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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 54 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about how grammars come into existence. But first, we are doing a liveshow in April. We will be doing a liveshow recording on the internet so that we can all be in the same place at the same time on Saturday the 24th of April, Eastern Daylight Savings Time in North America, which will be early on a Sunday morning for us here Australia.

Gretchen: That’ll be 6:00 p.m. for me on Eastern Daylight Time. We will include a link to a time zone converter so you can figure out when that is for you.

Lauren: We’ll be doing the whole show about backchanneling, which is all those ways that you –

Gretchen: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – actively listen to someone as they’re talking. Thank you for that excellent backchanneling, Gretchen. Something I think a lot about in our era of lots of video calls and online chats.

Gretchen: You can’t see me, but I’m doing a thumbs up right now.

Lauren: Excellent backchanneling.

Gretchen: These are some kinds of backchanneling. We’re gonna be talking about lots more. I think it’s fun to do a liveshow about backchanneling because it means that you get to backchannel in the chat while the show’s going on and chat with each other. That’ll be fun. We’re running the ticketing of the show through Patreon. If you’re a patron, you’ll automatically get a link to the liveshow to join. If you’d like to become a patron, you can also do that to get access to the liveshow stream.

Lauren: Patrons also get access to our recent bonus episode on reduplication as well as 48 other bonus episodes because we have almost 50 now.

Gretchen: That’s a lot! Lots of Lingthusiasm for patrons, which helps keep the show running.

Lauren: Our liveshow is part of LingFest, while will be taking place across the last week of April, which is an online series of events about linguistics. You can find out more about LingFest at lingcomm.org/lingfest.

Gretchen: That’s “comm” with two Ms as in “communication.” Speaking of LingComm, if you’re interested in communicating linguistics to broader audiences, you can also join the LingComm conference, which is a conference for practitioners of linguistics communication such as ourselves and many other cool LingCommers to learn from each other and help produce more interesting and engaging materials for all of you.

Lauren: LingComm, the conference, is taking place online the week of April the 19th.

Gretchen: You can also go to lingcomm.org/conference to see the schedule and other details there.

Lauren: That’s “comm” with two Ms.

[Music]

Gretchen: Lauren, how many people would you say you know who have written a grammar of a language?

Lauren: Hmm, okay, well, both my PhD supervisors. I’d say half the people in the department that I current work in. I have written a grammar of a language. This is a perfectly common activity among my professional cohort. I assume it’s a thing most people do and know about, so we don’t really have to explain it for this episode at all. This is fine.

Gretchen: [Laughs] Yeah, I would say that at least several of the people that I went to grad school with – not necessarily at my university – people I knew from conferences, professors that I knew – one professor I knew had her grammar come out the same year that her baby came out, and she posted a photo of the grammar and the baby, which were about the same size, on Facebook after that happened. It was really cute.

Lauren: Grammars definitely take longer than nine months to gestate. I can definitely confirm that.

Gretchen: I have not written a grammar. So, when someone’s going about writing a grammar, what – okay, here’s a language. There isn’t a grammar written or the grammar that’s written of it is not adequate. What do I do to start?

Lauren: What you’re talking about is taking all of the amazing complexity of how humans use language and finding the rules that reoccur within a particular language and then finding a way of articulating that concisely in written form in a grammar so that, by the end, you’ve worked through most of the common features you find in this language – all of the variations and irregularities – and you’ve put that into some kind of readable book format for other people to then learn about how the grammar of this language works. That is the overarching aim of this endeavour.

Gretchen: I’ve consulted grammars in the process of doing linguistics. I have the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language sitting on my desk. When I was in grad school, I spent a lot of time consulting Valentine (2001)’s grammar of Nishnaabemwin. There are grammars that I’ve consulted. They’re 1,000 pages, 2,000 pages long. Sometimes you’ve got a really massive grammar. Sometimes you get a shorter sketch grammar. They have certain similarities in the structure and the types of things that people cover in a grammar.

Lauren: Absolutely. You tend to start, traditionally, with smaller bits and work upwards. You’re likely to find a description, if it’s a spoken language, of the sound system or, if it’s a signed language, of the hand shape and body space phonology at the beginning of the book and then work up to word-level – you probably expect if a language has adjectives, a section on adjectives, which we’ve talked about before.

Gretchen: We have talked a little bit about adjectives.

Lauren: And then if you’re look at sentence-level stuff, like asking a question, how you do that, it happens at the level of the sentence, that tends to be more towards the end. You’re going from smaller bits up to bigger bits. It really depends on the tradition. We talked about lumpers and splitters before. If you like to split things down, a grammar is great because you can have so many sub-headings. I remember reading the rules for one set of grammars where it was like, “Please do not go beyond five layers of headings,” and I was like, “That’s actually quite a challenge.”

Gretchen: Because you have your chapter level headings, and then you’re like, “Oh, okay, if this chapter’s about verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs – within the transitive verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs,” and so on and so forth.

Lauren: Then you’ve got the irregularities. They might need their own subset. You can go from – the table of contents, you can get this big picture and then go down and down and down into the different sections. The grammar that I wrote of Lamjung Yolmo was a sketch grammar, so it’s only a couple of hundred pages. It makes sure to knock over – it would be very weird to have nothing about nouns in a language that very obviously has nouns – but it doesn’t go into the deep level of detail on some things that a longer grammar gets to. There’s always more to be done as well.

Gretchen: Any grammar is gonna be incomplete – even these massive doorstop-sized grammars. You’re gonna leave some stuff out where you’re a speaker and you’re like, “I know this,” but you don’t necessarily include it in a grammar. I’ve also read, in grad school – I don’t remember what language it was of – but I picked up this grammar that was written in, like, I wanna say maybe the 70s or 80s. There was clearly some sort of fad for doing this very abstract schematic thing of sentences or verbs or something. It didn’t have any complete sentences or complete verbs just written there. It drew them all on this diagram that I have never encountered before or since where everything was piece-able together. I was like, “Oh, wow. You’re participating in some sort of grammatical tradition that I’m just not aware of here.”

Lauren: I mean, I think the important thing is that grammars are written by humans, and humans are trained by other humans within particular traditions. I remember when I was building my sketch grammar, it was while I was also working on my thesis because I was looking specifically at evidentials, but you can’t know what’s happening with evidentiality without understanding how verbs work and how verbs relate to other parts of the sentence. And then I realised I was accidentally on my way to writing out the bones of the grammar of Lamjung Yolmo.

Gretchen: Sometimes you just accidentally write a grammar.

Lauren: That is how I accidentally started and very deliberately finished writing that sketch grammar. But I remember talking to my supervisors. One of them found it quite unusual that I wanted to include the methodology in my grammar. I wanted to explain specifically who I’d worked with, what I’d recorded, what kinds of elicitation I’d used. That wasn’t in that supervisor’s grammar tradition, but it was something I wanted to include.

Gretchen: A lot of grammars aren’t gonna include the gestures of the language or something, which I know is one of your things that you enjoy.

Lauren: Yes. There are traditions that do focus more on narrative structure, and you might find more about the structure of narratives in a grammar, and others that focus more on verb structure. There’s a very brief few pages on phonetics and then a really massive chapter on verbs. It’s sometimes because the language has lots of really fun, complex things happening with the verbs, but sometimes it’s just because that’s what that person was interested in.

Gretchen: This person was a verb fan.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Some parts, you know, it’d be pretty hard to do a grammar without doing some level of phonology at the beginning. But, yeah, what level of pragmatic stuff at the end, discourse stuff, or like, “How do people of this language talk to children?” or something like that – that might not be in a grammar.

Lauren: I’m doing a paper with a colleague on onomatopoeia at the moment. Some grammars will have a separate section on that. Because it’s not as central to every single sentence as, say, nouns and verbs can be for a lot of languages, it doesn’t tend to crop up as its own specific subsection in a lot of grammars.

Gretchen: Which doesn’t necessarily mean that language doesn’t have onomatopoeia. It’s just that it didn’t get the focused attention that got put there.

Lauren: This is always the question that you have while reading a grammar, right. It’s about what makes it in, but it’s also what doesn’t. Sometimes things don’t make it in because of trends or because of what people are focusing on or sometimes just because they’re important but incredibly low-frequency things that happen. Or if someone is doing fieldwork, and they come into a community as a man, they might spend a lot of time around other men and recording a particular variety. That’s where the methodology was really important for me to make clear why I was making choices. Also, the title of a grammar – I find it really interesting whether people say, “The Grammar of” or “A Grammar of.” I, very consciously, called it, “A Grammar” or “A Sketch Grammar of Lamjung Yolmo” because this is just my analysis and my take. Other people might come to exactly the same data with different conclusions. Or they might be way more into adjectives than I am, and that section is way more fleshed out in someone else’s analysis.

Gretchen: That’s an interesting side effect, as you were saying about, okay, well, if we wanna look at onomatopoeia in a bunch of languages, or if you wanna look at any sort of thing whether it’s verbs or sounds or handshapes or something in a bunch of different languages, okay, how can – if you’re making those beautiful graphs like are in the WALS database, which we’ve mentioned before, or if you’re gonna write a Wikipedia article about like, “Here’s how this language works,” or “Here’s how this phenomenon works,” the grammars turn into this input material of what gets cited there.

Lauren: Those big overviews are often built up from these grammars of different languages. That’s where having structures that are easy for people to access in the table of contents becomes really easy because, just as a human writing the grammar, there’s another human reading that grammar to put into those databases.

Gretchen: Dictionaries are often a very collaborative project where you have a bunch of people contributing words or contributing entries. You can say, “Okay, you need to take care of the letter P and see what’s going on here.” But a grammar is often written by one person, and so it reflects that one person.

Lauren: Almost, like the very overwhelming majority of the time, it’s people who aren’t members of that community. It’s a linguist who’s trained as a linguist and then come into this community and often built incredibly long-term, deep relationships with those communities and speak the language but not always. I know I’m kind of – it’s very easy to over-problematise something you do and spend a lot of time thinking about but, again, it’s worth remembering while reading a grammar.

Gretchen: Right. And what types of things you think are interesting, what types of things you think are novel or worth drawing attention to, or what types of things you think are common is a function of what you’ve been exposed to from a grammatical tradition. I’ve been thinking a lot about this question of “What do we put in a grammar” and “How is a grammar constructed by the societal context in which it’s written” because I’ve been reading this book called, Grammar West to East, by Edward McDonald. The subtitle is “The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning in European and Chinese Traditions.”

Lauren: Cool.

Gretchen: I will say, at the beginning, this is an academic book. It is a monograph. If you don’t have a background in linguistics, you’ll find it fairly dense going, potentially. But, as someone who does, it’s really interesting.

Lauren: Awesome! Pick out the anecdotes for us.

Gretchen: One of the first observations that it makes – and, when you think about this, it’s totally true – is that – so the European grammatical tradition is based on Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek are languages where you do a lot of changing the endings on words – sometimes the prefixes, but often the endings – on words to make them do grammatical things. The European grammatical tradition is a lot about making tables of all of the different ways that a word can inflect and being like, “Well, it does this and it does this,” and giving names to the different sorts of groupings and patterns that you find out of that.

Lauren: Which is great, but doing those things, it makes it a little bit confusing sometimes when you apply it to a language like English that doesn’t have the same ending changes, but we give them the same labels. That’s because the analysis of English is very much in that Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s inherited from the Latin tradition. There’s a pedagogical motivation for some of this because Latin and Greek were not just the languages that started out analysing themselves, although they were that as well, but they were also considered prestigious languages that you needed to learn. So, a lot of the grammatical analysis of Greek and especially Latin were in terms of how to teach them to speakers of other European languages. And it’s like, “Here’s a bunch of endings, and you need to learn them, and you need to learn what they correspond to and what their function is.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: What’s interesting is that the grammar of Chinese is different from that. They don’t do endings. What they do instead is you have things that have a grammatical function, but they’re considered to have the same status as full words. And so, the Chinese grammatical tradition is concerned with looking at those particles that have grammatical functions but are hard to write definitions of and cataloguing them and figuring out what’s going on with them and grouping them into groups. There are some words in the European tradition that are invariant – they’re often all lumped together in “adjectives” – words like “often,” or “always,” or something like that, which are – they just look like that all the time. They don’t have endings like the verbs and the nouns do. The Latin tradition grammarians didn’t care about those words, and they were really into the endings. The Chinese grammarians were really interested in, first of all, this fundamental duality between words that had a meaning to them, had what they called, “full words,” and words that were only for their grammatical function, what they called, “empty words.”

Lauren: That is a great metaphor. I like it.

Gretchen: Also, because culturally they were really interested in dualities, you know, the sun and the moon, and the full words and the empty words, and having a nice, mirrored duality was really appealing to them for aesthetic reasons in the same way that the European grammatical tradition is often descended from the rhetorical tradition because they were really interested in the aesthetics of rhetoric when it came to doing that sort of analysis. What your culture’s into aesthetically brings forth, okay, what are we trying to explain this. So, both of these are sort of ancient history, you know. Around 2,000 years ago they were the beginnings of this doing their own analysis grammatical traditions. You get this really interesting descriptive grammar that was published in 1898 by China’s first grammarian, Ma Jianzhong, called, Mr Ma’s Compleat Grammar, which I think is great.

Lauren: That is an excellent late-1800s name of a book.

Gretchen: It is exactly of a particular era. It’s “compleat,” E-A-T, not E-T-E, which is just –

Lauren: Perfect.

Gretchen: He was a native speaker of Chinese who had also been educated by Jesuits in French, and so he had exposure to both the French and the Chinese grammatical traditions. He writes this grammar where he distinguishes between full and empty words the way that the Chinese had – introduced these particles to be these “empty words” – but he also further subdivides the full words into the lexical categories that Europeans had been doing, which are verbs and nouns and so on. This distinction between verbs and nouns and so on was really important to the Europeans because verbs and nouns have different types of endings. You know whether something’s a verb or a noun because the endings are all different because this is a really endings-based grammatical system. The modern linguistic conception of how languages and their structures work is, to a certain extent, a hybrid of that because these full and empty grammatical categories is now reflected in what linguists call, “content words” and “function words.”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: You have words like, “dog,” and “cat,” and “run,” and “see,” and stuff like that where you can actually write a definition, and then you have your grammatical words like “of,” and “is,” and “to,” and stuff, which just have this grammatical function. So, this category that’s still really relevant in modern linguistics is there in one country’s grammatical tradition, but also modern linguistics does also still talk about “nouns” and “verbs.”

Lauren: Absolutely.

Gretchen: The history of the contact between these two grammatical traditions and how they figured out how to adapt things to each other is an interesting way of looking at what is it that we think of as important when we’re trying to write a grammar of a particular language or we’re trying to do grammar. A lot of ancient grammar traditions were really concerned with describing one very prestigious, golden-age language – or one or two – you’ve gotta write your grammar of Latin or of Greek or of Old Chinese because that’s the one everyone thinks is fancy. And the local vernacular that ordinary peoples talk, like, no, no one’s gonna write a grammar of that. It’s a very interesting way of thinking about, okay, what were people concerned about and how did those interests derive from the structure of the language or languages that they were familiar with.

Lauren: This book sounds so great, but I wonder if actually the title of it should be, “Grammars from East to West,” because if we look where our modern tradition of writing grammars in Europe is, it’s very much motivated by those Latin grammars and grammarians of old, but it’s also very influenced by Paṇini and the Sanskrit grammarian tradition that is two-and-a-half, three thousand years old as well.

Gretchen: One of the things that I was thinking about reading this, being like, “Wow!” – I knew some of the stuff about the European tradition, not all of it, but I didn’t know most of the stuff about ancient China – thinking, “I know that there was a really interesting grammatical tradition going on in India, like, right between these two major geographical regions.” There’s a bunch of stuff going on in Arabic as well, at a slightly later time. Can I have a book that writes about all four of these, please, in comparison to each other?

Lauren: Yeah. I know very little about the Arabic tradition. Most linguists at least know the name “Paṇini” That first N has a little dot under it in English, so it has a kind of palatalised vibe, but it also means his name is great. I know more than one university that has the “Paṇini Café and Sandwich Shop” because that’s a great multilingual pun to use.

Gretchen: Who can resist a pun? I learned a bit about the Arabic grammatical tradition when I was taking a bit of Arabic in undergrad. There are a whole bunch of things that that grammatical tradition does also in the tradition of “We’re going to look at our language and catalogue it in exhaustive detail and figure out exactly what’s going on in it.” One of the things that I remember was that there’s an exhaustive catalysation of what they call the “binyan,” which are the templates that you can slot your three-consonant roots into, and how you put the vowels in between them that mean all of these different things.

Lauren: Because Arabic is very interested in what happens in shifting the vowels of the language rather than what happens at the end of a word like the Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s very relevant in Arabic all of the different things you can do with the vowels in between them and whether, maybe, you double a consonant in a particular context or you put this vowel here or that vowel there. The classic tri-consonantal root that everybody cites is K-T-B, /k/-/t/-/b/, which has to do with books and writing. “Kitab” is “a book,” and “kutub” is “books,” and “maktab is “office,” and “kataba” is “He writes.” You can do all sorts of things with those three consonants and how you arrange the vowels between them. There’s an abstract way of representing “Here’s what the patterns are” with a template verb that you can show all the patterns with and going through and exhaustively cataloguing the patterns. This is the exciting thing to do if you’re an ancient Arabic grammarian. I’m excited by just thinking about it. But that’s very much influenced by the structure of the language. I don’t know as much about what Paṇini was doing except for the fact that he gets cited in a lot of Intro Linguistics classes as the first grammarian.

Lauren: Part of why he gets cited a lot is because he’s excellent. I’ll talk about that. I think part of why as well is that Paṇini synthesized and brought together everything that had been happening in the Sanskrit grammar tradition. Sanskrit is kind of like the Indian linguistic area equivalent of Latin, which is that it was the language of sacred texts and religion. It’s a language that is still handed down. People still learn Sanskrit in the way they learn Latin. But in that area, languages like Hindi and Nepali, the Indo-Aryan languages, are all later siblings and children of Sanskrit. It’s a very convenient analogy to Latin to draw with Sanskrit. I think, also, the motivation for thinking a lot about the language came from a theological attempt within Hinduism to understand truth through language and understand how language works. It was one of the core areas of study within the larger religious tradition. So, that was the motivation. But Paṇini – we know his name. We know not too much else about him except that he wrote at least two-and-a-half thousand years ago. He synthesized this work, and he name drops ten other people whose work he draws on. We’ve lost the record of all of their work. I think he’s excellent. That’s not in dispute. But it’s also just a convenient prominence he receives through being the kind of earliest record we have when the work was going on for thousands of years behand.

Gretchen: The person whose manuscript survives with his name attached to it.

Lauren: Absolutely. A very convenient way to appear to be very excellent is just to have none of the foundational work you draw on exist still.

Gretchen: No. This is like the Library of Alexandria all over again.

Lauren: What made Paṇini’s approach really distinct – and distinct from what was happening with those learner-driven motivations for analysing Latin – is that there was a logical progress to how he set out his description of Sanskrit. Similar to what we talked about with modern grammars where you start with the base elements of the sound system and then build up to words and parts of words. If something goes on a word after another bit, so you’ll describe the earlier bits first and build outwards. It’s this logical order and progression.

Gretchen: In a very real sense, the order that Paṇini devised over 2,500 years ago is reflected in the order of the grammar that you wrote a few years ago?

Lauren: It’s absolutely not an accident. The early 20th Century linguists like Saussure, Franz Bopp, where directly reading Paṇini and going, “This guy was doing this stuff thousands of years before we started thinking about it” and were directly influenced by Paṇini’s approach to thinking about how the language worked and thinking about it very descriptively. This is why he’s known as the first grammarian within even the Western tradition because he was like, “Look, there’s these words and they have these histories, but actually, the important thing is that we think about how the words are being used by people now.” The funny thing is he wrote that about what we now think of as Classic Sanskrit. People have not moved on from thinking about Classical Sanskrit in that way, and it’s become a learning tool, but –

Gretchen: We should all just be speaking Classical Sanskrit.

Lauren: The motivation is exactly the same motivation we use in a descriptive grammar now. It’s not about setting out the rules of a language and how it has to work, it reflects how a linguist has analysed that people are using that system.

Gretchen: I think that’s one of the things that comes up when we talk about a grammar is, particularly because grammar in the Western tradition is associated with Latin, and, okay, you’re learning about the grammar of English only so that you can translation Latin into English better rather than learning about the grammar of English as an object of its own study. This translates into, “Okay, well, what if we made the grammar of English more like Latin because that would obviously be better.” That’s where this secondary meaning of “grammar” as, you know, “Thou shalt not split an infinitive,” does – because in Latin an infinitive is all just one word. You can’t split it. It’s just one word.

Lauren: You can’t split it.

Gretchen: This idea that grammar is a tool to beat people over the head with comes from this, “Well, you’ve got to learn this language in school because this is how you’re gonna access all these classical texts that you are supposed to access, and you need to do it a certain way because it’s dead now, and it’s not evolving, and so you’re just learning to do this very particular thing,” that’s where this additional connotation of grammar as a stick to beat people over the head with comes in.

Lauren: That’s that very Latin tradition that we still have.

Gretchen: And it’s not only English that had a grammar as a tool to stay in touch with a lost golden age. This is also what they were doing in ancient Chinese of like, here’s this older thing. One of the other interesting things that I learned about the Chinese grammatical tradition, in particular with the writing system – because the writing system in Chinese can obscure different pronunciations – you could have a poem that you could still read in the written sense that’s very old but, for a modern reader, it doesn’t necessarily rhyme. At a certain point, when they were doing more historical linguistics, they realised, “Oh, this poem actually rhymed back in the day.” The pronunciation has changed so much that we weren’t really thinking about it because the characters look the same, but it actually used to rhyme, which sometimes shows up when you’re reading Shakespeare or something, and it’s got “thrown” and “drown” or something. Like, “Wait, those probably were supposed to rhyme based on where they are in this poem.” You can use that to reconstruct what was going on.

Lauren: It can feel a bit anxiety-provoking about committing an analysis to paper because you are pinning a butterfly for a moment in time. People are still speaking the language, and it moves on. As long as you don’t think of the descriptive grammar as anything more canonical and authoritative than people’s actual intuitions, that’s an important thing to remember. Especially if you’re working with a grammar that’s more than a few generations old, it may be that the person didn’t quite capture what people were doing. It may be that the language has changed again.

