#the only factor at play there. i will never hear her voice again and i'm not sure what i'm going to do abt that. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nny11writes · 2 years

Note

Hey-ho! Scrolling through your blog and saw a fanfic prompt about a girl falling for guy because her cat really liked him, would you consider doing a one-shot for Glitra, with How to Quit You only 4 chapters away from finishing?

Let's be fair, at the rate I'm writing How to Quit You I'll be done in a short 2 years :p

But also, hell yeah I'll write a glitra meet cute one shot where Melog is the reason they get together!

Somehow this got longer than I expected, which really, I need to stop expecting I can write short things. Like, honestly.

Melog Likes Glimmer and Catra Goes Along for the Ride

Rating: Teen for the cursing factor

Catra glared down at Melog.

Melog stared innocently back up at her, slow blinking to prove a point.

“No.” She huffed. “You broke out of your playpen again and then you went to her house. We are not being lovey dovey mister. You are in trouble.”

Melog turned away to meow. She wasn’t sure why he didn’t seem to like it when she saw him meowing, but whatever. He was back talking and she wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Yes you are.”

Another mew.

“You were a naughty boy. A brat cat. A rebellious toddler.”

He gave the softest meow yet, then stretched before walking away.

“Excuse me? I’m talking to you! HEY!”

Catra scooped him up to hold like a baby, and Melog began purring instantly. “Stop being so damn cute for, like, five seconds. You broke out of your pod to spend time with Sparkles. You are on thin ice buddy.”

In six years, Melog had never once tried to escape his Outdoor Play Pod. She’d hook it up to the sliding door and Melog could make his way in and out of the house in a safe and controlled manner. Catra was used to stepping out the side door to watch him happily watching the various birds fly by, lounging on his side as he chuttered at the occasional pigeon on the telephone wires.

And then she moved in next door.

Glimmer was loud and obnoxious and clearly out to do Catra in. She hosted parties at least once a week that were loud and could go late into the night. …Late for working adults okay, if Catra could hear them laughing outside or their stupid music after 10:00 PM her chest would literally start to hurt from rage. And then, Glimmer had shown up one day with a platter of cookies to meet all her neighbors with after a month of madness..

Cookies.

First of all, who does that? Second of all, Catra’s celiac had been acting up because she’d thoughtlessly eaten a piece of freaking candy earlier and she’d somehow missed the glucose syrup.

So that conversation went something like:

“Hi! I’m Glimmer, your new neighbor!”

“I’m gluten free.”

“...Okay? Hello to you too. And come on, a little cheat won’t hurt, will it?”

“I’m literally allergic to gluten, so yeah, it will.”

“...uhm, my bad. So-”

“Bye.”

Admittedly, not Catra’s best work in the social sphere. But also, when she’d gone over to complain about a party a few days later (in a very calm and more normal human manner thank you very much) Glimmer’s response had been a very childish, “What? I can’t hear you over the sound of my music. Oh well, have a nice night!” So their rivalry was justified.

Things had only gotten more out of hand one awful morning when Glimmer had caught Catra shoveling Madam Razz’s drive, and then tried to be “nice” and “chat with her”. Disgusting. They’d gone back and forth, snide and coldly polite, just all over the place before a tense silence became the norm. They’d gone into a sort of cold war that winter and it had been whatever until the late spring.

Because now Melog was finding ways to escape his custom built playpen.

Sure, Entrapta was going to be thrilled to find out how Melog was doing it to perfect the design of her catio creation, but Catra was the one who had to deal with going outside, having a heart attack when Melog was missing, and then hearing that annoying voice cooing over her cat.

Hence the current punishment snuggle which was being highly ineffective.

“You,” Catra grumbled into his soft chest fluff, “are an ecological terror and therefore an indoor cat. So cut it out, will you?”

He did not, in fact, cut it out.

Within a few weeks while Catra had been reading, confident in the cameras and sensors Entrapta had rigged to alert her if Melog made another escape attempt, when there was a knock at her door. She ignored it, because if it wasn’t some package she’d forgotten she’d ordered then it wasn’t important. But they knocked again even louder before ringing her doorbell. Catra fumbled for her bookmark cursing as the doorbell began to ring nonstop, finally tearing the door open with a snarl only to find Glimmer standing there with Melog draped over her shoulders.

Catra stared at them dumbly before slowly looking at her computer screen where the sensors were all still green, before turning to glare at Melog’s contented little face. “You- son of a bitch!”

Glimmer did something that sounded like a half growl half huff before shouting back, “Will you piss off!? I’m just returning him!”

“Shut up, I wasn’t talking to you! YOU on the other hand, what the fuck dude? How did you get past the weight sensors?” To say Catra was livid was an understatement. She didn’t even bother to close the door, assuming that Glimmer would either follow her or stay there, as she stomped to pull the sliding door open. And there inside the pod, was a small pile of rocks. “WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET ROCKS!?”

Glimmer snorted as she looked over Catra’s shoulder. Breaking out into nervous giggles, “Oh shit, you’ve been busting out of jail to visit me? He’s not an outdoor cat?”

“NO!” Catra took a slow deep breath and then released it just as slowly. Blowing up at her rival neighbor was probably the same thing as losing a battle. “No. He’s an indoor only and somehow found the only rocks in a ten fucking mile radius while being an indoor only cat to trick the weight sensors I installed to alert me if he escaped again.”

Melog, still limp as a dish cloth over Glimmer’s shoulders, didn’t even feel enough guilt to be awake for this conversation.

“You installed sensors? That’s pretty cool! My best friend, Bow, is a real tech nerd. I bet you’d have a blast talking to him.”

Catra could feel her ears burning as she grumbled, “I mean, sort of. My friend Entrapta made them and I passed her screws. So I helped.”

Glimmer cackled so loudly that Melog finally woke with a yelp, then scrambled off his perch to sit inside the house like a good boy.

“Shut up!”

“Y-you passssssed the screws!” Glimmer wheezed.

“I was helping!”

This was the wrong thing to say as her neighbor snorted and continued to laugh so much that Catra really had no choice but to join in. She just really found a good laugh infectious, okay? She would give her frenemy that one.

Glimmer had left shortly thereafter, allowing Catra to berate Melog in private before realizing that she was more speculating about this strange new person in her life. She could feel her stubborn insistence that her newish neighbor was a menace leaking out of her as she side eyed her cat. “Why do you like her so much?” He twisted to begin his kitty yoga bath session and Catra sighed. Well, so much for that.

Melog escaping was just starting to be a Thing that she would have to live with alongside the fact that he’d apparently chosen himself a second human.

The next time Melog vanished the sensors at least alerted her, and when Catra ran out the backdoor she found Melog waiting for her at the fence. He stared at her until he was sure she was watching and then gracefully leaped over it into Glimmer’s backyard. She saw red. That bastard had waited until he knew she could see him break the law. On purpose.

“I WILL END YOU!”

Some people might say Catra was dramatic, but really she just treated things with the level headed emotional dysregulation they deserved. She kept this very rational rationale in mind as she also jumped onto her back patio railing, then took one great jump and did the cleanest kong vault of her life over the fence.

In the air her brain registered the following: Flowers by fence, grass past flowers, hard surface on right, soon to be dead cat straight ahead.

After rolling on the grass and springing out of it to easily close the distance to said cat did her brain register a few other important details like: What the fuck was she doing this is private property and Glimmer could bust her for this one, Melog could totally side step her and Catra would face plant into the earth, and Glimmer was sitting in a lounge chair in a tankini staring at her open mouthed because Melog was sitting in front of the chair.

ABORT, ABORT, ABORT!

Catra managed to bring her legs up under her for what was sure to be a painful and sudden stop at about the same time Glimmer fled her chair so fast she basically teleported out of the way. So Catra landed in a deep squat, grabbed her smug bastard child, jumped over the chair to lose some momentum somewhere besides “via faceplant”, and then froze as soon as she had him secured against her chest.

She slowly turned around to look at Glimmer who was staring at her still, but instead of with disdain while calling the cops Glimmer’s eyes were sparkling.

“I am so-”

“That was AWESOME!!!” Glimmer whooped, literally jumping as she punched at the air over her head like some sort of straight to home children’s movie protagonist.

What?

“What?” She asked.

“It was like, Melog no you know you can’t be here! And then- WHOOSH you were FLYING and then you just ROLL, HI-YAH, and holy shit you looked like a goddamn panther! And then, scoop,WHA-PAH! Ahhhhhh!! It was great!”

Catra just blinked rapidly as she panted from the exertion, watching as Glimmer (now panting from speaking so quickly nonstop while reenacting key parts of the last 2 horrific minutes of Catra’s life) beamed at her. And, this cannot and should not be understated, while looking delightfully tanned in her form-fitting tankini. This felt like high school her’s best sort of unimaginative wet dreams.

And that was the thought that somehow made her relax, because it was just stupid enough to break through the regular stupid she’d gotten her head into.

“You know what?” Catra grinned, cocking one hip out as she looked at the fence again, “It was pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah it was! How did you even get that high up?”

Catra did her best not to roll her eyes and did not mention the railing.. “It’s only a five foot fence, we can literally see over the top of it.”

Glimmer had no such issue and rolled her eyes so hard she had to roll her head a little too. “So what? I still couldn’t jump it like you did. Climb it, sure! You work out or something?”

Oh no. Catra was all too aware of the way Glimmer looked her whole body up and down. SO much for escaping the stupid headspace. “Uh, yeah? Yes. I do work out.”

Great. She was officially turning into Adora. Just what she needed.

“Cool. Me too!” Glimmer flashed her a thumbs up before walking with purpose towards her side gate to let Catra out. “We should totally work out together sometime.”

Safely back inside with Melog now temporarily forbodden from his outdoor pod that it hit her, she’d just agreed to willingly spend more time with Glimmer every single week. Just because her dumb cat liked her! Who does that?

What was wrong with her for going along with this?

The answer was more than she’d like, but still less than most people would assume.

Catra sat outside with Melog for two weeks waiting to see how he did it, but Houdini 2.0 merely watched the birds even when she pretended to be asleep. Week three, she stepped away for a few minutes just to use the restroom and when she returned he was gone.

A casual glance over the fence (she swore to herself she was never jumping it again) revealed no Melog or Glimmer but her back door was opened a little so at least he was being consistent. She was already walking to her side gate when she heard a surprised shriek from Glimmer’s house before a loud bang, and despite her promise, Catra was jumping the fence.

“GLIMMER!?” There was a yelp and Catra quickly darted in through the backdoor. “Sparkles I swear to fuck! Are you-” and then she rounded the corner to find Glimmer’s hair barely peeking out from under a giant sheet and a tall wooden chair that was tipped over across her legs. Melog was happily loafed on roughly what looked like Glimmer’s chest. “-okay?”

The sheet sucked in, outlining Glimmer’s lips for a second, before ballooning out a little. “Yup.”

“Uh, you want some help?”

“Nope.”

Well, this was turning into a very lovingly made awkward sandwich with extra awkward sauce.

“Cool. So, what’s all this?”

Glimmer groaned pitifully as Catra began noticing a few extra details she’d missed at a glance. There were two more chairs with their backs towards the lump formerly known as Glimmer. A strand of fairy lights was slowly twinkling away under the sheet. And every area of the floor not covered in the sheet was covered in pillows or…cushions? Catra looked at the sad looking couch which was now missing it’s cushions for confirmation. There was really only one thing this could be.

“Did you- is this a blanket fort?” It was kinda funny. Catra was equally jealous because she’d never gotten to have a proper blanket fort in her life and also gleeful over having caught a full grown adult sitting in their blanket fort. There was an unintelligible grumble, so Catra lightly kicked at Glimmer’s exposed foot as she sing songed, “Didn’t catch that.”

“It’s not a fort, it’s a castle!” She huffed as she finally sat up properly, causing Melog to leap off her onto one of the chairs.

Catra burst into giggles and happily mocked, “Oooohhhh, excuse me princess! I meant no disrespect to your blanket castle!”

Glimmer leaned back on her hands with a glare, “You can just say, ‘Wow Glimmer I’m so jealous of your cool blanket castle that I could die’ and that would be enough.”

“I’m not jealous!” She tried to say it with firmness but considering the giggle fit that probably failed.

“Mmmmm, I think you’re lying.” Glimmer nodded seriously as she hauled herself up to fix the roof of her castle. “I think you’d love to curl up on these high quality cushions in the security of my castle walls. I even have candy and snacks in here!”

Catra had barely managed to open her mouth when Glimmer cut her off, “Gluten free! I did some looking so we have dove chocolate and beef jerky, as well as some puffed rice.”

“Glimmer,” she sounded way too fond. Catra needed to dial that back a little bit, but instead continued in the same voice, “I’m lactose intolerant and beef jerky seasonings can have gluten.”

“...well what the fuck sort of cursed half life are you living?”

Catra sighed dramatically as she toed off her shoes, ducking into the doorway to the castle as Glimmer held the sheet up for her. “I ask myself that everyday.”

It was fine, friends totally stayed over for an afternoon at one another’s houses in blanket forts. Probably. When she got home, Catra considered the fact that Melog was insistent already towards them spending time with Glimmer, for whatever reason. And that she was becoming more and more okay with it as they spent more and more time together (the work outs really were working out after all). Which is how she came up with a terrible idea and went digging through the closet.

Within a few weeks Catra knocked on Glimmer’s door, glaring down at Melog in his harness. “Don’t blow this for me.” Melog stared up innocently at her and slow blinked. “I’m serious dude.”

“Catra!” Glimmer smiled as she opened the door and then gasped. Her eyes watered up as she looked at Melog and asked in a strangled voice, “Is that a liddle vest? IS THAT A BOW TIE? Oh! What a handsome boy! What a handsome young man in his widdle vesty westy!”

Catra knew she was blushing horrifically. Okay, she’d planned for Glimmer to think this was all very cute but this was taking it too far. This was all Scorpia’s fault for buying them matching outfits to complete Catra’s stupid quasi-Jack Hetherington costume from hell. Oh god, what had she done? This was not mocking or jeering at all and Glimmer clearly hadn’t looked at her. Oh no.

“Ohhh, what a sweet boy! I love him! I wove you, yesh I do! Oh Catra this is-” Glimmer cut off and Catra could only feel more weirdly humiliated.

Because yes, Melog was wearing a yellow argyle patterned vest harness with a little bow tie in order to match Catra’s yellow argyle sweater vest and clip on bowtie. Why did she think this was a good idea again? This was stupid. She thought Glimmer would get a laugh out of it, not lose her fucking mind. Like, it was supposed to be an inside thought about how it was cute not an outside thought!

“Oh. My. God! Look at you! Look at you two!!!”

Catra shrugged roughly, “I mean, it’s whatever.”

“Aw,” and now there was the teasing tone she’d been expecting, damn it all, “don’t be like that, here, I’ll make it up to you!”

And with that Glimmer stood up and tugged at her vest and tie as she began to coo, “What a handsome boy! What a handsome young man in his smart little vest!”

Well, that certainly was an interesting tangle of emotions for her friends to suffer through her unpacking at a later date.

“We’re leaving. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. My lawyers will be in touch.” Catra all but fled to her house and once safely inside with a confused and meowing cat she slid down the door with a grin.

“She called me handsome,” She informed Melog, as if he had not been there to witness it, with a big goofy grin. Sure, she’d fled like the socially inept dumbass she was but still.

A few hours later Catra was lounging on the couch when her doorbell began going nuts and Melog immediately went to paw at the door, which was the sure fire cocktail to announce Glimmer as the person on the other side.

“You ever gonna knock like a normal…person…” Catra stared.

Glimmer smiled bashfully, wearing a cute charcoal gray skirt, a yellow argyle patterned sweater, and a wrap around fake bowtie. “Hey, I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I, uhm, didn’t mean to take it that far and make you uncomfortable. So. Yeah. AND, I thought, maybe I can join you and Melog on a walk? We can be the most fashion forward, fashion backwards, cat walkers?”

Oh wow, I love you. Was the only thought in her head as Catra began trying to process what was happening.

Oh shit.

Oh shit!

“Oh fuck you,” Catra stuttered as she tried to get her brain and mouth coordinated better than that, “SORRY!”

Glimmer at least seemed a little more put at ease, which really didn’t bode well for how Catra was treating her. “Wow, okay, just tell me you hate me.”

“Nope, no can do, sorry, can’t say that.” She at least finally had a sense in her head to step aside letting Glimmer in and therefore stopped Melog from clawing the back of her legs. She really needed to trim his claws, ow.

“Well why not? Seems rude if you ask me.” Glimmer smiled as Melog stretched as tall as he could on his back legs, his front paws almost brushing against her neck as she hunched a little to pet him.

Something quick, something witty, something pithy. “It’s the opposite problem really.”

They both froze as Catra considered every decision she’d made in her life that led to this moment. “Well this has been great, get out of my house.”

Glimmer threw her arms out wide, basically starfishing as if Catra was physically shoving her out the door. “Absolutely not! You don’t get to just drop something like that and then pretend you didn’t! You like me or you, like, like-like me?”

“Are we preteens, what the fuck Glitter.”

But Glimmer was only grinning wider now as she confidently strolled forward to get in Catra’s space. She tugged at the shoulder of her new sweater with a grin. “That’s not a denial! So, what I’m hearing is that this might be girlfriend material?”

“Fuck you, but this time I mean it.”

“That’s fair but doesn’t answer my question.”

Was she really going to do this while she was wearing a niche joke costume that Glimmer was emulating while Melog sharked around their ankles for attention?

