#(if ao3 permits)

[bitegore]

Hey! If you’re doing the Spotify flash fiction: Whirl, with 8 ✨

Whirl - Waiting on the Sky to Change by STARSET and Breaking Benjamin

Whirl was kinda mad that it was working, but he'd been wasting his time with Rung in those stupid mandatory therapy sessions for a while now after they'd booted him unceremoniously from the Wreckers and... Objectively, this was probably proof it was working. That was what made it all the more fragging annoying. He was just glitched in the head forever, that was his thing. They screwed him up and now he was all screwed up and everyone knew it. Yeah? But Whirl was sitting in his fragging hab kicking his fragging heels in the middle of the night and it was all just getting boring. Like he could just wash his hands (ha!) of who he was and move on because he was sick and tired of being the biggest fragging mess this side of Cybertron. That wasn't how it was supposed to work. But Whirl was getting tired of this. And that was proof something was changing.

[anna-scribbles]

was about to read chap 2 of call it even but ao3 decided to self destruct anna how will i go on

that is so tragic that i will just have to post a whole sneak peek of ch 2 for you here!!!!

Adrien loved Ladybug.

He loved the smooth timbre of her voice and the firm set of her eyes, the way her mouth would dig its way deeper into a scowl the more she tried not to laugh at one of the rare jokes he managed to pry beneath her red-and-black spotted armor. He loved the way she spoke of justice with such reverence, of peace with such passion. Adrien loved the idea of Ladybug, at least—the thought that there could be a person who embodied so much of what he cherished, the grace and goodness and compassion of his childhood. He loved what Ladybug stood for. What she pretended to stand for.

Sometimes, Adrien thought that he could have loved Ladybug if he didn’t hate her so much.

There were times, though—like now, her red fist redder with his blood, cold disdain smeared across her face—when Adrien thought that he’d have hated her regardless, this nameless thief who masqueraded around his city as a hero. There were times when Adrien was certain he could never have ended up anywhere but at the other end of her fist, if only so that no one else would have to bear the brunt of her brutality.

“Get up,” his father’s voice hissed into his earpiece. “Don’t just lie there like an invalid. Take her miraculous!”

“Me-ouch,” Adrien wiped some of the blood off his face and grimaced, rising to his feet. “I guess your pledge to protect the citizens of Paris from danger doesn’t extend to animal cruelty.”

Fury lit up across her face, instant and red. Of all her buttons he’d learned to press, none ever worked quite as well as calling her out on the hero facade. And today, now that he was getting a good look at her, she was more agitated than usual, all her movements impatient and sharp.

“Don’t you talk about danger and cruelty,” Ladybug spat, setting her yo-yo spinning in a razor-sharp circle of light. “That misunderstood-tragic-kitty act is as fake as your stupid smile. We all know you could put an end to the danger anytime you felt like it.”

“Then you have misunderstood me, my lady,” He watched the time-worn nickname worm its way beneath her skin, upheaving a vulnerable, messy sort of frustration. Adrien lengthened his baton and lowered his stance. “This can’t end until I have your miraculous.”

Ladybug let out a yell and swung her yo-yo in a blinding arc at his torso. Adrien intercepted it mid-air with his baton, pulling the staff loose from the wire and scampering past her to the other end of the rooftop. He would do almost anything to avoid getting entangled in that thing; it was near indestructible and Ladybug wasn’t usually very keen on treating her captives kindly. His father, also, was not very keen on his cataclysm being used outside of their specific battle strategies. Adrien, in general, was not very keen on making either of these people any more angry at him than they usually were.

“Eat up, my angels!” M. Pigeon yelled up from the sky, riding atop a massive cloud of pigeons. “Taste the delicious cuisine you were always meant to have! No longer will the pigeons of Paris be resigned to breadcrumbs and cat food!”

“Hey!” Adrien yelled indignantly. “Nothing wrong with cat food!”

Ladybug made a sound that could almost be taken as a snort, but when he looked back, her expression had schooled itself back into righteous anger. She lifted an eyebrow, challenging him, but pulled herself into more of a defensive stance. She always liked to take everything in before she made a move.

“It’s okay to laugh, you know,” Adrien grinned wide and assumed a jovial stance, taking stock of the angle of her feet, the aim of her gaze. She was smarter and stronger than him; he’d always known that. But he was quicker with words and knew where to aim them. “It must be an incredible drain on your energy to keep pretending you don’t find me funny.”

“You sure think a lot of yourself for someone who just admitted to eating kibble,” Ladybug scoffed, eyes trailing the flock of birds passing over their heads.

“Don’t knock it until you try it, my lady,” Adrien said. “For a hero, you’re incredibly quick to judge.”

“For a villain, you sure do love stupid small talk.”

“Well,” Adrien mused, “Maybe there’s more to both of us than meets the eye.”

“Doubt it,” Ladybug said lightly, and she spun out her yo-yo, knocking Adrien’s feet out from under him and leaping to the roof of a neighboring building.

Just then, a fleet of pigeons swooped down from the sky and descended onto a nearby outdoor restaurant, littering the rooftop with feathers in their wake. Pulling himself up, Adrien watched with a measure of horrified wonder as the pigeons devoured all the food on the tables in a matter of seconds like a pack of feathered piranhas.

“Are they supposed to be, like, carnivores?” Adrien yelled, the image of a pigeon tearing through a sausage burned into his mind. Ladybug, predictably, didn’t answer.