Gretchen: Another thing that I found really interesting about “What are the ideas that people were thinking about at the time” – so this is from Grammar West to East again. The author points out that when Chinese characters first became known in Europe, it was late 16th Century and, in Europe, for unrelated reasons, the idea of a universal language was the hot philosophical topic. You had people like John Wilkins, who ultimately created Roget’s Thesaurus, but he was really just trying to make a universal taxonomy for understanding the world, he ended up making quite a nice thesaurus but not with making a universal way of understanding the world. What was actually going on in China at the time was that Classical Chinese was a scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of the East Asian region. It was acquired as a learned language in the different parts of those regions. The Chinese words were given a local pronunciation. So, children in different parts of China would learn to read using a literary register of the local dialect, and there wasn’t the idea of a standard spoken language for the whole country. That’s a modern innovation. This is a situation that was a lot like Latin in Europe at the time. But Europe, you know, “Oh, you learn Latin in school so that you can do the literary thing.” But European scholars misunderstood the situation and thought that this meant that Chinese characters were interpretable by speakers of any language without them being based on one language, even though they were very much based on an ancestral language of the region.

Lauren: Oh dear. And their obsession with universality that they came to this very functional but still based on a language thing. Oh dear. I see exactly where this is going. That’s not good.

Gretchen: Also, they did the same thing with the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had not yet been deciphered yet. They were like, “Guys, we found it! We found the universal language of ideas, and it’s not tied to a particular language!”

Lauren: Not translated adds an extra air of mystery.

Gretchen: European scholars thought this was great. Francis Bacon thought this was amazing. It’s interesting to see not just, okay, here’s this thing that was going on in China at the time, which is interesting, but also, here’s how these things get reflected and refracted, whether that’s the Europeans approaching Chinese grammar as maybe this is a thing that’s universal or this Chinese grammarian, Mr Ma, looking at it and saying, “Okay, how can I merge these two grammatical traditions of the full words versus the empty words?”, and then also “What if I have nouns and adjectives and stuff?”, and “How could I group them in ways that make sense for the grammar of the language?” Everyone’s bringing their own preconceived notions to this space.

Lauren: I think the descriptive grammar has really figured itself out as a genre in the 20th Century. A lot of the discussion around how to make sure people aren’t just bringing themselves to it has been to widen the scope of what gets included. One really big influence has been the idea that you need to have the grammar, but it has to be presented alongside the wordlists because the grammar just tells you the rules not which words go in which places and also a collection of texts that are broken down and translated so that people can access what’s happening in narratives. That solves a little bit of that what gets included problem.

Gretchen: Because somebody could always go back and look at the text again and say, “Well, what if I interpreted them differently or wrote this grammar differently based on what I can see here in this longer thing?”

Lauren: Yeah. “The author didn’t get around to a section on the use of particles in narratives, but there’s enough texts here I can see what’s happening.” This little trio of publications is sometimes known as the “Boasian trinity,” which sounds a little bit more pompous and religious than it actually is, but it’s part of this expanding what gets included.

Gretchen: This is after Boas, whose first name I have forgotten.

Lauren: Franz Boas.

Gretchen: Franz? Franz Boas. He was one of the early grammarians in this descriptive and comparative tradition where it’s not just, okay, every intellectual in this one country or this one society is devoting themselves to this one language but, “Oh, what if we looked at lots of languages? What if we compared them?” This goes along with the colonial project of like, “What if we went and conquered some people?”

Lauren: Yes, there’s a lot of scientific rationalism happening here.

Gretchen: This is not entirely unproblematic either. It is interesting how the forms of the grammars start shifting when it stops being this sort of seeking this one language of like, “Oh, everything descends from Greek” or “Everything descends from Sanskrit.” Even the Europeans, at a certain point, when they encountered Sanskrit, were like, “Oh, everything must descend from Sanskrit,” and said, “Okay, well, what if we realised that we can’t actually know what the first language was? This is lost in the midst of time,” and figured out “What can we know about relationships and what is the possibility space for what are different things that languages do?”

Lauren: I mean, I think it’s also worth pointing out a lot of 20th Century language description has happened to try and translate religious texts and political documents and that is a subset of problematic colonisation within the grammatical tradition.

Gretchen: The longest text that’s been written down in a lot of languages is the Bible, which has all sorts of really weird consequences when you start using those parallel texts as the input for something like machine translation because you can have machine translation systems start spitting out things that sound like religious prophecies because they’re just regurgitation versions of that Bible input, which is pretty weird.

Lauren: Such a weird consequence of a weird set of earlier decisions.

Gretchen: Exactly. Here was this earlier decision that maybe this was even a religious text that was created 100 years ago by some missionary, but it’s the longest text that’s available in this language, and the grammar is more or less accurate – and yet. It wasn’t trying to record the stories and the oral histories of the people who actually spoke that language that they cared about themselves, it was trying to introduce this foreign religion to them.

Lauren: Again, it’s one of those things that is hard to avoid and so it’s just important to be aware of when you’re looking at some grammars. They may have a lot of Christian religious texts. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the religion of the speakers so much as the religion of the person doing the documentation.

Gretchen: Going back to that theme of grammars that are made by people and sometimes people’s agendas for making a grammar is –

Lauren: A different endpoint.

Gretchen: It’s less about like, “Oh, I want to help this language be taught in schools and support its speakers in their own goals” and more “I wanna impose my goals on the speakers.”

Lauren: I think another important change that has happened across the 20th Century in terms of grammars is the increasing availability of recording equipment and, therefore, the ability to make recordings of the language as a fourth part of that three-part collection of what’s important when documenting a language.

Gretchen: There are some really interesting ancient recording technologies like the wax cylinders that were used –

Lauren: You say, “ancient,” but you mean, like, 150 years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah, not ancient compared to Paṇini.

Lauren: Not Paṇini ancient, just, it’s really that the story of the 20th Century descriptive tradition is the story of embracing these recording methods.

Gretchen: There was a really cool thing where they had these old, cracked wax cylinders, I think it was in the Smithsonian, and they couldn’t put them on a machine to read them because, obviously, the needle would stumble over the cracks. It’s kind of like a record.

Lauren: They just fall apart.

Gretchen: Picture it as a tall record with all the lines tall rather than a flat record. But it was cracked, so they couldn’t put it in the thing, and they eventually figured out a way with lasers to read the recordings. I got to hear, you know, here’s a song in this language that hasn’t been heard for 100 years because the cylinder cracked. If it’s online, I’ll try to find a link to it.

Lauren: With recording technology, early on, and even for some linguists, it’s mostly about doing recordings so you can go back and listen yourself and really identify that you’re correctly analysing structures. But I think the more exciting thing is that it lets you really observe more people using language in more natural ways. The “Can you say this?”, “Can you say that?”, “Does that sound grammatical?” way of eliciting stuff can lead to an unusual way of approaching the language, but really drawing on people singing songs and telling stories not only makes for a richer, more realistic grammatical description that allows you to see those fuzzier, more complicated bits of language, but it also means that you can make those recordings available for speakers who are interested in going back to an oral history of the language for people who might come in the future and go, “Ah, you didn’t look at the way people’s prosody goes up and down and their intonation changes in stories. I’m gonna look at that, and I have access to these recordings.” I think this is where grammars are more exciting as we integrate more of that richness of actual language and bringing the people who speak the language back into real prominence within the grammar document.

Gretchen: Yeah. Because there is a certain way of writing a grammar which is very old which just assumes that whatever bits you have about “Here’s how this language works,” that information just exists at this abstract level, and it’s not necessarily tied to particular speakers or particular communities, and saying, “Oh, it would be good to give credit to the speakers who were saying this, or to identify this is a particular way that a language is spoken in a particular region,” or “Here’s something that’s going on here.” There have been some initiatives to do things like pair people who are trying to revitalise their languages with linguists to try to understand what’s going on in some of these older grammars because they can be hard to decipher without the special training. The one that I’m familiar with is Breath of Life.

Lauren: There are the Paper and Talk Workshops in Australia as well where you’re coming full circle and making sure that you give people the tools that they need to access the materials about their own language because you can make grammars for many reasons, and we’ve discussed some of them but, at the end of the day, the most important reason to me is that speakers of a language can access the materials that were created for that language.

Gretchen: I think when we look at the multi-thousand-year-old history of making grammars and the very different sorts of questions that people had about language thousands of years ago, I find it very humbling because we can think about what are the questions that people might be asking in another thousand years, and how can we make things that would help with that?

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, schwa pins, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found at @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards, as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include reduplication, Q&A with a lexicographer, and a Q&A with the two of us in honour of our 100th episode. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #transcripts #episode 54 #podcasts #grammar

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trekkiepirate · 2 years

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And here we go again. A fandom is choosing to infantilize the male actor but pointly ignores the female ones (Anya and Freya had gruelling scenes too and they are younger to boot but who cares right?).

Lauren and co. might not be my faves right now and I have more than a bone to pick when it comes to the show, but for now I'm going to believe Joey when he says he managed and trust him (and the others) and hopefully I will not be wrong :S.

I don't think people are pointedly ignoring the female actors dealing with similar scenes; I believe in most cases it's unconscious. For example until you mentioned Freya, I didn't think about how hard the training stunt work is and about the dark places she has to go to (y'know being possessed and KILLING PEOPLE and her nightmares and all the shit Ciri deals with both this season and last). Not because it's not true but because Anya and Joey are kinda my absolute favourites and Freya is further down the list. So I could think of them immediately once you prompted me with her name and I realised you are completely right and Freya had a damn tough season too.

I don't have as many issues with Lauren as some of the fandom seems to (though I will say I think the Eskel plotline was bad storytelling from a narrative perspective. Unintentionally bad I believe, but bad nonetheless). But I would point to how the people she works with in real life, on a day to day basis, trust her and the direction she is steering the show. Joey certainly admires her and trusts her. So I'm gonna trust her too. The show won't be an exact adaptation of the books (good, in my general opinion as some of it is too dated or too Straight Male Writer) and it won't be how I would do it. But I already like some changes, such as the fact it's Ciri's blood and title and not her WOMB (and title) that people are after, since in the books everyone other bastard wants to knock her up and that made me VERY UNHAPPY because she is a CHILD.

I think the issue is people THINK Joey had a bad experience because they picture themselves tied nonstop to a chair for 12 hours (which is not what happened) and they see the pain he projects in the show. The experience of filming and what we see are vastly different. In between takes, he was untied and got up and stretched. A set medic checked on him, not to mention any health and safety reps and Lauren and the director too. Someone noticed at one point that he looked peaky and got him some food between breakfast and lunch (or lunch and wrap). So Joey had a hella difficult day, yeah. But he didn't leave traumatized and no one hurt or msitreated him. He says it took him some time to come out of the dark headplace, but didn't give an exact time (nor should he be expected to, it's an interview not a trial). Maybe it took him all that night, maybe it took him a few hours alone in the hotel. Maybe he called Madeleine or his sisters or one of his friends or maybe he just played music. Maybe he needed to force himself out of the darkness, maybe he just needed to drag himself through to the other side. Maybe it took him a few days. But he got OUT and he was and is fine. He mentions repeatedly that Jaskier, even as a bouncy wise-cracking bard, is hard to shake and he's usually down for the count once the months of filming are done. Because acting, when you are as in it as he is, can be strenuous whether you're being tortured or bouncing around a tavern singing to an admiring crowd. And he takes the time for himself to get himself right once it's done. He doesn't go run into the next project or work himself into the ground. Joey has healthy coping mechanisms.

I think mostly people are projecting how THEY would feel tied up for 12 hours amongst people they don't know being tortured by this evil man (none of us know the crew but we need to remember that Joey is familiar with and friendly with them and he also specifically mentions his scene partner as being kind to him between takes). They think about how they would feel having to scream and pretend they are being tortured and that no one would rescue them and that this is probably the end of their life. And it scares them. Because out of context, in a real world scenario, that is a fucking SCARY thing. But in the context of the show, this specific show, it wasn't scary. It was hard and difficult and Joey turned in a performance that would earn him an Emmy-nomination if there were justice in Hollywood award shows. But I don't think, at his core, under Jaskier's fear, that Joey himself was in anyway scared. He trusted his crew and I think we should take his trust at face value. This is not a situation where unadulterated, contextless empathy is the way to go.

#the witcher #joey batey #acting #freya allen #anya chalotra

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clumsyclifford · 4 years

Note

prompt: "you are my family."

imagine if i had the ability to be concise like just IMAGINE

Ashton is curled up in his bunk, listening to sad music, when Luke finds him. The bus trundling down the freeway has provided Ashton a soothing sedative, something to ease the ache in his heart a little bit while he’d tried (and failed) to feel better, but he’s still hurting, an hour later, and when Luke tugs the curtain back Ashton isn’t sure if he feels better or worse for it.

“Hi,” Luke says, and either he can’t see the redness of Ashton’s eyes in the dim light of the tour bus bunks, or he pretends not to notice.

“Hi,” Ashton replies miserably. There’s no point pretending he isn’t.

“Can I join you?” Luke asks. If Ashton says no, then Luke will turn and go, but not without making sad puppy dog eyes for enough time to cripple Ashton with guilt. And he doesn’t want to say no. He really doesn’t want to be alone; he’s just used to it, when he needs time with his thoughts.

Luke won’t be disruptive, though. Luke knows when the time is to be silly and when Ashton just needs to breathe, to sit in silence and let the air in and out of his lungs, forcing himself through this rough patch because there are always going to be sunny days outside of them. Luke’s definitely been there. He won’t really admit to it, but Ashton knows, has been there, a couple of times, and he knows that Luke will understand.

“Yeah,” Ashton says. Luke smiles carefully as he climbs into the bunk, which is just barely too small for the both of them. That’s never stopped them before, and it doesn’t now; Luke just snuggles right up to Ashton’s chest, tucking his face into Ashton’s neck as Ashton wraps an arm around him.

For a good few minutes, they sit in silence. Ashton’s sad music continues to play dolefully through his earbuds, and Luke’s breath is steady against Ashton’s skin, and Ashton closes his eyes and takes deep breaths and tries to stop himself from crying.

It doesn’t work. This is just — it’s familiar, and it’s different. It’s right, and wrong. It’s Luke — but it’s not Lauren. Not Harry.

It takes a few tears dripping onto Luke’s temple for Luke to notice something is wrong, and by that time he’s already picked up on the way Ashton’s body is shaking with poorly concealed sobs.

“Ashton?” Luke whispers, pulling himself slightly upright, or as close as it’s possible to get in the low ceiling of the bunk. “Oh, no. Don’t cry. That’s useless to say, I know. Um, take a deep breath. You wanna breathe with me?” Ashton bites down on his lower lip hard enough to hurt, but the sobs wracking his body are merciless, and force their way between his teeth and tongue, out into the open. He tries to inhale but it just makes him feel like he’s choking.

“Ashton, Ashton,” Luke breathes, “come on. Put your hand here, you can feel me breathing. Just do what I do. In…” He inhales, tapping Ashton’s wrist steadily until he gets to seven, and Ashton gasps for air, feeling hopeless, feeling helpless. “And out,” Luke continues, exhaling with eleven taps against Ashton’s wrist. “Again.”

Ashton glues his eyes closed and tunes into his other senses, to Luke’s voice, soft yet still filling the space around them, and the way his fingers strike an unflinching rhythm into Ashton’s bones, and the way his chest rises and falls under Ashton’s palm. In for seven, out for eleven. Distantly, Ashton wonders where Luke learned this trick.

When there’s less of an imminent threat of suffocation, Ashton opens his eyes. His eyelashes cling together with tears for a moment before he gets them open, and though it’s dark enough in the bunk, especially with the curtain drawn, it still takes Ashton a moment to adjust.

“Sorry,” he mumbles immediately. Luke makes a noise of disapproval.

“Don’t say sorry,” he says. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. I could tell something was wrong. I’m glad you, um, let it out.” Tentatively, like he’s not sure if Ashton will push him away, Luke reaches out and wipes a tear off Ashton’s cheek. Ashton gives a shuddering exhale. “Do you want to talk about it?” Luke asks quietly, thumbing away the wet streaks down Ashton’s face.

Not really, is on the tip of Ashton’s tongue. But Luke is being so patient and so kind, and Ashton wants to put his faith in Luke. “Homesick,” he says instead, voice wobbling on the word.

Luke hums. “Oh.”

“I don’t see how you’re not,” Ashton mutters, reaching up to swipe at his own eyes. The tears are starting to catch the breeze and dry on his face, and it’s making his skin feel tight and wrong. “We left everything behind to do this. Don’t you miss your family?”

In the pause, Ashton tilts his head awkwardly to look at Luke. Luke is staring out into the middle distance of sorts, obviously turning his response over in his head. It’s funny; sometimes Luke is so obviously the youngest, and other times, Ashton wonders if he’s not the oldest. There’s something about Luke that’s so childlike at times and so profound and thoughtful at others, and Ashton thinks that might just be the same trait in different settings.

“Well, my mum’s here,” Luke says thoughtfully, “so it’s probably different, for me. But, um, also, I never really…like, I’m the youngest. I didn’t look after Jack and Ben the way you looked after Lauren and Harry. I don’t feel like they, um, need me? Not to say they don’t miss me. Well,” he adds with a sort of wry, self-conscious half-smile. “I just mean — I guess I’m not worried about them getting on when I’m not around. And it seems like you probably are worried about that. With your siblings.”

Ashton has to admit that that’s part of it, and he wonders how Luke’s picked up on it. Maybe it’s because Ashton has displaced his tendency to mother people. In fact, his new victim is usually Luke. Now, in the dark, at the mercy of Luke’s gentle voice and calming techniques, that feels preposterous.

“But,” he says, “don’t you miss them?”

Luke ponders this. “I don’t know,” he says. “Like, in a way, yes. But also, the band is my family. You are my family. I — I don’t feel like there’s anybody to miss because it’s not like my family’s either here or there. It’s just bigger now. It’s everyone here and everyone there.” He shrugs.

Ashton sighs and closes his eyes. “You got smart when we weren’t looking.”

“I’ve always been smart,” Luke says, with a hint of defensiveness.

That’s probably true, if Ashton had ever cared to look before. He’d been so caught up seeing Luke as someone to protect that he’d failed to notice that Luke doesn’t need protection, really.

“I’m sorry for,” Ashton gestures ambiguously. “I’m usually, um, I don’t know.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Luke repeats.

“You’re sweet,” Ashton says, opening his eyes and looking up at Luke. “You really are. You’re thoughtful and you’re so sweet. I’m really grateful to have you.”

It’s hard to tell without much light, but Luke seems to be blushing. He shuffles back down until he and Ashton are face to face, noses barely a centimetre apart. “You’d do it for me,” he says quietly. “More importantly, though, I’ll do it for you. Whenever you need.”

Ashton believes him, that Luke will always help him carefully pull himself together, glue him shut until another seal inevitably comes loose. Ashton’s just pieces sewn poorly together, but he trusts that Luke will be there with the needle and thread, doggedly stitching him up like an old ragdoll that serves no purpose but that has too much sentimental value to throw away.

The look on Luke’s face says he’d never throw Ashton away, and Ashton believes that.

“I know,” he murmurs, bringing one hand up, tangling it in Luke’s hair. Luke dips his head, once again burying his face in Ashton’s neck, and Ashton bites down on what is almost a chuckle. He’s pretty sure there are rules against laughing so soon after crying, but Luke’s just — he’s just cute, and charming, and endearing, and adorable, but he’s also so intelligent, and soulful, and sincere, and — he’s Luke, and he’s more things than Ashton can name. “Thank you,” he whispers, in case the gratitude emanating off of himself in waves isn’t obvious enough.

The curve of Luke’s smile presses into Ashton’s collarbone, and Ashton breathes in for seven, out for eleven, as he taps the comforting pattern against the nape of Luke’s neck. That, combined with the continuous rumble of the tour bus as it swallows up the miles, is enough to lull Ashton to sleep.

#is this a prequel to emo lashton? the origin of emo lashton perhaps?? MAYBE SO #luke hemmings #ashton irwin #lashton #lashton fic #5sos #5sos fic #fic #my fic #its not INTENTIONALLY emo lashton but i was just rereading it and..........it very well could be #reveriesofawriter #ask #answered

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kayluh1915 · 3 years

Text

Beautiful People

Paring(s): Pedro Pascal/Female Reader

Words: 5,378

Warnings: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Disorder, Medication Discussions, Insecurities, and Panic Attacks.

You and Pedro have been secretly dating for a few months now after a chance meeting. You both agreed that it was time to reveal your relationship to the public and chose to do so by accompanying him at The Oscars, but your anxiety does a great job of making you think that you don't deserve it.

DISCLAIMER!

This story is based on the song Beautiful People by Ed Sheeran & Khalid, but this IS NOT a songfic. It just gave me this vibe of Pedro walking down the red carpet with someone who doesn't quite feel like they belong and he comforts her by saying he doesn't really belong either and proceeds to list why they're better off because of it. I dunno, It just sounded sweet.

As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.

You can also follow me on Twitter if you'd like. My life is boring, but I might be able to make you laugh if I’m lucky.

Enjoy!

(PS: Pepe is a real person. He was my Spanish teacher my first semester of college... and yes, he really went to Cincinnati every Friday to gamble)

Read on AO3

My Masterlist

The frigid February air was like icicles on your skin, sending a full-blown shiver down your spine as you hurried out of the Science building and towards the dining hall. It was nearly noon and you’ve had only had a banana and a bottle of water this morning, so lunch sounded pretty great right about now… maybe a cup of hot cocoa as well.

The dining hall was about a three-minute walk from the Science building, more than enough time for the cold to seep through the layers of your coat and deep into your bones. The possibility of a cup of cocoa turned into an inevitability, you running for the hot beverage machine as soon as your student ID was swiped.

You sat at your usual spot, hanging your backpack on the back of the chair before taking a greedy sip of the hot drink. The warmth was a godsend, the sugary beverage warming your icy hands with a pleasant hum tumbling from your lips.

“You make noises like that in bed?” Someone asked, snapping you out of your warming daze. It was your roommate and closest friend, Lauren. You snorted at her remark, almost spitting out a sip of your drink.

“I thought you had Spanish class at noon?”

“Nah. It’s Friday, remember?”

“Oh yeah, gambling day.” Like you, Lauren was a music student. It was how you had met nearly four years ago. Like most music students, you both used the extra humanities credits you had earned in high school to bail you out of the required foreign language credit until university. You were doing fairly well so far, but it was because you had a decent teacher. She wasn’t the best, but she was alright.