“Do you want to go out with me some time? On a date?”

Yes, she absolutely was.

“I would love to.” Glimmer smiled softly at her before looking down at Melog. “Hey buddy. Thank you.”

“Are- are you thanking my cat because I asked you out!?”

“Well you’ve got to admit, without him jailbreaking you wouldn’t have done it.”

She opened her mouth to argue back, but it just flapped uselessly as she realized that just six months ago she’d been actively considering buying grasshoppers to release into Glimmer’s house just to be a jerk.

“In my defense, he is a very good judge of character and I’m an asshole.”

“I don’t think that would work as a defense in a court of law, but whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night.”

Melog chirped in agreement, and really, who was she to argue with that?

#Catra #Glimmer #Melog #Glitra #Glimtra #she ra #spop #fanfic #fanfiction #meet cute #the one where Catra falls in love because Melog likes Glimmer so much #prompt #no beta we die like meh #Catra has 100% calm level headed reaction to everything #definitely #no anger issues here!#except when there are #owning a cat really is just like that #Entrapta's catio is probably a big seller when she opens limited spots for purchase #Melog is the first one to bust outta there and we will never know why #(it's the plot armor)#Glimmer does NOT build blanket forts she builds blanket /castles/#when Glimmer gets jazzed she gets jazzed and no one can convince me otherwise #if you don't get the costume joke the short version is:#guy writing scientific papers credits another person as a co-author and in one case as the main author (while the guy was co-author)#turns out the other person listed was his cat #but papers either needed or typically had more than one author #there are pictures of them and I love them #Catra was going to be a professor for halloween #then learned about Jack and joked that it would be funny

63 notes · View notes

angellesword · 4 years

Text

YOUR EYES TELL | JJK (07)

Summary: You live in a world where people see in black and white. The solution to finally see the colors? It's simple. You need to meet your soulmate and look at him in the eyes, but what if the person bound to you is already contented with the monochromatic world? What if...Jeongguk, your soulmate, is already in love with someone else?

Alternatively:

"A future without you is a world without color."

Genre: soulmate au, e2l, slow burn, angst, fluff, roommate au

Pairing: Artist!Jungkook x Lawyer!Reader

Word Count: 3.4k

warnings: alcohol, kissing, handjob, bondage

SERIES: CHAPTER 6 | CHAPTER 8

"You need to drop Kim Seokjin's case!"

The loud scream of your soulmate echoed through the whole room.

The party was over.

Jeongguk was shaking in anger and you didn't understand why.

Two hours. He was quiet for two hours. He didn't speak to you, he didn't look at you—he just...simply didn't acknowledge your presence for straight two hours.

So why was he shouting now? Why was he asking you to drop your client's case the second he stepped inside your apartment?

You need to drop Kim Seokjin's case.

Jeongguk was repeating these words over and over again.

Or wasn't he?

You were drunk.

Too intoxicated to separate reality from your drunken world. Too intoxicated to know if he was repeating those words or if you just kept on playing it in your head.

You had all the reason to repeat it all in your head.

You had a reason to think why Jeongguk would continue to say it over and over again.

Jeongguk was acting strange at the party. You had never seen him so...lost.

He was just looking at one particular person like she was his way home—no. He was looking at her like she was his home.

He was looking at "Red!"

You called your assistant.

"There she is, Seokjin." You pointed at Red's direction as you looked at Seokjin who's standing beside you.

It appeared like Red didn't hear you. It's understandable. You were a few feet away from her. Your voice wasn't even loud when you tried calling her name. Besides, she was talking to a man.

You didn't notice that the man your assistant was talking to was Jeongguk. All you could see was his back, plus your attention was focused on Red.

She looked stunning. You couldn't see colors, but you knew her flowy dress was sparkling with glitters.

"Let's go?" Seokjin raised his brow at you.

You nodded and made your way to meet Red.

You hadn't had the chance to talk to her earlier because a lot of guests were trying to engage you in a conversation.

They were interested in you. Jay Park, a corporate lawyer, wanted so bad to recruit you. He even offered to triple your current salary. He said you just needed to work in his firm.

You politely declined his offer. You weren't in this party to look for another job. You were here to keep an eye on Seokjin.

This party was planned by you. The public needed to be convinced that Kim Seokjin was a good person.

He had to let the world know that he was a good father to Soobin.

"You need to bring Soobin to the party, Seokjin." This was what you told your client days before the party started. "Walk on the red carpet with him. Be gentle, always smile. Look at him as if he's your whole world."

Kim Seokjin nodded. It wasn't going to be hard. Actually, you didn't need to coach him to do this. Seokjin loved his son with all of his heart.

"Absolutely no drinking," your voice was full of authority when you added your second reminder.

The plan was to make it appear like he was sober.

Seokjin was. He had been sober for three years now.

"Seokjin..." You called. There was another reminder. This was the most crucial of all. You only told him this in the middle of the party.

He couldn't fuck this one up.

This involved Red.

This was why you and Seokjin were headed towards your assistant's direction.

"Red..." You called her name again; however, she still didn't answer.

It seemed like she had seen a ghost; her lips were shaking as she stared at the man in front of him.

You were just an arm length away from Red, so you decided to look at the face of the man who was making her feel afraid.

"Gukkie?" You squinted your eyes.

Jeongguk switched his gaze at you. He also looked like he had seen a ghost.

What was happening?

You opened your mouth to speak, but Seokjin beat you to it.

"Hi, sweetheart," greeted by your client as he carried Soobin in his arms.

"Appa!" The little boy embraced his father tightly, earning a laugh from Red.

"He ran away from me!" Red pouted her lips. It looked like she had finally snapped out of her daze.

"I just wanna play with you!" Soobin reasoned out.

Red simply laughed at the little boy's defense, caressing his cheeks. She could never get mad at Soobin.

Looking at the three of them made your heart melt. They looked like a family, which was the whole point of this party.

You gave Seokjin a thumbs up. He smiled at your approval, but his happiness instantly turned into discomfort when he felt a glare directed at him.

Jeongguk was grimacing at the birthday boy.

"Oh, right!" You turned to your soulmate, suddenly remembering that he was standing right beside you. You were too preoccupied with your role in this party that you completely forgot about him.

Well, the most important plan for tonight was to make Red and Seokjin look as if they were a happy couple.

Again, this wasn't going to be hard because: "Jeongguk, I want you to meet my client, Mr. Kim Seokjin." You paused for a second just to smile at your assistant. "And this is Red, Seokjin's soulmate."

Soulmate...

Red and Seokjin were soulmates.

They didn't need to pretend like they were in love since that's already the truth. Red could see colors vividly. Seokjin wasn't living a black and white world too.

It was final.

They were destined to be together.

It was funny because they met because of you. You had an important meeting with Seokjin with regard to his case, but for some reason you couldn't make it so you just sent Red to meet up with him on your behalf. This happened months ago, right now, the two of them were very much in love.

You knew Mrs. Kim was going to use the 'having an affair' issue against her husband, so the only solution you could think about was to gain the sympathy of the public and the jury.

This wasn't a case of infidelity. This was destiny.

The laws in the place you lived in weren't fair and it's because of the existence of soulmate. Everyone's fate was already written by the stars. Humans couldn't and shouldn't contravene the nature of the world.

Divorcing your spouse because you found you soulmate wasn't punishable by law. It was a valid reason; however, the case of the Kim couple was different since they had a child together.

It's complicated. Divorce trials didn't usually involve juries, but since the matter that should be settled in this case was child custody and separation of assets, the rules were different.

Seokjin still needed to be careful. If he didn't meet Red during the process of his divorce, he wouldn't have a 'valid' reason to breakup with Mrs. Kim. If, for example, he had an affair with someone who wasn't his soulmate, then of course, it was going to be ruled as infidelity.

As Seokjin's lawyer, you had to help him distort the truth. Since he didn't want to use ‘physical abuse’ as his reason to divorce his wife, you suggested that he used Red instead.

Seokjin simply had to lie. He should tell everyone that he wanted to be with his real soulmate. Red, on the other hand, had to make it look like he was capable of being a good step mother to Soobin. This was one of the factors the jury would consider when granting joint custody.

"And this is Jeon Jeongguk," you continued introducing the three of them with one another. "He's my soulmate!"

Your heart was pounding hard because of excitement. It was a pleasure introducing Jeongguk to people you cared about, but it seemed as though Red felt the opposite of what you were experiencing.

You couldn't see it, but her face totally turned pale when you mentioned that Jeongguk was your soulmate.

She couldn't believe it.

Why didn't you tell her? How long had it been since you met Jeongguk? Could you see colors? Could her ex-boyfriend see colors?

There were so many questions circling in her head.

She refused to voice them out.

"Excuse me. I need to go to the powder room..." Instead, she excused herself. She couldn't deal with any of this now.

Your smile faded when Red hastily walked away.

You were confused. You didn't want to assume, but it looked like Red wasn't too happy with the news you just shared.

Didn't she always say that she couldn't wait to meet your soulmate? You waited three months to tell this to Red since you wanted to see how she would react upon seeing your soulmate.

Your disappointment was abruptly replaced by worry when you realized that perhaps something's wrong with your assistant.

Was she having an upset stomach?

You turned to Seokjin to voice out your concern. Maybe you should follow Red. The thing was, before you could say anything, Jeongguk was already running away.

"Washroom." Your soulmate said, more like to himself. He didn't look at you. He just straight up ran after Red.

You were left alone with the host of the party.

"I'm glad you found your soulmate." Seokjin genuinely grinned.

You couldn't return the smile.

There was a weird feeling in your stomach. Your chest felt heavy and you didn't know why.

"Thanks, Seokjin." You replied even though you didn't mean it.

What was the use of meeting your soulmate if he wouldn't even talk to you?

You were aware that you could get very insistent. This was one of the many things Jeongguk hated about you.

You couldn't seem to stop—not even when he was uncomfortable.

"Jeongguk-ah!" You giggled as you emptied your nth glass of champagne. You honestly had no idea how much you had drunk.

"Where did you go? You suddenly left me alone!" You complained, lips protruding into a pout.

Jeongguk kept his lips tightly shut. He wouldn't look at you straight in the eyes, but you knew he was using his peripheral vision to see what you were up to.

Jeongguk was quick to wrap his arms around your waist when you're about to fall. No doubt, you were really intoxicated.

'Enough.' He said to himself, snatching the glass away from you. You had enough.

Apparently, you didn't share the same sentiment. You wanted more.

You wanted more alcohol as much as you wanted to know the truth from Jeongguk.

You kept on asking him where he went even though you knew he went to the bathroom to follow Red.

You knew because shortly after he left you with Seokjin, you also excused yourself from the latter so that you could follow Jeongguk.

You just couldn't ignore the annoying feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Unfortunately, you weren't able to follow your soulmate right away. The guests just wouldn't let you go.

You were a professional woman so you couldn't straightaway end the conversation.

"Thanks, Mrs. Choi!" You smiled at the businesswoman before finally making your way to the bathroom.

No one could stop you now. You just had to avoid eye contact with anyone.

You succeeded. None of the guests were able to pull you into their circle again, but then your little trip to the bathroom was stopped again.

This time, it was because of Jeongguk.

It turned out that you didn't need to go to the powder room anymore. You could already see your soulmate from where you were standing.

He was at the veranda of the hotel room.

He wasn't alone.

He was with Red.

You couldn't hear what they were talking about. You also couldn't risk getting closer to them. Eavesdropping was plain rude, but damn. You were dying of curiosity.

What were they talking about? Why did Jeongguk look so mad? Why was Red crying?

There was no answer to your questions.

Jeongguk wouldn't tell you anything. He didn't even mention that he met up with Red when he went back to your table.

This frustrated you so much that you ended up drinking. Pain. You had to get rid of the pain engulfing your heart.

Sadly, you couldn't—at least not when Jeongguk was being an ass once again.

"You need to drop Kim Seokjin's case!"

His words were loud inside your head again. Jeongguk wasn't repeating these words anymore, but his chest was still heaving up and down.

He was irritated, hurt, and helpless.

"And why should I drop his case?" Your voice was devoid of any emotion.

Jeongguk suddenly flinched. He was lashing out at you for straight ten minutes now. You never said anything. You were simply watching him complain about how he hated the fact that you were representing Seokjin in court and that he wanted you to drop it.

"Because!" He groaned, eyes widening when you took a step closer to him.

He wasn't expecting you to do anything. You reminded him of himself. Every time Red got mad at him, he would simply watch too. You were like that—you were always so willing to listen, always apologizing, always letting him off the hook.

What changed now? W-Why do you keep advancing towards him?

Jeongguk's back hit the wall.

"Because what?" You were cornering him.

Jeongguk could smell the mixture of your sweet scent and alcohol. You were too close, making his head spin.

You were the one drunk here, not him. But why couldn't he focus? All he could see was your tantalizing eyes.

Why were you so good with colors in spite of not being able to see it? Your eye makeup was painted to perfection—this was the only reason he could think as to why he couldn't seem to stop looking at you.

Yes. That's the reason. Nothing more, nothing less. He admired your talent. It's the artist in him that found you beautiful.

Of course Jeongguk found you beautiful. He wanted to tell you that when he first saw you wearing that sage dress, but as usual, he bit back the flattering remarks threatening to fall out of his mouth.

You ruined the chance even before he could speak it. Jeongguk was too flustered with the way you complimented him a while ago.

But he was given another chance. Jeongguk was certain that this was the only time he could relish your beauty. You were standing inches away from him, everything about you felt so raw.

"Because he's not a good person and you're following him like a puppy! You're his bitch!" But Jeongguk was stubborn.

He would never tell you how he felt. You still annoyed him. He wasn't dumb. He figured out your plan. He knew you were trying to paint a perfect Kim Seokjin. You wanted that little boy to fall into the hands of his drunken father.

Or so he thought.

Jeongguk knew nothing.

"You love to run that dirty mouth, don't you?" You smirked at him.

You had enough of his bullshit.

Jeongguk flinched again. You moved closer to him—totally invading his personal space.

He could feel your hot breath on the crook of his neck.

You slightly tilt your head upward, trailing feathery kisses on his jawline.

Jeongguk gasped when he felt your soft lips on his mouth. He didn't know what went over him, but he just found himself closing his eyes and responding to your kisses.

It felt good. You felt good. Jeongguk put his hand on the small of your back, pulling you closer to him.

Wrong move.

He let out a whiny groan when you pulled away from the kiss. Jeongguk tried to catch your lips, but you were already inching away from him.

"I don't recall telling you that you can touch me."

Jeongguk abruptly opened his eyes. He was caught up in the moment, cheeks turning red when he realized what just happened.

He kissed you! Well, you kissed him, but it didn't matter. All he could think about was the fact that he responded and he seemed to really, really enjoy it.

This was wrong. So wrong. You were drunk. He shouldn't take advantage of you.

It was easier said than done.

You were unstoppable. Jeongguk hadn't recovered from the kiss and you were already yanking his tie off, causing the first two button of his dress shirt to come off.

"Hands behind your back." You demanded, eyes turning dark.

Jeongguk avoided your gaze.

No. Never.

He would never do what you wanted.

"You sure you wanna play this game with me?" There's a hint of playfulness in your tone as you caressed the silk tie in your hands.

Jeongguk knew you weren't gonna tolerate his bratty ass anymore, so he reluctantly put his hand behind his back.

This earned a chuckle from you.

He made the right choice. Jeongguk was pleased when you showered him with sloppy kisses. He was caught up in the moment again that he didn't even notice when you reached out for his hands to wrap the tie around it.

Jeongguk's movement was restricted. He glared at you upon realizing what you had done.

"Hm?" You teased, cupping his bulge.

Jeongguk bit the inside of his cheek. It was a brief contact. He didn't understand why he was so affected.

He wanted you to do it again.

"You like it, Gukkie?" You asked innocently. Jeongguk wanted nothing but to wipe the smirk off your face.

You were so fucking annoying.

"Got something to say?" You were laughing because it was obvious that he was striving so hard to stop himself from moaning your name.

Maybe if he focused his attention on something else, he wouldn't go this crazy over your simple touch.

Right.

Jeongguk's eyes wandered around the living room. Tiles. Your marbled tiles looked so expensive. Walls. The walls were painted white. Tits. Your tits looked like a dream. Jeongguk wanted his hot mouth on your nipple—wait.

Jeongguk froze when he realized what was happening.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" You tittered, squeezing your tits together.

You were an evil person and Jeongguk couldn't take it anymore.

He moaned.

You chuckled again, clearly enjoying his desperation.

Jeongguk just didn't care anymore.

He moaned louder.

"Please," Jeongguk mewled. His big, round eyes were begging you to touch him.

"Please what? You gotta tell me what you want, Gukkie." You cooed, patting the wet patch forming in his pants.

Jeongguk whimpered. You barely touched him, yet he's already quivering against you.

"Just please," he gritted his teeth. You were playing dumb. How could you not know what he wanted?

"I'm waiting, baby..." You whispered, your fingers were gently massaging his dick over his pants.

Jeongguk's forehead hit your shoulders.

"Touch me. W-Wanna cum..."

"Attaboy..." You purred, kissing his wet lips and undoing his pants. You pulled down his underwear, freeing his fat cock.

You were drunk on alcohol, he was drunk on pleasure.

"Ah, Noona..." Jeongguk cried, he was enjoying your touch.

The torture continued. Your pace was slow, taking your sweet, sweet time spreading his precum on the tip of his cock.