He vaulted after her, trailing her from rooftop to rooftop as they both dodged the swarms of pigeons terrorizing tourists and stealing every bit of food in sight. Sometimes, the akumas remembered that they were on Adrien’s side and actually tried to help him take Ladybug’s miraculous. But just as often, it seemed, they were more interested in general destruction and chaos, causing as many problems for Adrien as they did for Ladybug. The pigeons, Adrien tended to think, were more of a personal handicap than anything.

“ACHOO!” Adrien sneezed, his still-broken nose sending an unexpected jolt of pain through his system. “Ow,” he groaned.

“Ha!” Ladybug spun around and kicked him in the chest, flinging him several meters back and over the edge of the rooftop. Slamming into the side of the building, Adrien dug his claws into the brick to slow his fall, pulling himself back up. When he finally made it over the ledge, Ladybug had her feet planted firmly and was throwing her yo-yo into the sky.

“Lucky charm!” she yelled.

In a shower of luminescent pink and white light, a polka-dotted Easy-Bake Oven landed primly in Ladybug’s hands. The way the hope sort of died on her face was almost enough to make Adrien burst into laughter, and it was really only years of media training that kept his expression schooled.

“Happy… ninth birthday?” Adrien offered, and the glare that Ladybug shot him honestly made the whole thing worth it.

“Shut up,” Ladybug snarled, and then she turned her gaze back to the battery-powered confectionery oven as if it might start speaking to her. “How the—”

“On your right!” Adrien yelled, and Ladybug glanced in his direction as a swarm of pigeons slammed into her from the left, knocking the lucky charm out of her hands. Adrien quickly scooped it up and vaulted to the next building.

“You menace!” Ladybug growled, swinging behind him in swift pursuit.

“Name-calling!” Adrien tutted over his shoulder. “Not very heroic of you, I have to say.”

“I’ll show you heroic,” Ladybug muttered, and then Adrien felt a sharp tug on his left ankle. He’d only just looked down to see her yo-yo line wrapped around his leg when she sent him flying backward through the air, the toy oven flung from his hands as he braced for impact.

Adrien slammed into the pavement, pain rocketing through his shoulder. His baton clattered down next to him, and he blinked the black away enough to see Ladybug standing up on the roof again, staring at her lucky charm like it was a math problem she was trying to solve.

“I, for one, am loving this game of kitty-in-the-middle we’ve got going,” Adrien called up at her. He extended his baton and vaulted back up to the roof where she stood, ignoring the splintering pain in his muscles. “My turn next?”

Ladybug groaned, shoving the oven under one arm and setting her yo-yo spinning with the other. She swung it out at him and he jumped, almost stumbling when he landed on his throbbing ankle. He could try using his cataclysm to disintegrate the roof and make her lose her balance, but he wasn’t supposed to activate it until she had three minutes or less left on her timer.

“Get it?” Adrien asked, swiping his baton at her legs. Ladybug jumped deftly away. “Because we’re throwing the lucky charm back and forth? Like, monkey-in-the—”

“I get it!” Ladybug snarled, wrapping her yo-yo line around a nearby balcony and tugging, hard. Adrien had only seconds to lift his baton up in a makeshift shield when the bricks all came clattering down on him, along with a few tables and chairs and plates of food.

Suddenly a swarm of pigeons separated from the huge flock in the sky and descended upon them, devouring the sandwiches and chips at alarming speeds. Adrien’s stomach panged with hunger—while the rest of him panged with pain—as he remembered that he hadn’t actually gotten to eat lunch.

“Hm,” Ladybug said decisively, like the feeding pigeons had imparted some sort of divine wisdom upon her. “Yeah, okay.”

She was gone before Adrien could dig himself out of the rubble, swinging away with her magic Easy-Bake in tow and leaving him to deal with her mess.

“What are you doing?” Father yelled into his ear. “Follow her! Don’t let her out of your sight!”

“Of course,” Adrien muttered, unearthing an arm from the mess of rubble and feathers. “Resident bug-catcher, on it.”

Loud-mouthed and brightly colored as she was, Ladybug could disappear when she wanted to. And, though he’d spent the better part of his teenage years committing her habits to memory, Adrien could swear that tracking her never got easier.

Sometimes, when she’d do this—try and shake him off while she figured out her lucky charm—Adrien would spend the whole five minutes looking for her, tearing through the city until a wave of light flooded the world and let him know that he’d lost without even putting up a fight. Those were the times he’d be punished the worst for losing. The punishments had only gotten worse as he’d gotten older; Adrien had a lot more to lose these days.

After the seventh or eighth building or alleyway Adrien had ducked into, he started to feel the familiar tug of dread in his gut, mud in his veins. There couldn’t be that much time left, now—he’d been stupid, and reckless, and now it would all have been for nothing. His father’s silence in his earpiece was deafening, ice-cold and heavy. He was doing it again. And especially now, especially today, he couldn’t—he swallowed down his panic.

On a whim, Adrien landed on the roof of a pavilion near the park, circled with concrete pillars and backed up to the brick wall of a building. He ducked his head in and bit down a gasp when he saw a flash of red inside. She was—she was here.

He waited, breath frozen in his lungs, but the attack didn’t come. Ladybug was murmuring to herself, fussing over what he presumed to be the lucky charm. Ladybug was here. And she hadn’t seen him yet.

“Cataclysm,” Adrien whispered, setting his palm alight with inky destruction. And then he charged.

In one swift motion, Adrien used his baton to knock both the yo-yo and the lucky charm from Ladybug’s hands, sending them clattering across the pavement as he slammed her body into the wall. She growled and pummeled her fists into his face and gut, sending stars of pain shooting through his vision.