Lauren’s was just… something else.

On the first day of class, he told his students to call him “Pepe” because he didn’t do the “formal shit.” He also said that there would never be a class on Friday’s because he goes up to Cincinnati to gamble with his buddies. Why he didn’t just put down that his classes were only on Monday and Wednesday were beyond you.

“Yeah. Whatever, though right?” Lauren continued. “I’m not complaining about one less day of class.” You smirked mischievously.

“No, but your Spanish is…” Lauren scoffed, only causing you to laugh harder into your cup.

“Bitch, you shut the fuck up. You can’t speak the damn language either.” You shrugged.

“You’re not wrong, but at least I’m learning more than you are with Pepe.” Lauren groaned.

“Fuck you. Come on, let’s grab some grub.” You stood up and grabbed your backpack, throwing away your empty drink cup to grab something to eat. You settled on your usual favorite and sat back down with Lauren who had somehow already made it halfway through her plate.

“God, slow down.” You teased as you hung your backpack back on the chair.

“I didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Cut a bitch a break.” You shook your head, digging into your own plate, but at a much slower pace. You both sat in comfortable silence, enjoying your meals as the indecent chatter of the surrounding students and meme music playing from the jukebox continued on.

“So,” Lauren said, breaking the silence as she sat down her drink. “What are you doing this weekend?” You froze at her question but played it off the best you could. Any hint of hesitation would send her into a frenzy of questions that you weren’t prepared to answer.

“I’m going in to see Mom. Maybe stop by my Mamaw’s too.” Lauren’s shoulders slumped.

“Damn, that’s too bad. Devon invited us over to his Oscar watch party tomorrow night. Figured you might want to come along since you’re into that sort of thing.”

You swallowed hard at the mention of The Oscars. Just play it cool… don’t. fucking. panic.

“Normally I would, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen Mom. You know how she gets when I don’t come to visit for a while.” Lauren nodded her head in understanding, knowing full well of how your Mom was after living with you for two years.

Little did she know that you had just seen your mother last weekend.

“I understand, boo. I’ll let him know you can’t make it. When are you leaving?”

“As soon as I’m done here. I packed my stuff this morning so I could just go. Trying to beat the traffic as much as possible.” She nodded in understanding.

“Well, I hope you have a good time with your Mom. Say hi to her for me, will you?” You internally sighed a breath in relief. How your big mouth managed to keep him a secret all this time let alone this was beyond you, but you managed to pull it off somehow.

“Yeah, sure.”

After you finished eating, you hugged Lauren goodbye and went back to your dorm long enough to drop off the books you didn’t need and pick up your suitcase. You went through your mental checklist one last time and locked your door behind you as you left.

You unlocked your car and threw your stuff into the backseat, making your way towards the interstate as soon as you left the college.

Home was about a two or three-hour drive down south, but where you were really going was about a 40-minute drive north. You put on some music as you cruise down the interstate, your nervousness slowly increasing the closer you got to your destination.

Your hands shook on the steering wheel, you bounced your left knee furiously, and you were biting your lip… pretty hard. You thought about reaching into your purse for the “take as needed” anxiety medication your psychiatrist prescribed you but decided to hold off on it a little longer. Maybe it’d taper off when you got to the airport.

It didn’t.

You had flown before, but that had been years ago when your micro home town had some kind of festival thing and gave free airplane rides. This commercial airline stuff was something entirely new to you which was already nerve wreaking, but the unexpected bustle of such a smaller airport made it worse.

Weeks before when you first booked the flight to Los Angles, you did as much research as possible to make sure that you knew the “norms” and guidelines of all the airports you were going to since there were no direct flights available. You were as prepared as anyone could be, but you were still extremely nervous and all the foot traffic only made it worse.

You went through security without any qualms and took a seat to wait for your flight to begin boarding. You pulled out your phone and texted your Mom and Lauren before someone walked up to you in your peripheral.

“Excuse, miss?” You looked up from your phone to come face to face with an older gentleman. He looked to be in his early 50’s with salt and peppered hair and a kind smile. He asked you your name and you confirmed with a nod.

“Sorry to disturb you, but your private flight is prepared to depart whenever you’re ready, Miss.”

...Excuse you, what?

“P-Private flight? But I-... I paid for an American Airlines flight.” The man nodded.

“Yes, but Mr. Pascal has sent a private jet to retrieve you. He was fairly insistent to make sure that you boarded.” You sighed heavily. You told him that a two-stop economy flight that you paid for was more than fine, but the thought of you doing anything like a normal person seemed to bother him for some reason.

“Okay. I-I guess I’m ready to go then.” The man smiled.

“Of course, Miss. May I take your bags for you?” You hesitated.

You had never been waited on like this before and you weren’t quite sure how to feel or respond to it. You were perfectly capable of carrying your own stuff and this guy probably wasn’t getting paid enough to carry some lucky college student’s stuff, but was it rude to say no even if you did so in a polite manner? So, you just agreed and handed him over your suitcase and backpack.

You followed him outside and over to a small commercial jet, a woman who looked to be around her mid 30’s standing right by the entrance of the aircraft.

“Welcome aboard, Miss. I’m Kendall Bishop and I’m your captain for today. If you’ll go ahead and take a seat and buckle your seat belt, we’ll depart shortly. I do ask, however, that you remain seated and keep your seat belt fastened until Mr. Clements informs you that it is safe to move about the cabin. Do you have any questions for me before we begin our descent?”

You smiled politely at her and shook your head.

Upon entering the cabin, you were at a complete loss for words. It was easily the fanciest thing you’d ever seen. Leather seats, stocked alcohol shelves, an endless assortment of snacks, a TV, even a fucking bed of all things. The man, Mr. Clements you assumed, gestured towards the seat closest to you. You sat down and buckled your seat belt like you were told to do.

Mr. Clements then reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, gesturing for you to take it.

“Mr. Pascal requested I hand this to you as soon as you board.” You took the envelope out of his hands, looking down at it with a curious gaze. On the back of it had your name scribbled onto it in familiar handwriting. You’d know it anywhere after reading so many letters from him.

“Please enjoy your flight and let us know if there’s anything we can do for you.” You thanked him with another nod, turning the envelope around and tearing it open. The plane prepared to take off as you read.

Mi Abeja,

I know you wanted and paid for a normal flight, but the academy offered to fly you to me privately last second. I was going to ask you if you were okay with it, but you were in class and your phone was off and I had to let them know something before my table read this morning. You work and study so hard and deserve to be pampered so I told them yes. They reimbursed what you paid for your ticket and I’ll give that to you once you get here.

I hope the unexpected change didn’t spike your anxiety too much. I know you’re nervous about this whole thing to begin with and I probably just made it worse. I’m sorry if I did.

I’ll be there to pick you up as soon as you land at LAX.

Love you,

Pedro. <3 <3

Your heart soared at his words, leaning back in your seat and looking out of the nearby window just in time to watch the plane lift up from the runway.

________________________

Four hours later, Mr. Clements informed you that you would be landing shortly. Your heart leaped up in your chest as you put your phone back into your backpack and fastened your seat belt.

It had been a few weeks since you’d last seen him and you were nearly vibrating with excitement by the time the wheels touched down on the runway. Mr. Clements offered to take your things again. You still weren’t sure if it was rude to turn him down or not and you didn’t want to ask and risk looking like a moron, so you agreed and handed over your backpack.

The captain opened up the door and exchanged pleasantries with you as you stepped off the plane, but you barely heard her over the pounding of your own heart. As soon as you looked up from the ramp, you saw him. He was there just like he promised he’d be, standing by his car and wearing his favorite pair of sunglasses all while smiling at you with that blinding smile.

Your sneakers barely touched the tarmac before you were sprinting for him. He held out his arms for you and made a small sound when you collided with him, wrapping your arms around his neck and laying your head on his chest. One of his hands caressed the back of your head, holding you to him tightly as the other one held on to your waist.

“I’ve missed you so much, Abeja.” He muttered against the crown of your head. You let go of him long enough to reach up and kiss him, tangling your hand into his dark curls. “Did you have a good flight?” He asked after you pulled away.

“I did. I was a little nervous at first, but I’m okay now.” Pedro gave you a saddened look.

“I’m sorry. I know it was unexpected and didn’t mean to hike you up, I just figured yo-” You put your hand over his mouth.

“It wasn’t your fault, Pedro. I’m just… not used to this… any of it.” He placed a gentle kiss to your fingers, taking your wrist into his hand and gently taking it off of his mouth.

“Please tell me you at least ate something.“ You nodded.

“I ate with Lauren before I left for the airport. She actually invited me to an Oscar watch party this guy named Devon is hosting. I played it cool just like we practiced, but it took everything in me not to freak out.” Pedro giggled, pressing a kiss to your nose.

“Isn’t she in for a surprise?” You barely smiled, nodding gently. You’ve been trying not to think about it, but the idea of you being on display to the entire world made your stomach churn and your knees weak. You were just a first-generation college student from the middle of nowhere, yet here you are in the arms of Pedro Pascal about to walk down the runway of the most prestigious award show in less than 24 hours.

“... Yeah.” You eventually answered. Pedro noticed the change in your demeanor and frowned, placing a kiss on the wrist he was still holding and caressing it gently with his thumb.

“We don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to, you know? We can always go with plan B.” You shook your head vigorously.

“No, no, no! I-I want people to know… I just… all so new.” Pedro smiled at you sympathetically, brushing a stray piece of hair away from your face.

“Just promise you’ll let me know if it ever becomes too much for you. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.” You look up into his mocha gaze, the butterflies in your stomach making you forget about your self-doubt if only for a few seconds.

“I promise.”

________________________

That evening you were curled up with Pedro in the hotel bed, empty take-out containers discarded onto the nearby nightstand as you watched The Shining together. He was fully engrossed in the movie, his fingers idly playing with your hair. You had tried to focus on the movie. You really did, but you’ve seen the damn thing a million times. Laughing at memes on Reddit sounded more appealing so that’s what you were doing.

“You know, I really miss you when you’re not with me.” Pedro said after a while. You looked up from your phone and up at his face.

“I miss you too. Music school sucks and I can’t cuddle Lauren… well, I can but it would be awkward.” Pedro laughed, caressing your cheek with his knuckle.

“Tomorrow, our stylists will be here around noon. I know you’re going to be nervous all day and will probably avoid eating, so I’m going to make sure you get up with me and eat a proper breakfast.” You groaned quietly.

“You won’t let me sleep in? Even on a Saturday?” You fake-pouted. Pedro tapped your nose gently with his finger.

“Not when tomorrow is such an important day. I don’t want you nervous on an empty stomach.” You both went back to what you were doing for a minute.

“You did bring your medication, didn’t you?” You hesitated before nodding.

“Yes.”

“Good. You’ll have something in case it gets too intense. Getting you to take it will be another story, though.” You didn’t say anything, favoring instead to raise up from your reclined position to swing your leg over his waist to straddle him. His hands instantly went to your hips, gently caressing them with his large hands.

“You’re so beautiful, Abeja.” He said after a while of looking you over and running his hands over your body. You smiled at him and leaned down to give him a kiss. It was pretty standard as far as kisses go, but when you pulled away you were both looking at one another with a fiery intent and slowly went back in for another. This one searing and far more passionate.

Pedro groaned deep in his throat as your tongues collide, the kiss deepening far beyond your original intent.

You weren’t complaining.

________________________

Pedro’s alarm going off scared the living hell out of you. You had been awake since 4 am, trying your best to go back to sleep, but it just never happened. When you finally gave up around 6:30, you grabbed your backpack and sat at the desk the hotel provided and did your weekend homework. You hadn’t realized that you were that engrossed in it until his alarm buzzed you out of it.

He groaned quietly and reached over to silence it, rolling back over and reaching out to the other side of the bed looking for you. When he noticed that you were gone, he raised up from the sheets and looked around the room. His hair was an absolute nightmare, sticking up in various directions as he stretched out his back and yawned loudly.

“Thought you wanted to sleep in.” He teased after he found you at the desk.

“You said you were going to wake me up early. Figured I might get some work done.” Concern then donned on his brow.

“Honey, how long have you been up?”

“Not long,” you lie. “I wanted to get some work done so I just got up at my usual time.” Pedro got out of bed and padded over to you, rubbing your shoulders and placing a kiss atop your head.

“You work too hard. You should take a break while you can.” You lolled your head back, Pedro’s hands rubbing your shoulders feeling absolutely amazing.

“I’ll do whatever you say as long as you keep doing that.” He laughed, kissing your cheek and heading to the bathroom.

________________________

You didn’t want to question the professional, you really didn’t. But after the third layer of concealer, you just had to.

“That’s a lot of concealer.” The makeup artist laughed.

“I know, I’m sorry. Use some cream for those bags next time and I promise you won’t need as much.”

You didn’t speak after that, allowing the hair and makeup artist to finish you up while they gossiped back and forth with each other. They made other side comments like that to you here and there. They weren’t necessarily rude so you couldn’t really say anything, but they did little for your already rock-bottom self-esteem.

The artist put a dark shade of lipstick on your lips, making a triumphant noise when she finished.

“Didn’t have the best canvas, but you look fabulous sweetheart! Smile with your mouth closed and you’ll be a knockout!” The makeup artist and hairstylist gathered up their things, leaving you sitting there in your robe staring at the floor and hoping they leave fast.

When they finally left, you got up from the bed and walked over to the full-bodied mirror. You showed your teeth and started looking over them. You never thought they looked too bad. Sure, they were crooked and had some spacing, but they were okay. Braces were expensive and playing a brass instrument with braces is a death sentence for lips.

What if you were wrong about them looking okay all this time? Maybe you should have taken out that loan and a semester off to fix your teeth…

Your stylist came in shortly after. He was quieter than the others had been and much nicer which you were thankful for as you changed into the white dress they had picked for you. When you came out, the stylist smiled and hooped.

“You look gorgeous!” You finished off your look with matching jewelry and a clutch purse, sitting down on the bed to put on your heels.

“It took me forever to find a pair of acceptable wedges for you, sweetheart. I don’t know why you didn’t just tough it out for one night, but hey. I get it. Country girls don’t like heels and that’s okay! It worked out.”

Again, not necessarily rude… but damn.

________________________

You were waiting in the lobby for Pedro to come out, bouncing your leg nervously and trying to remember not to touch your eyes or bite your lip because of the makeup. When you saw him step off the elevator, your breath caught in your throat. His hair was slicked back and his facial hair neatly trimmed, the black velvet suit hugging his broad shoulders perfectly.

“Wow…” He muttered, looking you up and down. “You look absolutely stunning, Abeja.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” You replied, playing with his bow tie.

“Hey, hey, no. Don’t touch it. I don’t know how to tie it back if it comes loose.” You laughed and shook your head.

“Fine… I’ll unwrap my present later.” Pedro’s own breath caught as you winked up at him. He cleared his throat and composed himself, offering you his arm.

“Ready?” You swallowed and nodded, taking his arm for him to escort you.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

________________________

You were in line for the red carpet, the flashing cameras of the paparazzi already blinding and you were still pretty far back. Your stomach churned, a wave of nausea rising up but nothing happening. Pedro took your shaking hand into his and squeezed it gently.

“You okay?” He asked, noticing how tense you were and only grew worse the closer you got.

“... fine.”

“Plan B’s still an option if you need it, Abeja. You have your medicine you can take too.” You shook your head, looking back at him to flash him a smile.

“I’m good.” You could tell that he didn’t buy your bullshit. Not even for a moment. He didn’t say anything, though, opting only to lift your hand and press a kiss to the back of it.

“I’ll be right there beside you the entire time, honey. If at any point you feel uncomfortable or need to leave, you let me know.” You nodded at him, accepting a kiss from him before looking back out the window of the limo.

Your turn came up way sooner than you would have liked, the greeter opening up the limo door as soon as the car stopped and allowing Pedro to step out into the public eye. The photographers went nuts, the flashing lights and screams from fans intimidating you more than you thought they would.

What the fuck were you thinking? You’re just some tired ass music student. You don’t belong here with all these people.

You almost chickened out and stayed in the car but when Pedro turned towards you and offered his hand you took it anyway even though your mind was screaming for you not to. Just the gentle touch of his calloused hand on yours grounded you enough to carefully step out of the limo, making sure that nothing happens to your dress.

You could hear the sounds of the crowd die down for a moment as they all started muttering to themselves. Your hand was shaking in Pedro’s larger one, the photographers gasping as soon as they saw your face. They started taking pictures faster than they ever had. The bombardment of flashing lights blinded you for a moment, but you adjusted to them quickly.

Pedro let go of your hand and put it on your back, gently leading you where you’re supposed to go.

“Okay?” He asked as he wrapped his arm around you and brought you close. You nodded. You weren’t comfortable in the slightest, but it wasn’t the worst thing ever. While both of you posed for pictures, people from the group of photographers said a lot of things to both of you. Some were kind, others were funny and got a good laugh out of you. There were also a few who were very rude, but they had been pushed aside by the others.

Overall, it wasn’t nearly as bad as you were expecting… but you were glad it was over.

________________________

You were standing aside checking your phone while Pedro did an interview with some of the press. He had offered you to be with him, but the red carpet had been more than enough fame for you. Your phone was on “do not disturb” mode, but you could still see all the notifications coming in. Your Mom, Dad, Lauren, and other friends bombarding you with messages basically asking what the fuck. You didn’t have the time to reply, so you didn’t open any of them.

Once Pedro was done with his interviews, he escorted you into the main hall where he introduced you to some of his friends and colleagues along the way. You considered it an honor to meet the people most only ever dreamed of, but you knew you didn’t deserve it. Someone else should be here, not you.

When you found your seats, Pedro offered you his hand. You took it and allowed him to seat you before he took his next to you and wrapped his arm around the back of the seat. The show started shortly after.

________________________

“And the Oscar goes to…” You held onto Pedro’s hand tightly as they opened up the envelope, your shaking hands encased in his. He had told you when he had been nominated that he didn’t expect to win it, but you could tell he had some hope as he tensely watched them read the card.

“Pedro Pascal.” You jumped up with Pedro, hugging him tightly as the audience broke out in cheers.

“You deserve it!” You told him, breaking away to give him a quick kiss. You watched him run up stage and accept the golden statue, walking up to the microphone with a few chuckles as he looked over the award.

“Wow, this is uhhh… this is incredible. Truly amazing.” He started. “I’d like to thank the Academy for this honor, my Mom and Dad who worked hard to raise me right and who supported me. My brother and two sisters for being there for me, mi Abeja for loving me unconditionally, and just… so many others. There are so many people in my life who have helped me get to this milestone and if I were to thank all of you, we’d be here all night. I love you all so very much and this truly… a dream come true. Thank you.

The crowd stands up and cheers loudly. You wanted to, but you were too busy trying to make sure your makeup doesn’t run down your face with a tissue from your clutch. Eventually, you give up trying and decide to go to the bathroom just to make sure everything still looks fine.

Your makeup looked just as flawless as it had before. You wish you would have known that the artist had used waterproof makeup so you could’ve properly celebrated Pedro’s achievement, but oh well. While you were there, you decided to use the bathroom. You didn’t have to go that bad, but might as well take care of it while you’re here.

While you were relieving yourself, you heard two other women come in.

“-ld for her. He needs to settle down with someone like us and around his age. Not some college student.” You froze solid when they realized that they were talking about you.

“I know. She isn’t even that pretty. Did you see her teeth? Do they not have braces where she comes from?”

“For real. Her body’s not that great either. Looks like she comes straight from the shack or something.”

“Wonder if that’s where he found her?” They both giggle.

“Either way, she doesn’t belong here.” You knew they were right, but you just couldn’t bare to listen anymore, pulling your underwear back up and fixing your dress after you flush the toilet.

You then run out of the bathroom, not even looking to see who the women were. It didn’t matter, though. They were right. You should have never came here and you couldn’t stay any longer.

You walked back to your seat and gently tugged on Pedro’s sleeve.

“C-Can we go… Please?” You ask, your voice shaking just as much as your hands. Pedro got up instantly when he saw the look on your face, grabbing his trophy, coat and your clutch. He didn’t ask questions as he placed his hand to the small of your back and began to escort you out of the theater.

By the time you got back into the limo you felt like you couldn’t breathe. The voices around you sounding like water as your vision became black around the edges. Oh God, is this what feels lie to die? You couldn’t die. Not now! You had so much to do, so much t-

Something extremely cold suddenly touched your face, the blackness around your vision fading slightly as you looked up to whoever had put something so damn cold on you.

You were instantly met with the warm eyes of your boyfriend, concern laced on his brow as he gently dabbed a cold washcloth over your face. You could see his mouth moving, but you couldn’t make out what he was saying over the pounding of your heart, but it eventually calmed down enough to where you could begin to hear him.

“There we go, bee… that’s it sweetheart. Nice and easy.” Your breathing slowly calmed down, Pedro cradling you in his arms as your panic attack faded.

“I should have never come here…” You muttered. “I don’t belong here. All these fancy dresses, the flashing cameras, nice cars… I don’t deserve any of this.” Pedro placed a kiss to your forehead.

“Don’t say things like that, Abeja. You deserve this just as much as anyone. And as far as not belonging, trust me when I say I don’t either. And, frankly, I’m fine with that. All of these designer clothes, the mindless gossip, the broken homes, being surrounded by so many but still alone? That’s not really a life worth living. The world of Beautiful People is a lonely life, one that I would rather not live.”

You wasn’t sure what to say, so you just didn’t say anything, curling up as close as you could to him.

He made you take a dose of your anxiety medication when you got back to the hotel, taking it with a swig of water before laying down and curling up close to him. You laid your head on his shoulder, the sounds of his breathing and the gentle feeling of his hand caressing your own shoulder lulling you.

Right before you doze off, you heard him say:

“No matter what any of them has said, you’re perfect the way you are and deserve everything.”

________________________

You wake up the next morning still wrapped up in his arms. You lay there for a while just talking and enjoying one another’s company before he finally got up to use the bathroom.

You reach for your phone on the nightstand, turning off “do not disturb” mode for the first time since yesterday afternoon.

Your phone was overloaded. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, everywhere was flooded. You didn’t even know where to begin.

Eventually, you just give up trying to put a dent into anything and returned Lauren’s list of missed calls. She answered on the second ring.

“You tell me every little detail, you sneaky bitch. And I mean everything!”

