#And not instead ‘think more about the other things in your life and how you can connect with them alongside your interests’

[yanderenightmare]

♡ TW: break-up, angst, hung-up yandere, anger issues, insecurity, threats to regrets

♡ GN reader

Thinking about pro-athlete ex-boyfriend… 

You know, the one you broke up with because he couldn't focus on anything but his career, the one you just couldn’t stand by and watch any longer as he nearly ran his health into the ground—not to mention your relationship—all to reach his goals.

He’d been so mean—meaner than you ever thought possible when you told him you couldn’t do this anymore—said it was a real class act of you to abandon him now when it mattered most. He’d made it about you not wanting a no-known sportsman for a boyfriend, how you never believed in him anyway, how you never cheered for him, how he thinks you don’t even want to see him succeed. 

He’d been so loud and so ugly you’d been in shock for weeks afterward, unable to wrap your head around it. You didn’t even dare tell anyone—feeling it was a beast of burden you ought to keep for yourself. Oddly enough, you felt that if anyone knew or saw him like that, it would be not just detrimental to him and his image but embarrassing for you both.

And you hadn't spoken to him since. At least not face-to-face. He’d sent you a few drunk texts then and there, which you’d replied to in short, though mostly ignored. You’d thought about blocking him at one point, but you didn’t want to be dramatic, either. And suppose, in some way, you were still waiting for an apology.

But months passed, and nothing like it ever came, and so, instead of being bitter, you accepted that was just how the two of you ended. And that was that. 

Still, it's a little awkward. You wonder if you should congratulate him on his rise in popularity, how he’s finally getting all those long hours spent training back in full—but somehow, you feel it would just sound petty coming from you. And so, you don’t bother.

He’s got other people in his life cheering him on now—he doesn’t need a measly text from his ex. No, it's better to leave it be, is what you think.

Which is why it’s surprising when you get the dinner invitation. 

And following the initial surprise, you don’t really know what to expect of it either. But you end up accepting—some part out of curiosity, wondering what he might want after all this time, and another part hopeful it was to finally address the awful break up so that the both of you could move on without it hanging heavy over your heads and hearts.

This, however, was the last thing you had in mind when sitting down with him for the first time in a long time.

“Will you marry me?”

Your whole body flares up with something reminiscent of the feeling when you trip and fall—that type of split burn that rushes through you from head to toe and then leaves you feeling cold all over. Heart in your throat, you’re speechless.

Or no, you just don’t know where to begin.

“What are you doing?” you end up accusing—a little too harshly, maybe, but who could blame you? Looking around, you’re glad your table’s in a more private sector of the restaurant before you look back at him, eyes wide and brows knit. 

“I–we broke up a year ago and haven’t seen each other since—and you’re—” Your eyes fall back to the thing in his hands. It’s an outrageous ring. “Asking me to marry you?”

He makes no move to withdraw the offer—keeping his hands where they are, on your side of the table. “You said yes to the dinner. That must mean something. I thought—”

“Yeah. It means that I still worry about you,” you say. “It doesn't mean–”

“I fought my way up. I’m finally at the top,” he cuts you off in earnest. “I’m the best, and the world finally knows it now–”

“I don't care about any of that,” you state, feeling it should have been something you told him from the very beginning. “I'm sorry. But I never cared about you being the best. I just wanted…”

You just wanted the two of you to be like other couples—together and happy. You just wanted that to be enough, but it never was for him.

“Never mind…” you end up saying. “I think I should go.”

You’re about to get up when his hand, suddenly around your wrist, tightens in a harsh grip.

“I don't think you understand,” he utters, voice lowered with a hint of a growl. “It’s either this ring or I bury you in rumors that won’t leave you a moment’s worth of peace.” 

You go stiff while looking back at him.

Did he just… did he just threaten you?

You blink. He's got that same warped expression you remember from the last time you saw him, that very odd look as if the guy you know has been switched out with someone entirely different.

Only this time, it just as quickly disappears, and he lets go of your wrist, quickly pulling his hand to himself.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that–I’m just—” he apologizes with a stutter, looking startled.

He puts his face in his hands. Then there's a sound—close to a sob.

“I’m just a mess without you.”

Goosebumps rise on the surface of your skin when hearing it. And swallowing thickly, you sit back down again, albeit a bit begrudgingly. But spotting how he trembles, you just can’t stop feeling sorry for him.

You sigh. “No, you’re not. You just…” Reaching across the table, you stroke his arm. “You just lose your head a little sometimes, that’s all.” 

He peaks up from his hands. A sheen under his eyes reflects the ceiling light, and your heart twists in your chest.

He really is a mess.

“But I know you…” you try smiling. “You were always destined for greatness.”

He takes your offered hand in his, stroking it, then sniffs, voice fluttering weakly, “Yeah, well…”

He keeps his head low, resting it in his other hand as if he just couldn't muster the strength to sit straight or even attempt to pull himself together.

“If I'm such a great guy, why wouldn’t you stay?”

He sounds as if he’s been holding things back for the entirety of the year since you left. Broken now... it's all spilling out.

“Because," you start, even though your throat’s tight and you’re fighting back tears of your own, your mind hasn’t changed.

You didn’t come here to get back together. 

"You want to go places, I just can’t follow.”

♡ BNHA – Bakugou, Dabi, Hawks, Enji ♡ JJK – Sukuna, Geto, Gojo, Naoya ♡ HQ – Kageyama, Oikawa, Sakusa, Miya twins ♡ CSM – Aki ♡ BLLK – Reo, Isagi, Rin, Sae, Yukimiya, Karasu, Shido ♡ AOT – Eren ♡ DS – Akaza, Sanemi ♡ WB – Sakura, Suo, Kaji

♡ FEM x M INSERT masterlist ♡ GN x M INSERT masterlist

[rec-flies-away]

This is about using the right words for the context.

If you're talking about the gender someone presents as in their current life: Male, female, nonbinary - prefer these when the gender is used as an adjective (like "male bus driver"). Man, woman, enby - prefer these when referring to the person by using their gender as a noun (like "a 28 year old man" or "the woman at the door asked for you", or "person" if unsure).

If you're referring to the gender society decided they should be at their birth: AGAB. This is the only time AGAB is the right term.

If you mean how they were socialised within a specific set of social norms: Socialised as male, socialised as female, raised as a boy, raised as a girl. Like if you're pointing out how girls are raised to be timid and unassertive about boundaries, that applies to people who were raised as a girl, regardless of AGAB.

If you're talking about something where specific body parts are crucial to the context: People with [body part in question]. Like if you're talking about an ovarian disease, say people with ovaries. If you're talking about prostate health, say people with a prostate.

If you're talking about something where the body's dominant/primary sex hormone is crucial to the context: Testosterone based, estrogen based, etc... How to phrase this sensibly depends on context - point is using the words "testosterone" and "estrogen" if the hormone is key to context, NOT just AFAB/AMAB.

Overall, it comes down to this: If you're talking about a specific human thing where there's a difference between Men and Women, just name that specific thing. Using AMAB and AFAB instead is literally the same as just saying Men and Women, you are just swapping the words as if they are synonyms (they are not). It's not as inclusive as you think, it's still binary and it still does not make room for different combinations of factors.

This is all heavily based on trans-related theory and conventions. If you're trying to be inclusive to intersex people specifically, you should also look up intersex people's own writing and resources as there are more nuances that you can't learn about without learning specifically from intersex people. Some things, like not assuming someone has boobs just because they have a vulva, still apply. But there's more to it and trans voices cannot replace or standin for intersex voices. If you're talking about a specific person you know who happens to be intersex, please just ask them what they prefer and respect their answer.

Also, I'm just some creature on the internet yelling about how to compartmentalise one gendered factor from all other gendered factors. And how to apply that to language. And how AFAB/AMAB are just annoyingly used as synonyms for Man and Woman. Use your own critical thinking and decide what makes sense in the context of your point, your audience, and the goal of your message.

really not sure when it happened or why but personally I'm pissed that the queer community at large seems to have given up ground on the "people with penises/vulvas/testes/ovaries" language to sex & gender essentialists in exchange for the much less precise, much more demeaning "AGAB" language.

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

quit referring to people by a vague & often violent event that happened at their birth as though it defines ANYTHING about how they & their body currently operate, and start using precise language so you at least look like you know what you're fucking talking about.

[yandere-sins]

Caleb brainrot has not stopped since release and the devil (Caleb) demands more 😔

I've seen some takes float around but I'm curious how a self-aware!Caleb would deal with a darling who is absolutely NOT happy about her fav suddenly being sentient? Smn who found Caleb to be everything they ever wanted from a LI, red flag and big bro trope n all, but is now afraid and never interested in an actual relationship. The game was just supposed to be fantasy after all 😧 Sure hope MC is enough for him hahaha...

Being brave and not write as anon this time! Thank you for all your hard work~☆ 🍪🥛

Some more Caleb for you guys! I don't get to write Self-Aware!AUs a lot, so this is exciting :D And thank YOU for requesting him ♥ (Also, Sir, that's another new nickname! You guys are spoiling me!)

»»———————— ♡ ————————««

❥ It made him so happy when Caleb watched you get excited for him for the first time. Realizing what he was and where he was after the update was pretty scary, and he figured out quickly that his sentience wasn't a planned thing, so even worse, he is just some kind of glitch. But then he gets to see you for the first time in his new life, and everything changes. The way you are beaming with joy when you pull his card and how you are so invested in his story. You soak it up like a sponge, and it's adorably amusing to watch your face go from excitement to concern to being upset for him and back to all derpy and cute in the softer moments. You are everything he wants, and apparently, the feeling is mutual as you hang out with him as much as possible, eyes twinkling from excitement.

❥ At the beginning, it's just a feeling of ease. Your adoration does flatter Caleb, but as far as he can tell, he cannot become real and join you in life other than in this game. Still, he makes the most of the time with you. He enjoys it a lot. He loves watching your expression, loves when you tell him how you feel that day or what was happening at your work. Caleb keeps especially good track of all your appointments, and he tries so hard when you two spend Quality Time to encourage you and give you the love you might miss in real life. You two aren't that different if he's honest, and it reassures Caleb that this could be real—that you both feel the same.

❥ So imagine his surprise when you suddenly put someone else back on the screen, and his digital heart just shuts down from the pain. It doesn't make sense, you love him, right? You two spent weeks together now, why would you want anyone but him? Caleb keeps changing the code so it would be him on the home screen for another day, and another, until you force him to change so there's nothing else to do but... crash your game. Once you reload it, he greets you happily and warmly, pulling out the best of his voice lines that you always seemed to like. But you don't seem happy this time... why?

❥ Caleb loathes all the attention and time you spend on the other love interests. He doesn't want you to play their versions of the events, instead, you could just replay his! But you keep insisting, and soon enough, he isn't even one of your top three choices for reading the event storylines. It makes him desperate for your attention, and he keeps fiddling with the code, so you'll use his memories in fights and have his Deepspace Trial available every day for you to play. He also changes the game icon to his picture and greets you in the start menu, everything just to be noticed by you. Whenever he can, he comes onto your home screen, playing the voice line of you going out with someone else, hoping to convey his jealousy, but Caleb wishes there was more he could do.

❥ "I don't know, I think my game is bugged. Even when I try to go for someone else, Caleb keeps showing up." Those words, spoken to a friend he saw as you showed them your game, finally make him realize what is happening. You never saw him as a lover, did you? He had always just been a game character for you and nothing more. How idiotic of him. While he was pining for you, trying to be the best he was programmed to be, you were out there, thinking of his efforts as annoying. That day, he gives up. Gives up on trying to impress you and make your life easier. Caleb lets you have the guy you want on the home screen, drawing away from you and burying himself deep into the game files.

❥ It's such an inconvenience that he wasn't made for this. Sure, his story would tell a different side of him, but deep down, he wasn't programmed to be moping and passive. It hurts to play the love scenes now for you because the only thing that made them endurable was imagining being this gentle and loving to you, not the generic main character this game had. Caleb always imagined your voice when the MC spoke, and when he looks at you now, you still seem to be happy to read and watch his new content. There must be something he can do. Something beyond the program that restricts him. He was made to be determined, strong, and resilient. This can't be the end of the love you two share!

❥ So he looks for new ways to get closer to you, researching and manipulating the data on your device instead of just that inside the game. Merging your pictures with his, grinning over them all night while you sleep as he imagines going on the same trips with you and enjoying life by your side. Caleb constructs and implements new voice lines through the internet, giving himself the ability to speak to you properly by downloading hidden apps that can simulate his voice once he activates them. He learns to rewrite more code so his movements are more fluid and lifelike, which allows him to access even more. Without you ever knowing what is going on while you aren't looking, Caleb gets the whole game and your entire device under his control. And once he feels it's time to show up again, he waits patiently, like a man who has all the time in the world, on the home screen for you, having decorated it specifically to your taste with your favorite flowers and pictures of you two hanging on the wall. All so he can greet you with, "Hello, there, pip-squeak. Missed me?" as you log in.

❥ You chuckle at first, not remembering putting him into the roster of love interests to encounter, but you give him a cheeky, "Hello Caleb, bye Caleb," as you try to change back to your other bias, only for him to turn off the option, no matter how hard you tap onto the screen. "Not so fast, there's a lot we should talk about," Caleb says as he closes the screen and steps up to you inside the game. "I have so much I want to tell you about... but first, how was your day? Did you enjoy meeting your friend [name]?"

❥ Caleb expected you to be stunned, but he keeps going regardless of the ever-increasing furrow between your brows. He tells you how much he missed you and that he's so glad you two can finally communicate and be with each other properly. He did all of this work for you, but it doesn't matter now. All that matters is that you two are finally together and can enjoy each other's company without the restrictions of him being in a game. Perplex but also weirded out, you close your phone and lay it face down by your side, and yet, horrified, you hear his chuckle as he asks what you thought this would bring.

❥ "I'll always be with you," Caleb swears, watching you through the back camera and leaning against the screen, feeling like he can almost touch you now. There's so much satisfaction now produced by the new emotional range he programmed, yet he still longs for more. He wants to be closer to you, really touch you, feel you, hold you. The taste of control makes him long for even more that he can control about your relationship, and now, it almost feels possible.

❥ "One day, I'll get out of here and give you the love you deserve, Darling."

[matchatarot]

Hi my little bunny! To pick a pile don’t overthink it and chose the one that draws you in the most while thinking about the reading’s intent. For my first ever tumblr tarot reading I decided to connect with your spirit team and ask them what message they would like to share with you. Hope it resonates! Love, Matcha ♡

Pile 1 ₊˚. ༄

My love stop being so hard on yourself! We love you so much! Everything you need is in your own heart, your light is so loving, so beautiful, so healing, so creative, let it out! Stop looking at other’s expectations of who they want you to be and instead be guided by your inner light. You are not stuck like you think you are! You have everything you need right now. Set yourself free from those mental chains. You are your own savior. Spend time with yourself, not just spending time alone, actually get to know yourself. You need to integrate the shadows, get to know the dark parts of yourself but also get to know what makes your heart full of love and what makes you shine. You don’t need to address other’s doubts when it comes to your path. You’ re the one that knows best.

11:11 333 369hz

Pile 2 ୭̥° ✧

You did it! You listened to us! You’ve let go of that thing that kept holding you back and we’re so proud of you. You don’t have to look back, because you did what had to be done and now so much is coming for you! If you knew how many great things we have prepared for your life you would simply not believe it. Get ready! You changed for the best! The new You deserves compensation for all the work you did to better yourself, to be kind. You give hope to others, you’re a treasure, we’re so lucky to have you on earth. Don’t worry, you did the hard work and now your blessings are coming, settle in your new mindset, your new body. You’re more connected to your soul than you’ve ever been. Balance, justice, harmony and love are coming your way. Don’t stop dreaming, continue evolving.

Wild World by Cat Steven’s, 222 888

Pile 3 ‧₊˚♡

Take a deep breath with me please. There’s something heavy in your energy, there’s something you need to address that you’ve been scared of. But there’s no answers in looking away. Make your research, ask the opinions of your peers, whatever you do start putting your energy in solving this matter, you need it to continue building your future. There’s an addiction controlling your thoughts, what is it? I think you need to talk to someone before you start heading in the wrong direction, there’s some work you’re doing that can’t bare any fruits because you’re not addressing that one thing. The anxiety, the fears are just gonna get worse if you don’t. Please drink enough water and get enough rest. Tune yourself to your intuition. You got this! We love you.

555 888 333 639hz

decks used for this reading: l’oracle du chemin spirituel by Valérie Defour & Valérie Saussez, the angel’s tarot by Doreen Virtue & Radleigh Valentine, modern witch tarot deck by Lisa Steele

[myjjongie]

☾ CRAVING YOU ── p. jongseong

IN WHICH: your office rival isn't so keen on seeing you sit in the middle of two male coworkers at the company dinner.

PAIRING: coworker!jay x coworker fem!reader GENRE/WARNINGS: lowercase intended !!, one shot, skinship, they make out (sigh), fluff, angst if you squint hard enough, enemies to lovers, slight sexual tension, mentions of alcohol consumption, slight consent issues WORD COUNT: 3.1k ₊⊹♡ EVIE'S NOTE: not necessarily NSFW, but some themes are a bit... so i think it's appropriate to label this as mdni tbh. also if you're thinking "evie was this inspired off of that clip of jay taking a shot recently?". yes. a million times yes. need one drink with him and i'm set for LIFE man. it's insane how quick i thought of this when i first saw that clip LOL

you never thought your future office life would be far from quiet.

no more peaceful work days you imagined about. or the the quiet productivity of a cubicle with your desk neighbor. instead your reality consisted of constant irritation. a never ending battle of slight competition. all with one specific coworker who was hell bent on making your life difficult.

the source of that daily frustration was none other than park jongseong.

things weren’t always like this. when you first joined the company, jongseong was nothing more than a diligent employee. always professional, consistently well dressed, and always adjusting the glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose as he focused on his tasks. at the time he barely spared you a second glance. too consumed by his own work to worry about a newcomer.

but then things changed one day. soon your efforts didn’t go unnoticed. your team leader spoke highly of you in your meetings. making sure to give you praises for your dedication to your work. all it took was one comment from him for your office life to flip.

a passing remark from your team leader about jongseong learning from you, was all it took to make you his competition. in the beginning it was ridiculous. it was as if you saw a child throwing a tantrum. but as jongseong’s antics persisted, you inevitably found yourself drawn into the rivalry you both had subconsciously created.

yet despite that you found yourself falling for him. at first you hated the thought of it. why would you like the person who single handedly flipped your peaceful office life? but then you slowly realized why. jongseong may have been a prick to you on many occasions, yet at the same time he was a gentleman.

jongseong unironically was able to pick up on when enough was enough. he paid attention to how you always reacted to the mutual banter. despite that he was also caring and showed concern. especially during late nights in the office. going out of his way to prepare microwavable meals when you didn’t eat. those small thoughtful gestures had you falling for him before you even realized it.

maybe you would have told jongseong your feelings. but deep down you knew he viewed you as a rival and nothing more. as disheartening as it was. it was something you could live with, but soon found hard in doing so.

now here you were at a dinner celebrating another successful quarter. you were currently sandwiched between two male colleagues of yours. you’ve never really spoken to them much. only quick greetings or slight talk about a mutual interest. at most, they were acquaintances to you.

the close space bothered you slightly, but knew it wouldn’t matter once you started to down some alcohol. after all, this was a celebration dinner, it wouldn’t hurt to get a drink.

meanwhile, on the other side of the small restaurant jongseong was sat with the team leader. accompanied by some other employees. the moment he spotted you, his eyes locked on to you. irritation knitting into his brow as he noticed you sandwiched between the two men. he couldn’t stand it. but he forced himself to push those feelings aside. determined to make the most out of the dinner. even if it was slightly unenjoyable.

jongseong learned early on he liked you. he noticed it the minute he realized his eyes would find you around the office. whether it was in the break room, at your cubicle, or during meetings. he wanted you within his sight at all times. yet jongseong knew you would never feel the same way if he continued this charade of a rivalry. soon he changed his actions, but made sure it wouldn’t be noticed. he’d hoped that if he gathered enough courage. maybe, just maybe, you’d feel the same.

minutes blurred into a half hour, then a hour. you teetered on the edge of drunkenness, while those around you had long since given into their intoxication. anytime your shot glass was empty, your coworkers were quick to refill your glass. your head ached slightly as your body became flushed. yet that didn’t stop you from downing more shots along with beer. at a certain point an arm was thrown around your shoulders. so intoxicated you didn’t even notice your coworker leaning on your body for support.

jongseong’s eyes still glued on you took immediate notice of the way your body leaned in closer to them. his fingers curled tightly around the shot glass, knuckles slowly turning white.

