
"Oh, Lord. Shit! I am an idiot." He cursed himself realising what he should have realized a lot earlier. He rushed out. His steps were hasty. He saw you walking across the corridor. You heard your mom's footsteps approaching in your direction but before you could walk any further, you were dragged back. Your back was once again pressed to the wall. His blue eyes were boring into yours.
"What now Harrison? I was just about to end... Mmh."
Definitely, you weren't expecting this. He had cupped your cheeks in his hands and his lips were on yours. You couldn't shut your eyes but yet your vision felt blurry. The tip of his spectacles was lightly pressed against your forehead while his eyes were closed. It wasn't exactly a kiss. It just felt like his mouth was pressed against yours, no movement but yet it did make you forget everything for a moment. No matter his lips were a bit chapped against yours but his breath was intoxicating.
"Y/n were you calling me... Oh my god. Do these things inside."
Your eyes widened at your mom's voice and finally, your blurred vision was backed to normal. You heard your mom leaving and getting away from where you both were caught.
'Caught' — Was it even an appropriate word?
After your mom was gone, Harrison slowly pulled away. Your eyes were still wide open like a reindeer caught in headlights.
"Why did you do that?" Your voice was surprisingly like a whisper this time.
"If the opportunity to make you change your perception about me has itself fallen right in front of me, I realised I should not miss it."
------
IF YOU CAN’T ADD YOURSELF, JUST TELL ME/SEND ASK AND I’LL TAG YOU.
PERMANENT TAGLIST (Everything I write):
@acceptance07 // @hollisellers2003* // @parker-holland-osterfield // @osterfieldholland01 // @jjasalem // @zselenophile // @miraclesoflove //@yourmum792* // @maryosprinkle // @crazyfreaker // @practicallylivesonline // @trustfundparker // @emcsii04 // @asmilinghopelessromantic // @
Faking, Falling - Haz x Reader Series:
@haz-the-divvy-div-div // @avenirectioner // @kisses-holland // @tominhoodies* // @hazarchive a.k.a @deleteidentity // @yourmum95 // @alt-ernativewonderland // @justasmisunderstoodasloki // @darlingosterfield // @osterfield-holland-andcompany // @tomhollandthing // @veronicas-littleworld // @still-awake-daydreaming // @fic-lover // @v-valz-n // @justchillinhereandthere // @peter-man-parker // @wizliar // @just-a-littlebit-of-everything // @gioandreolli // @
All Harrison Osterfield x Reader content (Series + One-shots):
@tomhaz // @v-valz-n // @marvellously-marvel-ish // @
#harrison osterfield#harrison osterfield fanfiction#harrison osterfield imagine#harrison osterfield fanfic#harrison osterfield x reader#harrison osterfield blurb#harrison osterfield fic#harrison osterfield x you#harrison osterfield x y/n#haz osterfield#haz osterfield imagine#haz osterfield fanfic#haz osterfield moodboard#haz osterfield fanfiction#harrison osterfield Moodboard#faking falling#fake dating
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↬ killing me softly.
date: march 2020 - september 2020.
location: ash’s apartment studio.
word count: 2,018 words, excluding lyrics.
summary: ash: i am so sad, i am so lonely, i want someone to love me, my mental health is terrible. there, that’s the whole solo. no need to read it.
triggers: mentions of nightmares, death, and alcohol. blink and you’ll miss it suicidal ideation.
notes: creative claims verification.
march 2020.
the escaping memories of a nightmare shake ash awake in the middle of the night and by the time he’s regained his senses, he’s sitting up ramrod straight in his bed, the darkness of his room closing in around him like death.
the remnants of the dream are thin and wispy, like the thinnest clouds covering the moon and he grasps at what remains, only to come up with a few images that don’t connect to each other.
a dark street, cold metal.
time twisting in on itself and breaking down. the meeting of eyes and the flashing omen of years of torment.
his body crumpled on the hard black ground. the looming sense of death he’d had the chance to outrun and had only asked to come to him faster.
his heart cracking like a shattered television screen and his mind going white for the rest of time like some undiscovered stage of intoxication.
screaming.
howling.
back to the beginning and through the flames of hell all over again.
he nearly topples off the edge of his bed reaching for the light on his nightstand and only when its light shines its halo does his heart begin to calm its beating.
before it can ease completely, ash takes a pen out of his drawer, forgoing the paper he also keeps there to write two lines on the skin of the inside of his right arm in a sleepy scrawl:
i’d be howling for you
before the shadows drag me under.
nightmares come to haunt him nearly every time he closes his eyes for days after that and the feeling he awakes with is always eerily similar.
it’s the fear of falling and the pain of every bone in his body shattering on impact upon hitting the ground.
he’d heard once on the playground in elementary school that you can’t die in your dreams. it’s a defense mechanism by your brain, they’d claimed with all the haughtiness of a know-it-all fifth grader.
ash knows now they’d been wrong. his mind is only at its most destructive when left unattended.
august 2020.
the nightmare only comes once a month or so now and it’s not something he’d have thought to raise in therapy if there hadn’t been a particularly bad episode where his manager had nearly been driven to swerving off the road by ash gasping awake in the back of the van on a way to a schedule.
she suggests writing down what plagues his mind at night when he can’t sleep, so he records a stream of consciousness that very night.
- did i lock the door?
- i hope those girls waiting outside of the building today didn’t find a way to get in.
- this apartment is too big.
- i’m lonely.
- should i call
- why am i doing this?
he stops.
early september 2020.
he’s so tired. it’s a shot to his ego to admit, but he’s on the verge of tears when the nightmare wakes him again and he’s not sure if it’s because of how much it had rattled him or because he’s been damned to another sleepless night.
ten minutes later, he’s in his kitchen with a glass of water in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling through his contacts.
he passes by his mom’s number, his dad, hyoyeon’s, miyeon’s, jaewon’s.
he stops at youngjoo’s.
she can’t give him what he needs either, but, god, is he good at shaping her into the illusion of what he wants.
is he, though?
if he is, then why does he feel so lonely all of the time? why does his apartment feel too big and the emptiness inside of his body only grow, despite the fighting to put out the music he wants and taking the leap to go to therapy again and the success he’s seen in his professional life this year?
he’s so tired of searching for coping mechanisms in those who never asked to be used. should he call her and tell her that instead? or would he wake her? interrupt her night with someone who means more to her than he does? would she care at all if he said he can’t do this anymore?
this.
pretending sex means something it can’t? bringing her back between his sheets like a drug he’s sickly accepted his reliance on?
fighting for meaning in a life he can’t shake the feeling doesn’t have much to it at all?
the pain of his teeth presses into his lip and he keeps scrolling to the very end of his contacts where only one character identifies a number he should have deleted a year ago.
if he called, would he take him back? if ash begged and pleaded and apologized and swore he wanted to run away tonight and spend the rest of their lives together and never look back, would he take him back?
if he did, would the emptiness inside of ash finally go away?
it wouldn’t.
ash doesn’t love him anymore. he can’t see forever with him and that’s how he’d gotten here in the first place.
but it’d once been something real, something good, something that made him feel like he had purpose and a chance at happiness and that light in the distant gets fainter and fainter by the day now and he’s trying so damn hard to be better to the world and to himself and to feed that light so he can become one himself, but nights like this, it all feels so useless.
yeah, it's true, true, i'm stuck in the loop
losing control, i can't get over
in the void, i can't be sober
he switches his glass of water out for drinking vodka straight out of the bottle.
early september 2020.
the song doesn’t get out of his head, even as he tries to beat it back and in a few weeks, he has a rough draft of a track he hadn’t planned on making.
it’s a weird song for him.
it’s not that he’s questioning whether the chord progression is too cliche or if the samples he’s used sound amateur. it’s the entire song, its musical lean and the lyrics that lean more conceptual than he’s used to, that he’s doubting now. they’re open to interpretation, more of a poem than a story, and it reflects the nightmares he’s been having, but he can’t imagine showing the song to himself three years ago and having any idea it was a song he’d written.
he listens nervously to the same track on repeat over and over again, finding small details to change as an excuse to avoid thinking too much about if he’ll have to scrap the song altogether, or worse, send it out and risk the rejection that could come. he’s been rejected time and time again before, but there are only two fates he can see this song meeting: a release in the exact form he sees it having or being resigned to the depths of his computer files forever, never heard by anyone but him.
it’s different from what he normally does, but not different enough at the same time and that’s what makes him so nervous. he thinks he likes the work he’s done, musically at least, but it’s more experimental than what he’s done before. he hasn’t even had anyone else’s help on crafting the track that he can pass off responsibility to if it’s dubbed entirely amateur, and he doesn’t want to give into the help of anyone else either. this isn’t a song anyone else can touch. it’s his and his alone, and that’s an inflexible fact as set as the rotation of earth or the existence of gravity.
the questions run around in his head as the hi-hats and the dark instrumental rolls into his mind through the dull black headset over his ears while the screen slowly traces farther and farther right on the visual representation of his composition. he’s muted the vocal track so he doesn’t have to pay as much attention to his own voice crooning back at him with a delivery and lyrics he can’t let himself get caught up in if he ever wants to song to have a finished state, and he’s pleased with the instrumental alone.
it’s a little like something he’d create in order to sell it off to someone else who has a more experimental sound, and for a while, he considers the option of never bringing it forth as a possibility for himself. he can try to pass it off to someone else who’s more secure in displaying themselves as a part of this song than ash feels at the moment. no matter how he turns it over in his head, though, for some reason, he can’t bear to do that. this isn’t a song he wants to strip of its personality and give away.
it’s a great piece, honestly. he’s proud of all of the layers to it and how it includes new elements he doesn’t have much experience working with. on the surface, it’s far from the limited acoustic composition and production he’d been so attached to when he’d put out his first album. this is something that he would have never even considered back then, when he was twenty-one and desperate and the music he was releasing was a mirror of twenty-one year-old ash. ash is three years older now—years that have shaped him into a person more in tune with the sound he has in front of him: something a little more unique and a lot darker, jaded and pained and raw. it feels exactly like what he wants to make even beyond the surface changes. it strikes him that even if he stripped the entire instrumental back to a guitar and his voice like he’d been so fond of two years ago, it’d still sound like the ash of today and not the ash of years past, years that feel like whole lifetimes to him—and, in a way, this feels just like twenty-four year old ash. in all the worst ways, perhaps, but twenty-four year old ash nonetheless.
as he considers that idea, a few of the butterflies in his stomach flutter away and leave him with a slightly more peaceful feeling under his skin. he can’t try to shove himself into the safe bubble twenty-one year-old ash had crafted around himself for protection, a thin plastic veneer of false innocence and abject victimhood, doe-eyed, romantic, and lovestruck. ash can still be doe-eyed. he can still be romantic and maybe, with time, he’ll be able to fall back into the vulnerability of being lovestricken, but those don’t need to be the only characteristics with which he defines himself.
if he feels hopeless and broken and dirty, what’s so wrong with putting that into a song? why does it need to be sugar-coated and rose-colored and always, always relatable to everyone and not just himself?
the track loops around.
ash stops it halfway through to unmute the vocal lines of the song and listen to the full track this time, deciding he can’t tear the instrumental alone apart anymore.
listening back, ash finds himself over-analyzing how well-constructed it is in the eyes of critics. should he soften it? harden it? completely rewrite every word? his own exhale of resignation is blocked out by the dark headset over his ears, but with it comes a contrasting feeling of decisiveness in his chest.
he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. it could very well be too dramatic, too self-indulgent, too ‘sadboi trap’. for so long, he’s let himself get caught up in the question of what others want from his writing. always, it’s about who he’s writing for. for someone he wants to woo with pretty words of infatuation or executives he wants to please or other producers he wants to impress.
this one is therapy.
this one is for him.
late september 2020.
“are you still having nightmares?”
his therapist asks the question as if she’s wondering what he’d had for dinner last night.
“it’s been a month now. i’m not sure if they’ve decided not to come back or if i never let them leave in the first place.”
#fmdverification#&& when you're screaming but they only hear you whisper | self para#&& bring color to my skies | character development#&& queued
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1015.
5k Survey LXIX
3501. Is 'no glove, no love' your STRICT policy?
>> I don’t have policies for activities I don’t participate in in the first place.
3502. What is the best Epic movie (examples of epics: ben-her, gone with the wind, last temptation of christ)?
>> I don’t know what else falls into the category of “epic movie”, so... can’t really answer.
3503. Finish the sentance.
Hey, Hey we're the: Monkees
People say we:
But we're too busy:
The time to hesitate is: now
You're too: physical
It's a nice day to: start again
3504. Have you ever had 'missing time'?
>> Only in the context of being intoxicated (and that one botched suicide attempt).
3505. Have you ever sent an electronic greeting?
>> Maybe a long time ago.
3506. If you could send anonymous tips to people you knew who would never ever find out who sent them who would you send the following tips to?
doesn't know when to leave:
poor crotch hygenie:
talks to much:
band/art/dream is going nowehere:
most likely to get arrestted:
needs to get their life together:
bad taste in clothes:
bad taste in music:
needs a hobby:
3507. Are you more likely to download porn or disney movies?
>> I don’t download much of anything, really. Streaming has become my default mode of consumption.
3508. What is it with people?
>> ???
3509. Do you eat too much sugar?
>> I can assure you that I do not.
3510 Imagine you have aband. Let's name your band.
Adjective:
Animal(plural):
Your band name is (adjective) (animals) Under Glass!
Could be better? Let's try again.
Adjective:
Noun (plural):
Your band is (adjective) (nouns) With Puppets
3511. Are you desperate but not serious?
>> I have no idea what this means.
3512. Was there a time when you were younger and it took less to get you excited? What did it take then? What does it take now?
>> Honestly, I have no recollection of excitement experiences as a child. I do know that excitement is difficult for me nowadays because 1) I’m still pretty emotionally blunted, particularly for positive emotions and 2) I automatically attribute all physical feelings that could suggest excitement to anxiety instead (because I’m still learning the difference).
3513. Remember learning to write in elementary school? We spend 2 years learning to print..then they throw that out the window and teach kids cursive. Why? If cursive is so important and easy to read then why aren't books printed in cursive? Why aren't cursive computer fonts more popular? Why do buisness forms always say 'please print'?
Schools are so preoccupied with teaching kids the complicated but traditional skill of cursive writing that more emphasis is put on that than on teaching kids how to clearly express their ideas through writing. I move that cursive writing become a jr. high school elective instead of a grammer school priority. Who's with me?
>> This seems like a personal rant based on your own experiences and I have no dog in this fight, dude. I think of penmanship like art -- script writing is an art form and being adept at it can lead to some pretty results. Just don’t use it if you don’t care for it. Also, I’m pretty sure very few (public) schools care about cursive writing in this era, lmao, so this is also an outdated rant.
3514. Can you think of anything else (besides cursive writing) that is unhelpful, or unuseful, yet traditional and unquestioned? What?
>> Whatever.
3515. Name one female celebrity who you would guess wears size ___ clothing:
0?
5?
12?
16?
20?
3516. Have you ever been to a place where the restrooms were named in a clever way rather than just saying men's and woman's? I've seen Hens and Roosters, Bart and Lisa, Dudes and Babes...what have you seen?
>> Yeah, I saw “Pirates” and “Wenches” once. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen others but I can’t remember what they were now.