#kayla's ramblings #pedro pascal #reader insert #my fanfiction #beautiful people

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buckysbitch107 · 4 years

Note

Can you write a fic where Bucky sabe reader from her toxic friends?? Can you make them really mean and make Bucky really sassy? Thanks 😊 btw I love your writing so far! You’re really good 😝

A Little Help | Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: You don’t even know why you still hang out with them. They’re rude, ignorant, and just overall toxic. So when everything goes wrong over dinner, you simply start dialing numbers to see who would pick up and be able to drive you home, knowing that the buses don’t run this late. What you didn’t expect was for your crush, Bucky Barnes, to be the first one to pick up. What you didn’t expect even more, was his reaction once he got there.

Warnings: Swearing, Crying, S A S S

Word Count: 1.4K

A/N: Hope this meets your standards! I tried my best with this one and i hope you enjoy it! Just a reminder that I will always be accepting requests!

“Hey, guys! Sorry, I’m late! Got held up at the office.” You explain, sitting down at the table with your two other friends. Heather shoots you a small smile while Lauren looks you up and down with pursed lips.

“Hi Y/N!” Heather greets before looking back down at her menu. Lauren scoffs quietly and you shoot her a confused look.

“Something wrong?” You ask, reaching for your water and taking a sip of it.

“Did you have to wear that dress?” Lauren comments, her face riddled with disgust.

“Is something wrong with it?”

“It’s tight, short, and a little revealing. I just wouldn’t recommend wearing it with your body type.”

“Lauren-”

“I know I’m not the only one thinking it!” Lauren admits, turning to Heather. “I mean, come on. Her thighs giggled when she sat down, her stomach pudges out of that dress, and no one wants to see those stretch marks, sweetie.” Heather sighs before turning to you.

“She’s not wrong, Y/N. You do look a little chubby in that dress. Plus you could’ve worn something nicer. Not that cheap crap. I mean come on, buy something of value for once.” She comments.

“Can we just order our food?” You whisper, looking down at your menu, trying to hold back the tears coming out of your eyes. The waiter comes over and takes your order, the people sitting beside you giving you sideways glares as they order their own food.

“Jesus Christ, Y/N. You ordered enough food to choke a goat. Especially with your body type, you should really watch what you eat.” Your eyes burn as you look down at your food.

“I’ll be right back.” You whisper, standing up and walking to the bathroom. You dry your tears and fix your makeup before making your way back to the table, stopping when you hear two familiar voices talking.

“God, why did you even invite her?” Heather asks, not aware of your position in relation to the table.

“Because I feel bad for her. We’re the best chance she’s got at ever having friends. I still hate her though.” Lauren admits, making you stop in your tracks and turn back to run into the bathroom. You pull out your phone and start dialing numbers, hoping someone will answer. Mom? No answer. Kelly, your big sister? No answer. You run through the rest of your contacts and realize the only people you haven’t called are some of the Avengers. Coulson? Nah, he’s most likely asleep. Cap? Funny voicemail, no answer. Your finger lingers over the last name, and you click it before placing the phone to your ear.

“Hello?” Bucky answers after a few rings.

“Buck-” You whisper, your voice catching due to tears, a crack replacing what would have been more words.

“What’s wrong doll? You sound upset.” He asks, sounding more alert and concerned.

“Can you just pick me up? I’m at the restaurant on 8th and Madison.”