Adrien extended his baton and smashed one end into the pavement at their feet and the other diagonally into a concrete pillar of the pavilion. He shoved the length of it as hard as he could acoss Ladybug’s torso, pinning her against the wall. She coughed and spluttered, ripping at the baton and hurling expletives his way.

It wouldn’t hold her for long, but maybe for long enough that he could—

Adrien lunged for the lucky charm—that stupid, polka-dotted Easy Bake oven—and scooped it up with his left hand, hovering his right palm in the air just centimeters above it.

“Careful,” Adrien warned, and Ladybug’s eyes widened.

“You evil, idiotic, worthless waste of breath—”

“Yes, fine.” Adrien waved her off. “I’m not interested in that. I don’t want to fight. I think we should talk.”

“What are you doing?” Father snarled in his ear, and Adrien winced. “End this and take her miraculous!”

Ladybug looked like she agreed; the glare she leveled at him sent ice down his spine.

“Talk,” Ladybug laughed humorlessly, fists still tight around the baton. “Right. You always want to talk.”

“I want to talk,” Adrien agreed, keeping his composure level despite the anxiety in his bloodstream and Father’s voice in his ear. He even threw in a smile for good measure. “Obviously we both know how this”—Adrien gestured to Ladybug and himself, and then to the greater generally-in-shambles city—“goes. And I imagine that it involves many more people than we’d both prefer.”

Ladybug looked at him with some intense combination of anger and bewilderment.

“Are you… trying to apologize right now?” Ladybug asked. “For being a terrorist? The thing you’re currently doing?”

“No,” Adrien said, taking a great deal of effort to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I’m not apologizing. I’m just recognizing that you seem to care about the safety of civilians, and so do I, and so I think we should be able to find some common ground and settle this in some way that doesn’t involve them.”

“The only reason they’re involved at all is because you keep attacking their city!” Ladybug shouted, her voice a lit flame. Her earrings beeped—two out of five. “What are you talking about?”

“Adrien,” Father growled dangerously in his ear, “stop this immediately.”

“Don’t play dumb, Ladybug. We both know you’re smarter than that,” Adrien pressed on. “There’s no one here to fool. If you give back what you stole, this can all end—”

“Adrien, stop!” Father yelled.

“You’re insane!” Ladybug shouted. “I never stole anything, and—and the very last person I’d ever trust to talk things through with is you.”

Adrien’s temper rose hot beneath his skin, his ears flat against his head. A rumbling began to shake the ground beneath their feet.

“And this is what you want instead?” Adrien shouted. “The whole city in danger? Us fighting like this, forever?

“Adrien!” Father seethed.

Something shifted in Ladybug’s gaze, her eyes set with an infuriating self-righteous zeal that dropped a rock in Adrien’s gut.

“I think forever is a gross overestimation,” she said. “In fact, I believe you’re already out of time.”

Ladybug smirked, and a high-pitched ding sounded in Adrien’s arms.

The Easy-Bake Oven exploded with popcorn all over the pavilion, and a torrent of pigeons descended on the microwaved feast, choking the air in beaks and feathers until cracks splintered through the pillars. Ladybug wrenched the baton from the pavement and jousted it into Adrien’s stomach, sending him gasping to the floor, but not before he kicked at her legs and took her down with him.

They tousled for a few seconds before a feather sauntered down through the air to brush right up against Adrien’s nose—he could swear his nose was like a magnet to the godforsaken things or something, seriously—and Adrien, with all his might, could not stop the earth-shattering, full-body sneeze that followed.

The sneeze—understandably—loosened his grip on Ladybug, who—also understandably—used the opportunity to pull her knee up to her chest and kick him in the stomach, sending him flying several meters into a pile of pigeons.

Adrien blinked, Ladybug’s red form hazy in his watery eyes. Why did the allergies have to happen, like, instantly? Why did it always have to be M. Pigeon?

“A ‘bless you’ would’ve been fine,” Adrien remarked, feeling around for his baton with his non-actively-cataclysming hand.

“Hmm. I’m not really in the mood to bless you, I think,” Ladybug said. Adrien blinked again, and she was closer than before, yo-yo spinning triumphantly at her side. “I’m thinking you could bless me instead.”

In a swift motion, she lassoed him by the waist and hurled him through the air, several seconds of freefall before he made contact with something warm and firm. He felt the moment his cataclysm was released and panicked for a second, thinking that he might have accidentally touched a person. But, no, when Adrien opened his eyes, he only found the ashy remnants of M. Ramier’s pigeon-feed bag in his palm. Despite himself, Adrien sighed with relief. Awful as she was, Ladybug was reliable. She’d never manipulated his cataclysm to hurt another person, only to deakumatize people. Though he knew Ladybug wasn’t above hurting innocents, she’d always seemed to care about her public image.

“Chat Noir!” M. Ramier screeched, now that all the black bubbles were gone. “What are you doing here?! Help! Ladybug!”

“Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you!” Adrien put his hands up, placating. M. Ramier’s eyes were still wide with fear. “Let’s get you down from here, okay?”

“You’re safe now, M. Ramier,” Ladybug landed firmly on the rooftop, polka-dotted Easy-Bake in tow. She snapped her yo-yo around the black butterfly and gave Adrien a pointed look. “He won’t hurt you anymore. Stray cats know when to scram.”