3517. What is the 'message' or 'point behind':
Fight Club?
Donnie Darko?
AI?
Minority Report?
Solaris?
A Walk to Remember?
You've Got Mail?
3518. have you seen, and what are your thoughts about these movies:
Drumline?
>> Now this is a question block I can actually answer. I did see Drumline, but I was 13 at the time so I have no real recollection of my feelings about it.
The Hot Chick?
>> Nope.
Maid in Manhattan?
>> Nope.
Star Trek: Nemesis?
>> Nope.
About Schmidt?
>> Nope. Okay, maybe I can’t answer this question block after all. What are most of these movies...?
Evelyn?
>> ---
The Guys?
>> ---
Intacto?
>> ---
The Jimmy Show?
>> ---
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers?
>> I did see this, but I don’t remember much of it either because it was at least half a decade ago. I do assume I enjoyed it.
Gangs of New York?
>> ---
Two Weeks Notice?
>> ---
The Wild Thornberrys Movie?
>> ---
Smokers Only?
>> ---
Treasure Planet?
>> ---
The Santa Clause 2?
>> ---
3519. START this sentance: ....and I think to myself, what a wonderful world."
>> ---
3520. What is:
insanity?
normal?
farenheit?
3521. Tell us about yourself in the third person for a bit:
>> I’d really rather not attempt that.
3522. If someone breaks a law, should they be punished if they did not know it was a law?
>> Oh, I don’t know. This is a concept that can get real thorny real fast.
3523. If it's so much easier to learn languages when we are very young (and it is, something to do with the developing brain) why do they wait until jr high and high school to teach them?
>> I don’t know anything about the justifications behind public-school curricula, dude.
3524. Name a band you sort of like: Dream Theater.
You are wearing that band's t-shirt in a store. SUDDENLY some guy you don't know comes up to you and goes, "Hey! You like (insert name of the band here)??!!"
This is obviously a really stupid question because if you didn't like them you wouldn't be wearing the t-shirt. Your witty reply is:
>> It’s not a really stupid question, first of all, because it’s a conversation starter as opposed to a straightforward inquiry. I’d assume he’s excited that someone else seems to be a fan of a band he likes, and is opening the floor to talking about it. Which is great! Let’s talk about prog metal!
Now, on the other hand, if the tone of “hey, you like Dream Theater?” is skeptical, like he’s assuming I’m just blithely wearing the shirt without actually liking the band or whatever, then I’d probably just give him a simple “yep” and see what happened after that. I’m not going to immediately be sarcastic or “witty” until I am positive about what kind of interaction is happening.
3525. If you were organizing cd's in a music store what section would you put each of the following in (don't forget the 'bargain bin' section!):
Blink182
Depech Mode
Weezer
Led Zeppelin
The Doors
Avril Lavigne
Nelly
Manfred Mann
Iggy Pop
Pink Floyd
Guns N Roses
Shakira
Britny Spears
Tool
Ozzy Osbourne
Madonna
The Rolling Stones
The Beatles
Motley Crue
Bon Jovi
3526. Does coffee stimulate your mind or body more?
>> It stimulates my anxiety drive, is what it does.
3527. Can you do 'six degrees of seperation' to anyone famous?
>> I assume not.
3528. What's the oddest thing in your home?
>> Me.
3529. Do you find it odd when people who are not handicapped use the handicapped stall:
in the bathroom?
>> No, I’ve used it because the close quarters of the other stalls wig me out sometimes. Or I’ve used it because the other ones were disaster zones. Or I’ve used it because I was also getting changed in the stall, or something, and needed the room.
in the parking lot?
>> You need a whole placard (or handicapped license plate) for those, so there are obvious rules.
3530. Do you sometimes find yourself talking to yourself? Do you answer yourself back?
>> No, I talk to the Inworlders, not “myself”.
3531. In your head do you call yourself 'I' or 'you' or both?
>> Er... “I”?
3532. What is the best excuse for why you haven't done your homework?
>> ---
3533. Someone tells you 'well there are black people, and then there are n*ggers'. What do you think?
>> I think that person’s an out-and-out bona-fide bigot, obviously? What the fuck else am I going to think (besides “I have to leave immediately”)???
3534. Does culture shape behavior or does behavior shape culture?
>> Yes.
3535. What determines whether a person will be:
intelligent?
pretty?
happy?
sucessful?
3536. What is social loafing? What is groupthink?
>> ???
3537. I have an idea. let's change the english language by making the words fewer, shorter and more concise. What do ya think?
>> No.
3538. What are the physical symptoms of:
joy?
fear?
shame?
3539. Here's the scenerio...your little eight year old brother is hangin out in the house when you come in..and catch him watching the playboy channel!
What do you do/say?
He says, "Why can't I watch this?" What is your response?
Why do you respond that way?
>> I don’t have an eight-year-old brother and I don’t know anything about how I would respond in a sibling-dynamic situation because I’ve never been in one.
3540. Who REALLY has a higher sex drive, girls or guys? How can you tell?
>> ---
3541. are you usually carefree?
>> No.
3542. Do you generally prefer reading to meeting people?
>> This is an odd comparison to make.
3543. Do you often long for excitement?
>> No.
3544. Are you mostly quiet when you are with others?
>> It depends on what kind of situation I’m in and what kind of day I’m having. And who the others are. And where we are. Context, people. Details. Please.
3545. Do you often do things spur of the moment?
>> No.
3546. Are you slow an unhurried in the way you move?
>> Sometimes. If I’m doing something I hate or that triggers me, then I tend to be a lot more hurried.
3547. Would you do almost anything for a dare?
>> I wouldn’t do anything on a dare.
3548. Do you hate being in a crowd who plays jokes on one another?
>> Er...
3549. Do you enjoy wild parties?
>> No.
3550. Have you ever paid for something priced more than $5.00 in only change?
>> No, but I was with someone that did. We had to scrounge for change in her car so we could buy enough gas to get us the rest of the way home, lol.
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A Sight For Sore Eyes
Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x Fem!Reader
Summary: You need new glasses due to your old ones breaking. Tom also happens to be at the eye doctor you’re at. Your bad eye sight doesn’t allow you to properly identify him.
Warning(s): None
A/N: This is my very first Tom story! I hope it came out well, I’ve had this idea for quite sometime. Enjoy my little blind birdies
“Excuse me, do you know when Dr. Calder will get here?” You huffed as you stood next to the marble counter. You couldn’t quite be sure if you were making eye contact with the woman behind the front desk computer or not.
“Ma’am, we’ve already said that Dr. Calder is our on her lunch break. She is possibly running late. If you could please take a seat in the waiting room, we have a selection of magazines.” She commented.
You clenched and unclenched your fists as you mentally cursed at her.
“Susan, was it—“ you didn’t allow her to correct you, “—There’s two things wrong with that statement. One, you said that two hours ago. Two, this is the eye doctor’s office where people come for glasses. As you can see before you, I do not have any on. Now, tell me...is that magazine still looking good?” You take a deep breathe before heading back towards your seat. Yes, you knew this might’ve been harsh, but in your own defense, you haven’t been able to see in the past week. Without your glasses you lived like Velma without hers. What was once beautiful trees and books, were now giant blobs of green and what looked like ants crushed on pieces of bright printed paper. Thanks to a very interesting holiday party and your roommate’s highly intoxicated cousin, your glasses were obliterated beneath a boot. Soon after you scheduled an eye appointment with your doctor.
Now here you were, fuming. The headaches were becoming too exhausting and one of your favorites hobbies was almost impossible. At least you weren’t the only one waiting, there had been someone else in the corner of the waiting room. Their features weren’t something you could make out, let alone determine if they noticed you trying to notice them.
“You’re also waiting for one of the doctors, yes?” The voice spoke out to you. A man, yes. You believed.
Clearing your throat you nodded looking at the blob, “Yes. For the past two hours actually.”
He nodded, “Myself as well. I just happened to step out for a quick phone call here and there. Are they reliable doctors?” He questioned.
“Mine is, really understanding and explains things really well. I usually don’t mind waiting—I just, I can’t see much of anything. I actually apologize but, I can’t really see you clearly enough.” You looked down and chuckled.
“That sounds horrid. I’m sorry about that, actually. I only ask since I’m not from here, but I’ve had an accident at work in which my glasses had um...fallen to the ground and unfortunately, beneath a golf cart tire.” He spoke with a slight chuckle. He had an accent, British. He voice was soothing. Well, as soothing as a voice of a stranger’s could be.
“Oh no,” you stifled a chuckle, “that’s horrible. Don’t feel too bad. I was clumsy with mine too. My roommate’s cousin accidentally knocked them off my coffee table and stepped on them. I left them in the midst of a party.”
Your hands rested among your thighs and you tried to stay in eye contact with the man.
“Ah, I don’t feel quite as foolish. N-Not that you are. I just mean—“
“Don’t worry pretty blob, I’m not offended.”
“Pretty blob?” He questioned arching an eyebrow. You could hear the confusion in his voice clearly.
You smirked, “I mean, I can’t see the intricate details of your face right now but I can see the colors you’re wearing and that your hair isn’t styled too crazy. You look pretty dapper from my point of view.”
Maybe it was the fact that you couldn’t see clearly, but your confidence was kicked up a few notches.
“Heh, I’m flattered. You’re quite the sight for sore eyes, yourself ma’am.” A warmth immediately rose to your cheeks. You glanced at your feet and back up raising your eyebrows.
“Ma’am makes me feel a little old, please call me y/n.” You insisted.
“Y/N,” he stood to his feet and took your hand in his, “Thomas, it’s nice to make your acquaintance, even under such circumstances.” He chuckled lightly. “Do you mind if I sit?” He motioned towards the seat closer to you.
You shook your head, “Not at all. So, is your eyesight enough to indulge in one of these magazines?”
Soon, your small conversation transformed to one of many points. The first being of the falsely hood of magazine articles written about celebrities. You had taken over mostly in this subject, Thomas just so happened to be a great listener. When the topic of favorite books came up however, he was very detailed with the passion he carried towards them. It was very impressing and left you intrigued in a way another human had never. Well, at least in something as simple as literature. Then again, in the way you were able to discuss it with him, it was something very far from the word simple.
He spoke of home, after you mentioned his accent. He even indulged in saying random words you had asked him to.
“Mayonnaise.” He said with a little hint of sex appeal.
“Oh yes, that’s the stuff right there.” You giggled into your palm.
“Your smile is far too beautiful to be hidden, love.” He said casually, as if you had heard it often.
He had done it again. Simple, yet extraordinary. He mentioned that he had done an audio book before and you made a mental note to try to search for it in the future.
He asked more about you, being the gentleman that he was. Despite being able to not see clearly, you could tell his full attention was upon you.
It just so happened, that you two had far more in common than you had expected. It amazed both of you just how much two people could agree. Of course disagreement was bound to happen, but you we’re enticed to his amount of maturity.
After another hour passed that you two hadn’t even noticed, the doctor had come through the door.
“Y/N, hi. I’m sincerely apologize, I had to pick up my son and there was immense amounts of traffic. Follow me, I’ll take care of you straight away.” She walked towards the back.
You faced you’re new found friend, well flirty friend, “If I don’t see you when I leave, it was great speaking with you. Really.” Your hand was extended.
Suddenly he gently took it in his and placed a soft kiss to the back of it, “The pleasure was mine, y/n.”
Thomas had been slightly hesitant to ask for further contact at the moment. He wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of his phone number being out. Watching you leave, he realized he was willing to take the chance.
As you were taking the tests, you were still thinking about him. It was odd but, he seemed familiar. In a way you couldn’t explain, you felt as if you had encountered him before. Perhaps he reminded you of a character you’ve read about somewhere? It must’ve.
“Alright, you’re all set. I’ve also taken it upon myself to get the glasses done already. They were done early. Nothing in your vision has altered much, but these should do the trick.” The doctor spoke before handing you your new pair of glasses.
You swiftly put them on and sighed happily. You could see everything clearly and your mind was at ease. They looked stylish as well, much to your liking. You hoped Thomas was still out there, now you could properly see him.
“Hey um, Denise?” You addresses your doctor by her name since you two were quite familiar.
“Yeah?”
“You’ve never had that man out there as a patient, have you?” You questioned, pushing up your glasses a bit.
“No, you think I’d forget a name like that?” She chuckled as she adjusted her coat.
“What do you mean?” You asked.
“His name. He’s an actor. Ya know, Loki. He played the villain in avengers. He was in that one monkey movie.” She said as if it were obvious. Suddenly you put two and two together. No wonder you had recognized his voice so well. Thomas, that was his full name.
“I uh, thanks Denise. I’ll see you for my next time—“
“Wait, are we still on for coffee?”
“Yeah, next Tuesday.” You said with a smile before exiting the small room with your new sight. You couldn’t guarantee if he’d still be around.
You pushed through the door of the waiting room, with a thud it hit someone’s shoulder.
“Oh I’m sorry—“
“I’m sorry.” Tom had spoke stepping back a bit.
Just then you connected all his features, his face matched his voice. Lovely. This was your chance. You stood tall and cleared your throat, “I um.” You chuckled nervously. “You’re still here.”
His own expression matched yours, “I am. I like the glasses,” he smirked, “I think a proper introduction should be stated since you can actually see me now,” he chuckled, “I’m Thomas, I also go by Tom.” You shook his hand again.
“I’m Y/N, but you’ve seen that all along.” You rocked back and forth on your heels.
“Well, Miss y/n...I stood here because I had a question to ask. I um, I’ll be around for quite some time and I wanted to know if you’d like to possibly get together again?”
Your heart was beating a bit faster. You couldn’t believe that he actually took as much interest in you, as you had in him.
“Mhm, yes, I mean. I’d like that.” You smiled, “Would you like my phone number?”
“Yes, yes, please. I’ll put mine in your phone as well.” He smiled as you two exchanged phones.
After typing and retrieving your phone back you smiled at each other.
“It was nice meeting you, Tom.”
“Until next time.” He reached around and embraced you gently.
Tom Hiddleston Taglist: @bambamwolf87
Permanent Taglist: @libbymouse @keithseabrook27 @maladaptive-ninja-returns @nephalem67 @tina8009 @marvelismylifffe
#tom hiddleston#tomhiddleston x reader#tom hiddleston x reader#tom hiddleston x you#tom hiddleston imagine#tom hiddleston fanfiction#loki#loki odinson#loki x reader
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Hi sweetie how are you?💞 I hope youre doing great bcs i wanted to request a smut reaction of Monsta X boys to their gf liking it rough, but like really reallyyyyyy rough ;)) (btw alligator fricking killed me :'D) 💞♥️💜 thank you have a nice day~
Apologies that this took so long. School caught up with me.
Alligator left me shook.You’re about to die even more, babygirl. 🖤
Warnings: Language, Dom!Monsta X, NSFW, mentions of alcohol.
Shownu:
You drunken flopped onto the bed. It had been a long night out. Between the alcohol and Shownu’s relentless grinding against you, you were in a daze. You closed your eyes, tugging your bottom lip inbetween your teeth. You hummed, your mind feeling with perverse thoughts.
“Babe?” Shownu mumbled beside you.
“Hmm?” You lazily opened one eye to see him staring down at you from the edge of the bed
“What are you thinking about?” He ran his fingers back and forth on the top of your thigh.