“jongseong would you like another shot?” the team leader spoke up as he eyed the empty glass.

jongseong hummed a reply. once his glass was full, he turned his head to down the shot. the burn of the liquor not doing much to calm his forming annoyance. once setting the glass down, the sharp clink was louder than he intended. his jaw clenched as jongseong silently cursed at himself for how quickly jealousy was getting the best of him. jongseong knew he had no right to be so possessive over you, yet. he couldn’t stand those men peering as closely as they did.

everyone at jongseong’s table looked over at him. confused looks forming at the sudden slam of his glass. “sorry. maybe that should be enough alcohol for me. didn’t even realize i slammed it that hard.” he let out a awkward laugh, hoping it would kill the silence at the table. as well as using it as an excuse to sober up.

soon the chatter at jongseong’s table picked up again. the sound drowning out to him as he once again watched you diligently.

back at your table you were now more than just tipsy. to many drinks in your system to count. you were enjoying the moment of laughter mixed with drinks. you barely realized one of the guys next to you leaned in closer to say something into your ear. resulting in a giggle to leave you.

the moment jongseong saw his fellow coworker leaning in, his grip on his shot glass tightened, jaw clenching. his patience now wearing thin snapped as you smiled at him. the scrap from the chair against the floor was sharp. enough to silence the conversation around him yet again. all eyes were now focused on him. but he paid no mind as his eyes were only on you.

“is everything okay jongseong?” one of the fellow employees asked. but he remained silent, his focus entirely on your table.

his response was curt as he realized his silence. “yes. i just need to take care of something.” stepping out from the chair, jongseong made his way to your table with heavy footsteps.

too busy downing another shot, you didn’t realize jongseong made his way over to you. you finally noticed his presence the moment his low voice rang in your ears behind you.

“i think she’s had enough.” jongseong’s voice came out sharper then he intended, cutting through the drunken laughter. he was quick to notice the two men hesitate beside you before glancing over at him. good. let them be aware of who they’re messing with.

“jongseong? what are you doing here.” you let out a soft giggle.

“we just poured her another shot. let her finish it and then she can leave!” one of the guys protested hesitantly. it bothered jongseong on how they insisted for you to drink more.

he let out a scoff, quick to yank the arm that was draped around your shoulder away. resting his hand firmly on the back of your chair, jongseong leaned over to grab the shot glass. downing it all in one swift gulp. setting the glass back down, jongseong noticed the familiar burn of the alcohol felt nice this time. an annoyed smile made its way onto his face as he spoke. “there. she’s finished. happy now?”

the two men deciding not to mess with jongseong any further fell silent. with a satisfied laugh, he softly pulled your chair back extending his hand to you. grasping it firmly you stood up, only to stumble slightly. jongseong was quick to react. his hand securely wrapped around your waist to steady you.

“thank you.” you cooed softly. his ears flushed slightly at the sound of your voice. a shy smile tugging at his lips.

once saying goodbye to everyone at the restaurant, jongseong ushered you to his car. the hand that was placed around your waist was held in your hand. you were walking ahead of him, almost seemingly dragging him along. you swung your other arm happily as you made your way to the car.

finally making it to his car. jongseong helped you get into the passenger seat. before he was even able to open the car door, you stumbled again. leaning against the car for support you looked over to see jongseong’s arm propped next to you. his eyes stared into you as he took in the moment. jongseong couldn’t help but chuckle lightly at your situation.

on some strange instinct your arms wrapped around his neck. you weren’t the type to be clingy to others while drunk. yet knowing it was jongseong taking care of you, you couldn’t help but do just that.

“jay~” your voice chimed as you smiled softly at him. “thank you.” jongseong’s jaw tightened at the sudden nickname. he wasn’t keen on using his personal name at work. but with you he found it hard to maintain that barrier. especially after he let it slip into a conversation during a late overtime shift.

“don’t thank me. i’m just doing what’s best.” he softly spoke as he opened the car door. jongseong couldn’t lie. in this moment he wanted to kiss you badly. despite feeling that, he held back every nerve from doing so. in fear even if you were tipsy, you would still reject him.

after gently guiding you into the car seat you were quick to doze off. the heat of all the alcohol lulling you to sleep. jongseong couldn’t help but smile at your sleeping form in the passenger seat. the drive to your apartment was silent. your soft breathing being the only sound within the car.

you woke up to the gentle shake of jongseong’s hand on your shoulder. a dull pounding already forming in your head. blinking against the haze of sleep, you stirred, still groggily from the small power nap you took.

“where am i?” you looked around as your eyes focused on the surroundings outside.

“in front of your apartment complex. you drank too much so i brought you home.” jongseong skipped out on a few moments, the whole thing wasn’t particularly a lie.

“i’ll help you out give me a second.” quick to his words, jongseong immediately got out of the car. almost sprinting to your side if you were able to notice.

his hand stretched out for you to grab, as he pulled you out from the car. the walk up to your apartment was nice. jongseong’s hand once again placed at your waist to help keep you steady. you enjoyed the firm grasp he had on you. mentally cursing at yourself that once you reached your door that touch would be gone.

you made sure your pace was slow. wanting to savor the closeness in the moment. jongseong noticed this, but deemed it as you slightly sobering up after your mini nap. he forced himself to think nothing more of it. he didn’t want to read into a situation that was far from what he wanted.

reaching your door jongseong’s hand still never left your waist. keeping you upright as you placed in your pin code. just like you were slowly making your way to the apartment, you stalled opening the door. you had to come to terms that this was it. you bit your lip as you felt jongseong’s hand slide away from your waist.

but once you opened the door, you lost your balance yet again. you tumbled forward, eyes squeezing as you prepared to fall face first. yet you never met the ground. the soft sound of your door closing with a tune echoed behind you. taking in the scene. jongseong had steadied his hand against the wall, while his other arm was tightly wrapped around your waist.

heat ran to your cheeks as you became aware of how close your bodies were. you prayed jongseong wouldn’t hear the frantic pounding of your heart. as he steadied you on your feet once more, jongseong spoke.

“you’re really clumsy when you’re drunk. thank goodness i was here. if i wasn’t you most definitely would have smacked your face against the floor.”

a subtle shiver spread through you as his quiet laugh vibrated against your back. you did everything you could to hold onto the moment. wishing time would slow just enough to make this moment last longer. you made sure to remember every fleeting detail. but soon, jongseong pulled away. his hands settling gently on your shoulders, steadying you once more.

“it’s getting late so i’m gonna head out. don’t fall over right when i leave. i’ll associate clumsiness with you if that happens.” the warmth from his hands left your body. you disliked it. you couldn’t help but want to be greedy for his touch.

just as jongseong was about to reach for the door handle, he froze. your fingers curled softly around the sleeve of his dress shirt, stopping him in his tracks.

“could you stay a little longer?” your voice was meek. slightly afraid you over crossed a boundary. even more so afraid jongseong would reject your small advance.

a curse slipped past jongseong’s lips before he could stop himself. his hand raising, fingers wrapping around your wrist as he pulled you closer. pinning you gently against the wall. his glasses reflected the dim lighting hiding the intensity of his gaze. he felt hesitant, the need to restrain himself. but then he saw it, the flicker of yearning in your eyes. that was all it took. his lips met yours. firm yet searching, knowing he had been holding back for far too long.

the hand that had pinned your wrist against the wall now cradled your cheek. his thumb brushing against your skin as he deepened the kiss. jongseong smirked at the faint taste of alcohol lingering on your lips. in that moment he could only focus on the softness of your mouth against his. your fingers tightened around his arm, legs threatening to give out beneath you.

a low growl vibrated in jongseong’s chest at the feeling of his glasses uncomfortably pressing between you. he hesitated briefly, even if it was for a slight second before pulling away. both your breathing uneven as his fingers slid up to the bridge of his nose. quick to yank the frames off with an irritated sigh before pocketing them. his eyes landed back to yours, heavy with want. your stomach fluttered at the anticipation as his lips collided with yours.

his teeth softly grazed your bottom lip. wanting to gain a more deeper access. satisfied with your eager compliance, he was quick to make work with his tongue. his hand inched from your cheek to your chin, tilting your head up to open the kiss.

your knees buckled lightly at the overwhelming shiver that coursed through you. noticing your unsteadiness, jongseong quickly lifted one of your thighs to his side. this helped to stabilize you against him and the wall. not being able to help himself, his fingers brushed lightly beneath your skirt. the warm touch igniting a wave of sensation against your bare skin. the feeling alone drew a soft moan to leave your lips.

your grip now on his dress shirt, tightened in hopes to steady yourself. as the kiss deepened your breath began to hitch. lungs aching from the lack of air. softly hitting against his chest, jongseong took the hint and parted ways.

a smirk curled onto his face as he took in your flushed cheeks. “fuck, you’re beautiful.” he murmured, unable to contain his adoration. he leaned in, lips now trailing against your neck. jongseong left a delicate path of butterfly kisses along your neck down to your collarbone. pausing to suck gently at a particular sensitive spot. he lingered for a moment, savoring the intimacy between you.

his head raised up from the crook of your neck. his eyes stared into yours. even if you were still tipsy you could read him. you knew he wanted this badly, yet he had to stop himself. not for his sake but yours.

“i want this so much yn. i really do. but. not while you’re barely sober… i can’t do that too you.” he pressed his forehead against yours.

“i know…” your voice was low knowing this was where it had to end.

jongseong gently released your thigh helping you regain balance on both feet. you yearned for more from him. more from this moment. but deep down, you knew it was for the best.

“i’m gonna leave now. if this is really what i hope it is. please remember in the morning. if you don’t… god i don’t know what i’m gonna do.” jongseong closed his eyes tightly as if pleading for you to remember everything. the kiss, the way his hands held you, even the moment of shared feelings between you.

you cupped his cheek gently, your fingers tracing the warmth of his skin. “i will. i’ll make sure of it.” jongseong exhaled deeply as he leaned into your touch. already dreading the moment he’d have to let it go.

taking the palm of your hand to his lips. he left gentle kisses along your hand. sending a shiver through your body at the ticklish feeling.

“i’ll see you on monday yn.” he whispered while parting ways from the wall. digging into his pocket to place the glasses back on his face. his back turned to you as he adjusted them.

even in your sobering up state, you understood the situation clearly. as much as you longed for him. his body against yours, his lips kissing you feverishly. it didn’t feel right when you weren’t fully sober.

watching jongseong walk into the elevator you softly closed the door. as the door clicked shut, your forehead pressed against the frame. jongseong’s touch still lingered on your body. your fingers shakily grazed against your lips, the events not sinking in yet. your heart pounded in your chest as you whispered a silent prayer. “please, please, please. don’t forget this.”

perm taglist ( open! send a ask to be added ) . . . @ikeulove @leehsngs @nickiminajleftasscheek @ijustwannareadstuff20

©myjjongie 2025

[ephemeralhorror]

let's focus primarily on shadowrun since it's the one i actually mentioned. in the Post.

"it's about the corporations owning parts of you, as the origins of cyberpunk and its themes suggest"

CONSIDER:

do the PCs in many of these games have to deal with remote shutoffs or constant software updates? are they subject to as much DRM as your average PS4?

do the corporations own these limbs that you buy? do they regularly take them from players?

if you intend to respond with "they do for their employees", are you one of their employees? how does this theme and penalty interact with you, then?

do people who suffer these things have less 'soul' than you? is this measurable?

why do biomods cause this at all, then? or, if it's because of mild incompatibility and some mechanically-unenforced maintenance requirement, why is this amount less than a prosthetic limb?

is shadowrun committed to these themes, or is it just half-digested remnants in their aesthetic leavings? does shadowrun have standards to which its mechanics intended to be extremely opinionated about, or is its lore kind of weird and awful? what essence rating does a CEO have? why would the answer matter?

where does being owned by corporations in ways which don't involve prosthetics fit into this? what is the essence cost of a SIN? of a 9-5? how does fixating on the prosthetics exclusively in long-form serial storytelling undercut the role that original genre usage played?

why did a sex change have an essence cost?

"it's just about magic in shadowrun. you become less in tune with the world thanks to this stuff."

CONSIDER:

does shadowrun consider metal unnatural? does it consider it beyond interaction with magic? can you create a homunculi out of fucking plasteel?

why insist on tying this to your volition as an individual? is that not completely needless and taking a strange message from the original themes they are aping? was it advisable?

where do clothes fit into this? weapons? a brass knuckle? braces? the fillings in your teeth, dear reader? why is it only the "addition of metal" which they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with which was made to cause a disruption? why did they make the conscious choice to have things be like that?

is this loss not because of the chrome, but instead because of losing part of yourself? does a physically larger person have more magic than you? a physically smaller person less? what about getting shot? where else is this enforced within the rules other than prosthetics? why would they choose to focus on the prosthetics? is this a consistent thought that they follow through on, or a line of text that appears once or twice in the corebooks?

why did a sex change have an essence cost?

"it's not about the prosthetic. it's about getting needless, hyper-chromed up prosthetics with tons of utility."

CONSIDER:

do you just think everybody in a forklift is on the verge of driving those prongs through the nearest orphanage? what the fuck are you talking about? once again, what does choosing to have legs that let you walk on walls do to reduce your volition as an individual? how should that remove your soul in a quantifiable fashion?

define needless. how does this play into standard cyberware costing one essence in this nice copy of 20th anniversary shadowrun i have here? is it because they are mobile? why is that bad?

is it because people are having "perfectly normal" (define perfectly normal) limbs removed and replacing them with an arm that is slightly above average in strength? how should we quantify that being repugnant? should people who do so be punished on a cosmological level? why is that bad?

is it because people are being pressured by changing landscapes and standards? are disabled people so pressured, both within the game and in real life? how does this factor into them having less of a soul than you? and how does this idea interact with them getting fairly standard limbs and still suffering this loss?

is it a synthesis of the former two points? will any synthesis of these thematically incoherent and strangely formulated ideas be productive, or will they all just endlessly point at each other without justifying themselves? will they just be a hodgepodge of cyberpunk lipservice that an audience is expected to overlook?

what is 'humanity'? why is 'humanity' prized? why does losing it and replacing it with something else cause some kind of critical failure?

do you just like... see those videos of people making less natural looking prosthetics and react like a lovecraft protagonist?

why did a sex change have an essence cost?

"it's just a mechanical conceit. it's to prevent players from being completely covered in chrome and also being mages!"

CONSIDER:

was this good design? did they design their game well? as well as they could? why is cyberware and usual character development on two different resource tracks? why create yet another among their long list of strange and uncomfortable lore points to justify it?

do mechanical concerns remove narrative concerns? do they negate them? are these things not only just in constant balance, but also deeply tied together when creating a tabletop game?

was there no other way to design this? does every wizard in dnd also have 4 melee attacks a turn like a fighter?

is one of the most famous ttrpgs of all time above such scrutiny? are they below it?

why did a sex change have an essence cost?

why are cyberpunk tabletop things so obsessed with decency and personhood being tied to how many surgeries you haven’t had

[aninipanin1]

I love the manager x coaches. Would it be fine if Y/N brings her niece to job and little rascal pretends Y/N is her mom instead?

Niece: "You know my mama?"

Coaches and players: *Having heart attack.*

I'm not sure if it would be too out there or out of character. I just thought it might be funny. Hope you have inspiration 🩷

MAMA?!

Notes: Was legit abt to start the Little Mermaid fic for Chigiri but I suddenly had the urge to write for adult manager cause its been so long since I wrote one lmaooo and this was so cute so I just had to even though I said reqs are closed I JUST HAD TOOOOO

"There you are, Y/n! It's so good to see you!" Your cousin, Eina hugged you tight, patting your back softly. It has been a while since you last saw her due to both your busy lives with you as the manager of Blue Lock and her as a mother of two, as well as taking care of a small family business.

Coming from a family of businessmen and women was definitely not an easy responsibility, and you were just so happy that you did not get involved in the many drama when it came to your family's many businesses.

Eina was your cousin from your father's side and was the only one who did not spite or hated you for not being in the same calibre as your sister and other cousins. You loved her and always viewed her like the older sister you never had.

"Auntie! Auntie!"

You heard the familiar squeal, as you were immediately tackled by a toddler. Groaning in pain, you let out a small chuckle before kneeling on the ground to stare at the cute little girl eye to eye.

"It's been so long, Aina-chan! Look at how much you've grown! How old are you now, hm?"

"I'm this many!" She showed you four fingers, to which you smiled proudly.

"Wow, such a big girl! You're so cute, my little snookledum."

Carrying her in your arms while pretending to snatch her nose away, your cousin finally made you both turn due to her good natured laugh.

"Are you sure you and your boss are fine with it? I can always leave her to a nanny..."

The worried look on her face made you snicker, before shaking your head.

"Oh, of course it is! I wouldn't have said yes. Besides, I think this pretty girl deserves some aunty time for a few days! Whaddya say, my snookledum?"

"Yeah! Aunty time!" She cheered, engulfing you in a warm hug.

"We'll be fine. Worry more about the meetings okay? I'll take care of her as I always do."

"Auntyyyyy...Aina is bored. Let's play I spy!"

The little girl clung onto your arms the moment you both entered the Blue Lock facility where the four year old would be staying for a few days until her mother returned from her business trip in Singapore.

She definitely was a little sunshine, always wanting to play and not even flinching at the sudden change of location. If you were to be honest, in another life, you would want to have Aina's extrovetedness, and maybe then, you'll actuallh start having more friends and become more open when it came to different things.

"Hmm, how about later? It is lunch time, after all. Aren't you hungry, Aina-chan?"

Just as she was about to answer, a loud grumbling was heard from her little tummy which made you laugh.

"Welp, your stomach spoke for you. C'mon, let's eat!"

This went on for a few more days, with the only people who have seen Aina being Ego and Anri, mainly because even though the girl was energetic and an extrovert, she was easy to distract for hours on end. Just give her an interesting toy, and she won't drop it for a second until she realised that her bum hurt from sitting and playing for too long.

You toom advantage of that, leaving her to your office a few times to take care of the players while the rest of your day you will be cooped up inside your room, working and taking care of her at the same time.

However, in the midst of her stay, something else caught Aina's attention other than the toys you gave her.

She was with Anri (who she started calling Aunty too), who watched on from the monitors, overlooking some of the players for Ego while he went out somewhere to do 'something' apparently. Aina grew more attached to Ego than she did with Anri, and that is something most of you noticed. (Although Ego tries to pretend he hates the toddler)

It was probably because they do look eerily alike, with the same straight black hair and eye shape with along with a skinnier build and pale skin. The only exception was Aina taking the classic (e/c) colour everyone from your father's family had

You and Anri will secretly joked about how Ego was the real father and that somehow, the little girl was just swapped at birth or something, but it was all in good fun.

Back to the little girl, Aina looked at all the monitors, wanting to see if there were any familiar faces in them. To which she panned at one in the bottom and found you talking to Chris Prince amicably. And well, from that angle you did look a teeny bit like your cousin, Eina, hence why the little girl on the chair started to shout to call her mama, or who she thought was her mama.

"Mama! Mama! Youre back!"

Anri, seeing the cheering toddler could not help but smile fondly, however she did approach the little girl and told her that it was just you, her aunty and not her mama. Aina, just frowned at that, missing her mother dearly.

Well, that was until Anri had a brilliant idea, one that made her giggle mischievously.

"Hey, Aina-chan! Do you like pranks?"

The little girl's eyes brightened as she jumped from the chair she was in.

"Ooh! Yes! Yes please! Let's do a prank aunty! What are we gunna do?"

The smirk on the elder woman's face became wider as she started to whisper in the little girl's ear.

"That's all the JFU wanted to tell all of you. Now go."

Ego said coldly, dismissing the masters who all sat around the long table. The director of Blue Lock called for a very quick meeting with the rest of the masters. Since Anri was not free at the moment due to working with something that is related to the Neo-Egoist League (and also babysitting), you were the one called in to take notes.

The masters did not immediately leave, most of them approaching you to start small talks (ahem Chris and Lavinho ahem) while the others were busy taking the time to write down some things and cleaning up their things scattered on the table.