“I’m harmless as a declawed kitten,” Adrien told M. Ramier, pointedly ignoring Ladybug. “I wish you well.”

read the rest on ao3 (when it comes back up)

[pinkpinkmermayyy]

if you think ao3 is revolutionary and amazing and without flaws than you’re probably white or a guy. Maybe even both, which yeah that mostly seems to be the case

[lilybillyotherstuff]

Shout out to the unofficial ao3 app being put on a 1hr time limit unless you join a subscription service, so it kicked me out mid chapter of this absolutely painful desert duo fanfic I saw on tumblr months ago

Rambling in tags,,,,

[faebriel]

and you caused it: chapter 1

(click for more detail!)

In which Niki has a terrible secret, Puffy just wants to move on, Tommy sneaks into casino parties and Wilbur learns to deal with anger being justified. Or - the one thing they don't warn you of, when dropping nuclear warheads on old friends, is fallout.

in chapter one: wilbur does his very best to be a good friend. niki continues to have issues with making apologies. a casino opening party is attended, and a few well-kept secrets find their way into the light.

wc: 9.8k (this part's the longest! you can tell i start writing out fics from their opening scenes lol)

so before getting into things, i'd like to lay out a few warnings and additional comments.

cws include: implied/referenced suicide, implied/referenced self-destructive behaviour, implied/referenced child abuse, and discussed food restriction. this is very much a fic about trying to deal with the fact that you haven't done great things and having trouble coming to terms with your mistakes and wrongdoings, and not always approaching that in a healthy way. do i still need to clarify all my fics are extremely entrenched in unreliable narrators? the viewpoint(s) of this fic most definitely are.

this fic should be considered canon-divergent from early season 3, as a direct sequel to cause most of us are bitter over someone.

apologies for some of the broken up snippet boxes. did you know tumblr has a character limit per text block? i didn't, until today.

and yes, this fic is also named after youth by daughter. i mean, come on.

with that in mind, onto the story proper.

prologue

The crater is so, so much bigger than she thought it would be. Crumbling rock stretches onward, a chasm fields larger than the pit that once was L’Manberg - easily bigger than L’Manberg ever was. Even now it yawns itself larger, stone crumbling at the edges and tumbling downward, ever downward. The crashing is muffled, the ground under her feet unsteady and yet floating, frozen, caught and crystallised in the stray second that Niki is trapped in. Every stone a diamond, the hulking and twisted mass of metal below glittering in the late afternoon sun. It sinks into her brain, thick and heavy, as she struggles to wrap her mind around what her eyes tell her she sees. This isn’t a burning tree, this isn’t dynamite - this shouldn’t even be possible. And yet somehow, somehow, they failed. She edges closer to the lip of the cliff, letting the sound of tumbling rock fade from her earshot, and stares. Just - stares. What else can she do? Bedrock peers up at her, threaded with smoking silver-grey. The air is clear up here, sky a fading blue, but the longer she looks - her eyes burn, and when she takes a breath she coughs on what tastes like gunpowder, but it burns down the rungs of her throat like it’s somehow been lit behind her tongue. Gunpowder is dry, cold - it doesn’t do that. She would know. The burning feeling raking its way into her lungs pulls her back from her vigil, and somewhere behind her she can hear Tubbo pulling Tommy back from the edge. His voice rambles on about - about radiation. Poison leeching its way into her lungs, her skin, every thread of muscle and sinew holding her together, her brain. (She’s either dizzy, or the height is giving her vertigo. She steels herself, clenches her hands into shaking fists, and tries not to drift.) And they’re all standing in the thick of it, air hot and heavy with poison. Because Tommy’s still here. She tears her eyes away from the wreckage, watches - watches him, still here, still alive, still fire-bright and bold enough to start kicking rocks around. When a cliff crumbles he bounces back, has the audacity to laugh. Jack’s eyes bore holes into the side of her head. Her stomach hurts, pulling itself apart, lining loose - oh, fuck, she’s going to be sick. She can - she can’t feel it, she shouldn’t be able to feel it, but she does. That poison seeping into her bones, settling there like silt. It reaches out with sticky hands, tearing open her stomach and burning everything it touches leaving nothing but the wet and wrong feeling of gristle inside and she takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut and clamps a hand over her mouth because she’s all too aware of every toxic shift in her chest. Takes a shaky breath, feels that burn down her throat too. Her gut is twisting like something’s grabbed it, shot it through with shards of ice, but it’s just her, Jack, Tubbo and Tommy. And the pit that stretches out beneath them. There’s a hand on her shoulder, and Tubbo’s words swim past her ears like she’s been held underwater. We need to go, his voice murmurs quietly. It washes over her like rainwater, like what’s left of the stream that weaves its way into the crater and drips down like rain on the edge of a roof. We need to go, or we’ll die. Isn’t that the point? she wants to ask. It all blurs together when she blinks the water out of her eyes - the shitty canopy over their van, a tree that goes up like firewood, smoke in the back of her throat. Dynamite under her hands, dug deep into a podium. Radiation sinking into her bones. She staggers over - Tubbo is wearing something heavy and yellow, encrusted in shimmering black dust, pressing something similar into Tommy’s hands. She’s wearing - Wilbur’s coat, thin and flapping in the breeze, still smudged with ash. She can feel a draft through the tears in the back. Tommy steps away from the cliff’s edge, and her hands twitch. Hasn’t that always been the point?

☢ ☢ ☢

chapter 1

the first two scenes of this fic are actually written out, so they have been linked in their entirety below:

scene 1 - wilbur and niki, hanging out again - comfortable, reunited - as niki brews potions that she (reluctantly) reveals are to treat radiation sickness from a mishap with one of tubbo's nuclear experiments.

scene 2 - niki walks to snowchester to drop off a few potions, a peace offering. unfortunately, tommy and michael are the only ones home. it's a bit awkward. niki struggles to navigate the historically-turbulent relationship between herself and tommy.