“You’re always so sweet to me.” You smiled, eyes still closed. “But I was just thinking how attractive it would be if you were rough in bed... like really rough.” You trailed off, diving back into your mind.
Shownu tightened his hand around your thigh, pads of his fingers digging deep. You looked up at him with hooded eyes and his voice intoxicated you more.
“Is that really what you want?”
Wonho:
Wonho and you often wrestled around. It usually led to sex but it was a good laugh. He secretly enjoyed watching you struggle underneath him and you adored the way he handled you. There was only one problem... He always held back, especially during sex.
You held Wonhos hands together on his toned stomach as you straddled his waist. He smirked at the way you tightened your grip. “Are you trying to hurt me Jagi?”
“Is it working?” You quirked a brow.
“No babe, give up.” He chuckled, slipping out of your grasp and letting his hands find your waist.
“Baby...” You paused. He looked up at you, sweet as could be. “Why are you always do gentle with me?”
The second those words left your lips, his eyes darkened. You could almost see the dirty thoughts spilling out of his mind. Wonho swiftly flipped you over, pushing against your core and your hips further into the bed. He wrapped his long fingers around your wrists and held them high above your head, tilting his smug face as he spoke.
“I don’t think you can handle it.”
Minhyuk:
You sat with your computer in your face, staring at the screen in awe. Alligator had just released and you couldn’t wait to watch it with your boyfriend. You gawked at all of his scenes. One in particular made you squeal.
“Oh my god. This is daddy af.” You groaned, doting on him.
“It’s what?” He chuckled next to you, secretly enjoying your reaction.
“Daddy. Af. Like you’re giving off total dom feels and i’m dying.” You held in another squeal watching him.
“Do you like that?” He furrowed his brows at you.
You froze like a deer in headlights, biting your nail. You knew he wasn’t going to let this go.
“Yes?” You answered shyly. Minhyuk smiled sweetly at your timid reaction. He pulled your finger from your lips and held your chin, forcing you to look at him. He closed the laptop, pushing it aside to focus on you.
“Don’t be shy.” He leaned into you, pushing your back to the plush bed below. “Tell me what you want.”
“Be rough with me.” Your voice barely above a whisper.
“Say that again.”
“Please daddy.” Your cheeks reddened. His teeth found your bottom lip, biting in contentment.
“Anything for you, Jagi.”
Kihyun:
“Stop being a brat.” Kihyun rolled his eyes at you.
“Says the one who just rolled his eyes like a twelve year old.” You scoffed.
“You...” He groaned “You need to be put in your place.” He shook his head. The words fell from his lips without a filter, coming from the depths of his wildest dreams. He regretted them, but wouldn’t back down first.
“Oh?” You stood, stalking over to him. “And you’re the man to do that?” You challenged him. You never admitted that you liked it rough and he never bothered to ask or try so for once, seeing this side of him set a new fire ablaze within your body.
Kihyun didn’t say a word. He let you press yourself against him, hoping to make him submit first. “Do it.” Your fingers danced up his chest. “Show me who’s in charge.” You didn’t believe he had it in him and Kihyun loved the doubt in your words. His hands found your hair, forcing you to look at him.
“On your knees. Now.”
Hyungwon:
Your words rang through his ears like his favorite song on repeat.
24 hours had passed since you confessed to him you wanted it rough. He had to admit he wasn’t sure what to think. His worst fear was hurting you but he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
He bit his lip as the bass tore through his body. His mind forgetting about the thousands of people infront of him and focusing on you. The way you looked at him with sultry eyes. The way your voice came out like velvet. The way you asked so innocently but he knew better than to believe you were an angel. How could he deny you?
He raced home, anxiousness filling his body. His pants were increasing in discomfort and it was almost unbearable.
Curse words left his mouth in strings as he fumbled with the keys and his bags. Flinging the door open, he quickly dropped his bags and kicked off his shoes. Slamming the door shut behind him, he was already racing out of his jacket. The apartment was dark and the city lights were allowing him enough light to find you.
He bolted down the hallway and into your bedroom. Like prey, you stood there cluess to the predator approaching you.
“Hey babe.” You smiled, not bothering to turn around. Hyungwon didn’t answer.
You felt warm hands snake round your hips as he came into contact with you. His body pushing you against the glass of the door. You hissed at the cold seeping through your daring silk chemise. His hands pressed the glass on both sides of your head and you were thankful he didn’t see the smirk rising on your face.
Hyungwon bit into your sensitive spot in the curve of your neck, pushing himself further against you. Long fingers danced down the glass and around your throat.
“Hyungwon?” You tried to sound as innocent as possible. His hands tightened around you and he growled in your ear.
“Don’t call me that tonight.” He turned you around to face him, hand still pressed firmly against your throat.
“Bed. Now.” He released his grip on you. Almost stumbling, you made your way to the bed, sitting on the edge. Hyungwon tore his shirt off, throwing it into the corner. The sound of his belt added more excitement as he spoke.
“You belong to me tonight.”
Jooheon:
Jooheon was the ideal boyfriend. He loved you unconditionally, communicated to perfection and did everything in his power to improve the bond between you two. Tonight, his idea consisted of having deep conversations. No phones, no tvs, just you two and the city noise flowing in from the half opened balcony door.
The conversation had made a turn and suddenly you two were discussing turn ons.
“I do have one... You don’t know about.” You looked away from his starry eyes.
“Tell me.” He cooed. You shook your head, embarrassed.
“Please?” You looked at him and fell into his trick. He could talk you into anything jusf about and you hated it.
“I enjoy...” You fiddled with your fingers, looking down at them. “I really like it rough.. really really rough.”
Silence filled the room before his voice filled your senses.
“Oh babygirl.” He chuckled sweetly. “You don’t know what you just did.”
Changkyun:
“Am I not good enough?” Changkyun stood across the room, crossing his arms.
“I never said that.” You sighed.
“Then why are we always fighting?” He leaned against the dresser.
“Idk why are we?” You crossed your arms too.
Changkyun groaned, leaning his head back. Another argument and you two didn’t even know what it was for.
“Maybe you need to put me in my place.” You mumbled.
“Excuse me?” He quirked a brow, looking over at you. “What did you say?”
You rested your chin on your hand, crossing your legs and smiling sweetly. “Be rough with me. Very rough, show me you’re in charge.”
Changkyun walked over to you slowly, grabbing a fist full of your hair and pulling down. Your eyes met his and you knew you had done it.
“You’re going to regret saying that babygirl.”
#monsta x imagines#chae hyungwon#hyungwon#hyungwon monsta x#monsta x reactions#wonho imagine#monsta x wonho#minhyuk imagine#minhyuk#shownu#kihyun monsta x#jooheon#monsta x i.m#changkyun#im changkyun
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Shadows of the Yiga | Chapter 6
Aryll went home Saturday night, and though she had the entire weekend to recover from her drunken adventures on Friday night, she still felt like complete shit when Monday morning came. She was groggy and tired, despite almost sleeping the weekend away. She and Link barely spoke when they returned home, but she felt too ashamed to even look at him, anyway, and didn't want to have any kind of conversation about the situation with him. To her relief, he didn’t pry. If things were different – if her father were alive – she would have surely been grounded. Link, however, never dared to try to ground her, but simply stewed in his own anger whenever she did something stupid. She was sure that was how he spent his weekend, and was probably happy not to have to parent her.
She barely made it through her first two classes when she was stopped in the hall heading to her third class. She immediately recognized the adult as the school's counselor, and she couldn't help the groan and cuss that escaped her throat.
Mrs. Chen raised a brow at her but made no other comment about her inappropriate language. “Aryll,” she started. “I was hoping I could borrow a few moments of your time?”
Aryll hesitated as she quickly tried to come up with an excuse. “You know, I think I have a test in my next class.”
The counselor smiled. “I'm sure your teacher will let you make it up. I'll write you a note myself. I promise it won't take long.”
Aryll shifted her books in her arms. “Well, I'm sure I don't have a choice,” she muttered.
Mrs. Chen held her smile. “Come on,” she said. “Let's go to my office.”
Aryll rolled her eyes, but followed the woman, dragging her feet begrudgingly as she did so. When they reached her office, she took a seat in front of the desk, slouching back in the chair as she waited for the counselor to close the door and sit behind her large desk like the professional she thought she was.
“Is this about Ren? Because I'm not apologizing for punching him. Idiot had it coming.”
Mrs. Chen shifted through some pages on her desk, not meeting Aryll's gaze. “No,” she said with a sigh. “I figured I wouldn't even bother with that one.”
Aryll grinned. It seemed she was making a name for herself in school if even the counselor wasn't going to bother scold her anymore. “Don't worry,” she said smugly. “I'll try to make your life easy, just as long as those fuckers learn to keep their mouths shut.”
Mrs. Chen folded her hands on her desk and looked up at Aryll. She offered a small smile, choosing to ignore the clearly rebellious teen's behavior. “How's everything at home?”
Aryll groaned loudly and rolled her eyes. “Here it comes. Can we just get to the point? Why am I here?”
“You're here because of your actions on Friday night,” Mrs. Chen said frankly, the smile disappearing.
“Friday night?”
She pointed a finger down at one of the papers on her desk. “You and your friends were drinking, which was your first offence. You also stole a car, your second offence, and drove while intoxicated, offence number three. Not to mention the fact that you got into a very serious accident that could have claimed your lives.”
“It wasn't stolen,” Aryll said with a loud groan. “It was Romani's mom's car!”
“Taken without permission,” Mrs. Chen continued. “But that’s hardly the worst of the situation.”
“What's your point?”
“This is unlike you, Aryll. These last few months, your behavior has completely changed. And it's my job to figure out why and get you back on track. You're a straight A student, Aryll. You're better than this.”
“I hardly see how what I do outside of school is any of your concern.”
“The well-being of all the students here are my concern,” she said, her brows furrowing slightly. “When things are hard at home, students tend to rebel.”
“What makes you think that's me?” Aryll accused.
Mrs. Chen cocked her head to the side. “Well, it can't be easy to be in your shoes,” she said. “To be without a mother and a father.”
“That's not it,” she said. “You're talking about Link.”
“Is there something going on with Link?”
“Look,” Aryll said frankly, sitting forward in her seat. “I'm sorry you weren't good enough to become an actual shrink or whatever. You're stuck here in a hormonal infested high school where you're stuck with the greasy-haired goths that just want to write song lyrics about how they're going to kill themselves. That's gotta be the lowest of the low in your line of work. So let me cut to the chase and do your job for you. You think life sucks so much for poor Aryll. She's got not mother, no father, and an ex-hero of a brother who is clearly just as fucked up as she is, maybe worse. PTSD, depression, alcoholism, you name it. It's no secret. And someday, he'll either drink himself to death, or OD, or maybe just straight up kill himself, and then poor little Aryll will have no one left, and she won't be able to handle that, and she'll follow in her brother's sad, pathetic footsteps, and that will be the end of that.”
The counselor held her gaze on Aryll as she spoke, and when she finished, her forehead creased in concern. “Is that what you think will happen?”
Aryll hesitated, her words lingering in her mind after her outburst. She replayed them over and over, and each time she realized just how much of a possibility that situation seemed to be. She burst into tears at that moment and pulled her legs to her chest to hide her face in her knees. She sobbed and her body shook. She let the tears flow despite wanting to seem stronger than she was. She didn't quiet until she heard Mrs. Chen shifting in her seat, and when she looked up, the counselor had the phone in her hand, her finger hovering over the numbers.
Aryll lunged across the desk, knocking the phone out of the woman's hand. “No, please!” she begged as she fell against the desk and continued to sob. “Don't call anyone. Don't call Link. Don't call someone to take me out of here in a straight jacket. Don't call anyone. Please.”
The counselor hesitated, looking Aryll over, then replaced the phone. “You realize that it is my job to report students with suicidal tendencies.”
“I'm not suicidal!” Aryll barked. She dragged herself off of the desk and fell into the chair, feeling exhausted. “I'm not, I swear. I'm not. I'll talk to Link, okay? I'll do whatever. Just don't call him. Don't call anyone. Just... just...” She broke into another sob. “Don't take him away from me. Please.”
Mrs. Chen frowned down at Aryll. “What would you like me to do?”
Aryll shook her head. “I don't know,” she muttered, still avoiding the counselor's gaze. “Let me... let me do this. Let me talk to him. He'll listen to me. He'll do anything for me. I can fix this.”
“Can you?” The counselor paused, but Aryll said nothing. “That's a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old girl.”
Aryll pinched her lips together, but said nothing.
“Aryll, you've been through more shit than most people have in their entire life,” Mrs. Chen said frankly. “No one expects you to be able to do it alone.”
Aryll stood and wiped at her eyes. “Can I go now?”
Mrs. Chen hesitated, then sighed. “Alright,” she said simply. “But I'd like to see you on a regular basis. At least once a week. Can we do that?”
“Do I have a choice?” Aryll muttered.
The counselor smiled. “I'll see you next week, Aryll.” She watched as Aryll left her office without another word. When the door was closed, she reached for the phone and dialed.
*****
Link stared at his computer screen, but the words and numbers seemed unrecognizable. He couldn't make heads or tails of anyone of it, but he wasn't exactly trying, either. No, he was simply staring, his mind empty. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep forever, and for a moment, he thought of doing just that. Or, at the very least, putting his head on his desk and hoping no one came to bother him. He had done it before. It was easy enough to hide in a cubicle and catch a quick nap. But life had other plans, the ringing phone causing him to nearly jump out of his chair.
He rubbed his eyes, letting it ring twice more before answering it. “Yeah?”
“Link, it's Mrs. Chen, the school counselor.”
Link's heart jumped. “What? What's wrong? Is Aryll okay?”
“Yes, she's fine. Actually, she just left my office. We had a little chat.”
Link blinked at the wall. “Huh? Why? About what?” He listened as the women spoke, and his heart sank. He nodded his head and verbally acknowledge that he had heard her and understood, but the world seemed to move forward without him, and before he realized it, he was hanging up, the conversation over. He stared at the phone for a moment before jumping out of his seat, grabbing his jacket and flinging it over his shoulder as he ran across the office.
“What's the hurry, Hero?” Sera said with a grin, but it disappeared quickly when she caught his urgency. “What's wrong?”
“I'm sorry, Sera,” he said simply, but she knew too well what he needed of her.
“Alright,” she called after him as he ran for the door. “You get one more of these!”
Link didn't know what to do with himself when he got home. There was still a couple hours before Aryll actually came home. He considered going right to the school to pick her up and give her the rest of the day off, but he thought better of it, figuring she wouldn't want to be bothered. Still, it didn't ease his worrying, and every situation imaginable found its way into his head. What if she didn't come home at all? What if she was hurt? What if she hurt herself? Or someone hurt her?
He tried to drown out the thoughts with tv. He stretched out on the couch, then curled up into the corner, tossing and turning every which way, unable to get comfortable, or get away from the thoughts that haunted him. Finally, he made his way into the kitchen, where he started for the fridge to get a beer, but then thought better of that. Aryll was upset – seeing him with a beer wouldn't help the situation.
So he opted to shift through the unopened mail on the counter, but that only brought him more distress. Overdue bills, an unpaid mortgage, what if the house was foreclosed? Could he find an apartment cheap enough for the two of them? Or would they just be stuck living like trolls under a bridge?