“Sure, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting outside.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” You walk back to the table after drying your tears once again and pick up your purse, quickly making up the excuse that your boss called you in. The two girls nod and continue their conversation, leaving you to walk out of the restaurant. As you stand out in the cold, tears start streaming down your cheeks.

~~~

The rumble of a motorcycle pulls you from your thoughts and you look up, instantly spying the old-fashioned Harley Davidson pulling up beside the curb. Bucky hops off his bike, placing the kickstand down before rushing over to you, pulling you into a bone-crushing hug that makes you sob a little harder. He pulls away and pushes the hair out of your face, his brows furrowing at your red-rimmed eyes.

“Oh doll, what happened?” Bucky whispers, causing you to let out a loud sob. You babble to him about the things your “friends” said about you, and his face grows angrier and angrier by the minute.

“And I just wanna go home.” You finish, wiping your nose with the sleeve of your coat.

“They said what to you? That’s un-fucking-acceptable.” He mumbles, grabbing you by the hand and pulling you inside the restaurant. You try to object, but you end up just leading him to the toxic friends still eating their meals. “Are you two Heather and Lauren?” Your two “friends” turn their heads up to meet his eyes, and you can practically see their panties fall off.

“Yes, that’s us.” Heather adds, trying to act all sweet and innocent, but Bucky looks past that in less than a second.

“So you’re the two assholes who made Y/N cry?” Their faces form into those of realization, and Heather tries to blabber out an excuse.

“Well-”

“Well, what? I don’t see why you judge her so much when you’re wearing the fakest damn pearls anyone has ever seen!” Bucky comments, pointing to Lauren’s necklace.

“And how would you know?” She retorts, obviously thinking she’s done something.

“The paint is chipping, bitch. Also,” He states, turning towards the other woman at the table. “I really hope you didn’t pay full price for that purse, cause the logo is upside down and one brush away from flaking off.”

“At least we can afford something of value at all! She couldn’t even buy anything from the stores we shop at if she tried!” Heather says.

“I’m sorry, have you seen her house? I’m sure yours can fit inside it 10 times. And why are you so focused on money?!” He stops, taking a breath before continuing. “I’m-i’m just guessing here but I’m really not, but you buy “expensive” things to compensate for your bitchy personalities.”

“As Heather said, she can’t afford anything we buy.”

“I’m guessing you can’t either because there is so much fake and ‘made in china’ here that I can barely breathe. And while we’re talking about fake, let’s have a word about those faces, boobs, and personalities!” Lauren scoffs and that’s when you try to intervene.

“James-”

“No! I’m serious! There’s more plastic in these two than there is in the entire fucking ocean!” The man grins sarcastically and sits at the table, crossing his left leg over his right and leaning back in the chair. “So do you want me to continue pointing out your flaws in front of all these people, or are you gonna apologize to my girl?”

“Um-” Bucky doesn’t even wait for the rest of that sentence as he grabs your wrist and starts walking away.

“What about the bill?” Lauren whispers.

“I-i can pay guys.” You whisper, causing Bucky to rear back as you start reaching into your purse.

“Nonono. Apparently, you have a shitty job, and they don’t.” He turns towards the women still sitting at the table. “I’m sure you two can manage without my girlfriend.” Bucky grabs your hand again and pulls you out of the restaurant, handing you a helmet before straddling his bike.

“Thank you.” You whisper, wrapping your arms around his waist as you sit behind him.

“Why didn’t you tell them you work for S.H.I.E.L.D?” He asks, starting up his bike.

“They’d use me to get to you or Cap.”

“Ah.”

“You-you called me your girlfriend.” You mutter, hoping he heard you over the roar of the wind. He apparently did, as he nearly slams on the brakes and pulls off into a side street.

“I did?”

“Yeah,” You whisper, tightening your arms around him.“you did.”

“Oh, well are you okay with that?” You bury your head into his back, trying to hide a wide smile.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” He speaks, turning around to still be on the bike but face you. “because you didn’t have a choice. You’re mine.” You pull your head up and look at him with a bratty glare.

“Oh am I?” You retort, grinning at him. Bucky rolls his eyes before slipping his head behind your neck, nesting his fingers in the hair at the base of your scalp as he pulls you closer. He places his other hand on your chin and tilts you head up, pulling you into a kiss that leaves you seeing stars. He pulls away with a grin on his face, both of your noses nearly touching.

“Yeah, yeah you are.” He whispers, leaning in again.

“Okay”

Permanent Tags: @wintersoldierslut @breakmy-bedbarnes @stuckys-hot-dogs @andreasworlsboring101 @yaxamarvel @donutloverxo

Just a reminder that all requests are open! My masterlist is in my bio, so you guys know who I specialize in, but really I do anyone y’all request. As I’ve mentioned, nothing is too fluffy, angsty, smutty, or gorey for me. I mainly write Marvel and its characters/actors. I can also write some characters from other things, you just have to ask! Also please let me know if you want to be a part of the Permanent Tags! But please, for now,

Call me Emily

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes one shot #james buchanan barnes #james barnes #james barnes x reader #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #marvel comics #comics #fluff #sass

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yourdeepestfathoms · 3 years

Text

Put Your Head On My Shoulder

[Wing AU; Tour!Verse]

Wing Chart

I did another art-writing trade with @spooner7308!!! They once again requested EB and Tour!Joan content for the wing au, so here it is! I think their dynamic is great

Also art-writing trades are open if anyone is interested! Just DM me!

Also also for legal reasons Jane is Lauren!Jane, not Carly!Jane, because Carly!Jane would NEVER. Though, if Jane really did what happens in this fic is up to interpretation hehe

Word count: 4880

TW: Blood, discussion of torture

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

The frantic knocking at the front door roused EB from her half-dazed reverie on the couch. She peeled one of her large wings away from her face and squinted through the dim lamplight; she really had to change the light bulb one of these days. She should treat the electrical items in her house like she does with the ones at the theater, right? But there was no real motivation for her own personal things…

More knocking. EB grunted in annoyance, hoping it would just go away. It was probably some stupid solicitors trying to get her to buy some cable program or something dumb like that. Don’t they know not to wander into a vulture’s nest? She wondered if she could flash them to get them to go away and never come back… No, no. That would just throw her back in prison, and who wants to go down with public indecency due to nude tits and bare ass on their permanent record? It was already hard enough to get her current job as is. And that was very un-metal of her.

The knocking continued, and now it just sounded like someone was trying to bust her door down. She growled. How good could this fucking cable be? Unless it had free porn, she did NOT want to hear it.

But the salesavian apparently didn’t take the hint because they kept trying to break her fucking front door, and EB finally threw herself up with a roared, “ALRIGHT!!”

Stomping to the entrance of her small, dingy apartment, EB flung open the door and was nearly rapped on the chest by the person standing outside. She flared her wings and crest feathers, fluffing them up to look bigger, and snarled, “What the FUCK do you w--”

And then the words died off.

Because it wasn’t some degenerate annoyance trying to sell her shitty cable at all, but a small, stick-thin hybrid that would never in a million years be able to go door-to-door selling useless crap people.

And there was something attached to her head.

It almost looked like a diver helmet and bear trap were fused together. Two thick iron jaws were clamped firmly over her mouth, attached to a series of metal clasps and straps and hinges that branched out over the sides of her head, anchoring the thing to her skull. It looked heavy and very uncomfortable, and EB could see chipped and frayed pieces digging into the hybrid’s sensitive flesh. It was brown from age, rusted and pockmarked in dents and scratches, practically crawling with tetanus.

With a jolt, EB realized it was a jaw trap, and it was Joan beneath its abrasive metal grasp.

The jaw trap was never used on EB personally while she was being tortured before her execution. At the time, there had been only one existing in London, and it was mainly used for show, getting its own pedestal and everything like it was the king’s fucking crown. No, instead she owed her tortured pleasure to the end of fat dove fingers, which ripped out handfuls of her feathers until it looked like she was infected with Drop Feather Fever. And for a dove, a supposed “holy figure”, he was fucking BRUTAL and MEAN. She also got to get a taste of the merciless brutality of a tail chopper, which severed the bone, muscle, and tendons of her tail before she could even have another fucking vision--and her tail hasn’t even recovered from THAT experience, and it’s been over FIVE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS!! And then there was also the whipping of the base of her wings, pulling out her talons, that one time they attempted to set her crest feathers in fire… God, she was starting to fall back into the darkness of those memories again.

Joan sniffled, and EB shook off the black vines trying to crawl through her heart and mind. Big, tear-filled grey eyes stared up at her, filled with so much terror and pain and distress. Joan looked absolutely shaken, like she was about to faint at any moment from pure horror.

EB grabbed her by the arm and dragged her inside.

Was her apartment too dirty? There were definitely some cans on the floor and it smelled a lot like cigarette smoke. Didn’t Vespers have heightened smell? Or was that the Hydras? Wait, Joan was crossed with both-- Shit, what if the smell suffocated her or something?! Could that happen? Joan whimpered, bringing EB back to awareness once again. She sat the young hybrid down on the couch and retrieved her tools from her bedroom (what? she’s a technician! might as well have some on hand! now if she could just change that light bulb…).

“Hey, hey,” EB said when she heard Joan whimper again, and she was surprised at how soft her voice came out. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you out of that thing.”

She knew how dangerous jaw traps could be. Even though she hadn’t been around to ever see one be used, she did her research on the things that happened after she died. She read about the awful things Mary had done. The way she put the traps on hybrids, the Flightless, and even Vespers simply for existing and because she didn’t like them. How she would have them sprung for the stupidest reasons, ripping the jaw off or crushing the skull or tearing the face of innocent people because they disagreed with the things she said. And then what Jane did with her four hybrids…

Rage simmered in EB’s veins, but she did her best to cool it for now. She could get her revenge when Joan was not at risk of losing her entire fucking mouth.

EB brandished a screwdriver and began looking for a give, but there didn’t appear to be any gives on the jaw trap. It was made of very specific metal riggings and hinges and springs, which were attached with even more specific clasps and latches. It wasn’t like any normal device that she could just take apart.

This was going to be a lot harder than she thought.

EB gently twisted Joan’s head with her hands and began searching for a weak part of the jaw trap. The back had several hunks of metal attached to it, dozens of locks and joints that looked very uncomfortable to have dug into the head. She tugged on one lightly and the entire trap creaked dangerously. Joan let out a muffled scream and burst into tears.

“Hey, hey, hey,” EB quickly swerved back in front of her. Glistening droplets ran into the grooves of the metal jaws clamped around her mouth; EB wondered if it was so rusted because of the tears of the victims who had to wear it. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you out.”

Joan sobbed again. Her breathing picked up, raspy and muffled through her nose because she couldn’t gasp out of her firmly closed mouth. Her eyes were wide and manic, like she was already seeing her own bloody demise playing out to her, and EB began to wonder if she had visions, too…

But EB would not let the hybrid die. Not ever.

“You’re going to be okay.” EB said firmly, but her voice still had a certain softness to it that was able to grab Joan’s attention. The hybrid looked up at her with so much desperation in her shiny eyes. “I won’t let you get hurt.”

Joan sniffled and nodded. Her panic attack had yet to be tamed, but at least she didn’t look like she was visualizing her own jaw being ripped off anymore. EB considered that a win for now.

“Turn your head for me, love,” EB said, and the pet name slipped out without her even thinking it through. Joan obeyed, tensing when the jaw trap jangled when her head moved. “Now sit still for me. Yeah, just like that. Good girl.”

With careful claws, EB began analyzing the back rigging of the jaw trap with a surgeon’s eye. She poked and prodded pieces of the contraption with the gentleness of someone holding an extinct bird egg, knowing the risk if her talons slipped for only a moment.

There were two thick circular seals attached to either sides of the jaws, which seemed to be holding them closed. They were connected by taut wire rope that fastened onto the back, too tough to cut through with her claws, but maybe some bolt cutters or pliers could do the trick…

“Okay, hold still for me,” EB said, pulling a pair of pliers from her tool box.

Joan began screaming, startling EB and nearly making her stab her in the temple.

“What?” EB yelped.

Joan shook her head wildly, and EB had to grab her by the ears to get her to stop from hurting herself further. She screwed her eyes shut, crying harder, and made distressed noises that sounded like she was saying “no.” Upon closer inspection, EB realized her panic when she saw that the wires were tightened into their straightness by a gear--and her knowledge in tech told her that if she were to cut them without unlocking the seal, the trap would spring.

“Shit,” EB muttered.

Joan whimpered. Her wings, shaking so badly they may just shudder right off of her back, pulled close around her like she thought they could protect her. EB’s heart ached at her despair and she wiped her thumb under one of her eyes, brushing away the tears.

“Joan, pup, look at me.” She said softly. She unfurled her wings around Joan, and the hybrid tried to curl into them like she craved their warmth. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m going to get you free, okay?”

Joan sniffled pitifully and nodded weakly.

EB returned her attention to the back of the trap. She looked closer, carefully poking her claws through the cracks and creases in the metal. She eventually saw a sprocket and fastener near the center, slightly obscured by springs and links. She could tell that it was the key to unlock the trap, and was probably hard to get to for a reason, so victims couldn’t just reach back and set themselves free.

“Okay, Joan,” EB said, peering in at the fastener. “Take deep breaths. You’re doing so good. I’m going to get you out.”

She reached in and tried to twist the fastener, but it was much too tight for her claws to loosen. Which also made sense. And also made her angrier because a victim wouldn’t ever be able to get the trap off if they were forgotten about.

She took the pliers and stuck them into the small gap, grasping the fastener with the jaws. She began turning it, loosening it slowly but surely, and the jaw trap creaked, then clicked. Joan cried out as the entire thing shuddered around her head, but EB could see that the wires were starting to lose some of their tightness.

“It’s okay, love,” EB said, brushing one of her wings against Joan’s arm comfortingly. “It’s almost off. Just keep breathing.”

Slowly, carefully, the seals and riggings went loose and the entire trap seemed to go slack around Joan’s head, allowing EB to pull it off of the terrified hybrid.

The first thing EB saw were the purple bruises bloomed across Joan’s cheeks and lower jaw from the tightness of the trap, then the nicks and cuts from the frayed metal, and then her mouth full of blood.

EB had read about how jaw traps were sometimes so tight that they damaged the jaws of the victim, causing nerve damage and bruising. There was also a plate that went into the mouth, sometimes cutting into the tongue and gums, which explained why Joan’s mouth was all bloody.

Rage boiled up again, like pus from an abscess. EB clenched her talons, driving the black claws into her palms. She released her fists before they could break skin and jumped up to retrieve a rag from the kitchen, which she wet with warm water. She swiped some painkillers from one of the cabinets as well, knowing that Joan had to have been in pain, even if she didn’t say it out loud.

When EB went back to the couch and brought the rag to Joan’s face, Joan flinched away with a whimper. Her eyes were glazed and haunted; she reminded EB of the way she used to be after she had first been reincarnated.

“Hey, hey,” EB gently brushed Joan with her wing. “It’s just me. It’s EB. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“E-EB?” Joan squeaked. Her voice was raspy and hoarse…as if she had worn it out from screaming.

The anger bubbled back up, burning hot, like molten lava trapped in a cauldron. She fought to keep it from showing on her face, knowing it would definitely startle the poor hybrid in front of her if she did.

Joan’s face crumpled and she began to openly cry. “I-I was so scared!” She choked out. “I-I thought I was--” She trailed off into the frantic wheezes and whimpers of a spiraling panic attack.

“Hey, shh,” EB wrapped her wings around Joan, and Joan sunk into them. She was tiny in comparison to the feathery appendages, and EB realized she was curled in them like a chick would in the wings on its mother…and that EB had her hooded like an actual mother hen would.

EB internally snorted. Her? Being a mother hen? That was about as likely as her changing the lightbulb in her lamp, which was definitely getting dimmer by the second. In fact, she would probably be THE WORST mother hen! Absolutely terrible! Would probably actually sit on a kid instead of just hooding them!

Wait, wasn’t it nesting season?

EB shook out her wings and Joan flinched. She quickly calmed her when she made a noise of distress.

“Sorry,” She said, rubbing the hybrid’s head with one hand. She used the other to wipe off the blood on Joan’s face with the rag, making sure to be careful over the tender bruises. When she finished, she gave Joan the painkiller pill, and then Joan promptly balled back up in her wings.

As EB held Joan, rubbing her back with one hand, keeping her protectively wrapped in her wings, she let the anger finally march through her veins like a colony of army ants.

How could someone do this to a kid? She could understand in a way why she had been tortured, she had a blasphemous vision, but Joan was so young. And all she was was a hybrid. She just looked a little strange, and yet people hated her like she was a devil loosed from hell.

A growl curled at the back of her throat, coming out sounding more like something a dog would make rather than a vulture. Her feathers stood on end as she cupped Joan’s face, made her look up at her, and whispered, “Who did this to you?”

Joan’s big yellow ears swiveled around like a searching radar, then pinned back flat against her head. She looked away, hugging her wings around her.

EB let out another growl. She couldn’t have expected Joan to give her an answer; no fault of the girl’s own, she was much too timid and anxious to spill information.

EB gently deposited Joan from her hold and stood up, becoming very aware of the empty, cold feeling that quickly infected her wings. She quickly shook them out, as if they were crawling with spiders, but the feeling didn’t go away. She scoffed. Must be stupid nesting season shit. Not that nesting season affected her. She was METAL and TOUGH. And metal and tough birds do NOT become mother hens!!

“I’ll be back,” EB said, thorns edging her words. She picked up the jaw trap and was surprised that the metal didn’t bend within her tight grasp.

“Wh-where are you going?” Joan asked, stammering over her words.

“To get revenge.” EB stated bluntly, striding for the door.

“P-please don’t leave me!”

That made EB falter. She stopped at the entrance to the apartment, the door half open, her wings spread and ready for flight.

“I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”

She hurried out. If she heard Joan’s reaction, then she wouldn’t be able to go on with her plans.

She hoped the little hybrid wouldn’t be mad.

Outside, EB leapt into the night sky and began flapping her way across the city. She pumped her wings furiously, soaring like a speeding jet through the stars. Her rage fueled her onwards, and she flew like--

(like that damn dove was on her tail feathers.)

Elizabeth grit her teeth through the pain. One by one, her brown feathers were plucked from her wings, leaving ugly bald patches and red marks across the tender pink flesh. She did her best not to whimper or whine, bit small noises of pain escaped her lips against her will.

“Oh, so now you’re quiet,” Chuckled the dove. He ran his claws over a handful of her feathers. His white wings were spattered in blood. “Maybe you should have kept your mouth shut about your fucking visions and you wouldn’t even be in this situation.” He flicked his wings and droplets of blood went flying. “Though, I guess I wouldn’t have gotten to have some fun with you right now. And I don’t expect a vulture to understand anything.” He raked his claws down Elizabeth’s left wing and laughed cruelly.

--like a demon was on her tail feathers. A demon. Not a dove.

EB shook her head and growled deep in her throat. She flew faster, beating her wings until her muscles burned with exertion.

(like how her back burned when the dove whipped her)

A cry of pain escaped Elizabeth’s lips when the whip came down on her bare back, slashing open a gouge down her tender flesh. Blood came pouring out, wet and hot and sticky down her spine. Her head spun- how many lashings has this been now? Five? Twenty? A hundred?

The dove’s laugh from behind her sounded like the cackle of a hyena.

“Still no new visions?” He asked. “I surely thought I could beat them out of you.” He leaned down in front of Elizabeth, and his face was dripping with her blood. “Come on, nun. Predict my future. Where am I gonna be in twenty years?”

“They don’t--work like that.” Elizabeth said through her teeth. The pain was sharp and radiating, burning like a wildfire through her back. Her wings were trembling violently and every shudder sent a new wave of torture vibrating through her nerves.

The dove laughed loudly, and Elizabeth winced. “Well, aren’t you tough?” He gave a gravelly chuckle and raised the whip again. “That won’t last much longer.”

“GET AWAY FROM ME!!” EB roared, wheeling around to swing her wings at something that wasn’t there. A sharp gust of wind caught her flight feathers and nearly sent her spiraling out of the sky. Sweat dripped down her face and she shook her head wildly, growling. With a whirl of brown and gold, she spun back around and continued her flight path.

She couldn’t remember the last time the memories of her past really came up. She was good at repressing them, beating them down into the darkest reaches of her memory so they could never come crawling back up. And if they did, she would fill her body with so much alcohol or smoke that her brain would drown in liquor and ash and become muddled enough to block out the memories on its own.

But she didn’t have time to drink or smoke or suppress anything. She just had to fly.

(because the dove had made sure she never would again back then)

Elizabeth glared at the dove as he curled around her. It was agony to stand, but she held herself as still as possible. The cuts along her back had broken open and were bleeding through her shirt.

“Tell me a vision, vulture.” The dove said.

Elizabeth growled, opened her mouth, then screamed.

The blade of the tail cutter sliced cleanly through her tail.

EB tucked in her wings and dove from the sky like a comet falling to earth. She opened them back up at the last moment and swooped down to the front stoop of the queen residence. She knocked furiously on the door, surely thinking she was splintering the wood beneath her fist.

(just like the way her bones had been splintered)

Tendons severed, muscles cut away, tail feathers docked, wings twin labyrinths of blood and gore. Elizabeth lied in her cell, shuddering in agony, staring listlessly at the wall. She couldn’t think straight at all anymore. Did she ever really have any visions?

The dove opened her cell down, rope in hand, and stared down at her.

“Get up, vulture,” He said. “You’ve got a big day ahead of you.”

After twenty-two eternal seconds, the front door opened. EB shoved past a confused-looking Cathy and stormed into the house like a raging firestorm.

“JANE!” She roared. “GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!”

“EB, what is the meaning of this?” Howard asked, but EB ignored her.

Jane walked out of a hallway, eyebrows furrowed, and EB nearly tackled her right then and there.

“What’s going on?” The old world swallowtail Cimex asked. Her large wings were twitching nervously, and EB so badly wanted to tear into them with her talons and teeth.

“I am going to be asking the questions here,” EB said to her, fire licking her words. She brandished the jaw trap, and it looked so much more menacing in actual light. Jane tensed, and gasps went around the room. “Recognize this?”

Jane swallowed thickly. “Wh-where did you get that?”

“I think you know.” EB said.

Jane looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, you snotty, pompous gnat!” EB snapped, enjoying the way Jane flinched. “You know exactly where this came from. You know what you did.”

“No, I don’t!” Jane said, glancing all around the room. “I haven’t seen one of those in centuries! I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“YOU FUCKING LIAR!” EB roared, making everyone in the room jump. “You--you put this thing on a fucking kid, you absolute monster! She came to me crying, thinking she was going to die! I know you’re fucking racist, but how fucking SICK do you have to be to pull this shit AGAIN?”

Jane took a small step back. All four of her hands were wringing in her shirt, like she didn’t know what to do with her arms while she was getting ripped a new one. Her face was ghostly pale, eyes wide in shock, and her wings had started to tremble.

“I-I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” She squeaked.

EB scoffed. “You’re such a fucking joke.” She said. “I knew you were illiterate and fucking stupid, but do I really have to spell it out for you? I know what you did to Joan, and I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

“She did WHAT?” Howard snapped to attention.

“What happened to Joan?” Aragon followed, unfurling her golden dragon wings. She shot an evil glare at Jane.

“She put this fucking torture device on Joan.” EB said, shaking the jaw trap for emphasis. It clanked loudly, the deadly jaws hanging limply. She stalked closer to Jane, ruffling up her wings to look bigger than she already was. The butterfly cowered beneath her, shaking from antennae to toe. With a voice that was dripping with venom, she said, “And you should know that when it comes to all equipment, tech, and machinery, whether it be used in the tour or not, my word is law. And my decree is that if you so much as think of bringing along another one of these wretched devices, then you have another thing coming.”

Jane went to reply, and EB slashed her across the mouth.

Driven backwards by pain, Jane staggered, wings flaring out in shock. Her hands flew to her jaw, pawing tentatively, green Cimex blood drooling through her fingers. Four long claw marks were carved across her lips and cheeks, and EB struggled not to smirk at how long the scars would linger on her face.

“Do NOT try and argue with me!” EB boomed, her voice resounding like thunder through the house. “I did NOT live through torture at the Tower of London to see this fucking thing be used in modern day!” She clutched at the jaw trap with both hands, imagining it were Jane’s head she was crushing between her talons. “You’re not going to hurt anyone everyone again, you fucking monster. Not while I’m around. And if you lay a single claw on Joan, if your silk so much as TOUCHES her, if your wings even BRUSH her, I will fucking kill you, and I will make sure it’s much worse than goddamn natural causes. I will make you feel real pain, you useless baby-making trophy.”

And then she pulled the jaw trap apart, looking Jane dead in the eye as if to say, “THIS is you.”

Silence fell around the house. Jane was frozen, shaking madly, but her petrified expression was more than satisfying for EB.

Was this what the dove felt when he tortured her?

Come on, little nun, tell me my future. Don’t make this all be worthless…

Raising her chin haughtily, EB threw the broken jaw trap at Jane’s feet, fluffed her wings at her, and then turned and walked out.

She took to the sky instantly, and began flying home. She swore she had a boost under her wings as she flew, making her stronger and faster.

She felt powerful.

EB was home in record time, landing smoothly and instantly darting into her apartment.

Joan was curled on the couch where she left her, wrapped up in a cocoon made of her own weird wings. Her head popped up when the door shut, and her grey eyes were rimmed with thick rings of red.

“I told you I’d come back,” EB said.

Joan threw herself at EB, and EB caught her in her wings. The hybrid dissolved into tears once again, sobbing so hard it sounded painful. EB tried to maneuver her back to the couch before she collapsed, but she ended up scooping her up instead. She ignored the weird nagging sense of worry tugging on her brain when she realized how light Joan was, even for an avian of her size. Because she will say it again: she was NOT affected by nesting season!!!!

“Shh, shh, shh,” EB murmured, swaying Joan in her wings. “It’s alright. I’m here now. I’m sorry for leaving you, but I had to take care of something.”

Joan sniffled and whimpered something completely incomprehensible, but EB couldn’t really tell if it was because she was crying or because she was also Scottish, and who could REALLY understand Scottish avians?

“It’s okay, love,” EB held her tighter, feeling stubby little half-chewed claws grip onto her shirt. “I won’t let you go. Everything is alright now. Everything is alright.”

Joan cried steadily for ten more minutes, and EB was surprised that she had that much left in her. But after the storm of tears was over, she was reduced to weak hiccups, slumped against EB’s chest in clear exhaustion. Her shiny grey eyes were clouded with fatigue, and she barely had the strength to even lift her own wings. EB stroked down her crest feathers, clucking.

