So I've already established that AU Leo has a tendency to abuse his portaling abilities to just go and explore a bunch of places, including New York, which leads to him stumbling across Run Of The Mill several years before he does in canon. And of course he loves the place, the food's great, the Maze of Death is good for training and he gets to hang out with Hueso! Hueso does not enjoy Leo constantly showing up to bother him when he's trying to work, but it's not like he can just kick him out. This is one of THE Baron Draxum's sons, Hueso is already in trouble with yokai law-enforcement and the last thing he needs is more enemies. (And no, he does not have a soft spot for Leo, what are you talking about)

Anway that's all fine and dandy, until two particular individuals happen to stumble across the restaurant....

Similar to in the show, some time after Donnie's first encounter with the Draxum family, him and April find Hueso's restaurant as well and starts to frequent the place. And considering Leo's a regular, well, it's not long until they happen to visit at the same time and uh-

This happens pretty soon after Donnie first reunites with his brothers, but they've encounteredeach other a couple of times in between then and now, which means that the Drax Trio have had time to come to terms with the fact that Donnie is not planning on joining their team any time soon. And while they want to change that, they realize that for the time being he is currently an enemy. Mikey and Raph are still pretty hesitant to fight him, but Leo and Donnie pretty early on established a "fight each other on sight" dynamic, because of course they did.

All of this is to say, as soon as they lay eyes on each other in the restaurant, they immidietly start duking it out! Hueso understandibly does not appreciate such a ruckus in his fine establishment, so out of respect for Hueso the twins agree to avoid any fighting in the restaurant specifically.

Now, you would think that at least one of them would have the common sense to just avoid the place, but they're both stubborn and petty AF and so Leo and Donnie keep running into each other there! And they do respect the no-fight-rule.... to a certain extent. The rule was specifically for physical fights and says nothing about verbal ones! So every time Leo and Donnie run into each other they keep insulting each other to provoke the other into attacking them, which would lead to that twin getting kicked out and hopefully banned for life!

Imagine:

Hajime Hinata with a Yandere AI S/O who can control the killing game

Trigger warning: Yandere themes (reader/you), forced relationships, manipulation (mentally, emotionally, literally), pain. Probably OOC (sorry). ❗❕SPOILERS❗❕

Note: this was inspired by @daisyfics headcanons on a reader similar to Monika. Please go read them, they're very good! Also. . Idk about this one, I might rewrite it. I just felt inspired and went with it, but it's probably super ooc for hajime.

You were a rogue AI, originally made to help the remnants of despair. But in the end, you only cared about haijme. . Or izuru, but you probably preferred the former.

You took control over everything that happened in the machine, overpowering monokuma's own control. Instead of ending the killing game though, you allowed to continue.

Because, it helped get you what you wanted. And what you wanted was hajime's affection, and love, and devotion.

Hajime only saw you as another classmate at first, but he slowly began to develop a small crush on you. How couldn't he? You affected such a charming personality. He couldn't help but fall for you, especially when you showed him affection (which, originally, he was a bit uncomfortable with).

Day by day, you progressively got more clingy and even demanding of his time and attention. He'd shut you down when you'd get like this, trying to reason with you and attempting to calm you down when it was obvious you were getting jealous and even occasionally hostile; it was getting ridiculous now.

So, you'd take your anger out on the other students. You'd never harm haijme though, probably not anyway.

You began to tweak and twist the personalities and mental states of all the ultimates on the island, making them dislike, avoid, and even react aggressively towards him. He didn't know what was happening, why everyone suddenly hated him. Even chiaki and usami avoided him now, with pained and pitied looks on their faces.

And then, you'd swoop in, showering him with love and affection. You planted seeds in his mind, that he didn't need anyone else; all he needed was you. You two together could take on the entire world. Just the two of you.

And those seeds sprouted magnificently. Haijme had no one to turn to, no one that would listen except you, and your sweet comforting words brought him so much love.

The only time people would listen was during trials, which had progressively became more frequent and violent. He hadn't noticed how bad everyone had gotten, since you kept him on a tight leash.

And even during those trials, people would state their distaste towards them. He even asked why everyone hated him, and all they could reply with collectively was "I dunno, I just do".

The one who seemed to not have any dislike towards him was chiaki, who--while not being able to speak or even interact with him directly--could tell him through letters. She warned him about you, telling him in a note that you were the reason why everyone was acting strange. Why she couldn't talk to him. Why all the students suddenly couldn't stand him.

At first, he didn't believe it. But the more he thought about it, the more he began to get suspicious. You were so clingy, so suffocating even. And soon, he began to believe chiaki. Were you spreading rumours about him?? So you could isolate him? So you could have him only for yourself??

When he confronts you, asking if you were the one who made everyone dislike him, you're puzzled. How did he know?

You tell him no, that you'd never do such a thing, which he doesn't truly believe. Before he can refute, you ask him why he asked, and he replied dumbly by saying it was chiaki who told him.

And this would lead to an argument. You asking why he was with chiaki, him asking why you want to know and why she couldn't talk to him because of you.

He eventually stormed off, frustrated and angry at you. And you were left feeling the same, but now with a deadly thirst for digital blood.

Chiaki was found dead the next day, her body crushed under the weight of broken debris. Several monomi bots were alongside her, flatten into pancakes.

Hajime looked so confused, and disturbed, and distraught at the sight. And here you happened to be, trying to make him feel better. Trying to comfort him in his frozen state, likely running your hands down his arms or patting his shoulder saying 'it was bound to happen' in a neutral or possibly even jovial tone.

But hajime isn't comforted. He's actually scared now, because he thinks you did it. A deeper part of him knows you did it. And he accuses you of it, which. . While yes you did, doesn't make his tone any less hurtful.

So, you tell him the truth about it. How you only did it because she was getting in the way of something she couldn't understand! She was a threat, and had to be taken care of. You described everything, and it only made him feel sick and revolted at you.

He tells you you're a monster, a murderer, and that he's gonna tell everyone what you did. And those words sting, and they make you angry.

So you threatened him, telling him you'll get rid of everyone if he doesn't act like you wanted him too. He challenges this remark, and so you fight back.

You show him exactly what you mean by reanimating chiaki's broken corpse, moving it and speaking through it like a puppet. He's stunned at first, before he freaks out and flinches away when you move it closer to him.

You bring him to where everyone else is, and display just how much power you have over this world. You begin to bring everyone who died back, this time really alive and working. Everyone's shocked, some are even happy. But that happiness is short-lived when you give in to the power.

You started to twist the world around you, and began to corrupt and brutally change everyone. You had them killed, brought back; executed, brought back, and so on. And hajime has to watch them killed in front of his eyes again, and again, and again.

You even punish him too by forcing him to remember who he really was, overloading his senses, and then going even further by killing and executing him as well.

He's breaking down faster then you thought, begging you to stop. He's crying, and in so much pain, but you just keep it going until you think he's had enough. And that isn't until hours in. Or at least what he thinks is hours.

When you're done, everything's gone black. Everyone's gone. There's only hajime in the fetal position, eyes stained with tears and exhaustion. He's shivering, and even the faintest touch would induce pain to him in this moment.

And then you swoop in, gently caressing his skin. Even if his body appeared fine, the pain and cuts and bruises still felt like they were there. So when your touch only caused him to feel soothed and calm, he was confused. . And instinctively his body wriggled closer to you. Weakly

You whispered into his ear, shushing his silent sobs and flinching. You told him it was all ok, it was all alright. You were here, and that's all he needed.

After that, hajime was careful.

You 'reset' the program, bringing everybody and everything back to their original slates. Except for hajime. He's forced to remember what you did to him. You make sure he remembers so he won't step out of line.

Chiaki and monomi are gone. They were no longer needed. And knowing you erased them completely just adds another layer of despair and depression for him.

He hates you. He fears you, but what can he do? You have him and everyone else in your control.

Don't bother thinking the future foundation will help either. Your control is so extreme, you're able to work the machines now. And besides

Their bodies are long dead anyway.

They'll never leave you. . He'll never leave you.

If hajime tries to fight against your grip well. . You may just have to punish him again. And if that still doesn't fix him, then. .

Maybe you'll have to be much more direct with the problem, by picking apart and swapping around his code. After all, everything's just 1s and 0s now.

He may come a little different, but he's still your hajime. He's just. . The version you want him to be.

And if that is the route you choose, then he'll love you unconditionally.

And really, that's all you want.

aaron & the family he's found all by himself; vol. 1 // vol. 2

( ft. the first meeting & the first family game night )

okay, rundown of his first meeting w the vixens!

the vixens don't really like the foxes. they cheer at their games and all, but outside of that, they mostly stick with the football players

bcs, well, the foxes are,, intimidating and most of the vixens don't get how or why katelyn started dating one

especially one half of the terrifying duo that is the twinyards. like these tiny blonde angst goblins have absolutely zero chill, and this is the backliner one, the one that shattered the nose of a dude basically twice his size

they may be short as fuck but they're scary, and the vixens are worried that he might break katelyn's heart

but katelyn's sure about aaron minyard, and when cleo softly asks, "is he worth it?" she knows her answer is a yes

savannah and the rest of the girls aren't convinced tho, so she asks aaron if he'll meet them for one of the afterparties they have after games

he agrees after seeing the hopeful look on her face

and surprise, surprise, it isn't a complete disaster!!

see, aaron has a habit of mirroring the nature of the person he's with. in the book, we mostly see him as an asshole bcs it's from neil's pov, and neil, as much as i adore him, is an asshole

i think that when he's with nicky ( someone he loves and trusts ), he's like, nicer. it's not in his nature to be cheery or anything but he's less,, hostile? and way more relaxed

and katelyn's been nothing but sweet and polite to him, bcs katelyn's sweet and polite till you give her a reason not to be

so he's sweet and polite back, or at least, sweet and polite as aaron minyard can get.

yeah, he's definitely interesting enough, clever and quick-witted enough, respectful and loyal and insanely talented enough, that katelyn decides he's worth it. doubts he'll ever get boring

and yes, she knows this is a big risk, bcs she knows the foxes' rep, knows how fucked up he must to secure a place on the psu foxes, notices how aaron flinches when she makes any sudden movement

but you know what? fuck it

so when aaron tells her his strange, twisted little deal with his brother, katelyn's willing to fight for him

and after nearly 2 months of this, she drags him to the vixens with their fingers interlocked and a hope in her heart that they'd play nice like she's asked ( practically begged ) them to

aaron's buzzing a bit with nervous energy. it's very endearing, how his eyes had lit up at the sight of her, then how she felt her anxiety about the night melt away into excitement

sav tries, bless her, tries to engage aaron in half-hearted conversation about exy ( which she hates ) and aaron tries back, but that fizzles out bcs for someone on a full-ride exy scholarship, aaron doesn't like exy at all

thank god that marissa, who's been trying to be less of a bitch all night, bless her too, lets it slip that sav detests exy

"okay, i can't anymore. minyard, savannah actually hates exy and she hates the foxes too, but we're hoping that you're an exception."

aaron, holding back a laugh: honestly? same.

sav: oh thank fucking GOD we have something to talk about then

"yeah, the entire sport sucks, doesn't it? i literally play it at college level and i still have barely figured out the goddamn rules."

"exactly! and my entire family's fucking obsessed for some reason, it's so annoying! ugh and the foxes suck even more, they're all so goddamn rude for no reason. except maybe the cute goalie."

". . ."

"eww not your brother, i meant renee walker,, and maybe you're not too bad either, minyard."

"you flatter me."

katelyn watches their exchange with more than a little amusement. aaron's not smiling, but his features have softened and he's flushed from the alcohol he'd had and she can't rly believe that this is the boy who they all thought would break her heart

bcs later when aaron comes up to her with a cookie dough cupcake ( her favourite ) she didn't even know was served at the party, leans into her so his face is buried in her neck, whispers "thanks for taking me", when she takes in all her friends laughing and chatting and waving at her, when sav gives her a thumbs-up and nods to aaron, she's never felt more whole

like she was part of something bigger than herself

then aaron starts hanging around them more! yeah he saw the look on katelyn's face and he was going to TRY for her or so help him- usually just with katelyn, sav, and cleo

she invites him to the "family game night" sav is making them have, and he's like "sure why not."

he knocks on the door of sav and cleo's dorm and sav lets him in

"yo, minyard! glad you make it, katelyn's out on a donut run but she'll be back soon."

okay,, okay. so he'll,,, what? interact w people?? hell fucking no

then he realises that it's only cleo in the dorm, plugged into her headphones, playing mario kart, and thanks katelyn for ensuring there would only be ppl that like, he didn't mind

the other vixens were okay, but way too LOUD, and aaron wasn't rly up for spending a whole night w them

cleo hands him a controller, an invitation to play, and he takes it gratefully. he and cleo hadn't talked that much at the party, but she was perfectly tolerable so far, which was a good sign

and mario kart was a part of his childhood, one of the only few that nicky's parents had owned, so he and his cousin had spent hours curled up in front of tv trying to beat each other

even tho he beats nicky most of the time, cleo absolutely destroys him. he mentally tries to brush it off as him being rusty ( which he definitely is ) but damn, cleo's good. still, she brushes off the compliment when aaron blurts it out

okay so then katelyn comes back with like way too many donuts and they start playing monopoly gathered around the coffee table

sav insists on putting on some music. wannabe starts playing. she winks at aaron and aaron winks back, still not smiling. cleo snorts and katelyn kisses his cheek

listen, cleo is a monopoly master. soon, she owns over half the board and it's pretty clear she's gonna win, someone ( savannah riley jameson, everyone ) flips the board

"jameson, what the actual fuck."

"shut the hell up, minyard."

"come on, sav, i was winning!"

katelyn's trying to pick up all the pieces and aaron bends down to help her, shaking his head at sav, who pouts and joins them while cleo grins, headphones slung around her shoulders while she perches herself onto the arm of the settee and hums to wake me up before you go-go

next, sav begs them to play twister. cleo's great at most games, but she has a particular dislike for twister, so she's out quick

katelyn is super bendy, bcs she took gymnastics for years, and aaron holds his own surprisingly well, considering the fact that he's short as fuck

sav: katie, right hand red

katelyn, ending up right on top of a blushing aaron: okay, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

sav: i stopped spinning like 15 turns ago, i'm surprised you didn't notice sooner

eventually aaron collapses and katelyn is hailed as the queen of twister and they spend the next 10 minutes just calling out random spots for katelyn to try

she gets all of them, and aaron is actually smiling now and it doesn't matter that it's only a tiny quirk of his lips, it's something and katelyn cherishes it

they play some sort of surgeon simulator thingy next, and aaron "gonna be a future neurosurgeon" minyard is awesome at it, bcs duh

katelyn's not very good at this. her hands get SHAKY okay

cleo also sucks at this, bcs she keeps getting nervous and having muscle spasms. sav's just doing the dumbest shit bcs it's bringing aaron closer to the edge of cardiac arrest

aaron: jameson holy shit what are you DOING

sav, slicing open the spinal cord: okay so what if i take out the lungs through the back haha

and now sav is sulking over the fact that she hadn't absolutely murdered the others at a game

so she brings out the ultimate game. the game of bastards, one that tears families apart, sets friendships on fire, starts wars too gruesome to be started by anything other than this wretched, cursed artefact. . .

s c r a b b l e

aaron's already having war flashbacks. katelyn groans and goes to make popcorn, bcs this shit's gonna take FOREVER and she knows it. cleo, an english major, is preparing herself for battle with the force of nature that is savannah

"the fuck do you MEAN fergalicious isn't a word???"

"savannah, please."

"no, here, listen to this."

"sav, we were listening to that!" katelyn complains. sav sighs and switches the song back to her "90's bops" playlist, then changes it to "hell yeah feminism" which instantly starts playing run the world ( girls )

katelyn happily starts singing and aaron's not even reluctant to hum along

sav and cleo are still arguing. this has been going on for so long. sav looks ready to flip over the board again, so cleo does it first

katelyn: cleo what the heck

cleo, the tired mom friend: don't fucking curse

aaron is also tired, but in a good way, in kind of that soft lazy droopy way

he falls asleep leaning against the sofa and katelyn's shoulder, with god is a woman playing in the background while sav and cleo continue arguing. cleo is standing on the coffee table. it's true anarchy

he wakes up on the sofa with a blanket thrown over him and sunlight streaming in through the lacy curtains and katelyn making a complete mess of the kitchen in a futile attempt to make breakfast. sav and cleo are draped across each other on the floor

katelyn, struggling to pick up burning toast: morning babe, how did you sleep?

aaron, calmly using a pair of tongs: pretty well. who wants pancakes?

sav, instantly shooting up: DID YOU SAY PANCAKES

so he makes pancakes! nicky taught him as soon as he'd gained custody of the twins, so he's pretty much an expert. he tries to teach katelyn, but then just gives up bcs she's clearly not listening in favour of staring at him

and they all gather around the coffee table and cleo's humming along to the song on her headphones and wow these pancakes are rly good omg

while aaron is chatting to cleo about what video games they should play next, sav whispers, "kate finley, if you don't marry this boy just for his god-tier pancakes, i will."

"sav, you're a lesbian."

"not anymore, i've decided that i am pancake-sexual."

aaron hears all of this btw, bcs cleo stops when she hears them talking. he blushes, and smiles, just a little bit

( if anyone actually cares about this, tell me! shoot me an ask if there's any particular ask you want to see with these characters, or just the foxes! )

UC Sunnyhell: Part one

Welcome to Sunnyhell! ☀

Next Part

Pairing: Spike x reader

Request: Series idea: College AU where Spike is the campus bad boy who secretly is a softie that writes poems and reader is the new transfer who just moved into Spike's apartment since it was the only available room on campus (no one wants to willingly live with Spike). Spike constantly having one night stands over, reader always trying to study. The Scoobies take reader under their wing but warn her about Spike's reputation. Slow burn enemies to friends to lovers?

Originally requested by: @sunflower-stan​

Warning: sex references. Swearing.

A/N: This is a college au !! There was a second part to this request but I didn’t have space to include it (just know I am using your ideas for the roles people would have on campus). This is part one of eight !!!!!! 🖤💜

You had been nervous for starting college. You weren’t even sure you wanted to move away from your hometown until the last second. This is why you ended up losing out on anywhere you could live on-campus. You were instead directed here.

To a little shared house just on the outskirts of the college. You had all of your stuff packed up and waiting to be moved in and you were just staring at the house. This would be your new home for the rest of the year. Your stomach flipped, a mix of nerves and excitement.

You were naturally more bookish. You enjoyed the theatre and musicals. Literature. Now, if you were honest upon looking back, a little sheltered. You were hoping this might change and that you could start fresh now that you were staring college. There were so many experiences and people that you were sure you would enjoy meeting.