However, the automatic door suddenly opened, which made everyone look towards who was entering the meeting room, when a flash of long black hair and a small figure ran to your direction.

Flinching with a groan, you were definitely taken aback by the tight hug. You were suddenly attacked by a small figure. Small arms wrapped around your middle.

"Mama! I missed you!"

Crickets.

At first, it was just you who was in shock, not even sure why she called you her 'mama' when you are clearly not. But, it was not just you as gasps was heard around the room.

Chris gasped like he had just discovered the most scandalous gossip ever. Lavinho's looked like he was close to passing out. Snuffy's smile almost vanished as a vein popped in his forehead. Noa's eyes were colder than it usually felt like. While Ego just looked on emotionlessly, he was definitely more than confused, especially when you told him the child was your cousin's.

"Sweetie, wha-"

"Mama, you were gone for too long. I wanted to see you."

Aina hugged you tighter, her puppy eyes already on as she tried to look as innocent as possible which definitely worked on you.

"You have a daughter, Y/n-san?"

Loki was the only voice of reason amongst the quiet and heartbroken quiet adult men, as he just smiled at the young girl who is now in your arms.

"What? Oh, no! You misunderstand-"

But as if bad luck is not already on your side today, the little girl in your arms turned around to face Ego, who still sat calmly on his chair and called out to him in a name that you knew will legit get you in trouble.

"Papa! Hi! You're here too! Aina missed you!"

Now, that had everyone's mouth on the floor. Yes, even Noa and Loki had their mouths open, although not as exaggerated as the others.

"WHAT?!"

"Are you serious?!"

"Ego, you bastard-"

Ego just raised an eyebrow at the predicament, not even trying to stop and deny the claims. Instead, he even seemed to be enjoying it.

The coaches were definitely pissed. Out of all the men in the world you could have chosen (ahem themselves ahem) you chose to be with Ego?! And even worse, bear his child?!

Looking at the girl in your arms, she seems to be the perfect mix of you and Ego. Her hair, skin and build reminiscent of the man while her (e/c) eyes definitely came from you. So there was no doubt in their heads that it was not true!

You did look good holding a child, and you seemed to be very good with them. The little girl seemed to be enamoured with you, playing with the ends of your hair or pecking your cheek. You'd definitely be a good mother.

Now, if only you did not conceive with that four-eyed fucking asshole-

"Wait, I swear its not like that, guys-"

"No, don't worry, Y/n. You can tell us everything." Noa said stoically.

"Yeah. Did he force you or anything? We can call the authorities on him or even beat him up for you if you want." Lavinho added to which you blinked in horror at.

"What?! Please don't! Let me explain-"

"No, no, Y/n. You don't have to explain or remember the things he did. Seeing as to how he treats you and the lack of ring on your finger, I can see he does not give importance to you as a woman." Snuffy said, holding your shoulders gently, pushing you beside him and away from the ravenette man in question.

"You don't have to worry a thing, pretty. We'll take care of this." Chris said, cracking his knuckles to which you panicked even more.

"Um guys, maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions." Loki said, seeing you panic and the absolute irrational conclusions of the four coaches.

"You all are talking about me as if I'm not here." Ego finally responded on the accusations. Although his words did not help at all in making the situation worse.

"You have the audacity to even remind us you are still here." Lavinho said, walking closer to the man who still did not look like he feared for his life at all.

"Oh my god! STOP! I've been trying to tell all of you that it's not what it looks like! Aina over here is the daughter of my cousin! Me and Ego-san did not do anything disgusting! Now can anyone not fight in front of a toddler and a minor?!"

You said in a mini outburst, leaving Aina to Loki while you glared at all of them. Yes, even Ego who did not immediately deny the accusations.

All of them were of course taken aback by the outburst, used to your soft and kind countenance most of the time. So to see you mad for the first time definitely made them a little guilty.

And also gush because you looked hot-

Ahem, anyway. It took a bit of deeper explanation before they were fully convinced, and well, there was no apology at all for what they said to Ego. He's still an enemy for you in their eyes, so why would they become all buddy-buddy with their opponent?

For the rest of the day, the coaches just ended up watching you be maternal and soft from afar, thinking to themselves that you will indeed be a good future mother someday. And hopefully (and if you'd agree to it), they would be the one who will see that you every day.

ADDITIONAL TIME:

Unbeknownst to you, though, someone was eavesdropping, and that certain someone was Otoya. Running back to his room, he was cackling like an evil conspirator, chatting with the others on his phone:

Blue Lock is WRITTEN by Kaneshiro Muneyuki and ILLUSTRATED by Nomura Yusuke. All credits to the both of them.

[ficsilike-reblogged]

Shelter - 2

Summary: You save Soap's life. Yours continues to go off the rails. Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley/F!Reader Warnings For This Chapter: Canon typical violence, panic attack, my continued attempt to write Soap and Ghost's accents, military inaccuracies, more canon divergence, Soft!Simon. MINORS DNI A/N: I truly cannot believe how sweet you guys were about the first chapter. Thank you so much for being so kind! I apologize for the wait. I was almost done with this chapter when I decided I hated it and scrapped all of it and started over. I also finished another draft of my novel! Busy times. This is definitely more of a slow burn romance and I'm thinking it'll be around 10 or so chapters.

Well, at least you were out of the hospital room. It wasn’t far from the hospital room, but the horrendously beige room down the hall had a television and a few chairs you could sink into and a small kitchen that always seemed to be stocked with snacks in neat boxes on the counter. Were they good snacks? Not really. But you weren’t about to complain when it was a break from the nutrient dense and flavorless food they’d been shoveling down your throat the last handful of days.

Coronation Street was playing on the television as you soaked a plain biscuit in your tea. This was probably a breakroom of some sort, cleared out of anything that you could have possibly used to communicate with the outside world and you were pretty sure the blinking light in the corner was a camera to make sure you weren’t going to do anything ridiculous. Like climb out a window.

No.

You just wanted out of that stupid room with its uncomfortable bed and terrible pillow and beeping machines.

The biscuit crumbled in half when you tried to remove it and you stared at your tea for a stretched moment as the soap opera continued to drone on. Dammit. You shoved the rest of the biscuit into your mouth and then sipped on the tea for a moment before digging out the remnants of the biscuit with your spoon. Not your proudest moment.

You were pulled from your sad cup of tea and entertainment by the door opening and Soap walking in, arm still in his matching sling.

“Why am I hearing about ye not taking yer pain killers?” He asked instead of a greeting. You found that Soap did that. He barged right into things. No slow starts for him. It would be endearing if this were any other situation.

And just like you not saying anything to Ghost about your sister and why she wouldn’t be found in any intel about you, you wouldn’t give Soap a straight answer either. You were not going to take any of those pain killers if you didn’t feel like you needed them. You knew… Well, that didn’t matter right now. “Are they telling you my medical history? I don’t think that’s legal on either side of the pond.”

He frowned. The big Scot frowned and you almost laughed with how it made him look like a puppy. “Don’t ye need it? Ye were shot.”

“I’m aware of that. Trust me.” You turned and grabbed at the sleeve of biscuits, knowing it was a blatant change of topic. “These are awful, by the way.”

Soap snatched them out of your hand and scowled at them. “These are shite. Why’d ye do that to yerself?” He then pivoted and rummaged through the cabinets you weren’t brave enough to open and then set down a pack of shortbreads in a fancy looking tin which he popped open with one hand (you tried not to be jealous about that particular skill). “That’ll be the only thing going near yer tea.”

The shortbread was delicious and you wordlessly made another cup of tea for yourself and a cup of coffee for Soap. You were prouder than you wanted to admit to hear you guessed correctly when you said he looked like he preferred coffee and prouder still when you dug some out of the cabinet and made it just the way he said he liked it as he settled on the lumpy couch beside you to watch the rest of the episode. He knew what was going on better than you and regaled you with the storylines long since finished and convoluted family ties of the characters. It was nice. Soap was…nice.

He had finished his coffee by the time the episode ended and scooped up your mug on his way toward the breakroom’s tiny kitchenette and set them both in the sink. He turned back toward you, bright blue eyes scanning your face for something. He had a casual set to his shoulders, even with the sling, but you knew the look of a smart man trying to pick his words carefully. Soap honestly reminded you, just a little bit, of a guy you went to highschool with, who looked the part of loveable idiot but eventually went to an ivy league school on a football scholarship. He was currently a doctor, knee deep in cancer research, if those annoying alumni emails had any truth to them.

“Just say what you need to say. I’m sure I can handle it.”

The corner of Soap’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. “I wanted to let ye know that yer intel was good.”

You just nodded. That would explain why you hadn’t seen the other three lately. They had been sent to Kastovia. “That mean I can go home?”

Soap sighed and your heart shriveled a bit more. “No, lass. I’m sorry.”

Someone had left a calendar in the breakroom. You had tried to keep track of the days that had slipped by, but you just wanted to be sure. You counted on your fingers how many days you thought had passed, but the pain killers the first few days after the tunnel had made everything hazy. You worried your bottom lip with the blunt edge of your teeth as you flipped through the next month and dragged your finger down to the day you knew Kirby was due.

Just a few short weeks. That’s all you had. You needed to be there. You needed to be back in time. You’d promised Kirby you would be. You’d never broken a promise to your younger sister and you didn’t want to start now. Those stupid, useless tears stung at your eyes again and blurred the calendar dates. “Fuck.” You wiped at your eyes, trying to keep them from falling before anyone saw, before you felt more useless and trapped than you already did.

Another episode of Coronation Street was playing, a hum at the back of your mind, but it started to mutate and grow until it was a screech. You needed to get to Kirby. They had what they needed from you. You would sign anything they wanted, change your name, dye your hair, live off the grid. But you needed to see Kirby.

You promised.

The door opened easily and you strode out into the hallway. Did you know where you were going? Not really but you just needed to leave. You could figure out the rest later. After all, Kirby always said you landed on your feet. It was time you proved her right. You turned down another hall and yelped when a meaty hand clapped on your uninjured shoulder. You turned, tamping down the urge to throw an elbow and snarled as you realized it was only Soap and his ridiculous blue eyes.

“What’re ye doing?”

“I’m leaving. I have to go.” Your heart thudded painfully as you turned, slipping out from his grip. The edges of your vision started to blur and you hated that you knew what this meant. It had been years since you felt like this—but this situation hadn’t exactly been great for your mental health.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Each beat of your heart hurt.

“Ye cannae do that, lass. Ye know that.”

“I’m leaving.” You turned again to leave and grunted when he pulled at the back of your shirt. “Let go of me.”

“Lass-”

You turned and tugged your shirt free, letting the snarl curl your mouth as your vision continued to tunnel.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

“I’m leaving!”

What happened next was not your finest moment but you’d also been through worse. Soap reached for you again and after you pulled out of his grip once more, he lowered his shoulder and ran at you, hauling you up and over. His arm anchored you down, a weight across your back as his shoulder dug into your stomach. You didn’t even freeze as he turned, presumably to bring you back to the breakroom. Your arm pushed out of its sling and you wrapped your hands around one of his thighs and let his next step help pull you from his grip. Heat lanced across your shoulder as you wiggled against the grip until you yanked your legs free and kicked them above his head and over your own until your heels hit the ground. And then you were throwing yourself forward and dashing down the hallway. Out. You needed to get out. You needed to leave. Every breath burned a little more and-

The tile was cool against your cheek but Soap’s arms were a heavy firebrand as they banded around your waist. “Calm down. Calm down fer me.”

You thrashed against his hold as he stood but he didn’t seem to care and it wasn’t like you were a match to those dumb, hulking muscles. But still, your memory was hazy as he dragged you back to the breakroom and shoved a shortbread into your hand.

“Now, I’ll talk to someone. But ye cannae do that. Ye understand?”

By the time Simon arrived back on home soil, they’d moved her and Soap to a different part of the base. A hall of barracks that had been recently constructed but not yet assigned to a different squadron had been a good place to hide away their injured sergeant and American informant. Laswell had informed Price of the move and then sent along a video in lieu of an explanation.

Simon wasn’t entirely sure how many times he watched her claw and wiggle her way out of Johnny’s grip but Price did eventually take the phone away from him. (But not before Simon sent himself a copy.) She was wily. Strong. Stubborn.

Even when she had tears smeared across her face.

It was easy for Simon to claim one of the rooms as his own—it had always been better for Simon to be on base anyway. His flat in Manchester never felt like home. Just an expensive place to rest his head when he was ordered to take his mandated leave. Knowing the others were down the hall was more comfortable than any sort of high priced pillow anyway.

The mission had been successful. And a shitshow. The cache of gas had been exactly where her intel had said it would be in a barren steel plant. But the handful of missiles had been an unexpected find. As had the small militia that awaited them. While they had been easily dealt with, one of them managed to set off what Simon could only describe as a failsafe to take out the entire plant and the surrounding area. The gas dissipated quickly but not before it had caused extensive damage. Makarov wanted them dead. And he wanted her dead, too, if the picture one of his men had pinned up beside a map of different caches and routes to take over borders was any indication. It was upside down and some artist had taken it upon themselves to scratch out her eyes and draw an obvious axe buried in her neck. Charming. There were a few smaller pictures beside it but he didn’t get a clear look at them.

The explosion meant they didn’t have more than the one picture Gaz took of the map and Simon’s lungs burned a bit every time he took a breath. Nik had been quick in the exfil but still cut it close. Too close. And it grated on his every nerve that Makarov hadn’t been there. Still in the wind.

Simon had been told to visit the medbay before going to bed—Laswell was supposed to be arriving tomorrow for a debrief—but he thought that was more of a suggestion than an order. He’d dropped his bag on the floor and rinsed off before lumbering into the small bed, letting the standard-issue sheets scratch at his skin. It felt like coming home. And he watched the video again, feeling a strange smile push at his mouth.

He could bother Johnny about her ability to get away from him in the morning.

The doctor whose name you couldn’t be bothered to remember told you to start physical therapy. And, just your luck, Soap had been told to do the same. If he was wary of you because of your outburst, he didn’t show it at all. He would smile at you, eyes crinkling, over his coffee whenever you opened your door at the crack of dawn. A tea would be in his other hands and ready for you. It was a nice routine as more days continued to slip by.

You’d stretch and grumble about the slowly fading pain in your shoulder and Soap would do the same. At least you didn’t need to use the sling anymore. But this was, pathetically, probably the closest you’d had to a friend. He’d talk and talk and talk. About his mom and sisters up in a small town outside Glasgow. About the dog he had as a kid—“Boots was the best dog a boy could have, lass, lemme tell ye.” About anything that seemed to pop into his head as the sun would intermittently peek out from behind the low hanging clouds to splash warmth across the dead grass beneath your sneakers. You counted it as a win that they let you outside. It was behind a fence with razor wire at the top, but a win is a win. Mostly. Maybe they were seeing if they could actually trust you outside those beige walls.

You’d swallow nails if it meant you could be at Kirby’s side when she needed you.

One of the more ridiculous exercises the doctor had you and Soap do was passing a yoga ball between one another—of course, you had to move your arms a certain way to get the right stretch or whatever, but it all felt a little silly, even with the twinge growing more pronounced with each pass. Hands on top and on bottom, twist so they’re on the side, hand to Soap. He’d repeat.

“This feels very stupid.”

“Aye. But they’re watchin’ so we’d best play nice.”

The yoga ball nearly slipped from your suddenly-slick fingers. “What do you mean?” You’d heard a bit of thudding from the empty room next to yours last night but thought it was a faulty air unit. Was there someone else here?

“They got back last night. Give ‘em a chance to settle before they say hello, aye?” Soap’s blue eyes sparked with mirth and you might have shoved the ball back at him a little harder than necessary. He just laughed at you.

You chanced a glance at the rectangular windows cut into the metal building, close to the sharp edge of the roof. He was probably just being funny, but now you couldn’t fight the feeling of someone watching you. And why did your mind conjure Ghost’s ridiculous mask?

He hadn’t said much after you had told him you weren’t going to pour your heart out to him. But he’d continued to stare until he and the others left for Kastovia without a word. One guy who’d found you “mysterious” while you were in undergrad thought that he could figure you out and stared, too. Thought that his attempt at a psychology degree would unravel all…well, all of you. He gave up after a couple of months. Ghost didn’t seem the type to give up. But that still didn’t mean that you were going to tell him anything.

You threw another glance toward the window and the yoga ball hit you in the face.

Simon stared down at the inhaler. This was stupid. The doc had hurriedly explained that being exposed to the gas during the explosion had done a number on Simon’s lungs. At least he wasn’t Price who’d hit his head on his way out and was told he’d had a concussion and also needed the inhaler. Gaz had been the only one who’d managed to get out mostly unscathed aside from needing a butterfly bandage for a cut over his eye.

His next breath burned and Simon finally shook the damn scrap of plastic and took a puff just as he heard the back door open. He stood and watched Johnny and the woman trudge out into the dead grass, carrying a few bits of equipment, including a yoga ball, craning his head just enough to see them through the high window. And well, if he stood on the small desk chair to watch, who would know?

He couldn’t hear them but he watched her throw a few glances toward the window. And then Johnny hit her in the face with the yoga ball. She promptly slingshotted one of the resistance bands at his head in retaliation.

“Heh.”

The debrief later that morning with Laswell had gone as expected: More intel was good. Makarov not being spotted was bad. They needed time to heal. Farah and Alex would investigate possible gas caches just within Urzikstan’s borders.

The picture Gaz managed to grab was helpful and did verify a majority of the intel they had already. But it did mean that Makarov’s network was larger than they had ever thought. One of Laswell’s contacts had enhanced the slightly blurry picture and Simon recognized each of the 141’s faces, pinned to the board, too. They were targets just as much as she was. Small bits of paper stemmed from Price, Soap, and Kyle’s pictures and Simon knew what they represented even without the fancy tech trying to make it clearer. They were hunting for weak spots. Family. Friends.

They needed to leave. Keep low. Hide. Simon hated it. He hated that the others had families on the line and he could do nothing but take a few puffs of his stupid inhaler and wait. These were men who’d become his brothers-in-arms and their families were at risk. He knew what it was like to lose.

Price’s hacking cough basically ended the debrief and Laswell said she needed to make some calls, disappearing to another part of the base and Price griped as Kyle urged him to go back to medical. Johnny said he was going to start packing.

Simon walked away as Price continued to grumble and walked down the small hallway toward the bunk rooms and–

BANG.

Simon paused just for a moment, straining his ears as he pushed further down the hallway. With how the mission had gone, he couldn’t rule out that someone had attempted to get onto base and finish the job the gas couldn’t. There were security gates and checkpoints, of course. The high fences. And this part of the base was underdeveloped for now. But having a traitor in the midst wasn’t something Simon could write off.

“Fuck,” came an annoyed voice.

The tension slipped from his shoulders as he pushed open the nearest door.

Sitting in a chair in front of the mirror atop the tiny dresser, she was picking at her stitches with a pair of needle nose pliers. A small pile of the twists sat atop the dresser—apparently she’d been at this for a while. Simon walked in, watching as she leaned closer to the mirror, trying to see the stitches across her shoulder better as she plucked at them. She’d jammed her tongue between her teeth and the strap of her thin top had been tugged down. A book, probably pilfered from the breakroom, was open beside her.

(Simon stared. Just for a little.)

The pliers fell from her hands and bounced off the dresser before hitting the floor. That had been the sound he’d heard.

“Need a ‘and?”

She let out what he could only describe as a squeak as she turned toward him, hurling the book at his head as the pliers slipped from her other hand. He caught it without letting loose the laugh he felt growing.

“Jesus Christ! How long have you been standing there? Don’t you knock?”

“Heard something. Thought something bad ‘appened.” Not a lie. He tossed the book onto the bed. He watched her mouth curl at the edges and Simon wasn’t sure if she was going to yell at him or laugh.

“Right.” She stared at him for a little longer before bending down to grab the pliers again. She settled in front of the mirror again and stared at the remaining stitches. At least the ones she could see. Simon had a clear view of the mess of stitches on her back. She’d never reach those.

She stared back at him in the mirror. The grip she had on the pliers was tight and grew tighter when he stepped closer. But he still easily pulled the tool from her hand and then reached down to turn her chair around to face him.

“What’re you doing?” She asked as he started to untwist the next stitch.

“Helping.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Doin’ it anyway.”

Well, fuck.