He moved to the table where he sat and instead opted to bury his face in his hands. It wasn't long after that when Aryll finally came home, looking just as tired and ragged as he felt. She hesitated in the doorway when she saw her brother, then let it close softly behind her.
“She called you,” she said simply.
Link glanced at her from over his hands. He let his hand drag down his face, and he paused for a moment to scratch at his chin. He needed to shave. Or maybe he'd just let the beard grow in. He stretched his legs out under the table. He was avoiding the conversation. “Yeah,” he finally said.
“Oh.” Aryll dropped her bag on the floor but did not move from where she stood. “What... did she tell you?”
“Everything.” Link assumed it was everything, anyway. Mostly, he was waiting to see how Aryll would react.
Aryll pulled her gaze away, then sat herself at the table across from him. But still, she did not regard him. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before she spoke. “Oh.”
Link hesitated. His brows furrowed as he held his gaze on his sister. “So, is that what you think's going to happen?”
Aryll shrugged a shoulder. “Is that what's going to happen?” She met his gaze. When Link didn't answer, her heart dropped. She stared helplessly at her brother.
“Link!”
“Nothing's going to happen,” he muttered, pulling his gaze away.
Aryll stood suddenly. “I'll believe it when you mean it!” she shouted at him.
“I mean it!” Link shouted back. “For the love of Hylia, I'm not going anywhere!”
For the second time that day, Aryll broke down. She covered her face with her hands, dropped to her knees, and sobbed. She continued to sob as Link hurried to her and took her in his arms. She let him pull her into his chest where she cried harder, and he held her tight.
“I'm sorry,” she said between sobs. She was finding it more difficult to breathe as she continued to cry, no longer able to control any of it. “I don't know what's happening. I don't know what to do. What do I do? What do you want me to do?”
Link pressed his face into her hair. “I'm sorry, Aryll,” he muttered. “You don't have to do anything, okay?”
“I have to,” she sobbed. “I’m just… I’m so scared, Link. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You’re not,” he said to her, hugging her tighter. “I promise you, Aryll. You will never be alone. I promised you that, and I won’t break that promise. Ever.”
Her body shook as she sobbed. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “For Friday night. For everything. For being a burden. I’m sorry.”
“Stop it,” he growled. “You’re not a burden.” He hesitated. “Please don’t do that to me again. I can’t lose you, too.”
Aryll nodded against him, unable to speak as she continued to sob.
“All I wanted to do was give you a normal life,” he said softly.
“I know,” she whispered. “I just. I took that and threw it in your face. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, too. For everything.”
Her crying quieted after a moment. She didn’t move from his arms. She listened to his heart beat and closed her eyes.
******
Link lost track of time. He didn't know how long they sat on the kitchen floor. All he knew was that it was very late, and he was seriously thinking of calling out of work, and maybe even letting Aryll skip school. As the night went on, her sobbing had quieted, and she eventually fell asleep against him. Link didn't dare move or wake her. His fingers stroked her hair absentmindedly as he stared into the darkness. For a moment, she shifted and murmured something indiscernible. Link let his fingers rest in her palm and she quieted once more.
But her eyes opened at his touch and she blinked in the darkness. Her fingers curled around his and she sighed softly through her nose. It was a simple gesture, his hand in hers, but in the time since their father’s death, it had become an unspoken reassurance between them; a reminder that they were not alone. That they still had each other. That the other was still very much a presence in their lives. It was a promise. One they both held dearly.
She pressed closer to her brother. “Link.”
Link wrapped his arms tightly around her. “I’m here,” he said softly. “I promise. I won’t leave you, okay?”
Aryll nodded silently. “I miss Dad,” she said after a moment.
“Me too.”
“And Mipha.”
Link sighed softly. “Me too.”
“You know,” she started after a quiet moment. “I always knew what you were doing when you ran off in the middle of the night. Or when you came home with torn, bloodied shirts. Dad never said anything to me, but I knew that my brother was a hero, that he was saving the world.” She hesitated. “It scared the shit out of me. It scared the shit out of Dad. But I knew you would be okay. I just had this feeling, I guess, that everything would be okay. That you would make everything okay.” She sighed softly. “I guess it never occurred to us that things wouldn't always be okay, even after the war was won. You gave up everything, for this world, and for me, and you never got so much as a thanks.”
“I don't need thanks,” he said. “If I wanted anything in return at all, I wouldn't have gone through all this bullshit.”
Aryll smiled. “I guess that's your problem. You're too selfless.”
“I really thought that would get me further in life.”
Aryll let her head rest against him. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Link shrugged. “I didn't do it for you. I did it for me. I didn't want to lose anyone else. See? I'm selfish.”
Aryll laughed lightly. “I think you deserve to be a little selfish.” She paused. “We don't even have to stay here. We could go anywhere. Who would stop us?”
“You need to finish school.”
“But I can do that anywhere.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But you don't have much longer.”
“I guess.” She closed her eyes. “As long as we're together.”
He kissed her head. “I promise.”
Aryll nodded. “And Mipha.” She turned her gaze to him. “Don’t push her away.”
Link’s brows furrowed and he turned away from his sister. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s really not,” she said. “You think you’re doing her favors, but you’re not. You’re not doing anyone any favors.” She forced a smile. “I mean, you’re a mess without her. Why don’t you just let her be there? For you?” Her smile grew. “She’s your hero.”
“Being a hero is a lot of pressure,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“I think true heroes have the strength to handle those kinda things,” she said. “Sometimes, even the most unlikely people.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “That doesn’t mean she’ll take me back, though.”
“She will,” Aryll said.
“You seem pretty sure of that.”
Aryll shrugged and smiled. “I just know these things.”
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studying.
pairing: college!peter x reader
rating: all audiences welcome to this fluff
what to listen to: roll up by fitz & the tantrums
a/n: for the anons who gave me some ideas, here is the start of a potential series? or, as i would say, peter crushes on his TA.
After months of applications and tours and accepted student days, Peter had finally settled on MIT.
(It had helped that Tony had written his recommendation letter. A lot.)
September brings a new leaf.
Peter trades in the hustle and bustle for NYC for that of Boston. It is less shiny, less new. He likes it though; likes the cobblestone, the spirit, the history and the rhythmic rattle of the T under the Kendell stop. The late summer breeze is crisp as Peter shrugs his hoodie on, bagel dangling from his mouth as he chews and launches himself up the steps towards the quad.
His sense are in a haywire; it is the new environment. His sunglasses are maybe a little darker than they should be.
A week ago, his phone had been buzzing with kissy emoji from Aunt May, a good luck text from Tony and of course Ned -- his friend had settled in only a few T stops away at Harvard. The first day of classes had come and gone, bringing it with it an overwhelming sense of belonging. For once, Peter didn’t feel like an outlier.
The only text Peter is paying attention to this morning is yours, though.
pls help me study for my bio quiz later, peter, i am begging u
It makes him laugh. Peter grins, dimples digging in a little bit as he settles into a quick pace. Strawberry converse beat against the jagged cobblestone.
I mean, he wasn’t going to lie to himself -- you were, like, gorgeous. And funny. And you thought it was cool that he’d binged the entirety of Jason Todd and the Outlaws in one night. The fact that you’d excitedly added him on Facebook last Friday after class was enough; he’d messaged you, asking if avoiding the chicken at McCormick was a smart move.
You were a sophomore. You knew the ropes. Peter is totally using it as an excuse.
it’s literally the second week??? who is giving quizzes already???
who’s THAT evil???
You’re laughing, crossing the quad on the opposite side of campus when you get his texts.
It was only happenstance you two started to become friends. His first class, an 8:30am entry-level history course run by Professor Frankfurt (which was really just one big Captain America fanboy session) happened to be the class you’d decided to TA for -- and in turn, the class you’d first met Peter in. Forced to sit front row after arriving late -- he’d had trouble finding the Tang Auditorium -- he ended up being the one to sit next to you.
He was wearing a Saint Motel t-shirt. You’d stopped him after class, nervously chirping your admiration of that particular album. He’d stuttered in surprise. You were a little mortified, mostly since you had realize how pretty he was. He had big brown eyes and dimples. Dimples.
From that point forward, it was like you couldn’t escape him. He joined the Broadcasting club -- and you’d laughed out loud when he walked through the door wearing a different Saint Motel t-shirt. Comic Roundtable wasn’t safe either, as Peter Parker had suddenly become the fresh face among the small club of eight. It truly culminated when you realized Peter had taken up residency on Danny’s floor -- the R.A. was a fellow Anthropology major, and one of your closest friends.
So, yeah, texting him and asking for help on a Gen Ed Bio course quiz was kind of pushing it. You wanted to hate Peter, honestly -- as a freshman he’d already met a handful of prerequisites through his famed Stark Internship, working his way through a good half of the first year Computer Science and Molecular Biology course load. The air at MIT was competitive, but for some reason Peter didn’t feed into it. You felt okay admitting a fault.
It wasn’t like you were going to go to Academic Computing. They’d definitely roast you for not understanding cell structure and osmosis and all that other shit. You were an Anthropology and American History double major for god’s sake. You didn’t need that stuff in your brain. You needed room for other things.
So, you text Peter back.
it’s prof steck. don’t play urself. stay away from her.
but is that a yes??? bc if it is i’ll swipe for u at baker!!!
Peter’s slipping through the auditorium doors when he texts you back.
Your phone buzzes on your desk, and you laugh a little when you read the message.
only if u buy me mozzerella stix!!!!
He shoulders you as he sits down. The touch is enough to light up Peter’s nervous system; he ignores the happy tingle that creeps up his back.
The stack of graded papers is jostled a bit by the movement -- Frankfurt had done an assessment on Wednesday, intending to get a gage for what he was working with in the class. So much for syllabus week. You, of course, had been tasked with grading. Not that you minded, though, it had distracted you from asking Peter to come out with you on Saturday night.
“You know,” you chirp, “Baker has make your own stir fry tonight...”
“No way!” Peter’s voice clips a bit, high and excited, “Then forget the fried cheese sticks, buy me stir fry.”
“Only if you don’t make fun of me,” you hum, rolling your eyes a little, “This quiz on is the simple stuff and I don’t know why, I just don’t get it.”
“Well,” Peter chides, settling back in his seat. His fingers dance across the trackpad of his laptop, waking it up, “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
You deadpan.
Peter grins. It’s toothy.
“Is that what the Stark Internship taught you?”
His laugh is boyish. Those dimples are back. Your chest caves a bit, face hot with a gooey expression. What the hell is wrong with you? Going gaga over a freshman?
“Naw, memes taught me that one.”
“Oh,” you wave your hands as Professor Frankfurt throws himself into the auditorium in a huff, “Even better.”
You’re both silenced into a hush as the rest of the first year class follows suit. Professor Frankfurt calls roll. Your name is called after Peter’s. You hand out the exams, and then sit beside Peter for the rest of the class, basking in the warm glow of his semi-permanent smile.
“You know it’s not a date, right?”
Your roommate has her fists halfway into a family sized bag of doritos. Netflix glows from the top bunk. You’re fixing your hair in the mirror hanging on the door.
“I know, but,” you sigh, “He’s cute.”
“He’s a freshman,” she waves as The Office drones on, “He’s fresh meat -- dead in the water. That’s social suicide, you know. At least wait until after Rush Week.”
“Peter doesn’t seem like the fraternity type.”
“Yikes.”
“That’s not a bad thing!” you huff, tugging your hair up and away, “Seriously, there’s a reason why you keep getting your heart broken by dumb boys.”
“Is it because I have an affinity for beefy rich assholes named Brad?”
“That’ll do it, honestly.”
“Fair enough,” she tosses a grin your way, “Good luck on your dinner date with Peter.”
“It’s not a date!”
--
It’s not a date.
Totally not?
Why is he so nervous?
Oh god, his hands are sweating.
“I’ll have the sweet and tangy sauce, please.”
The box of stir fry is handed to him -- you’re already digging in with a goofy grin on your face. You much on the lo mein noodles happily. You’re covering your own nervousness well. Thank god for deodorant because Peter has you sweating -- literally. It had climbed into the high 70s by late afternoon, leaving Parker in a t-shirt that seemed too tight to be legal and a pair of shorts. He was tan. And he had freckles. Everywhere.
Your hair is swept into hazy curls by the late summer heat. Peter watches the curls along the back of your neck as you both work your way through the check out in the dining hall.
You both make your way to the Hayden Library, strides slow. The sky looks gold, and the clouds glow in the deep blue of the September evening. Traffic drums on, but you both are locked into conversation. Nothing is breaking it -- not even the wave of friends across the street.
“So, New York, huh?”
“Yeah,” he laughs, taking a bite from his takeout container, “My Aunt told me that if I ever went to a Red Sox game, she’d murder me in cold blood.”
“Yikes,” you chatter, “You’re missing out -- I mean, no Big Papi anymore, but Hanley Ramirez is a big deal. Be a shame if you never saw him play in Boston.”
“Are you trying to convince me to go to a Red Sox game?” Peter’s voice hitches, “Because that’s not happening.”
“C’mon, the Yankees suck,” your smile is challenging and Peter laugh as you take a few steps ahead, turning around to watch him as you skip backwards, “Turn to the dark side, Peter! It’s more fun! We have a green monster.”
“I think I’d rather take the Hulk, honestly.”
“Me too,” you wink, “Bruce Banner is an absolute babe.”
Peter laughs at that -- loud and rowdy in the late summer heat. It’s intoxicating.
Your takeaway boxes have been abandoned, licked clean, in favor of a biology textbook and notepads. Though, it wasn’t a welcome abandonment. You wanted to pull your hair out. It showed.
Your lips are pulled into a pout. Peter watches your brows screw together. The study room is filled with the chatter of a Bio101 Youtube video he’d pulled up, hoping to explain osmosis and semipermeable membranes and the importance of saline.
“See?” Peter’s pen taps the screen, “From high to low!”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Sounds fake,” you hum, mushing your cheeks together as you lean on the wooden table, “But okay.”
“It’s not fake! It’s science.”
“So,” you lean back, waving your fingers, “... magic?”
“Basically,” Peter shrugs, “My formal title after grad school will be Wizard.”
“I want to be a wizard.”
“Then --”
“And make this whole quiz disappear.”
Peter drops his head into his hands, laughing softly as he rubs his brows together. You were getting it, albeit slowly. He couldn’t say he really minded losing his Monday night to you -- in fact, he found himself enjoying this a little bit too much. Your knee brushes his under the table as you shift, eyes drawn back to the video.
His skin tingles. Hot and prickly.
“How about one more hour of studying?”
“Thank god,” you whisper, “I can do that.”
“Power hour?”
“Power hour.”
He walks you back to your dorm.
Even though it’s in the opposite direction of his.
“I hope I helped,” he sighs, “Even if it’s a little bit?”
“You helped a lot -- seriously, I think I’m a wizard now.”
You blossom with pride as he giggles, eyes screwing shut as his head falls backwards. His converse scuff against the pavement as he shoves his fingers into his pockets. Peter glows under pinks and yellows of the streetlights. It’s cute. You wind your own fingers together, toeing the ground.
There’s a weighted pause between you both. Brown eyes burrow into your own.