You tentatively knocked on the door. You had packed up your little car and driven to UC Sunnydale the day before your course would start. You were assured that your roommate had your key and would tell you all about your new house.

You waited for a while before knocking again, a little louder. The door swung open almost immediately this time and you stepped back at the force of it.

A woman opened the door she was blonde and had rosy cheeks. Her skin was pale and she had plump, full lips. But you didn’t notice any of that. Because she had opened the door to you half naked. She stared at you as if to hurry you up. Cursing you with every breath you took.

As you managed to form words again, you began to ask.

“Oh... a-are you... Will-?”

“Do I fucking look like my name’s William?” She asked before shouting over her shoulder, “Spike one of your sluts is at the door!” her face was sullen as she grabbed up all of her stuff, slipped on some leggings and what you had thought was a bra as she pushed past you. Your eyes widened at her tone and you stepped out of her way less she body-slammed you in that direction anyway.

Your first impression of Spike was what one might call, a bad one. For one, you weren’t accustomed to meeting anyone for the first time fully naked.

He just raised an eyebrow as you stared open-mouthed “oh, right” he muttered, turning away slightly.

He wasn’t even embarrassed, his unlit cigarette hanging from his lip as he opened a draw and grabbed your key. He moved and handed it to you and you took it.

“Thanks” you squeaked, trying your best to act as if this was normal. You tried your hardest to keep your eyes trained to his face. He smirked, knowing exactly what you were trying not to look at. He sized you up for a moment, scanning his eyes over your body before shrugging and looking back up to your eyes and launching into his more formal greeting.

“Rules: don’t bloody touch any of my shit. Don’t start making me clean up, there’s a system oh, and please don’t start thinking we’re gonna braid each other’s hair and paint our nails - I didn’t want a bleeding roommate in the first place” He warned, pointing for emphasis. This gave you a flash of his already painted nails.

He rattled off a few more rules, as he lit up his cigarette. Rules such as don’t talk to him Monday through Friday, don’t speak to the people he brought back to the house ever and definitely don’t complain if you can smell alcohol and cigarettes.

“You’ve been warned. Right, your rooms the crap one on the left” he shrugged his head, before slamming the door to what was apparently his room as he spoke (to put some clothes on, you presumed). You started to walk towards the room he had pointed out, a little shell-shocked.

But you had barely stepped in when he opened his door again and popped his head out of the door, “Welcome to Sunnyhell!” He announced before slamming the door shut once more.

You moved everything into your room, you spent time making your room feel more like home. You spent a long time making it look cosy and yours.

To begin with, you and spike mostly kept out of each other’s way. You weren’t used to people being so blunt or hostile right off the bat. Still, you tried your best to be nice to him on the rare occasion that you did pass each other in the hall.

Your first day of classes had you feeling the way you always did. Lost. Both metaphorically and unfortunately you were also genuinely lost. You had taken a turn and you didn’t know where to go next. You checked your map but it didn’t make any sense.

You were just going to walk in a random direction until a kind voice spoke to you.

“Hey, you’re lost right?”

“Big time” You smiled sheepishly, noticing only now that your map was upside down. The blonde girl introduced herself as Buffy and seemed to take an instant like to you. She could tell you were a little out of your depth and it showed on your face as much as she had felt it inside on her first day.

You both started walking in the vague direction of the campus. She asked you what class you had and what room and she was determined to help you find it. You kept thanking her almost every other step for her kindness. But she just shook her head, showing that you had no reason to. She wanted to.

You got to know her and she asked about you. She explained that she and her friend Cordy were part of a sorority and that her and her friends had found it hard when they started college last year. As you rounded the corner and Buffy saw the room you had been looking for, she became slightly side-tracked. She saw one of her best friends.

You smiled at Buffy. You liked her, she seemed really friendly. She appears to be really popular too, she stops every other step to speak to someone.

“Oh, Will! Hey!” Buffy raised her hand as she did her voice to catch the redhead’s attention, “Y/n, this is the resident genius and science club president!”

The girl, Willow, was wearing  lab coat and smiling sweetly at you. Her aesthetic and Buffy’s didn’t really match so after greeting the new girl, you had to ask.

“And you two are friends?” You ask a little confused. You were still used to how cliquey high school had been so seeing lots of different people mixing and being friends was strange. But, you decided you really liked it.

“Best friends”

“Yeah! We all sit together at lunch and just hang. Why don’t you join us?”

“Oh, well-”

“Great, we meet at the canteen at one!” Buffy called, linking arms with Willow and leaving you at the door of the lecture room you needed.

You entered your class, trying your best not to feel so overwhelmed. You actually really enjoyed it and just hoped that this would continue through the rest of the year.

After class was over, you tried to familiarise yourself with the campus again. Looking at different stalls that had been set up for the new arrivals advertising clubs.

You felt a little out of place and so sort of stayed to the side lines, not really interacting with many of the students. You hung around by the noticeboard and something caught your eye. A bright pink flier. You took it down, staring at it.

It read ‘Open mic night – held by the Poetry society and the theatre club’ You folded the flier and stuffed it into your pocket with a little smile. Maybe you wouldn’t feel so left out here after all.

You looked up from your feet as you needed to try and find your next class. As you did, you managed to directly catch someone’s eye. Spike’s. You lifted your hand to awkwardly wave at him and give him a little smile at him but he just glared at your action and ignored you completely.

You watched lamely as he just stalked away. That stupid leather jacket of his whipping around his heels. Everyone moved out of his way they all scattered as he just walks wherever he likes.

You sigh, extremely embarrassed at the way he had blanked you. You shove the hand that had still been slightly raised into your pockets as you walked away towards your next class.

Eventually lunch came and you decided that you could go to the canteen. You stood awkwardly on the side looking around for a face that you recognised in the sea of bodies.

As soon as Buffy saw you, she called you over immediately and began to introduce you to her group of friends. It was quite the mix of people. You learned a lot in a short space of time.

There was Xander, he was on a basketball scholarship. Apparently he was the sole reason that the college team won so often. Although, how true that was you weren’t entirely sure. He was immediately friendly and invited you to sit. You had expected him to be unwelcoming and kind of arrogant but he was the complete opposite. He smiled and cracked a few goofy jokes upon your arrival to put you at ease.

Sitting next to him was Cordelia, but she preferred ‘Cordy’. She was Buffy’s sorority sister and head cheer coach. She was dating Xander, only in the sense that they shared sodas and the backseat of Cordy’s new car. She could have quite a biting attitude but she did this as a term of endearment you found… to the lucky few.

Then there was Willow, who you had already met. She was a proud nerd and she had more extracurriculars than you could count up to it seemed. She was incredibly sweet and good-natured treating you as if she had known you her whole life. You also learned she had a girlfriend.

Tara, who was sat braiding Willow’s hair seeing as she had finished her lunch already. It appeared like she needed to do something when she was sat in a group. She appeared nice although she didn’t speak as much as everyone else so it was

Usually, someone called Angel would show. Everyone on campus knew him apparently as he was a member of one of the frats. He was kind of hard to get hold of you discovered. Buffy was a little disappointed when she explained that he wasn’t coming to lunch today. She appeared to really like him.

After the introductions were made and everyone started to eat again, the focus turned to you briefly. Buffy said you should totally join their cheerleading group or one of the fraternities or sororities. But this wasn’t really your kind of thing. You explain that you’d rather find something else. As you said this, you felt the corner of the flier in your pocket. You hoped you would find at least someone that shared your interests. That you could bond with over the things that excited you. Form a connection with.

Not to say you weren’t already feeling a welcoming vibe from the table you were sat with. They were friendly but appeared to be holding back slightly upon your arrival. You got it, you were new. But it did make you feel like you stood out a little.

You stared into the distance as they chatted, until someone spoke to you.

“Where are you staying, y/n?” Willow’s girlfriend, Tara, asked kindly. She seemed quiet and so probably knew how you were feeling. You smiled at her, appreciating her effort.

“Oh, I applied late so I got what was left. I’m in a shared house just off campus, I’m living with this guy – Spike”

There was a collective intake of breath and some shared looks. They appeared worried for you. You looked up in confusion at their shocked faces.

“He’s bad news”

“Yeah, hot off the presses – Spike is a total no-go. Nobody else took that room for a reason, there are rumours” Buffy warned you, her voice going quiet.

“And that Billy Idol wannabe hair? I get vintage, but that guys totally stuck living in the eighties” Cordy commented, the resident expert in style you would soon discover.

“What are the rumours?” You asked, bracing yourself for the reply.

“Well, apart from the superficial stuff-”

“Yeah, Cor’s got that part covered” Xander teased which made Cordy stamp on his foot under the table. He yelped and they glared at each other before they began suddenly launching themselves at each other and making out.

“Anyway… he’s horrible to everyone. He once got into a fist fight over a half pack of cigarettes he found on the sidewalk”

“He has a new, uh, sex buddy every week and he’s on constant probation. They threaten to expel him from college all the time” Willow had whispered her warning which had made Buffy smile fondly.

But you weren’t smiling. You were starting to worry. You knew you should have checked the place out before you signed the agreement. Now you were stuck there.

“I can’t stay there if he’s gonna fight me! I can’t throw a punch” You said, not quite believing that he would try to hurt you.

“We have self-defence class on Thursdays, we can sign you up” Buffy said, patting your hand that was resting on the table. Your eyes widened, they really thought he might fight you.

“Buffy’s the teacher” Willow explained before telling you not to worry.

Since this conversation, you were even more cautious around Spike. The tension began to rise between you. His attitude was unforgiving and he had taken one look at you and immediately judged you as being ‘one of them’.

You tried to be his friend to begin with, being naturally friendly and wanting some kind of approval from him that you didn’t understand.

But it soon became apparent you were almost complete opposites.

He kept the kitchen in a mess where you liked to have some sense of cleanliness. He had become really annoyed with you when you had cleaned up. You had a spare couple of hours in the afternoon and thought you would make it look tidy. You had done it to be kind but he had snatched the bowl you had cleaned for him and stormed away.

The tension was beginning to rise between you. You spoke to your new friends about it when you sat with them at lunch and they fuelled your feelings. You were starting to realise just how much you didn’t like Spike.

You and Spike, apart from the odd hello from you and the irritated grunt from him, didn’t communicate. He had ripped up your note suggesting a rota system for keeping the house tidy. And he all-out blanked you if he ever stumbled onto some lame corner of the campus that you were hanging out in.

The tension moved from apparent indifference to an increasing distaste for the other and their opposing nature. Spike assumed you thought you were better than he was. Because you studied. And slept early and had friends that were ridiculously too clean-cut.

He had seen you hanging out with Buffy and her gang of losers. He instantly decided you were just some bland prep like them. He was waiting for the day you tried to bring one of them over so he could have the pleasure of kicking them out of his house the way they shunned him in public.

One evening, a few weeks after you had met Buffy’s friends in the canteen for the first time, you were home alone. Spike had gone out as he usually would to get drunk and you were staying in just like almost every other night since you had moved to Sunnydale.

You couldn’t sleep and so you had sat in the shared living space watching some boring late-night show for company. You hugged a cushion to your chest and just stared blankly at the screen. Feigning listening to the low buzzing of the set and hoping you could fall asleep this way.

It was at a time where you hadn’t started meeting your new group of friends outside of the canteen at lunch yet. You didn’t have people to talk to, you wouldn’t want to bother them anyway.

Suddenly the front door swung open and there was what sounded like some kind of scuffle happening through the doorway. You frowned confused. Until you saw that it was Spike shoving his tongue down someone’s throat. It was the third different person Spike had brought home that week. And it was Wednesday.

You had been sat in the dark and Spike was otherwise occupied so he dragged your houseguest to the sofa that you were sat on and tangled against them with an urgency fuelled by loneliness or alcohol – you didn’t stick around long enough to care why he did it.

You were fixed to the spot, your face contorted in horror as you had unwittingly become a part of his one night stand. But as their bodies rolled and pressed against yours, you screamed. They smelled as if they had brought the entire brewery home with them.

Spike barely even registered that you were there, he just cast an eye towards you and raised an eyebrow. As if you were the one in his way. You saw his hand lowering, groping his new friend and your eyes widened and you scrambled to remove yourself from the area and get to the solace of your room.

You scowled. He was so inconsiderate.

As the weeks went by it was apparent that you were never going to get along. You were annoyed that he wouldn’t acknowledge that the house was now shared. He treated you as if you were damp seeping into the walls. Tainting everywhere he turned. Bubbling and creating a problem in the corner. Spreading and ruining his mood with your stubborn insistence to stay in the home.

And you were starting to treat him the same way. Which, he knew you would eventually. He had guessed your friendliness had been an act.

You were just too different. You liked to study to stay on top of your work. Whereas Spike didn’t ever seem to be doing any work. You were always in his business, making comments and singing those musical songs around the house that bugged him so much.

It was as if you were living in a better way than him. You were trying to ‘improve’ him and he felt as if you were suffocating him with all of your little ideas about changing the house around. You were really starting to get on his nerves.

He kept irregular hours and this was okay by you, so long as it didn’t affect your sleep schedule. But, unfortunately it often did.

You had leaned over to turn your bedside lamp off and settled into bed. You closed your eyes, smiling at the day you had. Cordy and Buffy had taken you shopping. They insisted they would find you a new college wardrobe. You gave them a budget and your style ideas and they worked their magic.

You were so grateful they had kind of started to take you under their wing. You weren’t entirely sure if it was to get dirt on Spike at first, but they had gotten bored of the topic as the weeks went on and were more interested in getting to know you.

You began to drift into sleep as you recounted your day. Until all of a sudden you were jolted awake. Loud music had started playing. You checked the clock it was nearing midnight – you had gotten in much later than you usually would after your friends had taken you for a drink to celebrate a successful shopping trip.

The pounding of the music and the screaming vocals were so loud it was as if the band was playing a live set directly beside your bed. Your entire room appeared to be shaking because of it.

You got out of bed, your anger bubbling dangerously higher with every step you took towards the source of the noise. He was sat in the shared living area, drinking liquor from the bottle and nodding along to the music.

“I have a really important class tomorrow, can you keep it down?” You asked, trying to make your voice sound level.

“Don’t know. Can you keep your hands off my Weetabix?” He asked snidely. You had seen one of his friends or… whatever they were eat the last of it. But you were too embarrassed to bring up his promiscuity. The rumours had made you cautious of him and so you just didn’t say anything.

He quirked his eyebrow as if he had caught you out and turned to the cd player he was using. You sighed some relief but rather than turning it down he twisted the dial so that the volume was at its fullest.

This was it. You stalked towards the Cd player and turned the volume right down. He got up from his seat immediately, grabbing your upper arm to pull you away. His grip was firm and his body was extremely close to yours. His eyes were hard and unforgiving as he spoke.

“Did you forget the rules already? Don’t. touch. My. Bloody. Stuff”

You snatched your arm away and gritted your teeth. You couldn’t think of any witty comebacks. You wished you were Buffy or Willow – they would have known what to say.

Instead, you just expelled air through your nose and stormed off. The punk song now blaring out of the speakers again as you slammed your door shut.

You were so angry you were shaking. You stomped into bed, putting a pillow over your head and tried, and mostly failed, to get some sleep.

You were a zombie the next day. Completely running on caffeine. Your new friends helped you out, tried to wake you up before class and Cordy swore that when she saw Spike next she would give him a piece of her mind. You appreciated them so much.

You were worried because you didn’t seem to have as much in common with the others. Cordy and Buffy went to their cheer club and their sorority. Xander was the basketball star with a goofy, soft heart. And Willow was this complete sweetheart genius who had a love for learning and found the work here all so easy. Her girlfriend was really sweet too, although a little quiet. You had only met her once that time in the canteen but you decided you could probably call her a friend too.

You didn’t have much in common, you were more bookish and you had to work a lot harder to grasp what was being taught. Despite your love of learning, it didn’t come naturally to you. You had to work at it to maintain an average grade. This meant you would study even harder to achieve those grades that you truly desired.

But luckily, despite your suggested lack in commonality, they really liked you for some reason. You and your new friends had all just clicked. At least you had them to be accepting of you.

Either way, that still didn’t solve a problem like Spike.

He infuriated you. He made you want to scream. You wanted to move out. A dark part of you wanted to sneak into his room at night and smother him with the pillow he had forced you to cover your ears with.

You just hoped through the rest of the year that things couldn’t get any worse than it already was. That you could just ride it out.

You were sure there was no way to bridge this gap. No way you could possibly ever get over what a complete pain he was. You couldn’t stand him. He was smug and didn’t care about anything. He was selfish and he didn’t even acknowledge you in public.

You just wanted to get this college year done and get out of there. You had decided that if you ever saw Spike’s face again after this year – it would be one time too many.

Bewitched | Damian Wayne

✦ pairing — older!Damian Wayne x Plus Size Reader

✦ word count — 2.8k

✦ request — can I request a older!Damian wayne×reader where they have feelings for each other but are really stubborn and then while they're on a mission the reader almost gets shot and then confess to one another

✦ warnings — light angst, reader and Damian are hostile towards each other until they’re not, poorly channeled feelings, everyone else is tired™︎, mentions of violence, fluff

❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎

Whoever decided you deserved to be punished with Damian Wayne’s presence must’ve hated you. Probably Tim, he had been the one who gave the leadership of the team to Damian. A sweet gesture between brothers that damned your existence.

You supposed he had been happy, Damian had looked pleased with himself, standing tall with an annoyingly smug look in his face as he spoke to his brother mere meters away from you and the team. Thankfully, he ignored you for the first week until he had to give you orders for a mission.

You had been miserable throughout it all, he made you feel so much disgust you felt you would throw up at any given moment. Not even Wally got the reaction you had, it was too visceral — surely no one hated Damian Wayne and his perfect hair more than you.

Your stomach flipped, just as you thought about it he ventured into the room. You glared at him, and he naturally glared back with an intensity that would’ve intimidated anyone who hadn’t heard him complain about petty things. At least he hated you too. With a scoff, Damian fixed his scarf —the green one that only made his eyes pop— and followed the path toward the elevator.

“Ten bucks you chicken out.” Wally’s voice snapped you out of your fixation on the spot Damian had been glaring at you from. Dragging your eyes to the side where the ginger was standing, you tilted your head in confusion.

Gar chortled, “Just ask Robin out and take us out of our misery.”

Unbelievable! They really thought you could ever grow to even tolerate the brat. “I’d rather shoot myself, thank you very much.”