"Wanna cum, gonna cum." Jeongguk was going crazy while you were squeezing your hand around the head of his cock.

You knew he was subtly asking your permission. It made you soft.

The game was over. You quickened your pace.

"Don't be shy. You are perfect. So, so pretty when you cum."

Jeongguk shuddered. Eyes sparkling because of your compliment. So he had a praise kink, huh?

"Cum for me, baby."

That was what he was waiting for. Jeongguk came fast and hard.

You couldn't help the smirk forming on your lips as you watched his cum in your fingers.

Jeongguk looked pretty. He was still drunk on pleasure. Your heart swelled in pride. You did this. You ruined him—just by using your hands.

"Red isn't your soulmate, Jeongguk." You suddenly said.

It's like Jeongguk was pulled back to reality. His head snapped, looking at you straight in the eyes.

The smile on your face was gone.

"It's me." Even your voice was impassive.

"And you have no other choice but to accept that..." This was the last thing you said to him before walking straight out of the door.

Jeongguk swallowed hard. The best thing to do was to follow you. This was something you two should talk about, but Jeongguk, being the brat that he was, just stood there.

He didn't know what to do—what to think.

Only one thing was clear.

You knew.

625 notes · View notes

willow-salix · 3 years

Text

TAG MiniBang 2021

Because the combined bad influences of Flyboy and Sonata were at work here we also decided to bend the rules a little and post early...

I was privileged to work with one of my best friends on this project, @misssquidtracy . We went a little rogue (seems to be a theme for us) and shared both parts of the challenge with both of us contributing to the art and the writing. Squiddy provided a beautifully done pallet knife piece as the background for my foreground art and we plotted the story together to ensure that it worked for both of us. We had been looking forward to sharing the writing but unfortunately, due to life constraints on her part she was only able to write a little of the fic but what she did add perfectly compliments the tone and style of my writing.

Big thanks to @tagminibang ) @godsliltippy ) for organising this event.

So, here it is, our offering to the TAG Mini Bang. We hope you enjoy it.

Ting ting ting

“Not again,” Virgil groaned, hauling himself up the stairs from the kitchen to the lounge. He regretted ever giving Gordon that bell, he really did. Yes his brother had gone through a tough time, yes he had scared the hell out of them when the Chaos Crew had left him at the bottom of the ocean in his mangled craft, yes they were incredibly grateful that he was alive and mostly whole, but if they had to hear that dinging one more time they might possibly murder him themselves.

“Yes, Gordy, what do you need?”

“I’m lonely, and I’m hungry, come and sit with me for a bit?”

“Sure-”

“But maybe make me a sandwich first?”

“A sandwich?”

“Yeah, with extra cheese and a pickle on the side, not too large a pickle but not too small that it’s gone in one bite. I want to taste it, you know, but not be overwhelmed.”

“Sure-”

“And can you get me a drink too? One of my special milkyshakes, you know, with the ice cream and frozen banana in it?”

“Coming right up,” Virgil sighed, heading back down to the kitchen again.

“Gordon still demanding everything and anything?” Scott asked as he jogged in from the poolside. His T-shirt was sticking to his chest and his hair was damp with sweat but he still looked like he could do it all again. Not that they would have time, they were lucky if they got to do any planned exercise at all, usually they were forced to skip it and work out on the job when a call came in.

“Of course he is,” Virgil growled, slapping a slice of cheese on a piece of bread with far more force than necessary.

“What did the cheese do to you?”

“It’s guilty by association.”

“Ah,” Scott said, like that explained things perfectly.

A few slices of chicken received the same treatment and Scott wondered if the meat had actually been dead when it arrived on the island or if Virgil had simply smacked it into submission so well that the chicken had flown clear into next week and arrived as sandwich filling.

“Can you fix his drink?” Virgil asked.

“Can’t gotta shower this off before Grandma accuses me of stinking up the place again.”

“Any excuse,” Virgil scowled. “It would only take you a second.”

“A second too long, bro, I’m escaping while I can and you’d be wise to do the same,” Scott said, heading for the stairs and freedom.

“How can I escape when Gordon needs help?”

“You’re forgetting one important thing,” Scott told him wisely.

“I am? And that would be…”

“John’s home.”

Virgil snorted out a laugh. “He’s less likely to do it than you are.”

“No, you're misunderstanding me. If John’s home that means…” Scott let his sentence trail off into silence heavily filled with insinuation.

“Sel’s here,” Virgil finished triumphantly, catching on perfectly.

“Give that Tracy a prize,” Scott grinned, shooting triumphant finger guns his brother’s way as he headed up the stairs.

And they said that John was the genius in the family, they hadn’t seen Scott at his most devious. Virgil wasted no time in yanking out his phone and texting the witch to come and take over.

“Here’s your sammich, Squidward,” Selene cooed, plonking the plate down on Gordon’s lap while smacking a kiss to his forehead. “Virgil started it but I finished it for you, Brains called him down to his lab with some kind of air filter emergency so I took over. I brought you some of those crisps you like from my private stash too.”

“The cheesy curl ones?” Gordon asked hopefully.

“Yep,” she grinned, waggling a family sized bag of Quavers in his general direction.

“Did you bring my drink?” Gordon asked around a mouthful of chickeny goodness. Say what you wanted about Virgil but he made a damn good sandwich, even if Gordon could taste that this was made with a little less love and a little more impatience than usual.

“No, sorry, did you want one? Virgil didn’t say that. I’ll go get you something, just wait right there.”

"Not like I can leave if the mood takes me," Gordon grumbled as he opened the chip bag.

She was already gone, only to race back in a few moments later with a can of coke.

“What? What’s wrong, boo?” Selene asked when she saw the pouting look of disappointment on Gordon’s face.

“It was supposed to be one of my special milkyshakes,” he whined.

“Right, got it, my bad!”

She was gone again, taking off to the kitchen where, upon closer inspections, she did indeed find the beginnings of a milkshake. There were two scoops of ice cream already in the blender, melting in the warmth of the room. A half peeled banana sat abandoned on the counter next to a carton of milk.

“Typical,” she groused as she set about breaking up the banana, pouring the milk and setting it to blend as she tidied the mess away. Once done she poured it into a tall glass, added a straw and a few slices of fresh banana to decorate the edges, just as he liked it, and delivered it to the waiting aquanaut.

“Great, thanks, Sel,” he grinned, handing her his now empty plate and swapping it for the glass. She put the plate on the coffee table and sat on the couch opposite him.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

“Sit with me and keep me company?” he begged, looking so miserable and pathetic that she couldn’t say no.

“Of course I will.”

Gordon swung his injured leg up and she moved to sit next to him on the couch, placing a cushion on her lap for him to rest his cast covered foot on.

Gordon settled down with a contented sigh, sucking happily on his straw, the milkshake level in the glass steadily dropping.

“I’m bored,” Gordon bitched five minutes later.

“That peace lasted a long time,” Selene laughed, putting her phone down on the side table to give him her full attention. “What can I do to help? Do you want to watch something or play a game?”

Gordon made a face. “You’re crap at games, Sel.”

One eyebrow rose in disbelief. “I wouldn’t exactly say crap…”

“You tried to play with Alan and died three times in two minutes, lost all your lives and were forced to float along behind him as a ghost for the rest of his turn.”

“Anything is crap when you say it like that,” Selene huffed.

“Only when it’s true.”

“Tell me then, oh great games master, what do you want to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then don’t moan you’re bored,” she pointed out.

“I mean there’s nothing to do. No one is around.”

Selene gestured to her chest. “Am I suddenly invisible?”

“No, of course not,” he scoffed. “That would be far too cool, why don’t you have witch powers like that?”

“Because I live in the real world, not a movie?”

“Lame,” he declared, dismissing it.

“Back to the original point that I am, in fact, right here. Therefore your comment that no one is around is redundant.”

“I meant no one I can do anything with.”

“Thin ice, bub, thin ice.”

“I meant like my brothers or someone. Alan is busy revising for his final exams, Virgil’s with Brains and I’ve no idea where Scott is but I think he’s avoiding me, which is just mean if you ask me. I’m a delight.”

“Yeah, you sure are,” she drawled, not sounding too convinced. “You’re also forgetting a brother.”

“Who?”

“John? You know, gorgeous ginger love of my life that’s chilling in his room right this minute? That brother?”

“John? No way.”

“What’s wrong with John?” she squawked indignantly. Her man was the most perfect of people, amazing and fabulous, just all round awesome. Although she might be a tad biased.

Gordon shrugged, scrunching his nose up in a ‘meh’ kinda way that said everything and nothing.

“No, come on, tell me what you meant,” she demanded.

“No offence, Sel, but John’s a bit…”

“A bit what?” she asked, her tone warning him that he was in very dangerous territory.

Gordon, with the grace of an elephant and confidence of a man that knew he was injured and therefore wouldn’t get slapped, plowed on.

“A bit boring.”

“Boring?!” she hollered, her voice travelling to the four corners of the island so effectively that Alan lifted his head, wondering if some distant God was echoing his thoughts as he slogged through his history homework.

“How very dare you!” Selene continued, working up a good glare that Gordon was completely immune to. He simply sipped the last of his milkshake, smacked his lips and raised an eyebrow, daring her to do something about it.

“He is not boring.”

“Matter of opinion,” Gordon shrugged, handing her the glass to put down on the table.

“Right, that’s it, you can besmirch my fun factor but I will not allow you to do so to my man. That’s a step too far.” She gently, for which he was thankful, shoved his leg off her lap and dragged his hover chair over from its spot beside Virgil’s piano.

“Get the hell in, hoppy, we’re going for a ride.”

-x-

"You deal with him, he's driving me nuts and pissing me off at the same time."

"Me? I'm the very picture of perfection, I could never drive anyone nuts."

John declined to comment on that one for fear of never stopping, he had twenty-four years worth of stories after all.

“The pissing you off is subjective too,” Gordon finished triumphantly.

"He's your problem now," Selene announced, shoving Gordon's hover chair further into the room before making her escape, slamming the door shut behind her.

John closed his eyes, praying for patience. His fiancée was well known for her legendary patience when it came to pampering and mothering his family whenever any of them were sick or injured. She'd spent almost every day with Gordon since his run in with the Chaos Crew and had done so with relentless cheer, for her to have given up now was not a good sign.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Gordon protested hotly.

"Are you sure?"

Gordon averted his gaze, suddenly taking great interest in a dust particle dancing across the shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window, "Yes, I'm sure. I wasn't doing anything. That was part of the problem."

"Ah," there it was. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I'm so bored," Gordon wailed. "And your girlfriend is being mean to me."

"Fiancée," John corrected him, not looking up from his work.

"It's not my fault I hate sitting around doing nothing all day. I’ve gone from a physically and mentally intensive, fifty plus hour a week job, to sitting on my ass from dawn until dusk. Can you blame a guy for getting twitchy?"

"Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice at the moment," John reminded him, quite needlessly he thought.

"Gee, thanks for the reminder," Gordon huffed, trying to cross his arms although the cast and sling he was sporting prevented it. That just seemed to annoy him even more.

"I can't do anything right now! How do you do it?"

"Do what?" John asked, squinting through his magnifier at the small window frame he was carving from a piece of polymer clay.

"Just sit around all day."

John raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I don't sit around all day."

"OK, float around then. It's not like you're actively running around like the rest of us are."

"I'll pretend I never heard you say that," John scowled, wishing Selene had dumped his brother into the sea instead of into his quiet, peaceful room.

"You're sitting around right now," Gordon pointed out, gesturing to the desk John was sitting at, which was currently doing double duty as a work table for his latest project.

"One day you'll learn to appreciate the benefits of a quiet, occupied mind and a still body," John told him.

Gordon sighed, propping his good elbow on the desktop, his chin resting in his upturned palm as he watched his brother fiddling with tiny things that seemed utterly useless to him.

"What are you even doing?"

"Working on a series of book nooks for Sel's side of the bookcase," John answered, sounding slightly distracted as he measured the finished window against its place in an intricately carved brick wall.

"Why?"

"Because she likes them."

"I mean why are you making it? Can't you just buy her one? It's not like you can't afford it."

"Where's the challenge in that? Besides, things are always more special when you make them yourself."

Gordon yawned and leant forward to rest his head on the tabletop.

"Do you want to help?" John offered, although honestly Gordon's version of helping was always patchy at best.

Gordon scooted closer to look over John's shoulder, eyes darting over the rectangular box that he was building the nook inside. About the size of two thick books sandwiched together, the nook already had a little cobbled street and two shop fronts in place. The tabletop was scattered with a selection of impossibly tiny screwdrivers, picks, scalpels and other instruments of possible torture that he couldn't hope to name.

"Pass," he announced decisively, flicking the control of his hoverchair so he spun in a wide circle, pointing to the door. "I'm out."

"Peace at last," John sighed, flicking his magnifier back into place over his right eye as he set aside the window to be baked later and reached for a fresh blob of clay.

-x-

"What ya dooooooing?" Gordon yodelled, slamming the bedroom door open so hard that it smacked into the wall and shook several picture frames. He scooted his way into the room without even waiting for an invite.

"Gordon!" John huffed, clutching his heart where it was trying to leap out of his chest from the shock of his brother’s sudden, and very noisy, entrance.

"Hi, I got bored, thought I'd drop in on my favourite big brother," Gordon grinned as he glided his hoverchair closer.

"Are Scott and Virgil busy?" John asked, that would be the only reason Gordon would have promoted him to his favourite.

"Yes," Gordon admitted, "but that's not the reason why I'm here."

John turned his head to shoot him a raised eyebrow of doom, clearly communicating without words that he didn't believe him in the slightest.

"So, what are you doing?"

"Working on this book nook," John replied patiently, holding up the small cauldron he was crafting.

"The same one?"

"Yes."

Gordon’s eyes nearly fell out of his head, "Still? It’s been four days!"

"Yes," John hissed out, starting to get frustrated by the constant questions.

"Why?"

"Because it takes a long time. If you're going to do a project you should do it right."

"At the speed you're going it's gonna take forever," Gordon snorted, casting an assessing eye over the work John had already done.

"That doesn't matter," John assured him. "It's not really about the time it takes or the end result, it's about the process, the journey to get there."

"Sounds lame to me," Gordon yawned.

"Obviously," John drawled, rolling his eyes.

"What do you mean by that?" Gordon demanded to know, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Because it's you."

"Hey! Rude."

"Accurate," John said, placing the little cauldron down and selecting another piece of clay which he placed on a ceramic tile.

"Why?"

"Because it requires a calm mind. It's good to slow down sometimes and just be still."

"Says the console jockey."

Console Jockey? He did not just say that!

"So you don't think my job is stressful? Or as tiring and important as yours?" John snapped, wondering if it was bad form to smack your injured brother around the head with a partially constructed book nook. He glanced at the nook, he had put a lot of work into it… It would be a shame to waste it. That thought alone saved Gordon.

“Well, yeah I get that it might be a bit stressful, but it’s not like you have to do much that puts you in danger, not like us,” Gordon continued, digging his hole even deeper, a hole that John was looking forward to shoving him into.

“We all have our specialities, you couldn’t do your job without me doing mine,” John retorted, trying very hard not to let Gordon’s comments get to him. Gordon would never understand what it was like for him to be stuck so far away from the action, away from his brothers when things were going wrong.

Gordon, thankfully for him, had been unconscious from the moment he had activated his emergency code. He hadn’t heard the frantic calls going out over the comms as the family mobilized to help him. He hadn’t heard the desperate scramble as Thunderbirds took off, racing to the scene. But John had heard it all.

John had been the one to stay on the line with Gordon, talking to him the entire time, knowing that he probably wouldn’t hear it but feeling that he needed to say it all the same. He wanted to know that if his little brother regained consciousness for even a second he would hear a familiar voice, that he would know that they were coming, that they would rescue him. He would know that he wasn’t alone.

He knew what it was like for people that were in danger, knew the comfort they got from someone talking to them, listening to their stories, being there for them verbally if not physically. John was often the one that spent the most amount of time with those they rescued, keeping their spirits up as much as possible until his brothers got there.

His brothers were seen by their rescuees as the real heroes, the ones that leapt in and plucked them out of danger, but John was the one that got them that help, the one that made sure the rescue played out as best it could, liaising and coordinating until the job was done. But Virgil, Scott, Gordon and Alan were the ones that got the thanks , the ones that got the hugs after they dropped their charges off, not John.

Not that he minded too much, he knew that his job was just as important as theirs, maybe even more so because, when someone put out that call for help, when they sent their desperate plea out into the world, they deserved to know that someone would always be listening out for it, that someone would hear and that help would come.

He knew all of this, and he knew that Gordon did too, it was just the frustration of inactivity that was making him say the things that he was. John just wished that that knowledge made it easier to listen to.

“I might not be doing the physical rescuing,” John continued, feeling the need to push his point home. “But I work just as hard, when you’re home you’re off duty until a call comes in, you can relax, swim, watch movies and laze around until you’re needed. When I’m up there I’m on duty 24/7 and even when I do manage to catch some sleep it’s not deep or particularly restful. Any little noise, any call that triggers the system's keyword algorithm gets transferred automatically, I have to go from asleep to awake in seconds to take it.”

Gordon was quiet for once, watching him closely. John didn’t like it, it made him feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And here we have the little seen Tracy, see how he stays inside his hide and hardly ever ventures out… he knew how they saw him, why they likely thought he had the easy job.

“These help, they give me something else to focus on. I need to keep my mind active and challenged while still trying to relax.” John paused, trying to think of a way to explain his thinking that Gordon might understand.