---

after snowchester comes the afternoon syndicate meeting - insert the meeting notes, penned by the deeply-experienced ranboo_beloved.

items of note: technoblade's absence, as he is due to return from his hibernation tomorrow. phil advises ranboo and niki that techno seems to have some big ideas in mind for the syndicate upon his return, but there's no time to speculate - wilbur has advised them that las nevadas is throwing an opening party for its casino in a few nights' time, and the syndicate does not trust like that! ranboo will be representing paradise burgers and phil is pulling the "you've all called me old for too long, and i am now using it as an excuse to get out of this party i don't want to go to" card. niki, you would love to go, wouldn't you?

---

well, niki is a bit so-so on las nevadas, but to be honest - a night at a fancy party with a few friends doesn't sound so bad. so niki makes her way to the sparkling city in her glitziest red dress, and wilbur is just a little bit too excited to meet her on its front steps.

The place is bustling, fashioned for pleasure instead of business tonight - strings of lights wrap their way around slender pillars of stone on every corner, each housing sea lanterns that send shifting shades of blue and purple across the obsidian paving. The water flowing from the fountains is bright and blue, the music coming from the casino is booming, and the space needle is lit up like a lighthouse that throws the spotlight onto every partygoer who enters the city. It is sparkling, dazzling, and probably shockingly expensive. In other words, just as tacky as Niki had expected. Although maybe even sparklier. There is something about this place that is stale, artificial. There is a chill to the air despite the sand stuck in her heels, and Niki finds herself shivering as night settles over the desert - and wishing she had a shawl or something. She's wearing the same red dress as she did for the banquet months ago, knife tucked by her back, right in arm’s reach. Though even in her glitziest gown, she feels underdressed. "Wonderful, isn't it?" Wilbur, at least, seems unbothered - he’s still donning his torn trenchcoat and canary-yellow sweater, but moves through the city as if the bright lights and tall buildings fit him like a glove. “Wonderful is one word for it,” Niki murmurs. She’s never visited Las Nevadas, and tonight with its flashing nights and thrumming music seems determined to leave… an impression. A good one, or a bad one, she can’t say - although she’s certainly leaning towards the latter over the former. She thinks she can feel a headache coming on. “Oh, come on, Niki. Try to have a little fun, won’t you?” He grins, a little crooked. “A beautiful night in a beautiful city - a lot of potential, for a night like that..." Wilbur is acting strange. it’s not the locale, because he looks the same as usual and moves through the city in the same way as usual - but he is clearly planning something, and Niki hates to say it but it’s putting her on edge. Bless him, but Wilbur planning things doesn’t end well. Especially when she doesn’t see it coming.

"Alright, get over here," he interrupts her rapidly-derailing train of thought. "Your eyeliner is smudged.” Niki wrinkles her nose as Wilbur licks his thumb, and dodges an attempt to swipe it past her temple. “I’ll decline you rubbing your spit on my face,” she says, taking a step back. Wilbur pouts. “I don’t have anyone to impress here, Wil.” Certainly not. Not in the brightest, most wasteful city in the server. Wilbur presses his lips together, but he doesn’t say anything - just huffs, taking a step back with a roll of his eyes. Niki resists the urge to roll her own. He’s wired, and she’d like to pretend she’s not at least mildly suspicious, but she is. She keeps her mouth shut, though. She trusts Wilbur - despite and because of everything in equal measures. “Don’t blame me later,” is all he says. “This place is so... gaudy. I don't know how much fun you expect me to have,” Niki points out, and reaches out to fix the pins on his collar - glinting gold under the lights, one’s come detached from the point of his collar and dangles helplessly from the chain. He huffs slightly as she winds the pin out from the wool of his sweater, and fiddles with the point of his collar until it stays. “You really are starting to sound like Techno now, you know.” “He’s your brother,” Niki says, flattening out his collar. “i think that should be a compliment.” “Maybe,” Wilbur laughs, and offers her his arm. “Just - try to have fun, yeah? Don’t be stressed. It’s a party.” “It’s a reconnaissance mission.” “It's a reconnaissance mission at a party,” he says flippantly, although there’s something hiding beneath his tone. Niki trusts Wilbur, she reminds herself. “I know you’re putting some plan together again,” she says, despite herself. she just can’t piece together what he’s planning, and that worries her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hums. “You clearly do.” Wilbur drops the act a moment - not long enough to fill her in on whatever scheme's caught his eye, but just enough for him to shoot her an encouraging smile. “You'll have a good time, Niki,” he assures her, confident. "Promise."

but oh, the party seems fine. she runs into a few friends - quackity, tubbo, ranboo (they got a babysitter for tonight), actually meets slime. tommy is there too, and they share a bit of awkward conversation, but even they are getting along finely tonight.

Tommy nods out towards the mostly-empty space in the middle of the room, some glitzy imitation of a ballroom - Ranboo and Tubbo, hand in hand, twirl around the space in a clumsy but cheerful attempt at a waltz. As they pass the bar Ranboo spins Tubbo under his outstretched arm, smiling at Quackity - the man grins back, and lets the vodka glug into his glass for a few seconds too long before tossing it back with a grimace.

niki eventually takes a small breather from the party, lingering on the sidelines to catch her breath between all of this talking - this is where wilbur finds her, the most keyed up he's been all night and insisting that niki follow him. it'll be worth her while, of course (he's done something to make things up with her, to make things properly right between them, to do something just for niki). and so niki follows to the faux-ballroom, eyes cast downward to avoid stepping on anyone's feet as wilbur eagerly ushers her through the crowd, until she almost runs into his back as he steps away and finally -

locks eyes with puffy.

who is not happy to see her.