Just because Rachel and Garfield’s relationship worked, it didn’t mean everyone in the team liked each other. And honestly, Gar was either blind or too optimistic to see Damian and you would kill each other if you were left alone in the same room. Wally would’ve probably liked that.

Wally and Gar shared a look. They did that a lot whenever you interacted with Damian — sometimes it wasn’t an interaction what triggered it, you could ask if Robin would stay at The Tower and they would do it; you could say something about how dumb his hood was and they would do it; you could avoid the gym when he was there and they would do it.

Ignoring them, you announced you would go take a walk to shake off the stress Robin gave you.

“You’re acting like a child,” Wally told you, shaking his head.

❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎

Damian was in a horrendous mood. He was being a brat, there was no doubt, but he couldn’t care less.

Titus tried to get his attention, whining and wagging his tail. Damian patted the hound’s head and went back to the book he had been reading. He couldn’t even focus properly, his mind was still reeling out of frustration.

He had come to tolerate Tim a long time ago, Damian now fully saw him as a brother. But Tim seemingly lived to torment him, there was no other explanation as to why he thought it would be a good idea to have him in the same team as you.

He had earned his place as leader, but he didn’t want you around. His gut failed him sparingly, and this time it said he should stay away from you.

Testing you would have been a good idea, perhaps you had mystical powers he wasn’t aware of. That would explain the way his chest tightened when he saw you, you were bewitching him to have a heart attack.

Dropping the book, he patted Titus’ head again before leaving his bedroom. He ran downstairs with an impetuosity he hadn’t felt in months.

Jason’s grunts and the tapping against a keyboard echoed around the Batcave. Damian double checked to make sure no one else was there. Walking directly towards the youngest of his older brothers, he leaned his back against the desk as he stared at Tim.

“Drake, do you have a moment?”

Tim didn’t take his eyes off the screen, “What’s up, Dami?”

He would’ve sneered at the nickname a year ago. Now he ignored it. “Have you tested (L/N)?”

Jason and Tim sighed loudly, tired of hearing him go on and on about you. Everyone in the house avoided Damian whenever he came back from Titan Tower just because of that, it seemed like he was the only one who hadn’t realized what was really going on.

Indulging him, Tim stopped typing and turned to look at his little brother. “Tested her for what?”

“Hidden powers. I believe she is manipulating everyone in the team.”

Tim pursed his lips, humming. It was getting harder and harder not to laugh at Damian’s theories and demeanor. God, if only Dick wasn’t busy! It would’ve been hilarious.

Jason couldn’t help himself, however. Standing from his planking position on the mat, he popped a water bottle open. Bringing it to his lips, he commented, “Maybe it’s time you ask her out.”

“That implies I don’t despise her which is a severely wrong misunderstanding of my character,” Damian stated pridefully.

Leaving the chair to stretch, Tim placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “You’ll learn to like her.”

“I’d rather stab myself and suffer an agonizing death.”

Jason caught the faltering tone in Damian’s voice but decided to keep it to himself. “You’re being childish, demon spawn.”

He opened his mouth to defend himself but was interrupted by Alfred who announced it was time for them to get ready for patrol.

❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎

Rachel insisted that it wasn’t hatred what you were feeling. Listening to her might have been wise, but it would mean entertaining the idea that you found Damian attractive. You couldn’t, it didn’t sound real.

You had said “he’s just not ugly” and tried to move on, but no one believed you.

It didn’t matter because you believed it to be true. You had faith in what you were thinking and feeling. The only thing you felt towards him was repulsión and it was mutual, he had been clear the week prior.

The team had tried to prevent you two from fighting, keeping you out of his way. Aware of the reason behind their tiptoeing, you stormed out and confronted him.

His words had affected you a little bit, you couldn’t deny that, but that was only because you had been accused of doing things you weren’t capable of.

You said things you had never imagined uttering to another living being. You had never been a hateful person, but Damian made you react aggressively 100% of the time. He hadn’t been different, you had never heard him say such things — not even when he faced Deathstroke.

The yelling got to the point where Dick, Kory, and Tim were summoned by Victor who didn’t have time to put up with more fights. After complaining about how sloppy you were and how better the team would be without you, Damian had stormed out on the four of you.

Dick and Tim had been unfazed, clearly used to the bratty behavior. You excused yourself and went directly to your bedroom. You didn’t see him until the next mission.

He regretted every time he had complained of a narrator using a variation of witnessing something in slow motion. He now understood exactly what the narrators meant, and he was doing so in the worst way possible.

Damian had never regretted many things, not since he started living with his father at least, but now he could think of multiple comments and gestures.

He needed to calm down. You were okay, everything was fine — you were capable of taking care of yourself, he didn’t have to worry. You hadn’t even been harmed, but he couldn’t shake the image of that bullet missing you by millimeters.

What would have he done if you were shot? It would’ve been his fault for not giving you the proper orders, for thinking you would eventually quit being part of the team and free him of the oppression in his chest and the lightheadedness.

Turning the lights of his bedroom off, he closed the door. The other wooden doors were closed too, Garfield usually slept for an entire day after missions so Damian imagined everyone was trying to be as silent as possible.

Well, your bedroom door was ajar. You were finishing folding the laundry you had left undone before the mission. Damian knocked out of politeness. “Busy?”

“I’ll have the mission report ready in an hour,” you told him, not bothering to grant him your attention. The only reason you were giving him explanations was that he was your team leader. “I just need to make a phone call.”

“Boyfriend needs to know where you are?” His tone was harsher than he intended. Damian hated the way you couldn’t even grace him with a glare now.

You folded the pastel yellow t-shirt on your lap carefully. “Sister, actually.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware that you had siblings.” You hummed. Damian blurted, “Does that mean you don’t have a boyfriend?”

The insistence made you lift your head to stare at him. He could’ve been mocking you and you wouldn’t have been aware. But he wasn’t, his eyes were dancing over your face in expectancy of an answer.

“I don’t.”

“That’s good.”

Planting a foot on the floor, you shrugged. As you split the stacks of clothes to carry them with more ease, you asked, “Is there anything I can help you with?”

God, there were many things; the fact that you had asked was a win on itself. Damian walked into the bedroom, curiously analyzing the bookshelf. He had only been there once, when he was given a tour of the tower — remembering the unnecessarily mean comment he made about the color of the walls, he winced.

The color was fine, but he had hated the way his heart raced when you opened the door and greeted Tim and him. You had been so polite he didn’t recognize you the first time you rolled your eyes at him. He couldn’t blame you for disliking him, he just wished it was different, that you were in the same position he was and with the same worries that had caused him many sleepless nights.

He opened your closet to then take a stack of clothes from the bed. He liked the way you arranged them, it reminded him of the way his mother used to.

“Leave that, I can do it.”

Shaking his head, Damian silently picked another stack of clothes and like he had done before, stored it in your closet. “You should rest.”

He was scaring you now. Since when did he care about your wellbeing? And since when weren’t you healthy enough to do chores?

“I’m not tired.”

“You were almost shot at.”

Oh, that. You had assumed no one had been paying attention, you didn’t even blame them for that when the battle had been so intense.

“Well, you were almost stabbed but I’m not saying anything.”

“You technically are.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

Damian made a pause. “What if I had been stabbed?” You looked up at him, so innocently confused he had to fight the urge of cupping your full cheeks. “What would you have done?”

Such a great question. Rachel’s voice echoed in your mind — she had been right. She was always right, actually, and you didn’t like it in this instance.

“Does it matter?”

“Sadly.”

“I don’t know,” you confessed. “What I said last week… I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.”

“How come?”

“I didn’t mean anything of what I said either.” He sat on the edge of the bed. Avoiding your eyes, he continued, “I wish— no, that would be a lie too… this isn’t how these things are supposed to go.”

Unsure as to what to say, you decided to remain silent. Only he knew what he wanted to express.

“I don’t want you to leave, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

You were more baffled now. “Is there a but?”

“No. I’m afraid there are things I do actually want you to do, though.”

“The report?”

He giggled. Damian Wayne giggled because of something you said. You had never heard a sound that compared with it, there was no point in trying to find something as adorable as a brooding giant giggling because of your perplexed questions.

That was until he said, “I want you to like me. I want you to trust me like you trust West and to talk to me… I want you to tell me about your life, all the things you like and hate.” He let out a scoff, “I know it’s asking too much, but I want you to…”

It shouldn’t have taken him being about to watch you get hurt to realize it. Then again, he wasn’t an expert in emotions. Damian dominated languages, he could talk his way out of almost any situation, he was an expert in many sciences, but emotions had never been his forte.

Emotions were weaknesses where he came from. He wasn’t the child scared of his mother catching him crying out of pain due to a broken arm anymore, but that child still lived inside him. Said child had morphed into a young adult scared of his own self catching him falling in love with the person he least expected.

His fear had come true, and running away from it wouldn’t only be useless but stupid.

Playing with his fingers, he stated, “I want you. That’s it.”

“Me too.” You put your hand on top of both of his.

Damian stared down at your hand for a moment, then turned to look at you. He needed you to be sure of what you were saying, he wouldn’t hold it against you if you couldn’t see past his awful behavior toward you.

You squeezed his fingers. “I mean it.”

Twisting his hand, he pressed his palm on yours. Wiggling his fingers as he intertwined them with yours, thumb brushing the back of your hand, he asked, “Is that okay?”

“More than okay,” you assured, making him grin.

You felt your stomach twist at his gesture. This time you didn’t find the sensation uncomfortable — on the contrary, it was a relief to finally understand it had never meant disgust. Your pride hated it, your mental health was thankful.

Your head drifted closer to his shoulder. The soft material of his sweatshirt invited you to rest it there, and Damian was delighted when you finally did it. He stayed still for a lingering moment, questioning whether he should do it or not — eventually he caved in and kissed the top of your head.

Craning your neck to look at him, now with your cheek pressed on his shoulder, you smiled at him. His eyes lit up as he smiled back, green orbs deviating to your lips.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Kissing you,” he answered truthfully.

Breathing out a small laugh, you said, “do it, then.”

He slowly dropped his lips onto yours, brushing them tentatively at first. You slid your hand off his as you kissed him back, placing it on his other shoulder as you lifted your head without breaking the kiss.

Damian’s arm wrapped around your plump waist, holding your face with his free hand while deepening the kiss. Trailing your hand up to his neck, your thumb traced his jaw while your lips sucked on his bottom lip.

“I still have to call my sister,” you reminded him as he pulled you closer.

Humming, Damian tightened his arm around you to bring you flush against him so you would straddle his lap. “I’m not stopping you, angel. I’m sure you can multitask.”

And so you called home, with an arm around Damian’s neck as your fingers played with his hair and he buried his face in your neck.

The next morning the kitchen was almost empty when you were ready for the day, only Rachel was there already which was how it usually went.

Eventually, the kitchen and therefore the dining room filled. The only one missing was Garfield, but you were used to that after missions. The chatter progressed as it did on a daily basis — Rachel mostly kept to herself unless she had something to say, Victor told Wally to stop talking with his mouth full of food, and Wally disobeyed Victor.

“Good morning.” Damian greeted the team, walking toward the cupboard to retrieve a mug.

Your teammates mumbled greetings. The clattering of silverware against ceramic got louder as they hurried their meal in case Damian and you decided it was a good time to fight.

A warm hand was placed on your hip. You carefully turned around, placing a hot mug in his free hand. “Green with a teaspoon of brown sugar.”

He kissed your forehead, lips still caressing your temple as he spoke, “thank you, beloved.”

Wally’s shocked screech woke Garfield up from his deep slumber two floors up.

Introducing: The Wandering Witch AU

(With transgirl!Remus, questioning!Sirius and endless conversations about the metaphysics of wandless magic)

This is the latest installment of our various Wolfstar AU's with August, one we came up with while we were on a mini-holiday, celebrating our third anniversary.

In this universe, pureblood-supremacy is rampant, keeping the Wizarding World in the permanent dark ages. Muggle-born wizards are only allowed a wand upon being accepted at a magic school, and most institutions favour pureblood children over half-blood, or muggle-born students. Wands are registered and heavily regulated, including tracking-spells and random spot-checks for counterfeit, or unregistered wands by Ministry officials.

After a werewolf-attack at age 4, Remus Lupin’s father tries to teach her magic using his own wand, knowing she would never be allowed into Hogwarts. However, performing magic with someone else's wand is not only dangerous and illegal, but also extremely difficult. Remus — a savant, who can sense magical currents in a way none of her peers can — realises that she doesn't need a wand to focus her power, and instead develops her own way of casting — or spell-weaving, more accurately —, tying an intricate web of knots between intent and the ambient magical currents to shape reality to her will. While admittedly crude and volatile, her technique turns out surprisingly potent, which makes her more than capable of protecting herself against the many dangers of a transphobic, werewolf-hating world.

Because her condition places both her and her family in a vulnerable position (the "werewolf-issue is an ages-old favourite talking point of mainstream wizarding politics, including a fearmongering campaign designed to marginalise intelligent magical creatures and eradicate non-human magic users), the Lupins decide to avoid registering their child after the attack, relying on the help of muggle medicine and corrupt healers to nurse her back to health after the transformations. They move frequently, bouncing Remus from school to school, but once Remus has gotten a basic education, they settle down in an isolated cottage on the Scottish highlands, and her mum takes on the duty of homeschooling her.

Having been brought up in a mixed family and lived the majority of her life as a muggle, Remus is well-versed in the matters of 21st century life. Once they settle into their new home, she starts transitioning, takes up Luna as her middle name, but keeps Remus as her first name, refusing to abide by arbitrary societal rules about names being connected to certain genders, rather than the people wearing them. After both her parents meet a tragically early death in a car accident, Remus finds herself alone in the world, with both a house and a large sum of money to her name; she sells the cottage and spends her parents' life insurance settlement on getting bottom surgery, then sets out to travel the world, looking for someone, or something to find a meaningful connection with.

----------

On a glance, Cassandra Black is everything her most ancient and noble house could want for an heir. She is brilliant, powerful and a downright genious when it comes to magic; the only problem is, she's a bit too smart for her own good, and no amount of discipline can keep her from asking too many questions. The only thing her bewildered parents achieve with their constant, increasingly violent punishment is that young Cassandra stops asking them, and starts looking for answers of her own.

By the time she's 11, she's thoroughly disillusioned, worlds away from the conservative, blood-supremacist doctrines she was brought up with. Upon entering Hogwarts, she spends the first free breath of her life on convincing the Sorting Hat not to place her in Slytherin, a decision she pays for with the world as she knew it. In return, she gains a new, brighter one, full of friendship, adventure and budding romance — although dark secrets, stomach-turning injustice and bitter heartbreak too. When it comes to her parents' attention that she is sleeping with a witch, their treatment turns from toxic hostility to open abuse, severing all emotional ties between Cassandra and the House of Black. She spends five years as a proud Gryffindor, but by the time her 16th birthday rolls around, she feels like she'd learnt everything Hogwarts had to offer — the good and the bad alike. She decides not to return to the castle for the sixth year: instead, she uses the start of the school year to orchestrate an elaborate escape plan, that would make it impossible for her family to find her. She breaks her wand and vanishes into the night, never to be seen again.

British Wizarding society erupts in chaos, because even one as scandalous as the Black heiress, the mysterious disappearance of a 16-year-old, pureblood-aristocrat (and a witch, for that) brings the Ministry's messaging about public safety into question, and the story keeps the tabloids busy for the better part of a year. The family puts out an enticing bounty on their firstborn's head, but regardless of the spectacular reward, no one can locate Cassandra, and without a wand to track, she proves to be impossible to trace. Eventually, the tabloids move on and the story slowly fades into the background, although, en lieu of a body, they never officially assume her dead, and the family never gives up the secret search for their wayward, blood-traitor daughter.

----------

Three years later:

Somewhere, hidden in the mountains of Scotland, there is a halfway-house, for magical folks who need to get off the grid, for one reason or another. Remus is a regular visitor, using the shelter's reinforced cellar for the full moon, and taking her time to recover at the quaint little house for a while thereafter. Nobody bothers her there, and while people do use the retreat — it's always clean, stocked with food, healing items and clean bedding, among other obvious signs of habitation —, she'd never encountered any other guests during her visits. This time, however, an unpleasant surprise welcomes her, in form of a backpack and a half-drunk bottle of wine on the porch, and soon, she finds the owner of the items as well, lounging on her favorite sunning spot.

The stranger looks ragged; unkempt and malnourished, and when they speak, their voice sounds hoarse, like they haven't used it for a long time. Remus is immediately weary, even though the stranger looks very young and rather unimpressive, expect for the very posh accent and the fact that despite their extremely strong magical aura, they did look startled, almost terrified when Remus walked up behind them — and yet, their hand never even twitched to draw a concealed wand.

"I’m armed!" the stranger warns — maybe they expected a muggle? —, but still doesn't move to reveal any weapon. Remus is quite certain she could take them on in one-on-one combat regardless, should it come to that, but she finds it alarming that this runaway teen would survive alone in the wilderness for what seems like a considerable period; a feat that requires a number of skills and the kind of training that does not come with the elocution training the stranger's speech suggests. Not just the accent, the face too... Under the layers of dirt, severe sunburn and a fading black eye, there is just something eerily familiar about them.

She introduces herself as Remus — it's one of her favourite ways to quickly size up a person, based on their reaction to her obviously masculine name. She does the whole cheeky, "whatchagonnado" act she perfected throughout the years, expecting anything from a spiteful comment to a confused eyebrow-raise in response, but the stranger just nods and gives her a polite "hello, Remus", like this was the most normal interaction between two people who just met at a shelter for magical misfits, in the middle of fucking nowhere.

The stranger, however, is less forthcoming about their identity, and Remus has to openly ask for their name after 10 minutes of tense, but idle chitchat. The stranger blushes a deep red, and once again, there is that flash of panic in their eyes, before they blurt out "Sirius... Black."

"Oh."

Of course, Remus thinks, wondering how she missed it before. She knows exactly who Sirius is, or who they used to be — she'd seen this face a million times before; a younger, smoother version with fewer sharp angles and without the haunted look in their bloodshot eyes, but the very same face was once plastered all over Britain — on missing flyers, in front page news, later on wanted posters... 10.000 galleons are a fine bit of money for a head like this. She gives the stranger a sideways glance, and they glare right back at her, with a defiant expression that might have betrayed their famous origins, even without the esteemed family name. The Blacks, they do all look the same...

"Well, that answers the question whether you're a muggle" Sirius remarks with a bitter chuckle. "Look, I know what you're thinking. And yes, they do have the funds, but just so we are clear on this, if you move to draw, I'll attack you, and it's gonna be over before you ever reach your wand. You will lose, most likely die, and then I'll have to spend this lovely evening digging a hole for you in the woods instead of sharing a bottle of crappy wine. So, just don't, okay?"