“These are almost like a meditation,” he started. Gordon understood meditation and finding your zone. “Creating something out of almost nothing. It keeps my mind focused, helps with finger dexterity and hand eye coordination with the added bonus of it relaxing me. It’s good to slow down and take some time to do something creative, you should try it some time.”

Gordon listened to his brother and he tried to take in all his words, he tried to understand the meaning behind them, he really did, but it just didn’t make any sense to him. He understood about wanting to be lazy, to sit around and do nothing sometimes. He loved to laze on the couch with his snackies and an Into the Unknown marathon playing out on the holoscreen, but that was watching something exciting, interesting, to him that was relaxing. This...whatever it was that John was actually doing, made no sense whatsoever to him. The idea of trying to relax by actually thinking...that was the most alien concept of all.

Gordon knew, probably better than his family gave him credit for, what it was like to be mislabelled. Within every sibling pool, there were the mandatory roles: the serious one, the caring one, the smart one, the funny one, the calm one, the angry one, the one who sang in the shower, et cetera. He’d proudly embraced the role of ‘the funny one’, and had diligently flown the flag for the humour camp for as long as he could remember. If a brother came home from a rescue in a slump and needed a cheery pick-me-up, it was Gordon who stepped up to the task, irrespective of his own mood. His smile and laugh were infectious, and he had yet to encounter a frown he couldn’t (eventually) turn upside down.

But with every ‘role’ came misconceptions. Scott was serious, therefore people were quick to automatically assume that he was a killjoy. Similarly, John’s intellect and preference for solitude often went hand in hand with him being branded antisocial, since there was apparently no possible way someone could enjoy their own company so much, yet still pursue and maintain meaningful relationships with actual people.

Gordon was no stranger to this treatment. He liked to laugh and be spontaneous, and consequently, was often regarded as the Tracy who didn’t take his work seriously, the Tracy who had the attention span of a gnat (albeit a very handsome one), and the Tracy who couldn’t be trusted with anything that required delicacy, be it physical or emotional. His affinity for making people laugh, though an exceptional quality, frequently acted as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his relentless optimism made him the most effective of the bunch when it came to emergencies involving children and young adults. On the other hand, it sentenced him to a fate where the bad jokes he cracked would always be two steps ahead of the secret deep thinker that lay within.

“Let me see it again,” Gordon sighed, trying his best to be a supportive and understanding brother, since he did feel a little bad about the things he had just said. He hadn’t meant to say them, they had just come out. That was the trouble with being laid up from an injury, not only were you out of action but you were in pain, and pain made you grumpy and less likely to monitor the things that came out of your mouth the way you should.

He knew that John worked hard, hell he knew that what his brother had said was right, John was never truly off duty. They were all aware that he didn’t get enough sleep, enough down time, enough time to relax and just be. They knew that if John was on Five he would consider himself on duty, at work, and therefore he’d never allow himself to take time out. Things had changed since Selene had blundered her way into his life, now he spent a lot more time on the Island, which meant that he was finally taking some time out for himself. If one of the ways he chose to do that was by crafting ridiculously tiny things out of clay to stick in a hollowed out box that was his business. Gordon wasn’t there to judge, he was there to spend time with his brother.

John moved aside a little so Gordon could get a closer look, trying to resist the urge to smack his hand away every time Gordon reached for a tiny piece that had taken him hours to perfect.

“These are really small,” Gordon mused, poking at a window that John had just finished painting, leaving behind a smudged fingerprint. “Woops, sorry, Bro.”

“Maybe you should try making something of your own,“ John suggested, carefully removing the window from his brother's possession and picking up a brush in order to attempt a fix.

Gordon nodded and John passed him a ceramic tile and a miniature rolling pin.

“How about you try cutting me out a few shop sign bases?” John suggested.

“Do I get one of those scalpel things?” Gordon asked, a little too eagerly for John’s liking.

“Maybe we can work up to that,” John hedged, subtly moving the scalpel out of his brother’s reach and passing him a square cookie cutter. “Use this cutter for now.”

Gordon shrugged and spent a few minutes rolling and squishing the clay trying to get the thickness to the exact measurement that John insisted on. It wasn’t easy or fun.

“Nope!” Gordon announced, giving up and pushing the tile away. “It’s still boring. Pass.”

He swung his hoverchair around and headed in the direction of the door. “Later, Bro.”

“Oh...OK...later, I guess,” John stuttered, wondering just what he had done to deserve such a chaotic family as his.

“Oh, hey, boo, where are you go- WAHH!”

John’s head shot up as Selene’s yelp rang out from the hallway.

“Sorry!”

“So you should be, you little shit,” she grumbled to his retreating back as she thumped into the room.

“What happened, love?”

“Let’s just say that if his chair had wheels I’d have lost a few toes,” she said, wincing in imagined pain.

John scooted his desk chair back and patted his lap in offer, one that she happily accepted.

“So, why was Gordy doing his boy racer bit? What did you say to him?”

“Me? What makes you think I said anything to him?”

“Because I know you two?”

“Fair,” he sighed, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”

Selene turned her head to look at him, not liking the helpless look on his face.

“Babe, you are helping him, you’re there to keep him company or talk to him if he needs it, that’s more important than anything. What happened to make you think that you weren’t helping?”

“He was asking me about these again,” John nodded towards his work area on the desktop. “But he didn’t seem to understand, that or he just didn’t want to.”

“He’s Gordon,” she sighed. “You know what he’s like, he’s full on, he’s in your face and he’s not at all subtle. Taking his time with things just doesn’t compute with him.”

“It would do him good though, if he doesn’t learn to embrace it he’ll be exactly the same as he was last time.”

“Was he really that bad?” she asked, concern lacing her voice.

John nodded. “He doesn’t do inactivity well. When he had his hydrofoil accident his therapist talked him into signing up for a virtual college degree in Environmental Management of Rivers and Wetlands. It was supposed to take him at least a year as a part time course with ANU in Canberra, but he blew through it in the first semester and earned himself a distinction for his insights on the impact of Anthropogenic Noise on Wetland Habitats. His professor was so impressed he offered him a fully funded PhD, citing his time with WASP and the time he spent in the bathyscaphe as practical experience that would make up for his lack of degree. Obviously he turned it down, but he still likes to rub our faces in it now and then.”

“Wow,” Selene breathed. “Forget his professor being impressed, I’m impressed.”

“He has a phenomenal brain,” John said, a small but very proud smile on his face. “When he actually decides to use it to its full potential, that is. There is nothing he can't do when he chooses to focus on something, he’s all in. It really helped him to feel like he was gaining something and moving forward even though he was sitting still.”

Selene nodded, understanding completely. She knew that all of her boys were wicked smart, but Gordon always presented himself as the least academic. He was more of a doer, wanting to be out in the field, learning as he went, diving in head first to every situation.

But as Selene and John both knew, appearances could be deceiving.

“If that’s what helped him last time, then we need to find a way to convince him to try something new,” Selene insisted.

“I tried, he’s not interested.”

“That was with your things, babe. We need to find something that’s a little more him, and I think I know just the thing.”

-x-

“I have arrived!” Gordon yodelled, announcing his entrance in his own unique way. He slid his hover chair in through the open door like the boss that he was, bringing his shining presence in to brighten up his middle brother's obviously dull existence. “Didja miss me?”

“Like a hole in the head,” John grumbled, turning to look at the grinning face of his brother. His eyes immediately began to water as they were assaulted by the far too bright colours of the shirt Gordon was wearing, a tie dyed monstrosity that Selene had made for him for his birthday.

“A little more gratitude, if you please," Gordon huffed.

“Grandma finally released you?”

“Yep,” Gordon stretched out his injured leg and patted the air cast on his now slingless arm. “Got time off for good behaviour.”

“I find that hard to believe,” John teased, then nodded to Gordon’s arm. “How’s it feeling?”

“Not too bad, my grip still isn't great but Grandma promised me that once the bone has finished knitting I’ll just need to exercise it and build the muscle strength up, then it’ll be as good as new.”

“That’s great, it won't be long before you're able to go back out with Virgil and stop, how did Sel put it, 'haunting the house like the ghost of Christmas future'?"

"Can't come soon enough," Gordon sighed, butting his chair right up close to John's, knocking his arm in the process. "What you do- you're still doing that? Still? It's been a week!"

"It's not like I get a huge amount of down time," John pointed out. "I'm only here now because Sel said she'd dump me if I didn't make an effort to come down earlier in the evenings so I could actually eat a meal with you all."

"You actually believed that threat?" Gordon laughed.

"Of course not, she'd never dump me, but I thought I had better humour her and let her feel like she at least had a little sway," John shrugged, pushing aside the little piece of doorstep he had been painting. "Honestly, it's nice to come down for a meal and family time, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it until it was happening again."

"I guess we all got a bit too caught up in International Rescue after we lost Dad," Gordon admitted.

"Like we had nothing else in our lives," John nodded, completely understanding.

"Yep."

Gordon fell silent and John let him, concentrating on mixing the perfect colour acrylic to add a few highlights to his stones.

"Can I have a go at making something? I bet I could do it quicker than you," Gordon asked, reaching towards what Selene called the sharps tub. John smacked the lid down on it just in time.

"Actually, we got you a present."

"You did?" Instantly distracted, Gordon sat up straighter, excited by the prospect of a gift. "What did you get me?"

This," John answered, opening his desk drawer and extracting an interestingly shaped bottle, upright with a thicker, rounded bottom and a thinner neck, ending a cork stopper.

"Wow, is that an original?" Gordon asked, taking the bottle carefully and turning it to study it from all angles. He knew exactly what this shaped bottle was, there had been a collection of them in Commander Shore’s office that he would stare at every time he got called in for some reprimand or another.

"19th century," John nodded. "Sel found it in a little shop in Mayfair. They assured her it was a genuine, used on a ship, captain's decanter from around the time of the civil war. They hadn’t fully traced it when Sel bought it but they think it came from one of the ships that fought in one of the smaller skirmishes around 1861.”

“This is really cool, thanks,” Gordon smiled, still turning the bottle over and over.

“It’s to hold this,” John continued, drawing Gordon’s attention back to him.

Grinning, John delved back into his desk drawer and pulled out a rather faded and quite dusty box. He brushed the dirt off the top and slid it over to Gordon.

"A ship?" Gordon frowned.

"Yep, Selene and I thought that you needed a little project of your own, so she had the idea to get you a ship in a bottle. You don’t see them a lot these days, but apparently her Grandfather had a couple and they always fascinated her.”

“So you put the ship in the bottle?”

“Yep, instructions are inside, go nuts.”

“Pfft, instructions,” Gordon snorted. “No one needs instructions, they’re a waste of time.”

-x-

“Ouch,” John hissed, hopping in place on one foot as he bent down to pick up what looked to be a tiny piece of mast that had attacked the sole of his foot. “Gordon, why are there bits of ship all over my floor?”

“Because I dropped them,” Gordon replied, his voice muffled due to the tongue of concentration that was peeking out from between his teeth.

Huffing, John gathered all the pieces off the floor, both pieces of ship and bits that they had been cut out of, and deposited them on the desk next to Gordon.

“How’s it coming along?” John asked, settling in his own chair. He’d only been gone a day but Gordon had managed to take over the entire bedroom, spreading his belongings, bottles, snack wrappers, his phone and a discarded hoodie, all over the place, as well as half the contents of the vintage ship box.

“It’s ridiculous. I think it’s missing pieces or something, it’s broken.”

“Well it was an old kit, but we were assured that it was complete,” John frowned, sliding the tray over that Gordon was supposed to be storing all the pieces in. “Have you checked the contents list and matched each piece to make sure they’re all there?”

Gordon looked at him blankly, like he was talking a foreign language.

“Did you check that everything was there before you started?" John elaborated.

“Of course I did,” Gordon promised, crossing his fingers and hoping his brother didn’t see.

“Against the list?” John clarified.

“I eyeballed it, OK?”

“Not good enough,” John insisted. “That’s not how you go about doing things like this, you can’t just slap them together and hope for the best.”

“Why not?” Gordon whined. It worked for him in almost everything else he did in life.

“Because this happens," John gestured to the mess surrounding them.

“Fine, I’ll read the damn instructions.”

Leaving Gordon to it John slid his almost completed book nook over and picked up his paintbrush to start adding some finishing touches before he started on the wiring for the lights. He’d barely done more than five minutes when Gordon started huffing.

John waited a little longer, trying his hardest to ignore the ever increasing sounds of frustration and impatience from his brother. In the end he couldn't stand it a moment longer, he had to ask the most loaded question ever.

“What’s the problem?” John asked, pushing his own work aside.

“These instructions don’t make sense,” Gordon bitched, flapping the paper in John’s face. “Look at the little picture here, you have to stick this little pole into that hole in the deck but the deck doesn’t want to stay together and that piece there keeps sliding and the pictures make no sense.”

“That’s because you missed around eight steps in between,” John told him, praying for patience.

“No I didn't, I followed the pictures exactly,” Gordon insisted.

“The steps aren’t in the pictures,” John explained. “See right there?” he pointed to the words above the pictures. “The pictures are a diagram of each finished stage, not how to get there. They are for reference only, not instructions.”

“Urghhh, this is going to take forever,” Gordon pouted, crossing his arms. “What’s the point?”

“The point is that by the end of it you’ll have something unique that no one else does, something you can be proud of and know that you built with your own two hands.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort,” Gordon muttered.

“It is,” John promised. “I’ll help. How about I read out the instructions and you follow along? We’ll get through it quicker that way.”

Gordon wasn’t convinced, but John looked so hopeful that he didn’t have the heart to refuse him, especially since he and Selene had gone to so much trouble to get the things for him in the first place. He might be a miserable little sod, but he wasn’t that ungrateful. He knew that they had gone out of their way to get something they thought he’d like, the least he could do was make the thing, even if he knew he wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe John was right, working together they could get through it quicker, and that could only be a good thing.

“Alright,” Gordon agreed, “let’s give it a go.”

Slowly, methodically, John read out each piece that was needed and Gordon located them, storing them neatly in a wooden box that Selene provided when she popped in to bring them drinks an hour or so later. She stayed just long enough to steal a kiss from John and drop one on the top of Gordon’s head before she beat a hasty retreat, not wanting to get roped into helping. She wasn’t the best at following instructions and didn’t want to get grumped at.

By the time they had all the pieces checked and catalogued they had discovered there were indeed two pieces missing, but thankfully they were easy fixes, just a small , round piece of wood to represent a porthole, which they could easily make a replacement for and a piece of mast. One snipped toothpick later and that was sorted too.

John started with the first set of instructions, reading them out patiently as Gordon found and fitted them together.

“So, how’s work been?” Gordon asked, like a chatty hairstylist, as he carefully dipped the end of a thin dowel into a small pot of wood glue.

“Same as ever,” John deadpanned, “a bunch of idiots that got themselves into trouble and needed help, and only half of them related to us.”

Gordon sniggered, glancing at John, seeing the sly smile on his brother’s face. He’d forgotten just how amusing John could be when he delivered something sarcastically witty with such a serious tone. Gordon hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it, wondering just what his more serious brother would come out with next. John was always like that, he seemed so quiet and reserved but, when he was relaxed and in company he was comfortable with he’d take you by surprise by letting loose a zinger that you couldn’t help but laugh at.

“Let’s not talk about work,” Gordon suggested, “we haven’t hung out properly in ages, you’re either up in Five or there are other people around.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ve missed me?” John teased.

“Maybe,” Gordon allowed, “but if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll deny it and tell Grandma you want her to make your birthday cake this year.”

John held his hands up in surrender, although he couldn’t hold in the laugh that bubbled up as he reached for the instructions again.

“OK, let’s get this done before we stop enjoying each other’s company.”

They worked slowly but steadily over the next few hours, putting together the structure for the first mast. Once it was done they called it quits and abandoned it for another day, the smell of something tasty coming from the kitchen proving to be too much to ignore.

-x-

“Gordon, that’s my finger.”

“Oh, sorry, can you just like… I don’t know, yank it off?”

“If I wish to leave half my identifying fingerprints behind, yes.”

“Do you really need them?”

John didn’t dignify that with an answer, the look he threw at his brother communicated his thoughts perfectly.

“OK, OK, I’ll get some dissolver from Virgil’s studio, wait right there,” Gordon instructed him, grabbing his crutches and hobbling his way out of the room.

John sighed, keeping his hand perfectly still, the hull of the boat dangling from his fingertip. He was still there five minutes later when Gordon clumped his way back in, Selene hot on his heels. She had the glue dissolver under one arm, a large bag of chips under the other and a plate of sandwiches in each hand.

She dumped the plates on the desk, then the chips, before turning to see the state her fiancé was in.

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” Gordon winced, dropping down into his abandoned desk chair and reaching for a plate.

“Can you at least help me before you start stuffing your face?” John asked, waggling his hand, which made the boat sway violently from side to side.

“Can’t, eating,” Gordon mumbled around the massive mouthful he had just taken.

“What did I say?” she demanded to know. “No hurting the hands, you know how I feel about that.”

John wiggled his fingers again, drawing her attention to his plight. He looked so pathetic with the half built little ship swinging from his hand that Selene took pity on him, intervening when he looked like he was about to grab the thing and yank it off himself, fingerprints be damned.

“Oh for the love of the Gods, let me do it!” Taking his hand she used a paintbrush to smear glue dissolver around the area of skin it was stuck to. She took her time, rewetting and using the brush bristles to push the dissolver under the boat, trying to ease it free from his skin with minimal pulling.