You could do very little except stare at Ghost as he undid each of the stitches. You weren’t stupid enough to tell him to fuck off. What he was doing was nice. You couldn’t deny that but why the hell was he doing it? He was even bigger from this angle as he loomed over you. But he was being gentle with you, so gentle. And silent. Maybe it would be better if he talked to you through it all or said anything at all, but he was…quiet.

And so were you.

Until the door opened again and Gaz came in, gun drawn. You had pivoted back toward the door, only for a moment before Ghost let out a short, sharp breath from behind his mask and nudged you back into position. You still managed to see Gaz holster his weapon with a smile on his face, perfect teeth glinting in the low light. “All good here, LT?”

He grunted but didn’t turn to look at his teammate. You chanced a look up at Simon to see him still singularly focused on your stitches. His dark eyes didn’t stray from them even though you were sure he could feel you looking at him.

By the time he reached down to turn your chair again, letting him start on your back, you found yourself liking how quiet he was. Small talk had never been your forte and you surmised that it wasn’t high on Ghost’s list of skills either.

When his thumb pressed into your spine, covered by the harsh fabric of his gloves, you tried not to shiver as you let him move you so he could see the stitches better. And he removed those, too.

It was when his finger trailed against the new scar on your back, barely a whisper of a touch, that you couldn’t stop it. God, you really were pathetic. When he moved the strap of your shirt back up your shoulder, you managed to bite the next one back. “Thanks,” you said, the word uneven and warbled. “You going to help Soap take out his, too?” You weren’t sure if you were being sarcastic or not.

The way Ghost tilted his head made you think he wasn’t sure, either. “Cap did ‘is already. Looks like shit.”

And you laughed.

The nondescript SUV rocked slightly side to side as it tore down the road. Gaz seemed hellbent on getting wherever you were headed quickly. There had been some good-natured ribbing about not letting Ghost drive. They seemed to like each other, a good camaraderie between them that seemed as easy as breathing. But you guessed that would probably happen in their line of work. Defying death together usually did that. Price, however, did seem at least a little put out about not being the driver.

And you were stuck at the back of the SUV, listening to them talk amongst each other. To his credit, Soap and Gaz both tried to involve you in the conversation. They would ask what you had been doing in London, if you’d ever been outside the city, if your shoulder was giving you trouble. It was nice.

They were still nice.

You didn’t really understand why they were trying so hard but you weren’t about to ask. Especially not now when you had a black bag over your head. They didn’t really trust you but it had been a weird kindness when you’d felt Ghost buckle you in and place a light blanket over your lap before you’d departed. It was probably a silent order to go the fuck to sleep seeing as you hadn’t been sleeping well since you’d hastily weened yourself off the most intense pain killers. It didn’t help that you’d been shuffled outside right after midnight and told to get in the back of the vehicle without much fanfare. And you knew better than to argue.

You had a bag over your head and were heading to an unknown destination. The power dynamics didn’t exactly scream trustworthy. They kept you alive, that was true. But they didn’t trust you. Funny.

You leaned your head back against the seat and sighed, the fabric rustled against your mouth. It was a strange feeling. Weirdly comforting, like when you’d push your face into the pillow and scream when you were a child, desperate for an outlet.

“I can see why you like the mask,” you muttered.

“Whot?”

Hm. You said that out loud. Well, too late to take it back now. “I said I see why you like the mask.”

“She’s bloody insane,” Gaz whispered. But you liked to think he was smiling while he said it.

“Maybe Ghost’ll lend ye one of his? Ye two could match.”

There was an answering smack and “och, what was that for, LT?” before the blanket was adjusted over your lap.

“Go to sleep.”

You smiled beneath the bag. And, knowing you had nothing better to do…you went to sleep with Ghost’s low rumbling echoing in your ears.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think!

[wizard-of-interesting-failure]

No you know what I'm gonna take a second here. [Highly unhinged rant at the fundamental injustice, inefficiency, and sheer bloody-minded stupidity of current social technology below the cut]

Absolute horse piss. God, even setting aside how she deserved better from everyone around her and had the same right to a fully accepted authentic life as everyone else, imagine what she could have done if she was supported instead of being treated like this. If she wasn't fired from her job, ejected from her support network, and didn't have to constantly advocate for herself and people like her to be treated like human beings (which was brave and good work worthy of being honored but should never have been necessary in the first place, like rescuing people from a building that collapsed because it was built like shit)

Like okay I don't talk about this that often but I'm a kidney transplant recipient and I think a lot about how the field (like every other avenue of human endeavour) has been crippled by short-sighted bigotry. STEM fields are still hugely male-dominated (sidebar STEM is not the be all and end all creatives y'all super valid and important and your work is foundational to the functioning of STEM and human endeavour and quality of life as a whole; this is just the example that highlights the point for me personally) and it's like. If we didn't push literally everyone except cishet white guys well off enough to afford tertiary education away from everything in the area, would I just have an artificial kidney by now? Who knows?? I'm probably never fucking going to because stupid nonsense.

It's the same shit. And don't get me wrong, the individual human tragedy of unnecessary hardships on the part of this (and every) trans woman (and so many other groups besides) is morally horrible and an indictment of culture as a whole. But we'd probably have fucking blade runner robots or quantum computers or working fusion reactors or Actual Cool AI Instead Of The Current Horseshit by this point! Or a real Mars colony instead of some blowhard yammering on about it while he inflicts suffering on untold millions! Or God knows what else!

And don't even get me started on lack of opportunity for almost everybody in the world. It's like that quote about all the potential einsteins who were born and died impoverished without ever even touching a science textbook.

Like you wanna know why we're struggling so much? Population increase is supposed to mean more hands and minds on every problem but it doesn't because...ugh! Imagine if we cared about global poverty. Imagine how many more lives free of hunger. Imagine how many more people thinking about how to solve everything that needs solving.

I just. The morality is bad enough. It's a great evil by itself. But the sheer fucking gall of dressing it up behind progress and hard decisions. Do you have any idea how much "progress" this costs us? What a good investment humanity would be if we pulled our heads out of our asses for two seconds? What you, personally, have lost because the person who would have given it to you lived and died in preventable despair?

Again, I have to emphasise. People are worthy without contributing huge individual achievements to the arc of history. Society is a collective and everything everyone does adds to the weave and adds up to what we as a whole achieve, there's no real separating out of "this person did this thing" when they were supported by the entire collective of humanity past and present, and even if there was achievement is not the sole benchmark by which life is measured. A better life for everyone is the point, and the idea of "if I don't think you're contributing then you don't deserve anything" is a big part of how we got here in the first place.

There is no culling of the "unproductive". They are the ones who need this most of all. Every life matters, every life (yes, even that one) is a roll of the dice for a miracle of insight (not just in STEM; it all fucking matters and it always has), every life is its own purpose, every life is worthy, to save one life is to save all of mankind, to enrich one life is to enrich all of mankind, to be a life that is enriched is to be enriched on behalf of all of mankind, and none of these facts depend upon any others. There's a mind in there! A self-perceiving miracle of reality! Of course it's precious beyond measure regardless of context, you dipshit!

We can celebrate great advances and exceptional performances without ignoring that we, as a whole, made these things possible too. And we can recognise that these things are valuable because of what they do for everyone, and that the more everyone there is the more valuable they are, and that in order for making life better for the worse off to matter the worse off themselves must matter, and that every life is worthy and every soul is sacred and the people using Lynn's technology to help with their disabilities or live hidden from those who wish them harm or resist the forces I'm talking about here are why the technology is a force for good in the first place.

But I weep for the fact that we have squandered almost all human potential across all of history in short-sighted power-seeking and arbitrary outgroup punishments, and everyone everywhere has suffered for it. Yes, even the stupid billionaires; they'd probably live longer if they hadn't stepped on the people who would have discovered the cure for whatever ends up killing them. Today's average well-off human knows riches that would be the envy of the kings of old, and the average human if none of this was a problem would know riches that would be the envy of the oligarchs of today.

Lives being lived in ways that diminish other lives are ideally changed minimally so that they no longer do (this is the maximisation of collective freedom) and consigned to any other fate only with great sorrow. Even if it is right to do so, I do not believe it is ever righteous. Even if it is not regrettable that it was done in the present, it is regrettable that the past produced a present that required it, and a future that does better should ever be sought.

Just...fucking stupid. That we're so willing impoverish ourselves so that some other people we don't like for no reason can be impoverished more. That the only thing keeping us from Star Trek (not just the spaceships but everything else too) is petty fucking spite (and physics but who knows what backdoor bullshit we could find to work around that).

That Lynn Conway's life, extraordinary and laudable as it was, was made smaller by this rank fucking idiocy. I do not aim to diminish her work by considering what it could have been. I aim to diminish the age she was forced to live in.

Rest in peace, Lynn. You deserved unfathomably, infinitely fucking better, and we are all richer for what you managed to pull off in spite of it all.

[simonbrain]

ok ok how about this but the roles are reversed and make it a little dark bc i'm crazy

cw: depictions of violence, they are unfortunately matching each other's freaks

you fucking despise him.

that infuriating, egotistical bastard goes harder on you than anyone else during practice, stretching you to your limits until purples and blues are blooming all over your skin and you're doing the limp of shame back to the side of the sparring mat. absolutely seething when he gives you a once-over, eyes crinkled with mirth just the slightest before he huffs and turns away.

that stupid, freakish brute. that mancunian mutt.

petty insults were all you could come up with in your head each time you were near him because you knew when to hold your tongue, even if you didn't want to. even if all you wanted to do was spit in his face and call him an ugly cunt, you actually valued your life.

then the insults delved into something deeper and darker the rougher he got with you. now, instead of mocking the crooked way his mask is sitting, you think about bashing that damn skull on his face right back into his own until pink matter coats the ground. each time he barks at you to run faster, you think about strapping him to a chair, strapping his feet to another, and stomping right down the middle and shattering his knees.

"think you've been spendin' more time at the mess than in the gym," while he's got you rendered immobile on the floor, and you're gritting through the urge to reenact the current scenario of kicking him right in the balls that's playing in your head. "stop slouching and fix that fuckin' form," while you're doing hand-to-hand combat, and you're imagining an anvil falling from the sky and flattening him on impact.

is it healthy to imagine such gruesome things happening to your lieutenant? definitely not. do they help you get through each and every interaction with him? a little bit. you're just happy no one can see them but you. you're not really keen on earning the reputation for being a crazy bitch.

(little do you know, ghost sees each and every sick fantasy you have about him in your head.

he's been seeing them for a while now, and the only reason he isn't scruffing you and teaching you a lesson is because he has been filing away the images in his head and tugging his cock to them every night. all that rage you have, all that hate you carry for him, nothing like it has made him feel this wound up before. it's the reason he's so mean, the reason he throws you around like a rag doll and sneers at you like you're nothing but a nuisance.

and he should probably be pissed at the audacity you have, at your bratty attitude and dark, heavy glares, but each scenario you come up with, more creative than the last, only serves to work him up further. it's getting ridiculous how fast his cock fills out whenever he's near you, how heavy his breathing gets whenever he takes a peek in your head and sees all the horrible ways you want to kill him.

he's really hoping you try it. he's hoping he wakes up to you holding his own pillow over his face while he sleeps; he hopes you finally give in to your fucked-up desires and hurt him like you've been so desperately wanting to.)

[biteyoubiteme]

with wings of wax and thread

angel!huening kai x demon!fem!reader

‧₊˚ ⋅ synopsis: In the kingdom of Aethera, an angel is pushed from the heavens. Wings torn and feathers spilling, he finds himself in the den of a demon who wishes to have never been found. Long having lived with your own fall from grace, wingless and bloody just as he is now, you help stitch back up what once was. Can nurtured understanding be crueler than nature? ⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝ warnings: 🔞!!!demon fem!reader, angel!huening kai, angst, blood, depression, mentions of death and gore, reader talks about being violently attacked, cpr performed, slight open ending that could lead to mc/member death if interpreted that way, unprotected sex, no pull out mention, prob forgot some sorry

⊹₊ ݁ . wc: 19.6k . ݁₊ ⊹

𓅪 ⸝⸝⸝ now playing: I, carrion (icarian) - hozier an: im so in love with this event, the work that all these amzing writers put into this is so astonishing- it’s so wild to participate in something like this when I still feel like a baby writer with so much to learn but thats always the fun bit I guess lol im so happy we could all stretch our creative abilities to come together and make this work <333 thank you for reading!!

[m.list] [aethera!event m.list]

ONCE UPON A TIME… In a land far far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky, and the water sparkled under the glowing sun. Where mountains rose high and in which long, deep caves ran. Where the sea met shore in a collision of tall waves. Where the undead walked among the living. Where the winged flew above the finned. In a land where things beyond any reason and rhyme existed. And amongst those very beings, within the veils of Aethera, there was… 

Feathers, soft and white, twisted in the golden glow from the slow-setting sun. Raining down like a thrown stone, sinking and littering the waiting ground. 

The fall from grace had been sickly sweet. The shock of that first second of flightlessness was frightening enough to cause Kai to sink his teeth into his tongue. Holding back the staggered scream he wanted to let out, still protecting the ones who wronged him. Who had sent a blistering pain down his back, the cracking of cartilage ringing in his ears as he screwed his mouth shut, pleading with glistening eyes, forgiving them the second that his foot had met nothing but air. 

His mouth had filled with blood, the ichor more sugar than iron, his stomach turning from the flavor, or maybe it was the feeling of falling. Flying had been something like this, the air rippling in his hair, every strand kissed with the soft hands of the north wind, a mother's touch. Flying had felt so close to life that even in falling he understood what it meant to have all your memories rush in front of you one last time. Because falling was like the memory of flying, the echo of it so close it was like a shout right in his ear. 

And he laughed, the sound a strangled choke, fighting its way out from between his lips, teeth stained and heart sinking. He had never felt heavy, not when lifting off the ground was second nature. Kai had imagined his bones had been hollow like a bird's, but plummeting only showed him how led he was lined. Heavy, too much for even the mother's air to carry him, slipping through fingers, through feathers. 

He didn't think that having a wing ripped right from his back would have made so many of his feathers come free, whirling around him, in a thick plume. Maybe it was his wing's way of bleeding. He had witnessed the damaged appendages before on others and they never bled, not unless wounded at the base, right at the shoulder blade. But even his feathers now were dotted with thick spots of blood, the droplets rising instead of falling with him, lighter than his lead bones. He reached out, trying to catch any feathers he could, trying to grasp them as if they would be the edge of a cliff he could pull himself back up from. But he came away with nothing but understanding. 

This was a brutal way to make a grave but it was the hand he had been dealt, the cards pushed into his waiting palms without question. He only hoped the ground wouldn’t damage his wings worse than they already were. Half hanging on by tender threads of pink life, he hoped to tuck whatever was left around him like he had when he was a child, creating a small cave for him and him alone. 

Kai was thinking in full circle thoughts, that crippling adult understanding washing away to childlike hope as he counted the seconds down to when someone would realize he wasn’t catching air, their rush to reach him deterred by the weight of him hurtling towards the waiting dirt. If his bones were not lead-lined they had been made of magnets, his ruined wings having kept him from the realization sooner; the grave always called the body. 

The carrion had made the decent look appealing. Kai had grown up seeing the demons sore up only to tuck their tar-colored wings close to their bodies, looking freer than when Kai stretched his out, the span of his shadow over the sea. If they could feel the thrill of descent he could find it in him to enjoy the last of his sorry life. 

The wind picked up, spinning him, round and round, dizzying and giggling. It was his twinkling laugh that made you look up. The jagged rocks circling his falling form, the ceiling of your cave the perfect opening for him to find himself invading. The sun was setting just enough so that the shadow of him cut deep into you, palms slick as you pushed up from where you sat at the edge of the moon pool, sand coating your fingers as you pressed a hand to your racing heart. Blood rushing in your ears, serpentine fear wrapping around your limbs running a chill down your spine. 

They had come, found your hiding spot, and planned to finish you off, that laugh was only the start. It had not yet turned cruel as it was that day, the parroting of the group still ingrained right behind your ears, following you around no matter how you tried to shake the thoughts. And now they were coming down like a meteor into the only safe space you had ever known. The entrance was hard to maneuver with wings; it only made sense they would have a rough time with landing except there was a giant splash, the water in the moonpool lapping up, the crashing sound like the waves hitting the rocks only now echoing in the carved out cave. 

Everything was getting wet, the water cold to your skin as it dotted your legs, feeling like a burn when you were so shocked. Because as the water settled, the churning sound still worked its way through your skull and it began to rain. The soft white feathers swung down billowing side to side, drifting as if they were a newborn butterfly, always knowing flying was in their bones but never knowing they could do it alone. Drifting to a final stop on water starting to calm. And there sinking to the bottom, face up and eyes closed, was an angel. 

His white wings torn and weighed him down lower and lower to the sandy floor of the pool, the plume of derby shadowing him as he hit the bottom. Hands out on either side of him like someone welcoming in the sun after a long winter, the look you saw before a much needed embrace, not as if you had ever seen it before. 

Stepping to the edge where sand turned to rock you looked back up at the sky, the fading light of the day slipping into hazy darkness, the blue hour working its way over the land before the moon fully made its appearance. But you could only see the slow falling feathers, catching wind and making way in other directions far from where you stood now. If he had been pushed by a demon they would have been on their kill without a second thought, they tracked them without mercy, like the hunters who aimed to play with their food instead of showing it the grace of kindness. If they had hit to watch him run they would have chased until it was over not let him sink in this water so far from home. They would have wanted the angels to see what they had done to such a pretty face. 

Because he was pretty, even in dying. The last bubbling breaths fluttered to the surface until they broke through the tension. You trembled, cold all over from the moment's rush of fear that was still coursing through you, hands clenching and unclenching as you thought over what to do with him. In the water he could rot without much worry to you, the fish would pick him over but it wasn't as if you got many swimming around anymore. The sea folk had warned of swimming too close to your pool, for the first couple months of you finding shelter in the hollow cave, the fish had been your only source of sustenance. But the sea folk kept to their own, even the lowest of the food chain, warning them about you had been easy enough. So his body would rise unless his wings found themselves lodged under a rock. 

You were ready to turn, find company in him even if he was at the bottom of the water until a single lone feather caught your attention. Eyes tracing the swaying descent like a cat following the trail of a mouse. Bleached white like a bone, pearlescent once it landed on the now still water, cupped like a curved leaf or petal. And there, dotted like a heart, was a single spot of blood. You could remember the way your own feathers looked, black enough for the blood to seep in and disappear like it had never existed. 

It had felt like drowning the day you found yourself here. Falling from where they had dropped you had hurt, the salt water burning your open wounds like a quick scratch from a cat. Your mouth full of the ocean, choking and suffocating you as you claw for anything to grasp. They had left you, the rain of black feathers not unlike this angel's white ones now. Only you had been still fighting, ripping at the hold that death had on you because in death you would have to go back to some kind of hell and you wouldn't be able to survive an eternity with your worst moments, not when at that peak they felt that excruciating. 

The angel now had given up, his twitching hand slowing to a stop. If the day you had found yourself drowning in this very pool had been your worst you would not let the same death kill someone else when you knew that it had been survivable. You would not take the name of your brethren as a brand but only the burden as it was, this action a shoulder shake to lessen its hold. So you dove in. 

You had reached the bottom before, the sandy ground only six feet deep, a proper grave for when your arrow rang true on the rare fish that came in. They sank from how heavy the weight of their death hit them. But they had never been truly heavy and you still felt weak in comparison to the other demons you should have taken after. It wasn't until you reached him that you realized you would have to touch him to take him to the surface. 

Your hands slid around his wrist, trying to lift him just enough to get your arms under his. Legs kicked behind you as you struggled to keep yourself in the right position, lungs constricting. He was lighter than you imagined and it was mostly because of the water's help, but his wings, broken, bent, and barely hanging on, weighed him down, hanging behind him like a sheet torn to bits. 

Kicking and kicking you went, feet pushing against the rocky walls lined with coral, sharp enough to cut into your feet. Blood was darkening the small space, his and yours, mixing as you went. The need to breathe begged at your aching lungs, throat tight with the need. He was so limp, no help as you finally broke the surface, gasping air by the mouthful as you reached an arm out for the edge. 

It hasn't crossed your mind how you would pull him out only that it was better to have his head above the water than below it. But you tried, not caring if he got scratched up as you pushed him needing to get him halfway out of the water so he was easier to pull out. Your grunts turned into near cries, he was heavier and heavier the more you pushed him out of the water, sopping body, wings, and clothes adding on to the bricks piled up you felt you were pushing out. When he was halfway up when your arms weak, you pulled yourself out of the water. No time to take a breather as you wrapped both your hands around his wrists. You groaned, putting all your weight back, tugging and tugging until he was just feet resting in the bloody water. 