Remus can't help but admire the kid's bravado — they aren't stupid, she can tell that much, if from nothing else, the fact that they somehow successfully evaded one of the most powerful magical families, and their countless footmen, for over three years without ever leaving a trace; and yet, they seem to know when they're outmatched.

"Who says I'd need to draw?" she smirks, hoping to provoke a quick duel out of the youth. She likes to get the power-struggle out of the way early on, just so nobody gets ideas while she's sleeping or in recovery. The young Black might turn out to be a reluctant ally, but they could mean real trouble after the full moon, if they were to follow family tradition in wanting to rid the world of a monster like herself. Three days left until the next transformation, which means she's at the height of her power, so taking Sirius out here and now would be the wisest, and she thinks she could do it without harming them too badly. Nothing she couldn't fix in a blink afterwards.

Sirius measures her with a curious squint, slowly raising their left hand into the air. All five fingers are adorned with a variety of silver rings, from plain, thin bands to heavy signets with rune-engraved stones. A web of glowing lines flare up on the back of their hand, spreading out from an intricate magic sigil on their wrist. They emit a faint, blueish white light, running along each finger to the tip, as Sirius charges up for a wandless spell. Flashy, but creative, Remus thinks, truly impressed for the first time. She's used to wizards relying on their wands to do the work for them, and she knows seven different ways to dismantle the connection before they ever get to fire off. The stranger's magic is different — it's raw and unpolished, but brutally powerful, and very complex, in a geometric sort of way. This would be more difficult than she initially thought, and she's unsure if she could immediately disarm Sirius without having to literally dis-arm them.

To avoid confrontation, she raises a hand in front of her too, conjuring a harmless little will-o-whisp in her palm — a trick she developed as a child, tied up on the bare cement floor of her parents' basement, waiting for the curse to take hold. There was no light in the basement; she was lonely, cold and terrified, so she made herself a friend, a cold flame to keep her company while she was waiting for the moon.

Sirius' eyebrows disappear somewhere under their tangled fringe, but their face lights up with a huge, mischievous grin:

"Remus, the girl raised by the wolves... You're not boring at all, are you?"

Been Through

Summary: Y/N has been taking care of her four year old by herself. She did everything she had to make sure her daughter never wanted for anything. And she had planned to do that for the rest of her life, but Lisa Manoban and Jennie Kim have other plans.

Y/N has to make a decision: Lisa or Jennie?

Rating: Mature

Warnings: G!P Lisa and Jennie

Notes: This is my first BlackPink story so please be nice. Lol. I might post other side one shots and stuff and take requests eventually but this is it for now. Please make sure to like and rb!

Chapter 1: I've had enough of petty dues

Been about three years since I dated you. Why you still talking 'bout me like we together? I moved on for the better. You moved on to whoever.

You sighed heavily to yourself. Lily please don't do this to me today, you thought as you wrestled the denim jacket onto your stubborn four year old.

Lily only stared blankly at you as though she read your mind, but simply didn't give a shit.

Her brunette bangs flopped into her eyes, and normally she'd immediately bat them away, but moving would mean helping you get on her clothing, something she was simply not too keen to do at the moment.

You could practically feel her resisting the urge to twitch. Her eyes were turning red, and her hands were balled into tiny fists. All of this just because she didn't want to wear a stupid jacket.

Lily was stubborn. Just like her other...parent.

You swallowed harshly at the thought of Lily's....sperm donor. You're not sure if it's out of sadness or anger.

When you're finally done putting the finishing touches on Lily's outfit, you stood up and grabbed your purse. Lily could be heard frantically swatting at her bangs behind you.

"Come on, Lil. Time to go." The four year old grabbed your hand without hesitation, even though she still seemed to be mildly irritated with you.

"Where we going?"

You chuckled lightly as you locked your front door. Your precious baby. So sweet, but she had a horrible attention span.

"You know where we're going, baby. We're going to Whole Foods to get some groceries, then we're going to go pick out fish for your new tank."

Lily started to jump excitedly, "Yay! Fishies!"

Getting her into her carseat had proven to be easier than you thought, with all the excited squirming and all.

Fish were certainly a big deal to her, but grocery shopping was a big deal to you. You're an adult. Your problems are different than a four year olds. Who would've thought?

Grocery shopping was easily the bane of your existence. You didn't have to do it very often because it was only the two of you and you normally bought 2/3rds of the store when you went, but that didn't make it any less stressful.

You make it to Whole Foods sooner than you'd like. Lily is eager to get the shopping done and over with so she can get to her fish quicker. She has the right idea.

You throw your own denim jacket into the cart, Lily's small giggles erupting from where it landed.

"Where should we start first, Dancing Queen?"

Lily hummed lightly, her finger tapping her chin, "Fruit, Mommy. I want strawberries."

You nodded easily, heading over to the produce section. While Lily attempted to steal loose strawberries, you rummaged around in your purse for the grocery list you had made earlier in the week.

"You like strawberries? So do I." A voice said from somewhere near you. You normally wouldn't let strangers interact very long with Lily, but you're in Whole Foods. What could possibly go wrong?

"My Mommy says I'm not 'posed to talk to strangers." Lily said, rather brattily you might add.

"What if I told you, your Mommy and I aren't strangers?"

You glanced up from your purse at that, "No, I'm pretty sure we are stra-" Your voice cut out in shock. You're definitely not looking at a stranger.

"Hello, Y/N." The voice is so recognizable you're not even sure how you missed it.

"Jennie? What are you doing in LA?" Your question came out frantic, probably because that's how you felt.

Jennie Kim was definitely no stranger. In fact, she was the complete opposite.

Jennie's your ex.

Jennie ignored your question for the time being. Instead, she eyed your daughter curiously, "How old is she?"

"Jennie-"

"How old is she, Y/N?"

"She turned four last month." You practically whispered.

Jennie only nodded before clenching her jaw slightly.

"YG had us move here a few months ago."

Your chest skipped a beat at the word 'us'. That meant she wasn't alone. That meant all those things you tried to outrun four years ago are finally catching up with you.

"Oh."

"Yeah..."

"My name is Lily. Who are you? Why do you know my Mommy?"

Jennie looked back at you as if asking what was appropriate to say, you were in no position to speak at the moment.

"Lily. That's a beautiful name. My name is Jennie. Your Mommy and I used to be good friends." Jennie blinked harshly and spoke slowly.

Lily nodded along, that was all she needed.

"Rosé and Jisoo miss you. You should call them and hang out."

She's missing someone and you wondered if she left her out on purpose. You're too pussy to ask.

"Do you all have the same numbers?"

Jennie stuffed her hands in her pockets, "Yeah, but you're going to have to unblock mine."

It's petty. You both know it, but you deserved it and Jennie couldn't bring herself to care either way.

"I'm sorry, Jennie."

That seemed to break her general silence.

"You slept with my best friend. I don't know if your kid is mine or hers."

You rolled your eyes so hard, you're pretty sure they got stuck in the back of your head for a moment.

The claim was old and tired. The two of you had resolved that little discrepancy back in Korea.

"Can we not do this right now?"

"Now's as good a time as any...I thought we were okay, Y/N. I thought we had fixed all of our problems. Then, you just up and left."

You don't have the mental capacity to continue this conversation.

"I had to do what was best for us. I loved you, I really did, but there was just too much riding on us working out. I couldn't do that to you or myself. So, I left."

Jennie shook her head, "You could have talked to me about it."

"Jennie. Look, I love you, but we were just not going to work back then."

Jennie looked like she was about to speak again, but decided against it, her eyes drifted back to Lily's hazel ones.

"Fine. But please call me sometime soon. Maybe we can have a less hostile conversation over dinner.

"Yeah, maybe."

With one last look at Lily, Jennie turned around and resumed her own errands.

Yes, another reason to hate grocery shopping. Sometimes you run into your ex-girlfriend in the produce section and she asks you the really hard questions. Hate when that happens.

Pairing: Finn Balor X OFC (Ciara)

Word Count: 1981

Warnings: Mature to explicit as the story goes on.

Description: After moving to the USA from England to start her career as an NXT superstar, Ciara gets to meet her long time crush, NXT champion Finn Balor. It's clear the pair have chemistry, but when tensions start to rise, will they find they want more than a no strings attached relationship?

So this is the first piece of fanfic I have written literally ever. I will be posting them here periodically, but I already have 6 chapters out on my Wattpad, AO3 and FanFiction pages.

This series will involve romance, drama and (although it will take a little while) some smutt too. Hope you enjoy it! 😊

Chapter 5: Prince Charming

I had a quick shower in my locker room before heading out to the car park, where Fergal was coolly leaning against his car. I was feeling kind of nervous. Up to now every time I'd seen Fergal it was down to pure coincidence. Now we were very intentionally going out for food together.

"Ready to go?" he smiled as I approached his car. I nodded sheepishly in response. "Good. We'll swing by your place so you can drop of your stuff and change if you want."

"That would be great, thanks!" I threw my gym bag into the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat. Fergal turned the radio on low and pulled out of the car park.

"So can you drive back in England?" he asked me.

"To be honest no, I never got my licence"

"Really? How come?" I hesitated for a moment before answering. The truth was simple: I could never afford to. But the reason why was something I wanted to run so far away from that I'd never think about it again.

"Well... I grew up in a poor area and money was tight for a lot of my life. I guess I just... Never got around to it," I lied, before lowering my head in embarrassment.

"Ya know," he piped up eventually, clearly noticing my discomfort, "I didn't learn to drive until I joined NXT. Dusty actually taught me" he admitted, with a hint of sadness.

"You must have some great memories with him"

"Oh I could tell you some stories, " he smiled at me before turning his attention back to the road.

The journey was filled with laughter as Fergal recounted his driving lessons, and soon enough we were pulling up outside my apartment.

"Right, won't be a minute"

I jumped out of the car, rushed inside and dumped my gym stuff in the washer. Knowing that this wasn't a date took a lot of the pressure off of choosing an outfit. I kept reminding myself that this was just a casual meal between work colleagues and not to overthink it. I returned to the car in a nice top and some jeans.

"So where are we going?" I asked.

"Well there's a nice sushi place near here, or we could get pizza-"

"I LOVE sushi!" I interrupted loudly before catching myself "I mean... Sushi sounds great, please"

"Sushi it is!" Fergal giggled, and pulled away from the pavement.

* * * *

As we entered the restaurant, the host greeted Fergal with a warm, familiar smile.

"Mr Devitt! Your usual seat I presume?" he asked, eyeing me before giving Finn a knowing look. It was obvious the host was not surprised to see Fergal here with a new face.

"Yes please, if it's available"

"Of course! Right this way sir. And might I say, your lady friend looks ravishing this evening" he flashed me a charming smile.

"This is Ciara, she's a new superstar. She worked her ass off today so I'm treating her," Fergal flashed that gorgeous smile again, but his quickness to correct the hosts mistake had me a little disappointed.

"Ah, my mistake sir! I assumed... No matter. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Just a soda, please"

We took our seats in a quiet corner of the restaurant.

"Same for me, thanks" I nodded.

"Right away," he nodded and left the two of us alone.

Our table was next to a large window looking out across a small stretch of beach. Not one of the many that were overpopulated with tourists, but a quiet, peaceful piece of heaven. As the sun started to set, its light was dancing across the surface of the ocean. It was a beautiful sight. I could see why this was Fergals usual table, though I couldn't help but wonder how many women he'd brought here, charming them with the view.

"So, what looks good?" Fergal opened the menu and glanced over the pages.

"Honestly, all of it..."

"I usually just get a sushi platter to share and then order some ramen or a bento box for myself."

"That sounds perfect," I closed my menu and set it down, relieved that he'd taken the lead before I said something stupid. Fergal called a waiter over to give him our order before turning his attention back to me.

"So how did you get into wrestling?"

"My mum is a huge fan, we used to watch it together. She's basically in love with Brett Hart" I giggled.

"She must be incredibly proud," he smiled. I nodded in response, trying to hold back some tears that had started to form. Noticing my sadness, his tone softened, "I know it's hard, moving away from family, friends, boyfriend..."

"Oh, I'm single so that's not an issue but... Yeah, I miss them a lot."

It could have been my hopeful imagination, but the look in his eyes seemed to shift slightly from sympathy to devilish triumph.

"Really? That's interesting..."

"How so?" I asked, playfully.

"Well..." he hesitated before leaning in slightly closer to me. He squinted his eyes in thought, as if he were trying to solve a difficult puzzle. "You're beautiful, so I doubt you're short on options. You don't have any annoying habits that I've seen, but honestly you're attractive enough that most guys won't care-"

"And what if I'm only interested in women?" I teased, enjoying watching his attempts at analysing me. He chuckled cockily and licked his bottom lip.

"Well in that case, all that flirting you did last night wouldn't make much sense would it?"

"I... Suppose not..." I mumbled, my cheeks beginning to feel hot once again.

Every interaction between Fergal and I felt like a game of Tennis, passing flirtatious remarks and enticing glances between us until one of us (usually me) was left feeling embarrassed.

"So that means, you're choosing to be single. Why is that?" he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, satisfied with his theory.

"I'm just not looking for anything serious now. My career comes first."

"That's smart," he nodded in approval.

We were interrupted by a waiter bringing our food to the table. Everything looked and smelled amazing.

"I just got out of something semi-serious so, I'm focusing on my career too."

I popped a Maki roll into my mouth to hide my surprise. He didn't look like he was lying to me, but Saraya had mentioned last night that he was seeing someone. Maybe she was just taking a dig at him. There was a lot of hostility there after all.

Ugh... Thinking about last night was giving me flashbacks of my piss poor attempt at being alluring. I shuddered the thought out of my mind.

"You ok?"

"Yeah just, kind of embarrassed about last night," I confessed. "I don't normally flirt with complete strangers."

"I could tell, you were really bad at it. Do you always get like that when you're drunk or are ya just that attracted to me?" Fergal laughed, doing nothing to calm my already crimson face.

"I'm always like that, sorry to disappoint. But I did want to thank you for not taking advantage, and for making sure I got home safe. It was really kind of you..."

"Wow. No wonder you're single. You really need to get higher standards for men love. If not trying to sleep with you when you're drunk is your idea of kind, you're gonna be dating a lot of assholes."

I knew he was right, but considering my last relationship, honestly at this stage I'd say almost anything was an improvement.

We continued eating and laughing until finally the bill came. I reached into my bag to get my purse out.

"Woah, what are ya doing? I said this was my treat." Fergal insisted, reaching into his back pocket.

"At least let me pay for half of it"

"Absolutely not."

"You are fighting a losing battle here miss. Mr Devitt is a gentleman after all," the host chimed in, leaving me with no choice but to concede. We thanked him for the meal and said our goodbyes.

It was only when we got outside and it was pitch black I realised how long we'd been here for. Time really felt like nothing when I was spending it with Fergal. The journey home was made in a comfortable silence, both of us stuffed from dinner as I hummed along to the radio, and before I knew it we were pulling up outside of my apartment.

"Here, it's dark. I'll walk you to your door," Fergal switched off the engine and got out of the car.

"Thanks again for tonight. It was nice getting to hang out. Made me feel a little less lonely being here," I reached into my purse to grab my keys.

"No problem, I know what it's like moving to a new country. If you ever need anyone to just hang out with, let me know," he suggested.

"And next time I will definitely pay!"

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that." he beamed.

In the moonlight he looked more gorgeous than I could ever imagine, and I couldn't stop my gaze from wandering. They travelled from the pale blue pools of his eyes, to that intoxicating smile, to the perfect contours of his chest, all the way down to-

"Ahem, my eyes are up here," he smiled cheekily, clearly very pleased with himself that yet again he'd caught me checking him out.

"I was just-"

"No need to be embarrassed love. I take it as a compliment. I actually find it really cute you can't keep your eyes off of me. Besides..." he took a step closer to me and placed a tender hand on my cheek, "You're not the only one who's thought about it."

"Th.. Thought about... What?" I stammered, feeling a pleasant tingling at his touch.

"Oh, you KNOW what" he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear.

"I don't..."

He pushed me gently against the wall and held me there, one hand still caressing my cheek, the other pinning my hands above my head.

"So... You haven't thought about me ripping your clothes off and throwing you onto the bed. You've not thought about how it would feel, me kissing every inch of your body," he moved his face closer to mine until our lips were mere inches apart. His eyes were staring intensely into mine, and the feeling of his breath on my skin made my heart beat faster.

"And you've never imagined how, when you can't take any more, I'd make you feel more pleasure than you've ever felt before."

I ran my tongue along my bottom lip in anticipation. Anticipation for a kiss that never came. A let out a small whine as he pulled his face away and released me from his hold. Hearing this he smirked.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he sighed, looking very frustrated with himself. "Look, you're sweet... But I don't do sweet. Okay? I do broken and desperate and fucked up. It's just easier that way. Good girls always think they can fix me, and then treat me like I'm the bad guy when they get their heart broken in the process. If you know what's good for ya, you won't cross that line. I'm not your Prince Charming, love."

He walked back to his car, leaving me alone at my doorstep, confused and disappointed as he drove off into the night. I shut the front door behind me and threw myself onto the sofa in frustration. Damn, having him that close to me, talking about the things he was had gotten me all worked up. I needed to get that out of my system before the next time I saw him, otherwise I might just have to show him how wrong he was to call me a good girl.

a simple misunderstanding

fandom: avatar: the last airbender rating: G characters: sokka/zuko, katara words: 2k additional tags: canon compliant, fluff description: zuko and katara start hanging out, just the two of them. sokka gets suspicious and decides to investigate. a/n: hi!! this was written for the @lgbtqshipszine and i can post it now! i love my silly boys

read it on ao3

—

Sokka is a good older brother—he thinks so, at least. He does his best to look out for Katara and give her advice when she needs it, but he also tries to give her some space and let her make her own decisions. They are only a year apart, after all, and she’s grown up a lot since they first found Aang in the iceberg.