It’s broken by the door to your dorm swinging open and a group of guys bustling by. It prompts you both to laugh again.
“I’ll see you on Wednesday, then?”
“Yeah! And, uh, I’ll let you know how I do on my quiz!”
“Make me proud!”
He waves, you wave, and you swear it’s the warmest you’ve ever felt.
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It’s nice to see Alex again though he usually avoids former partners. It’s simply been long enough since their breakup that no trace of awkwardness is felt, simply a sense of familiarity. He’s more or less the same, having decided to keep the facial hair Jipyeong had always hated. It’s as sleazy-looking in real life as it is in the instagram photos he pretends he’s not scrolling through. That’s a pointless exercise that makes him wonder if he’d be more successful if he had chosen to stay in San Francisco, or if he’d still be the same person but with shittier fashion sense. It does, however, answer many questions that he’d like to ask (have you neutered Tim Tam yet, yes), prefer not to (are you married, 2 girlfriends and what was probably a sugar baby later, the answer is no), and never wondered (Crossfit is indeed life-changing; hot yoga gives you 10 more IQ points!).
Alex is cordial and professional at the Sandbox, offering Jipyeong nothing but a handshake before they sit down to grade the baby startups. But he lingers conspicuously in the meeting room after all the other judges leave. Jipyeong fingers a piece of his hair that’s come loose despite the pomade and waits.
“You look fluffier. Fatter.” Of course Alex’s first words are about his weight.
“I started eating rice again. I hated low-carb.”
“Rice or tteokbokki?” Alex smiles. “Anyway, it’s not a bad change. Let’s go to Gotgan. I have a reservation for 7pm.”
“You made a reservation for two?” Alex has always been overly confident, but that’s his charm.
“If you say no, I’ll ask Dongchun.”
Jipyeong considers him, looking almost exactly the way he did when Ms Yoon first introduced them 5 years ago. She’s always been able to look right into him and see what he wanted. As much as he respects her, he’s never wanted to tell her that her matchmaking attempt worked. Nothing he does today will have the tiniest effect on the future. All that’s in the past. All that’s waiting for him are Yeongsil and his big silent bed. So he gathers his notes into his satchel and fishes out the keys.
“Let’s take my car.”
“Let’s take the subway. It’s not far and we’ll probably get drunk.”
__
They stay sober. While getting drunk is fun, Jipyeong’s most regrettable moments (bar one that has surfaced intermittently for the last fifteen years) have all occurred when he was intoxicated (crying at a class KTV when Mrs Choi’s favourite song came on, dancing to Wonder Girls in front of a girlfriend’s parents). Staying sober is for the best.
Alex makes some noises about heading back to his hotel room. They both know he doesn’t mean it.
“I want to show you my new place,” Jipyeong says when they’re halfway there. He’s forgotten how private the sidewalks can be at night, cars on one side, the river on the other, blanketed in the dark. “It’s bigger than the one I had before I went to America.” Waves of headlights wash over them, illuminating Alex’s face before dipping them back into darkness. Everyone is rushing somewhere that only they think is important.
“I’d be surprised if apartments could be any smaller.”
“They’re always getting smaller.” Jipyeong jostles against him to avoid a woman on a bicycle. Alex puts his arm around him and doesn’t let go. In San Francisco this is what couples do. In Seoul they’re just old friends. Skinship, being a mentor, being a sunbae--these are all great excuses for what Jipyeong really wants to do. Even through two shirts and a lined blazer his body wants Alex’s body.
They walk in silence though the lobby, past the doorman whose chief qualification is knowing when not to look and float skywards in the lift.
--
“We have to take our shoes off, I just want you to know. You can leave them over there. Yeongsil, lights please.” The lights flicker on, Yeongsil is clearly having a good day.
“You know, I don’t let people wear shoes in my house either… That’s not Alexa.”
“It’s Yeongsil, it’s an AI speaker. It’s one of Ms Yoon’s more promising startups. It’s… more interesting than Alexa.” Jipyeong says, taking off his jacket and leaving it on the table. “It told me you were coming last week.”
“No, no, I told you that I was coming.”
“Yeah, but before I got your email. He tells fortunes too and he told me someone from my past was coming.”
“Everyday you meet someone from your past. And you shouldn’t let it listen to everything you do. It’s going to get hacked.”
“Astrology is in, everyone is going to love that feature,” Jipyeong shrugs. “Nothing I do here is worth any money, they can just hack my bank accounts.”
“You’re not paranoid enough for someone who works in tech.” Alex says, as he almost fondles Yeongsil.
“I’m actually trying to reduce my paranoia.” Jipyeong takes Yeongsil from Alex and stuffs him under the jacket. “Does that make you feel better?”
“No.” Alex continues to touch the other things in his apartment without permission. “Is every photo here of yourself? I know you don’t have family photos but that’s so vain. You should’ve kept some of the gang at 2STO or at least something to remind you of me.”
“The internet is filled with pictures of you. Anyway I still have the Grandpa Rudin you lent me, it’s more useful.”
“Did you really finish it?”
“I just wanted to know why everyone complains about it.”
“Well, now you know I guess. If you liked it don’t tell me.” Alex has moved on to the cardboard sign that proclaims Jipyeong the 2001 winner of the Inter High Schools Investment Competition brushing a finger over the scratch mark Tim Tam made on it before Jipyeong decided it would be safer in his closet. “I like the lamps. Are you into art now?”
“The seller had it staged, I just decided to buy it the way it was. I think it looks very cohesive.”
“So that’s why it looks like no one lives here. It’s like you don’t have any stuff.”
“No, I have the plants and I keep the EXO and Apink merch in the walk-in closet, it’s too personal to have it out here.”
“Red Velvet is better. I wish it weren’t so bloody creepy to be an uncle fan.”
Alex is still the only man with whom he can talk about Eunji and Kyungsoo and not feel dirty. He’s stumbled upon Dongchun’s Twitter (which is, in his own defense, a fascinating read) and knows too much about his deep love for TWICE. There is something a little unsettling about ajusshi fans, even if he is one himself.
“I think there’s something more interesting we can do here.” he takes the sign and puts it back on the top shelf. “I haven’t been laid in 6 months. I’m going to burst.”
“Couldn’t you have picked someone up at a nightclub?” Alex is smiling in such a familiar way; they both know this old dance.
“They’re full of university students.” Jipyeong says while helping Alex out of his jacket, which surprisingly, is only GAP. “You smell like metal.”
“It’s Sartorial, remember? From Penhaligon’s? It’s got that magnesium note.”
“You still haven’t finished it?” Jipyeong bought it as a gift while in London for him. It was so long ago, almost like a dream. He’s had dreams, whenever he’s been alone for too long, of undressing another person, but he can never remember what happens afterwards. The dream-person’s shirt has no smell, no trace of sweat. He slips Alex’s shirt off his shoulders. No undershirt as expected.
“Nope. I bought another bottle. It’s different from all the other man-perfumes. It doesn’t just smell like tonka bean.” He slips a finger over Jipyeong’s mouth, smearing his summer lip balm before dipping inside and scratching his gums lightly with a fingernail. “Your mouth is as lovely as you are horrible. Have you learned anything since we split up?”
“Test me,” Jipyeong says.
The only light in the bedroom is light pollution from the city below. It’s still more than enough to see by, despite the fact that Jipyeong’s night vision has gone to shit from more than a decade spent staring at a computer screen.
[this part not written yet]
--
He dozes off without meaning to and wakes up to the sound of engines. Alex is playing F1. He must have gone through his closet and found the playstation Jipyeong has been trying and failing to quit.
“You’ve got some very impressive beard burn on your jaw. ” Alex says as he overtakes Rosberg. He’s chosen the Singapore circuit. Onscreen the city is cloaked in darkness, the only thing that exists is a winding silver road and cars driving nowhere at 300 miles an hour.
He leans over and takes the controller from Alex, crashing into a Ferrari before spinning out into the barriers. “Are you bragging?”
“No, I’m just being honest.”
It’s a strange mirror of their early days when he would wake up to Alex on a coding binge, the clacking of the keyboard starting and stopping with his thoughts, the weak light of his laptop throwing huge shadows on the wall.
Jipyeong rolls forward on his belly; he wants to see Alex properly. “What do you like about Samsan Tech?”
“I like their engineering. Dosan’s incredibly talented. Their CODA algorithm builds on existing knowledge, and is an improvement on it.”
“And that’s your professional opinion?”
“What else would it be based on?” Alex fixes him with a look.
“Well. People say that you can’t be emotional as an investor. But how can it not be emotional?”
“Jipyeong. I’m excited in the way that I am when I see something beautiful. I wish you could see it too. I still can’t believe you’ve gotten so old without learning to read code.”
“I can code.”
“I don’t mean using OCaml to code a model.”
“There’s only so many hours in a day.” He rolls over and watches the dead light from the screen play across the ceiling. “I can always ask an expert.”
“I’m going back to America after Demo Day, you know. As fun as it would be to stay here and pretend we don’t know each other I have a job I have to get back to.”
“I meant other experts.”
“There are none like me.”
“Well. Talking to you is more fun.” He tangles his fingers with Alex.
“You’re not still posting loss porn on Wallstreetbets are you?”
“I just did. Lost fifty thousand on Apple puts.”
“You’re going to end up living in a corndog stand again.”
“Actually, I won’t. I didn’t tell you yet but I found her last month. She’s in a food truck now. So there’s nowhere I would go.”
“Can I meet her?” Alex perks up. He’s always loved a good story. “I want to know what you were like as a kid.”
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A Beautiful Crime
@nikolaisuggestions a magician never reveals his secrets but I’m no magician and it’s no secret how much I adore you.
Think of the circus and the Big Top inevitably comes to mind, the barkers shouting the attractions to a teeming crowd, the performers filtering in and out of the smaller tents. Think of the circus and you think of clowns in their greasepaint and sword swallowers with their dangerous pieces of steel. Think of the circus and you think of the ringleader with his whip and the lion tamer with their chair, you think of the magicians with their smirks and the trapeze artists flying through the air.
Think of the circus and you think of spectacle, grandiose and incredible. You might remember visiting as a child, when you were innocent and full of wonder, you might remember being a teenager moody but reluctantly entranced, as an adult who knows all the tricks but enjoys all the same. The circus is a beautiful, magical place and it’s no wonder he would make his living here.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the greatest show unearthed!” the barker cries outside the tent and the magician readies his tricks. The people filter into the small tent, cramped if they’re being realistic, but no one ever is in a place like the circus. They can’t see that half the space is sectioned off for the magician to conceal his secrets, they don’t see me behind the curtain, violin propped under my chin with bow in hand.
They see nothing but what we let them see, me and my magician, my trickster. Every pantheon has its trickster, no? Every pantheon needs one to balance the scales, too austere and the balance crumbles away to nothing, power wanes and it’s simply too dull darling. I suppose it’s fortunate the trickster always goes best with the sky father, always a well matched pair when they find the time to play together. And we’ve found the time today, we’ve found a reason and we’ll use any excuse we can conjure.
“Are you ready to be dazzled? Confused and bemused?” Nikolai starts, jovial as ever, genial and welcoming. He’s a sight in his bright clothes, with his bright hair and dancing eyes, he’s a Joker come to life. He has the smile, the laugh, a subtle air of mania hanging about him like a miasma if all’s true. He is demented, deranged and dangerous. And beautiful, ever so beautiful.
“Here you have it, a pack of cards, nothing so special right?” he asks and I draw the bow across the strings, smiling as the music is piped through the tent, behind the audience, around them, above and below. His idea, a lovely one, immerse them in the illusion, create a new reality for them to play in to draw them into the illusion ever so subtly. It’s wonderful to see him grow and learn, to take my advice and implement it so seamlessly into his act. Smart and beautiful, he could steal any heart.
“Here, have one,” he offers and I know he’s been playing with the cards this whole time, tossing them in the air, juggling them and catching them as a pack but now I can all but see him bowing as he spreads the cards, holding them out to some audience member. He has a flair for the dramatic, learned or instinctual it doesn’t really matter because he wears it so well.
I play on, half listening as he captivates the audience, making things appear and disappear, creating things of thin air. They’re easily amused and fooled, they’re simple people after all, they’ve come to see a show and they’re only here to be entertained. They don’t look for the answer behind the tricks, they simply accept them all as tricks because what other answer could there possibly be?
They accept so much really, they accept that the music they hear is recorded and fake, they accept that the cards have markings on them or that the magician has a second deck hidden away to make his miraculous feats possible. They accept the soothing tempo of the music, they hold their breath as it rises and sigh as it descends, they follow the pattern of it all without even realizing and I know if I stopped playing they would all look around confused. They would blink and whisper between themselves, they would look around and wonder what changed.
None of them hear the music anymore, not consciously, but I know they’re swaying along to the rhythm I’ve set. There’s power in a tune, meaning in words, the art of manipulation is more than voices and bodies and I’m a Master of my craft.
“For my final trick, I’ll ask you all to get out of your seats. Everyone is going to play a part in this trick!” he laughs, big and vibrant, manic and ecstatic and I smile with him. He knows how to play his audience ever so well, he plays them better than I play my violin so doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?
We’re both skilled at what we do, he’s a marvel at charming a crowd and my talents lie in enchanting them one at a time, we’re a pretty couple. I play as they all get to their feet, as the chairs scrape back and he makes his table disappear, I step deftly to the side as it appears next to me and play on. This song he chose is haunting, beautiful but spine chilling, ever more so on an electric violin compared to a traditional.
The strings hum under my fingers, sing to my bow and I breathe slowly as the song creeps along to its end though we won’t have the chance to get there. Oh no, I breathe in as I step back, feel the solidness of his back to mine and follow his lead as he turns, where he faced his audience, now I do and I’m standing where he was in the middle of their crowd. I smile behind my mask, the perfect porcelain mask he provided me with, and take a bow as the crowd bursts into applause.
All they see is a smartly dressed man, violin in hand and half his face covered. I know half of them think this is simply a trick, that I was waiting under some concealed door, that perhaps I am the magician under a mask and with a fake prop. They probably think this mask is to hide who’s under it and they all so foolish to think the magician wasn’t wearing a mask all through his performance. Because he wears a mask too, one his enthralled audience was too foolish to notice but I saw it the very second he let it drop into place.
And I look to him now, standing behind this crowd with a smile less than happy on his face and a glint less than proud in his eye. The mask is hard to see but the damage isn’t, the cracks around his lips, the spider-web lines of shatter under the eyes. His mask is breaking and chipping, once perfect porcelain is flaking away and showing the truth underneath. Oh but not quite gone, not quite yet.
“Bravo!” he yells from behind his crowd as I straighten and reach for a woman’s hand, they all think this is the end of the show and they don’t realise this is simply the intermission. The woman smiles as I bow over her fingers and she smiles as I press my lips to the back of her hand and she smiles as blood dribbles between her lips and she falls dead to the ground. She dies with a smile on her face and happiness in her heart and truly how many amongst us will be afforded the same luxury?
The second of silence, shocked, stunned, confused, dazed silence is the finest vintage I have ever tasted. The mess of emotion playing across the face of the crowd, the blankness in their dull, stupid eyes, oh it’s marvelous. Ever so beautiful and ever so intoxicating.