“Thank you,” he sighed, sitting patiently while she worked. Thankfully it didn’t take her too long, although it took a lot of cursing under her breath and the odd ouch from him to get there.

“One boat,” she announced, placing it triumphantly on the desk.

“Fanks,” Gordon said, spraying chip crumbs as he did so.

“Welcome,” she said, brushing at her leg which had unfortunately been in splatter range. Still holding John’s hand she bestowed a kiss to each of his abused digits before releasing him.

“Right, I’m out of here. Play nicely, you two, I don’t want to have to send Grandma in to babysit you both.”

“It won’t come to that,” John assured her, reaching for his own sandwich. “We’ve not got much left to do now. We just have to attach the rigging to the masts, check that they fold properly then insert th-”

“I’m out, I don’t need to hear anything about insertion, not after you just glued a boat to your hand,” Selene declared, her exit swift and to the point, the door shutting firmly behind her.

“She has a point,” Gordon admitted, swallowing his last bite. He pushed the chip bag in John’s direction, although there was barely more than a handful and a few crumbs left in it.

“But we’ll never admit it to her face,” John insisted, steadily munching through the large sub she had brought for him.

“Never,” Gordon agreed.

-x-

Gordon sighed dramatically as he crutched his way down the hall from his bedroom. John’s bedroom door was open but his brother wasn’t inside. The ship, now fully rigged, sat beside the bottle on the desk, just waiting to be placed inside once some sand had been poured in as a base. Gordon had chosen all different shades of blue to represent the sea and had even watched a few videos on how to do sand pouring art, something he’d never expected to find even remotely interesting, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go in and make a start on it.

John had barely been home the past week and when he had it had only been for food and enforced sleep. Even then he had been known to sneak out of bed the second Selene was asleep, being discovered on numerous occasions sitting at their father’s desk until the small hours working on this, that or the other.

Emergencies, and therefore the need for their services, had seemed to increase three fold, something Selene was blaming on the moon phase and mercury going retrograde and, for want of a better explanation, they were all inclined to agree. There was no rhyme or reason for the surge in idiots that were calling in at all hours of the day and night with trucks caught under a too low bridge causing a pile up, hands stuck down toilets, drunks climbing to the top of electricity pylons and repair men getting trapped inside ATM machines they had been fixing.

His brothers had been on the go near constantly, whether it was from rescue call outs or working on their plan to find their father, but none more so than John. While Selene had always been good at what she liked to call Tracy Wrangling, none more so that when she was dealing with a stressed out Scott, even she had admitted defeat and left them to their own devices. Self preservation was key after all.

John had been dealing with not only rescue calls and Chaos Crew sightings, but signal tracking, GDF liaising and general hoop jumping, all of which had kept him far too busy.

It had been over a week since they had done anything to their project and Gordon was feeling the loss. Not so much of the project, although that really had helped with his frustrations at his lack of physical ability, not that he would ever admit that to John, but in spending time with his brother.

Much to his surprise he’d found that he was reluctant to work on it alone, it had become their thing to do together. It was a time where they would hang out, shoot the shit, reminisce about childhood memories, times that they had spent together talking about their hope for the future where they would find their father alive and bring him home.

Both of them knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that if they did manage to find him there would be no telling what physical or mental state he would be in. Gordon knew from experience just how tough physical injury, limitations, and recovery could be on the mind and the body, especially in someone who had been as active and viril as Jeff Tracy.

They all knew, although no one seemed to want to talk about it, that as hard as it was going to be to actually locate him and hopefully bring him home, that would only be the beginning of what could potentially be an incredibly long and difficult journey of rehabilitation and reintegration into the family and the world as a whole.

John had been right, taking some time to be quiet, to slow down and think while keeping your mind and hands busy really was a productive way to spend your rest hours and, stupid as it sounded, Gordon didn’t really want that to end.

He was only a week or two away from potential cast removal and a return to physical activities like his beloved swimming and strength training in their home gym and, while he couldn’t wait to get back to it, he knew he’d feel the loss of his enforced quiet time.

He glanced again at the abandoned ship on the desk and turned away, clumping down the hall towards the stairs. So it would take them a little longer to get it finished, Gordon was fine with that because for once he wasn’t feeling the need to rush.

-x-

“Remember to pour it slowly,” Gordon instructed as he held the funnel in place, its long pipe reaching right down into the bottom of the jar. “Start with the darkest one, that’s going to be our base colour.”

“I’ve got it,” John assured him, selecting the tub of midnight blue sand and scooping some out into a smaller pot to make things easier. At Gordon’s nod he began to slowly and steadily pour the sand into the open neck of the funnel. As he watched Gordon expertly directed the tube, allowing the sand to pour out to pool in the bottom of the bottle.

At Gordon’s signal John stopped pouring and waited while Gordon carefully removed the tube and used a long metal skewer to poke and prod the sand into something that looked vaguely like waves.

“The next colour up,” Gordon requested and John did as he was asked. They repeated the process four more times with different shades of blue, John pouring in a little at a time, Gordon directing the tube to deposit more in one place than others, mimicking the movement of sea waves as best they could. In between each layer Gordon used the skewer to poke and mix the colours here and there, blending the layers into a smoother transition.

“That’ll do,” Gordon said confidently, twisting the bottle so John could see the full effect.

John had to admit that he had been pleasantly surprised when Gordon had announced that he had ordered some coloured sand and looked up how to do sand art on the internet. He hadn’t really known what to expect, although he would admit, if only to himself, that he had thought that Gordon would be a little heavy handed and impatient, but once again he had proved him wrong. He really had done his research and the result was a beautiful mix of colours that really did give a perfect impression of a gently moving sea.

“That’s looking great.”

“I know,” Gordon grinned, modest as always. “Where’s that resin gone?”

“Here,” John answered, pushing it across the desk towards his brother. “Make sure you read the instructions and measure the amounts accurately or it won’t set and you’ll ruin the sand and the bottle.”

“Yeah, yeah I got this,” Gordon assured him as he did indeed read the instructions through properly. Once he had familiarised himself with the ratio of resin to hardener, he measured carefully and poured them into a mixing jug. Once it was fully mixed he slowly, gently, poured the mixture a little at a time into the bottle on top of the sand. With each little pour he waited for the resin to trickle down between the grains, slowly adding to it until all the sand was covered.

“And now we wait,” John said, carefully placing the bottle in the patch of bright sunlight coming in through the window.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Gordon offered casually, not really expecting his brother to agree. John hardly ever watched anything with just him, they had vastly different tastes in movies and John usually made some polite excuse to escape.

“Sure, sounds good.”

“Really?” Gordon goggled, his eyes almost falling out of his head. “You don’t have anything more important to do?”

“More important than watching a movie with my little brother? I don’t think so,” John grinned, retrieving Gordon’s crutches from where they were leaning against his bookshelf and tossing them to him one by one. “Come on, last one to the lounge picks the movie.”

“Hey, no fair!” Gordon yelled, scrambling to his feet as he fumbled with his crutches. “You’ve got legs like a giraffe and neither of them are broken!”

“Sucks to be you,” John tossed over his shoulder as he took off down the hall to victory.

-x-

“Careful,” John warned.

“I am being careful,” Gordon snapped. “I got this.”

“Your hand’s shaking.”

“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.” He steadied his, only slightly shaky, hand by propping his elbow on the desk for stability. “OK, let’s do this.”

They both held their breath as Gordon maneuvered the body of the boat through the opening in the bottle, making sure each sail stayed carefully folded down and the strings remained untangled before he fed it down the neck and into the bottle.

“Phase one, complete,” John intoned in such a serious voice that Gordon couldn’t help the laugh that he snorted out.

“Pass me those long nosed tweezers?” Gordon asked, holding out a hand.

John slapped the requested instrument into his brother's hand like a nurse in an operating theater, provoking another burst of laughter.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

Making sure the strings of the sails were still dangling outside of the bottle, Gordon carefully moved the body of the boat further down into the bottle with the metal skewer until the stern touched the top of the resin and sand layer.

“Now the sails,” Gordon whispered, hardly daring to breathe as John moved in to help, taking over the holding of the strings while Gordon reached in with the tweezers.

Gently, working together, they started the delicate process of tugging gently on each string, unfolding the paper sails and locking them in place.

“String one.”

“Got it. Watch number four sail.”

“Yep, thanks...OK… can you just give string five a little pull? Perfect.”

“Sail three is flopping!”

“Gah, hang on, just got to tighten that...yep that’s got it.”

“Maybe if I gather…”

“Yep, that’s good, do that again.”

“This next bit is going to require a delicate touch, maybe I should-”

“Hey! I can be delicate!”

“It’s not coming up...back sail two is stuck, release it...careful!”

“There, saved it.”

John gently pulled the strings a little more and there it was, their ship, sails proudly upright and everything. He kept hold of the strings, while Gordon held on to the boat with the tweezers as they carefully lifted the bottle from its side to its proper upright position.

Using the skewer John maneuvered around Gordon’s hand and nudged the boat into a better position before he carefully released the strings. They both held their breath, hoping and praying that the sails wouldn't collapse the second the strings fell.

The boat, with its sails, stayed strong.

“Yes!” Gordon cheered, holding up his free hand for a high five, grinning when his brother’s palm smacked against his own.

“Scalpel,” Gordon joked as John handed it to him so they could lop off a little of the trailing strings. Then, using the skewer, they arranged the strings around the edges of the boat.

With the boat finally upright and in place, they added another layer of light blue coloured sand with a sprinkling of white to mimic the tips of the waves. They finished it off by pouring in a little more resin, both to set the sand and hold the boat in place, using the tweezers to make sure it was correctly positioned.

“Phew,” Gordon breathed, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his cast covered leg. “We did it. Go team.”

“We did,” John smiled. “And it looks damn good.”

“It really does,” Gordon agreed, shifting his head to look at the bottle from all angles.

“Nothing left to do but let it dry and put the stopper in,” John said. “How do you feel now it’s done? Was it worth the time?”

“I still think we could have done it a lot faster if you’d just let me skip a few steps in the instructions and do it my way, but it wasn’t that bad,” Gordon admitted. “I’m oddly proud of it.”

“You should be, you did good,” John leant back in his chair, crossing his arms as he relaxed. “Are you going to stop teasing me about my book nooks now?”

“Pssh, no,” Gordon snorted. “Ships are cool, yours will always be boring.”

He didn’t see the bottle of water coming until it was too late.

-x-

Gordon walked straight to John’s room from the infirmary, feeling oddly free without his crutches and casts. Six weeks was a long time, after all.

The bottle with its little ship sat exactly where they had left it in the center of John’s desk next to the abandoned book nook that was still not finished. It took him very little time to insert the cork stopper and pour a little of Selene’s spell bottle sealing wax around the top, a bright, cheery yellow wax that matched his beloved Thunderbird Four.

He smiled as he thought of his little craft, waiting down in her dock for him, ready to be taken out when the next call came in. It had been a long and frustrating time but finally, blessedly, that time was over.

He poked an experimental finger into the wax seal, checking that it had set properly. It had, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad about it. It had been a project that at first he’d had very little interest in, but slowly it had turned into so much more. Not just something to wile away a few hours but a chance for him to reconnect with the brother he spent the least amount of time with.

Years ago, back when he had been small, John had been his everything. When Alan had been too tiny to be of any use and Scott and Virgil had been too old to be bothered with him hanging around, it had been John that had been there for him. It was John that had patiently listened as he read aloud from his sealife books, who had watched movies with him, played with him, and spent the most amount of time with him. Back then, their three year age difference had seemed like so little but so much at the same time, an older brother that made him feel wanted and included when the other two saw him as an annoyance.

Gordon couldn’t quite put his finger on when things had changed, when they had slowly drifted apart. John had seemed to grow up so much faster than he had, Alan had welded himself to his side, looking up to Gordon as he had to John and things had never been the same again.

It had been too long since they had been able to just hang out, to laugh, to tease each other without things going too far and one of them getting annoyed. It had been nice and Gordon had realised that he didn’t want to go back to nothing but hollocalls to Five when an emergency came in or the odd family dinner and movie night where he had to share with the rest of the family. John was the only brother that Gordon didn’t spend one on one time with as standard and he realised that, no matter how much he might blame it on John being so far away, in reality it was as much his fault as John’s.

Gordon picked up the bottle, leaving a box in its place. The model kit of the Mercury Project space capsule and its launch pad had been hard to find even with his junker contacts. In fact, he had almost given up and admitted defeat before he'd thought to look at the label on his ship box and sent the shop owner an email.

Smiling to himself, knowing that there was no way John would be able to resist that challenge, he took the finished bottle, with its little ship, to his room where it would take pride of place on his bookshelf, a constant reminder that even in the worst of times, positivity could still be found.

“Thanks, Bro.”

#tag mini bang 2021 #tagminibang2021 #Gordon Tracy #John Tracy #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds fandom #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds fanart #TAG Mini Bang 2021 #TAGMiniBang2021

51 notes · View notes

leefi · 3 years

Text

I want to talk about YJH for a second, specifically regarding where he's been positioned in the story and how things have been playing out through his POV (Spoilers up to chapter 120).

Most characters have benefitted tremendously from having Kim Dokja around to influence the direction of the story - Jung Heewon (who I believe was originally a nameless character) has blossomed into one of the strongest incarnations so far and Lee Jihye is stated to be far more powerful than she was in the original third regression.

And while virtually everyone benefits from KDJ's presence, we saw YJH's mental state actually rapidly deteriorating after KDJ's arrival, all the way up to the cinema master fight. It was stated several times in the story that "he shouldn't be this cruel at this point, it's only his third regression, he's acting extremely out of the norm"...and while I can't know for sure, I wonder how much of that is due to him having to share the spotlight with KDJ. He has been very quickly relegated from the role of protagonist to deuteragonist, and is no longer the primary dictator of how this world moves.

Then again...he never actually was. His author was before. And even in-universe, most of his actions and decisions have been heavily influenced - if not outright dictated - by the constellations watching his suffering for their own entertainment. It's so...strange. It's such a strange position that he's in. He's the protagonist, he's the most powerful person on the field, but he's had arguably the least amount of agency over his own actions than anyone else in the story. The vast majority of things he is going to end up doing that Kim Dokja knows about simply haven't happened yet. We are where the story begins. Depending on when this reality truly began, YJH as an autonomous person was really only born a month and a half ago, and that's strange. I'm trying to put myself in his shoes, and it's hard, because he knows so little about the current situation; and I know so little about his previous two regressions (*throttles Kim Dokja for no particular reason*). So really all I can do is speculate...

Speaking of, isn't it strange that YJH's sponsor has never even tried communicating with KDJ at all? That we have no idea who his sponsor even *is* (and that KDJ doesn't raise any questions about it)? Of course my working theory is that KDJ *is* his sponsor...I have no idea how we get there, but I have no doubt that he is. Maybe the Fourth Wall skill is sponsor!KDJ's way of protecting human!KDJ.

One last thing about Jonghyuk is something that I wonder if KDJ will be capable of stopping. When we first met him, the first thing Dokja states is that he will be the man to kickstart the tragedy that changes this world. That. Is...future tense. Something very bad concerning YJH will happen that we haven't seen yet. Does it occur at the end of this third regression? Somewhere before? We're actually nearing the end of when his third regression would be normally...IIRC they mentioned earlier that he dies due to Yoosung (not during the fight, but due to her actions in some way). But what is this action he takes that turns the world upside down? Every time Kim Dokja saves somebody that YJH loves...is that him trying to guide him away from that possibility? Shit, KDJ, what are you gonna do if you end up needing to save yourself?

Ultimately I feel I may be denying YJH too much agency in how I'm thinking about him right now but as it stands I honestly can't help it. By his third regression he's already a psychopath, we don't hear his voice that often, he works mostly off screen, and when he is around he's laser-focused on what needs doing. But essentially what I'm trying to say here is just how strange of a position he's in right now. Hearing other characters comment on him now is what reminds me that he's meant to be the main character. "As expected of a protagonist". Who?? What?? How?? What factor makes him the protagonist now? The fact that the universe lives and dies with him? All that makes him is a hostage.

The universe living and dying with him...Kim Dokja?

That's why KDJ's influence has been so monumental. YJH resisted his presence at first - a lot - and the majority of his actions and decisions have been reprehensible thus far. But Dokja's actions were the first to teach him that he didn't need to keep going the way that he was. There is another way out - he just has to find it.

We've been watching "real people" transform into "characters" as the story has progressed beyond where they finished. I think that the opposite is happening for Yoo Jonghyuk. The more that KDJ pulls us away from the original story and he's forced to react and make his own decisions off of such, the more agency the "character" YJH is going to gain as a person.

#ayah reads orv #omniscient reader's viewpoint #orv23 #orv24 #yoo jonghyuk #woof

30 notes · View notes

owl-with-a-pen · 3 years

Note

They kissed!!! well, Brainy kissed her (And it's strange, I was convinced that if there was a kiss, Brainy would make the first move) Can you imagine what it meant for him to do it? And it was so sexy and then he said those cute things. I'm going to cry. Tell me what you will write about it. I'm sorry, I'm just so happy, Brainia is two steps away from being official again.

- I know what you mean! I was hoping Brainy would be the one to make the first move this time too, and it didn’t disappoint. What shall I write about it, you ask? Perhaps a self indulgent addition to the scene with even more kissing involved! Hope you enjoy. x

Brainy had missed this. So much, in fact, that a part of him didn’t want to give it up. Of being here on the Legion ship, with Nia Nal and no one else.