So when Sokka notices that Katara has been spending more time alone with Zuko, he holds himself back from immediately confronting her about it. They could be doing anything, talking about anything. He’s trusted her to be alone with guys before; he’s even teased Aang for his long-standing crush on Katara. Besides, they clearly bonded in some way when they went to search for the man who killed Sokka and Katara’s mother, even when it didn’t turn out the way they’d expected. He should be happy that they’re getting along now.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Zuko, and it’s certainly not that he doesn’t trust Katara. He doesn’t think Zuko would do anything to hurt her—or, well, not on purpose—and he pities the fool who would even try, because hell hath no fury like a Katara scorned. So, really, it shouldn’t be any of his business what Zuko and Katara talk about in whispers on the shores of Ember Island or in the courtyard of Ozai’s beach house. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Unfortunately, try as he might, Sokka just can’t shake the slightly sick feeling he gets in his stomach whenever he sees them talking, even if it’s only a word or two about what they’re having for dinner. He watches their interactions for any indication of romance, but if they do feel that way about each other, they’re doing a damn good job of hiding it. They don’t hold hands—in fact, they barely touch at all, except for when necessary—and they don’t usually sit next to each other during meals. Zuko does sit next to her when they go to see the Ember Island Players, but it seems completely platonic, and Sokka doesn’t miss the way they slowly scooch away from each other during the “romantic” scene between their actor selves. They still talk, though, and sometimes, Katara says something to Zuko that makes him blush furiously. Talk about mixed signals.

So Sokka makes little to no progress on his theory, which is really less of a theory and more of a sneaking suspicion that there’s something fishy going on. Zuko has been acting strange around Sokka for a little while, occasionally stuttering or spacing out in the middle of a conversation, and it might have to do with this whole business with Katara. If Zuko’s had a crush on her for some time, then it would make sense that he’d be nervous about Sokka’s reaction. (Sokka, for his part, feels weird around Zuko sometimes too, but that’s probably just because Zuko hasn’t been with them for very long, and maybe a small part of Sokka is still nervous around the guy who used to try to capture or kill them all on a regular basis.) Eventually, he decides he’ll just have to take the initiative and talk to Katara himself, or else the wondering is going to drive him crazy.

He corners her one evening after dinner, when everyone else has dispersed and Katara is starting to clean up in the kitchen. She looks up from the sink when she hears his footsteps and raises an eyebrow.

“I’m guessing you’re not here to help me clean up,” she says.

Sokka leans up against the nearby wall in an attempt to look casual. “Katara,” he starts out, “you know you can trust me, right? With anything?”

Katara frowns in confusion. “Yeah, of course. You’re my brother.”

Sokka nods and crosses his arms over his chest. “Good! Good.” He clears his throat awkwardly as he searches for the right words. “Because I realize that you can make your own decisions and that you don’t need me protecting you all the time, and so you know that if, say, you were to start dating some angsty firebender who used to try to kill us all the time, you could tell me that, right?”

Katara nearly drops the bowl she’s washing and shuts off the water. “What?”

Sokka can feel his face heating up. Apparently rambling tactlessly is still one of his strong suits. “Just, you know, theoretically,” he adds pathetically.

Katara just stares at him incredulously. “Zuko?” she says with a laugh. “You think I’m dating Zuko?”

Sokka shrugs. “Well, what else was I supposed to think with you two always running off to talk privately? Zuko hasn’t been able to look me in the eye since the Boiling Rock. I thought maybe he was nervous around me because he was afraid of how I’d react if I knew he had a crush on you or something.”

Katara laughs again. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not particularly interested in him, and I’m positive he’s not interested in me.”

Sokka narrows his eyes. “Well, then, what have you two been talking about?”

Katara’s cheeks turn pink. “Us? Uh, nothing. Nothing important. What, two people aren’t allowed to just talk to each other alone?”

Sokka snorts. Like brother, like sister. “Well, that’s not suspicious.”

Katara sighs. “Look, if you really wanna know, you’re better off talking to Zuko.”

“He’s been acting weird around me for weeks now,” Sokka says, trying not to let the hurt seep into his voice. “What makes you think he’d tell me anything?”

“He will,” Katara replies cryptically, and with that, she returns to washing the dishes.

Clearly Sokka isn’t going to be getting a solid answer out of this conversation, so he turns around and heads down the hall to find Zuko.

It doesn’t take long to locate him, out in the courtyard practicing firebending with Aang. Zuko’s been training him in a frenzy; it feels like that’s all they do sometimes. They just ate, and they’re already back at it again, likely at Zuko’s direction. The least they could do is take a few breaks.

Sokka waltzes down the couple of steps outside and into the courtyard. As they’re both practicing the same forms, Aang moving his body in sync with Zuko’s, neither of them notice him approaching. Sokka waits until they seem like they’re at a good stopping point, assuming a final fighting stance and then relaxing their postures, to call out, “Hey, Zuko? I need to talk to you.”

Zuko nearly jumps at the sound of his voice and whirls around. “Okay,” he says, attempting to act calm, but very obviously failing. The sweat rolling down his temples doesn’t help matters, either. “What is it?”

Sokka awkwardly glances over at Aang. “Uh, can we talk in private, actually?”

Zuko narrows his eyes, but nods silently and waves a hand in Aang’s direction, dismissing him. Once he’s out of earshot, Sokka sits down on one of the steps. Zuko, however, remains standing.

Sokka decides to just get straight to the point. “So. You and Katara.”

Zuko raises an eyebrow. “What about me and Katara?”

“You’ve been talking a lot recently,” Sokka says. “Alone.”

Zuko’s face heats up, though it was already a little flushed from training. “So?”

“I asked Katara about it, but I didn’t get much out of her. I thought maybe you two were dating or something, but she said that wasn’t it. She wouldn’t tell me anything else, though.” Sokka shrugs. “She told me to ask you instead.”

Zuko folds his arms over his chest. “What gives you the right to know about two people’s private business?” He really sounds like a prince there, and it looks like he knows it.

“Well, number one, something’s telling me this ‘business’ was hidden pretty specifically from me, and I’d like to know why,” Sokka replies. “And number two, I’d appreciate some sort of heads-up if my sister ends up dating the crown prince of the Fire Nation, who spent the better part of a year actively trying to capture us.” That last part comes out sounding more hostile than he means for it to.

Zuko scowls and throws his hands out. “What are you saying? That after all this time, after everything, you still don’t trust me?”

Sokka holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “No, no, I didn’t mean—”

“Save it.” Zuko scoffs, but there isn’t any venom in it, just hurt. “And here I was starting to think we—”

He bites his lip and stops talking, just stands and stares with his hands balled up into fists at his sides and his eyes glinting with something Sokka can’t quite decipher.

“What?” Sokka asks. “Starting to think we what?”

Zuko shakes his head, looks away. His body relaxes, and he opens his hands back up, using one of them to rub at his scarred eye. Finally, he walks over to the steps and sits down next to Sokka, resting his arms on his knees as he thinks about his response. After a long moment of silence, he speaks.

“When we were together at the Boiling Rock, I...realized something. I decided to talk to Katara about it later, and then she started giving me some advice.”

Sokka narrows his eyes in confusion. “Why her specifically?”

Zuko sighs. “Because she knows you best.”

Sokka shakes his head. He really, truly has no idea what’s going on here. “What does this have to do with me?”

Zuko is quiet for a long time. Finally, he says with a small laugh, “You got it all mixed up, Sokka. I’m not interested in your sister. I’m interested in you.”

Sokka almost doesn’t believe that he’s hearing correctly. His heart is full of so many somethings, things like relief and shock and hope and desire and an overwhelming feeling of duh.

“Me?” he sputters, because he realizes that he hasn’t said anything yet, and Zuko is looking at him like he expects Sokka to slap him. “I—me?”

Zuko smiles wryly. “I know; I was surprised, too.”

For a moment, they just look at each other. Then they both start laughing, so awkwardly and so stupidly. They laugh so hard that Sokka’s stomach starts to hurt. They laugh so hard that they have to hold onto each other to catch their breath, and that’s when Sokka leans in.

It’s short and soft, an apology, a beginning. He tastes like fire and what they had for dinner, but Sokka doesn’t mind. When they kiss, it feels like something clicks inside of him.

Zuko pulls away first, guilt written all over his face. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was just afraid—I didn’t know how you’d—”

“No, no, I get it,” Sokka assures him. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t trust you, because I do, Zuko. I do.”

Zuko’s lips curl up into the faintest smile. “I wanted to ask Katara for her blessing. And then I just ended up coming to her for advice on how to...well. Court you, I guess.”

Sokka snorts. “Just be yourself. That’s enough for me. Just don’t go making me jealous.”

Zuko giggles—he actually straight-up giggles. Sokka thinks he could listen to it forever. “Jealous? Of who, Katara?”

“Well, yeah. I assumed you two had a thing.”

Zuko shrugs, his cheeks bright red. “I never said it was a good plan. But it worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

Sokka smiles to himself and laces his fingers with Zuko’s. His heart feels like it might take off and fly away at any moment. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I suppose it did.”

(Katara finds them kissing again a few minutes later, and the only thing she says is “Finally.”)

Falling For You- Tom Holland x Reader (Part 1)

Word count: 2, 463

Summary: Two high school friends reconnect after years spent apart. And once they are alone, they can't deny the impassioned feelings they've always had for one another.

Warnings: none :’)

✭♡✭♡✭♡✭

The bell clanged against the door as you made your way into a dimly lit street-side pub. 

The frigid London air lofted into the once cozy atmosphere, sweeping your hair violently over your shoulders even though you attempted to keep it at bay. You sighed deeply, making sure the door closed behind you. Frustrated, cold, and grumpy—was your mood. You were a usually timid and shy girl, but right then it took all of your willpower to not slam the door and vigorously demand the bartender to pour you four vodka shots. Nothing was going your way. Your usual Friday night for as far as you were concerned. 

You slipped out of your coat and hung it up on the rack, knowing you would need to down a couple of shots if you were going to survive the night. "Aye sweetheart." The bartender glanced your way, gesturing for you to sit down and get comfortable. "Evening." You acknowledged. "I'd like two shots of gin please, and rum with coke.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded, even a stranger could sense your foul mood. Or maybe that was because it came with a bartender’s job description, knowing when and when not to bother someone.  "Everything alright miss?" 

"I'm okay." You rubbed her eyes in discomfort. "Just some college drama that I'd like to stay out of." 

The bartender was most likely wondering why you chose to stop into his bar. The college bars were a couple blocks north, a surpassingly far walk from this facility. "You got a ride home?" He asked, sliding you two shots filled to the rim. You stared down at them and grinned sheepishly. This would definitely help you forget, sooner rather than later. "Yeah." You sighed, watching him mix the rest of your order. "I'll take an Uber." "Sounds fine with me." He set the glass in front of you. "It's getting pretty late so I'm going to clean up a bit, I'll leave you be. If you need anything just holler." "Thanks." You smiled, bringing the liquor to your lips and tilting your head back.

Visiting local and less trafficked bars like this one was a habit you found yourself regularly in. It was a great way to get wasted while not having to interact with your peers. It was also a great way of avoiding any temptations that came with following and getting drunk with a group of college boys. 

This place was quiet. You could nurse your drinks in peace and leave without feeling guilty of ignoring people. The vibe was always low key, and the older Victorian architecture was something that pleased your eyes. Smooth wooden bars and chairs with cushioned stools, you might have to become a regular customer. 

Your attention turned to the football match replaying from earlier in the evening. But your mind could not focus, it was racing with all the responsibilities you were temporarily avoiding. You groaned and took the second shot of gin, this one hitting you a lot harder than the first. You quickly held the mixed drink to your lips in attempts to chase the shot down easier. The coke settled your stomach. 

You held the glass by your fingertips, and swirled the ice around for amusement. You felt like you were in a trance, sitting in a pub all alone. You could not help but feel that something important in your life was missing. It was midnight, and the bar was pretty much empty except for a group of rowdy men in a back booth. The stereotypical British night was unfolding around you. The same old and boring routine. 

An evening like this was never going to be fun if you didn’t drown yourself in booze. The thought caused sadness and self pity to seep into your mind. You honestly thought things would be different. At least that was you hoped when you were in grade school. But now, you were 21 and still hadn't finished nursing school. You had one year left and it was killing you. You had the most boring office job in the world to help you get by and pay off the debt. It was beyond stressful. All you wanted to do was think of something comforting. And attempt you did, but nothing came. You kept drinking into the night, ordering a few more shots to keep you busy. The alcohol tasted less and less appealing the more you drank. You were about to raise your hand for another, but you were cut off by the door bursting open. The cold air came in a rush, an equivalent to the feeling of someone striking you across the face. A group of attractive young men swarmed inside, all of them laughing and talking. The bar soon filled with an exciting buzz that wasn't there before. Great. You thought, knowing it was time you took your leave. You reached for your purse that was nestled in the seat beside you, knowing you had been there for over an hour. But as soon as you lifted your head, you felt every negative emotion melt away. You almost gasped, eyes widening as you spotted the last person you ever thought you would see. Tommy? What was he doing back in London? "This is insane." You mumbled, turning back to the counter and confiding in the alcohol. You must be seeing things. There was no way he would be back here. 

Normally, you would have stared straight ahead and pretended to not have noticed his presence. But your inebriated state gave you a boost of whirly confidence. Gaining the courage, you peered over again and winced. It was him, and he looked wonderful. His curly brown hair had finally grown out to the length you had always urged him to make it. It suited him well, a little too well. You found yourself gawking. You had said goodbye to a boy, but now you were staring at a man. All the memories the two of you shared clouded your mind before you could stop them. You hadn't realized how much you missed him. When Tom left, you suppressed those exhilarating memories. That was the only way you could move on. Though there were dozens of people surrounding him, your eyes focused on him alone. He looked so handsome that it took your breath away. Your eyes met shortly after, and you watched his expression light up when he realized it was you. Your heart began to beat faster as Tom whispered something in Harrison's ear. Harrison smiled and waved at you. He looked great as well. Tom excused himself and walked to your side, a little too quickly to remain unsuspicious. "Y/N..." He breathed in disbelief, a soft smile appearing on his lips. "You look amazing, darling." He complimented, causing you to blush a deep shade of red. His voice had gotten much deeper since the last time you chatted. "I can say the same about you." You chuckled, setting aside your last shot glass to face him completely. "It's been years." He continued, staring at you as if you were fragile. You most definitely looked the part. Tom may of changed, but his warm and kind brown eyes stayed the same. You had stared into them so many times before, but tonight was different. They were filled with an unspoken attraction that you tried so hard to deny when you were younger. The nostalgia was hitting you right where it hurt you the most. Tom’s gaze was pulling relentlessly at your heartstrings, reminding you that you had never truly moved on from him. But then you remembered how abruptly he left, how he hardly mustered a meaningful goodbye. Those memories still stung, even if you claimed they didn't. That's why this hello was so bittersweet. You lowered your gaze, swallowing the lump in your throat. "Yeah, I thought I'd never see you again." "Why do you say that?" Tom made himself comfortable on the stool beside you, moving your purse onto the counter. "You have my number darling." He said nonchalantly, raising his hand and asking for a beer. "And you have mine." You scoffed, finishing off your glass and asking for another one. Tom was quiet as he watched you take the shot. You took a sip of water to wash the liquor down. You tried to not show how badly it was burning your throat. "I couldn't just text you, Tom. You went to America.... we drifted apart." Tom grew silent for a long moment, and eventually he nodded with affirmation. "You're right." He admitted, realizing how careless he must have sounded. You shrugged, keeping your gaze on the television. You really didn't know what to say, or how to say it. Would he even want to know how you felt back when you were teenagers? Would it even matter? "How was America?" You asked, attempting to keep the conversation on something besides the pain you felt when he left. He never noticed and you planned to keep it that way. "It was amazing, but it's nothing like home." He reached his hand out as the bartender passed him a beer. You were far past tipsy, and his words sounded like music to your ears. You wanted to keep him talking, to make you feel like you were not alone. “I missed everyone here too much to stay.” You smiled at his conviction. It was nice to see that the fame hadn’t reached his head. “So the movie went well?" You tilted your head, finding yourself swooning all over again. You just couldn't help it. Tom's eyes sparkled at the mention of it. "Perfect, I still can't believe it happened. We just finished filming so I got to come home. Only for a few weeks though." "That's awesome." You grinned, catching his gaze before flickering your eyes away in embarrassment. Your cheeks started to flush from the liquor. Maybe that's why you felt like you were floating. There was no way you could still have feelings for him after all these years. "You're a star now, what you always wanted." You added, the comment coming out more hostile than you intended. Alcohol was notorious for its uncensorship. Tom raised his eyebrows. "What have you been up to?" He asked curiously. "Nothing." You felt tears stinging your eyes. Why were you crying? Were you jealous that he was living out his dream, while you still hadn't reached your potential? "I'm still in school. I have one more year before I'm registered." "That's great," Tom assured. "Not even close to nothing." "I'm sorry." You apologized, sniffing quietly. "You caught me at a bad time." Tom leaned in closer, and you could smell the alcohol in his breath. He genuinely seemed concerned by the expression you were making.  "Are you really okay?" "I'm drunk," You reminded him. "and stressed...Seeing you again made me want to cry. You should probably leave before I say something weird." His jaw clenched. "Do you not want me to be here?" "I'm overjoyed that you're here, Tommy." You whispered. "I didn't mean it like that." "I know, I know." He sighed, licking his lips nervously. Though he seemed to relax when you called him by his childhood nickname.  "I've just been hoping to see you since I came back. I missed you." "I missed you too." You smiled, a tear dripping down your cheek. How pathetic. Tom's eyes widened. "Please don't cry...what did I say?" "N-nothing." You chuckled, shooing his hand away as he tried to dry your cheek with his sweater sleeve. "It’s the alcohol. I wasn’t expecting to see you." He laughed. "I couldn't tell, you're beautiful either way." You rolled your eyes. "Still a Casanova aren't we?" "Only for you." 

Those words caused your stomach to flip in a way you had not experienced in far too long. Silence then consumed you, afraid to speak on anything more. 

Tom’s phone buzzed next to him, you assumed his friends, who were still eyeing him suspiciously from the other side of the bar. 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two £20 bills. "It was nice to see you again Y/N. But the mates are calling. Do you need me to call you a taxi?" He asked, seemingly reluctant to go. Tom’s eyes twinkled with concern. You knew if he had the option to drive you home himself, he would. You glanced over to the door and noticed his mate’s were all gathering their things and grabbing their drinks. "I’m alright." You mumbled. "I want to catch you at a better time, yeah?" You nodded, a genuine smile spreading across your face. "I would love that." "I will call you tomorrow." He handed you the money. "For mine and yours." "Tom, my drink wasn't that much!" You looked confused as he curled your fingers around the bills. Yet his gentle touch soothed your precarious thoughts. "You've had three drinks since I've been here darling." He chuckled. "Keep it okay? For all the birthdays I missed." The thought was sorrowful, but you accepted the gift. "Thanks." Tom scratched the back of his neck, seeming nervous for what he was about to admit. He leaned down to whisper quietly in your ear. "The thing I regret most is leaving you behind, Y/N. I hope I can make it up to you." You were speechless as you gazed up at him. Did you hear that correctly? "Tom—" His hand lingered on your shoulder for a moment, but before you could process what was happening, you felt his lips against your forehead. The sweetest, most charming gesture you could have ever hoped for.   "I'll see you soon." Tom parted, letting his hand fall away from your flustered stature. You felt the promise in his stare. You would see him again, and fairly soon. "Bye." You managed to whisper, watching him slip back into his coat and laugh with his friends. Tom glanced over at you one last time, his lips curving into a heartwarming smile. Yet there was still a sadness behind it, an unspoken regret. You started to believe that everything he said was true. He really did miss you. You slipped the bills onto the counter and left in a hurry. The group was already gone but you didn't mind. You needed to be alone after what just happened. You may be drunk but you could still think straight. Tom really said those things. He was really there. Tears started to pour down your cheeks as you stood outside on the curb, trying your best to make sense of it all. Were you possibly getting a second chance to be with Tom?