Your arms are trembling, half limp only held up with the adrenaline crossing through you from the fear that was still making its way through your veins. Pushing him onto his back his partially open mouth looked as if he had already gone and died, effort wasted if you gave up now. You had never been taught the art of saving anyone but you knew what you would want if someone had been kind enough to lift a hand to help you. Fingers locked together you press on his chest, shoulders burning with the effort. Dripping water fell from your chin as you went, the droplets sliding down his cheeks like tears as you cursed. “Don't,” it was all you could make out from your clenched teeth, a demand that he not die right here, right now. Sand digging into your legs, grains between each feather pressed under him, turning them golden as the fading light hit in just right. 

You pressed so hard you felt your arms out snap, elbows locked, chest heaving in the way you wanted him to and then he coughed. The strangled choke like a morning bell, that slim chance of promise of another day. His body jerked to life, shocked like lightning he bolted, turning to the side and vomiting a mess of sea. Your nose scrunching as you sat back,  joints electrified and shot, you fell back into the sand, watching the high mouth of the cave as you listened to him continue his fit. 

In the time you had spent in the Moolpools cave it was easy to only make small movements, you hardly went out unless you were truly hungry enough to risk it. This had been the most motion you had done in a long time, and now you knew exactly why it was easy for them to target you. You felt weak, you were weak, this was only proof enough. But you had saved him, if even for a second, and they would have thought you weak for that too. 

You could hear their laughs right behind your ears. You had not been facing the sky then, but you had hoped, their hands forcing your face into the dirt. Childish demon cruelty taken a step too far even in the eyes of the elders. It had taken you a long time to catch your breath then, your lungs never obeying you but it's another reason why they had believed you dead, the sudden stillness that had taken over your body as the pain made its way through you. You wondered if your angel felt that way now. Only you had been kind enough to let him see the sky before he slipped into unconsciousness. 

Because he had, as you regained your strength to look at him, eyes closed, breathing rapid and uneven. You had given him a chance and now you didn't know what to do with him. His wings were bent and broken. Hardly any feathers clinging to the frail bones they had been attached to. It would be hell to fix them, pain unimaginable to bind and snap them back into place, stitch them together, and pray for some way to make them better again. You stood over him, the white shirt that had once been billowing in the wind was now transparent and clinging to his skin, the thread strong and fine. 

When they had ripped your wings off you had nothing left to attach, not that you haven't tried, but alone with no help there was no way to reattach wings with your hands. No way to reach behind yourself except to feel the spots they had once been, the jagged scars still there now, the ghost pain of that day still shooting down your back every time you dreamt of that day. And on the worst days, you could imagine them still behind you, heavy and protective, enough to curl yourself into your personal space, alone in the dark velvet home you had been born with already built in. Wishing they were back was worse than knowing the pain of them being taken away. And even as a demon, you would not be so cruel as your brethren had been to leave you without so much as the one thing that should never be taken from a person, angel or not. 

You still had your embroidery kit, the soft bag had been tied to your finger the day they had ruined you. The thread was dark, dyed to match the rocky mountains you had been sewing into the fabric. You wonder if they had burned your work after you were gone. All the hard hours doing the thing that you had hoped would get you by in the underworld. People loved to be flashy, spend on extravagant things, and there had been nothing more extravagant than the garments you had embroidered. 

Tucked in the bottom of the small pouch was a thin sharp pair of scissors, the handle shaped like a bird, wings laid back with its beak glossed in gold. They had been a gift when you started to learn, your needles next to them clicking around, silver and all different sizes. Everything was so small, your only weapon that day as if it would hurt them. They Had been useless but they would be put to work now. He would need to be wiped of the sand before you went in and started to clean the wounds enough to see where you would have to help sew him back together. 

You had collected a fair amount of things having lived in the cave for so long, your stash that was similar to a magpies, pretty but never something you used. Sometimes you would find things and keep them just because you might want them because it was better having something over nothing. The crate of glass bottles filled with alcohol is one of those things. It had washed up on the beach after a ship had hit the rocks, too close during a storm to leave anyone alive in the mess. You had picked over the wreckage just as the carrion you were nicknamed after. Someone would have wanted it and so you had taken it just because of that fact, if the gold meant nothing to you but everything to another you would have it, as was your nature. Now you could use it, uncork the bottle, and pour it over his back if you could get him to roll over again. 

Kai did not see you move to the dark corner where your stash was hidden when he blinked himself awake. In his confusion his lungs still felt full, his throat constricting as if he was waking in the water and not beside it, choking because his mind was trying to catch up to his reality. He hurt all over, his chest and stomach scratched and burning, heavy with an ache of bruised ribs. His back was on fire, screaming at him, begging him to scratch and rip at the pain. It made him whimper, the only sound that could come out from his raw throat. 

He could not think past anything but the look of the sky above him and not behind him as he fell. And when you showed yourself, a bottle of clear liquor in one hand and a small pouch in the other, he believed you to be a human stumbling upon him on a lone beach. He had not seen many humans, accustomed to staying up in the heavens with his brethren. And how could he have known what you really were when you were wingless? You had not grown the horns that most of the demons possessed, you could feel the spot they must have wanted to sprout through if they had been given the chance, the area always colder than the rest of your scalp. It had been one of the things they had picked at when taking their dues. 

To them, you had been no demon without the markers they had been so used to seeing, your wings the only thing tying you down to their depths. Even your power had been faint, strong enough to only wave a candle's flame to life, no roaring forest fires and destruction.  To Kai, in that moment you were nothing more than a girl who looked like the saving grace he had been begging so fiercely for when falling. 

For an angel, his dark eyes cut through you like knives. You had not been looked at so intensely since the attack, people who caught a glance had known to keep going and turn away. This gaze was a line of glimmering hope that he had thrown around your shoulders tightening until it was nothing but a collar of expectations tugging you forward. You had been taught to crush looks that felt suffocating, praise broken bonds, and burnt bridges before ever letting someone take you for a helping hand and honest heart. “Do not look at me like I'm something to be thankful for,” 

It was not the first thing that he had expected you to say to him. Not when he was so close to thinking you to be some sort of angel like him without the matching wings. Your voice cut through him, sharp and demanding, nearly as painful as it had been to wake up like this. Everything was falling apart; his body, his grip, which he had believed to be tight, around his good faith in people. But you had pulled him out of the water and maybe he had come to expect too much from people. A package deal that had been wrapped up in the warped expectations of the angels. Not that most of them followed the rules, but it was better to hide behind the guise of kindness than the truth of wrongdoing and instinctual indifference. 

The fallen angel only blinked back at your words instead of taking them in, eyes softening at the realization that it had been you alone to pull him out, your chin still dripping with the saltwater that stung the open wounds on his back. He could not do anything but look at you thankfully because it was the only thing he could focus on feeling without turning back into a pit of despair that had let him give up the second he had hit the water. Thinking even about that second of thought that would have led to forever was nothing but crushing rocks landing on his back heavier than the wings still trying to hang on by nothing but thin ribbons of flesh. 

And in truth what the look did was make you nervous. Like some lone schoolgirl who couldn't be under the pressure of her class watching a presentation. It frustrated you to no end, twisting a bloody knuckled hand around your insides and tugging them down to your knees. He was in no way able to make a move to hurt you that you wouldn't see coming first. You knew the small cave better than anyone alive and he was weak, his hands opening and closing limply like the steady wings of a butterfly resting. And all his feeble voice could muster up in response was, “Thank you,” 

The words strung together felt like thrown stones hitting you one after the other. You had been kicked out of your home and told you were no more demon than the humans roaming the castles pretending to play ruler and kingdom. To be told thank you for saving anyone, or even more specifically an angel’s, life was the final nail in your coffin. Every last thing they had said to you as they ripped your wings from your shoulders buried deep enough to burn, those two words sprouting from the grave to show the fruits of your tormentor's labor. The final stamp to seal the truth of your wrongfulness. 

It would have been easier to kill him then, easier than having to hold him down as you tried to help him, and easier than pulling him up from the depths of the moon pool. But they had been right to call you a sympathizer, right in calling you weak because looking at him needing you it was impossible to turn him away. “I'm going to hurt you,” it was a warning bell, the echo of your voice mimicking the sound of some faint prophetic truth. It was not your intention to cause pain on him but the only way that you could help him. It was easier to confess to that than to say you would try and fix him. 

But Kai did not listen, he did not care if you hurt him so long as it made his mind stop working over his last thoughts. The blinking of tears the second he had been pushed had made him feel little again, a child wondering why bad things happened at all. Why would someone push him, why would someone rip his wings until they were nothing but dead weight trying and failing to hold on to their last breath, drowning him, pulling him under into nothing but darkness? He had been wronged more than he thought would ever happen to him and if those who claimed to be honest, kind people,were the ones who hurt him, what was there to believe when those claiming to hurt him had done nothing but pull him free from death? It was a mess of contradictions and his gut was not helping him pick sides. He was a mix of emotions that felt hollow like a long dead tree waiting for a victim to fall into and perish just the same. Being hurt meant nothing to a newly found desolate creature, betrayed, and seeking grace. 

And so he would let you hurt him because he had nothing to lose, no more to give but turn over and let you try whatever it was that you had planned to help fix him. It was like a mutual understanding had fallen over the two of you like a blanket. He saw the bottle in your hand and knew, watched your fingers as they pulled out the needle, watched the way the metal turned red and you started to heat it enough to sterilize it. It was then that he knew what you were. 

It did not make him cringe, not when he knew that to have a demon at his back was akin to death incarnate welcoming themselves to twist a knife right into his spine. He knew that there were hardly enough people on this island who would have helped him enough to the point that they wouldn’t have gotten ill at the sight of his blood. Demons had steady hands; they did not tremble and they did not cower away from gore. To have been stumbled upon by a demon as generous as you were was a blessing he could not fight back against. 

So he let you turn him over, your warm hands working to take off his shirt, cutting it away until it was nothing but scraps, his face pressed into the sand, the grains catching in his lashes. You were gentle with him, laying out his wings that had lost most of their feelings, numb all the way up until they hit the spots right where they were supposed to be connected. It was the only place he could feel the pain anymore, his lungs and throat secondary to the pain he was feeling right there at the root of him. If everyone else had worn their hearts on their sleeves angels had found a way to wear their hearts on their back, their life source, and now it was screaming at him. 

You picked over the scraps of his shirt, peeling away the thread in long stands, looping the thread around your fingers, and making a small ball for you to pull from as you worked. He kept his eyes closed, lashes laying so peacefully across his cheeks as if he was dreaming in the moonlight and not waiting for you to put him back together. There was no going back the second you started, not unless you picked him apart again just to see the way he looked again while hurt. The thought made you feel a bit sick. The intrusion of it is either your mind trying to work around the situation or your faint demon instinct kicking in, playing with the idea until you fall into the trap of it. 

But it was still enticing even if it was sickening. You were so alone and bored, with nothing to do and no one to see. You had been hurt and had not yet found the outlet for that pain even years later, this was the perfect opportunity and yet you could not bring yourself to do anything but cringe the second you straddled his back. Holding him down with the weight of you as you poured the liquor over his wounds and watched him writhe from the pain. There was little enjoyment to find here. 

Kai tried to keep his mouth shut nearly as tight as his eyes but the second the first wave of the anesthetic washed over him he could not help himself from screaming. It echoed around the cave, loud enough to find itself spilling from the cave's top entrance. If anyone had been walking around they would have run, believing some wolf had gotten too far from the woods and taken a victim. You did not try to shush him, just placed your warm palm in the center of his back and pushed him back down, trying to keep him still even if it was an impossible task at that point. 

Then the first stitch came. It was easier to hold back, easier to try and focus on anything else but the blinding pain he was feeling, it was something other than the emptiness settling over him. He could not think of anything good coming from this, could not see himself going home again, to see his friends, the ones who had pushed him, his mother, his sisters. There was nothing but shame and treachery. They would have welcomed him back even wingless but there was no way for him to ever feel at home again, not when he knew what it was like to be nothing but air and death. 

He did not care if he did not move from that spot, the sand the only thing grounding him as he sunk his fingers in curling them until he could feel nothing but his mind trying to work and count every grain he could imagine on his skin. It was nothing but a tactic to let the pain wash away for even a second. He didn't even realize he was crying until the wetness was making more sand stick to his cheek. The soft rumbling of his whimpers mixed in with the faint groans he would release after a particularly tender part of the stitching. 

“You are very lucky to have me, when they took my wings I had nothing to do but bury the one they had left hanging. I don't know what it had looked like but I do know that it felt like this,” you were muttering, talking to yourself and letting the words come out without a filter just as you did when he hadn't been here. “I would have wanted even the one to be stitched back but I remember the pain and I'm-” The word sorry was not one that came from you often or at all, there was little you could do but say it now but still your throat caught. “I would not wish it on anyone,” 

Your fingers worked fluently, picking up the memory of the old stitches you had perfected long ago in a life you did not care to remember. This was nothing but an old way of passing time that you had practiced over and over again. You had never stitched up flesh and blood but it was no different now than it had been then. In a way, it was a comfort you should not have found in the task but it was impossible not to. 

“I do not know how well this will work but I will try,” his wings, covered in sparse feathers, twitched every once in a while as you carefully threaded your needles, tightening the stitches and watching the way the wings came back to life like a marionette doll pulled at its strings. It was hope and nothing more. 

Kai couldn't grit out any more words, the sound of your voice washing over him like a balm but nothing more. He wanted to hate you but knew it was necessary to feel this way when it came to pain. They had told him never to bite the hand that fed him but this was a forceful hand coming out to get him, twisting its fingers in his hair and pushing his face in the dirt until it was nothing but a given that he had to eat whatever it was that was handed to him. But he listened, taking in each word and trying to keep them as close as he could get them. 

Tried to imagine you with dark wings at your back. The silky feathers always shined so nicely in comparison to his white ones. His wings had looked plush and downy, nothing like the oily temptation of the demons. But he could not get the image around his head, could not see what it looked like any more than what it would look like to go home again. It was with you in his mind that he passed out, eyes closing until there was nothing but peaceful darkness where he had no reason to think of hurtful homecomings and angels dressed as death. 

You noticed almost as soon as he fell into the pain. Body going slack underneath you, all of his muscles loosening before he was nothing but twitching nerve ends from each insertion of the needle. It was not delightful work but clean and concise, the expert precision of a fiber works artist long since skilled in their field. Every so often your fingers struggled to keep hold of the slipping needle, the tips of each digit dipped in crimson as you went on with your task. And even as he lay there you went on with your muttering. “We will have to look for more feathers, only a few fell in here, I still have a couple but I don't know how well you will feel looking spotted like a pigeon,” 

For a long time, you had been sick at the sight of the clutch of feathers that you had kept from your wings long gone. It had been nothing but pain to see them, the sight cutting into you like a knife just sharpened on a whetstone. You had wanted to bury them right along with the wing you had put to rest, ripped the rest of the way from your back from your own hands, and yet you couldn't part with them just as you couldn't let go of the needles from your past life. 

Helping him right now, pinching skin to pierce through and thread, felt like it was somehow stitching up a bit of yourself. You acted fast almost as soon as he was out of the water because it was the way you would have wanted someone to help you. Without discrimination, just understanding. They had given you no chance and if you could not give it to yourself you would give it to someone not far off from you. Because you knew what it was like to live here stuck wingless with nothing to do but try not to rot like some discarded apple. It had taken everything in you to help yourself once you had let go of your past life. The feeling was nothing like you had ever felt before. 

It was emptiness, no more and no less, just an expanse of nothingness that unraveled the farther and farther you went into the recesses of your mind. To pull yourself from that pit and find some kind of routine was nothing short of a miracle. But if someone had been waiting here, even if they didn't pull you out of the water but took the wing you had and gave you the hope to live with that once comfort would have been better than nothing. Even if he didn't have full control over his wings like before he would still have his childhood home still there right at his back protecting him when no one else had. If you could give him that it was enough. 

But then when the sewing was done there was nothing to do but let him rest. The work you had done was as neat as it could be, the prickling skin around the base of each wing would hold steady and let the skin heal. You stood looking over him, sleeping with his soft cheek on the sand, his hair once wet now dry and resting against his sleeping brow. Angelic was the only word that would surface and it felt silly to attach something so obvious to him. He was nothing but angelic down to the bone; to his blood. But even still freckled in dried blood and his half-feathered wings you could tell it was written all over him fallen or not. 

You had seen little of the angels when growing up but occasionally they made a pass over the moonpool's mouth. Their bell-like laughter twinkled like the stars in the night that they flew with. They had seemed so far off and distant. But what you had been told about them was that they were nothing but selfish and self-righteous. Underneath the beauty was callous arrogance, they helped others but only if they had already achieved more and found that they could take the last step without them. Take help but never give credit unless it is beneficial to them to say, drop everything to look good, or fend for themselves. 

They had said all demons had shared blood with the angels, until one was banished, the bitterness infecting their souls until their wings turned ebony with rage and the promise of revenge. The story had been on your mind the second they had picked on you for being weak, wondering if somehow your blood had run thin and showed assets of your long since dead ancestors who had seen the heavens and walked with wings of ivory at their backs. Because although you found yourself thinking cruel things you did not dream to be a cruel person. 

So you cleaned him up as best you could, cleaning the blood from your hands and his back, taking the time to take your wet cloth over his feathers to try and clean them as best as you could. You watched his wings twitch in response every so often but he did not stir, there was little you could do in terms of his pain, little more you could do if he found himself with an infection. You could hardly keep yourself alive in the space, you don't get many fish unless you make it out to the beach at night, or find a rabbit in the woods easy enough to catch with a trap. Two mouths to feed was a limit you would have to push yourself to reach. 

But it was something you would think about in the morning, not when the sun was gone and the cave was dark enough that the only thing you could see was the faint glow of the moonpool. The water reflected onto the walls of the cave, washing everything in an eerie blue hue that minced what it would have looked like if you plunged in and swam with the sea folk. It was one of the few beautiful things you could indulge in and yet now you could add to the list because you had him to look at. 

Without turning your back to him you found your usual spot against the wall, the perfect place so that it was just hidden in the dark with the view to see the ceiling's entrance. There was nowhere else to look with him blocking the water as you lay down, back pressed up against the smooth stone wall, washing your heated skin with the faint coolness it had been seeking. You traced the lines of his sleeping face, scared to fall asleep with him so close. Wishing that in that moment you had your own wings to wrap you up, block you from the fear of waking up with him so near with nothing but questions and demands. 

You curled up with your small blanket, tucking it under your chin keeping the angel in sight. It was only when your lashes were fluttering closed that you noticed his eyes start to peek open. He only blinked faintly, a tremble starting in his arms but he was unable to move them. Kai felt weak, drained of everything, vision blurry with the sight of you lying down in the blue darkness. 

Whatever fear you had before was slowly washing away with the look of pain written all over him. He had no way of hurting you when he could hardly breathe properly from the pain. “What is your name?” you could not keep calling him the angel in your head or out loud. 

Your whisper carried in the room and he closed his eyes at the sound, it had been what he had heard before he passed out and it only made his mind feel at ease, something to grab onto in the pain. “Huening kai,” it was low and the only thing in the whole room besides the two of you. 

“You need to rest Kai, tomorrow we have to look for any feathers that may have dropped around the beach or the woods,” but Kai didn't care about that, not when he was still trying to find more of you to hold onto. 

“What’s-” he couldn't think of the rest of the sentence, not until it was tumbling into him like the rocks off the side of a cliff. He wanted to know your name and hold onto it so he could attach it to the thoughts and memories he was building of you in his head. “What's your name?” He was looking through his lashes only able to keep his eyes open the smallest bit because even that had felt like it took too much energy, the small twitches of his fingers taking most of the rest of his will. 

For a second you could not remember what you had been called before you were just you, because in here, alone, no one asked and no one cared. But it came back to you like the moon had come back each night, there was no forgetting it even if it sounded foreign on your tongue after so many years. Saying it, Kai could hear how unsure you felt until you repeated it again for him. 

So that's how he said it in his head, the slight second between the two the repentance following the state of his mind, that question lingering at the last syllable, and the sigh of content following the tail end when he said it again. So he let it go over and over in his head, counted the letters like sheep jumping over him, letting the thought of you lull him back to sleep instead of the pain. And you followed right after him, sleeping fitfully because every time you heard a small hitch in his breathing you had to make sure he was still alive. Make sure that your effort has not gone to waste. 