Part of their confusion lies with me, of course it does. They haven’t the faintest idea who I am, all they see is a well dressed man with a violin, a man with soft black hair falling around his masked face. They have half of my face but they still can’t see the snarling smile on playing across my lips, they can’t see the malice in my eyes, they see nothing but the porcelain mask and nothing but the mocking smile painted below it.
“Oh my what a trick, m’lord, care to show us again?” Nikolai asks, laughs, shouts from behind their backs breaking the silken silence. Three try to run, tearing for the one exit they know through the tent but they don’t get far, they’re back in front of me before they can blink and they’re dead before they realise where they are. A simple, single touch is all it takes to steal the life from their bodies, faster than a bullet, quicker than poison, painless and simple.
A woman screams, one shrill, piercing shriek, just one before she’s falling to the ground as well. These people, these fucking sheep, they don’t realise they’ve all walked right to their own slaughter. Why do we kill them? To help purge the world of course, there’s always a higher reason and you could choose any of them you please when you want to commit a massacre. What’s my reason?
Oh I need to secure the trust of my new ally, the money from this hit will only sweeten the pot, I’m ever so bored and killing a few people is infinitely more fun than sitting on my ass and fucking with a computer. What’s my reason? I’m a genocidal fucker with so little regard for human life I consider them all animals and beneath me. I’m a bastard, a crazy, too intelligent bastard who finds joy in murder and happiness in lies.
“Where are you going? The show’s not done!” Nikolai yells and he appears before me, bends low at the waist and snatches a man trying to run, redirecting the momentum and flinging him through a portal I know opens up high above us. I nod at my Joker and take a step back, two for good measure and smile wider when the body crashes through the tent to splatter on the ground where I stood.
Oh the screams are a symphony now, a symphony of the damned and I don’t mean that metaphorically in the slightest. These sheep were marked for slaughter the second they stepped into this tent but not handpicked, they could have been anyone at all and they still would have died, screaming and terrified.
“When the sun sets, we’re both the same,” I hum behind my mask and tuck the violin under my chin to play the last few chords of the song. There are five people dead at my feet and more raining from the sky, the dead outnumber the living and soon there’ll be nothing but me and the music and a madman left.
“No touching the assistants!” Nikolai snarls and I don’t bother avoiding the fist aimed at my face, I don’t flinch when the man’s arm disappears and the blood of his severed newly severed limb sprays over me. The shrieks are piercing, terrible and damaged but I keep playing, wiping the blood from the strings as I go and watching as Nikolai kicks the man as he falls to the ground. There’s a viciousness on his face I love, a savagery closer to the face of a starving street urchin than a well dressed magician but looks are ever so deceiving, no?
The man dies under the magician’s boot, lungs collapsing under vicious assault and when he tears back around, the expression in his lovely eyes is feral. I do like him, this unhinged enchanter, this mad Joker, he’s perfect for every and any plan I could have.
“M’lord,” he tsks, reaching for the dirty mask and taking it away deftly, barely jarring my violin as I eek out the last few notes of this tune. I breathe slow and deep as he dashes the porcelain mask to pieces and reaches through another of his marvelous portals to drag the last sheep for sacrifice. A man, no a boy, eyes filled with tears, mucus leaking from his nose and lips trembling in his fear.
I remember myself at the age he probably is, a child so close to adult, unsure of the future but sure of my own conviction. What would I have done if our places had been reversed? Would I have run? Would I have offered my services to the magician and his fiddler playing their games of death? Would I have accepted my fate and lay down to await my end?
“The greatest trick of them all, darling, is making people think there’s a trick in the first place,” I tell him, smiling at him so understanding, so soothing as I take my bow from my strings. He can’t think of a thing to say, I can see the blankness in his eyes and I’m being merciful as I set the bow against his throat, really I am. I’m doing the poor boy a favour as I slide the bloody bow along his neck, giving him one last chance to pray for his soul, before my fingers brush his skin and he falls limp to the filthy floor.
So many twisted, broken bodies piled up around us, splattered and spattered and the flickering circus lights filtering through the holes in the ceiling sends strange shadows playing across them all. Outside the rest of the circus is probably gathered, ready to burst through the flimsy canvas to find our well planned massacre and it’s time to go.
Hmm, but one last trick before we leave I suppose.
“Bravo, Mr Magician, an exceptional performance,” I compliment Nikolai, throwing my violin on the ground and applauding him. He smiles, bright and joyful, bending himself in half as he bows, bows again and again as we continue our macabre act.
“Thank you m’lord, thank you kindly,” he laughs childishly as he straightens and I peel off my gloves and throw them to the side. I nod to him, close my eyes and when I open them, I’m on the far side of the field from where the circus set itself up. I can see the big top, magnificent and incredible in the last of the day’s fading light and I wait patiently for the rest of the screams to start. Then I turn my back and count with each step I take, slow and steady, don’t run, don’t panic.
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10-
“They’ll be ash by tomorrow morning, m’lord,” Nikolai declares proudly and I don’t turn to see the fire I know he started, the fires. The circus will be ash by tomorrow morning.
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Blindspot recap 2x16
(Aka the one where Cade is the source and Patterson’s tooth is the mole)
Happy Blindspot day! Here’s a rather late recap, as is kinda typical for me at the moment (nightshifts take up a lot of energy haha). But anyway, have a look below the cut for a lot of rambling about how much I love Jeller and how much I want to hug Patterson haha
Oh yeah, Nas is being strangled. Forgot about that. But oooh I love the car-seat trick and then like flipping herself over into the backseat??That was kinda badass. I'm always approving of seeing ladies beat the crap out of bad guys. But anyway he's dead now (nice work Nas, I’m sure Weller didn’t want to interrogate him or anything) and anyway she's got the info-- which if there's really info about Sandstorm on that USB, then clearly he wasn't the one that put it there (bc he would have just used a decoy) meaning that if it’s legit then her source and this killer are not connected. Which lbr we already know they aren’t.
But nvm about all that bc this scene is far more important. The team are all hanging at Weller's and laughing and toasting and drinking and ughhhh remember early last season when Zapata and Reade had never even been in his apartment?? And now they're all hanging out?? Being besties?? And omg Patterson is such a cutie, insisting they toast every time (maybe I’m going to make a variation on that rule and always toast to Patterson herself before I do a shot haha) and they all indulge her and ughhhh my babies. And then Jane is there, walking straight in without knocking bc lbr this apartment is always open to her. Do I dare even consider the fact that she has a key, ‘in case of emergencies’??? But anyhow clearly Weller had invited her (because of course he did, he probably suggested the group drinks in the first place just to have an excuse to invite her over), and she probably had wanted to come so much but had already agreed to plans with Oliver and felt she couldn't cancel on him... especially not when she would be doing so to go spend time with the guy she’s actually in love with. That would probably be a kinda unfair thing to do to your date. But lbr when he bailed n their dinner she probably wasn't even that upset bc she was now free to go be with her family instead ughh. Also it's weird to think that this is all taking place immediately after last ep? Like only hours after the team all split into pairs to hunt down the smuggler. I mean Zapata's looking good for someone who got shot in the back of her vest, and Weller seems to have recovered well from being tased haha. But anyway they're all like ‘yaayy Jane's here’ which is so cute lol, and Zapata's like 'wait what about that thing you had on' (ugh look at this supportive lady-friend being all discreet haha) and Weller looks up with that 'I-really-wanna-hear-this-but-also-really-don't' expression bc I'm sure that even if Jane hadn't told him she had a date when he invited her to the drinks, he would have known it anyway bc she would have been all flustered and awkward and also clearly bummed about missing out on being with the team and ugh I bet Weller is fighting off a grin rn to know that she's here with him-- er, I mean with them-- and not with some guy and aww Patterson immediately involves her in the toasting thing and ugh look at my babies all being so happyyyyyy. And then Zapata immediately finds a excuse to whisk both of them off into the kitchen so they can have a ~girl talk~ (omg her "boys. so sensitive." comment lol. I feel you there girl.) and ugh I am SO HERE for this bonding and supportiveness and lol considering Weller got up and headed somewhere right the same time that they did, I'm totally picturing him hiding around the corner sneakily trying to listen in haha. Whereas meanwhile Reade and Patterson are left awkwardly at the table and she reaches out so earnestly, telling him she's worried about him, and he just walks off. Excuse me, I will not tolerate this rudeness towards my baby. Go back and apologise. And then omg Jane has snuck into the nursery (love the mobile with Aussie animals on it, like it’s a nod to my country for producing Sully haha) but anyway ugh I love the way that Jane looks around the room; it's not a wistful "I wish this was mine to share with him", though I'm sure that there's definitely a bit of that buried down deep. Mostly though she just looks at it all with such tenderness and pride, because she can see what a good and loving father Weller is going to be and it makes her love him all the more. And then oops Weller busts her (lbr he'd been fully aware of exactly where she was every moment since she stepped into the apartment, and was just waiting for his chance to spend some time alone with her) and she's adorably embarrassed and guilty about snooping but he doesn't mind at all bc lbr Jane has 100% free access to anything in his life bc he loooooves herrr, and then ugh Allie gets mentioned and Jane tries to suss out what the situation will be after the baby is born bc lbr she's secretly picturing her and Weller’s future life together, whether she realises it or not. And then she apologises for overstepping and takes the question back, just like he did when he asked her about Oliver, and ugh I love that these two are doing this little dance and wanting to be closer and know all these things about each other but they're afraid that the other doesn't want to share that connection so they apologise and try to step back again, but the other one always reassures them it's alright and then opens up a little more and ughhhhh these two are so clearly inchinggggg their way back toward each other again and ugh this is such a honest and vulnerable moment that could have easily led to something even deeper but of course by the very nature of the Jeller moment, it means that they have to be interrupted-- and so right on time there's a text from Nas (since she couldn't barge in in person, she had to make do) and ugh we’re all sitting here like 'okay you nearly died? cool well you would still have been not-dead in five minutes, how about next time you be more considerate and give everyone some time to themselves before demanding all the damn attention’. Sigh.
And so now the team is all back at the FBI and I'm curious as to how they got there, bc I'm certain that all of them except Jane would have been too intoxicated to drive. Like seriously tho did they all pile together into her car?? Who got to ride shotgun?? Weller, since he's the bigest and also the boss? And also so he and Jane could throw loaded looks at each other while she drove? Or what if Weller was feeling gentlemanly and let Patterson sit up front so she wouldn't be squished, and instead Zapata was the one sandwiched between Weller and Reade, poking her elbow into Reade's side lol? I really hope they did all drive together, I mean it’s just a far more entertaining thought than FBI people picking them up. Though it'd be kinda funny if they took cabs or ubers instead, like 'hey we're a bunch of FBI agents take us to our headquarrters stat'. But anyhow, I'm getting distracted. The team arrives in the lab, Weller checks in on Nas just long enough to get the USB with the info. The team tosses ideas back and forth about who the source is and if he had anything to do with the attack, then Weller sets Patterson to cracking the USB which will take all night. Ugh, my poor baby works so hard. Though lbr it's not like Weller is gonna go home and to bed either; he’ll probably spend all night working in his office so he’s readily available if she needs him. And then lol now Patterson's busy with her computer and Reade & Zapata have apparently decided they have some place else to be, so when Weller walks away, Jane can go after him alone, touching his arm (yaaaasssss Unnecessary and Lingery Touuuuchhhhh) and asking him if he's okay and ugh he's so upset and Jane just steadies him like no one else can and promises that they'll get Shepherd and then she touches his arm again (oh lord help me) before going to help Patterson and ughhhhh I love Supportive Wifey Jane and ugh I know I've said it before but I'm just so glad these two are partners again ughhh
Naw Reade and Zapata have just had another one of their joint gym sessions which I think is adorable. And lol he's talking about a woman he thinks is kinda cute (lbr tho man you're not exactly being picky these days) and she grimaces at him, which is basically a pretty good reflection of how I feel about Reade and his proclivities atm lol. And then oh hello random drug screen lady! That was a funny moment with "it's your lucky day"/"we finally have hot water in the showers?"/"we have soft serve in the commissary??" lol you sassy buggers. But more importantly than all that is the horror on Reade's face when she tells them they're going to be screened today-- yep, this is called karma, bro. You were mean to my baby Patterson and now the universe is punishing you. Also I love Zapata's “Couldn't you have given us a heads-up on this” and the lady's snarky reply. I like her already. And I like that she didn't take any of Reade's crappy excuses about not feeling well. It’s time to face the music, sucker.
Awwww Jane sitting on the floor with Roman and trying to get him to eat and worrying about him sleeping on the hard floor and ugh he asks her about her night and about Oliver and then ughhhh "I don't have much, but what little I do have I owe to you". That is such a true statement, and it kinda encompasses the good and bad? Like yeah he's in a cell and has no memories and that's because of her but he's also alive and being cared for and free of Sandstorm and that's all because of her too. Ugh their situation is such a complicated and interesting one but I really wish she would be honest with him about the zipping. He's been a little more settled lately, no huge outbursts in a couple of days, so maybe it's approaching the right time to start telling him the truth?? Please???