Cardfight!! Vanguard Extra Story IF 16 things

forgot to post this, heck

Fanguard’s dream of actual hobo Kai-kun sleeping on Bench-chan is finally realized

There’s a lot of Kamui and Shin instinctively having feelings true to the true reality and mismatched to IF’s world. There’s two possibilities for this: a) Aichi did a really shitty job nailing down everything due to his concentration being focused primarily on Kai-kun b) the rupture from the illusion around Kai-kun unravelling tore into the IF world as a whole and it’s unable to entirely maintain its story, allowing for instances like Morikawa recalling Kai-kun’s line from Reboot’s first episode or Kamui and Shin recognizing Kagero as a clan expected of him.

The Kamui/Morikawa interactions were really cute, it’s nice to see them butting heads and just being rambunctious kids

Izaki sank the Miyaji Kai-kun theory, curious what he’s like at school in this form.

The ferocity of his original memories invading and scaring him having a lasting impact and making him afraid to play again even a couple/few days later is both fascinating and gutwrenching.

Honestly very surprised that Shin would reprimand anyone for being loud, particularly when that’s Misaki’s thing and where are you hiding her?

The softer he is, the more heartbreaking his situation is in the grand scheme of things, even if he’s come to terms with it. How dare you, Bushi.

IF 15: [roasts himself]. IF 16: [literally roasts a nerd]

Love and hate how the opportunity to elaborate and delve into Kai-kun’s relationship with Dragonic Overlord is taken advantage of because why not just stab me instead? It’s a nice insight into a facet of his time away from Hitsue that was never truly touched on in either version prior.

Emi and Shingo become Fanguard.

Right eye sighted. But being it’s Shingo's recollection of Aichi, not yet willing to buy that it’s completely normal with the fact that, beyond this and his encountering Shuka, it’s remained hidden — the purpose of the shot itself was to establish Shingo isn’t remembering things correctly, so there’s no reason to believe that he’s aware of anything that might be different about it.     — This could be reflected in how Aichi keeps his distance from the others, holed up in his private quarters and suffering with only Kourin seeming to be anywhere near him during such times. It’s reminiscent of Legion Mate, both in his trying to shoulder everything alone/hide the agony he’s going through and Kourin’s close proximity, standing as his right hand in a manner that no-one else fills.    — Also to go with the Legion Mate topic, in this moment, IF Aichi gives off VoidAichi vibes. Despite how broken up it’s apparent he would and should be to exile himself (see V epi 21 and the flashback to him watching the others in Card Capital from Legion Mate), he shows no emotion, but rather seems completely numbed. Also probably looking waaaay too far into it, but 2/2 times when his face has been completely obscured, there’s been a stylistic choice beneath his eyes that is typical of exhaustion/strain/fatigue and it keeps worrying me.

IF 17

The preview gives the impression that this episode is about to be a turning point; that with Naoki and Shingo both having some understanding that things aren’t quite right, their loyalty to Aichi might start to wane.

Naoki’s going out in his Miyaji school uniform has alarm bells ringing, personally, for reasons elaborated below.

Never knew that needed Kai-kun working a part-time job in my life but boy is it a need now.

Here for Mamoru reigniting his fandom for Kai-kun. Very here for it.

IF vs. V 21

As a first note, Kai-kun being the one to separation between Aichi and his deck against their IF selves has a nice touch of irony to it. Calling back to it would be a powerful way of drawing on their positions in relation to the scene.

Considering just how badly Aichi freaked out over the idea of giving up his Royal Paladin deck and what it would force unto him, there’s little reason to suspect anything that’s happening in IF is really of his own free will.   — It’s been brought up that, without the two meeting as kids, Aichi shouldn’t really have much knowhow about Vanguard, much less a relationship to it. Considering Kai-kun remained a Hitsue student, it’s an easy assumption to make that Aichi’s education followed the same pattern (though his reasoning for returning to Miyaji remains a mystery, with his lacking the confidence that his original reality/Outside World self had); his exposure to the game might come through his time in Middle School, but it’s a loose and distant connection at best. IF World Aichi, without knowledge of Outside World (if they are two separate versions), would have no reason to target Vanguard over anything else.

As Void and Star-Vaders aren’t a facet of the Reboot continuity, a theory that had in mind for a while is that a remnant of Brandt may have seized the moment when Aichi was Deleted and been festering away in the same manner as the Link Joker Seed. A previous post detailed the mindfuckery involved to break Aichi enough that he would turn on the game, particularly given how fearful he was of relinquishing it and the isolation it would return him to — the very circumstances he’s imposed upon himself (but far worse, in exiling himself from the real world). Though he’s a selfless boy and Kai-kun means an enormous amount to him, it simply doesn’t make sense that he would willingly go down this road.

Rather he’s mind has been twisted so much to believe in what he’s now doing or he’s being controlled by something of Brandt (as we’d never confirmation it was no longer a threat), if not some other force (though to introduce a new one at this stage in both the franchise and the reboot continuity with OverDress around the corner would be a peculiar choice).

Couple of theory things, feat. one really out there idea:

Naoki:

Naoki’s actions in the preview might be glimpses of him starting to break away from Aichi’s will; not with malicious intent, but rather the opposite.

The line of thinking goes as so: as he and Shingo come to realize their memories have been tampered with, Naoki seeks out Emi and Shuka, obtaining Blaster Blade with the intent of returning to the point in time where Aichi should have received it. Among the screencaps Bushiroad has released, one shows a young Naoki and Aichi, who’s holding a card  — rather than allowing the event to play out as it should have, Naoki intends to give Aichi the card himself.

In doing so, Aichi can begin down his path that liberates him from the crushing loneliness that he endured prior to actively playing the game, or in the case of IF, running away from home. Simultaneously, Naoki himself is freed from the guilt that’s shackled him in both continuities about not doing anything to help Aichi, as the Reboot has demonstrated how he yearned to at the time but was too late to make any move. This is his means of doing so and atoning for a reality when he failed.

When Emi, Shuka and Kai-kun would recognize him as the one who threatened the latter’s parents plus Suiko (and Ibuki) would be familiar with him as normal, there’s not a clear reason why he would forgo his Sanctuary Knight uniform for a civilian look other than to avoid attracting the attention of bystanders.;(It might be overthinking it to speculate there being anything more to it than this, but when has that ever worked?)    — Granted this is under the assumption that he would be able to leap through the timeline though Jammers of earlier episodes were capable of doing so, none of the enemy’s core have made any such move yet. And the consequences of doing so; if Aichi’s suffering is the result of IF World unravelling, then Naoki venturing to alter the timeline further may, in fact, cause him more harm than any good he may intend.

2.5 hours later edit: Courtney just shared the epi synposis and FUCK

Alternatively, Naoki might regain glimpses of the Psyqualia Zombie arc and see himself beating Aichi, leading to Destiny Conductor being able to control him and his eventual Deletion by Ibuki’s hand.

On the one side, it reinforces Aichi’s feelings that Vanguard is something they shouldn’t come into contact with, but Naoki could see it otherwise. He harbours guilt over being the catalyst for those instances, piling on top of his failure to reach out when they were in elementary school, spurning him to go back and redo everything so that he can always protect Aichi, not to embody anguish that the other goes through.

It would also strengthen a hostile opposition towards Ibuki, whose past sin comes back into play. He might throw the event in his face as a means of trying to dredge up his old feelings towards Vanguard and sway him to resist setting things right, whenever/however it is he’s released from wherever Aichi sent him and depending on what he experiences there.

Kourin:

Where we are currently feels very much like the “Sera’s betrayal leading to the Quatre Knights’ dissolution” point. Sera and Rati clashed with one another personally, Gaillard joined with Kai-kun and Naoki, Neve opposed VoidAichi directly — Naoki’s actions in the preview might be glimpses of him starting to break away from Aichi’s will. Though Naoki’s intentions are ultimately to save Aichi from the position he’s stuck in, it’s ultimately defying him — a far cry from what has been shown of the Knights, thus far, who have been fiercely loyal to him, which makes this sort of movement striking.

Miwa also doesn’t appear best pleased in the preview. As someone whose best friend was nearly killed as a result of Aichi’s orders  — a friend at risk now that he’s taking a stance against the group’s status quo — there’s every reason for him to defect for the sake of preventing another (and possibly actually fatal) incident. It’s very possible that It’s entirely possible that, in similar vein to Legion Mate, the collapse of the Knights will leave only Kourin by Aichi’s side, who’ll serve as the last line of defence. 

Mamoru & Tokoha / Aichi & Emi:

It wasn’t touched on during Nagisa and Gouki’s episode, but the dynamic of older brother and younger sister has the potential to crop up here, as well as the chance to contrast the Sendous’ current selves with the Anjou siblings (and the former’s past).

   — Not to mention how Mamoru and Aichi are polar opposites, at the moment in regards to their sisters in danger. Mamoru gambled with his life to keep Tokoha safe in the Dragon Empire attack of the original continuity, and anyone could see Aichi would do the same, but IF Aichi is the one who would inflict harm upon Emi, made clear by his soldiers’ attack on her and Shuka when they attempted to enter the past. Maybe, inadvertently, Tokoha might be put in jeopardy and Mamoru propelled to protect her in the same way, bringing about the behaviour of the two versions of her brother that Emi knows in the same situation.

Give me 11-year old Tokoha to mirror 11-year old Emi at the start of each continuity and drive this home.

And most importantly:

DRAGONIC OVERLORD ARMOUR

What Can We Do to Fight Police Brutality and Protect Our Rights?

I see a lot of emotion and turmoil right now, and it’s understandable. Fear, anger, hostility, pain, sadness..

People are throwing around ideas and talking about what we need to be doing and how we need to feel, but all of it is a little abstract and some of it is counterproductive. 

What steps can we take to defend our rights that are concrete and could address the corrupt government and law enforcement system in a way that prevails?

Note: this is merely a starting point for discussion, feel free to add your own thoughts and resources

Here are some steps I think we should consider, support, and spread:

1. Eliminate Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects officers from being sued for violating your rights. Originally meant to protect officers acting in “good faith,” this defense has morphed over time to make it exceedingly difficult to prove your rights have been violated by creating an almost impossible criteria: you need to identify a judicial decision that happened to involve the same context and conduct. Without that, the officer is shielded from liability and the case is dismissed, reinforcing the cycle and never establishing a precedent. 

U.S. Representative Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, is scheduled to introduce a new bill, the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, on Thursday (06/04/2020). Once it is officially introduced I will include a link, and we can all examine the bill and begin taking steps to support it (assuming the bill doesn’t have any riders).

Read: Qualified Immunity Explained Read: U.S. Lawmaker Prepares Bill Aiming to End Court Protection for Police Read: Justin Amash’s tweet on his Bill

2. Implement Police Liability Insurance

When settlements are paid out for injuries caused by officers, its rarely paid by the officer in question. We, the taxpayer, pay for it. We’re footing the bill for the officers violating our rights and the rights of others.

Mandatory police liability insurance has the goal of punishing cops that police badly: the worse their policing, the higher their premium. Eventually, those with very poor track records would either no longer be eligible for police liability insurance (and therefore be unemployable) or be priced out. It would be similar to nurses and doctors’ professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them financially by paying out damages.

One major critique is that this method is simplistic and may cause police officers to be overly cautious (i.e. avoiding conflict since they’re afraid of their rate going up).

Read: Make Cops Carry Liability Insurance: The Private Sector Knows How to Spread Risks, and Costs

3. Demand Data & Transparency

Improved data collection and reporting is necessary to identify law enforcement trends. It should be mandatory for police departments to keep track of a list of policing metrics such as number of people killed, use of force and to what degree, and stop-and-frisks, and have the list of metrics standardized to enable direct comparisons between departments and ensure quality policing. This data should be collected and released publically every year. As of right now there is no federal or comprehensive database, but there is one created by the Center for Policing Equity.

Data like this can then be used to create tailored training programs for departments, whether that’s on de-escalation or implicit bias.

See: National Justice Database

4. Take a Stand Against Quota Policing

Quota policing, whether formal or informal, impacts how our actions are viewed by law enforcement and in turn how we view police officers. 

Quota policing is when officers are expected to or awarded if they meet certain quotas regarding arrests, stops, or tickets. Quota policing infringes on our rights as citizens as it can force police to manufacture illegality and dissuade them from using discretion, leading to more unnecessary stops and opportunities for brutality. 

Quota policing can be formal or informal. Event though some states, like New York, outlaw policing quotas they persist nonetheless. One example is in a recent lawsuit against NYPD, in which Officer Adhyl Polanco has accused the NYPD over alleged quotas, stating:

”’The culture is, you're not working unless you are writing summonses or arresting people,’ says Polanco.” ...

“Polanco says he encountered an unwritten rule that officers are expected to bring in ‘20 and one.’ That's 20 tickets and one arrest per month. But it was tough to get anyone outside the department to believe him, because NYPD officials would always deny there were any quotas. They still do.”

5. Fight Private Prisons

Police brutality is one aspect of the corrupt justice system. Private prisons play a role in how we are all treated and how we view and interact with the entire justice system. 

Private prisons are prisons that are privately owned and operated, or leased by private corporations that have total operational control. Private prisons have a financial incentive to incarcerate more while releasing and rehabilitating less. Inmates are not a commodity and never should have became one. 

With contracts that guarantee 65% - 90% occupancy in prisons it is evident that our system is broken. Leaders are pressures to act against their communities’ best interests and keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted. How might this be done? Finding more people to incarcerate (more stops, which create more opportunities for brutality) and longer sentences. 

See: Abolish Private Prisons

6. Demand Change in Blue Blood Culture

Police officers have a tough job and face struggles non-officers don’t, and their shared experiences mold a culture unique to them. This, by itself, is not an issue. This is completely natural and part of the human experience.

The problem is that police officers play a vital role in society and hold a lot of power over the public. When an insular culture develops, it becomes very easy to pressure officers into complicity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in. No one wants to be othered, seen as a snitch, or hated by all their peers. Officers want to be a part of the in-group, but that involves conforming and being trusted.

This means looking the other way when a fellow cop plants drugs, when they beat on people, when they commit fraud, when they break protocol, when they don’t even attempt to investigate, when they take or give a bribe, the list is endless—it’s the blue wall of silence.

Without accountability and transparency, cultures like this are allowed to proliferate. Culture is self-sustaining in the fact that it only continues to exist as those within it continue to perpetuate its existence. Previously listed measures are a necessary step before department cultures like this can be expected to change. Without accountability and transparency, we rely on the good of one’s heart alone. It’s been demonstrated that just isn’t enough. This is the only non-concrete step, but it is dependant on practical changes for it to be successful.

Please also check out: Campaign Zero, which outlines even more solutions than what I have here, researches policing practices, tracks legislation in different states, and enables you to reach out to your representatives.

all roads lead - ch.2

When his mother dies, Stiles runs away, straight into danger - only to be saved by Peter Hale. Seven years later, after burying their alpha, Stiles and Malia return home.

Word Count: 2,065 | Also on Ao3 | Other Chapters: 1, 3, 4, 5,

Chapter 2: BOOKS

The bus drops them on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, and as it retreats back down the forest-hemmed road Stiles feels a desperate urge to run after it and beg the driver to take him back to New York.

Instead he swallows the fear that beats like his heart in his throat, and turns to face the sign in front of them, which reads Welcome to Beacon Hills, Please enjoy your stay in large, rust-marred letters.

Past that is the road into town, crowded by dense trees which tower into the sky on both sides. Stiles used to feel so at home in the woods, with their hushed magic and teeming life hidden just below the surface. But these woods are menacing, oppressively quiet but far from silent. These trees are old, centuries of memories imprinted in the whispers of their leaves and cracks in their bark.

"We've come this far." Malia's voice is like a shot in the quiet, cold air, snapping Stiles from his thoughts.

"I don't think we thought this through." Stiles replies. He's right, of course. It's only been four days since Malia stumbled across the article which mentions his dad - the sheriff of Beacon Hills closing yet another thought-unsolvable case only a handful of weeks ago - while she was searching for any remaining members of Peter's elusive family, or a trace of her mysterious mother. They packed light, buying a ticket on the first bus to California that very night.

He has no idea what he's doing. What could he possibly say to explain the last nine years to the father whose death he mourned almost a decade ago? How can he face what Stiles running away so soon after losing Claudia must have done to him?

"We can't turn back now." Malia sounds so sure of herself, so without doubt - it's a trait Stiles has always been jealous of, now more than ever. "And besides, we need to tell the Hales that Peter is dead."

"Pretty sure they already thought he was." Stiles snorts derisively despite himself. "Either that or they'll be glad to hear the news. There's a reason he refused to talk about them."

"Well then I want to meet them and punch them in the face."

"Sounds like a plan," Stiles concedes, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he squeezes Malia's hand.

"Let's go then." She shoves him playfully, and he promptly trips over his own feet, landing with a thud beside his rucksack. "How can you be a big, bad alpha werewolf and still be clumsy?"

"Guess I'm just talented that way."

"It's a very impressive talent."

He takes a mock bow as he stands. "Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week."