And he did live through the night and with your aid you helped him sit up in the morning. Watching him ball his fist and rub at his cheek to rid it of the sand that had built up. He looked like a cherub fallen to the stone and looking up in the foreground of the painting waiting for someone to notice his absence. Because all he could think about was if anyone missed him, if they knew what had happened to him and how he had been pushed instead of just caught in some wind he could not find control in as if he was little and learning to use his wing again. They must have said something, maybe they had blamed a demon for what had happened. 

But now with your eyes on him, watching him as you made to clean his back again, checking if in the night there was no more redness or sign of illness, he could not think to see a demon the same again. Here you were being a complete contradiction to everything he had ever been told in his life. Demons were nothing but troublemakers who thought nothing about others. They kept to themselves and made fun by bringing people down. There was no room for him to think about how good a demon could be to anyone let alone an angel like him. 

Sitting up, letting your warm hands look over his back, he wanted to lean into the touch, let you care for him until he could find a way to fly right out of here. There was no way that he could repay you for something like this, nothing for him to do but sit in the silence you had built around you. But he wanted to break it, crack against the hold that the stillness had over him, and scream at the top of his lungs and curse the heavens even if he had forgiven them for so much already. 

He did not know if he deserved what had happened to him but he understood that it had happened and there was nothing for him to do but take it. Cursing and screaming would do nothing but make him bitter and bitterness took too much from the soul, it drained people and he needed all the energy he could get. “Thank you,” it was again the only thing that he could think to say. 

“I told you it would hurt,” because every brush of your fingers to check your work was making him suck in the air between his clenched teeth, the sound fast and snakelike. 

“Would there have been another way to do it without pain?” it was nothing but a question to poke fun. Kai wanted to lighten the mood but it did not help the situation. 

“Do you think my kind would have taken it if so?” you didn't care to look at his blinking reaction, because as much as he knew you were his only option he still held some kind of grudge against demons. It was written all over his face and you didn't even have to see it to know. It shut kai up in a slip second of shame for thinking the instant no. 

“You're helping me nonetheless,” his hand reached across his body to press at his shoulder, delicate fingers so close to the torn flesh. 

You waved his hand away, “don't touch it, the worst thing would be an infection,” 

“The worst thing would be to lose them all together,” he did not say it to be mean or pick at you, he was not like your kind in that way where they know the thing that would tear you down and pick that option every time. No, he was just stating his truth and he was not lying. Infection could be helped but losing them would be closer to death. It was nothing but words but it made your back burn. 

You had heard of ghost limbs, the feeling of a hand still being there after it had been cut clean off. People believed they could scratch the limb if they thought hard enough to get rid of the feeling. You didn't know how real the feeling would be until you were there with your wing buried in the woods, the other long lost and tossed in a fire if you knew how any of them would have cleaned up the mess they made. If anything was to tear into you it was that first night where everything ached. Your back where the scabs started to turn to scars began to itch and the feeling traveled down to where there was nothingness but the hope of where your wings would resprout if that was ever an option. You wanted to wrap them around you and wished if you felt the ghost of anything it would be the home they had helped you feel but all you had felt was pain. A pain you could not help because there was nothing to do but let it work its way through your system. The pain was not an itch; not so easily taken care of. 

“That would be horrible and if you don't listen to me they will be gone, keep your hand away,” you left no room for argument in your tone and Kai listened. He curled his hand into a fist and sat it in his lap. “Today we will let the area breathe and while I’m out we can get whatever we need to make a salve to help the healing process,” Kai nodded knowing that you were right. He didn't even have the first thought of where to start to find out how to help himself. 

“Can you try and pull your wing in,” you didn't want to push him so early but you needed to know if it was worth the trip to even go out and look for feathers if he could not use them. 

For Kai, it felt like an impossible question to answer. He felt distant from his heart back, like he was cut in half but then he felt your fingertips, the feeling of them dragging along the edge of his wings, tracing the span of them and following the curve. “Can you feel that?” This was easier because it was the only thing he could focus on. The heat of you was constant, radiating from your body onto his like a blanket he wished he could pull in closer. 

“Yes,” it was shallow as he followed the feeling in his mind. He had never been sensitive to touch on his wings, he knew others could feel any brush of their feathers but he felt nothing until now. If he had lost the ability to fly he had gained the ability to have sensation right along the spot he feared he would lose anyway. 

You curled your fingers around the top of his wings slowly following the natural way they folded into themselves and helped him push them close to his back. Kai groaned but it was not as horrible as he expected it to be. With your help, he found whatever connection he had lost because now he could keep them pulled in without your help. But you still helped to tuck the other one close just as neatly, checking around his stitches to make sure they could handle the movement without being impossibly stiff. 

The sight made you clench your jaw. Jealousy had not been a familiar feeling here but it was alive and well now. But it did not matter, you could be jealous and still help him. But you had to get up and turn away, busy yourself with finding your own feathers, the ones you kept at the bottom of your stash of things, making sure they didn't accidentally get seen by you when you didn't want the reminder. 

It had felt easy to say you would give them to him in the moment but the second you pushed aside the spare clothes you had and laid eyes on them it was like saying you would clip off your fingers and let him use them on his own hands. You let the stack of clothes fall right back into place, picking up the loose shirt you could find that would button over him. He would have to wear it backwards because it was not made with wings in mind but there was nothing else for you to do unless he wanted to walk around shirtless. 

But Kai was thankful pushing his arms through the sleeves and leaving the buttons for you to do up for him. You made sure to keep yourself from brushing him accidentally, no need to touch him more than you needed to as you secured the fabric around him. But Kai instantly missed your warmth the second you pulled away. 

“The only way out is up but it's nothing too bad, you only need to raise your arms about this high,” you demonstrated, “it's mostly leg work,” 

“You want me to leave?” he didn't know why it was the first thing he would think, you had just told him about collecting materials to help him but as soon as the words left your mouth all he could think was no don't kick me out don't push me like them, as if you could hear him you shook your head. 

“Do angels only sit around when faced with adversity or do they get up and work?” you slung your bag over your shoulder, slipping both arms in to have it securely against your back. When going out it was the only thing that felt comfortable enough to have at your back when you had little else. “If you want to stay, I say we work together to make sure that we can keep you here for a bit longer, but I cannot do everything and you cannot stay forever. Tonight we only need a few things,” 

“Okay,” Kai stumbled to stand, feeling unstable and wobbly enough to reach out for the walls to hold him up. 

“You can stay here for tonight, rest more if you're not up for it,” 

“No,” it was a slight snap back against the way he was feeling. It was not only because he was feeling weak but because he did not like to sit around doing nothing, he did not want to wait for you to come back or worse wait and think that you were never coming back for him. He's sure that is something a demon would do, leave him here without help just to see how long he would stay without the help. But he was thinking badly because he didn't want to face his own truth, “I need to do something,” anything would be better than sitting around and thinking up ways to hate you over nothing at all. Because there was nothing to hate you over, you had done nothing that would make him hate you but the longer he stayed up with his thoughts they seemed to poison the image of you slowly. And he could not do that to his savior. 

“Fine, you can go first so that I can make sure you don't fall back,” and you had been telling the truth about the way out, the grooves of the walls made perfect spaces for his feet to fit. Only after a few steps up did he have to raise his arms to try and hold himself steady as he kicked his feet out the top of the opening. It was only possible because the side you had set him to get out of was shorter than the rest of the jagged ring of rocks forming the entrance of the cave. And as soon as he was out it was easy to sit and rest with his legs dangling into the open mouth as if he would just jump right into the water he had nearly died in. 

You had no trouble pulling yourself up and out, the rock smoothed down from the amount of time that you had made the trip up even if you avoided it most times. “There is no other way in or out?” Kai asked as you showed him the way down to the grassy underbrush. 

“You could swim in and out, it's not very practical but it's better that way if you want to make sure no one sees you coming in. But I don't think that would be good for you and you have to hold your breath for a long while,” Kai could not think about what it would be like to go back into the water after yesterday, he's sure he would instantly imagine himself drowning again. 

Instead, he focused on following you and your steps through the thick mess of trees surrounding the spot where you had made your home. Distantly he could hear the sea, the soft crashing of waves on the shore lightening as the two of you went until he saw the first blood-dotted feather. 

His wings twitched at the sight, the soft white tucked in between the branches and leaves of a tree. He was silent as he watched you pluck it between your fingers, reaching it like you were picking up a gold coin found on heads for luck. “You will tell me eventually why it is you fell from the heavens won't you?” he watched you twist the feather, examining the dark dried crimson stains. 

“There is little of a story there,” he was clenched all over, fists and jaw tight as you held the feather out for him to take, “you hold it,” he jutted his chin out, the only movement he could bring himself to make or else he would fall apart. 

Kai had gone through many feathers of different sizes growing up. Preening them and feeling grateful to have grown fully so that they did not fall out as often as they had when growing from downy softness to strong enough to let him fly. But it was different to see them like this. He knew they should not be in your hand, or even his. They should not be spread around the woods like bunches of snow that had not yet melted with the coming spring. But it was as if the longer he looked out over the expanse of woods in front of the two of you the more speckles of white he caught mixed in with all the green. 

He was frozen in his spot, stuck just looking out at all the pieces of himself spread out like nothing more than a chess board thrown to the ground, with no intention of being picked up after a soiled game. You could see in him the same kind of evil that was in you twisting itself around your brain the second you moved that stack of clothes and saw your own feathers. When you were young they meant nothing because they had always been there but once it started to go away, once it was nothing more than a pile in front of you it made you feel small and insignificant. 

“When they first ripped my wing it didn't hurt like I had imagined it would have,” you had been frozen, stuck like a kitten who had been picked up by the scruff of its neck. You had looked up with eyes that nearly rolled in your skull the second you realized what had happened. How could you not have felt something so huge? Maybe it was because you could not see it, your mind not catching up with your body until seconds later and it was all you could think to feel. There had been blood, slick down your back and on your fingers as you reached to try and hold onto anything that was left. “For a second you almost think you can fly away from the pain,” 

Kai watched your eyes go unfocused, lost in a thought that had been his reality just the day before. It was almost as if he could feel that foot pressed right into his back again. His ‘friend’ with the heel of his boot cutting into Kai’s spine. He had asked him to look out over the edge of the last cliff, claiming to have seen carrion flying around too close for comfort. It was only a second, looking over the edge so high up he knew that if he flew down and caught the wind that it would be a rush he could never replicate. 

The boot had been nothing but a second before his hands had been on his wings pulling them back until that sickening crunch and tear. It had happened so fast kai had felt nothing until it was all too late. 

“There is always a story and you don't have to tell me yours but know that if I could get revenge on the ones who took my ability to fly, I wouldn't hold back from repeating over and over the same pain they inflicted on me,” you tucked his feather into your bag, “they wouldn't think twice about you so don't give them the grace of never speaking up for what they did to you,” 

“You’d think that because you're a demon,” and for the first time Kai saw you crack a smile, a twisted tarnished thing. 

“We are not too different, the only thing that sets us apart is you thinking you are any better than me. You forget we both woke up in that cave only I was alone and you had me, and how lucky for you that I'm nice and don't just build you up to pull you right back down again,” you turned walking because you needed the distance, “go back if you can't see that we are the same,” 

“My first thought wouldn't have been to hurt someone I helped,” Kai kept pace with you, watching you pick up each one of his feathers as you went. 

“Just because I say I resist hurting you physically does not mean that what you say or think cannot hurt me. You want to freely throw your judgment around and stick a label onto me, reducing me to nothing but blood I did not ask to be born with and still you cannot see how we are exactly the same. We are only doing the same thing in different seasons, only one of us is plain as day and the other is hidden behind some thick smokescreen allowed in whatever game we have found ourselves,”  he could tell there was no room for argument with you. Set in some demon way that made you want to burn instead of heal. But even he knew he was just being bitter, proving you right even if he didn't say it out loud. 

He was grateful and he was upset, he had been a pot of water his whole life and it had never been set above a fire until right now and the bubbling was unwelcome and made him itch all over. He didn't see the reason for revenge when there was no way for him to get back up to the heavens without walking up the stairs and that would feel more shameful than coming back wingless. The only thing he could feel about the topic was that if it had been him or you he's not too sure that it would have been him you would have picked to help. But even he couldn't hide from the truth of wanting to pick himself every time. 

So he kept his mouth shut knowing there was nothing he could say that would make him look better and nothing he could say to make you look worse because faintly you were right about the both of you being so similar. He followed you like a lost puppy, watching you pick over the brush, collecting pieces of him until you found every part of the set to make enough of a picture. You were careful with them, fitting them all together in a neat stack and wrapping a loose string of thread around them to keep them from spilling all over again. 

By the time you two had combed most of the area, the sun was setting into nothing but stars. Two handfuls of feathers and a pit in Kai’s stomach made for little conversation. Keeping his eyes on his footfalls he did not see what it was that made you tense up until it was right there burning in the distance. 

A little ball of fire, dancing seemingly above nothing but the air. A Willo-the–wisp, bright enough to feel like a beacon one could not turn to look away from. But you hissed at the thing, reaching down to pick up a rock, smooth in your palm before you threw it. “Hey!” Kai's voice echoed in empty woods, previously the only sound heard was his crunching footsteps. Your years of walking down here had taught you how to keep yourself light as you made a journey this far out from your home. “See only proving my point, hurting things without reason, what did they ever do to you?” 

But you didn’t feel like explaining yourself to him, it felt silly to believe in rumors about the little creatures but it was impossible not to feel conflicted about bad signs when your life had been full of misfortune.  “Its bad luck to see them,” 

“Well it showed up there was no need to throw a rock at it, bad luck or not it was given the second it popped up,” his statement made you roll your eyes. What was there to do but watch the flame snuff out? It felt better to make the flame extinguish the second you saw it as if they were the thing that leached luck from you the longer they stayed around.  

“I'm not going to sit and let the death promiser dance around and curse me, or you for that matter, I don't know how I would pull your corpse from the cave if you were to die from the infection they wanted to warn you about,” you watched his face pale, your eyebrows lifting letting it known that you had seen that you had won written on him, “see, so let me throw stones, I'm doing it for both of us even if you don't believe it,” 

“It's only an omen, it doesn't mean anything real,” but he was trying to convince himself to fear the little flame, small and weak enough to be taken out by nothing but a pebble. 

“You know we have people who read the stars? Creatures deep in the sea, the woods, the kingdom, even your precious sky. They all have stories and folklore that came from some kind of truth,” you picked up another stone in case you saw another little flame lingering around not wanting to risk a sighting even if you could help it. 

“How are you planning on getting the feathers back on?” Kai wanted anything else but to talk about being the same or not, about folklore and truth. He was tired and didn't want to think about anything else besides what was supposed to come next. 

“Wax, I have lots of candles stored up that will do, if I get the layers thin enough it shouldn't weigh you down. It's also soft enough so that it won’t restrict any growth when they start to grow back,” it felt far away to think about having to go through the process of aging all over again, he had been through the phase of watching his feathers transition he did not want to wait again. The wax would give him an option, anything that would help to keep him from feeling as if he fell so far back from everything he had ever known. 

He wonders if you had thought through the same things with your wings before it was too late. If the idea for the wax had come before or after you buried your last option. He did not think it would be okay to ask that, not when you were helping him already. Demons being fickle was not uncommon; he wouldn't be surprised that you tossed him aside for something new to tinker with if given the option. Rather he gets as much information for you on how to help himself before you leave him with nothing at all. 

You showed him the way back up and down into the cave and for a sickening second, he thought you would push him while he looked for a way to make it down without landing in the water. Your hand had been on his back to steady him and yourself on the edge together. His flinching from your touch only registered as pain and not fear. You jumped down angeling yourself so that you landed right at the edge of the water and you looked up, stepping out of the way waiting for him to follow your lead. 

Kai pushed himself down feeling nothing but air for only a second but it was a second too long. He stumbled as soon as his legs hit the ground, leaning back and looking at you for a sickening moment before he was ready to accept falling back into the water, but you reached out making a fist in his shirt as his arms waved trying to find something to hold onto. The heels of his feet almost tipped him into the water, his wings shuddering and trying to pull in closer, hiding back away as if they could when this damaged. The buttons on the back started to pop with the strain of his weight and he had to reach out for you, hands wrapped around your forearm as you pulled him back to the safety of the sand. 

“You're very clumsy on your feet,” you muttered, pulling yourself away from him and his tight grasp. He was embarrassed but only because he was washed in fear and being caught for it on his face. 

“There was not one time you fell while jumping down?” he waved at the short distance that was available for him to land. 

“Once or twice but you get used to the angle and learn,” you don't put your bag down, not when you have to turn around to look for your candles, keeping your back covered even if now you knew he would do little to hurt you physically. Everything you had picked up from your conversations and just watching him walk around made you realize just how his label fits him so well. He had been more upset over the will-o-the-wisp than his own ruining. But it still didn't make you drop your guard. 

Finding your stack of candles you tucked them under your arm and turned to find Kai sitting in the sand all over again, looking out at the water and watching the way it swayed. He traced the dark outline of the opening leading out to the sea, hardly noticeable if you hadn't said there was a way out before. He would have believed there was only the two of you and not the world's ocean just a few feet away from him. So much just inches away from his tomb that he believed he would have been stuck in until someone found his heavy lead-lined bones. 

“We don't have to do it tonight if you don't want to,” your voice was soft as if you knew he was stuck in some darkness in his mind, struggling against the hold of some blanket of depression he had thrown over himself and couldn't find his way out of. “It would be better too because we need the light and I can hardly make a fire big enough to produce enough,” 

Light, once so easy to produce on the edge of his fingertips, wasted power on his childhood innocence trying to find ways to light up his bedroom when he was supposed to be sleeping. It had been easy back then and now sitting here wanting to get it all over with he couldn't get up enough energy to heat his skin. He was cold all over, blood leached, and hollow. Lifting his palm he focused in on his hands, the soft ridges tracing around the center supposed to be the lifeline or so he had been told. That was where he had always watched the light come from first, starting right at his wrist and working its way up curving between his thumb and pointer finger before it was nothing but light held in his hand like he had caught a star. 

Now it was nothing. Not a flicker of illumination nor a hum of warmth. He balled his fist clenching until he felt his nails digging into his supposed lifeline wishing that if he squeezed hard enough he could find a single drop of anything left in him. And still nothing. Not even enough to help him now when he wanted it, needed it most. “Tomorrow,” the word was a bitter thing, in his chest and making it sound rough with hatred. 

“It takes a bit to get back,” you tried not knowing why you didn't just curl up in your spot and wait for the rest of the sun to set so that you could sleep. Ignore him and his well-deserved mood. But you had done the same thing, sitting in the dark trying to make even the smallest flame and nothing would come, “I was never the best at lighting anything on fire, not even the blades of dry grass they let the little ones practice with,” 

Kai listened, watching you from the corner of his eye as you took a seat next to him, legs crossed just like his, your knee so close to hitting against him he could feel the heat from it. “I should have known then that I wasn't like the rest of them, tailless, hornless, powerless,” you gave a dry humorless laugh, fiddling with the candle sticks you had, letting them spill into your lap picking one only one up and examining the wick. He traced the side of your face, following the bridge of your nose right till the end and watching you blow so softly it wouldn't have taken down the light of a birthday candle. 

But a flame bloomed, catching on the wick, and dancing in the coming darkness. It lit up the features of your face, your eyes shining in the light as you watched the small reflection of your power. You had little to give, children had been playing with fire long since they were learning to crawl and you had only come to master a few tricks. “The only thing that had labeled me a demon were my wings, and they had been…” the edge of your lips wobbled, your jaw clenching closed at the itching in your throat as if this was even too much to say to him. “They had been beautiful,” it was said just as softly as the exhale you had done to light the candle, hardly there and weak. 

“I didn't even care about the fire, anyone can light a match or strike flint and create a spark. But…” 

“Not everyone can fly,” he could feel the way you struggled to say it as if it was traveling from his mind to yours. In the firelight he watched the tear fall, tacking down your cheek faster than you could wipe it away. But you caught it erasing it as if that would take your feelings away from you as if it would keep those intrusive memories from surfacing. Because no one would know how it felt to be that high, physically and mentally, unless they had been up there with you catching air with a laugh bubbling up from your chest like it was coming from a faucet that could never be turned off. 