After all, for the next half hour, there would be no world ending threats. No calculations to commit to memory, no multi-dimensional planes to map out exact co-ordinates for. The ship’s route was pre-programmed. For the first time in far too long, Brainy realised that he could relax.

Of course, recent factors had made such a concept unthinkable at first. Undue stress had complicated his emotional control, thwarting what little progress he’d made with Lena. Comfort eating had become somewhat habitual over the last few days, and even after every coping mechanism Midvale High’s expansive list of extra-curricular activities had been able to teach him, nothing had wanted to stick.

Nothing until he’d heard her voice.

Nia singing. So softly at first, arms tucked awkwardly around her chest, as though afraid to be heard by anyone other than herself. But then she’d met his eyes and, in that moment, she’d smiled a smile that had lit up his world.

Brainy could still see it so clearly in his mind, had reserved an entire thought track for that memory, playing her song over and over whenever his more volatile emotions tried once again to rear their head.

He could hear her now, a distant murmur of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, calming the frayed edges of his nerves still agitated from two days’ worth of close calls.

Nia hadn’t just saved the day. She had saved him. Pulled him back from the brink of total emotional meltdown. Indeed, he hadn’t felt this at peace with himself since removing his inhibitors, and he had certainly never felt this sure of his emotional state.

Right now, he felt hope for the future, of course, but there was something more. Something comfortably warm that flooded through his chest and stomach, itching through his blood like static. He felt giddy. He felt happy.

He felt love.

He had always been capable of those emotions - had felt them in varying degrees throughout his life - but looking at Nia now, even while she was sat halfway across the room, flicking through that old Midvale newspaper with a soft smile on her face, Brainy realised he had never felt it this profoundly before. His love for her swelled inside of his chest, urging him to close the distance between them then and there, to spin her in his arms and never, ever let go.

He could still taste the sweet bite of her lip gloss on his tongue. Ardently, he wanted to kiss her again. But, this moment was still, undisturbed, and he did not want to ruin that.

So, instead, he remained in his chair, switching aimlessly through the settings via telepathic control. He found it far too easy to slip back into old patterns, half spinning about the main control deck to dissuade at least some of the nervous energy that was steadily building inside of him.

It wasn’t stress this time, but felt just as chaotic, swirling in his stomach, unwilling to still for even a moment. It would have done no good to try and box this feeling away and so, Brainy closed his eyes, falling back onto his thought track of Nia’s song.

Tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen

Pour myself a cup of ambition…

Within moments of seeing Nia’s smile fresh in his mind, the tension in his shoulders began to ease and Brainy breathed out, relaxing steadily into his chair.

He only realised he’d started humming the song out loud when Nia’s actual voice caught him by surprise – far closer than he had expected.

“Brainy? Everything okay?”

He blinked open his eyes to find Nia stood in front of him, arms folded, brow furrowed with concern.

Brainy smiled, it appeared he was doing that a lot more lately. “Everything is… perfect,” he admitted. “More so than it has been for a long while.”

Nia smirked at that, biting her lip. She reached out for his hand, running her fingers gently across his knuckles. “You’re sure?”

Brainy relished the feel of her touch, nodding firmly. “One hundred per cent.”

“Those are pretty good odds,” Nia agreed solemnly, squeezing his hand. “But, um, I think we can do better.”

A bubble of something caught inside Brainy’s chest. He swallowed it down, suddenly far too aware of the insistent beat of his own heart. “That would be… statistically improbable.”

“But not impossible,” Nia said. She took a step closer, her legs brushing against his knees. “How much time do we have before we get back to our Earth?”

Brainy blinked, quirking a brow. “Not long, just under thirty minutes before we breach Earth’s atmosphere.”

Nia’s next smile glimmered with mischief. “I can work with that.”

“Work with that – how?”

“You said earlier that you’d forgotten how good emotions could feel,” Nia said, lowering her voice. “Maybe I can remind you of some of the best ones.”

Before Brainy could ask her to elaborate, Nia’s arms curved around his back, fingers pressing firmly into the nape of his neck. Brainy shuddered involuntarily, the static in his blood exploding into shrapnel, piercing every exposed nerve. Nia’s touch felt electric, hot like a pulsing fire; her nails dug teasingly against his neck as she tugged them up and through the back of his hair.

Their faces were so close now; Nia’s right knee was balanced precariously in the space between Brainy’s legs, allowing her the purchase to pull herself towards him.

Nia’s smile was radiant when she murmured, “What d’you think, Wildcat?”

Brainy opened his mouth instinctively, welcoming her lips a moment later. The heat in his heart blossomed outward as he pressed hard into the kiss, a low groan catching inside his throat when Nia’s fingers clenched around handfuls of his hair.

The sound must have startled her, for Nia began to pull away, appearing worried she may have acted too impulsively. Brainy’s heart stuttered at the loss of contact and, desperately, his teeth latched to her bottom lip, urging without speaking for her continue. That he wanted her to continue.

Nia laughed in response, the warmth of her breath scattering across his face as she cupped it in her hands. Brainy’s eyes fluttered shut and he sighed out, taking Nia’s arm as she relaxed further against him.

When her lips met his again, they were softer than before, more inquisitive, but it wasn’t long before she deepened the kiss, and Brainy was more than happy to match her enthusiasm. When his hands found her waist, Nia gasped out against his mouth, the sound alone increasing the blood rush in his ears.

By the time they parted, Brainy realised he had to pause to catch his breath. He blinked upward. His lips felt tender, and his mind was hot and clouded, but it was still. Every thought track had paused its course, instead shifting all focus to one Nia Nal.

Brainy scanned every inch of her, chest hitching and falling with the frantic beat of his heart. He drank in every aspect of her expression – the joy glimmering in her eyes, the grin that split her face wide open, the exuberant happiness that he found he shared with her without even needing to try.

She was wondrous, stunning and so, so beautiful. Brainy felt for a moment that he must have certainly been dreaming. How else could he have been so lucky to have Nia in his life?

“So,” Nia said breathlessly, tracing her hand beneath Brainy’s chin, leaving a prickled warmth wherever her fingers touched. “Did it work?”

Brainy answered her question by kissing her again, tugging her so suddenly that she lost her balance and toppled halfway into his lap. Brainy grinned against her lips when she laughed again, his hands exploring every inch of her back, scratching insistently against the netting of her dress.

Thirty minutes, Brainy thought.

It appeared he could work with that, too.

#supergirl #supergirl fanfiction #brainia #nia nal #brainiac 5 #supergirl 6x06 #dreamdox #kissing scenes are hard to write but screw it I'll give it my best shot #i just wanted more elaboration on how brainy must have been feeling #because it must have been A Lot

38 notes · View notes

majesticbrownjawn · 3 years

Text

Halloween

This is a throwback and may be the first Erik-ish fic I wrote more than two years ago.

Reader (like me), isn’t a fan of Halloween, her boyfriend tries to change her outlook.

NSFW, boo.

I hate Halloween; you thought to yourself angrily as you woke up on the morning of October 31.

You had a bad experience when you were younger and had been scarred ever since. Your boyfriend Jason loved it, though, especially after Black folks decided we'd make Halloween all about the culture. He was excited about his costume but refused to share what it was. He said it was a surprise and would make you have a heart change about Halloween. You doubt that highly. One of his best friends threw a big party every year, so you were headed there tonight.

Thankfully it was Saturday, and you didn't have to rush to get yourself together after work. You wanted to have lunch with Jason because you knew even though you'd be at the party together tonight, he'd be too excited to pay you much attention.

————

"Hey babe, you wanna grab some lunch with me?"

"Aww, I'd love to, but I have to put some final touches on my costume."

"Really?! I haven't seen you all week Jason," you whined.

"I know, baby, but I gotta finish this. I promise I'll make it up to you tonight."

"Ok, fine," you said, disappointed, and hung up.

You waited until the last minute to decide what to be for Halloween because you and your boyfriend usually coordinated what you'd wear, but because he was being so extra this year and didn't want you to know who he was going as, you had to figure things out on your own. By the time you made it to the Halloween store, the only thing left in your size was the cliche slutty French maid costume. You bought it without trying it on and went on with your day. You were out later than anticipated, so you had to get home and get ready quickly. As you were putting on makeup, you heard your phone buzz. It was a text from Jason.

Hey baby, I'm running behind, so I won't be able to pick you up. I'm sorry. Text me when you're ready to leave, and I'll have an Uber pick you up and bring you.

He was really annoying you today.

You arrived to the party about an hour later and was surprised to see the mansion was already packed with people. You picked up your phone to call Jason but saw that you didn't have service. You walked around for a while, observing the detail in the partygoers’ costumes. A blue Avatar and headless horseman caught your eye and impressed you. After looking for Jason for much longer than anticipated, you decided to stop at one of the bars to get a drink. As you stood in the line, a rough tug at your hips and warm breath on the back of your neck startled you.

"What the fuck are you wearing?!" A deep voice said.

The slutty French maid costume lived up to its name. Your full breasts were spilling out of the top and the dress barely covered your ass. You added fishnet stockings to cover your deliciously thick thighs and to add to the overall hoe factor. You rarely wore heels, but tonight you decided on a pair of clear, stacked, 5” sandals. You knew Jason wouldn't like your body on display at the party, but he would just have to get over it tonight. He was lucky you’d even showed up.

The voice in your ear sounded familiar. You jerked away and looked at the man from the ground up. He wore combat boots, a pair of camo pants that hugged him in all the right places, a vest with metal breastplates, and a thin shirt that hugged his muscular arms perfectly. His hair was cut low all over, except for in the middle, where he had short dreads that sprung up and away from his head wildly. Two of his lower teeth were dipped in gold. The look in his eyes was one of pent up anger and rage.

Jason had transformed himself into your own personal Erik “Killmonger” Stevens.

"Jason?" You were surprised at how much he actually looked like Killmonger. He knew you had a not-so-secret thing for him, which is probably why he was so confident you'd love his costume this year. People frequently stopped Jason to tell him he resembled the fine ass actor who played your fictitious, homicidal movie boyfriend, but you never saw it--until tonight. He'd been growing his hair out since the summer, and you hated it so much that you barely let him touch you. You told him he could get some cut when he cut his hair, but he refused to, so you’d been finding other ways to get what you needed the last few months.

"Answer my question. Who gave you permission to come out dressed like a slut tonight?"

"OK, Jason, this is cute, but you not gon' talk to me like that."

You turned to walk away, but he grabbed your wrist so tight that your body involuntarily stepped back towards him to ease the pressure on your arm.

"Where do you think you're going?"

You realized at that moment he wanted you to play along, so for the sake of your wrist and his fun, you went along with it.

"Nowhere Killmonger. I'm all yours," you smirked at him.

He grinned devilishly and replied, "You better be. And you can call me Erik."

He grabbed a bottle from behind the bar and instructed you to follow him until you reached a pair of plush couches in the atrium of the mansion. People were all around, dressed in costumes, seemingly entranced by the music and the free-flowing alcohol.

"Drink," he demanded.

He started to pour liquor in your mouth before you could respond.

"Wait!" Alcohol was all over your lips and chin and quickly trailing down your to your breasts.

He quickly sucked it off your neck and licked the top of your tits in plain sight.

"What are you doing, Jason?" You were angry and turned on at the same time.

"You got one more time to call me by another nigga's name. You understand me?"

You nodded your head and squirmed a little, realizing how wet you were.

"Now drink up. I want you loose tonight."

Erik wanted to dance, so you joined the crowd on the floor. His camo pants were thick, but you could feel how excited he was to be grinding behind you. In character or not, he hadn't touched you like this in months. As your bodies moved together to the music, one of his hands crept up your waist and palmed your breast. You loved the way his hands felt on you. He turned you around to face him and gave you the nastiest, sexiest kiss you’d ever experienced. He was really in character and you loved it.

After grinding on each other a while longer, he whispered in your ear, "I'm ready to fuck you."

Your eyes bulged out from your head and the tingling in your pussy that had been happening since you laid eyes on him tonight intensified. You were ready to fuck too.

"Go upstairs into the second door and take off everything. NOW." He dismissed you, confident you’d obey his order.

You trailed up the stairs and waited for him.

"The fuck you still got clothes on for?!" Your boyfriend was always firm, knowing how to lovingly put you in your place when I needed to be checked. But the tone he used tonight was different. It almost made you afraid of him.

"I'm going to teach you how to listen today. Bend over." You looked at him with questioning eyes to see if he was serious.

"Bend the fuck over," he repeated. You leaned onto the bed in front of you, ass straight up, listening like a good girl. He ran his hand down your ass before giving it a firm smack.

"When I tell you to do something, I mean that shit." You could hear the lust-filled anger in his voice.

You flinched in pain, but your mouth let out a needy moan, encouraging him to continue. He hit your jiggling backside again just before you heard the sound of your fishnet stockings ripping, leaving your ass fully exposed, save the thong you wore. You felt the string being pulled away from your center and onto your ass cheek.

His fingers circled your clit from behind, making you arch your back, pushing your pussy deep onto his fingers. You wanted them inside. You were so wet, and they’d slipped in a few times already.

"Not yet, baby," he growled. He replaced his fingers with his mouth.

He gave you a good tongue lashing from behind and licked up your slit towards your ass. He slowed down as he made his way upwards, and you tensed up, knowing where he was headed. Your boyfriend loved your body and gave all of himself to you when you had sex. He was attentive and genuinely desired to pleasure every part of your body, but you were never comfortable with him pleasing that part of you. It was still so taboo. Would it even feel good? With him thinking he was Killmonger tonight if he tried, would you be able to stop him? Would you want to stop him?

As his tongue reached that small region of flesh between your pussy and your other hole, your reflexes caused you to reach one of your hands back, trying to swat him away.

"Wait, Jas-Erik, whoever the fuck you are."

That was the worst thing you could have done. He grabbed the arm that tried to push him away and held it on top of your back with his hand, leaving you to balance all of your weight onto the single arm below you. His other hand firmly gripped your upper thigh and pulled you closer to his face.

"Ahhhhh, Erik." You were gone at the first stoke of his tongue in your no longer forbidden area.

He ate you mercilessly, giving you a pleasure you'd never experienced before. Your arm gave out on you, and you finally just planted your face into the bed. Your ass never moved, though; you were enjoying his tongue too much. He released your arm. The noises you were making was assurance you wouldn't try and stop him again. Your eyes rolled back in slow motion when he opened your pussy with his fingers pushing them deep into you and twisting them as he moved in and out of you, mouth still teasing your ass.

"Oh my gosh, Jason. Fuck!"

"What you just call me?" His words vibrated against your hole, sending a shiver up your spine. He smacked your ass hard. "What's my name?"

Smack.

Your body shuddered, but you didn't answer.

"Hmm?" He struck you again and laughed.

"Erik," I whispered. His fingers moved to your clit, sending shockwaves through your body, making your pussy jump from the inside.

"Louder," he demanded.

"MmmmErik!" Unintelligible sounds left your mouth as he stroked your clit and ate you from behind. Your climax overtook you, pushing the balls of your feet deep into the soft carpet and making your toes point back up towards the bed. Your body went stiff before going completely limp. You flopped stomach-first onto the bed below you.

He leaned over you on the bed and whispered, "We ain't done yet, turn over."

You lazily rolled over on your back as he carefully took off his costume. You watched his beautiful body in awe when he removed his shirt and revealed dozens of scars across his chest and abdomen. He was committed to this costume.

You were on autopilot and didn't realize you were pleasuring yourself until he growled, "That's a good girl, keep that kitty wet for me."

Your fingers continued massaging your pussy as he stood over you, stroking his dick and chewing his bottom lip. "You look so good, baby, rubbing your clit like that, but I thought I told you to take your clothes off." He reached down and snatched the top of your dress open, making your breasts spill out and sending buttons flying across the room.

"Yeah, that's better. Now play with them juicy ass titties." You stuck your fingers in your mouth, trying to get them as wet as possible before moving them in circles around your deep brown nipples. His dick slid up and down your slit as you continued giving special attention to your sensitive breasts.

Finally, he entered you with a loud grunt, spreading your walls with his healthy girth. You inched up the bed a little trying to adjust to him; it had been a little while.

"Uhun, where you going? Ain't no escaping this dick tonight." He cupped his hands under your thighs and lifted your ass off the bed, pushing himself further inside, using your legs to pull you up and down his juicy dick.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, Erik."

"Feels better now?"

"Yes, baby, yes," you whimpered. He twisted in and out of you, pausing every few strokes to stop and lick your clit before entering you again. His pace sped up as he looked down on you with dark eyes.

"Ahhhh got damn, girl. This pussy so fucking wet." He inhaled deeply like it was going to keep his nut from coming too soon.

"Of course it is, daddy. You keep tapping my spot," you moaned. He shifted his hips a little, hitting it straight on.

"Where is it?"

"It's right there. Don't stop, right there, please!" Your fingers gripped the sheets below you as you came hard around him. He rubbed your clit midway through your orgasm, intensifying and extending your high. He came inside you heavy before falling to your side, breathing deeply as you traced your fingers along the raised scars on his chest.

"So, you like my costume?" Your boyfriend was back.

"It was aight." He raised an eyebrow at you.

"I can give you another spanking if my performance wasn't convincing enough."

"No baby, my ass hurts. But I have a question. You think Killmonger cuddles after sex?"

"Fuck no!" He yelled. "I do, though."