“Let me get you some water before you die of dehydration, little creature,” EB said affectionately. But when she tried to get up, Joan made quite an adorable whine (don’t tell anyone she thought that, though, or she will fucking rivet you a new anus) and mustered up enough strength to wrap her wings around her stomach and hang on her with her dewclaws. “Uhh. Pup? You gotta let go. I need to get you some water.”

Joan buried her face against her chest and shook her head.

“What, do you want to come with me to the kitchen or what?”

Joan looked up at her, eyes glistening like a newborn baby bat’s, and EB had her answer.

Carrying a hybrid hanging onto her like a baby koala might have been weird if EB hadn’t have read something that said Vespers liked hanging on things because it was “true to their bat nature” and also liked being swaddled by wings because it made them “feel secure” and “reminded them of their mother.” Not that she looked that up because she liked Joan, though! Well, she DID like Joan, but she was just looking up things about Vespers because she was interested in the other tribes, that’s all! Nothing for Joan’s sake! She was just curious!

Oh, who was she kidding? Maybe she could let her persona fall just this once. After all, Joan gave her a reason to change that goddamn light bulb. And when did a little nesting season instincts ever hurt anyone?

#wing au #dont tag as ship #six the musical #six the musical fanfic #six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fic #six the musical au #EB #elizabeth barton #tour joan on the keys #tour jane seymour #tw: blood #tw: torture #put your head on my shoulder

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mindingmyownbusiness · 4 years

Text

Rescue (5/?)

Pairing - Bucky x Reader Soulmate AU Summary - You’ve always believed your soulmate was out there somewhere, Bucky not so much. What happens when he finally takes a leap of faith and reaches out to you? Warnings - some canon-typical violence in later chapters, the occasional curse word, but I promise to make up for it with loads of fluffiness Chapter Word Count - 1798 Notes - Posting has gone from once a week to super sporadic lol (sorry everyone!). My goal is currently to have it finished before school starts in a few weeks. Inspired by Rescue by Lauren Daigle and by a lot of the concepts in Sense8.

Series Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

...a few weeks later...

“Dogs or cats?” Bucky was leaning back against his headboard, idly flipping a knife as he listened for your answer.

“Hmmm… that’s a tough one. I’m gonna say cats for right now, dogs later when I have a bigger place. I’d feel bad leaving a pupper cooped up in here while I’m at work.” You rinsed your plate and set it in the drying rack, moving to drain the sink and reaching for a dishtowel.

“I get that. Been thinking of getting a cat myself. It’d be nice to have around but would also drive Sam crazy, win-win. Your turn, Y/N.”

“Any broken bones?” You asked as you hung the dishtowel up and headed to get ready for bed.

Bucky barely stifled a laugh. “More than I care to count, doll, ribs and fingers mostly. Comes with the job.”

You try to picture him shrugging his shoulders like what he said was no big deal as you finish washing your face, shaking your head as the image fails you. “Wow… I forget how dangerous your job is sometimes…” you whispered the last bit to yourself but you knew he had to have heard you.

Not willing to let you dwell on that thought, Bucky presses forward, “How ‘bout you, hmm? Break an arm maybe? Collarbone...?”

“Nope, not a single one actually. I did have to get stitches once but I was so young I don’t remember it. Busted my face on the corner of a table when I was a toddler. Still have the scar.” You peer closer into your bathroom mirror, gently running a finger over the thin white line.

“Ouch… maybe we’ll compare scars one day..”

Bucky sheaths his knife, turning out his bedside lamp and slipping under his sheets, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. Meanwhile you’ve slipped into your pjs and climbed into bed as well, a comfortable silence enveloping you both as you tuck into a ball under your covers. Your mind begins to wander, the dark and the quiet opening doors to thoughts and questions that typically remain dormant during the light of day.

“Hey Bucky?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“Can I ask you a hard question?”

“Sure…” His heartbeat picked up, suddenly wary of what you were about to ask.

“Did um… w-were you one of the ones that got dusted?”

He let out a slow breath, the memories of that terrible day playing back in his mind. “Yeah… not the most comfortable feeling.”

“Same. I remember… I remember being so confused and then… nothing. Until we all blipped back that is. Adjusting to a world that went on without you for five years hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.”

“Tell me about it…” he murmurs, his thoughts going much further back than the five short years you both lost, the statement ringing with more truth than he was ready to admit yet.

You clear your throat, “Well, I certainly ruined the mood.” Laughing nervously you forge on. “Time for a new topic, I think it’s your turn...?”

“Sure, let’s see… how are things at work?”

“It’s alright, nothing exciting really. It’s not my dream job or anything, but it pays the bills and the girls I work with are pretty nice so there’s that. How about you? I’m sure your job and the people you work with are a thousand times more interesting than what I’ve got going on.”

Bucky smiles fondly, “Well you already know Sam, can’t live with him, can’t work without him. He’s fun to mess with but I couldn’t ask for a better friend or partner… not since my last one anyway... But Sam’s not nearly as reckless as Steve. Steve was a handful in the best of times, always looking for a fight but in a good way, never backed down when he knew it was the right thing to do… Feels like I’ve been watching his back my whole life…”

“Sounds like you two were close? Did he… did something happen...?”

“Oh yeah he ah.. he sorta retired..? Just decided he was tired of putting his life on hold for the next mission. I supported him but it was still hard to see him go.”

“That’s very noble of you Bucky. You are an amazing friend and partner. He was so lucky to have you.” The admiration and pride in your voice is unmistakable.

Not one for taking compliments well, a flustered Bucky attempts to lighten the situation. “Life goes on right? The world may be getting weirder every day, especially since everyone came back, but I think I’ve found my place in it.”

“That’s so good to hear… I still feel a bit out of place, most of my friends survived the blip and are just in completely different places in their lives than I am. We still talk but I don’t think it’ll ever be the same…” You pulled your blanket tighter around yourself, snuggling deeper into your nest and shaking off the negative thoughts clouding your mind. “So, tell me more about Sam, what makes him so fun to mess with?”

Bucky can’t help but laugh, “Literally everything. He’s so dramatic and it’s way too easy to push his buttons. Just the other day, we were training and he was working on throwing his shie---umm I mean this new sort of weapon and I mayyyy have been telling him the wrong thing just so it would knock him on his ass. Laughed about that for days.”

You found yourself laughing right along with him, eventually ending with a sweet sigh. “What I wouldn’t give to see you smile...”

Bucky stops laughing abruptly and you immediately know you’re the cause of the sudden tension between you. Unlike previous times however you resolve not to cave or opt for the awkward smooth-over. Time to face your fears, Y/N.

“Bucky, part of me desperately wants to apologize for saying that but honestly, the rest of me isn’t sorry at all. I really do want you to be totally comfortable with me and I know I promised not to push you but… I need you to know that seeing you, eventually touching and being with you is something I genuinely want. I mean how could I not want that with the man that I lo--” the words stuck in your throat as you caught yourself, “...th-that I’m meant to be with? You’re my soulmate Bucky, you have to know what that means to me, to us.”

Bucky felt like he was torn in two, reluctant to admit that the thought of letting you all the way in was getting to be as stressful as keeping you out but then again he was the stubborn type. “It’s not just about you seeing me doll, it’s about what seeing me will mean, it’s about my whole life and all the crazy that it entails.”

“You know… you know you can be honest with me right? I can handle it, I promise. There is literally nothing that you could tell me that would drive me away from you, okay? Nothing.”

“How can you promise me that?. You can’t possibly mean it. You don’t know… you don’t know my whole story. It’s not a pretty one.” You can feel his walls going up but you can’t hold it in any longer. It’s now or never...

“What if…” you swallow nervously, “w-what if I told you I did know. That I know you better than you think I do...”

Your words flowed like ice through his veins. “What are you saying Y/N?”

“I-I started to put two and two together almost immediately, as soon as you told me your name. It’s not that common you know....” He’s so quiet you wonder if he has stopped breathing. Knowing there’s no turning back you continue, “And there were so many little things that kept adding up: that you were so reluctant to let me see you, how you told me you used to be military but now you work in security... that you live and train with Sam, Sam Wilson right? Or that time you were out of contact for a week and the story broke about the Falcon and the Winter Soldier taking down that terrorist cell? I know that was you Bucky, I’m not crazy.”

You took a deep breath, calming down a bit. “Did you really think your soulmate would be that clueless? That the person meant to be with you. a literal Avenger, wouldn't be able to figure it out? I’m not upset with you, I promise. It's not like you lied to me, everything you said was ‘technically’ the truth. But... the more I learned about you the more I confirmed my hunch and the more I felt like I was lying to you, and that just didn’t sit well with me.”

Silence was all you could hear on Bucky’s end but you knew he was still there. You gnawed at your lower lip worried that you had made a horrible mistake. “I wanted to come out and just tell you, so many times, but at the same time I had promised not to push you. I was waiting for you to be ready to tell me but I was also starting to worry that it was never going to happen. Bucky I’m so sorry, I--”

Bucky blurted out, “Why are you still here then?! You should have shut me out already. How could finding out not change how you felt about me? Y/N, I’m not just some guy with a military past and a job that takes me away for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time, that’s enough to put a strain on any relationship. But I’m also over a hundred years old, I deal with literal alien threats, and a-and I’ve killed so many people… those memories, the things they did to me, that part of my life is a literal hellhole, and it doesn’t go away, ever. It’s always with me… all those years without memories and now I’d give anything to forget…” You could hear his labored breathing, the anguish in his voice. Tears welled up in your eyes for him, ashamed that you’d hurt him but also desperate to be the one to comfort him. “Y/N I’m-- I’m sorry, I have to go. I need some space right now.”

“Wait Bucky, don’t---” and just like that the connection severs. Not completely thank goodness, you can still sense your bond deep down, but you feel as though a chasm has formed between the two of you.

“I’m not going anywhere Bucky… I love you...” you whisper into the silence, hoping somewhere, somehow that he can still hear you.

Part 6

Taggy tag tags: @bucky-plums-barnes @buckyywiththegoodhair @avengerofyourheart @sebspocketsquare @sgtbxckybxrnes @bionic-buckyb @plumfondler @imaginingbucky @sexonastickstan @angryschnauzer @witchymarvelspacecase @palaiasaurus64 @eyecandybarnes @promarvelfangirl @the-observant-fangirl @ballyhoobarnes @trinityjadec @kjs-s @sebbytrash @true-queen-of-mischief @buckthegrump @moondancewrites @thisisjamesbarnes @beccaanne814 @oneshot-shit @moonbeambucky @stevieang @tnupsweetpie @avenger-nerd-mom @eyesfixedonthesun22 @searchingforbucky @notimetoblog @sugarfreecapsicle @nomadicpixel @nacho-bucky @sarahwroteathing @captain-rogers-beard @buckys-darling @tilltheendwilliwrite @ifellinnthepit

@marie-is-in-the-dark @lorilane33 @igothroughphasesalot

#bucky barnes x reader #soulmate au #marvel fanfiction #sebastian stan

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sabraeal · 4 years

Text

Seven Swipes for Shirayuki, Chapter 2

Prologue | Chapter 1

Obiyukiweek 2020, Day 1: Fair Play Never attack an unarmed foe. Never charge an unhorsed opponent. Never attack from behind. Avoid cheating. Avoid torture.

“You don’t have to go.”

Newspaper crumples beneath her hands, but the smell of ink and wood pulp steadies her, keeps her on her feet instead of-- of going right over there and giving him a piece of her mind the way her father taught her. Shirayuki braces herself against the island, willing her feet to stay put, to stay rooted right on the tile. Sure, she’ll feel good when she does it, righteous anger filling her right to brim, but once that’s gone, all she’ll have left is--

Is regret. No, not that, never that, but she knows from experience: anger can keep you going, but it hollows you out when it’s done, and she’s just...tired of that. She’s cried her tears over this; she won’t waste more on a situation that can’t be changed.

With a steeling breath, she lays the paper flat again, the chill of the marble seeping through the print. She grabs a dish from the pile, wrapping it so tight it has hospital corners before stacking it in the box. Another inhale, another dish, over and over again. She has to keep her hands busy, otherwise she’ll have to talk, and if she talks--

Well, like she said; she’s done with crying.

“Shirayuki--”

“I know,” she manages, finally. “But I should.”

“No.”

Obi’s over by the oven, but she can feel him stiffen, shoulders hunched and hackles raised. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t look, but his chin tilts just so and she knows, she knows he’s aware of every body in this room.

“No, Shirayuki...” Zen sighs, dragging runnels through the shaggy mop of his hair. “I didn’t mean-- it’s just-- it’s not fair that not only am I...” He bites his lip, thankfully stopping that train of thought before it starts. “You shouldn’t have to lose your home on top of...everything else.”

Her gaze fixes on Obi’s back, on the way the yoke of his shirt stretches tight against the width of his shoulders, taunt over the tank beneath like skin over bone. “You’re right. It’s not.”

“Then...stay.” His voice is so soft, so earnest, she wants to believe in it, in him. That if she only sat down, if they only talked, they could find some way out of this whole mess. “There’s no reason you can’t. We’ve always been friends.”

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? They’ve had six years and yet, yet--

They’ve never had the talks that matter. She’s not sure they ever knew how.

“And we’ll always be friends. It’s just...” So many words vie to be the ones that fall from her lips, but she carefully picks, “It’s better that I’m not here.”

It’s only half a sentence, but she’s too kind to say the rest: to watch you be happy with your model wife. Instead it just sits on her tongue, searingly bitter before she swallows it down.

He’ll never hear them, not from her, which for him is just as good as not knowing. Zen’s never been able to hear what she won’t speak out loud. Not that she’s any better. Ah, that’s probably why they made it this far in the first place.

“That’s not true,” he says, “this is where you belong, even if we’re not--” his breath hitches-- “listen, it’s not like it would be weird for me to have a physician on call. Plenty of people do.”

That pulls her up short. Zen makes it so easy to forget that he isn’t just some-- some normal guy she knows, someone moderately wealthy, whose family has a house with too many guest rooms and who got a car for his sixteenth birthday. But sometimes--

Sometimes he says things like this, and she remembers the number of zeroes in a Forbes article. He’s literally almost too rich to function.

A box clangs next to her on the island, Obi’s knuckles blanched where he holds it. “Plenty of people also pay to keep mistresses on call too,” he says, so casual, “I wonder which one they’ll think you are, Miss?”

Zen cheeks flush so red he might as well have been slapped. “What do you mean by--?”

“Obi,” she manages, voice strained. “Don’t you think you should...?”

She nods to the box. He takes a breath, eyes narrowing to an angry slant.

“Right,” he breathes, hefting it into his arms. “This is all packed up. I should take it out to the car.”

Her eyes catch his, holding his gaze meaningfully. “I think that might be best.”

“Yeah, well.” He shifts the box, careful not to look at either of them. “Call me if you need me.”

Zen loiters in the doorway, and for a hot minute, she’s convinced Obi will barrel right through him, that he’ll take those shoulders of his and knock Zen to the floor.

But he doesn’t. The way Obi moves has only ever had a passing acquaintance with the known laws of physics, and now is no different. The math says there’s no way two men of their dimensions could fit in a single doorway and not touch, but Obi manages it without even looking, box and bodyguard both.

Zen sucks in a breath like he’s been hit, air hissing through his teeth as he pointedly does not look at the place Obi is not.

“I’m sorry it ended up like this,” he says after the wound in the room stops bleeding. “You have to know that I didn’t...”

Have a choice. That’s what he wants to say, what he always says when his brother’s machinations scuttle their plans. But that’s not true here. There was a choice, a clear one.

And he chose Izana over her. She can’t even say she’s surprised. She can’t even say she blames him.

“Garrack told me you quit your job at the hospital,” he says, so soft. “You don’t have to do that. Not because of me.”

“It’s not.” She stacks another dish in her box. “It just made the decision easier.”

“Shirayuki...” His foot hovers, but still, he won’t cross into the room. “Where are you even going to go?”

Shirayuki bites her lip, folding cardboard flaps. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Of course I do!” he snaps, pushing his hair back. “Just because I had to-- to do this doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

It does. Or at least it should. It would if he was anyone else; if he was just some guy she met in a medical library, trying to hide from her boss. Someone who had enough money to ruin a Ralph Lauren polo without batting an eye, but not--

Not someone who owned a hospital outright. Not someone who could split his life into before my trust fund matured and after. The guy she thought she’d met all those years ago.

But he’s not that, he’s-- this. With all the baggage and responsibilities that come with it. Including the model fiancée.

“I want to be with you,” he manages, finally, every word pulled painfully from his lips. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Her fingers clench on the box, cardboard denting under her grip. It’s right there, trapped behind her teeth, why didn’t you--?

But that’s not-- not fair to ask. Not when she knows how heavy this weighed on him, how much he must have tried to avoid it--

“Shirayuki.” His breath hitches in his chest. “You know I didn’t mean for this to happen, not this way. I thought...” His fist thumps gently on the frame. “I would never humiliate you, not on purpose.”

“I...” Her mouth works, even if her throat won’t, even if all she can manage is a croaking, “I know.”

“Do you?” His voice breaks, caught in his chest, and it’s only her grip on this box that stops her from going to him, that stops her from telling him it’s all right.

It’s not all right. But that doesn’t mean it’s his fault. Not entirely. “Zen...”

“Shirayuki, you know that I...”

She turns to him then, box in hand, and his knuckles are white where they clench the jamb. His gaze is fixed to the floor, to the tile she broke that first night she moved in, when the bottle hit the floor after he-- he--

(”There’s champagne in the fridge,” she says, blinking as she crouches among the shelves. “Did you order this?”

There’s a laugh in his voice when Zen answers, “No.” He shuffles around behind her, breath hot on her ear, and oh, he’s just-- this is very close-- “But there’s a note.”

“Oh!” she squeaks, staring at his hand as it snakes over her shoulder, gently tugging the embossed card off the bottle. “Then who--?”

“My brother.” The humor’s leached from his voice now, lifeless and annoyed. “He says he hopes you are not disappointed by the humble dimensions of your apartment.”

She blinks, sitting back on her heels. The bottle sits heavy in her hand, so wide and awkward. “Humble? This is almost as big as my grandparents’ place. Obi and I could go whole days without meeting, if we tried.”

Zen shrugs, a twitch of his shoulders. “I asked for a bigger one.”

To ask why would only invite madness. The kitchen here might be larger than her old apartment, but anything less than a three-floor penthouse is pauperish to this crowd.

“Come on.” Zen holds out a hand, smile wide. “Let’s at least enjoy the rare fruits of my brother’s kingly generosity.”

She giggles, letting him pull her to her feet, but it catches in her throat as they pause. He’s so close, only a single tile separating them.

His eyes flicker up, meeting hers, and ah, she’s seen that before, the barely-banked heat in his eyes. Her heart flutters against its cage, and she doesn’t know whether her instincts are telling her flight or fight, not when he tugs her in, and she, inexorably, comes.

Shirayuki has never been one for kissing-- it’s messy, for one, and she never knows where to put her nose-- but with Zen it’s simple, it’s uncomplicated. He holds her, one arm banding around her shoulders, pulling her close to the narrow shape of his body. He feels like his kiss, warm and delicate, the bare tracery of his ribs rising up against her fingers.

They part, a scant breath between them, and she can see how his hooded eyes watch her, feel how his heart pounds beneath the cotton of his button-down. “Shirayuki, I...”

He leans in again, lips brushing hers, but it’s different this time, like he’s-- he’s testing her.

His hands curl around her shoulders as he pulls away, holding her fast. The heat still lingers in his eyes, but it’s not just that which darkens them, oh no, but something heavier, something more meaningful.

“Shirayuki.” He takes a deep breath, not a hint of humor in him. “I lo--”

With a clink, a crack and a fizz, liquid seeps into her socks, and-- “Oh!” she yelps, springing back. “The champagne!”

The bottle, so sturdy in her hand, is now in a half dozen pieces on the floor, fizzy drink everywhere and only fit for a paper towel.

“I hope that wasn’t expensive,” she breathes, hands clapped to her face.

Zen laughs lowly. “Oh, it was. But not as expensive as that.”

Her gaze drops, fixing to the large crack in the terracotta tile. “Ohh,” she moans, traipsing over to the sink, grabbing a sheaf of towels. “You are not getting your deposit back on this place.”

“It’s fine,” he mutters, cheeks flushed, “I own it, after all.”)

Zen’s lips seal around his words, just as they always did, just like they always would. That’s the thing, isn’t it? He could never bring himself to say it. And she--

Well, she’d only managed the once.

“I guess that’s it for this box,” she says brightly, tucking it firm against her chest. “I should-- I should bring this down to the truck.”

“R-right.” He shuffles in the doorway, and when he situates himself, he’s just outside, hovering in the hallway.

“Great.” She walks toward him, stilted, as if she’s barefoot and the carpet is gravel, like every step hurts, and--

Well, it does. She draws level with him in the door, and even though she can feel every molecule of air between them, his body is too far out of her ambit to reach.

“What are you going to do?” he asks, too soft, his foot edging too close. “Where are you going to live?”

“Zen...” She steels herself, lifting her gaze to meet his. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

His inhale is sharp, a stab. “Shirayuki, I couldn’t live with myself if you...if I...”

His words flounder in the air between them, as awkward and foreign as fish out of water. She-- she doesn’t know what worst case scenario his mind conjures, what imagined fault he’s ready to nobly fall upon, and in the end-- she doesn’t want to.

If he can’t walk away from her, she’ll have to walk away from him. No surprise; the Wisterias have always let the hardest tasks fall to her.

“Well then,” she breathes, heart beating hard in her chest, “it’s a good thing you brother already took care of all that.”

(”You’ll forgive him, won’t you?” There’s no concern in his voice, no curiosity, just a polite inquiry to bring the conversation to where he wants it. Izana Wisteria is as sleek as his leather interior, and twice as slippery. “It was, after all, a mistake. Inexperience makes fools of us all.”

Funny how acceptable that explanation is when it’s her that’s been made ridiculous. He hadn’t been so gracious about Laxdo ward all those years ago.

“You don’t have to pretend you care,” she informs him, fingers clenched around her phone. It’s been buzzing nonstop for the last mile; even with a whole morning spent, Yuzuri still hasn’t run out of ways to ruin Zen’s life. It’d be sweet, if she wasn’t so-- so--

Empty.

“No,” Izana agrees, crossing his legs at the knee. It’s a full-size limo, but those legs leave her crushed in the corner, no room unless she wants to risk playing footsie with the man who owns half of LA. “I suppose I don’t. Not with you.” The corner of his mouth twitches, and he turns away, covering it with a hand. “Which must be why I do.”

There’s nothing she can say to that. Ah, what she wouldn’t give for Obi to be here, for him to remind her of all the reasons she’s very angry.

“Don’t think this is some...condolence ,” he tells her, voice muted by the vacuum of leather and carpeting. “I had planned to ask you even before this all was so...certain.”

“A severance package?” she offers waspishly, if only because she knows he likes the sting. His teeth peek out from behind his lips; as much of a smile she has ever seen from him.

“Yes, not that at all.” His mouth curves, amused. “I do nothing out of pity, Shirayuki, least of all business. I planned long ago to try to woo you over to my employ, this only...accelerated the timetable.”

“I see,” she hums, and for once, she believes him, if only because Izana Wisteria has no more reason to lie to her. Not when he’s gotten what he wanted all along.

“Of course,” he continues, waving an absent hand, “I thought this would be in addition to your duties at the hospital.” He fixes her with a raised brow. “I do know how much you value your independence.”

She’s known Izana for too long, for she hears exactly what he means to say: or at least the illusion of it.

“I will admit, however,” he drawls, “that I do find this a more convenient state of affairs.”

Her hands clench in her lap, the soft jersey of her skirt slick against her palms. “How nice that everything worked out for you, then.”

His brow cants, wryly. “I cannot help but point out, everything is working out for you as well.”

“F-funny,” she manages, throat aching with every word, “it doesn’t really feel like it right now.”

Her fingers blur, lost in the pastel flowers, until it’s almost like one of those paintings at the MFA, all blotchy colors to make up a bigger picture. Maybe this would all come into focus too, if she wasn’t so close to it.

“No.” The word is too soft for Izana, too human. “I don’t imagine it would.”

“Don’t.” The word bursts out of her before she can stop it, but still, still-- she stands behind it. “Don’t pretend you feel sorry.”

“I don’t,” he assures her. “This was how it was meant to be. However...” he hesitates, the tip of his tongue coming out to wet his lips, “...I can regret that my brother’s illusion didn’t last longer.”

He clears his throat, and she could swear that there’s the barest blur of pink on his cheeks as he says, “In any case, the contract would stipulate that you could retain your current staff, if that sort of arrangement would please you.”

She blinks. “My staff?”

“Your bodyguard,” he clarifies, head rolling along its axis to meet her gaze. “What was his name...? Obi.”

“O-oh.” She hadn’t even thought-- she had barely even remembered that he was Zen’s, not just another security detail hired on by the hospital, not just there, just for her. But now she’s reminded, and--

And she thinks of that giant penthouse, absurd for just the two of them, only now with one less tenant. Of sitting in her office with only the white noise of the vents. Of trying to live around the silence of his absence, one day at a time.

“Yes.” She’s too breathless, too eager. “I would. I mean, if he agrees to come with me.”

Izana’s lips curve into a bemused smirk. “I doubt that will be a problem.”

She’s half-tempted to ask him what he means by that, but he glances up, pinning her with a look that she’d see on barn cats that had caught themselves a good vole for dinner. “As for my brother...I’ll leave informing him of this new arrangement to your discretion.”

“Ah.” The sound huffs out her, a palpable hit. “I see. That’s...” she swallows, throat thick, “one way to pass the buck, I suppose.”

He laughs, quick and sharp; it startles her. “Isn’t it?” The floor beneath them rolls to a stop. “Ah, it seems we’ve arrived.”

A quick glance over her shoulder confirms: that’s the front of her apartment building, doorman already hurrying over to help with the limo door. “Oh, we have.”

The door opens, the din of the outside world rushing in. Tires crunch on the pavement, birds chirp distantly from overhangs; somewhere down the street someone must take a left from the right lane, the protests of other motorists bleat angrily in response. Shirayuki slides her feet around the corner of the bench, one foot hanging out, just about to brush the curb--

And she hesitates. Her gaze fixes where the limo kisses the sidewalk, and this-- this is the moment, the end of the rabbit hole. This is where Alice steps out of Wonderland.

“I’ll have the contract sent over in the morning.”

Shirayuki jolts, sole scraping the sidewalk as she turns, wide-eyed. His gaze is fixed to her, oddly intent. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Dr. Lyon.” His mouth twitches toward a smile. “I’m quite looking forward to this arrangement.”

Her hands fist in her lap, curling around the film of her skirt. Oh, how foolish she was to think that this was an end, that even something like this could possibly be her exit from this world. This isn’t where Alice ends her adventure-- oh no, this is where she walks through the looking glass.

“Thank you,” she manages, smoothing her palms against her thighs. “And, ah...congratulations.”

Izana Wisteria is known to smirk, known to grin, known to even, at times, leer. But now, now--

He smiles. Ear-to-ear, tooth-baring, and pleased.

Maybe if he did that more often, she might be able to forgive him for all this. Eventually.

She slides along the leather, stone solid beneath the sole of her flat as she moves to leave, but she catches a glimpse of black and white lingering against a palm tree. Even from the corner of her eyes, she knows him, knows that casual lean and languid tilt of the head.

“One more thing,” she hears herself say.

Izana raises a brow. “Go on.”

His sunglasses might be mirrored, but she knows his gaze meets hers, even this far away. “Obi gets a raise.”)

Her fingers tremble, stilled only by where she presses them against the box’s sides, but it does nothing for the jellied state of her knees, for the way she feels like she might lose her entire lunch if she does anything more than just stand here and breathe.