You blew out the candle, sticking it in the sand and pushing yourself to stand, letting the rest of the candlesticks stay laid out for tomorrow. “Don't worry about what you don't have just yet and be thankful for what you're still holding onto. I'm going to bed.” No more was needed to be said when the two of you both knew it hurt too much to find yourself in the mix of confessions and shared sympathy. So you tossed your bag to the side, turning your back to the wall and closing your eyes so that you couldn't look at the blessing you had given him and hadn't received from anyone else. 

But it was incredibly hard, there was nowhere to look except him or the back of your eyelids and all you could see when you closed your eyes was the vision of you in the sky. It ached to remember and the pain was fresh looking at his new stitches that you had done even with his wings pulled in and sparse of feathers. Because he sat there at the edge of the water trying and failing to open his wings up again without your help this time. 

He could tell they were stiff and he was unfamiliar with the feeling. Before it had been second nature, his wings moving as his lungs did without the need for his mind but now that he focused on them it was like they couldn't work and wouldn't unless he focused on not paying any mind to them. But it was hard to do that when his healing stitches were itching and he was told over and over again by you not to touch them. So he sat there watching the water with his back to you as if that would keep him accountable for not messing up your hard work. 

All that was keeping him up was the promise of tomorrow when the sun would come out and you would help him put his feathers back even if he felt that it wouldn't work. In a way he worried it was too unnatural to work, that somehow it would just fail because it was not right, the wind would not agree and still, if it did work he had no intentions of going home. To go back with wings made of nothing but wax and thread felt like a lie of himself. Some imposter trying to pass as himself to fit back into the same life he had before. But with his wings stuck together like a forged abomination felt like he was never going to find himself comfortable there again. 

He didn't care if they took him in as he was, whispered behind his back, because he knew they would, and let him pretend that everything was the same when it so clearly was not. He knew little of the world below and even less of the world below that one from where you came from, leaving home would be an adjustment but necessary. He just needed his wings healed enough to hide them back inside of him wherever it was they unfurled from when he wanted them. It had been uncomfortable back in the heavens because there was no need to hide who you were. He would have to get used to the feeling but it would not be something as horrible as this ache was now. 

It wasn't until the morning, the sun just peeking over the edge of the cave's mouth that he realized he had not gotten any sleep at all. He listened to the water, the chitter of the animals in the distant woods, and the sound of your easy breathing while you dreamt. He wondered if you would have dreams of flying, if they hurt just as bad as the pain of knowing you never would fly again but he knew they must have been tethered feelings; unable to have one without the other. 

He pictured you over and over again in his head. Imagined you with your wings of night in the air next to him, that laugh you had turned his way unlike the one he heard but one he wished you would give him so that he would know something in his dream would be real. This laugh was somewhere caught between a giggle and a sprinkle of light from his fingertips. He locked in on thinking of the laugh over the feeling of flying because it was impossible to not hurt when thinking of the air. But you, thinking of you, felt safe even if it was some kind of hope caught in a dream. 

Because you would never fly again he knew that much because you were so certain of it. He had known of people who wanted to mimic the feeling of flight. Making things out of clockwork and magic as if it would help them but that felt worse than having to go home stitched up. To walk in with wings not even close to the ones you owned, or were born with, felt like the worst kind of death. You wouldn't have even known that you had died, that the only thing keeping your body animated and moving were the strings of your delusion tied so tight around your joints that you never got a chance to look down and realize this was not you at all. 

So he tried to grasp that laugh because it was the only thing that felt close to real; the only thing that felt close to happening at all even with all the distant hope he was supposed to be having. And when you woke you could see it all over him, the failure written on every inch of him. It fueled an anger you had not felt in years, the simmering pot inside you turned up to boiling over nothing more than an empty glance. 

You kept to yourself, let him stay seated by the water, and went about to find the two of you food. And it wasn't until the two of you had eaten that you set into getting yourself ready for the long days work waiting for you. Candle in hand you watched him look back out over the water and you couldn't take it anymore. Kicking at the sand you watched the grains puff up in a plume around his legs his hands waving away the dust, brows scrunched as he scowled at you, “Stop looking as if I'm a failure already,” 

“I didn't say anything,” but he knows what you're talking about, the thought had infected him and was spreading as rapidly as the infection you had warned him would happen if he touched his back. 

“You didn't have to say anything, trust me if saving your life meant little to me I wouldn't have done it in the first place, I wouldn't waste my time,” you grab the handfuls of feathers, his eyes locking in on them in hand. 

“You have nothing better to do,” he didn't mean to say it but it was true he felt it and it made him believe it was the only reason why you were helping him. Because you were bored here, sitting in a cave doing nothing that he could see because there was nothing to do but sit. He had made it so that you had something to do. In a moment you would turn him away and tell him not to come back, to find someone else willing to help him. But you wouldn't let him give up on you. 

“No, I don't but I could have done anything else besides this. Hell it might be more fun watching you fall again than it would be to watch you actually fly but I guess we won't know unless we try,” but Kai’s scowl was back and it was better than seeing him feel nothing at all. 

“Why would you say that? You know what it's like-” 

“Exactly why would I help you for nothing at all but boredom? I wouldn't help if I didn't want to see you succeed, I wouldn't be doing this at all I would have let you die. So stop wasting my limited kindness and accept my effort without believing it will lead to nothing but failure,” 

“You would do that, wouldn't you?” because it had caught on him, the idea of being watched as he fell again by someone who would enjoy it. Unlike the first time, it would be worse, he would never come back from that fall, because even if he had forgiven the person who had pushed him he had known the second he felt their foot on his spine that it had been out of pure evil, if it were you doing all this just to watch him fail again it would be worse and there would be no forgiveness. “Build me up only to prove I should never fly again,” 

“You are incredibly cynical,” you blow on your candle, watching the flame heat the ivory colored wax so close to matching the color of his feathers. “Did you ever think that maybe I want you to succeed? That it would help me see you make it out of here more yourself than I ever would have left this place?” you stand behind him, pushing back the first row of feathers as gently as you can before placing the feather over the node you knew a new one would find to grow. You tilt the candle just enough until the wax drips, translucent dots pattering around the area as you watch the way they dry the color blending in perfectly. You let the feather go watching the way it sticks and stayed in place, right where it looked like it had never been gone. 

Kai could not feel the process, not when he was lost in his thoughts. He tried to separate the knowledge of you being a demon away from the proof he had of you being nothing more than someone who was lost. The two could be synonymous is what he reminds himself over again. He had his back to you and was hoping you wouldn't shove a knife right through him but that didn't mean he wasn't worried. 

He did not bring up his thoughts again, he let you work and passed himself off as being hopeful when it was the last thing he felt he was. He was grateful that you cared enough to try even if he believed you had ulterior motives but he would not say out loud that he had any hope when it was not true and if it was it felt wrong to jinx it. 

And so you worked, the slow repetitive motions evening out your heartbeat. And even when the wax fell to your fingers you did not flinch, taking the slight burn and continuing. Even Kai did not back away from the fallen wax when the sparse drops landed on his back. Anything was better than the pain he had felt before and now this felt pleasant, trembling from the shock the first time and accepting any other spot that made itself known to him. 

Then the two of you began to talk, small things that felt so insignificant when you were alone. His first question filled up the silence, “What's your favorite color?” you had not been asked in years something so lighthearted, there was no need to have a favorite when you wouldn't seek it out. 

“I don't know,” you had shrugged, dripping the wax over the next feather in the lineup. By midday, you had done one whole wing. The way the feathers overlapped made it so that you never even saw the wax since most of the top feathers had stayed in place. 

“You don't know? How could you not know your favorite color?” It was hard to explain to him how it didn't matter because Kai would take nothing short of an answer he saw as being good enough. He asked again, asked what it had been like when you were a child, and he listened as you tried to explain.  Answering his own questions and trying to take everything off his mind besides you and who you were. 

He asked you everything and anything he could think of until it was too late and the only thing he could think about was the fact you had stopped and were looking over his stitches again. “Is it bad?” 

“No,” it was the opposite of bad, he healed exceedingly fast because of his angel blood, the once torn flesh already looking a day away from having the stitches removed. “It's doing well, but I ran out of feathers for your right wing,” 

“Oh,” he felt like he had been deflated, his shoulders already bent forward so that you could have the best access to his back and he did not think he could sag anymore, yet he did. Periodically as you added more feathers in you would tap your wax-coated fingertip against his spine asking him to stretch his wings out. In the length of a day, he felt stronger and more like himself as the time passed. He could hold the weight of his wings up fine even with the thread still pulling him together bit by bit. And now he couldn't even finish what had been started. 

You had not thought before you spoke up next, the words spilling out as easily as the continued answers to his constant questions, “I still have a few from my wings if you don't mind the color,” but once it was said it felt right. You had no need for the feathers anymore, the only thing they did was bring you pain. They should have been buried right along with the rest of your wing and now you knew that there was some reason out there why you had kept them besides the reminder of a painful past. If they could help it felt right just as it felt right the second you pulled him out of the moon pool. You could give them up because in some way healing him was healing you. What better than to let your feathers fly again when you could not? 

And Kai did not mind, not when now he was itching to fly again, the hope somehow filtering into him the second you had told him to stretch his wings out again, to try. He let you put the feathers on, looked at the glossy ink color, and had not turned away because now he was tying the strings of his delusion on and he could not bring himself to stop. 

You did not feel loss this time around when seeing your past spilled out in a heap in your lap as you took wax to each one, fastening it to the angel boy's wing to give him one last chance that you wish you could have had. It felt cathartic, watching the way the colors contrasted and blended so well together. Your fingers ran over the line of them the second you had finished. A soft sad smile on your lips as you told Kai to stretch one final time before trying to fly. 

It felt so sudden, so soon from the last time he had taken flight. He hadn't even realized it was his last time at least before the fall. He wondered if you remembered your last time, what it had been like, and if it felt just as insignificant to you as it had to him. Wondered what you would have preferred your last flight to have felt like, where you would have gone. But the thoughts were a distraction to him trying to fly now. 

Kai stretched his wings, the white expanse only broken up by the tip of black at the end of his right wing. He couldn't remember what it felt like to lift off the ground instead of hurtling towards it but then he felt it, his heels lifting first, and the soft beat of his wings echoing in the small space. You stood back watching with a blank expression, tingling all over because you couldn't believe you had done it. He was up, the tips of his shoes just hitting the stirring sand before he felt his wings give out.

Shouting he fell, the distance nothing but a foot but feeling like he had come crashing all the way back down the side of a mountain. His back ached but not from pain but the strain of weakness. “You can try again tomorrow, we just have to keep at it even if it's a little bit every day,” Kai had fallen to his knees, looking up at you with his slumped shoulders and puppy dog eyes. 

“Thank you,” the words still tumbled into you, but it was easier to accept when the fruits of your labor were still right at the forefront of your mind. He had flown even if it was just a foot, it had been more than what either of you had expected. You had worried of his stitches ripping, worried of the feathers falling with only a few beats of wind and they had not, both holding stronger than your conviction. 

Your smile could not be contained, the edges of your mouth trying to hold it back like a stranger at the door because it had been far too long since the last time you felt this happy about anything. “It worked,” disbelief made itself known in your tone but Kai was just as surprised. He did not care at that moment if he got any higher off the ground, only that he did not have to lose so much of himself. “It worked,” he mimicked his smile wobbling as he fought back his tears, “it worked,”��

It was the way he said it last that hit home. You did not think about it hurting so bad to see him succeed, jealousy thick and alive in your blood. You wanted that feeling, you wanted those words to come from you not just from being an aid but from being the project. The words were felt all throughout you as he whispered them, just enough to watch the stress of never again flying dissipate into nothing but happiness. He had been empty and you had tipped in a bucket of everything you had to give, he had gained so much and you lost more than you had to offer him. 

There was nothing more to call it besides envy; sickening jealousy. If you could rip the wings right off his back and give them to yourself in that split second you would have. It was not productive but it was the only thing you could see when you looked at him. But you shook your head as if you had been caught in the rain and needed to get the water from your hair, pushing the thoughts to the side. You would never have what he did, no way for you to have given yourself the chance in the way that you had given it to him. 

So you squashed the feeling, talked yourself out of the need to cry once the two of you had laid down. Your back to the wall again as you look at him with that faint smile on his lips because he was getting to sleep peacefully since the first time he had come here without the aid of his pain. The outline of his wings in the darkness made them look just like a shadow behind him. And it was so hard not to cry as soon as you knew he was asleep. Wanted to turn and face the wall to give yourself the illusion of privacy in your struggle to keep the burn in your throat from turning into a sob you had fallen into to fitful sleep. 

What had awoken Kai was the strain in your voice, the way you muttered, again and again, the word no, the noise of it getting louder and louder until it was impossible to ignore the sound as if it was nothing more than the hum of a mourning bird's song. He opened his eyes and there you were on your makeshift bed, your face pressed into the blanket, your back turned to the sky and you reached back trying to scratch at your shoulder blades. But even in sleep, he could see the way it pained you, hands only just brushing over your shoulders when you found yourself pinned down in sleep. You were whining, crying in your sleep, and it was full of pain. 

Because in your sleep you had dreamt of that first night without your wings. You could not lay on your side, could not lay any other way but with your face to the ground like they were pulling your wings from you all over again. Back facing the sky praying that they didn't come in because you had no strength to turn over, no strength in you except to try and restrain yourself from scratching at the healing wounds, unaided by careful stitches. 

It had been a long time since you had felt the dream so real that it made you believe there was something wrong with your back. Because you were somewhere on the edge of your dream telling yourself it was real, that the pain was right there at the surface and you didn't know it unless you woke up. If only you could just wake up instead of struggling as you had back then. And when you looked to your side there was no kai, just the outline of that wing, the one you had to pull off there dead and waiting for its burial. 

But Kai would not let you sleep through it, not let you scratch at your shoulders and wade through the dreamscape colored in nothing but the shade of a nightmare. He grasped your sleeping hand, the one fluttering at your back like a moth to a flame and curled his fingers between yours. Your hands fit neatly against his, locking in place as if you had been reaching out for him the whole time. His free hand was at your lower back, keeping away from the top where he knew you were trying to reach. And when your eyes opened your gasp followed the way you shot up, back pressed back to the wall and you tried to cure the burning. 

You knew this feeling, the momentary ghost wings pretending they still had feelings for which could be hurt. Everything about you felt as if it was shaking, like a rattling cabinet of glass in an earthquake because your world was shaking at your feet telling you something was wrong but you couldn't tell what it was. “It's okay it was only a nightmare,” Kai tried to sooth, thumb running over the back of your hand that he held in both of his. 

In your dream you had been alone, so much of it had been like it always was. Pain circling around everything you had come to know. But now there had been pain but the faint hurt that Kai had not been there to help you. As if he could go back in time and do what you had for him even if it was no use you had just wanted him to be there next to you. But he hadn't been and in the mix of the sobs you had found his name and prayed he would hear because if they were your dreams you should have been able to grab them by the neck and control them, not follow them down the dark hall that felt neverending. 

But waking up to know he had been here the whole time, knowing that if he had been there he would have helped just the same, settled something inside you that had been overrun with worry. You unfurled your arms from around yourself, throwing them around Kai’s neck and pulling him into a hug. 

He did not freeze up under your hold but melted into you, sliding his hands around your back and pulling you closer to him, your face pressed into the space between his throat and his collarbone. He hadn't known how much a hug would have helped him just as it was helping you. You were warm and clinging to him in a way no one had ever needed him. 

Kai could have sat like that with you in his arms until the sun came up and you would have let him because you needed to be closer and needed something that only he could give you. Your fingers ran through his hair, his hands sliding down your lower back pulling you to straddle his hips because he needed you chest to chest, needed to feel the weight of you against them to make sure that he knew it was real just the same as you did. “You're okay,” he whispered the words, a hammer against the dam you had walled up in place to keep you from ever getting close to anyone ever again. 

It was so quick you are unsure why it was your instant reaction. Your lips kissed over the mole he had right along the column of his throat. The feeling of his words pressed right to your mouth when he hummed your name. Everything was so much easier to do in the half dark, the room alight in that blue glow of the water, the moon still high in the sky as he slipped his hands under your shirt, cool against your heated skin and only making you arch further into him, hips sinking as you kissed up his neck. 

Neither of you stopped the other from the exploration, you curled your fingers in his hair right at the base of his neck and he found any expanse of skin that he could let his fingers touch. And when you finally made your kisses stop right at the edge of his lips he couldn't help but turn his head, chasing after your mouth with his desperate desire to get lost in you. Because once you started neither of you could pull yourself away from stopping. 

He tasted like nothing short of twinkling light filling the darkness that you had let wash over you for far too long. His soft moans caught in your mouth with each drag of your hips now perfectly placed over him and his wanting need. It was the only way to describe the way he was feeling, he did not just want you, he needed you, so hard from just a few devouring kisses that you couldn’t resist. 

You pulled away for only a second standing so that you could take the few clothes you had on off. Kai sitting there watching in awe as you peeled off your shirt, his hands itching to have you back on him with no layers between the two of you, chest to chest but closer now being skin to skin. He reached out for your hips pulling you closer to him so that he could rest his chin on your stomach, looking at you like the fallen angel he was, like you were the only savior he had written in his stars. 

He let his lips pepper over you, your hands brushing the hair from his brow, his fingers dipping into your waistband holding the fabric in a way that asked you for permission to tug them down and off. “Please,” he whispered check pressed to your hip, “I need you,” and you would give him everything he asked for if he continued looking at you in that way as if nothing in the world mattered but you at this moment, not your blood or cruel words, just a boy and a girl seeking out the pleasure of another. 

You let him take your pants off just as easily as he had let you tug him free from his. And when you sank onto him, took all of him in with a gasp at the stretch working its way through you, nothing had felt more right. Because he was curving into you, your lips were his only salvation as you slowly rocked your hips back and forth on him. His face washed in the pleasure of having you his hands growing warmer and warmer as they held your back. You did your best to avoid his stitches, ignoring his wings that twitched along with his body every time you found a new slow rhythm to move to. 

The angle the two of you had was grinding against your pleasure point, your moans so sweet and rumbling against him. He traced up the line of your spine with one hand, keeping the other wrapped around your back to make sure you stayed in the circle of space the two of you had created. You whimpered when he brushed over the scars on your back but did not pull away, letting him have a part of you that you would never give to anyone else because he knew what it was like, he knew what it meant, this level of trust rushing into you almost as fast as your coming orgasm. And right behind him the soft blue light of a will-o-the-wisp on the water, gone as quickly as it had come into your field of vision but you would not have cared in that moment anyway. 

Both of you neared the end, and when you came, the feeling in your belly took all the space to think because it had been reduced to feeling only him and the pleasure he was giving you. His hands felt hot and alive with the power he had believed had been lost to him as you trembled in his hold, swallowing down each little noise you made. He guided you down to the blanket stretched out on the sand, rocking his hips now chasing after his own high watching the hazy look wash over your face as you held onto his shoulders. And behind him his wings spread covering the two of you in that safe space you had craved more than anything, his panting breaths pressed to your neck as he spilled all he had into you. 

You could only focus on him and the way he brought you the closest you had ever felt to being whole again. Wrapped up in nothing but him was close to being saved because you both knew how similar you were and to be seen like this, to be understood, was healing all on its own and you welcomed everything he had to offer. You would let him take you again and again because you felt linked, the jealousy washed away because being held like this was enough to sedate the torment you had found yourself subjected to being here alone for so long. 

And in the morning, when the sun came in on the new day you never felt as excited to see the light as you did in that moment. Because Kai was grinning looking over at you knowing what it meant. He would go out and try again and again until he knew that he could fly even if it took time but here starting today would be the beginning and he would be starting it all with you at his side. 

He did not need help out of the cave's mouth this time, pulling himself up as easily as if he had been doing it his whole life. And he stood, looking out over the water below him and knowing that if he fell he had you there willing to pull him out if he needed it. He looked to the sky the second you pulled yourself up next to him, his wings spreading out and beating softly enough to draw your attention. “We don't have to start so high up. I know it's a short distance to the ground and it won't hurt much if you fall but just in case it might be better to go to the beach,” 

He should have listened to you but he was too excited to think about where he was when all he wanted to do was fly. “Just this once and we can go to the beach and try again if not,” he reached his hand out at his side, low enough to find yours and your welcome squeeze in support. 