Back in the lab, Nas has emerged from the med bay, and so Patterson shows her and Weller the photos that she got off the USB-- pictures of Shepherd and Sandstorm peeps from the day before. And then the source calls and tells them where to bring him money before he gives them any more info on Shepherd's location. And yes this is all very important but rn I'm actually much more interested in Weller's loose necktie situation bc damn I'm digging it. Also I wanna know what happened last night? Like did he go home? Did the others go home? Was there any point in them sticking around anyway if only Patterson could run the decrypting program? If he did go home, did he sleep at all? I need to know these things. But anyhow Jane catches up to him in the corridor, and she opposes his plan to stake out the meet site beforehand, worried that they'll spook the source and lose their chance at a lead. And lbr she's kinda like his inner voice, here? He's having to do things a certain way bc he's the boss and he's supposed to do things by the book and prevent risk to his agents, but all the arguments she's making are exactly what he feels himself, yet he has to ignore them. Ugh I love the fact that even when they appear to be at odds, they’re still in tune?? #soulmaaaates
Oooooh Zapata's questioning Reade about his weird behaviour and lol she teases him about handling his hard liquor like a preteen (tho I would hope that preteens aren't drinking hard liquor lol) and then jokingly prods him about if he’s really worried he's going to fail, and then he's all 'well, yeah' and she's like wait what. Then he gets called up and walks out like a guy going to his execution and seriously son you would never be in this situation if you hadn't made such terrible life choices lately
Meanwhile the rest of the team is actually working, trying to hover around inconspicuously as Nas goes to the drop point. Which is kinda ridiculous tbh bc literally the source would recognise both Jane and Weller instantly so I feel that this is not a terrific plan. Then he calls and tells Nas to go to a nearby hospital and gives her directions on dropping the bag into a laundry cart before leaving. Then some guy collects the cart and puts the bag in the laundry chute-- so Weller accosts him and shoves him into a wall. Ah, my cranky son. (Tho lbr I quite enjoy watching Weller manhandle people. I would not mind watching him shove Jane into a wall in a much gentler and more romantic fashion haha). Anyway turns out the guy was just paid to do it, and they realise that the source is down in the laundry room at the base of the chute, and Weller is all like 'quick, to the stairs!' and Jane's like 'nah son I got this' and legit jumps down the chute, slowing her fall on the walls and doing a kickass roll when she gets to the bottom. Dude. Life. Goals. And then she immediately pursues the source, only for him to circle behind her and put his gun to her head-- and the moment he speaks she realises it's Cade. Okay so Cade has been the source all along? Or maybe both he and Markos? Or maybe he, Markos AND Remi? But then anyway in another incredibly badass move, she dodges to the side of the gun and disarms him and throws him over her shoulder and ugh I am so down with this fight bc while Jane is definitely going to be the more skilled, she is probably the person who taught him to fight well in the first place?? Student vs master. And them bam she has the gun on him and tells him that they're on the same side and that she killed Oscar and ooooooohhhhhh I bet he didn't see that coming. And then suddenly Weller is there, impressively not out of breath considering the fact that he probably just sprinted down like five flights of stairs to get here and protect his wifey. And Nas is there too, and says 'Cade! in surprise and recognition(??), and I guess she knows what he looks like from a sketch of Jane's or something? Still, it's weird how quick she was. And then he reveals he's the source and everyone is like whaaaaaaa lol
Oooh Reade's in trouuuuble. With Zapata, that is. And he insists he was just blowing off some steam and she shuts him down, making it clear that what he's doing is waaaay more serious than that, and insisting that he tell Weller. And awww she says that they're all family, but Reade blows her off. So he really doesn't believe that the team is family to him? That's sad. And wrong. And then he even questions Patterson about tipping off the drug test people and I'm literally offended on her behalf. She's being cool about it ("agents can't call for random drug tests. They're random.") but I bet his suspicion hurt. And then Jane joins them and I feel like she picks up on the vibe, but they all focus instead on Weller, Nas and Zapata as they go in to interrogate Cade. Why three of them? Why is Zapata there? I mean she’s great and I'm always happy to see her being badass, but I'm just a little confused. And anyway Cade is being a smartass about 'where it all started' (aka the big bang) and the ladies are basically like shut up and get to the point lol. So we hear his backstory about why he joined Sandstorm (dad died in a mining accident and lawyers robbed the family of compensation etc. Because apparently the only response to tragedy and injustice is terrorism) and then he tells them that he left Sandstorm when he realised that Shepherd was only fighting for herself, not his cause. While listening, Jane has a flashback to Roman talking to Cade about all the people that are going to die in phase 2, and Remi shuts down the conversation. It definitely seems like the memories we see these days often have Remi seeming like much more of a jerk then she used to (not that she was ever a ray of sunshine before tho tbh). Idk it might just be a product of what's triggering the memories. Anyway Cade explains that he stayed with Sandstorm so he could do more damage from the inside, and Weller gets pissed at him about trying to kill them (or really, trying to kill Jane, which is the part that actually upsets him). And Cade says he did it both to try to stop the plan-- bc back then Jane was much more central to it, right?-- and also as revenge for Oscar killing someone he loved. I'm so intrigued by the way he talks about Markos-- "Markos made me whole" sounds like much more of an intimate connection than family/brothers-in-arms. Whether they were involved that way or not, I'm definitely headcanoning that Cade was in love with Markos.
Aaaand so Weller is not happy with Cade’s demands for money and immunity. He storms into his office (does he really ever enter his office any other way?) and I love that Jane is confident in her right to be there but still hangs back a little, giving Nas a chance to make her case first, pretty much bc she knows it won’t work haha. Only Jane can get through to him when he’s like this. And ugh one of Weller's main arguments against Cade going free is that he tried to kill Jane. Lbr that’s totally an unforgivable crime in Weller's opinion. And ugh again I’m so glad about this whole moment-- like if this was happening in the early eps of this season, even if Weller would have admitted his anger over Cade trying to kill Jane at all, Jane certainly wouldn’t have been there to hear it and know that he felt that way. But now she is, and even if she tells herself that he's really just making excuses not to work with one of Sandstorm’s members, a little part of her would cling to his protectiveness of her and revel in it. But anyhow I love that she puts a hand on Nas' shoulder and is all like 'good try, but dw, I got this.' And she follows him and locks eyes with him and tells him that they have to put their baggage with Cade aside, like Weller did with her, and he's all "that was different" and ugh she reminds him about telling Zapata he didn’t even want to be in the same room as her and ugh it hurts me that that memory comes to her so easily. How much it must have hurt her to hear that, and how much Weller must regret it now and want to take it all back and tell her he never really meant it and he actually loved her all along and ughhhhhhh. And ugh he drops his gaze from hers and you already know that he'll let Cade go. He'll do anything for her. Lbr a lot of the time Jane is the most powerful person on this team bc of the sway she has over Weller, but it’s a power she would never abuse. Plus, she would do literally anything for Weller in return, and close to anything for every single member of the team. Ugh, my loyal baby.
Anyway so Cade gets his deal and tells the whole team about Shepherd meeting with a smuggler person, possibly to be smuggled somewhere herself. So they send out a team to lie in wait for ehr, but just as they're ready tog et into position, they see smoke coming from the building, and race in only to find that the guy Shepherd was meeting is already dead and a bunch of his files are burned. So they think Cade sold them out and pre-warned Shepherd, leading to an angry confrontation and he's all 'uhhhhh I've been here the whole time? literally how could I have gotten any kind of message out" lol and then he tells them that maybe they have a mole, which pisses Weller off. Uh, Cade, you might want to be careful. People are a little sensitive about the ‘M’ word around here....
Ughhh Jane suggests that they use Cade to try to jog Roman's memories and Weller allows it bc she's his beloved wifey and he wants to make her happy ugh. And it's such an interesting dynamic with Cade and Roman. "I don't know whether to choke you or feed you soup. Or maybe both" lol. And then Jane is all sweet with Roman when he can't remember anything, and it must be strange for Cade to see how not-Remi she is?? Though he still throws a jab at her about wanting her brother in a cage, which sets off another memory for her about keeping Roman from talking to Cade. As a sidenote, I love Remi's flat, dead voice and how different it is from Jane's. But anyhow clearly the doses that these two were zipped with were very different, or Jane’s has been wearing off or something, bc she is definitely much more susceptible to triggers than he is. But ugh my fave part of this scene was probably when Cade says that mean comment to Jane and Weller just grabs him roughly by the arm and drags him outta there. No one’s mean to his wifey and gets away with it...
Zapata and Reade get their results back, which were thankfully negative (though part of me wishes his had been positive just so he had to face it and get help). Also I love that they have these very private conversations in the locker room-- like cmon guys someone could be literally right around the corner. But anyhow ugh Zapata is so serious and worried rn and she insists again that he tell Weller and get help (work-dad will fix it!), but Reade is refusing to seek help bc he’s kinda a butthead these days. And so Zapata-- while making it clear that she's doing it out of love-- tells him that she will tell Weller if he doesn't, and his reaction to that reminds me of a little kid: "but... but you're my best friend" *lip wobbles*. Uh yeah, dude, she is! That's why she will do whatever it takes to protect you, even if you hate her for it! Ugh. Poor Zapata, she should go talk it out with her BFF Jane. Meanwhile Weller locks Cade back up, and then being the sweet marshmallow he is, actually pauses and tells Cade that he's sorry about his father. Ugh, my big softy. He mentions that his uncle was a miner too, and Cade's all ‘yeah I know, Shepherd talked about you a lot’. Which is creepy but unsurprising, I guess?
Over in the lab, my baby Patterson is looking at files on Borden, which is upsetting. She gets another headache, then is looking at pictures of Shepherd when she suddenly puts it all together, realising what's been going on with her and why Sandstorm always seems to be ahead of them. Also lol at the lab tech who comes up to ask her something and she's all "not now" and they back away respectfully from their queen haha. But oh my poor baby, this must be a horrible feeling, to realise her own role in all of this. Weller would never blame you though honey!
And speaking of Weller, he's back in his office when Jane comes in all shy, and she's like 'um, weird question, but... are you my supervisor?' with literally THE CUTEST expression on her face, and tbh it's kinda funny to consider her as part of boring old workplace ladders bc she's just ~part of the family~ (or rather jst like an extension of Weller, lbr) and Weller is like 'uuuhhhhhhhh yeah I guess I am' which shows he never really thought about it either lol. And lbr, she kind of went from victim-->asset-->Weller's partner-->traitor-->prisoner-->asset-->Weller's partner, so she never really fit neatly into the whole boss/employee thing. But anyhow she shows him the requisition form that she needs him to sign, all the stuff she wants for Roman, admitting she can't stand to see him so unsettled. And Weller literally doesn't even hesitate before signing it, despite the fact that someone like Roman could very easily use those things to craft a weapon or escape tool or something. He just signs it bc not only does he trust Roman not to do that, and also cares about her and hates seeing her sad, but also he remembers feeling the same way when Jane was first brought to them. Which squeezes my heart bc he acted so aloof at the start but you just knew-- KNEW-- that underneath he really felt for her and wanted to help and comfort her. Which he soon did, though as professionally as he could (until the feelings won out over professionalism haha). But ughhh I bet it hits her hard when he says that about having the same feeling-- bc she LOVES Roman. That's why it hurts her to see him like that. So if Weller felt the same way about her, even back then....
But anyhow, of course this tender Jeller moment is just begging for an interruption, so in steps Patterson, showing them warnings on her ipad as she talks about having a bug in her servers that she needs to fix, and ugh every word she's saying is so clearly about herself and fixing the 'bug' in her before it corrupts the whole FBI 'server' and ugh she's holding herself together so well and Jane looks confused and then concerned and Weller just looks aggrieved and ughhhhhh I NEED there to have been a moment after she leaves (after writing on the ipad to tell them to gather the others and meet her in that metal cage thing that radio signals can't penetrate) where Jane just reaches out to Weller and comforts him bc lbr they're like the parents in this family and Patterson is daddy's little girl and ughhhhh how sad and angry and frustrated and horrified they must be all at once and ughhhh. I just feel like Weller needed a hug and Jane wanted to hug him but couldn't-- not it his glass-walled office, not with unresolved stuff still between them-- but she would have at the very least stepped close and had her hand on his arm and murmured comforting words and ughhh. But anyway the whole team is in the cage now, and Patterson tells them all about the bug she found in her tooth, which is seriously crazy small. It couldn’t possibly exist in the real world. But anyhow Jane, the protective mama, is like 'Let's go get it out right now' but Patterson, my brave baby, looks at Weller and suggests they use it to lure Sandstorm. Which is a very good idea, lbr. Which then leads to them all hanging out in Weller's office reading from scripts, and it's kinda hilarious to see actors playing people who are bad actors? Like their reading is so stilted but I guess it still sounds believable enough to Sandstorm, so that’s all that matters haha
So now Sandstorm is coming to the safehouse where Cade is being kept, to kill him before he can ‘trigger any more' of Roman's memories. Borden's the one making the calls since apparently Shepherd is out on a barge in the middle of the ocean for whatever reason (lbr who knows why Shepherd does literally anything except for ~Insanity~). I'm sure that will become clear eventually. So the trap is set; Reade and Patterson are in the safehouse with Cade, presumably settling him in, when he overpowers Patterson, steals her gun, and fake-shoots them both before making a run for it, forcing the Sandstorm guys to race after him. I appreciate seeing Borden getting tricked by the very people he tricked, and it all almost works too, except apparently he has superhuman eyesight and notices a floodlight up in a tree. All the others are surrounded, but he escapes off another way-- only to be caught by Patterson, who wounds him with a shot then chases him into a barn. Meanwhile the ringleader of all the others manages to shoot all three of the others before shooting himself, and come on, really? What if he'd fired at the FBI? Someone would have taken him down immediately. So why couldn't they have killed him after he fired the first shot, or even shot at one of the other guys in the leg to drop him and then kill the main guy before he could re-aim and kill them too? I guess we're gonna have to suspend our disbelief here and just roll with it, bc lbr how could our crackshot team (especially Jane) not be able to stop this from happening?
But anyhow. On to more important things, which is my baby chasing Borden into a barn all alone, despite Weller shouting orders not to. And ugh as she walks in you can see that like literally everything in this barn (propane tanks, paint thinner, etc) is flammable, and well this is surely a very bad sign. And then she demands that 'Nigel' turn himself in, and ugh he shoots towards her and nearly hits the tanks and the she corners him and yet again they're facing down from either side of a gun, and ughhh she's telling him that he's going to spend the rest of his life in a cell and he actually reassures her, telling her that it's okay that she wants to kill him and omg okay maybe he's just saying that bc he assumes that she does, but then again maybe he KNOWS? If Sandstorm has been able to hear everything she's said in the past couple of weeks, then they have heard all her sessions with Dr Sun, the ones that (as she admitted to Reade) usually end with her sobbing. How many times did Borden come into the control room and volunteer to take over a shift listening to their bug; how many times did he sit there and listen to her cry and rail about how he'd betrayed her and destroyed her?? Ughhh and while I don't feel sorry for him (okay, maybe the teeeensiest bit), I do believe that he DID care about her. It just wasn't enough. And then ughhhh she's yelling at him now for what he did to her and there's tears in her eyes and he tries to apologise and I appreciate that he's made no move to shoot at her (I don't believe he would anyway) bc I'd hate for her to have to kill him bc that would mean even more emotional trauma-- like Jane with Oscar. And then he holds up the grenade instead, ensuring he'll die but also giving her enough time to make a run for it, to survive. And ugh if I’d known from the start how this would go I definitely would not have started shipping them all those eps ago lol
Ugh, back in the bullpen poor bruised Patterson is staring at the photos of Borden and the other Sandstorm operatives and ugh my sweet Jane comes up to check on her and it's super clever how there's originally no sound other than the music, like Patterson is kind of separate from everything. She's holding a little radio scrambler like it’s a talisman and ugh I just feel so sad for her. It's going to be so long before she is comfortable again in her own skin, until she no longer feels betrayed and violated and ruined. And Jane says much the same, telling her how killing Oscar made her feel more betrayed and unsafe. Ugh she's so sweet and supportive and doesn't push when Patterson says she can't feel anything, just makes sure she knows that she's always there for her. Ugh. Jane would die for any member of this team in a heartbeat and it kills me. As does her sorrowful face as poor Patterson walks away. And then ugh my baby goes to the med bay to get the tooth out, which is very symbolic and (hopefully) cathartic, and ugh she's so angry and so far from her usual bubbly self and she refuses any anaesthetic for the pain and ughhhh this is just awful
I'm impressed that Nas actually lets Cade go with the money. Are we sure she didn't poison it somehow, or put a tracker in it, or...? But regardless, Cade refuses to stay and help, and Nas is sounding pretty doom and gloom about their chances of stopping Phase 2. But naw Weller believes in the team, and he's confident that they've weakened Shepherd-- after all, her right-hand man is now dead, and her two former proteges are now on Team FBI (aww, he considers Roman to be on their team). Also speaking of Roman, he's now lying on his bed with his soft sheets and a book and ughhhh I'm so happy to see him smile ugh my baby puppyyyy. I hope that he remembers these little signs of love when the truth about the zipping comes out...