In. Out. This is-- fine. It’ll be fine. The hurt is only momentary. What did Opa always say? What doesn’t kill you keeps you moving.

Right, she just has to-- do that. Keep moving. Putting one foot in front of the other until all this is just a reflection in the rearview. She’s done it before, she can do it again.

It’s only-- she thought she was done with this, with losing everything.

Her feet guide her around the corner, and--

And Obi lazes between the bank of elevators, box tucked under his arm and head tilted back, relaxed. Starched cotton stretches across his chest, rucked up at his elbows. Even like this, even rumpled and at rest, eyes closed, she knows he’s aware of her, of how many steps it would be to put himself between her and any potential danger.

Shirayuki stops, shoes scuffing to a standstill. One eye slits open, gold peeping through a net of black.

“Good?” he asks, mouth tense at the corners. Behind him, the elevator creeps up the shaft, its whirring muffled by the walls. Still, she can see the numbers tick up behind him, an old timey affectation for a building this new, 7...8...9...

“Yeah.” Her fingers clench. The box’s corners are cardboard, but they cut into her knuckles still. “Great. Just...fine.”

Both eyes open now, narrow brows raising straight to the bristle of his hairline, and ah, she should know better than to put on her brave face when he’s so practiced at looking straight past it.

“It’s only...do you think we could...?” She hesitates, hugging the box closer to her chest. “Maybe we should ask the movers to get the rest.”

The doors ding, parting, and he sticks out a hand to hold it. “Sure thing, Miss.”

She only realizes she’s been holding a breath when she lets it go, practically deflating as she steps into the car. “Good. Great.”

“They’re already on their way.”

Her head jerks up, twisting to stare at him, and he-- he just smiles, a soft curl at the corner of his lips before he sets a knuckle on the L button.

Shirayuki breathes, staring down at the box in her arms. Maybe she hasn’t lost everything this time.

#obiyukiweek20 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #seven suitors #seven swipes #ans #modern au #once again we haven't QUITE reached the premise of this fic #but we are EVER INCHING CLOSER #i probably could have done an 8K chapter and gotten where I originally planned but like...#i like to believe i have learned since SS #4-5K is fine for a chapter #even if this is all painful

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tessisawriter · 5 years

Text

What Real Support Looks Like, Part 2 (Mat Barzal)

Part 1 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8

A/N: I changed my other OC (the friend from Ireland) to a girl because at its core, this story is about the various support systems people have, and I want to portray strong female friendships.

TCD = Trinity College Dublin

Warnings: Two swear words, angst (please let me know if I missed anything!)

Word Count: 2.4k

The sun streaming through the blinds woke Gemma up.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up, expecting to see her and Mat’s room, but she saw the Eberle’s spare room and remembered last night’s events.

Gemma wished she could go back to that blissfully unaware state she was in thirty seconds ago, but that was not how the world worked. She looked over at the clock, which read 9:15AM. Jordan and Lauren had to be awake by now, since Jordan had practice in a little over an hour. She got out of bed and padded over to the bathroom that was conveniently attached to the spare room.

Lauren was right about her body needing to recover. Gemma slept like the dead last night, and she actually felt well rested. When she saw her reflection in the mirror, though, she realized that she didn’t look as good as she felt. She clearly didn’t do a thorough job of removing her mascara because she looked like a raccoon, and her nose was red from all of the crying. Gemma cringed but didn’t dwell on it, and she made a beeline for the makeup bag she haphazardly packed last night. She ransacked it in search of her mascara remover, but she only found cotton rounds. She looked at the counter and felt like an idiot when she saw the mascara remover sitting on it, front and center.

Gemma wiped each of her eyes clean and washed her face. After she was finished, she looked in the mirror again, and she was pleased that she looked almost normal.

She walked back into the bedroom and pulled out a pair of jeans, a light sweater, and socks from her overnight bag. It had been unseasonably warm for the beginning of March, so Gemma only packed a few pairs of clothing. She was going to have to go back to Mat’s apartment sooner rather than later.

She sat down on the bed, and as she put on her socks, Gemma noticed that her phone was not on the night table where she thought she left it. Figuring she left it outside, she exited the bedroom and walked into the living room, but no one was there. She stood there for a moment, and she heard hushed voices coming from the dining room. If Mat were here, she knew he wouldn’t be quiet, so she approached the dining room.

Gemma was greeted with the sight of Jordan eating fruit at one end of the table, and Lauren and Sydney Esiason huddled in front of Sydney’s laptop on the other.

Sydney was Matt Martin’s fiancé, and she was Gemma’s other closest friend out of the other Islanders’ S/O’s. The two of them bonded over both being from Long Island, and she was the first person to get Gemma out of her shell. Sydney and Lauren weren’t particularly friendly before Gemma started dating Mat, but she had brought them together, and they were now as close to each other as she was to both of them.

“Gemma! You’re finally awake! How are you, sweetie?” Sydney walked over to her and encompassed her in a bone-crushing hug. She was much shorter than Gemma (so was almost every S/O and a few of the players), but she was strong. Gemma hugged her back.

“I’m assuming you know?” Gemma asked as she pulled back from the embrace.

“Mat called our house last night looking for you,” Sydney said.

“Oh God. Lauren, did he call here?”

“We took the landline off the hook, but yes, he called both mine and Jordan’s cellphones,” Lauren replied. “We let them ring. And then an hour ago, your phone started ringing; it was so loud that we could hear it in the living room. I was sure you were going to wake up, but when I went into your room, you were sound asleep, so I took it outside. Here,” she said, holding out Gemma’s cellphone in her hand.

“Thanks,” Gemma said.

“Oh, and your mom also called a half hour ago. Apparently, Mat called her too.”

“What? Are you serious?” She couldn’t believe Mat called her mom.

Gemma’s mom moved to Charleston, South Carolina two months ago with her new husband because the property taxes were too high in New York. They were very close and talked to each other almost every day.

“Yeah. Needless to say, she was alarmed and called your cell. Since I had it, I picked up and told her everything, and that you are going to be living here until you find a new apartment. She asked me to have you call her as soon as you woke up.”

“Okay, let me give her a call,” Gemma paused for a moment before adding: “Did she say anything about him being drunk when he called?”

“She didn’t, but you never know,” Lauren replied.

“Ugh,” Gemma said while pulling up the contact on her phone. Her mom picked up after only one ring.

“Sweetheart, are you okay?”

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine,” Gemma reassured her.

“Lauren and Sydney told me everything. You did the right thing, honey,” she said.

“I know,” Gemma replied, and even though she meant it wholeheartedly, her voice cracked.

“Sweetheart, are you sure you’re okay? Do you need me to come back and stay for a few days?”

“No, Mom, I’m fine. I’m in good hands with Lauren, Sydney and Jordan,” she replied. “Besides, I don’t want to uproot you from your new home so soon.”

“Okay, but don’t you worry about me. If you need me, I’ll be on the next flight out.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you,” Gemma said.

“I love you, too.”

Gemma hung up the phone and looked at Lauren and Sydney, who had resumed looking at whatever was on Sydney’s laptop. Jordan was no longer at the table; he must have gone inside to get ready for practice.

“What are you two up to?” Gemma was suspicious.

“Well, since you didn’t get to celebrate your birthday yesterday and it’s going to be 75 degrees out today, Lauren and I thought we should throw you a party at my pool,” Sydney said.

“Guys, that’s so sweet, but you don’t have to…”

“Stop it, Gem. We’re more than happy to do it, and you deserve it,” Sydney said.

“Well then, thank you! But wait, did you just say it’s going to be 75 degrees out? It’s March.”

“Yep,” Sydney replied, emphasizing the “p,” “And it’s going to 45 degrees on Saturday. There’s climate change for you. Do you have a bikini with you?”

“No, they’re at Mat’s apartment,” Gemma said.

“Well, I’m going to practice in a few minutes,” Jordan announced, re-entering the dining room with his hockey bag in tow, “And Mat will be there, too, so if you want to go to the apartment while we’re there, that would probably be a good idea. Especially if you left behind anything you’re going to need.”

“Well, I’m definitely going to need my umbrella,” she said, thinking back to last night and her ruined dress. Gemma often attached memories of important events to clothing, so the dress wasn’t a big loss because she wasn’t going to be wearing it again, anyway. She couldn’t bear wearing the dress in which Mat broke her heart.

“I’ll see if Marty, Tito, and I can figure out something to keep him occupied for the afternoon, maybe a trip into the city, but I can’t promise you anything,” Jordan said. Gemma knew they didn’t have a game tonight, so maybe they could get him off the Island. She didn’t want him to ruin her second attempt at celebrating her birthday.

“As long as he stays away from Sydney and Marty’s house, we should be…” Lauren was cut off by incessant pounding on the front door. Gemma knew who it was without even having to look out the front window to confirm it.

“I’ll get it,” Jordan said. He walked over to the door and opened it, and a crazed-looking Mat shoved him back into the house before Jordan could react.

“Hey!” Jordan yelled as Mat walked towards Gemma in the dining room.

“Gemma!” Mat said, but before he could get to her, Sydney stepped in front of her.

“Do you seriously think any of us are going to let you talk to her?” Sydney growled. Gemma had never heard her sound so agitated. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, and I don’t care. No,” she said to Mat, who had tried to interject. “What you said to Gemma was inexcusable. Matt and I are absolutely disgusted with you. It was her birthday, for fuck’s sake! And the project she has worked so hard on is finally close to being done, but you couldn’t just be happy for her, could you? You don’t deserve her.” Sydney was out of breath when she finished berating Mat. Gemma wanted to hug her, but Mat opened his mouth before she had a chance.

“She’s right, Gem, I don’t deserve you,” he said, “I am so, so sorry for everything I said last night. I do support your career, I was just frustrated…”

“No,” the word left her mouth before she could stop it. “Being frustrated is not an excuse to say what you did. You could’ve talked to me and said you missed spending quality time with me, but no. Besides, I think you meant what you said last night.”

“Gemma, I didn’t…”

“You know what they say about people when they’re drunk. They are more likely to tell the truth, and I think you told the truth when you said you wished I wasn’t going for my master’s degree,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, get out.” Gemma was tearing up, but she didn’t want Mat to see that.

“But Gem…”

“Okay, that’s enough, we’re going to practice,” Jordan said, grabbing the back of Mat’s t-shirt and hauling him to the front door. “I’ll see you later, babe,” Jordan said to Lauren as he shoved a struggling Mat out of the house and shut the door behind him.

“Well, that was…something,” Lauren said, and she walked over to Gemma. “Are you okay, Gem?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Gemma lied through her teeth, and Lauren looked like she knew it.

“As soon as Jordan texts me that they’re at Northwell, we’ll go to Mat’s apartment, get some of your stuff, and then come back here before going to Sydney’s. Sydney, has anyone else confirmed their attendance?”

“Yeah, Grace just said she’s coming,” Sydney said, referring to Grace, the captain, Anders Lee’s wife.

“And how about Kristy? Can she get someone to babysit Jack for the afternoon?” Kristy was Casey Cizikas’ wife, and Jack was their one year-old son.

“She’s not sure, but she wants to come. If Jack isn’t too fussy, she might bring him.”

“All right, sounds like we have everything together on that front,” Lauren said. “We’re not going to be able to leave for a few minutes, so why don’t you eat your breakfast, Gemma? I left it on the counter.”

“Thanks, Lauren,” Gemma said, and she padded into the kitchen, where a bowl of fruit awaited her. She grabbed a fork and sat at the center island when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Mat, of course.

“I’m sorry,” it read. Gemma scoffed and deleted it, and was about to silence her phone when she realized she had one more call to make.

She pulled up Annie’s contact. Annie was Gemma’s closest friend who she met at TCD while on her semester abroad. Annie graduated last year and was now working at a financial firm in Dublin. Right after Gemma came back from TCD, she met Mat, and last summer, she took him to Ireland so that she could show him where she went to school and introduce him to the friends she made while there. Mat charmed the socks off of all her friends except Annie, who didn’t like him from the start. Gemma knew Annie wouldn’t be surprised to hear what happened.

Annie’s phone didn’t even ring before Gemma heard her lilting Irish accent on the answering machine.

“Hi, it’s Annie, leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

The phone beeped and Gemma started talking.

“Hey, it’s me, um…I can’t really talk about this on your voicemail, but I need you to call me back, it’s really important. Okay, bye.” Gemma hung up and immediately flipped the button on the side of her phone to silent mode. She ate a few kiwis and slices of mango before Lauren and Sydney entered the kitchen.

“Jordan and Mat are at Northwell, let’s go!” Lauren said.

“Okay, let me just go get my bag,” Gemma replied, and she walked into the spare room. Her backpack already had her wallet and keys inside it and plenty of space for some more clothes since she unloaded her books last night, so Gemma grabbed it and headed back to the kitchen, where Lauren and Sydney were waiting. Both of them were ready to go.

“All right, I’m ready.” Gemma announced, and the three of them walked out of the house.

“I’ll see you in 30!” Sydney said before she got into her car.

Gemma looked at Lauren. “I hate to ask you this, but…”

“I’d be happy to drive,” Lauren answered, already knowing what she was about to ask.

“Thank you.” Gemma handed her the keys and got into the passenger’s seat.

When Lauren shut the door on the driver’s side, she put a hand on Gemma’s shoulder and said, “It’s going to be okay, Gem.”

“I know,” she replied.

“You don’t have to put up those walls around me,” Lauren said, “I get it. It’s going to be really hard to go back to Mat’s apartment. But I’ll be there with you, and we’ll get out of there as soon as we can, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. Satisfied, Lauren started the car and pulled out of the driveway, driving down the same road Gemma did only twelve hours before.

@averytiredlawstudent @star-adorned @theforevermorereject

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sweetestrequiems · 4 years

Text

Alright I got tagged by at least FIVE people, so... I’ll do EVERY set of questions, and the person who asked them is getting tagged so y’all have references as to who I’m referring to. (By the way, this is a SUPER LONG post.)

Let's get this goin’. Questions are all under the picture of Kelsey Colbert, and nicely divided by pictures of Kelsey Colbert:

@six-fragile-dreams:

1) How are you today? -Pretty chill. Pro’ly caught a cold, but I can get through it.

2) Favourite animals, colours and artist? -Owls -Monochrome Schemes/Galaxy Schemes/Pastel Pink/Charcoal Black -Kelsey Colbert, ‘nuff said.

3) What's your favourite conspiracy theory? -Aliens and call me lame for it but I will only believe either side with scientific evidence presented to me.

4) Do you like chocolate? -Yes, yes I do.

5) Coffee or Tea? -Coffee, all day, every day.

6) Favourite scent and flavour? -I love vanilla scented things. Also, cherry blossoms. -Coffee flavored things are nice, but really... anything overtly sweet like candied pecans is nice too.

7) What's your favourite genre? -Of literature? Poetry. -Of music? “Classical” (Baroque/Classical/Romantic) and Jazz

8) Biggest inspirations? -I’ll leave this one blank because... it is such a long list...

9) Favourite perfume or body spray? (or any other thing like that) -Japanese Cherry Blossom and Warm Vanilla Sugar from Bath & Body Works. Call me basic.

10) List your 5 favourite artists! -Kelsey Colbert -Taylor Swift -Lauren Daigle -Ariana Grande -Adele

@frogs-in-clogs:

What instruments can you/ do you wish you could play? -I answered a whole ask about this. Click here for that.

Do you like audiobooks? -Nope. I prefer having the actual book in my hand.

Favourite board game? -I’m more of a card game gal. Magic the Gathering, Cardfight! Vanguard, FutureCard Buddyfight, or die by my blade.

Have you ever broken a bone? -Yep! I broke it playing softball. Broke the middle finger on my left hand.

Would you rather live in a city or a village? -A mix of both is the best thing for me. A not so populated city, but urbanized enough for me to be happy. But if I HAD to pick, probably a city.

Biggest inspiration? -Once again, list so long it'll take up twenty minutes of your time.

Do you listen to music when revising? -As in... writing stuff? Yeah, I do. I have a whole playlist dedicated to it.

Guilty pleasure music? - *sweats in salsa music*

How would you describe your accent? (Sidenote, how do you imagine my accent? I'm intrigued) -I... don’t know how to describe what a Puerto Rican sounds like?

Do you believe in aliens? -Scroll up, I ain’t answering again.

@boombiotch:

1. Favorite musical, if you listen to any? -Of all time? Cats. I LOVE Andrew Lloyd Webber scores.

2. Favorite ice cream flavor? -Butter Pecan

3. Favorite OC, if you have one? -The high school student who wants to sometimes slap her best friends with her binder, 17 year old Meghan Isabella Pereira.

4. If you could learn any language, what would you choose? -Irish.

5. Moon or the sun? -I like warmth, so the sun. But, I am a sucker for the moon too.

6. Do you have a favorite flower? -Hibiscus!

7. Are you a morning person? -Nope.

8. Do you like to write? - *sweats in Ao3 and this account*

9. Do you believe in ghosts? -Yes.

10. Ayy what do you think of me? *awkward fingerguns* -You’re honestly a total sweetheart, and I am very glad you’re in my life!

@bchcadcd:

1.) What’s your favorite memory? -A tie between my high school graduation in 2017, and being told I’d be playing Helga in PUFFS the Play.

2.) Do you get attached to people easily? -Yes, yes, yes.

3.) Favorite mythological deity? -The Mórrígan, Demeter, Persephone, and Shiva.

4.) Favorite superhero? -Comics: Spider-Man (Tom Holland’s Peter Parker), Supergirl (Melissa Benoist’s Kara Danvers) -Anime: Mt. Lady / Rabbit Hero, Mirko / The R Rated Hero, Midnight

5.) Do clouds have feelings? -I believe so.

6.) Favorite childhood book series? -Warriors

7.) What’s your love language? -The little things. Noticing how someone’s eyes light up when they’re happy, or the little scratchiness of their voice when they talk. Call me hopeless, but I value those little things.

8.) Do you put any stock into personality indicators? (MBTI types/Hogwarts houses/Zodiac signs/etc.) -Not too much, but it’s nice to know it. (If anyone is curious ‘bout me: INFJ-T / Hufflepuff / Virgo Sun - Pisces Moon - Gemini Rising )

9.) Favorite genre of show? -If we mean live theatre? Opera. Nothing against musicals, but opera draws more emotion.

10.) Favorite cast member from six? -Studio: Aimie Atkinson -Broadway: Samantha Pauly (Hon. Mention: Andrea Macasaet) -1st UK Tour/West End: Natalie Paris (Hon. Mention: Maiya Quansah-Breed) -West End: Courtney Bowman (Hon. Mention: Jarnéia Richard-Noel) -2nd UK Tour: Jodie Steele -Bliss 1.0: Alicia Corrales-Connor -Bliss 2.0: Megan Leung -Breakaway: Amy Bridges -Australia/New Zealand: Kala Gare (Hon. Mention: Courtney Monsma)

@one-time-i-jumped-off-a-cliff:

1. What’s your phone background? -Aimie Atkinson lockscreen, Millie O’Connel home screen.

2. Do you have any siblings? -Two older brothers. I’m the youngest of three.

3. Go-to party trick? -Don’t have one. I don’t go out much.

4. Voice type? -Mezzosoprano, with emphasis on Alto voicing. (If you speak of music, that is.)

5. Are/were you one of the popular kids in middle school? -Nope. I was the loner. The one everyone was scared would snap and actually do atrocious things. Little did people realize though, I’m actually a sweetheart. They’re all trying to be my friends now, I just keep denying ‘em.

6. If I gave you a puppy right now, what would you name it? -Shadow.

7. How many languages can you communicate in some way in? -Three, four if you count Morse Code. (Spanish/English/Japanese)

8. Do you play any sports? -Used to play Tennis, used to play Softball. -Also did Marching Band. (Fight me on the definition, I dare you.)

9. Opinion on Dear Evan Hansen? -Brings a good light on mental health issues, but it needed a better approach to it as well.

10. What was your first fandom on tumblr? -In technicality... In the Heights. I didn’t really see myself involved with fandoms until much more recently.

My questions to you! Feel free to say I tagged you!

Summer or Winter?

The beach, or the mountains?

There’s a red button in front of you. You press it, and you receive a million dollars. But, someone random in the world dies. Do you press it?

Favorite fashion trend/style?

Favorite all-time lyric from a song?

Favorite sound from nature?

Who’s your favorite YouTuber, who are they, and what do they do?

What’s your Hogwarts house?

What’s your favorite work by William Shakespeare? (Sonnets and all included, not just limited to stage plays.)

If you got thrown into a fantasy world, what kind of powers would you like to have?

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goingsllightlymad · 5 years

Text

Lams - ballroom

The carriage lurched along a winding driveway, tilting slightly to one side as turned around a gravel bend. Inside, sitting stiffly behind the opening where the curtains had been drawn back to let the cool spring breeze in, John had turned a sickly shade of yellow-green. Flashes of hot amber light flashed across his freckled face as roaring braziers passed by the carriage. The rising embers danced in his hazel eyes, which were fixed on the pair of small white hands folded in his lap. His own hands, so used to holding a glove or a pretty woman, now strangely awkward and restless when there is no use for them. He would rather have a gun with him. He would rather not be here at all.

Beside him, his father shifted in his seat, grunting, displeased. When was he not displeased, though. Shirt collar sharp and thickly starched, he made a frightening figure, all cold white wig and colder green eyes. People always told them how different they two were: the dark-robed slave trader and his kind-hearted son, but there were days when John looked in the mirror and he could not tell the two apart at all. Those were the days he was most afraid of, when the line was thin enough for him to see all that he could have been, and all that he still feared he would become.

As the coach jolted to a halt, John's hip collided with jutting bones, sharp and intrusive like the stab of some cruel knife. Even the bones beneath that porcelain skin were cold and loveless. It made a lot of sense. The opening to the carriage was thrown open by a freshly powdered manservant and John scrambled to escape the cramped black box. Bursting out into a wide stone path, Jon was dwarfed by the towering expanse of a colossal red-brick manor house, windows like a thousand eyes crying tears of liquid gold into the darkness of the night.

Aware that his father was standing beside him once more, he strode off briskly, up the steps to the tall front doors of the house, from which music and conversation were spilling out on a wave of colourful dresses. Losing himself in the tide of fabric, John's set grimace began at last to soften into a confident smirk. He had long since accepted that his place in society was not beside his father, but it was now becoming increasingly clear that his place was here, where the brightest and the best of New York met to flaunt their extravagance and wealth.

Threading lightly through the mass of people congregated in a tight circle around the dance floor, John found who he was looking for in the corner where the crowd was thickest and loudest. In their clamorous midst, a startled George Washington was trying his hardest to escape from a barrage of questions and tedious anecdotes by women whose wigs sat loosely upon wrinkled pink faces.

"George!"

"Laurens!" Washington called, excusing himself with evident relief and making his way over to Laurens, "It's a good thing you found me - I was quite afraid I'd be there for the rest of the evening. I knew this would happen," he added in a fervent whisper, and Laurens snorted undignifiedly at Washington's politeness and awkwardness around people he did not know.

"You really shouldn't have come, if you knew this was going to happen!"

"No, no, it would have been awful of me not to! After all, someone has too keep them out of trouble," Washington sighed, gesturing to the drinks table, where John could see the top of Lafayette's curly hair bouncing animatedly as he drank and laughed wildly. Beside him, Mulligan was already drunk beyond his wits, shouting over-enthusiastically about the right way to sew pants.

John grinned affectionately at his best friends, the kindest and possibly most misguided men he had ever met. Swinging his head and suddenly seeing John, Lafayette waved excitedly, grabbing Mulligan's head and pulling it round with a cry of childlike glee. Shaking his head in mock disappointment, Laurens held on to Washington's arm and dragged him over to where the two men were half-standing.

"Laurens!!" Mulligan yelled, eyes lighting up mischievously.

"Mulligan! Glad to catch you while you're still conscious," John teased, feeling bad immediately as he watched Mulligan's grin morph into a babyish pout of dejectedness, "And while you're awake you can pour me something and I can join you!"

"Really, Laurens, you're meant to be the sensible one here," Washington rubbed his forehead wearily.

"Sorry, sir," Laurens saluted sarcastically, reaching for the filled wineglass which Mulligan was proudly presenting to him. At this point, the man almost had a right to be proud of it, as Laurens had assumed that he was well past being able to pour liquids successfully. Mulligan was always full of surprises, "Eye on one of the ladies, George?"

"John, I'm married,"

"So?" John winked and nudged Washington.

"So, I really think you should follow my example for a change,"

"For a change? Do I not do everything you do, do everything you ever tell me to?"

"Quite frankly John," Washington laughed a little and laid his hand lightly on John's shoulder, "No."

"You've probably got it right, anyway. Aren't any pretty girls here besides. Hell, I'd be better sleeping with the other officers!"

"Speaking of, the new guy's here tonight; I'm s'posed to be introducing him to all your ladies but frankly I haven't seen him all night," As if to demonstrate, Washington turned to scan the room for his 'new guy'.

"Probably off in some corner doing your job for you."

"Nah, chatty guy like him, he couldn't find a girl if he had an inheritance, and I'm glad to say he hasn't got any of that!"

Even as John laughed at Washington's words, he could hear all at once the grating sound of some loud voice's wild laughter somewhere across the room.

"Think that's your guy?"

"I really, really, hope not. Which means that yeah, it probably is." Washington sighed deeply and John handed him a glass of wine, which he swallowed quickly before taking his leave to find his disastrous protege.

"Joooooooooooohn!"

"Quiet Laf, I want to get a good look at Washington's new favourite. Not that I'm jealous or anything, it's just... something I should probably know..." Laurens craned his neck to see over the crowd, above the tide of ridiculously high wigs and stiff starched collars. He could see his father standing by the door, talking pointedly to some old woman with a face like a china doll left to crack in a hot summer sun. He could see the Schyler sisters at the centre of a thick group of young men and women, smiling politely and looking fantastically beautiful, but didn't they always? After a time, you get used to beauty, and John had long since lost his admiration for their expensive gowns and long hair. At last, John picked out the rapidly shrinking figure of Washington in his rich velvet coat, stumbling awkwardly through the crowd, and in front of him a very aggressive and very short man, with a voice which seemed to make the wineglasses of the people gathered around him tremble fearfully.

As he watched, Washington briskly removed the man from the crowd of people and proceeded to usher him towards, as Laurens realised with dread, where Laurens was standing. Washington met his gaze with a weak, apologetic smile and exasperated eyes, the man by his side talking incessantly in a high-pitched babble of nonsense. Laurens thought he might be drunk, and thought that that might be a sight he did not want to see.

"Gentlemen, Alexander Hamilton. Son, these are John Laurens and his... companions,"

"Not'cha son." Hamilton spoke with the petulance of an only child, but when he turned at last away from Washington, the eyes he cast over Laurens were bright and intelligence, as though they had lived a thousand lives and each more interesting than Laurens' pathetic sob-story.

"Didn't ask for your opinion." Washington patted Hamilton of the back patronisingly and left the two young men alone.

"So I hear you're quite the speaker, huh?"

"...yes! Yes, I am! I like to speak!" Hamilton seemed to trip over his words in away with John had to use all of his strength not to laugh out loud at. Only moments ago this man had been so loud, so certain, his words confident and carefully-chosen, and suddenly he seemed to forget how to speak.

"Well then, Hamilton, I think you're gonna get along just fine here with us drunkards and idiots. Or maybe I'll just keep you all to myself," Laurens smirked flirtatiously at him, delighting at the mortified blush which was spreading over Hamilton's face from his eyes to the faint black peach-fuzz spread across his upper lip and chin. A rush of guilt flooded Laurens' chest and his smirk lapsed into a kindly smile.

"John come ooooooooooooooooon, I miss youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu," Mulligan slurred, draping his arms over Laurens' shoulders lovingly. He smelled overpoweringly of alcohol and gunpowder, and John pushed him off laughingly, "who doesn't, baby?"

Hamilton opened his mouth as though to say something, but evidently thought better of it as he closed it again, looking very much confused and more than a little interested. Laurens' smile widened with suspicion, wondering if this ill-dressed, arrogant and overly-opinionated young protege of the greatest general in America could in fact be made even more of a disaster by also being hopelessly gay. To be honest, it was quite refreshing to see Laurens' own story relived in front of him, albeit with less daddy issues and worse clothing choices.