(oh, it would be so kind of wilbur - who has noticed how lonely the niki-who-is-now is compared to the niki-who-once-was, who once had perhaps not a country but friends and a girlfriend who she could rely on. and someone as sweet and good as niki would never do something to cause a horrible, drawn-out, justified breakup.

the point is, wilbur puts niki on a pedestal. he means well. they don't even notice that he does, half the time - he thinks she is good and clever and rational and deserving of the world, and some of the time, she really is those things. she's just also an attempted murderer. and finally, it is coming back to bite both of them in the ass.)

puffy, who has been led to believe that this is some get-her-back scheme orchestrated by niki, is mildly annoyed at best. we broke up for a reason, she insists, and niki knows that.

"I can’t believe you," Puffy scowls, the expression a brash, red rose across her face. "Really, Niki?” “This wasn’t my idea!” she cries. "Guilty as charged," Wilbur mumbles - suitably abashed, he slinks over to Niki's side. She is still too shell-shocked to shoo him away. Puffy is transfixing, like that. A thousand thoughts tumble through her head, chaos - and yet, she can't bring a single other one stammering to her lips. “Well, god knows what you’re telling everyone, then!" Puffy snaps. "I don't know what kind of dumb get back together plan you're trying to pull - I don't care, Niki. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but - you're a fucking mess." The words land like a blow to the chest - Niki sucks a breath in past her teeth, bracing for the hit, before she thinks better of it. "I told you. I can't fix you, I couldn't - I couldn't just stand around and keep my eyes closed when you hurt people, Niki, I'm done with it. I told you, I'm done."

but niki has been trying. and fuck, trying has been hard. she's not going to beg that puffy takes her back - that ship has sailed - but she's not going to stand there and let herself be slandered, either.

“...I’m getting better," Niki retorts, voice small. Puffy lets go of an angry breath. “Don’t start. Don’t start.” “I have the Syndicate now!" she exclaims. "I have friends - good friends - and I started baking again, I started caring again, I started trying again, and it's - it's none of your business, either way. It's not your business!" “This started being my business when you tried to kill someone under my care - I don't know if you remember that - and then you just, just disappeared off into the wilderness about it! Fuck, have you even apologised to Tommy for all that?” And Niki goes quiet. It's more of an answer than anything she could have said in words. Puffy's glare goes thunderous, voice a loud, rumbling crash in Niki's head. “You haven’t? After exile, after all of that shit - you were in the vault with us, Niki, you heard everything that fucker said, you were there - and you haven't even fucking apologised to him?” A cold rush of - of shame, it sweeps over her, making her painfully aware of the scuffs on her dress and the acne on her chin and the abject, open anger on Puffy’s face. Puffy is no angel but she is righteous, powered by something burning bright and so scathingly good at her core, nigh-divine in her knightly fury - and despite her namesake, Niki is so very far from godhood. “It’s difficult," Niki tries. "It’s - it’s complicated.” “No, it’s fucking not!" Puffy shouts, incredulous. "You tried to kill the kid!” “Niki," Wilbur cuts in, voice quiet. Niki freezes, ice fanning down the length of her spine - she had forgotten, she had somehow forgotten, that the world existed outside of the small bubble encasing herself and Puffy. It all comes rushing back to her now, an assault on the senses - the coloured lights, the fabric of her dress settling across her neck, the uncanny sensation of a person standing at her back, the low sound of Wilbur's voice over her shoulder. "You, did you - you tried to hurt Tommy?” She is experiencing that sense of paralysis again, she dimly notices, silent - voicebox giving up the ghost. Oh, there's nothing she can say to fix this one. So the cords of her throat make no noise at all. “Yeah, go on, brag about it." Puffy waves a half-hearted hand in her direction, dismissive. "You seemed real proud of yourself this time last January.” “She’s - she’s lying, right. What the fuck." She can't see his face. She can't see him, and for some delirious moment her mind parrots if you can't see him then he can't see you, then it's not real then this never happened, he never came back you never tried to kill anyone you never he never - "Niki - Niki, she’s lying, isn’t she?” She turns, strangling the delirium silent. Niki has seen Wilbur heartbroken, desperate, dead - and yet there is another expression in his face that Niki simply cannot recognise, can't put a name to, an expression she has never seen turned onto her. “...I told you," she says weakly. "I said - I said I’d done things I wasn’t proud of - “ "Yeah, what - property damage or something, some shitty fights, I don't - I don't know," he exclaims, voice climbing in volume and incredulity. “You tried to kill him?” “I - I..." “...can you even admit it?” "Let me finish," she snaps, and he falls silent. “I - I did, I did.” Ah, there's the name for that expression. Horrified.

a crowd is forming. and it is listening.

from the crowd bursts tommy and ranboo, both in a state of panic - and as soon as tommy enters the scene, all eyes land on him.

did niki try to kill you, wilbur demands.

and tommy, he backpedals - no, we're over it, we're getting over it - it's none of your fucking business, wilbur, we sorted it out! and the lack of denial amidst it all is damning.