He wrapped his arms around you, placing kisses in the crook of your neck.

You couldn’t stop grinning as you laid there in his arms. The experience with him tonight was overwhelming. It felt like you fucked someone else.

You fucked Killmonger.

-----

Tags:

My list is jacked, if you don’t want to be tagged, inbox me. If you’d liked to be tagged in the future, just comment and let me know. Thanks for reading!

@harleycativy @queenflaws @theogbadbitch @goddessofthundathighs @syndrlla97 @soufcakmistress @mbakusprincess @supersizemeplz @therealmrsrhodes @toniilaney @raysunshine78 @19jammmy @killmonger-fics @just-peachee @trinityaneise @wawakanda-btch @killmonger-fics @just-peachee @ladymac82 @suburbanblackhoe

#Erik Stevens #Erik Killmonger #erik x reader #erik killmonger fic #erik x black reader #killmonger fanfiction #killmonger x reader #killmonger smut #black women #black reader

175 notes · View notes

professorsnape394 · 3 years

Text

The Potions Master’s Apprentice

Chapter Eight: The Goblet of Fire

A/N: This is the Eighth part to my fanfiction ‘The Potions Master’s Apprentice (Severus Snape x OC)’. Chapters 1-16 can be found already uploaded on Wattpad under the same name. Feel free to leave requests in my inbox for anything Snape related you want me to write. Leave a comment below if you wish to be added to my tag list.

Pairing: Severus Snape x OC (Dumbledore’s Granddaughter)

Summary: A talented young witch is employed as an apprentice professor at Hogwarts, but who will she be working under? Severus Snape is not best pleased with his new responsibility of taking on an apprentice, however she is relentless to create a friendship between them. Will she be successful? Or might the friendship just go a little two far? With the eyes of her grandfather constantly watching over them, an attempt at a relationship might not be in the cards for Aria Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

Word Count: 2428

Warnings: slight mentions of blood, possible accidental self-harm trigger warning.

Credits to Gif Creator

A small commotion from the Great Hall piqued Aria's interest, her curiosity getting the better of her. The room radiated an icy blue light emitting from the centre of the room which contained the infamous Goblet of Fire. A group of around 20 students or so surrounded the cup, all laughing and taunting the two boys who sat on the edge of the age circle that had been drawn by Albus Dumbledore, a bemused look stuck on their faces. Aria watched as their enchantment took its toll on the Weasley twins. They had been attempting to enter themselves into the Tri-Wizard tournament, but to no avail. Professor Dumbledore's spell was far too powerful for the likes of Fred and George Weasley.

Not even attempting to hold back her laughter, Aria approached the boys, helping them to their feet. Almost instantly they practically tackled the woman back down to the ground.

"I missed you boys." She grinned from ear to ear, regaining her balance, giving her skirt a thorough brush down.

Exchanging more than a few pleasantries the trio caught up with each other, before Aria remembered her position as Professor, that is. Giving the boys a light scolding for their stupidity, Aria opened her mouth to take away a number of Gryffindor's house points, however she was quickly interrupted by the hushed gasps of students and the scurrying of feet as they cleared the room, leaving only the twins, Aria Dumbledore and one Severus Snape.

The Potions Master cleared his throat catching the attention of the Students and their friend. Embarrassed she had been caught not properly carrying out her duties as Professor, Aria put some distance between herself and the Weasleys.

"Ten points from Gryffindor." Snape declared, glaring at his fellow professor more than the students. "For each of you." He finished, a rather satisfied grimace appearing on his face. The boys let out a long groan but kept their mouths shut, knowing better than to object.

"I was handling it." Aria objected, taking another step in the direction of the Potions Master.

"Clearly." He droned with a roll of his eyes. "It certainly looked like you were handling it when the three of you were carrying around on the floor, exchanging familiarity's, and hugging." His disdain for the act almost making the word almost unbearable to say.

Aria opened her mouth to explain herself but was once again interrupted by the presence of the Headmaster.

"Mr and Mr Weasley." Dumbledore announced. "I suggest the two of you make your way to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey will meet you there." The boys gave a thankful nod to the Headmaster before rushing from the room, eager to reverse their own enchantment. "As for you, Miss Dumbledore, I advise you to keep outside relationships professional while here Hogwarts. I will not abide my Professors playing favourites among students for personal reasons, do you understand?"

"Of course, Headmaster." Aria whispered, taken aback by her grandfather's use of their shared last name.

Albus gave the pair of Professors a final sceptical look before leaving them alone.

The young witch gave her mentor a look of disapproval, eyeing him up an down. It had been almost a month since their small heart to heart, if you could even call it that, and Severus had pulled himself together quite nicely. He had cut back on the binge drinking and was getting at least some amount of sleep, whereas before Aria wasn't sure if he had been getting any at all. Just as much as he had regained his physical appearance, he had almost completely reverted back to his arrogant self. Only this time he was not quite as vocal about his dislike for his apprentice.

Neither of them had attempted much of a conversation regarding anything other than work but they had gotten used to each other's company and often spent the evenings marking together comfortable silence, occasionally sharing the odd pot of coffee on those long nights when neither of them had the energy to stay awake.

The past few days however, saw Severus begin to pick up his bad habits once more. Not so much the drinking, but his insomnia and irritability, particularly towards Miss Dumbledore, had definitely made a comeback. Yet, she couldn't quite figure out what was making him act this way. The Professor had made it clear to her there was an another factor besides herself but she had not one clue what, or rather who, it might be.

Aria kept her distance from the man over the weekend following their last meeting, hoping not to aggravate him any more than necessary. Although one thing Aria did not have the ability to control was her curiosity. She could not help but be drawn to anything she deemed interesting. She had no self control and just always had to get herself involved, whether she was welcome or not.

An occasion where her inability to keep out of other people's business proved a nuisance occurred no longer than a few days later, following the Weasley twin incident.

Sat alone in her chambers, quietly reading to herself, Aria could not help but overhear the hushed argument occurring in the hall. She knew she shouldn't snoop; she told herself it would only end badly. But the whispers were practically calling to her as they made their way along the dungeon halls into her private quarters.

Although she could not make out the dialogue, she immediately recognised the voices; Severus Snape and Igor Karkaroff, Headmaster of Durmstrang. The unlikely pair only intrigued her more, but she fought the urge to intrude.

As quickly as they had begun the hushed tones of the men disappeared out of ear shot. The sound of Snape's office door slamming behind them. Content with not being able to hear the voices any longer, Aria was able to suppress her urge to interfere and get back to happily reading her book.

That is until the sound of shattering glass filled the halls followed by less hushed tones from the men. Igor was practically shouting at Severus meanwhile the Potions Master chose his words extremely carefully, never letting his voice raise above a certain volume. The voices continued to argue, Severus telling Igor over and over again to leave, but the man refused to listen. It was clear to Aria that Igor was testing Snape's patience and any minute now the man would snap, just as he had done with her many times before.

Another smashing sound came. Then a throaty cry from Severus. His tone a mix of anger, pain and impatience.

"Get out, now." The Potions Master finally said, his voice full of venom and dangerously low in volume. The only reason Aria heard any of this was that she was now almost fully out of her chambers and making her way down the dimly lit hall.

She passed a rather flustered looking Karkaroff on her way down to meet Severus. The Durmstrang headmaster locked his eyes onto her own, a look of danger swimming inside his mind. His gaze slowly lowered itself down the whole of her body, taking in every inch of the woman's physique. She couldn't help but notice the unnerving wink he gave her as she walked by.

Eager to get to her colleague and mentor, she uncomfortably shuffled past the man, rushing her way down the rest of the hallway. By the time she got there Severus Snape's door had once again been slammed shut.

Gingerly rapping her knuckles against the cold hard wood, Aria let herself into the room, making sure to close to door behind her once more.

"Severus." She whispered, making herself known to the man who's back was turned to her. "Are you okay? I heard glass smashing, did he break anything?" The professor asked, looking around the room to spot several piles of broken glass scattered across the floor, including one small clump on his desk. As she took a closer look she spotted small beads of blood clinging onto the tiny shards. Snape turned to face the woman, a contorted look of discomfort and anger evident on his features.

"Please leave me alone, Miss Dumbledore. I do not have the energy to deal with you today as well as Professor Karkaroff."

"You're hurt." Aria gasped, paying no attention to whatever the man had just said.

"I'm fine. Please, just go." He sighed, taking a seat behind his desk. Again, Aria paid no attention to the professor's wishes, instead she took the seat across from his, carefully disposing of the cluster of smashed glass.

"Let me see your hand."

"I said I'm fine." Severus grumbled once more.

"Give me your hand, Severus." Aria commanded, extending out her own for him to rest his on. A few moments and one skeptical glare later Severus gave in against his better judgment, presenting his bloody wound to the woman, with a roll of his eyes.

Another gasp escaped her lips as he rested his hand against her own, the deep gash more visible to her now than ever. Her delicate fingertips traced the skin of his palm, careful not to go too near to where his hand had been sliced open. Severus felt a serious of tingles dance up us spine while the women did this, the pace of his heart picking up slightly.

"How did this happen? Did Igor-?" She wondered letting her sentence trail away.

"No, not at all." Snape shook his head. "It was my own stupidity." He admitted. "I was taken away with my anger then I smashed a glass jar under my hand in a fit of rage. I hadn't quite thought of the consequences of my own strength.

"There's glass buried deep in there. We have to get it out." Aria gently lowered her mentors hand to the desk, jumping up from her seat and scurrying around the room, picking up countless jars of ingredients and vials containing potions. "Don't you have anything to clean the wound?" She questioned desperately, working herself up into a panic.

"Third shelf from the top, seventh bottle from the right. You'll find a vial of clear liquid." Severus couldn't help but let his eyes follow the witch as she followed his directions to the store cupboard. The way she panicked over a less than fatal wound was endearing to him. He knew although he had sliced through the skin, it was easily fixable and there was no need for the haste she had quickly adopted. Yet enjoyed the thought that she cared for his wellbeing.

"Got it." She announced, brandishing the bottle proudly. Rushing back to her seat, she pulled a cloth from an old set of drawers and dowsed the material in the liquid. "What even if this anyway? some anti-bleeding potion or something."

"Alcohol." He replied simply, a ghost of a smile threatening to appear on his face as he caught the reaction of his colleague.

Aria let out a burst of nervous laughter she couldn't hold back.

"Well then, I guess you better prepare yourself, because this shit is going to sting like a motherfucker." She warned, extracting the glass from the wound and pressing the damp cloth into the gushing gash. Severus winced in pain, but tried his hardest not to let it show.

"Hold it there for a minute or two then the wound should be thoroughly sanitised and will able to be bandaged up." Aria gave him a nod of understanding, her gentle hands clasping around his rough calloused one. The two shared a moment of intense eye contact, neither of them daring to speak a word. When it became clear to the both of them that they could no longer keep it up Aria broke contact, reaching for the long roll of bandages, a small blush rising to her cheeks.

"What was he doing here?" Aria dared to enquire.

"That's none of your concern." Snape replied simply, his tone turning sour once again.

The room went silent for a minute or two before Snape chose to break the ice.

"Now that I have you here, care to explain your little display of affection with the Weasley twins the other day." Snape spoke, his gaze flickering between the woman's face and her delicate hands which wound the bandage carefully around his palm and wrist.

"Oh, I thought you knew!" Aria responded, caught off guard by his sudden interest. "Before I came to Hogwarts I lived with the Weasley's at the borrow for a good few months. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were friends with my mother, they really helped me settle in before coming here. The twins and I got to know each other quite well, we had become good friends over the summer."

"Mmmmm." Severus hummed. "I am quite sure I know why they wanted to get know you so well. Hormonal teenage boys can only have one motivation."

Aria scoffed shaking her head at what the man was insinuating.

"Oh come off it Severus, we were friends, nothing more. Besides, their my students now, I plan on keeping a profession relationship between us, just as my grandfather asked." She smiled, tying a small knot in Snape's bandage to finish the job.

"There good as new." She smirked, her thumb mindless stroking the skin of his wrist.

"Perfect." Snape retorted.

Both Aria and Severus stood to attention, almost simultaneously. The space between them slowly closing in on itself as they felt themselves being drawn towards each other. Deep and low breaths were the only sound filling the room as the two stood almost chest to chest, tension building between then by the second.

Shaking themselves back to reality, Aria took a few steps away from Severus and towards the door, feeling she had fulfilled her stay and did not want to risk overstaying her welcome.

"Surely there would have been an easier way to fix this? Don't you have a potion or something to heal it instantly." Aria wondered aloud, hand clasped tightly around the old iron door handle, only just now coming fully back to reality.

"I might do." He shrugged.

"The why did I waste both our times sitting here bandaging you up?" She cried, though she wasn't nearly as mad as she let on.

"You amused me with your panicked nature, I wanted to see how well you worked under pressure. None-the-less this would will heal just as well without the use of magic and I will be once again back to normal."

"God help us all." Aria laughed, pleased to see Severus had not taken her comment to heart. And with that she was gone.

Taglist: @ayamenimthiriel @lizlil

#severus snape #severus snape fanfiction #severus snape one shot #severus x oc #severus snape imagine #Harry Potter #harry potter and the goblet of fire #harry potter fanfiction #severus snape x reader #severus snape x y/n #alan rickman #potions master #potions masters apprentice #dumbledore #dumbledores granddaughter #Severus Snape smut #severus snape fluff

53 notes · View notes

watayaaratamblr · 3 years

Text

Arata is an unfortunate character.

No, he is NOT!

But if we wish to make him one, then we don't need one fifth of the effort put into making Taichi the "sad" character that most fans keep labeling as "Poor Taichi", and Arata would have been then the most unfortunate character in Chihayafuru. All we need is a good mangaka (Suetsugu is!) & the intention to make him draw sympathy (the whole point), simply because Arata’s story is well packed with good material serving the purpose.

Starting with the fact that he was an almost blind child … Like “looking through a magnifying glass”, hearing voices outside but being unable to see anything~ A child who had to wear glasses from the age of 3, any writer can make this a touching story if so they wished -But Suetsugu sensei did not want to.

Growing up as a weak boy who is a letdown in everything most boys do, crying alone when he fails to fit in, disappointing his father who kept pushing him to go outside and be “normal” like all the other children all while letting go of Karuta that he was confirmed to have liked since he was very young. Writing a bit of his struggles to find a place for himself within the norms could have made readers cry a lot.

His grandfather thankfully extended his hand to him, offered him a place where he can be himself; But that too, created a situation where he maybe had to take a side & deal somehow with the other side because his grandfather & his father had a fight and he can only be torn between them. I’m no writer myself, but I can make this sentimental.

Then his father took him away to Tokyo where he had to be a part of a poor family, and not only to cancel his needs & desires (like for example having different outfits for school instead of the few he will be noticed to wear frequently) but to also work sometimes to support his parents, to wake up before school time in the early mornings when other children are probably sound asleep in their warm beds, to go outside in the cold, to earn some cash and to give it to his parents … I read some real sad stories with this idea. So yeah, Arata could have been one of the saddest characters if Suetsugu wanted him to be.

And not to mention being bullied and laughed at for not only his impoverishment (which he can hope to change) but for his identity (as a boy from Fukui speaking a “weird” dialect). He received all this with lot of patience, and tried to comfort himself by himself with his grandfather’s “gift”, how it was a refugee for him.

Any writer can make a sob story out of Arata’s unspoken loneliness & yearning for home, his grandpa & for playing his beloved Karuta properly.

Or out the fact that he couldn’t make any friends in his new school either (he was confirmed to never have real friends since his childhood through the fact that he struggled to fit in + he stayed like that even after he grew up (like Murao said), and he is not someone who doesn’t care about having friends because he was confirmed to almost worship his bond with Taichi & Chihaya, Taichi specifically even though their friendship isn’t really a comforting one; he longed for friendship however it is!)

He enjoyed that friendship nonetheless, he might even have felt like he was compensated for everything he wished for through it but he was soon robbed of all of it as he was separated from these friends & while he could still enjoy a bit of it through correspondence (at least Chihaya kept in touch), he wasn't as untroubled as needed for that because he was about to lose his precious grandfather.

And the process of losing him wasn’t something to take lightly either. Having busy (or rather negligent?) parents made him (a boy not even 14 years old) a caregiver for an old man who suffered from paralysis on the right side of his body and later dementia, not as simple as that, he had to watch what his most beloved & respected person turn into day & night, when he worked “really hard” (as stated in the manga) with his rehabilitation exercises, when he helped him with his baths, he massaged his limbs, he fed him, constantly talked to him & showed him Karuta cards to “keep him” in this world. And when it's too much for him, he goes outside the room and cries bitter tears silently, all alone! There was this person who suffered from (PTSD) for years because their sick aunt didn’t recognize them (they were her favorite nephew before & they were 17 yo at the time), this person couldn’t visit her since & couldn’t see her before she died & they developed a fear of “getting too close” & of seeing sick people, they had to seek long & serious therapeutic help. And Arata actually suffered from PTSD for over a year & half, any psychologist can easily recognize that from the fact that he quit Karuta, refused to touch & hated to see the cards (I stress on this), how he answered Chihaya when she called him, how the calm & patient him (that we knew from his childhood) was agitated & treated her rudely when she insisted on playing a match. And it was all confirmed in Arata’s last words in the same chapter: “I wanted to see you, I always had, but I didn’t want you to see me like this” (in the official tr), he knew that he wasn’t himself (contrary to what Taichi thought, his friend who decided to abandon him instead of trying to help. Chihaya still had faith in him but Taichi was louder -ch10)

Still, thanks to Chihaya, Arata was back to his beloved Karuta, though we all questioned how much fun he really felt while playing again, how much of him was involved with the game now. And eventually, he himself expressed the pressure (not the fun) he felt while playing. What took his passion away, what turned the feelings of a Karuta baka into mere obligation, this also is good content for an emotionally charged story, it only needs the intention of the writer.