"Y'know Hamilton, I don't particularly like balls. I mean, the dancing type at least. What say you we get out of here?"

"O-oh? And do what? I mean, I for one like balls... I mean, the dancing type and... and the, uh,"

Laurens' urge to laugh was overridden only by the startling realisation that Hamilton looked undeniably pretty when he blushed, and that this cute boy knew exactly was Laurens was implying and was in no way turning it down.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. C'mon, there's a garden outside. Let's get some fresh air," and without waiting for Hamilton's reply, Laurens slipped quickly through an open door near to the drinks table, slipping a coin and a wink to the slave standing guard. Bewildered, Hamilton hurried after him, stepping out into the cool spring air and down a narrow flight of steps to where the lawn stretched away down the hill where his eye could not follow.

Standing alone on the wet, moonlit grass, Laurens watched him arrive with a thrill of anticipation. It's not that Hamilton was particularly attractive, or that Laurens was particularly desperate, only that it was hard to come by a sober man who was willing to sleep with you and stay there in the morning. It was hard to come by a pretty man to whom you are more than just a drunken mistake to be hushed up or laughed at when the regiment found out, as they inevitably did. Hamilton had yet to learn that, Laurens could tell, and he almost pitied the pathetic little man. With all his youthful confidence and education, there was still so much he didn't know.

"Don't enter the army," Laurens murmured as Hamilton came to stand beside him. His eyes had drifted to the swirling blue mist over the hills in the distance, and Hamilton could not help but gaze at his distracted face. It was handsome, in a strange, inexplicable way. Maybe it was the freckles scattered across his face like raindrops on glass, or the way his hair curled softly around his face like the mane of some war-scarred lion. Or the way his eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight, alive with the ghosts of a story Hamilton desperately wanted to hear.

"It's not that simple. I have to,"

"You never have to, Alexander," Hamilton was surprised by the use of his name, as he had rather thought that Laurens had forgotten it. But suddenly Laurens seemed sober, and lonely in a way that Hamilton had never seen before. He seemed as though he had spent his whole life surrounded by people and yet had never been really there at all. So used to being the protege, the centre of attention for reasons good or bad, Hamilton knew he could never understand this. "They make you sign up, they tell you what to believe, they tell you what you can and can't do, but in the end it's always up to you. The army's not the right place for you, Hamilton, because it wasn't the right place for me either.

"You know, when I joined I thought there'd be pretty women and parties every night, and you'd never be alone again, but now... sure there's alcohol, and there's harlots whenever you're passing the whorehouse, but it's never quite the same. Women, there never as good as you think they'll be; I just stick to men. And above it all there's the loneliness. The army, it's never as good as you think it'll be. And who's to say we'll even win this? I used to be so sure we would, but after a while you get to wondering and really, what's the point of fighting after all? There'll be more wars, there always will, and sometimes I have no idea what it is we're even fighting for."

Laurens' voice trailed off, merging almost with the mist he never looked away from, and though Hamilton tried to form a reply to this mournful speech, no words came.

"Washington told me you're high ranking,"

"Did he now?"

"You're brave,"

"I'm stupid. No one's ever truly brave in war. They do what they have to do, or else they'll die. I'm no different, no one ever is," Laurens turned to look down at Hamilton's thoughtful expression, adjusting his stance so that the two men stood facing each other under the pale moonlight.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't entirely know. I think maybe I care about you too much to let you throw away your shot like I did."

"You care about me too much?" Hamilton raised an eyebrow, "Why John, we've only just met!"

"Strange, isn't it," a smile tugged at the corners of Laurens' lips, as his eyes locked onto Hamilton's lips.

"Not really,"

Standing on his tiptoes, Hamilton closed the space between their lips. Taken aback a little and smiling broadly into the kiss, Laurens snaked an arm around Hamilton's waist to hold him upright, fingers playing with the lining of Hamilton's green velvet coat. The kiss was slow and gentle, and after a moment they broke apart for breath, then resumed with all the passion and urgency of starving men upon finding a banquet before them.

Hands roaming over thick fabric, they backed up against the trunk of a tree in the thick grove behind the house. Here the night was alive with the evening songs of birds and the scurrying of creatures through the light undergrowth, and in the gaps between the leaves the lights from the house shone like stars. Kissing down his jaw and neck, Hamilton deftly pulled off Laurens' coat, shrugging his own off into a heap of mingling coloured fabrics. Where the shafts of strengthening moonlight pierced through the trees and fell onto him, Hamilton seemed to glow with an ethereal beauty which captivated Laurens for all of the two seconds his mind could pay attention for before flooding with delight as Hamilton left marks on the base of his neck.

"Spot's taken, let's goooooooooooooo," a familiar voice slurred loudly from a little way away.

Reaching for Hamilton's shirt buttons, Laurens was startled by the sight of two shadowy figures standing by the trees a little way from them, clearly drunk and draped over each other's shoulders in a way that was probably not entirely because of their inability to stand upright.

"Waaaaaiiiiiiit, waitwaitwaitwait! It's Laurens!" With an overexaggerated gesture which sent his hold upper body lurching forward, the taller figure pointed at the two blushing men who were still frozen in place against the tree. Straining against the semi-darkness, Laurens could pick out the piercing eyes and long nose of Laf and, beside him, the squat figure of Mulligan. He wasn't going to ask why the two were here, because he thought he might already know and he feared that upon being asked, one of the two might tell him more than he ever wanted to know. Besides, he was still pinned against a tree, thankfully almost-fully-dressed, and with both arms wrapped around Hamilton. With his back to the two intruders, Hamilton was staring into the tree trunk with a horrified expression, making no attempt to move away, for which Laurens was strangely grateful.

"Guys! Kinda busy here!" Laurens' voice came out higher and sharper than he'd expected, and he could have sworn he felt Hamilton laugh against his chest. The two very confused men babbled affirmatively and made their way clumsily out of the grove, while Laurens tried his best to ignore the fact that they were definitely kissing as they did so.

"We should, uh," Laurens murmured shakily, "We should head back inside before they can go round telling everyone what they saw,"

"Yeah, yeah probably,"

Hamilton detached himself from Laurens' arms and picked up the coats from the damp grass by their feet. Pulling his own on and handing the other to Laurens, he cleared his throat, the sound echoing through the sudden silence of the grove.

"You don't regret this, do you? I mean, I wouldn't care, I just"

"You know I don't," Laurens smiled secretly, certain that Hamilton could see it, "in fact, I wouldn't mind meeting again. You know, to finish what we started."

And with that he started back to the house, leaving a very bemused Hamilton to hurry after him.

#lams #hamilton #alexander hamilton #john laurens #george washington #marquis de lafayette #hercules mulligan #fan fiction

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ilovemygaydad · 5 years

Text

Friends in Dark Places [ch 14]

pairing: moxiety, eventual logince, background eventual remile, background eventual remy/emile/deceit

WARNINGS: kissing, implied making out, non-consentual touching and kissing, abusive ex, toxic relationship, self hate, sex mentions, mentioned threesome, rumors, depression, anxiety, depressive episodes, food mentions, unhealthy coping mechanisms, not eating, isolation, worrying, swearing, anger, yelling, swearing, homophobia, homophobic slurs, possibly something else

tag list: @hufflepuffgirl01 @cocobearthe4th @cas-is-a-hunter @band-be-boss-blog @theunoriginaldaisy

a/n: jsyk, it’s totally okay to ask for a modified chapter if you need it or if i need to add tags! i get it, and it’s no problem for me to quick edit a chapter or whatever :) also, feel free to send requests or questions that you have!

first - previous - next - companions

consider buying me a coffee (please)

February 18, 2016

Patton stepped over the threshold into Jay’s house. He’d spent a lot of time there, so it wasn’t being in his boyfriend’s house that was making him anxious; it was the fact that it was the first time they would be alone. Jay had begged him to come, so he’d obliged.

He shook the snow off of his coat and dumped it on the floor next to his boots. “Babe, I’m here!” Pat’s voice echoed lightly in the plastered halls. He heard shuffling a few rooms over and made his way towards the sound. The door swung open, and a half-dressed Jason stood in the doorway. He subconsciously noted the girl sitting on the couch, equally undressed and disheveled.

“Patton. Looking gorgeous as ever,” his boyfriend drawled. His lips were swollen and bright pink.

“What the hell is going on, Jason?” Patton’s voice was hard as he gestured to the scene in front of him. The girl inside stood up and walked to the door, wrapping her slender arms around Jason’s waist.

“He really is as beautiful as you’ve said, Jay. Those eyes truly are stunning. And you know how hot I think freckles are. I would have been a fool to refuse your offer.” Her words dripped like honey--uncomfortably slow and thick. Her hand reached out to cup Pat’s cold-tinged cheek, and he flinched back from her touch, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“What offer, sweetheart?” The anger was gone, replaced with a sugary sweet that held no warmth.

Jason gave his signature dashing smile. “I was thinking, right? You’re bisexual; I’m bisexual. And Lauren here has just been dying to try a threesome. It’ll be fun!”

“What?” That was ridiculous! What kind of thought process was that?

“C’mon, babe. I’ve seen your potential; you’d be an amazing partner in bed!” Jay quirked his eyebrow and pulled Patton closer.

“First of all,” Pat stated as he took a step backward. “You know my feelings on this matter. Second, no! I’m not doing that! We’re fifteen, Jason. Not to mention that you set this all up without even consulting me.”

“And I wouldn’t have had to do that if you’d just loosen up a bit and let me show you something actually pleasurable!”

Patton was about to protest once more when Jason roughly kissed him; his hands fumbled with his belt buckle. On impulse, Pat pushed him back, knocking both Jay and Lauren to the ground in a heap.

“What the hell, Jay?! I said no! What the fuck do you think that means?” The anger was back and more fiery than ever. He was pissed––no, he was furious.

“You fucking moralist! You ruin everything! I went as far as to make this perfect for you, Patton. You’ve done nothing for me, but I’ve done everything for you.” Jason slowly rose from the floor, redness rising in his face.

“I told you exactly what I was comfortable with from the moment you asked me out! I should have listened to Roman and Logan when they said you were nothing but bad news, but I was swept up by your ‘perfection.’” Patton spat back. He’d reached the end of his rope, and he was taking none of it.

“Those two were so much better than you are! At least they were somewhat willing to play to my needs; they were never so self centered as to refuse everything I want. Sure, they didn’t go nearly as far as I’d liked, but they’re better than you. You’re poisonous. You’re a bomb just waiting to go off and ruin all of my hard work! Now, either take your clothes off and join us, or we’re breaking up right here and now.” That stung. And for just a moment, Patton ran over the situation in his head. He was so devastatingly close to caving before he came back to his senses.

“Then I guess we’re done.” Patton swiftly put his shoes back on and wrapped his coat tightly around his body, stepping back out into the cold February air.

---

All discussion ceased as Patton, Logan, and Roman stepped into Westview. Every pair of eyes turned to them. Specifically Patton. A bright blast of chatter erupted once more, and Patton could glean little bits of conversation from them.

“I heard that he slept with three guys this weekend!”

“Yeah? I heard he had a threesome with some chick from South and Jason Keith!”

“Patton Shea is such a slut!”

“Not to mention he’s a fag!”

Patton Shea. Slut. Patton Shea. Whore. Patton Shea. Slept with three guys in one weekend.

Patton spun around and dashed from the school; Logan and Roman followed close behind. He could hear their furious voices behind him as they walked down the sidewalk to the nearest bus stop.

“I’m going to murder Jason! That dick deserves it! How fucking dare he hurt you like that, Patton; especially after what he did on Saturday,” Roman growled.

“For once I agree with your aggressive sentiments. Patton, you are the sweetest person I know. You deserve so much better.” Logan was normally calm—far too calm for most—but this angered him to the core. Pure hatred seeped from his voice.

Patton stopped and spun around. “Do I, though?” The words hung heavily in the air, and Patton’s voice cracked as he said, “Do I?”

“Of course you do,” Logan gently stated. “You are incredibly kind, generous, and genuine. I have never once known you to do something to hurt another person. Jason, on the other hand, is rude, egotistical, incorrigible, and… and… He’s just awful, okay? You deserve the world, and he deserves to rot in the deepest pits of hell.”

You break everything you touch.

“You’re wonderful, Pat.”

Whore!

“We love you.”

Poison!

Patton plastered on a fake smile. “Thanks, guys, really, but you should go to class. I’ll be fine—“

Roman cut him off with one fluid motion. “Yeah, just shut up and let us come with you.”

---

Jason’s words never left Patton, but neither did the rumors. As the months passed, they became less prominent, becoming floating leaves in the back of his memory. It wasn’t until much later that they would rear their head again.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.

---

Present

Virgil paced around his room. He was worried. Patton hadn’t woken up until 11 this morning, which was ages later than he usual. Then, he had refused any visitors to his room, claiming he was doing mass amounts of homework. Virgil brought him some lunch, but he had been instructed to just leave the plate outside the door for him to get in a moment. Patton wouldn’t even let his mother in!

It was, quite frankly, terrifying, and Virgil was glad he’d gotten Logan’s phone number.

Virgil

Read [2:32]

hey lo its virgil

im really worried about pat

he hasn’t come out of his room at all and won’t let any of us come in

Logan

Delivered [2:32]

Ah. It seems he has entered a depressive spiral. As I’m sure you’re familiar with the feelings, I’ll spare you the details. Just know that it is nothing personal.

Excuse me for one moment.

Logan immediately went to his text conversation with Patton and began typing.

Logan

Read [2:34]

Patton. It has come to my concern that Virgil is worried absolutely sick about you. I know that you have been feeling less than subpar today, but I need you to let Virgil in so that you two can work things out. He obviously cares a lot about you, and I know for a fact that you care about him just as much. You are one of my best friends, and it kills me to see you down like this.

As soon as the read symbol popped up, Logan went back to Virgil.

Logan

Delivered [2:34]

Go talk to Patton. If he doesn’t let you in, text me, and I’ll make him.

Virgil let out a light laugh at that. Logan was so caring and willing to help his friends, but he didn’t know how to do it in the most sensitive way. Just seconds later, he stood in front of Patton’s door. He hesitantly reached out and knocked. The door abruptly swung open, and a gloomy Patton motioned him in.

Virgil immediately took a seat on the bed. “I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. I didn’t mean to upset you like this; I just… I wasn’t thinking properly. I’ve been really worried about you all day, and like… I’m sorry.”

“That’s not the reason,” Patton mumbled, pacing along the blue rug on his floor.

“Then why have you been shutting me out all day?” Virgil’s voice was pained; the sound triggered something inside of Pat.

“Because I was trying to avoid this!” Patton gestured wildly at Virgil’s upset expression. “I didn’t want to hurt you, yet here we are! I’m poisonous, Virge. I do nothing but hurt people. I’m the apple from Snow White--sweet and nice at first, but I’ll end up killing you. You deserve so much better than me! You should have picked Roman or Logan; they’re smarter, nicer, more talented, and so much more. But no! You picked me of all people. I’m clumsy, stupid, reckless, emotional, and just plain pathetic. I have nothing to offer.” He sat down exhaustedly on the bed, flopping back onto the plush comforter.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding, right? Patton, you’re amazing. You talked a stranger that you had never met before out of suicide just because you wanted to. You let that same stranger into your home and then ended up allowing them to live with you. You are so much more than nothing. If anything, I don’t deserve you. Roman and Logan are both wonderful, but you have something special inside of you.” Virgil fell back, too. There were a few beats of silence before Patton spoke again.

“If you keep talking bad about yourself, I’m going to physically fight you...” Virgil could hear the smile in his voice. He was so glad. He couldn’t bear to live another minute without Patton happy.

“Come at me, bro.”

Virgil felt weight leaving the bed, but he’d only registered it a moment before he was hauled up by the wrists and propelled into a sweet kiss by Patton. He lightly smiled. God, it was good to have someone again. It was even better that said someone wasn’t an asshole.

“So, what are we?” Virgil asked a few moments later, when they had ended their kiss.

“I think the proper term is ‘boyfriends,’” Patton smiled.

“You sound just like Logan.”

“Satisfactory.” Patton let out a small laugh at Virgil’s irritated groan.

“Shut up and kiss me, nerd.”

#sanders sides fic #m writes things #moxiety #logince #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders

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solonerdbird · 5 years

Audio

My review of the first 12 episodes of the anime Carole and Tuesday, the English dubbed version, currently on Netflix.

Mumble Jumble Transcription:

Hi, this is K.S. Garner and you’re listening to the Solo Nerd Bird Podcast and today I want to talk about Carole and Tuesday, the first twelve episodes that are on Netflix, currently. [This is] part one of the [review] since there’s only twelve episodesI believe as of today September 26th of 2019 is only 23 episodes it maybe 24, I'm not sure as of right now so we’ll jump straight into the Introduction which is actually the production of the show just to give everybody their credit so no one gets upset with me.

So the original story was created by Shinichiro Watanabe, the same creator of Samurai Champool, Space Dandy and my personal favorite Space Cowboy. Like I have the ship, I can't name it right now but I have it [tattooed] on me right now and I’m thinking about getting another one I'm not really sure yet. So it was produced by Bones Studio which they've also done Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, My Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100 just to name a few and the music is by flyingDog Studios or Productions I’m not really sure what they will go by and it was founded in 1997 and if you ever Google flying dog the studio or Productions that does music it’s actually stylized as a lowercase ‘f’ and a capital ‘D’ all one word. Yeah, it took me awhile to actually find it. But like I said, Netflix is airing Carole and Tuesday and they bought the international distribution rights to it and so they're airing the English dubbed version of it and they aired it August 30th of 2019 but the original show in his native Japanese Ashley are April 10th of 2019 like I said we're sticking to the American or English dub version currently on Netflix.

So, let’s get straight into it. Who are Carole and Tuesday. So I'm going to recite the blurb that's on of their official website which is, ‘A chance meeting brings them together. They want to sing. They want to make music. Together they feel like they might just have a chance.’ Carole herself she is, I guess you can say the African-American, I'm not sure if she was even American but she talks with an American accent she's the African-American character on the show she's an orphan works odd part time jobs to make ends meet while living in her landlord's former storage unit. Tuesday, obviously if Carol was the black girl Tuesday is the white girl who’s family considers her to be lazy, unmotivated, with no aspirations in life other than to create and play music. So they both meet on this bridge, like Carol just got fired from one of her odd part time jobs again and being on this bridge while playing her piano and Tuesday’s just captivated by this girl and they all girls,they’re both teenagers in America they’re both still minors. Anyway, they are girls so I'm going to be referring to them as girls or maybe ladies or women but they are technically still anyway when they both me on the bridge. Like I said Tuesday's just captivated by Carole while she’s playing her piano but then they get run off byt security because they’re not supposed to be playing on the bridge. But they meet back up at Carole’s apartment and they just start exchanging their vastly different upbringings, right, and it's just, this is just the beginning of this very beautiful, loyal friendship and quote on quote “the driving force behind the Miraculous 7 Minutes”. There’s just visions of the miraculous 7 Minutes in the beginning of every episode. it's like Gus who’s actually their manager, you'll get to see where he comes into play maybe what I want to say about the second, the second episode, it's not a spoiler, I promise. But he comes into play and he describes, you know,it was this miraculous time it those 7 minutes and you know we'll get into that part but right now we have to go all the way back to how they met and how I met them and how we got to this point, right.

In my opinion, this whole thing would be my opinion so in my opinion, as of right now I love this show. The World building combined with past but the ever so relevant pop culture in music from Earth to the current lifestyle and environment on Mars has Shinichiro written all over it just like I said I'm getting a lot of Cowboy Bebop feels I'm actually getting a lot of Steven Universe feels too which is probably why I really like this show. It has those musical elements I think combined with the action adventure and the loyalty of the friendship and friendship is tested at some point not even at some point like throughout these 12 episodes, the first twelve episodes and if this is what it is in the first twelve episodes I wonder what they’re going to do in the next 12 right.

The Musical part, like I said just give me a lot of Steven Universe feels. I'm not really big into musicals as I would like to be but this is definitely, you're scratching the surface of musicals so the musical part, there’s supposed to be a soundtrack release it actually just got pushed back there was a post on their Instagram page that is going to be pushed back I think like maybe another month but there is no official release date. I personally don't skip into the next episodes like you wouldn't, like with other shows you just skip right into it instead of waiting for it to count down for a bathroom break like I don't need a bathroom break. These episodes are only like 20 minutes long if you just skip straight into it. I don't even bother doing that. The opening sequence, the opening theme song just me and the closing theme song “Hold Me Down”, I mean, “Hold Me Now” I sorry. They’re super, super catchy and I find myself…

[horrendous singing]

I can't wait for the soundtrack I'm going to be going to get in my car I just I can't wait anyway the main vocalist are as follows Carole is played by I believe you pronounce her name is Nai Bri.XX Tuesday by Celeina Ann. I believe her name is Alisa, she voices Angela, she’s like their musical rival. You have Crystal who’s voiced by Lauren Dyson and Skip was played by the musician Thundercat. I don’t think I ever heard of that before Thundercat before this show but I'm definitely following him now and I'm definitely getting a lot of Thundercat in Skips cuz at first I thought okay Skips is kind of like a muscular Childish Gambino who doesn't rap. He just kind of like does all the singing parts and he plays an electrical guitar. But once I looked up Thundercat and his music, I was like, okay, was this character actually made for Thundercat. I'm getting a lot of Thundercat in Skips, Skip. Skips is from Regular Show, not to be confused. But then again he's the one that probably wrote the songs so it makes a lot more sense. And then with Crystal she's like the Beyonce of Mars. Beyonce has transcended onto Mars and this is what it is, you know. So I just, that's what I'm getting with them. Like I said before I even found out about Thundercat, I was referring to him like a Childish Gambino even like Pharrell again that doesn't rap he just does all the singing parts and he plays the guitar like maybe [coughs] excuse me, like Lenny Kravitz. I only picked those artists cause those are the ones that I like, come straight to mind for me they just happened to be black artists. I think I picked black artists because Skip is black (??) but you can watch, just go and watch the show. I highly recommend watching it that's why I'm doing this for you. Highly recommend you watch it and it's alright.

So there’s another part of the show that made me a little bit hesitant with watching it. It was the fact that Carole, the black girl is African American or black like I just said and she's one of the title characters. I was kind of afraid of how they were going to portray her, like she has dreadlocks and she's not Bohemian but she kind of skips to her own beat. And I like, erm, I kinda wonder how they’re going to do this but there is no type of racial prejudice on this show I guess because it’s the martial environment is on its humans and AI with or like robots whatever you want to call them. That's pretty much it on this show. It’s not like humans and a variety of creatures like on Star Trek or Star Wars, you know, living together anything like that it's just humans and AI. But I, from what I can see there’s no real prejudices. I mean, there’s gender that comes into play, like the scale of gender that varies or that could possibly very. I don't want to touch too much on that because then that would be a spoiler and we don't do spoilers, no we do not! But like I said, they did a really good job. There was at one-point where there was like, like a gangster rapper or that he was going to try to do something like that but then it was like the exact opposite. That's what I was hoping for and that's exactly what they did. He did the exact opposite of what he physically, what he visually look like, what he tried to portray himself because I'm pretty sure other people of color other black people specifically since the title character is black can relate to this about how they'll watch something that they're interested in but then they get into it and the characters being betrayed as one of those stereotypes. You know big lipped, overly sexualized, lazy, pipe smoking, hip-hop loving & ghetto fab, baggy clothed; co-worker, mistress, hobo or a dangerous person that the protagonist is told to avoid at all times or you see them, cross the street every chance you get but thankfully this isn't it.

Shinichiro roll portrays Carole as strong-willed, self-sufficient, optimistic, silly and resourceful even from her lack of connections money from a familial network. She isn't bitter, she isn't jaded by being, I guess, being left behind of our family. She's been unable to find a way to get by and live her own life and pretty much define herself. She doesn't throw Tuesday up, Tuesday's up bringing back at her face, like, oh you come from money hey can, I can I get some, you know and you can't do nothing so you might as well on back home like I haven't really no need for you. Whereas Tuesday's ignorant of the world around her and is easily compromised, Carole count steps in I don't even think as a big sister, I kind of see them as equals in a way but Carole shows Tuesday that independence and confidence in herself can bring more competency... competency into her life than the abundance of wealth and connections through her family could ever for her. Like this, this is so much better like with or without money if you're confident in yourself if you understand you know...how to wash your own clothes, how to cook food for yourself, how to finesse your way in and out of these various part-time jobs like Carole has you'll go further in life, you know. You'll do better, maybe not further but you'll do better and you’ll appreciate everything a lot more than just with the use of your money. Just like, you just threw your money at whatever to get whatever you want like this is better than that. Shinichiro, the animators and all of the creators, they've done a wonderful job, right.

I would like to get more into the musical aspects unfortunately, like I said we (clap) don't (clap) do (clap) spoilers (calp) so highly recommend you watch the show. You know really getting into it like I have watch, listen, decide for yourself. A lot of this like I said he's my own opinion of it, of the characters, of how they have been portrayed, how other characters have (inaudible), have been portrayed. Watch, listen, make up your own minds. If I missed anything, if you want to comment, question, please go ahead and, and send me those comments and questions (laughs). Maybe some concerns maybe you want to expand a little bit more yourself just go ahead and, and shoot me an email my social and my email will be up. And like I said, the show has been great, I can't wait to watch the next 12 episodes. I'm not sure if they're available on, on uh, Crunchyroll yet or if I have to wait another year. I mean so be it. If I have to I will but this show has been really interesting and it's helping me get back into anime slowly so like, I, I can't wait. I tell as many people as I can about this show Carole and Tuesday, is amazing. And when I put up my interest in doing an episode about Carole and Tuesday my Instagram just blew up and so I was like okay let me hurry up and watch the rest of this so I can go ahead and put up my review. So as of right now, this is only the first part. Once I'm able to get my hands on the, um, next 12 episodes I'm going to go ahead and just film the next one for you guys.

So thanks for listening. This is KS Garner and you have been listening to the Solo Nerd Bird Podcast.

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IG: solonerdbirdpodcast

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