the argument could continue between the four of them for days, but tommy is already frantic - he cuts wilbur off, tells him ranboo is in a state of panic and can barely speak, and was using his few words to beg tommy to take him to wilbur. wilbur's not keen to drop this line of conversation at all, until ranboo babbles out the words casino, and TNT, and wilbur goes white.

you didn't, tommy says. no way you did, no fucking way -

you promised, niki chokes out, and wilbur snaps that now is not the time for her of all people to be rattling on about lies -

and the horrible story forces its way out of ranboo: yes, wilbur asked him to place a bit of TNT in the casino. a small amount! small enough that wilbur had practically forgotten. but ranboo, anxiety-ridden, felt strangely something was out of place - and discovered that somehow, they don't know how, they don't (they do know: it's the same reason excess TNT seems to appear around ranboo and prisons in droves) a few stray pieces of TNT have become an entire network, hundreds of pieces as far as they could see when they checked just now. enough to blow the casino sky-high, and easily kill every player inside.

all hell breaks loose.

tommy is furious with wilbur. wilbur is demanding why tommy didn't tell him about niki. niki is panicking. the crowd has given up on staring for now, instead focused on their escapade stampde. quackity is furious with everyone, barely keeping control of the crowd as they flood outside, as far from the building as they can get.

“Where is Tubbo?” Quackity shouts. “Tommy said he left earlier,” Niki offers quietly, and the man whips around to face her - his gaze settles on Niki, and Niki is not afraid of Quackity by any means (not in Manberg, not now), but the fire in his glare makes her stand a little straighter. “You’d better fucking hope you heard him right, Niki,” he snarls, and turns back to the crowd. “I need - “ And then, the bombs go off. It feels as if someone has taken a sword to the night that falls over Las Nevadas, splitting it open - day spills over them, a bright light that burns its way into her eyes even as she hides her face in the crook of her elbow. The ground shakes…

they make it out, but las nevadas is a wreck. fire falls from the sky, the sands glowing alight with flame, slick with melting glass. niki falls into step with the flood of evacuees, surrounded by whispers, by stares, by a crowd of nosiness and judgement that shifts awkwardly away from her when she walks beside them, pulled into puffy's tumultuous wake.

as the blast settles, the truth dawns on niki - wilbur has heard what she's done. everyone has heard what she's done. puffy has (yet again) rejected her, her peers have rejected her, even wilbur, whose friendship she fought so fucking hard to get back, has rejected her. all her work to heal - all her work, dragging her feet as she just couldn't quite spit out an apology to tommy, not a proper one - has gone up in fire and smoke. it's over.

With her arms wrapped tightly around herself, curled-up and pitiful, Niki walks away from the flaming crater that was once the city of Las Nevadas.

[huldrabitch]

I've read through all the chemist/matheo fics on ao3. Wtf am I gonna have to write??

[cypresscoffin]

Hmmmmmm

Writing.........

I should do that more.....

[mantisgodsdomain]

"oh wow [REDACTED] i see a lot of sex-related titles in there does your portfolio have nsfw in it-" NO it doesn't. We failed sexuality class. If we were capable of writing anything NSFW then we would use that ability to write character studies examining a character's relation to their body and how the reproductive strategies and adaptations their species uses may impact it. We're, like, physically incapable of producing A Sex in any form besides doing academic speculation like we're a scholar theorizing about t-rex mating strategies and we don't think that our 3k word essay on potential cultural attitudes and pressures regarding sex & reproduction as they relate to insects in a world where their biology has adapted to a point where they live for far longer than a few days or months at the cost of an excess rate of mutation meaning that the majority of resulting grubs are likely to be both nonsapient and likely to kill or maul their siblings upon emerging from the egg or cocoon is, like... the kind of stuff that our followers or random Ao3 users would want to read.

[we-love-fanfic-quotes]

It's weird to think of Edgeworth even existing on the weekend. It kind of seems like he should puff away in a cloud of maroon smoke at the stroke of 5 PM on Friday.

[animanightmate]

I am currently engaged in an exercise to test every single tag and attribute (not including global attributes because I might just die) for AO3′s HTML coding system after I lost my cool spectacularly when it kept stripping out my code for my latest work, which was quite formatting-heavy (or was before it got turned into a much simpler version). I want a definitive reference table of what actually works for any future projects on the platform.

It’s slow-going, as you can imagine, but please let me know if you’d be interested in seeing the results when I finish. (I haven’t yet found anything that dives into every attribute of every tag, but if this exists already, please do let me know.)

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

5oclock in the morning about to watch Past Prologue for the very first time let’s fucking Go 

[malkaviian]

creo que mañana (bueno hoy cuando despierte) publico La Mierda(tm) y los nervios ya me están matando lmao

[hellfridge]

this is probably what addicts feel like when their main supplier is out of town for one (1) day actually

im literally so scared for ao3 shutting down tomorrow this must be how addicts feel before rehab

[ksspectacles]

i’m alive btw. just haven’t been on social media too much. btw i do have an account on the website formally known as twitter under the same name (link). i’m not more active there or anything but it’s there if you want to follow me there.

edit: this was apparently my hundredth post lmao

[sunwarmed-ash]

Sinful Sunday Post

Well I'm sick :( sorry about that guys. Turns out the whole 'covid turns your immune system into a garbage heap' is true bleghh

Anyway, this sunday I'll be posting an old favorite, and in the mean time I'll be dreaming up smutty chapters for next week

Love y'all so much!