Ooooh Reade deliberately left without talking to Weller, calling Zapata on her 'bluff'-- but ugh given the stunned and upset look on her face, it was no bluff. She knows she's going to have to go to Weller now, even if it costs her her best friend. And ugh she shows up at Weller's door, rather than just walking right into his office when she had the chance-- like she had to go home and mentally prepre herself/talk herself into it. And of course Weller lets her straight in and ugh he looks so concerned both for her and for Reade and ughhhhh he's such the Dad of this family ughhhh
Sigh Oliver texted Jane and she went right to him. I suppose it's sweet that he cooked this whole fancy meal as an apology... and then ugh she kisses him, probably to shut him up so she doesn't have to hear that accent anymore-- and tbh I'm actually glad when the guys show up to kidnap them before any items of clothing have come off. Now THIS is one scene that I don't mind seeing interrupted...!
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crying to radiohead isn’t lame
(you can jmp loc_888 if you just want my final thoughts.)
in a recent tumblr manifesto directed at convention organizers regarding their lack of codified rules of conduct and lackadaisical approach to safety, i was outed as a big part of the overall problem:
Bryce Case Jr. (a.k.a. YT Cracker) would not be invited to DerbyCon as an artist nor welcomed as an attendee. Again, this is someone with a long history of security violations and drunken abuse of women at other conferences. There are records of all this. It is unclear if the /courts/ were ever involved, so this individual represents a different standard of evidence… but he unmistakably is a known bad actor and if DerbyCon can’t bring themselves to prevent his attendance, it is a signal to the community (especially women) that DerbyCon is not a place where people are safe.
the author of this section is admittedly shannon morse (aka snubs), who, rightfully so, has a beef with me for an incident that happened at the bsides las vegas pool party in 2014. i was dared by a friend to grab her butt and, like a third grader, proceeded to fulfill this dare.
yes, i was highly intoxicated - i don’t offer that as an excuse, just as backstory. the drinks were flowing and i had been pretty belligerent that evening - i kept turning up the volume on the mixer vs. the wishes of the convention organizers; my rap performance was sub-par, the dj performance even worse. i don’t deny that i was in rare form in the wrong way.
the next day, i apologized to everyone i thought that i had fucked things up with the night before. i was able to piece together a lot of the events that were foggy through the human blockchain i was with. a lot of people do embarrassing shit when they are inebriated, and i am definitely no stranger to being “that guy.” i am not, however, some kind of sexual predator.
i was not invited back to the party in 2015; i didn’t really expect to be invited back due to my actions the previous year. at this point in the story though, i still didn’t even know the snubs issue existed. it wasn’t until december when snubs tagged me regarding the incident in a defcon videos thread:
https://twitter.com/Snubs/status/673553028847263744
http://archive.is/Uj1zT
i immediately hit up int80 and whoever else i could regarding this whole thing and emailed shannon to sort it out:
https://imgur.com/a/nLzam
long story short, she told me everything i did that evening. i apologized and told her i was wrong and if she or her man wanted to take a crack at me, i deserved it. i truly feel terrible about it. i am not in the wholesale business of violating people, just their computers.
snubs acknowledged that we hashed it out over email and things were kosher:
https://twitter.com/Snubs/status/673641949279096833
http://archive.is/9NHtz
i spoke with the bsideslv folks in DMs, they tweeted my apology and request for grievances. i won’t screenshot, but here:
https://twitter.com/BSidesLV/status/674391295616352256
http://archive.is/3XaOi
i thought my mea culpa was SYN ACKd, and the world was flat again. i was asked by bsideslv to perform again in 2016. i even pointed out in the email that if snubs was unhappy with my presence there that i would not attend:
https://imgur.com/a/ZOhQA
perhaps there was a miscommunication, but i did think everything was ok at this point. i think any reasonable human being would. in august, during the defcon festivities, snubs took to twitter again:
https://twitter.com/Snubs/status/761853967110242304
http://archive.is/LeNx0
i told her i was more than happy to apologize in person and i thought this was worked out:
http://archive.is/a5yCq
we didn’t hash it out, obviously. anyway, this must’ve been stewing for some time. i don’t blame her for being pissed off and it is totally her choice to be mad at me. she can be mad at me forever if she wants, and i know now after the recent tumblr post and the video where she recounts this story and voldemorted me (see below), she does not like me:
youtube
if you’ve made it this far, congratulations.
loc_888:
look, i admit i am an imperfect human that is a stellar fucking idiot when he’s rammed a bunch of alcohol down his throat, but i will not cop to being a serial rapist or chester molester or threat to people at conventions. i admit that grabbing shannon was poor judgement and poor behavior and i am sorry i put her through that. however, if there’s some giant body of evidence out there that i am the hacker bill cosby on some tyler durden, multiple personality shit then please, show it to me. rarely am i ever alone at conventions, so there are usually always witnesses to my conduct. it is totally disingenuous to paint me with that large of a brush.
in lieu of a heavy handed CoC, i am all for setting up a shitlord dunk tank at these conventions - $5 to dunk me in manure like some back to the future tannen cosplay - with all of the proceeds going to female STEM organizations, or whatever else you think i am against. there are real fucking assholes out there, and i don’t know if i am one of them.
don’t touch people without their consent, and don’t be a fucking dickhead. everyone makes mistakes, something glass houses two in the bush gets the worm.
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[MS] Vacation
"Welcome aboard sir" a ship officer says with a friendly voice when I step off the ramp onto the stunningly white deck of the Queen of the Ocean. Smiling faces everywhere I look. Happiness, the anticipation of living in paradise for the next six weeks, the desperate desire of getting away from the maddening crowd of the cities, of angry, demanding bosses, of tight schedules and, in some cases, of the prying eyes of their own spouse.
"May I help you with your luggage sir?" asks a melodic voice pulling me back to reality. A bellman. "Yes. Please do." and he accompanies me to my cabin carrying my suitcase. "Here we are Mr...." "Swanson. Dennis Swanson" "Oh yes, Mr. Swanson, cabin 305." He unlocks the door and puts my suitcase beside my bed. I thank him, pull a 10 Dollar bill from my wallet and when I turn to him, he's gone as if he vanished into thin air. After recovering from the initial shock, I attribute this occurrence to the fact that I can be so absentminded at times that I wouldn't notice a rogue wave hitting the Queen of the Ocean and sending her to the depths of the seas.
A few minutes later I hear a knock on the door. I peer outside and am greeted by an attractive blonde woman in her mid twenties who. judging by her uniform, must be a stewardess. I let her in and she shows me the amenities and instructs me how to wear a life jacket and what to do in case of emergency. I pity her. How many times does she have to repeat the same damn thing to snobbish fools who take her words for granted and want nothing more than for her to leave, only for them to panic in an emergency when they have no clue how to put a life jacket on. I thank her and she leaves.
My eyes slowly open as I wake up from a short nap, and decide to take a stroll on the uppermost deck to enjoy the view. I've never been on a cruise ship before and it is exhilarating. It's like a floating hotel. The top deck is packed with travelers enjoying the mid afternoon sun. The harbor from which we set off is now but a thin line on the horizon. I stroll to the bar by the pool and order a Bacardi on the rocks. Sipping my drink, I silently observe the people on the deck. Quite a few young people in their mid to late twenties frolick by the pool, elderly couples sunbathing in deck chairs, others leaning on the railing chatting with their friends. No one's on their phone or their computer. Now that's a change from everyday life. I wonder how many passengers this behemoth carries.
The sun is setting and the deck lights slowly increased in brightness. I finish my drink, thank the barman and make my way back to my cabin. Someone knocks on the door about half an hour later. I open it and peer through the gap. A stewardess greets me outside with a friendly smile and hands me a note. It is the same woman from earlier. "Megan" reads her name tag. Just now did I notice the tiny mole on her left cheek right above her dimple.
"Good evening sir, you're invited for captain's dinner tonight at 7:00."
"Oh, thank you. I'll be there"
"See you sir. Have a nice evening".
I am beginning to like her. If there is a tragedy, I don't want her to be hurt. She still has her life ahead of her.
After taking a shower and dressing to the occasion, I go on my way to look for the ship's restaurant. "Excuse me sir but you are not authorized to be here" someone says behind me. I turn around and no one is there. Wait. This cannot be the way to the restaurant though. It's noisy and the heat is unbearable. My clothes adhere to my body that's how much I'm sweating. Wait. Why am I wearing black overalls? Didn't I dress formally with a suit and tie? Absentmindedness. What am I doing here? I turn around and walk back finally managing to find the exit. I need therapy once I'm back home.
I pass by some security personnel talking and hide behind a corner, eavesdropping on their conversation.
"Have you seen John?"
"No"
"He hasn't reported to the reception desk since we departed this afternoon. He isn't answering calls either" "Did he leave the ship before departure?"
"No. I saw him helping a passenger carry a suitcase after departure"
"Alright let's inform the captain about the situation. Make sure not to tell the passengers. We don't need mass hysteria"
The group dissolves and I feel a bit apprehensive. They are right. No one deserves to have their fun spoiled. I walk briskly to my cabin, take another shower and this time I'll put the right attire on.
I realize for the first time that captain's dinner is not just a formal dinner evening with the ship's captain where you can throw nautical questions at him and beg him for stories of his seafaring adventures. Well, at least that's what I thought of it as a kid. Instead of the captain, an attractive young woman dressed to the nines. Jewelry glistening on her ears, neck and hands, joins me. Expensive. Must be the daughter of a mega rich business tycoon. Her name is Rebecca. I engage in small talk with her feeling empty like a chatbot while my thoughts are wandering to Megan, her sweet dimpled smile and green eyes that can illuminate even the deepest corner of your soul. And the mole on her cheek makes her look even prettier.
"Are you listening?"
"Sorry but their performance is really mesmerizing. I think I should look at you more often"
She laughs in a controlled formal way. Personally I'm not much into uber rich stuck up princesses but I keep that to myself. As we get progressively more intoxicated, she makes a move on me. I find myself back in my cabin with her on top of me. I wake up and let my hand wander to her side of the bed and not feel her there. Oh man, she probably realized her blunder when she was drunk and left. I'm sure she wouldn't say a thing to me when we bump into each other again. I just hope I won't get into trouble with her dad. Disappointed, I close my eyes to sleep away my drunken stupor.
A knock on the door. Megan? It's 10 in the morning and I have a terrible headache. I stumble to the door and open it. No, not Megan but a security detail.
"Sorry for the disturbance sir but we advise you to stay in your cabin until this afternoon at 3. Lunch and anything else you need will be served to your cabin. A passenger has contracted the flu and we are trying to contain it and need your cooperation."
"Who?"
"A young lady. I apologize, sir, but we can't tell you more for privacy reasons. "
"I understand"
"Ship's hosting a pool party this evening on the uppermost deck sir complete with buffet and games. It's best to take your mind off of the situation."
"Thanks. I'll be there"
"Thank you sir. Have a nice day"
After sleeping throughout most of the day, I get up at dusk, shower and proceed to the top deck to observe the festivities. When the sun finally disappears from the horizon, a dinner buffet formally commences the event and it seems every passenger on the ship is in attendance. Suddenly I hear a loud bang followed shortly by a sudden jolt that made me and everyone else lose their balance. Screaming everywhere. Megan? No! Megan! I have to find her. I sprint past the panicking crowd down the hallway between cabins. I can't find her. I grab two life jackets from a shelf while the rest of the passengers are fighting for them. I make my way to a lifeboat when I hear a second explosion. The ship begins to tilt. More screaming. I can't let Megan die here. I hear someone shout something unintelligible behind me and spin around. A deafening crack causes my ears to ring and I feel something striking my chest. I have been kicked by a horse before and it feels awfully similar. It's the same security guy who knocked on my door earlier this morning. He is letting Megan die and is probably responsible for this disaster, too. I feel a surge of rage boiling up like lava and screaming like a banshee lunge at him before a second bullet plunges everything into darkness.
January 12, 2175. Neurovision Research Laboratories.
Subject No. 24
Name: Dennis Swanson
Report: Subject stable since awakening from stasis. Brain activity stable until end of memory. Wild fluctuations at the end. Increased heart rate and blood pressure. Increased motor activity.
"He's having a seizure. Disconnect the computer now!"
"Heart rate stabilizing. Prepare to move him back to stasis"
"Who's this one?"
"Some eco terrorist. Son of a bitch almost sank a cruise ship in 2019. Set off two charges, got shot in the head by a security guard while trying to set off a third and survived. Killed three people before that."
"Jesus Christ"
"I cut out the memories where he committed a crime but he isn't stable enough for reintegration into society."
" May I take a look?"
"Sure"
"May I help you with your luggage sir?" "Yes, please do" His name tag read "John" (fast forward} His eyes widened when the suitcase opens and my equipment fell out. That damn lock! He went for the door but I was quicker. With a swift movement, I pulled my garrote around his neck and twisted it shut. He laid on the ground jerking like a fish out of the water. After a few minutes he stopped moving. If someone came in I'd be screwed. I grabbed him under his armpits and shoved him into my closet. Good they didn't have security cameras in here.(fast forward}
"Excuse me sir, but you are not authorized to be here."
Security. Last thing I need.
"I'm sorry but I'm lost. Could you show me to the restaurant?"
" Yeah, go along this corridor and..."
When he turned to point in the direction I drew my 45 caliber pistol and pumped two rounds into his chest. He slid down the wall and was dead even before he reached the floor. The silencer and the engine's noise made sure no one heard a thing. I tore off the guards' shirt, grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him to a large box containing life jackets. I emptied the box, stuffed his body inside and covered it with the life jackets. With his shirt I wiped down the blood and stuffed the soaked garment into the same box with his body. Proceeding deeper into the bowels of the ship, I attached three C4 charges along the starboard side of the hull. Thankfully no one saw me due to my dark overalls.(fast forward} Sex with Rebecca was awesome. She really knew what she's doing.
"Would you mind lending me one of your shirts?"
"No! Don't open that!"
"Whatcha got in there honey, your wife?"
"Just don't open it"
Rolling her eyes Rebecca pulled the closet door open and stumbled back covering her mouth. My hands were around her neck before she could let out a scream. I threw her onto the bed and knelt on her chest while squeezing her throat as hard as I could. She probably worked out everyday and fought back vehemently. "Shhh. Be quiet. Shhh" I tried to soothe her. I didn't want to kill her but she left me no choice. Her resistance slowly faded until she stopped moving. I kept my hands on her throat for another minute before letting go. I looked at her dead body, her dead eyes still reflecting the shock. I just wanted to blow my head off at that moment. (fast forward}
"Drop your weapon!:"
"You're gonna drown like everyone else."
What a nuisance. Holding two life jackets in my hand for me and my partner Jason who is waiting for me at the extraction point, i froze. With a grin on my face, I spun around aiming my pistol at him. BANG! I looked down on my chest and saw a perfect red dot that was dripping blood. I drop my weapon, life jackets and cellphone in shock. A surge of rage boiled up in me like lava and I lunged at him. BANG!
"How's he doing?" A blonde woman in a lab coat strode into the ward.
"Pretty badly. We'll move him back to stasis. He's been conscious most of the time but unaware of his situation."
"Yeah, his gaze has been following me whenever I check on him. I guess he likes me." the woman joked. "By the way this is Dr. Julian Green, the new guy on the team. Dr. Green, this is Dr. Megan Cole, our team leader." Dr. Green shook the hand stretched out to him looking into Dr. Cole's face. Those green eyes illuminating the deepest corner of your soul. And her dimpled smile made even prettier by the mole on her left cheek.
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