And he shone in the world of Karuta. YET he was never “proud” of it, that was never received as anything special. When he comes back home, none really cares (or at least, none shows any enthusiasm), he goes to the western-challenger qualifiers and his parents won’t even go watch, won’t even prepare some food for him, he comes back home late & finds none, and prepares everything by himself (apart from Yu’s help). His parents pray for his defeat, meaning that his DREAM to become Meijin/be strongest in Karuta doesn’t mean much to them, and he knows it, and he was never shown telling them the news like when you want to share a happy one. Arata’s mother -before giving up after acknowledging Arata’s dedication- wanted his defeat even though there was enough money to support him, the lack of money being the excuse she & her husband claimed to be the reason of their lack of support.

The support system Arata lacks isn’t only in his family. Since the death of his grandfather he seems to stand alone in Karuta too. Murao was the only one who spared some time for him but only after he realized how “alone” he was and took pity on him. Murao's realization implies that the training Arata was doing at the Nagumo society didn’t really count for what he really needed. Kuriyama sensei (being expected by fans to be the “Harada” in Arata’s side) was almost useless & he himself expressed his confusion about what to do with him & how to help him. We never saw him particularly guide him in any way either. "Experiences" & "taking chances" were two factors that helped Mizusawa members for example to grow a lot, but these chances are doors without knobs & we know that they were opened for them by adults who were taking care of them in a way or another + being friends ensured that they encouraged each other then proceeded with every idea they got to learn & experience more. Arata lacks both these sources (adults around him rather burdened him with their expectations) so he kept training on his own mostly & we saw how it felt frustrating to him to be relying only on his solo training & an "image" encouraged by a long-dead teacher, he realized the toll of lacking real opponents in practice with whom he can measure his abilities & correct his mistakes to grow stronger. Support can also be emotional. Did Arata ever receive particular emotional support? I can only remember panels where the people worried for him kept watching him from afar while he dealt with it on his own.

Yu was an exception but even her support was written in a way suggesting that Arata was prepared to go on without it. Because with time, Arata learnt to "not expect much" which is also a very interesting trope for a sad story.

And he was described as “a lonely player on top” but this was never elaborated to show how it felt like to be one for Arata himself. This idea is also brilliant for melancholy if the author wanted fans to sympathize with Arata but she didn't go beyond praising Chihaya who could somehow reach him & Shinobu chan.

And while playing on his own (or working part time to support himself), taking care of himself, he met his two precious friends again (they were the only selfish desire Arata has openly expressed throughout the series). But what he felt is that he was left behind & that he was the only one so far away. And he was. They got to experience so many things he didn’t, they made new friends & new bonds & he didn’t, they got closer to each other & he didn’t… At the end he went back to be the outsider & them the two old childhood friends. If the author wrote just a little bit more about these, if she highlighted these facts they could have made a good drama.

Love is the main reason Taichi is "felt for" (because he progressed in karuta but not in Love ..not yet at least). Arata is also a part of the love triangle in Chihayafuru, and if we try to summarize it with the intention of making it sad, then let's go, there is enough to say for that, we just need a good writer (which I'm not sadly). Still in short: Arata seems to have started to develop feelings for Chihaya a long time ago but he had to keep that in check because he thought she was dating Taichi & he kept his distance out of respect for that assumed relationship even though he craved at least connecting with his old friends. When he came closer, Chihaya was interested in him but he never knew, the enthusiasm she showed him was not different from how she is with everyone, no, Taichi received special treatment, while for him, every time he tries to say something to her he is cut off somehow. Everything seemed to be against them getting close. Later Chihaya seemed to have ultimate fun with Taichi too, maybe that was the only thing he thought he could give her, now she didn't need it. Maybe he had that thought again when she praised his game against Harada sensei that's why he confessed but soon, She is once again so far away, she seemed to need Taichi to function properly, he understood that & he used that to cheer her up in her most important tournament. He wanted badly to play with her again to only be totally iced, he couldn't even be seen by her, he was so far away, she belonged to where he wasn't part of (& even her friend kana found a way to express her disapproval of him) Can we not make a drama out of this? Or out of his stuttering, awkwardness & introversion? Or maybe the fact that his parents don't understand him? And did anyone alse feel that in most of Taichi's mother's appearances, we got this feeling that Taichi is a son who should be cared for while when Arata's parents appeared, many times, we can feel how Arata was used to highlight their feelings as individuals & he was drawn there as the member of the family who had to pay attention to that? Anyway, every single one of these points alone is very good material for a "tearjerker" so what about all of them combined? because they are all facts from Arata's reality.

Again, all we need is a good writer (we have it) & the intention to make it that way which isn't there. Suetsugu decided instead to put double the effort to make Taichi the "sorrowful/anguished" one because Arata is not a character written to feel sorry for or to commiserate. He is rather written for the most part of the manga as an inspiring one, an aspiration, to be a drive & a goal. So despite having all the above circumstances, he is instead written as a character who keeps to himself, doesn't complain, hides his hardships, makes it seem that he fine when he notices that someone is watching, tries to focus on what he has & be happy with it however little or simple. That's why it's easy for him to forget & forgive, easy for him to recover & stand up again because there are other characters who need him there as an example, who think that he is perfectly fine so they should only focus on themselves and thus, Bildungsroman can be used for them. And finally- wait, what were Taichi's problems again?

----------------------------------------------------

Writer adds:

#chihayafuru #wataya arata #ayase chihaya #chiharata #mashima taichi #this is dedicated to Arata fans who are constantly told they love a one dimensional character which is just ignorance speaking #or at least looking the other way when Arata actually is there!

13 notes · View notes

slashingdisneypasta · 4 years

Note

I can't believe I'm actualy going to ask for this but, I wanna know Slender brothers reactions when one of the other creeps (or even the other brothers) tease him for his crush on the reader who happens to walks by at moment and hear everything? If you write for them and want to write this of course

Here you go! I hope you like it! Sooooooorrrry its taken so long ):

~~~

Splenderman:

· Splender cares not for ‘teasing’? Pft. What are you talking about! He’s a centuries old eldritch being who basically feeds off of the happiness around and inside him- you don’t think he’d have learnt not to be bothered by most words by now? (I say ‘most’, because words said by his brothers that ring with truth still, of course, hurt and push him to change and improve).

· But, Slender is still irritating when he’s persistent. And Slender is always persistent. Stubborn bastard. Especially when he has a goal in mind- which is to get you and Splender out of his home because you’ve both been here for 3 months non-stop, beating around the bush with each other and not just coming out with your feelings and Slender is going to get you out of his house even if it means playing cupid *Disgust audible on ‘cupid’*.

· Splender is aware of this ulterior motive to Slender trying to get him to confess… its just not enough. Splender never confesses feelings first to mortals, although he really wants to. He wants you to come to your own conclusions first because he doesn’t like the power imbalance involved in him taking the reins in a romantic relationship between you, a mortal, and him, an omnipotent immortal being. (Side note: He will absolutely never, ever, in a million years read your mind, either. Absolutely not)

· They’re in one of the many hallways in the mansion and you’re walking through the kitchen on your way to the living room which will lead to this particular hallways, when everything goes to hell (Or heaven, depending on how you feel XD). “I can’t, Slender.”

· Quickly, out loud and out right, Slender says. “You’ll never know how bleeding irritating your sense of morality is to me Splender.”

· “Hm, what?” Splender hadn’t quite heard what he said because he had to quickly catch a book that had slipped off his pile, as he was busy carrying some books down the hallway (Towards the Livingroom doorway) to the archive room down the hall as his little brother badgered him.

· “I said I hate your moral compass.”

· “Ah, what’s new?”

· Slender, for a moment, stops talking. Doesn’t have a quip ready yet then, Splender thinks. Must be thinking of a new angle to persuade me with.

· Really he’s sensed your approach to the living room door, just as they are, and is waiting for the appropriate moment to be am evil little shit. “Ah, mind blip. What were we talking about again?”

· Splender reads the cover of the book he saved from the floor absentmindedly. “My ‘Complete idiocy in staying in your home, that I helped to build in the first place, as I wait for lovely Y/N to confess to me so I can confess back and not force her into a relationship with our power imbalance, which is bothering you, King of The World Slenderman, for but a couple months of your immortal life’? I think that’s how you put it- I mean, I could have added some things but- “

· “Oh, good afternoon Y/N. Finally. You’re here.” Slender greets you, standing now in the living room doorway as they stand, like, 2 feet from it. Definitely not far enough away that you didn’t hear all that. “You heard. That’s wonderful. Bye, then. I expect you both out by the morning- if I do see you then, you’re on your own for breakfast you squatters.”

· Then Slender disappears and you and Splender are left standing shocked in the hallway.

· “Umm… “Splender wonders what he could say, being cautious as he slowly lowers the books from his face. “Dear, we should talk.”

· You grin. “Come on, hand me some of those books and we’ll talk while we put them away.”

Offenderman:

· Look, Offender can handle teasing. All the Slender’s can (Except for Slender, haha), but Offender especially doesn’t mind it because he has total confidence in how, uh, disturbing he is and his ability to scare people off. Especially, he thought prior to this day, little scrawny oven fried teenagers.

· But apparently, he had overestimated his capability with this particular pest.

· Offender had come to Slender mansion today to rest up because no place is quite as uneventful and as such, good for rehabilitation as his brothers home (And also, you’re here so that’s obviously a factor) is, but Jeff had been catching him every time they were anywhere near each other with a quip or a chortle about his obvious feelings for you.

· I mean, of course they were obvious (To everyone but you, clearly). He flirts with you heavily, and yet has never made a proper, serious -unwarranted, - advance towards your person. He always saves a seat for you if he knows you’ll be around, and he’s been around the mansion far more often then he used to be. So, yeah, it was obvious. Offender wasn’t trying to hide it- in fact he wanted you to know. But somehow you hadn’t picked up on the hints?

· Jeff had, though. And, also, everyone else who has visited the mansion at any time that you and Offender are there as well. But Jeff is the only one posing a problem at the moment.

· He just thought it was so funny, that Offender had found a person he actually liked, and who caused him to hesitate about hurting (The first time he met you, and he intended to hurt you he hesitated. And that is how he realised he had a crush), and Jeff would just not let that slide.

· Offender had brushed him off and snapped back at him in his casual, yet very very threatening style enough today.

· So now Jeff had to be really dealt with.

· “Look, ugly child, in my experience a boy only spends this much energy on someone if he likes them. So, unless you want to prove your worthiness to me in a more private setting- I’d give it a rest!”

· And that moment, in which Offender has cornered a Jeff The Killer who is now reconsidering his actions today in the shadow of the Sexual Offenderman, is the one you walk into.

· Jeff and Offender spot you at the same time and as Offender’s wondering how he can twist this into him not actually threatening to rape Jeff, Jeff’s panicked pea brain goes a completely different direction to what his cunning (Yes, I promise you, when he isn’t panicked because a Slender Brother is hovering over him, he can in fact be smart) ass would have done in another position, and points to Offender and exclaims- “He’s in love with you!”

· Offender stops- Well, actually, thank you Jeff, that’s actually helpful. You might actually hear it, now. But he is still frustrated by the boy so he turns away from him and just growls, “You’re excused, thank you for your service Jeff.” *And in Jeff’s head: And wish on your lucky star that I don’t visit you when you’re sleeping tonight. You’ll learn it’s not so funny to badger an eldritch monster. *

· (Don’t worry, he doesn’t plan to visit Jeff at all. His focus is on you now)

· Jeff BOOKS IT, anyway. Cuz he doesn’t know that!

· Now that it’s just you two, and he has sufficiently scared Jeff shitless, Offender brightens again. “Y/N!~ I think it’s a good idea that we have a sit down together and talk about this, yeah?”

· *Cue Offender manipulating you through acting like a nice, level headed guy who just wants ya’ll to have tea together, into sitting with him and so he can charm you, now that he knows you actually understand his feelings*

Trenderman:

· Zalgo is bored. And when Zalgo is bored, the Slender brothers end up getting bothered. It’s usually Splender or Slender (Mostly Slender) and almost never Trender, but Zalgo is happy to work with this.

· There are two reasons Zalgo never gets to annoy Trender. 1. Trender is usually very levelheaded, and as such, is the least fun to play with. Zalgo can ordinarily, never find a good angle. And reason 2 is a result of the first reason: Being that he never has anything going on that can be picked on.

· But… now, Zalgo knows about a little crush that Trender has! And as such, he can finally finish his collection of annoying the Slender Brothers. So yay for Zalgo!

· Not so yay for Trender.

· “Zalgo, I’m really busy, so let’s get straight to the point. We’ve never had any sort of relationship, so, and take this with the most sensitivity- why are you here??”

· “Ooh, so authoritive and formal. Just like Slender- tell me, Slender’s older brother, why haven’t we had a relationship?”

· “Can I pay you to leave?”

· “Oh right! You would rather Y/N think you’re hot. I wouldn’t worry, I’m sure they do. Don’t worry, you have Slender’s formality, Offender’s shoulders and Splender’s approachability, “Chef kiss. “Perfection!”

· Trender’s mouth rips open and he forces a natural growl out. He hates being compared to his brothers. He is not a cocktail of his brothers; he is nothing more and nothing less then himself. “You deeply offend me. You’re whole being does.”

· “That’s what I go for!”

· “Anyway- “

· “Anyway,” Zalgo mimicks Trender here, getting a deep sigh from Trender in response. Chuckling, Zalgo, straightens himself and speaks again in his normal voice. “So you do like Y/N, right? I’m not way off?”

· Trender, mid wiping down his face halts, then turns to look at Zalgo. “Wait- That was the point of this conversation!?”

· “Yeah! Wasn’t that clear?”

· “No!” Trender exclaims, outraged. He thought Zalgo was just mindlessly antagonising him- that sure is what it felt like!

· “Well, haha, mate. You were way off, then!”

· “Agh, YES! I like Y/N! Wouldja go, now?”

· “Certainly!” And, with one last giggle, he does. Walking down the hall to Slender’s office. He sends finger guns and winks to someone hidden in one of the rooms he passes. “Oh hey Y/N, see ya later! I’m sure you have lots to talk with Trender about!”

· “Uh… yeah… “ You, left standing in the doorway to your room as you were about to leave it and go get something to eat when Trender yelled at Zalgo that he liked you, turn down the hall to a very still, very surprised Trender. You raise your eyebrows.

· “Oh… of course.” Trender drops his arms to his sides and zips his mouth shut again.

Slenderman:

· “Toby… “Slender says the words slowly, nearly whining in frustration as he just wishes his proxy would leave him alone about you. Alas, Slender had made a mistake and given Toby the duties that revolve around being close to their boss all day, like a moron, and now he was stuck with him.

· And it’s not like Toby is teasing his boss. No! He’s but… questioning him.

· Interrogating him.

· But in the friendliest way possible!... Which just so happens to annoy Slender even more.

· “So, you don’t like them?? Yes? No? Maybe? ‘Its Complicated’? Do they scare you? Do you know anything about them? Have you told your brothers? I mean, I wouldn’t. You might though, they are you brothers and you trust them, right? RiGHt? Uh well… on second thoughts, maybe you don’t. You’re a lil bit of a locked shell you know boss? You should confide in someone more! You’d feel way more chill. I confide in Masky or Clocky! Masky only with gross things like this mole I have on my butt- He hates it. I also talk to Hoodie! But I feel like he tells everything to Masky, he’s a bit untrustworthy. A bit off, I dunno. Scares me- OH maybe that person that you can confide in, sir, can be Y/N!”

· “Toby!”

· “Yes boss?!”

· “Calm yourself!”

· “Yes boss!!”

· “I need to stop hiring rando’s off the street… “Slender mutters to himself, continuing down the hallways even grumpier than usual. “Next time I need to pick up an accountant or a lawyer or something… Absolutely no more waffle crazy arsonists. “

· “What was that sir?”

· “I was just pondering where I should bury you after I get your replacement trained.”

· “Ah, right sir! I always liked that bit of earth down by the lake- not too cold, not too warm, no bears nearby… “

· Slender groans, turning and entering into the living room and going for the kitchen. He needs a cup of tea desperately.

· “Toby, new rule. No more talking about my ALLEGED feelings for Y/N, got it? Punishment is death.”

· “I wont need to sir.”

· Immediate suspicion fills Slender’s chest. Toby… wont… need to talk about it? Why? “Why is that, Toby?”

· “She’s sitting on the couch, sir.”

· Slender has never whipped around so fast. But once he has, he definitely feels the need to do it faster, again, and run off somewhere but he restrains himself.

· There you are, bundled in a blanket on the couch like a caterpillar sitting up the remote and some of your fingers peaking out from the face hole (The struggle of turning on the TV when you’re bundled up in the blanket, aghh). Your eyes are wide, as anyone’s would be after hearing the Slenderman hint that he has feelings for you.

· It’s a very awkward moment. You, a caterpillar, Slender, a mute, and Toby looking between the two of you expectantly waiting for something to happen.

· … Before Slender teleports away without a word.

128 notes · View notes