Malia rolls her eyes and starts walking towards the town, leaving him to scoop up his bag and scramble after her.

~~~

Half an hour later finds them standing in the library in the centre of town. It's small, considering it's the only one in the entire town - low roofed and darkly lit, shelves stretching as far as the eye can see.

This would be Peter's idea of heaven. Stiles can imagine him - a less broken, teenage version of him - curling up behind the stacks, going through book after book, determined to read the whole damn library.

Even the smell, of old books and ink, reminds him of Peter.

Stiles blinks rapidly and forces himself to focus on the task at hand: research.

He's always been able to trust in 2AM internet spirals to find any information he desires - his aversion to Peter's dusty old tomes of lore is one of the things they argued over most - but of course these things can never be that simple. The Hale fire is a thing of mystery, its details buried under confusion and wrapped in conspiracy - almost as if someone went to great lengths to obscure the facts.

He wouldn't be surprised if that someone had been Peter. Know thy enemy, he would always say, a favourite refrain heavy with the weight of experience. What better way to fight an enemy than to make yourself unknowable?

They don't even know how many people died in the fire, how many survived. How long Peter's excruciating coma lasted. How he ended up stumbling across Stiles, sweeping him and Malia up in a whirwind of pack and safety and home. It wasn't something Peter prefered to dwell on, and even Malia never pushed.

Stiles tears his eyes away from the bank of admittedly ancient computers, turning regretfully to the newspaper archives, and gets to work.

It takes far longer than he'd like. His attention span has never been a trusted thing, either flitting between things like a bird or doubling down on one and letting the world fall away. As a wolf the impatience, the frustration, only grows.

What little he knows about the Hales is information he's collected, hoarded like gold in the tiny morsels he's been able to gather along with any information about Beacon Hills. The Hale family, a long line of wolves settled in Northen California. Settled there for a reason, the grapevine insists, though none can remember why. Power. Magic. It alls boils down to those two inextricable things, in Stiles' experience.

And then came January, 2005. The Wolf Moon. A family gathering gone awfully, terribly wrong. He finds, buried, in the wrong box, the newspaper for the day after. Electrical fire, the headline claims, though it is too soon after the incident for such a judgement to have been made. Eleven dead - the number burns into his eyes, and for a moment he's lost in imagining it, those last moments, the smell of ash on the wind. He feels sick.

Finally, he finds two names: Laura and Derek Hale, Peter's niece and nephew. The only other survivors of the fire. A passing mention in a middle page column announces them leaving Beacon Hills.

Leaving Peter.

A sudden flush of anger takes Stiles by surprise. He has to squeeze his eyes shut to hide his flickering irises.

They left him. Alone, in agony, paralysed, and they fled, tearing away the one thing which might aid his healing. The warmth of pack, of family, replaced only by the burning memories of a house and life ablaze.

He'd known the story was bad, but still. Stiles feels sick, imagining how awful those months must have been. He feels hollow enough with one burnt and broken pack bond, cold in a way no fire could warm - but he has Malia, and her connection burns inside him, a guiding lantern in the dark, softening the edge.

Peter had a pack of thirteen reduced to two in an instant. And then those two lights had wandered far into the dark where even their glow would be useless.

No wonder he'd been so broken. No wonder he'd clung to Malia, to Stiles, like lifelines that might vanish like so much smoke.

Malia wanders over to his desk and seats herself on top of the table, ignoring the poisonous look the librarian gives her. "You're spiraling," she says shortly.

He pushes the newspaper article towards her. She wrinkles her nose - he's sure she would rather put her own arm in a vat of acid before having to read - but nonetheless skims over the words, a frown settling between her brows.

"Nothing we didn't already know," she says eventually, with a nochalance he knows is fake. Malia doesn't understand a lot about social cues or human interaction, but pack loyalty holds a close place in her heart. Shot at for most of her younger years by hunters, chased by other creatures in the Beacon Hills Preserve, abandoned by her own father for being too animal, too inhuman - the only safe haven she's ever known is Peter and Stiles. Her pack, always there, without question or demand.

Stiles sighs and nods, leaning to rest his forehead on her knee. She combs her fingers absently through his hair, and the gesture settles something inside him.

He's so tired. So lost. He feels as if he hasn't stopped moving, thinking, panicking in years. Was it really only weeks ago that he'd made a deal with the devil, let a fox crawl into his skin to save his pack, only for it to make a home there, to lead to that pack's very decimation?

And you'd do it again, he thinks, and he can't tell if the voice is a lingering other or his own. But he knows it's true. Better a quick and bloody death from the claws of mindless trickery than a slow and excruciating torture at the hands of hunters.

He wants to curl into a ball in the woods and never move again, but he forces himself to look up at his beta, his best friend, his sister. They've picked a direction to move, and until they can find steady ground again, it seems easiest to simply follow.

"Where to?" Malia asks, sensing his thoughts. Sometimes he wonders whether their pack bonds share more than connection, emotion, warmth. Then again, Malia knows his scent, knows his mind, perhaps better than she knows her own - as does he for her. They are in tune in a way deeper than words can surmise.

"The Hale house," he says slowly, "...or my dad's."

"Charred ruins and a possibly hostile pack of werewolves, or the grieving father you abandoned to alcoholism. Tough choice."

"You really know how to put sparkles on everything," he snipes. She tugs his hair almost painfully in response.

He weighs the options in his head for a moment, makes a show of thinking, but his heart has already decided. "My dad," he says. "He might be able to tell us what we need to know about the town. Give us the history, the inside track."

"And he isn't supernatural," Malia reads between the lines like they're the whole goddamn book.

"Yeah," Stiles admits.

He's had enough of the supernatural for a lifetime.

~~~

Unfortunately, life can never be that simple, and things have changed in the almost-decade Stiles has been gone. He knocks on the door of his old house, ignoring the ghosts of a buried past which curl around him. He doesn't dare wander directly into the sheriff's office, isn't sure how he'd handle that many guns and the overwhelming smell of death; only now, facing this monument of his buried regrets, he's not sure that's any worse-

The door swings open, and he finds himself face to face with a girl around his own age, all angles and dark hair.

She smells sharply of wolfsbane and iron.

He flinches back in surprise.. "You're not the sheriff."

"Last time I checked, yeah," the girl laughs. It's a nice sound, entirely at odds with the scent of violence on the air. "I'm Allison. My family moved here last year- this used to be the sheriff's house, though. Are you looking for him?"

Words fail Stiles entirely. Everything here is so wrong, on so many levels.

"We are," Malia steps in smoothly. "Could you tell us where to find him?"

"Have you tried the sheriff's station?"

Malia gives her such a deadpan glare even Stiles would cower under its full intensity. He's impressed by how long the girl - Allison - lasts before wilting, scrawling an address onto a post-it note and handing it over with a bashful smile.

He's never seen such an effective wolf in sheep's clothing.

Except perhaps himself.

He nods wordlessly at her, not trusting himself to speak, but as they turn to leave Allison speaks out. "What do you want with Stilinski anyway?" Her tone tries to sound benignly curious, but there's an edge to her voice, a personal concern that strikes him as odd.

Stiles pauses a moment before answering. "I owe him something, and I'm here to pay my debts."

The words are more true than he'd like to admit in their vagueness. He has no idea what he'll say, what he'll do, what he wants, he just knows that the path leads to his father, and that's where he has to follow. To talk. To explain. To fight. To apologise.

Something.

Nevertheless, the words have the desired effect - he tastes Allison's suspicion on the air and smiles, grabbing Malia's hand and walking away.

He's always loved courting danger a little too much.

First Cow (2020)

It’s impossible for me to write about First Cow without thinking that this movie is some sort of sublime cross-over between Joaquin Phoenix’s worst nightmare and joyous fantasy. Running at odds with his oddly emotional anti-milk Oscars acceptance speech back in February 2020, First Cow is a love letter to the power of milk in the realm of baking. The sweet, sweet udder juice provides the very backbone of a community’s happiness and two men’s livelihoods. But, where Phoenix’s nightmare turns to fantasy, the universe gets justice. No milk theft shall ever go unpunished! Move over, Herman’s Hermits; it’s not just “No Milk Today,” it’s no milk ever!

My kidding aside, I was pleasantly surprised by First Cow, though truthfully I’m not sure exactly what I expected besides knowing it was a movie set in nineteenth-century America. Acknowledging my own biases and knowing ahead of time that the director was a woman, I was surprised by how decidedly male this film was. There are really only three female characters of note throughout the whole film, and none of them have prominent speaking roles… in fact the only one who does speak English merely serves as a translator for men.

I wonder in what way the director, Kelly Reichardt, sees herself as fulfilling that role in making this film. That is, in choosing to deliberately make a movie about the nineteenth-century fur trappers in the harsh, male-dominated world of Oregon Territories, Reichardt wanted to highlight an aspect of the dominant “alpha” male society that is most certainly experienced by males but is rarely commented on, largely because it is considered female. I’m talking, of course, about love. I doubt there are viewers of this film who would disagree with my assessment that the two male protagonists shared a love for one another, but I’m sure many would categorize that love as merely representative of “deep friendship” or “platonic” (in the layman’s sense) at the most. While I’m not going to sit here and necessarily argue that the two characters shared an erotic love and I do not think that is the intent, I really do believe characterizing their relationship as merely “two great friends” would be received by the pair as a great insult. The two share the type of relationship seen among men that is rarely seen in the media save for war movies where “brotherhood” is a dominant theme. Outside of war, it’s a relationship that is largely reminiscent of the beautiful love seen between Midnight Cowboy’s Joe Buck and “Ratso” Rizzo. It’s the sort of sacrificial love that dominates the thoughts of Christian scholars. Still, it can be easily misinterpreted as erotic love. What I think Reichardt does beautifully is develop the love between the two carefully so you see it organically develop such that by the time we get to the final scene, we are unsurprised by one of the two character’s sacrificial acts of love.

The key scene, as I mentioned, comes at the end, but it’s noteworthy to mention that the pair’s ultimate fate is made plainly clear in the first few minutes of the movie. The movie starts (almost paradoxically) with an epilogue of sorts. We’re in the modern day, and a woman is exploring the forests of Oregon when her dog stumbles upon some bones that (with a little more digging) reveals two skeletons lying next to one another, like two lovers lying in bed. The best reason I can think of as to why Reichardt includes this epilogue before the rest of the film is because as soon as we the audience realize that two males are the most dominant couple in the film, we more readily anticipate and are more open to seeing love develop before our eyes.

So accordingly, after this brief pre-movie epilogue, the film jumps backwards in time to the nineteenth-century where we meet Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), the cook for a trapping company who is runs a little out-of-step with the rest of his crew. It is embodied in a visual motif that is repeated often throughout the film. We will have a shot of either of the two main characters, Cookie or his eventual companion King Lu (Orion Lee), doing something quiet in the foreground while characters perform some other more exciting activity in the background which in any other movie would take center stage due to the inherent spectacle. But it’s clear that Cookie is a more sensitive soul, he enjoys his time in the woods collecting mushrooms, and he does not have any interest in violence whatsoever. But that does not mean he isn’t without courage.

Early in the film, he comes across King Lu, a Chinese immigrant who is on the run after killing someone to avenge the killing of one of his good friends. Notably, when they first meet, King Lu is completely alone, hungry, and naked. While it isn’t addressed specifically, it is implicit in King’s and Cookie’s first meeting (and during other character’s subsequent interactions with King later in the film) but racially hostile undertones almost threaten to undermine King’s and Cookie’s initial friendship. Yet, like the story of the Good Samaritan, Cookie puts away his initial feelings of racial bias, and goes out of his way to clothe King with a blanket before allowing him to speak any further. Cookie grants King with a great deal of dignity, and goes one step further, offering to smuggle him among the various bags and supplies on his travels, knowing full well that if the rest of his crew find out that Cookie was hiding a “Chinaman murderer,” that he’d be in deep shit.

Cookie and King separate after this initial meeting, but upon reuniting later in the film, they never separate from one another until the very end. In what is the most puzzling choice in the film to me is Cookie’s initial decision to join King for a drink at King’s home. The two reunite in a trapping fort bar after a fight breaks out and the two are the only customers not drawn outside to enjoy the spectacle (the outsider/outcast motif returns). However, just before the start of the fight, one of the primary instigators of that fight requests for Cookie to watch over his infant whom he had brought to the bar. Therefore, when King asks Cookie to join in at his home, he is also asking him to abandon this helpless infant. The image of the baby swaddled in a basket recalls the previous imagery of King swaddled in the bags and supplies within which Cookie was smuggling him. And ultimately Cookie does abandon the baby for King, and in joining King for a drink at his home, never actually leaves. The two begin living together. So I’m not sure of the significance of the baby. Is it that Cookie had the choice between two “new lives,” one a literal new life of someone else and the other, in King, a chance at a new life for himself? Or is it simply just to serve as foreshadowing that in following King, Cookie is opening himself up to a life of indulgence where the concerns of others are less important than his own happiness?

As for the latter question and the plotline that develops around it, it really serves as a bitter critique of American capitalism and the American dream. While we love to tout the “by the bootstraps” myth, this movie serves as a simple morality play about how no matter what, pursuing the American dream means ripping somebody off for your own benefit. In this instance, it means Cookie and King nightly sneaking onto the property of the leader of the trapping fort and stealing milk from the only cow in the area in order to essentially have a monopoly on baked goods and make a pretty penny. Now, we can sit and debate about the morality of “owning” a cow, and whether Cookie and King are even doing anything immoral since it is preposterous to own an animal! Or I’m sure there are those (Joaquin Phoenix) who think Cookie and King are just as immoral for taking ANY milk from a cow as the man who owns the cow in the first place. This is not the time to discuss animal rights. But it is notable what the cow, too, has had to suffer in order allow for Cookie and Lee’s successes. She was initially transported to the trapping fort along with a mate and her calf, but both died en route. She spends her time tied to a tree and by the film’s end locked up within a small cage.

In sum, the love that Cookie so beautifully shared with King at film’s beginning does not seem so equally shared by the pair in regards to their relationship with others. And in their pursuit to become successful capitalists in a system rigged against them, they ultimately hurt some of those around them, most notably titular cow with whom Cookie has almost romantic relationship with, which in some ways makes his treating her as little more than a literal cash cow so egregious, even if he cares deeply for her.

Hence the morality play. I don’t have to spell it out for you what might happen if two people repeatedly rob the same person in the same way again and again and again. But even if we as the audience agree that the cards are stacked against Cookie and King from the start in their attempt to become independent, to achieve the American dream, the film never pretends that they are acting as virtuous agents. In the end, though, they get their redemption even as they receive punishment. King is given a chance to abandon Cookie outright who in an attempt to flee their pursuers has become badly injured. King realizes he can just take his riches and run. But he doesn’t. He decides to lie next to his dearly beloved companion. While he could not have predicted what would be the fatal consequences of this decision, he knows that sticking with Cookie in his current state will only cause him trouble. But that’s where the beautiful sacrificial love that defines this pair comes in. Whereas many will view this film and remember it as a cautionary tale about the American dream, I will forever remember the realistic love of brothers shared between these two wayward men.

***(1/4) (Three and one fourth stars out of four)

plague beetle

a tale of doctor devorak and count lucio over the years.

hi here’s some jucio shit that i wrote back in july which never saw the light of day until rn // this was what july!spring made of their timeline so excuse any discrepancies :-)

>>

Julian Devorak was not afraid of the Count. Or, as he knew him, Lucio. Yes, Lucio was many things in his eyes—hot-headed, narcissistic, inappropriate at times (ah, who was he kidding, all of the time), and perhaps even formidable—but he had never found him frightening.

Ferocity on the battlefield and a short temper in his daily life, most people were undoubtedly intimidated by the Count, no matter how much they might laugh at him in private. He rose to the occasion in Vesuvia through the history of his work as a mercenary, successful and brutal, commanding respect. No, actually, commanding fear. The Count had always equated fear to power, had always seen fear as synonymous to respect.

But all that was really left behind of his mercenary days were their implications. Only stories of the Count’s vicious victories and quick reflexes remained on the tongues of his subjects. Only rumours of his conquests passed through Vesuvia. Julian knew there was more to it—to him, to Lucio—than that.

As a battlefield medic, he was too often occupied with the lives thrown into his hands to take too much notice of the actual fighting. And anyway, it made him uncomfortable. Too much... suffering. Unnecessary. Too much hostility. He preferred to focus on his patients, swiftly but carefully attending to their wounds. Often life threatening. Quite a bit of pressure, but nothing he hadn’t prepared himself for. During battles, it was much more important for medics’ work to first and foremost be fast. Tenderness came afterwards, merely an afterthought, if time constraints allowed it.

He had only heard of Lucio from others until then. Obviously, crossing paths with the respected mercenary in this line of work was inevitable, but there’d never been any particularly notable moments. Lucio’s condition at the time of his and Julian’s first interaction required a very delicate mix of caution and urgency. So, while most people saw Lucio at his most fierce and focused, Julian saw him at his most vulnerable. In pain. Allowing someone else to...well. Not take care of him, per se, but rather, truly tend to him.

It wasn’t Julian’s first amputation, but it was a novel enough procedure to him that the thought of carrying it out still caused a splatter of nausea to tickle his stomach. And as it turns out, amputations were intimate. Lucio didn’t want to live without his arm, he insisted he’d run all the risks if it meant keeping it—but, no, Julian was right; the chance of an infection was too high and too dangerous. It had to go. He was sorry. But it had to go. For Lucio’s well-being.

Trust was hard to come by. Julian had spent far too long travelling to trust easily. He knew that people were cruel, they would betray you the second they got the chance, the second they got the opportunity of personal gain. So, trust was hard to come by.

However, there was something about the fact that Lucio insisted from then on that Julian be his main medic that was comforting to him. And the false pretences Lucio used to poorly disguise his trust for Julian (he was just better than the other medics) didn’t stop him from the odd honey-mouthed comment on how nimble Julian’s fingers were, or the odd joke, a rare and genuine smile cracked in the privacy of their unconventional bond.

Parting ways wasn’t hard (or at least neither of them would admit it), but it was short-lived as, eventually, Julian’s work in Vesuvia as one of the palace doctors drew him right back to the Lucio, the newly proclaimed Count. Both of them found familiarity in their exchanges, consisting of matching smirks, the expected wisecracks from Julian, and Lucio’s usual teasing banter (albeit, arguably much more blatant). The ease of their communication helped both of them adjust. Julian was not afraid of Lucio.

_______________

Julian was not afraid of Lucio. However, the comfort did not last long, the Plague spreading soon after. Too soon after. Most of Julian’s time was spent in the dungeons, dank and depressing, working on finding a cure. It wasn’t fun. Neither was the Head Doctor, a morbid, unsettling character with eyes that would pierce through Julian completely.

The worst part of it was, undoubtedly, the patients. Or rather, their deceased corpses. Julian’s self blaming tendencies peaked, unnerving guilt of letting patients slip through his fingers keeping him up most nights. The only nights he really got any sleep were the ones where he was given the luxury of spending the night in his mostly unused house outside of the palace. It was a vacated safe place, far from and untouched by the eldritch horrors of the Red Plague.