[dramaticals]

through the wringer

pairing: theodore nott x ravenclaw reader

summary: theo tries to get your attention by spoiling you with gifts. you pretend not to notice the shift just to mess with him. childhood friends to lovers. / requested by @the-empty-refrigerator.

word count: 1,117

author’s note: i've also posted this on ao3 but as a theo x hermione fic, and so if you're interested in reading that instead: click here. reblogs / comments are always appreciated.

"What's this?" You ask, blinking in confusion at the box of your favourite sweets in his hands.

Theo places the box in front of you before settling into his usual spot at the Ravenclaw table. Your housemates have now made a conscious effort to leave room for him, considering he had no qualms about squeezing his way in to sit beside you. It's as if he didn't have his own assigned table.

"I thought you Ravenclaws could read."

"You're a twat."

"And here I was, doing something nice for you." Theo sighs. Always the flair for the dramatics. "It's Valentine's Day."

You eye him suspiciously before finally accepting the sweets and his reasoning. For as long as you've known him (and you've known him long enough that you couldn't even remember not knowing him), the two of you have never exchanged anything on Valentine's Day.

"Right, well, thanks." You say, offering him a nudge of your shoulder. His cheeks were pink. "I suppose I could share since I didn't get you anything."

Theo looks at you expectantly before he gives you a slow nod. His facial expression is unreadable, but something flashes in his eyes that you couldn't quite decipher. "How generous."

"I got you this."

You look up from your parchment, settling your quill down carefully to not spill ink. The library was nearly empty at this hour, and Madam Pince was an hour and a half away from kicking you out.

"Another present?"

"Are you complaining that I'm spoiling you?"

"I don't reckon a fresh box of the cheapest quills warrants you tossing the word spoiling around."

"It's not my fault these happen to be your favourite to write with."

"Hmm, touché." You sound, accepting the pack of quills. "Will that be all?"

Theo blinks, his eyes darting between his gift and you. He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. Nothing comes out.

You shake your head and begin to pack your things away. You bite back a smile as Theo, ever the conversationalist, is clearly at a loss for words. "Come on, Nott. Walk me back to my common room."

"It seems Theodore's quite fond of you." Luna points out as soon as Theo leaves you with another present. This time, it was a locket charmed to hold as many tiny pictures as you liked. Being quite the sentimental person, this gift was thoughtful and just proved to you that Theo knew you—not that it needed to be proven.

"I know." You say, touching the locket he had secured around your neck. There's only one photo in it currently; a picture of you and Theo, laughing as you attempted to swipe frosting across his nose.

"You seem fond of him."

You nod and smile lightly. "I am."

"He doesn't know."

You shake your head. After Theo secured the locket around you, you questioned what the occasion was, and Theo shrugged, claiming he was just messing around with a spell. He couldn't hold your gaze, and his tells when lying were practically screaming in your face. Theo excused himself quickly when you gave him a very friendly side-hug in thanks, teasingly claiming just how good of a friend he was to you.

"I refuse to tell him until he can be a big boy and use his words."

"Are you going to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Theo asks, cutting through the welcomed silence as the two of you sit near the Black Lake.

"Mhm," you sound noncommittally. "As I do every time we're permitted to go."

"Right," Theo nods. He's fiddling with a loose string on the blanket the two of you are sitting on. "Wanna go with me?"

Your brows lift slightly, and your eyes flicker to his. "Don't I always?"

"I mean, yes."

"Okay," you say slowly. You pause long enough for him to interject. When he doesn't, you sigh and shake your head. "So I'll meet you at our usual meeting spot."

"Okay."

"I can pay for myself, Theo."

Theo shakes his head, making quite a scene of pulling out a few sickles and galleons (the price of two butterbeers and a slice of apple pie did not warrant the number of galleons he placed on the table).

"I'm well aware." Theo says, waving off your attempt at tossing in the amount for your share. "But I'm paying for it."

"Then the next one's on me."

"That's not how this works."

"This?"

"Yes."

"What's 'this' then?"

Theo's jaw clenches, and he exhales a breath. "You know what this is."

You did.

After he met you in front of the Ravenclaw common room instead of your usual meeting spot, purchased a book you were eyeing at Tomes and Scrolls, opened all the doors for you, and pulled out your chair for you at the Three Broomsticks (and then sat beside you rather than in front of you), you had a strong inkling of what this day was. But Theo never explicitly asked you or said anything that would allude to being interested romantically, and so you continued the charade. You played dumb.

Your brows furrow, and you blink in convincing bewilderment. "Do I?"

Theo releases a small groan, his hands covering his eyes in defeat. "Gods, you're impossible."

"I'm confused."

"I like you!" Theo blurts, bringing his hands down so he can meet your gaze. His eyes burn with frustration and longing. His cheeks are red, and he's bouncing his left leg as if he'd just heard he needed to face three boggarts at once. "I've been trying to tell you this whole time. The sweets, the quills, the necklace, the book. I even took you out on this bloody date. How do you not know already?"

It took everything in your power not to crack as he finally voiced his feelings. As you watch him take bated breaths, you can't help but erupt into a fit of laughter.

"Merlin," you giggle, wiping the tears from the corner of your eye. "It took you long enough, you bloody goof."

Theo flushes, and you can't tell if he's red because he's embarrassed and confused or if it's because he's seconds away from breathing himself into hyperventilation. You don't let him get to that point (being the gracious and not at all cruel person that you are), as you grab Theo by his collar and pull him in for a kiss.

Theo tastes of butterscotch and syrup, and his lips are soft and hesitant until they're not. He comes to, his hand moving to cup your jaw as he kisses you back.

You pull away from him, beaming at his shell-shocked and pleased expression. "I've known. I just wanted to hear you say it."