Vesuvia lost its people dozens a day at first, and soon there were hundreds taking their last breaths daily. And Julian was no closer to finding any sort of inkling to what, why, or how. And then Lucio contracted the Plague. The symptoms were clear—the red sclera of his eyes, the bloody cough, the fatigue taking over him. It was painful just to watch. So, Asra the wandering magician’s help was enlisted.

He wasn’t pleased. His attitude towards Lucio wasn’t particularly affectionate, and his efforts to find a cure were, if Julian was honest with himself, half-assed. Though Julian tried to keep a semblance of professionalism with the magician, he couldn’t help himself—he was inexplicably drawn to him. It didn’t last long. Things got rocky.

Julian knew Asra wanted to leave. Asra’s apprentice, seemingly fond of Julian, expressed a desire to help the people of Vesuvia, but these words were always met with a certain cynicism from Asra, who deemed the apprentice’s actions as self destructive. Gradually, their disagreements got more heated. And finally, Asra, fed up, left. Julian couldn’t help but wonder whether he was part of the reason too.

Either way, Asra’s apprentice interned under Julian’s medical practices, learning from his first hand experience. Soon, however, the Plague took hold of the apprentice too. Although Lucio was still alive (rather pitifully), Asra’s apprentice was gone far too soon. As much as Julian wanted to scream, he didn’t have time. People were dying constantly. Who was he to stop trying to find a cure because of just one of the Plague’s victims? So he worked.

The guilt ate him alive. Lucio wasn’t getting any better either. No, he was definitely deteriorating. The weight loss came suddenly and hit hard. He spent most of his time in his wing, in bed. Julian’s sleepless nights got worse. He wouldn’t sleep at his own house, even when allowed the luxury. All waking hours would be spent in the medical facility, an hour or two of sleep caught in between research. He missed his sister, he missed Asra, he missed the apprentice... the only comfort he allowed himself was the occasional laughs he still shared with Lucio from time to time while treating him, though they were clearly more muted.

Things got worse, so much so that Julian was incapable of expressing it in words (though, by nature, he’d certainly love to try). For that exact reason, it came as such a shock to whatever was left of Vesuvia when Count Lucio announced that another Masquerade would be held. It didn’t seem like the time. Julian heard Countess Nadia arguing with her husband. But he was adamant. So, preparations began a few weeks in advance.

It was quite possibly the most hectic the Vesuvian palace had ever been—every available resource spent on research of the Red Plague, and the little staff that remained were put to work on the grand party’s planning. No one dared challenge the Count anymore. As he got sicker, his words slurred more often, his anger got harder to control, and he was even more easily upset. And that was saying something. Julian found himself dreading their interactions. The Count’s delirium made him prone to temper tantrums—although that was too childish a term for the intense fits of rage he now flew into.

Julian reminded himself of the solidarity they had shared on the battlefield. He tried to hold back tears, although he often failed in the solitude of his office. He reminded himself that he was not afraid of Lucio—that he was not afraid of the Count.

_______________

Julian was not afraid of the Count. He was taken aback by the resentment and mood swings that one human could harbour, yes, but he was not afraid. He never had been.

What the Count said, went. One would think that there would be a law against rulers in such a ruined state enforcing what they thought were suitable measures, but, unfortunately for Julian, there was not such a law.

The Count’s treatment times were very specific—he had to be taken care of and checked in on first at sunrise, then when the sun was highest in the sky, and then at sunset. If he ever called upon a doctor (which would almost always be Julian), he had to be tended to. As his illness worsened, these calls became more frequent, at unorthodox times.

Which is why, when Julian was told he had to see the Count right now in the middle of the night, he was not surprised. He was much more surprised, however, at the fact that the guard had said that the Count had insisted he come down to the dungeons to see Julian himself. Was... was he in the condition to be able to? Nonetheless, the Count arrived.

From the start, Julian knew that... something wasn’t right. The Count—Lucio—often had a glazed look in his eyes, or when he was enraged, a slightly mad look but... no, this definitely wasn’t normal. This was less mad, less loopy and more... more unhinged. Words tried to leave Julian’s throat, getting caught behind his teeth, not moving past his lips.

“Jules—” It was the first time the Count had ever called him anything but Julian. Julian could see he was holding onto something in a tightly closed fist, pressed close to his chest like it was something precious.

“Uh, ah, Count Lucio—” Julian’s mouth finally let him say something, cutting him off just as he saw the red scurry in Lucio’s palm, feeling like his blood supply had been cut off as he realised what Lucio—no, the Count had with him.

The Count was saying something now, chapped lips upturned as if whatever he was saying was amusing to him. His movement were sloppy as he made his way to Julian, whose body had gone on autopilot and was moving away from the man in front of him slowly. He tried clearing his mind but the fog was too thick. He was too tired, he was too afraid, he was too tired, too tired, too guilty, and useless and—

Lucio was close enough to thrust his fist in Julian’s face. It was still closed, but his jerky movements let his fingers loosen unpredictably. Julian’s fears were confirmed.

The ominous lighting of the dungeons unfortunately came to illuminate the Count’s hand. The red beetle he grasped grotesquely came to be bathed in red light. It was a plague beetle.

The Count was still speaking, but Julian couldn’t hear any of it as he kept backing up, the obviously delirious man still following. Julian’s back hit a rough brick wall behind him. Fuck. Was he literally cornered?

Julian’s naturally quick instincts were sluggish from the sleep deprivation, the anxiety, and most of all... the fear.

If Julian were to describe what happened after that, well—he wouldn’t. There were no solid memories from that moment. Just feelings. He felt fear. He felt a rough hand on his cheek as his eyes closed. He felt something soft yet brittle being pushing against his mouth. He felt the force of whatever words the Count spoke (he still isn’t sure what they were). Predominantly, he felt the crunch of the beetle in his mouth. He felt its legs squirming against his tongue. He felt himself gagging, he felt a hand being clamped over his mouth until he had no choice but to swallow. He felt the scratchiness of the beetle as it slid down his throat. He felt his hands on his face, wet with tears. He even... he felt anger.

But the next thing he knew, the Count was collapsing and he was pulling Julian down with him. And for a moment, Julian felt worry—he felt guilt—for he thought he had killed the Count.

Julian Devorak was afraid of the Count. No longer did he know who Lucio was. All he knew was that the Count of Vesuvia was many things. He was hot-headed, he was narcissistic, he was inappropriate and he was formidable. But most of all, he was frightening.

Notes on episode one

Sometimes when you’re feverish and hopped up on Niquil you just gotta rewatch the Witcher and type out your feelings in the notes app on your phone. “Writing down things I noticed” quickly became “writing more meta”, so! A look at how Geralt is different in this episode, and his relationship with Renfri the Shrike, Witcher dogma, and choice.

(in my defense i tried to keep things short by writing in bullet points but lol that’s cute)

-Geralt is so much softer in this episode. He is more open. He is by no means chatty or friendly, but he wears neutrality well. It’s obvious he expects people to treat him badly and turn him away just as much (or more) than he expects cooperation, and he is willing and able to accept either. He is a man doing a job. He asks for the alderman’s house, is inoffensive and neutral when the man chases off the helpful barmaid and tries to turn away. He tries to de-escalate— just tell me where it is and I’ll go. When that still doesn’t work and they threaten him, leave or on the end of the rope, he rolls with it, even jokes, “not a hard choice.” He isn’t angry, doesn’t even seem more than slightly annoyed, really. He’ll go. He had been open to the possibility of things working, and to the possibility that they might not, so he takes the hand dealt. This Geralt is so different to the one we see in future episodes, who is much more jaded, cynical, even bitter. He’s not quite as able to meet people with that same neutrality.

-This Geralt is much more ready to accept the outstretched hand. He jokes in this episode. Look at his first interaction with Renfri when she helps him. He is slightly wary, but accepts the beer she buys him with curiosity. At her self-deprecating mention of a horrified mother, he jokes, “Our secret, then.” Earlier in the episode, there’s his humor and scorn for Stregobor, “All the good predictions rhyme.” He listened to all Stregobor’s bullshit with neutrality, likely trained as Witcher’s are to hear out people even when the job isn’t one a Witcher does. He doesn’t pander; he is straightforward, but also not purposefully offensive or aggressive until it is deserved. Even then, he works to remain even tempered— his greater and lesser evil speech, his blandly delivered disdain for Stregobor’s admissions of kidnapping and killing innocent women. His emotions break through now and then, but he gets them back in check. He keeps his distance.  But the humor. We see Geralt’s sense of humor in later episodes as well (“these views” to Triss comes to mind) but it is so much more freely given in this episode. Or it’s less surprising compared to his more open stance. He is utterly charmed by Marilka, he enjoys the back and forth with Renfri, he smirks when they cross verbal blades over what it means to be a monster and she tries to get a rise out of him. He is amused when she posits “what is they come after you?” Because for him that’s a given; that’s part of the Witcher job description! Of course people fear the mutant warriors. Of course he gets chased away, turned away. Of course they have come after him, and he was trained to be ready for that eventuality and to accept it like any other part of the job, not with violence and resentment but with a shrug and then to move on. So much of what changes between episode 1 Geralt, who is maybe in his mid forties, and later Geralt, in his 50s-80s, is that he is not as readily able to keep that neutrality in him. He is not able to keep his carefully trained emotional distance, no matter how badly he wants to or how well he puts up the front. He has become jaded to the fear, the hate, the misunderstanding. (And it goes the other way, too, with softer emotions. He is definitely not keeping his distance when he fights to be allowed the save the Striga princess, when eh tries to gift Renfri’s brooch to her, for instance.) And a lot of it starts here, in Blaviken, where Geralt saved the innocent citizens of the market by killing a woman he had in fact liked and understood to an extent— and still he gets a stoning for it.

-Geralt just all around feels younger here. When do Witcher’s first leave Kaer Morhen to walk the Path? 18? 20? 22? The way he describes his first monster to Roach and the line “Yeah... I thought the world needed me, too;” I can definitely believe he was that young. (Imagine 18-20 year old Henri Cavill as Geralt. Imagine, I dare you. It’s darling.) So he’s been on the Path for 20, 25 years maybe. Wandering with his horse, seeing much of the continent for the first time, taking jobs and facing down monsters, many of those for the first time, too. A heavily trained young man who had been prepared for a hostile world, for monsters and money, to live a job and take what is given. Witcher training is quite practical and unromantic when it comes to how they are trained to view and interact with the world. But it is still a romantic version of young Geralt we find in his tale. So ready to save a young woman, hotheaded and with messy strikes against a mere human when the Geralt we know is shown as nothing less than controlled and precise. The quite unromantic response of the rescued pokes fun at himself, completed with his self deprecating jibe, “yeah. I thought the world needed me, too.” Grown up from his first days on the Path, this Geralt is still young, comparatively. Before the episode is done we see him grow up a bit more. Also, just the way he interacts with Marilka rings so much like an older brother. That little smirk!

-So Geralt is younger, less jaded, more open. He is also more vulnerable, or at least he reads that way. Rewatch that kiss and tell me that their closeup doesn’t frame Renfri as the initiator and Geralt as the vulnerable, soft-eyed receiver.

-dang it, he just likes Renfri. Almost immediately. Maybe two lines into their dialogue and his wariness fades. Renfri is young, but she burns brightly. She is fierce and firm in her handling of the situation and her men, wry and a little sardonic, she isn’t afraid of him and even teases him— shouldn’t have taken the back roads, should buy some new clothes. Then she draws closer and flirts as she pours him another beer when the barman refuses to serve them both. (And that line before Marilka interrupts, along the lines of “Seems everywhere I go I find more and more monsters these days,” its so obvious she was about to broach the topic of Stregobor with him. Or is that just me?) In the woods, her presence doesn’t alarm him when she approaches. He lets her keep his back, even knowing what Stregobor had told him. He goes back and forth with her on the matter of monsters and one’s own actions— which, phew, the commentary that gives on Witchers. An inherent conundrum of being taught that they, mutants, are inherently monstrous compared to humans yet must in their line of work, as traditionally neutral parties, remain neutral or risk acting the part of the monster. Their strength should not be turned against anything that is not a monster and a danger or it risks becoming monstrous, being used to monstrous purpose. “Great power, great responsibility.” Regardless, he enjoys going back and forth with her. He liked her fierceness, respects it, sympathizes with her and views her as the wronged party in the affair with Stregobor. Yet still he tells her, the responsibility is hers to walk away from the violence. Go live your life. A truly Witcher response. He doesn’t stop her following him to his camp. He doesn’t even stand when she floats in on his heels, lets her sit with him, listens when she speaks. He seems pleased when she admits that she will be leaving, receptive. Look at how his face softens when she speaks of her mother. Remember, this is the young man whose mother abandoned him at the foot of Kaer Morhen. It’s still raw all this time later, and will be a few decades on, as we see when he confronts her hallucination/vision. Geralt understands at least part of Renfri on a terribly personal level. He turns and lets her kiss him, not the other way around. Of course, she lied. He dreams, or hears from within his dream, her prophecy. I’m not completely clear as to whether the show meant to imply that she used some kind of magical ability to put him to sleep, and if inside that spell her inadvertent prophecy came through. Regardless, he is beyond grim when he goes to town to stop her, and I do believe his expression when given the ultimatum by her men is very speakingful. If not enough for you, however, then of course there is his quiet, resigned, disgusted, “Fuck.” But a Witcher accepts what comes from humans, good or ill. They walk away from attacks and hostility when they can, but defend themselves when needs must, and here it does. But that’s the catch, see. When he decided to come into town, Geralt wasn’t following his Witcher training. Think of what he told Stregobor— it wasn’t his problem, Witchers don’t deal in human affairs, and Geralt himself prefers not to choose at all when faced with lesser, greater, middling evil. He would rather be the true neutral. But he likes Renfri, empathizes with her even as he disdains and dislikes Stregobor. Geralt is the kind of man who was a young hothead bent on saving the world one young woman at a time. He likes bold, impetuous children and horses. His base instinct is to protect people and to side with the victims— we see its suggestion in this episode, and it is realized in full during the season. He isn’t neutral, as much as he wants to be. So he chooses, and hates himself for it, because he will never know if he was right. (And it doesn’t matter if he was right. Because right or wrong, killing Renfri wounded him and he carries it for decades.) It reinforces his belief that it is better not to choose at all. He was wrong to have chosen. He believes he should have walked away, let human affairs fall as they may, and yet we the audience know he will never be able to walk away from a massacre, do nothing, and still remain himself.

-Stregobor is the worst and that’s all I have to say about that.

-Renfri’s stepmother was 100% a lying turd and I will bet hard cash on that. “Yes her step mother told me she did this awful stuff, proving the mutation i had already decided existed anyway. Obviously she wanted to protect her own children so she hired me.” Are you???? Fuckin kidding me dude???? “Beep boop good thing there are no cautionary tales about jealous or cruel step mothers who hate their royal step children. Good thing no one would ever want to nerf said royal step children to open up the royal throne to their own get by, say, telling some teeny weeny lies to a gullible sorcerer who drinks his own koolaid” I s2g

-OH oh I almost forgot, one more thing. Just. One more. Fucking. All of Henry Cavill’s acting in the final scene and fight with Renfri. That hurts, sir. Every look and expression screams how badly he does not want to do this. I’ve said it before in another meta (and, like, in countless tags) but the terrible, breathless vulnerability and dread in Geralt’s face when Renfri reveals herself and her hostage? How slowly and carefully he draws closer, sword turned down and away, free hand open and soothing, as he tries to convince her to stop? Tries to use axii on her, and the softness of his voice, the clench in his jaw that says even as he seems to plead and beg with his eyes for her to stop that he is preparing for what will happen if (when) she won’t and despises every moment of it? It’s like the culmination of the audience’s introduction to What A Witcher Is (or perhaps better, What A Witcher Does). We see it throughout the episode. What a Witcher is, is neutral. They take what they are given. What they do is their job and nothing more. They kill dangerous monsters that threaten others and themselves. With humans, they defend themselves when necessary and that is all; necessity. There is no choice, it is simply what a Witcher does in a world where they know that sometimes the worst reaction a person can have doesn’t stop with angry words and threats. It is just another part of the life. They will back out, they will leave, they will sleep in the woods when they know they’re not welcome. They don’t push. They have been trained to avoid fighting humans wherever possible. They are not the aggressors, when blows come to blows. It is not what they do. Renfri cannot stop. Geralt must know this, after the intensity of their conversation in the woods. It is not Geralt the Witcher who made the decision to follow her to town; the Witcher would have left. Geralt the man, well, we know what he would do because we see it. When Renfri attacks him, however, he reacts as a Witcher does. As he did against her men. Controlled, precise, eliminating the threat. No cruelty or hatred. Just training. -Unlike his fight against the men, which is largely one long, smoothe dance, the fight against Renfri is riddled with pauses, stalemates where they lock eyes and we are shown closeups of their silent, intense exchanges. Neither wants to be there, but neither is willing to back down. -In my last meta I mentioned how Geralt clearly had the upper hand throughout their fight and doesn’t utilize multiple chances to finish the fight and critically injure Renfri. He instead tries to de-escalate-- strikes out with a slap, pins her, parries, defends, disarms her. These pauses in the fight for their eyes to meet and the little moments of silent communication seem an extension of this. More so, if I’m going to work with the Geralt the man vs. Geralt the Witcher dichotomy, then I would say these moments are Geralt the man breaking through. Communicating how he can’t let her go through with her plan. Begging her to reconsider, to walk away. Frustration, dread, a nonverbal don’t do this and don’t make me do this. Especially that last closeup. With Witcher efficiency and neutrality, he reacts to her final attack by turning her dagger back on her and sinking it neatly into her throat. Threat eliminated. Save... they both react with a long pause of breathless shock, before he wrenches it back out and she begins to bleed. There is a final close up from over her shoulder, her hair half obscuring Geralt’s face as he gazes presumably into her eyes, as he brings one hand up to her cheek— Geralt without speaking makes very clear how much pain he is in. He does what a Witcher does, but even as his hands did the work he is himself a gutted man. Regret. Pain. Love, of a sorts, whatever love can grow for someone you’ve known in such a short time yet felt such empathy and enjoyment and appreciation for. That is the young Geralt we saw, vulnerable and open and humorous, and this is where he ends. Look at his face as he leaves Blaviken. Geralt has become who we will follow for the rest of the season. -(If you look, really look, Marilka is not angry when she tells him to get out of Blaviken and never come back. Her eyes are soft, and sad. She is a clever little girl in a village too small, who knows the people there better than Geralt, and who knows he will never get more than a stoning. Maybe Geralt would have fought Stregobor for Renfri, maybe not. But Marilka tells him to leave, and he does.)