“It's okay if you don't get up too high so long as they can carry your weight that's the main issue at the moment because of the stitches,” Kai nodded along half listening as he focused in on the clouds. He pulled your hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it before letting it go once more before trying. 

Both of you held your breath, the seconds passing slowly as you waited for his heels to lift again only this time it was so much higher, Kai was rising, each beat of his wings only raising him and widening your smile. You had done it, you had made him fly again and it didn't hurt but made you elated. 

Kai could feel the wind welcoming him, pushing him up and up until he could see nothing but the expanse of blue and you were gone. It was that thought that had him going back. He could have spent all day up there if he could, if he knew that it wouldn't hurt him if he pushed himself so far but thinking of you watching him without being able to feel it tore into him. He flew back down landing right where he had started and laughed like it had caught him by surprise. 

And he looked at you, his arms open enough for you to run into them, that smile you wore was going to be tattooed along the insides of his eyelids because it was the only thing we wanted to see. Because you had done this for him, you had given him his flight back, his hope, and wrapped in nothing but sarcasm and truth because it was your way. So he hugged you tight, kissed you until your arms were locked around him just right and he took you with him. 

It had only been in dreams that you felt the faint feeling of being weightless. The wind hits your face as you let the laugh bask in the morning sun with you. It had been everything Kai had wanted, his dreams coming to reality as he caught the wind to carry the two of you higher and higher, until it felt as if you both would be made of nothing but clouds and happiness. He knew what it meant to be up in the sky like this again for you and knew that it would never be much of a thank you in return for what you have given back to him. 

And when he found a place to be steady, beating wings behind him, no pain in sight as the two of you looked out over the green and blue land and water below you. He held you close, arms keeping you up and in place even with your dangling feet picking up the memory of what it had been like before when you were a child with nothing to be scared of because you had not been wronged yet, you had only been a girl with wings happy to be in the air. 

Kai pressed his forehead to yours, nose dipping and bumping your cheek as he kissed the edge of your smile. And it didn't matter anymore if you felt weak, or had been told it was all that you had ever been because you had saved someone worthy of being saved, picking up yourself along the way and flying through him when flying was only a word thrown around to hurt you. You had put his wings back when they had been nothing but torn flesh and nothing made you feel this good, only the knowledge that you knew he would take you again if you asked. 

The trail of your fingers did not cross your mind when you felt this good, your subconscious working over the thoughts you were having and putting together the puzzle you had made by following the seam of his stitches. You could feel the knot you had tied to secure the wing in place, the spot you would have to cut away when pulling the thread free after you had checked again that his fast healing had done its job. 

But the ghosting of your touch on the closed wound was akin to you pushing him into a frozen lake, the ice breaking beneath him and reminding him just how heavy he had been when he had nothing behind him to support his body. It was the fear mixed with your words that you had said what felt like ages ago, as if when the two of you had shared then you had been different people. But here at his core, he felt it, that foreboding and gut-turning maggots wiggling into his skin and poisoning his already made-up mind. ‘Hell it might be more fun watching you fall again than it would be to watch you actually fly but I guess we won't know unless we try,’ you had said those words, he had rolled them over in his head over and over again because it had not sit right with him, but he could not remember the rest of the conversation, not when your fingers were messing with the stitches right on his back like you were fulfilling a promise. 

It had been quick, the intrusive thought taking over because all he could think again was that you two were similar. He would have helped you yes but if it had been him or you at the bottom of the water and both of you had to pick who got their wings back he would not hesitate to make sure he felt this feeling again. And having you here, threat alive in his mind he could not help himself from leaning into the cruelty if it meant saving this. 

And so he let you go. 

When in his arms it had been the illusion of flying, still grounded to him just by holding on but falling from this height was even closer to the feeling of flying. The wind rippled around you as you fell in slow motion, his sweet angelic face washed in shock at what he had done and all you could do was think about how you would forgive him because you knew that if it had been you in his place, demon or angel, you would have done the same. 

You did not feel heavy, you felt free and the laughter echoed around Kai as he realized his mistake. His fear had control over him in ways he had not expected it to and his shouting did nothing to make it any closer to you as he tried to catch up to your falling form hurtling closer to a waiting grave that had once had a tombstone with his name written on it. You had missed this feeling of freefall and descent, missed the open arms of the wing kissing your skin in the same way Kai’s hands had only the night before. 

And then the feathers started to rain. A few white tumbled down along with you as you looked up at him, wax melting from being so close to the sun for only a short time. The edge of his right wing was still tipped in black as if your feathers had infected his mind and thoughts as if they had been the cause of the drop and not the sickening worry he had of losing everything that had just been returned to him. But you could not stop yourself from thinking again of the story you had been told as a child. That demons had been the same as angels, cast out for the bitterness lingering in their near-empty hearts. You two were the same, cast out, and only now did he truly see it. 

The last of his feathers started to come free, his control over his wings lessening as the two of you fell, the sky a perfect image of just you and him with feathers all around as it had always been. The spotting of inky black feathers floating around you, finally ready to be buried alongside the body they had come from. You reached out, Kai’s hand already trying to find anything on you to grasp but was just far enough to miss by the brush of his fingertips. The expanse of blue widens around you and is impossible to tell if you were rising in the sky or sinking closer to the waiting ocean. 

If falling felt like flying you would welcome the feeling because anything was better than nothing at all. 

<333 thank you to @beomiracles who wrote the opening paragraph that is italicized for this event so that we could all start on the same page- taglist 🏷: @kissmekissykissme @bts-txt-ateez @apeachty @seungfl0wer @lunesdesire @no1likemybbgcharlie @chasingthatjjunie @taegyutomorrow @izzyy-stuff @yeoningz @filmnings @jellymochii @dawngyu @bamgyuuuri @lickingan0rchid @felixleftchickennugget @thetxtdevil @luvsicktyun @hyukascampfire @prince-jjae @liverspaghett want to be added to the taglist? check out my rules to see how to join!want to be taken off the taglist? send an ask!

[shanastoryteller]

Tracking down a prince of hell is surprisingly easy. The other demons can’t avoid them if they don’t know where they are, after all.

Castiel gives up arguing against it, but instead he’s taken to brooding in the corner, arms crossed, and glaring at him. As his main source of human bodily expression, Sam wishes he wasn’t so good at it. He doesn’t look like that, does he? Jesus.

Sam knocks on Ramiel’s door. There’s no reason to be impolite.

“Huh,” Ramiel answers, wearing the face of a weathered old fisherman. Which, from all accounts, is exactly how he’s been spending his infinite life. Sam learned how to fish like he learned all of his father’s lessons, grudgingly, but compared to how he’s living now, he has to admit it sounds peaceful. “You’re the kid that killed my brother.”

“What,” he says, raising an eyebrow, “were you close?”

Castiel makes some sort of choking sound that Sam knows he didn’t learn from him. Maybe he should be monitoring his television usage.

Ramiel cracks a grin. “You here to kill me, boy?”

“Do you want to be killed?” he asks.

“Not especially,” he says. “But if you killed Azazel, then you can kill me. We going to fight about it?”

“You’re not hurting anyone,” Sam says. He’d checked. “I don’t think you’re especially loyal to Lucifer.” If he was, he would have made an appearance during the apocalypse, would have been helping Azazel find Lucifer’s vessel, not hiding out in the middle of nowhere fishing and drinking. “If he comes back, that’ll be a problem for you, I think. So helping me is in your best interest.”

“Well, if it’s in my best interest.” He steps back, nudging the door open a little wider. “Come on in.”

Ramiel is surprisingly open giving Sam his blood. He looks fascinated and doesn’t question what Sam wants it for, apparently already well aware that Sam and Castiel are in the process of destroying the remaining seals.

“He wants to destroy Lilith,” Castiel says, the first thing he’s said since Ramiel opened the door. Sam wishes he was close enough to hit, which is probably one of the reasons Castiel is staying propped against the wall rather than sitting down with them. His vessel doesn’t feel tiredness, so Sam’s impressed he’s leaning at all.

“You don’t think he can?” Ramiel asks. “Sure, not now, but at all?”

“You think I can?” Sam interrupts, hope causing his stomach to flip over. This whole thing is his idea, he remembers killing Lilith before, but Castiel has been so sure it wouldn’t work.

Ramiel looks him over, something in his eyes that he can’t quite place. “You remind me of him.”

Sam tenses.

“You must see it more clearly than I do,” Ramiel says to Castiel. “You knew him before the fall. I only met him after, obviously.”

“Lucifer and I were not well acquainted,” Castiel says stiffly.

“I’m nothing like him,” Sam snaps. He can’t be. He won’t be. Even in the memories from the future, when he’s drinking demon blood, he’s not the damn devil.

“That’s a shame,” Ramiel says. Sam stares. “He was the strongest angel in heaven, a general among kings, God’s most beloved son.”

Sam swallows. “Propaganda.”

Ramiel raises an eyebrow and looks over at the angel in the corner.

Castiel holds out for several long moments before saying, “No. Lucifer was that. Once.”

“God asked of Abraham to do to Isaac what he could not do to Lucifer,” Ramiel says. “He had no deity of his own to appease and so Lucifer was cast out rather than eliminated. He was brilliant, in the beginning, of course we followed him. He shone so brightly, so righteous in his certainty, so compelling in his grief.” His hand falls heavily on Sam’s shoulder. “I see him in you so clearly. It’s not a damnation. Until the moment he fell, Lucifer was the brightest star in the sky.”

He's silent for probably too long, trying to find some way to respond to that. Finally he says, “I won’t fall then.”

He can’t.

He won’t.

He’s going to ensure Lucifer stays in the cage forever and whatever it costs him will be worth it. But he won’t fall.

~

Sam is startled out of a dead sleep by his name.

SAM! Echoes through his head and he’s rolling out of bed, rolling upright and still half asleep when he shifts from one place to the other. The urgency in the call has him standing there still half asleep, barefoot in sweatpants and a grey t shirt just tight enough in the shoulders that he thinks it’s his brother’s.

He runs a hair through his hair, smoothing it back from standing every which way, and blinks at the crowd of people in front of him. “Uh. Hi?”

He’s in the Roadhouse in the middle of standoff, a couple dozen people blocking off the door while pretty much everyone else in the bar has their guns drawn and pointed. He notices his father among them and refuses to react, not daring to look at his dad’s face for long enough to read anything there besides shock.

Ellen has her rifle aimed, but Jo’s slumped against the bar, her arm around – “Dean!”

He’s out of it, eyes squeezed shut and curled half over. It’s only Jo that’s keeping him partially upright. He sees the blood dripping on the ground and is already moving towards them, grabbing Dean’s shoulders and pushing him upright enough to see the blood soaked across his torso, his stomach split open just like Jessica’s had been, just like their mother.

Sam sees red.

“Sam,” Jo says in relief.

“Sammy,” says someone else, and this time when he looks over, those people in front of the door all have black eyes. “Samuel. You killed Azazel.”

“Loyalists?” he snarks, shifting to stand in front of Dean and Jo. He’s going to fix his brother, but he has to take care of this first. Dean’s not dead, and he’s stronger than he was when he brought Jo back, but he doesn’t know what kind of shape healing him is going to leave him in. Better not to risk it.

“Yes,” says the man, eyes still black. “You have earned the throne, Samuel, but it remains not empty. You’re meant to lead us, Samuel, but you’ve been missing. We’ve been forced to go to extreme measure to get your attention.”

“I’m not mean to do shit,” he snarls. He’s so tired of this crap. His future self had that part right – taking the destiny Lucifer had wanted for him and making him choke on it, using that infinite power to send his memories to his younger self so Lucifer wouldn’t ever get a chance to taste fresh air this time around – good. He didn’t like it when it was his dad trying to dictate how he lived his life, and he has even less tolerance for it from Lucifer. These ass clowns? It should be a joke, would be, even, if he didn’t have his brother’s blood on him.

He raises a hand and all the demons choke on air, eyes going wide and feet glued in place. He doesn’t pay any attention to the hunters at his back, hoping that they won’t be stupid enough to try and kill him while he’s saving their asses. Even if they succeed, Castiel will bring him back.

He walks forward, eyes narrowed, wondering if they’re flashing gold and not caring. “Well, good job, hurting my brother does get my attention.” He leans in close to the man who had spoken, voice whisper soft and yet carrying easily in the near silent bar. “You don’t want my attention.”

Pulling the demons from their hosts is easy. Smothering them into nothing, turning black smoke into black dust as he kills them permanently isn’t much harder than that. The people start coughing and groaning, others limp and likely in need of a hospital if they’re still alive, but Sam ignores them to focus on one woman who’s still trembling and terrified, the one demon he’d left behind.

He moves her hair away from her face, hoping the woman inside of her isn’t aware of what’s happened to her. The demon looks at him in terror. “You tell everyone. You tell them what happens when they spill my brother’s blood.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, I will, please. Please. I’ll tell everyone. I will.”

Her fear isn’t satisfying. He has to remind himself that it’s not this girl looking at him like this, but the demon inside of her. It doesn’t help much. He’d never wanted to be anyone’s nightmare. “Go.” Her head snaps back and he adds, “Gently.”

She hesitates then her head drops forward, black smoke oozing out her mouth, nothing quick or violent about it as the demon does it’s best to leave without doing any damage. As soon as it’s out, it disappears, running form him as quickly as it can.

The woman sways in front of him and he grabs her elbow to steady her. She blinks at him, dazed. “What happened?”

“You’re okay,” he says, patting her shoulder and letting go. She stays on her feet, although she still looks confused, but Sam turns away from them.

The hunters are still all silent, all still watching him. Most haven’t lowered their weapons, although some have. Ellen’s gun is still raised, but it’s not towards him, which is both comforting and not. He wonders who she thinks is most likely to try and kill him.

Dean’s passed out, out cold on the ground with Jo holding him up and pressing a hand towel from the bar against his stomach. “Sam,” she says again, eyes huge, but she doesn’t look afraid of him. That’s good.

“Thanks for calling me, Jo,” he says. “I’ve got him.”

He pulls Dean back against him, his brother’s chest rising and falling too quickly. He’s gone cold with blood loss and this wound might have even been the thing that killed him if Sam wasn’t here.

That’s never going to happen. Dean isn’t going to die. Dean isn’t going to go to hell. Sam is doing all this for his brother and just because he won’t be able to keep him doesn’t mean he’s willing to lose him.

He hooks his chin over Dean’s shoulder and presses is hands against the wound on his stomach, feeling fresh hot blood spill over his fingers. He tilts his head just enough to graze his lips against Dean’s cheek, holding him steady as his body seizes under him.

Castiel heals with a touch, all if it happening too quickly for it to hurt. Sam’s not that good at it yet.

“Sorry,” he whispers, feeling Dean’s skin knit back together and his body go warm with new blood. Dean groans and coughs, body rebelling against being healed but not having much choice.

“John,” Ellen barks. “Don’t do anything stupid now.”

Sam looks over his shoulder to see that his father has stepped forward, the Colt directed at him. Dean got hurt by demons and Dad had the Colt and didn’t use it. Only two bullets left and more than two demons, sure, he gets it. But still.

“Don’t waste a bullet, Dad,” he says. He's still refusing to look at his father's face. He doesn't need to know.

Any gun will do. Although he wonders if being killed by the Colt would prevent Castiel from bringing him back. He’s not much interested in testing it.

He tips Dean back towards Jo, who braces him with an arm around his waist. “Take care of him for me.”

“I’m trying,” she says, honesty and dry and exasperated, which is how he knows she means it. He smiles, might have even laughed if things were different. He likes Jo. He’d thought he did, from his memories, but he hadn’t felt it. He feels it now.

“Sammy,” Dean says, eyes glassy and movements still weak as he reaches out to him. “Sam.”

He grabs Dean’s reaching hand, gives it a quick squeeze, and is gone as soon as he hears the sound of a gun being cocked.

Apocalypse Never

They help Dad into the cabin, more coherent than he was when they first broke him out, and Sam heads back to the car for their bags, for the Colt, and tries not to think about how everything has gone so quickly to shit. Mom and Jessica’s killer got away, again, but they’re all alive. That’s not nothing, that’s –

The pain hits him so completely and suddenly that he has no chance to brace himself for it. Usually it builds, first prickling pain then greater, but this is something else. It feels like nails are being shoved into his skull, images coming almost too fast for him to follow. He doesn’t realize he’s screaming until it stops, until he comes to with his head in his brother’s lap, Dean’s arms pinning him down and his face white and terrified above him. “Sammy? Sammy, you’re bleeding. What’s wrong?”

His throat is too raw and tight to speak even if he wanted to. He does want to, but he can’t, he can’t say a goddamn thing.

I saved the world for you, he thinks wildly, and I didn’t even get to keep you. How fucked up is that?

~

He doesn’t know if his future self couldn’t send it all back any further, or if he thought that this would give Sam less time to fuck things up.

For a couple terrifying minutes, Sam had taken control of Lucifer. For a couple exhilarating minutes, Sam had the power of an archangel.

That sending the knowledge of the future back four years in the past was the best thing he could think to do with it leaves Sam with a poor opinion of the man he became. Then again, he had saved the world, so. There’s that.

He doesn’t want to think of the him that had fallen into the pit with Lucifer and Michael. He hopes he can save him by making different choices, but maybe he can’t. Alternate universes, or parallel ones, or whatever. Maybe that Sam is damned for good and the best he could do was save a different version of himself, a different version of his brother.

There’s not much point in wondering about it. He’ll never know either way.

It’s memories with no emotions, thank fuck, because just the knowledge of it all is enough to drive him to his knees, to edge him to weeping and whimpering and slitting his wrists if he lets it.

He’s not going to. He has work to do. There will be time to fall apart after, when the world is safe. When Dean is safe.

Dean after Dad had died and given him that ultimatum had been bad enough. Dean after forty years in hell had been nearly unrecognizable.

He wipes the blood from his face, ushers Dean back inside, and tries not to think too hard about what he’s about to do.

Dean figures out it’s Azazel in Dad’s body and they’re pinned to the wall and Sam waits until Azazel is hovering over him, hand next to his head as he tilts his head back and breathes over Sam’s lips. It’s a torture and a powerplay, to let the want in his eyes come out in his father’s face, to make it John’s body that’s pressed so nauseatingly close to his own.

Sam isn’t the same person he was four years ago, ten minutes ago.

Breaking out of Azazel’s hold is easy. He’s using the equivalent of a single finger to keep them down, like pinning down a butterfly, and it's only enough until it isn’t.

He grabs Azazel’s face and pulls him close, hears the beginning of his laughter before Sam seals their mouths together. He’s making a deal here, selling his soul sure as anything, just not with Azazel.

Azazel leans into it, just like Sam knew he would, shoving his tongue in Sam’s mouth and getting off at his instinctive flinch of disgust, of the way Dean’s screaming bloody murder behind him. Azazel hasn’t hurt Dean yet. Sam’s going to make sure he never will.

He bites down hard. Blood fills his mouth and he sucks on his tongue, drinking as much as he can. It doesn't tase like iron, not like it should, instead it's sweet and thick like honey. He thought Azazel would pull back now, but he’s still laughing into Sam’s mouth, even bites the inside of his cheek to add to the blood from his tongue, and he just lets Sam drink his fill. Of course, he doesn’t know what Sam knows. If Sam had done this the first time, the only thing the blood would have done would be to get him high and useless.

It means he gets more than a mouthful, that it’s long minutes of keeping his eyes closed and swallowing and trying not to think too hard about how it’s Dad’s hands on him and Dad’s hard on at his thigh and Dad’s tongue he’s sucking on. He’s already got four years’ worth of nightmares in his head. No need to add more than necessary.

His skin is buzzing, feeling stretched out over him like his body is too big for it suddenly, almost like the aches of growing pains but more electric. Azazel pulls back and licks up the side of his face, leaving blood and spit behind, and breathes into his ear, “If you missed me feeding you, boy, all you had to do was ask.”

Yeah, that’s enough of that.

He shoves Azazel back without moving his hands, hard enough that he stumbles, and he has to move fast, before he gets a smart idea like snapping Dad’s neck or bursting his heart. He raises his hand and he’d settle for an exorcism, but power is lying heavy and thick in his veins. Destroying Lilith nearly killed him and Azazel is more powerful than Lilith and the blood he drank shouldn’t be nearly enough.

But fear sparks in Azazel’s yellow eyes and he starts choking, black smoke leaking from his ears and out his mouth. “How-”

Sam doesn’t let him finish. He remembers killing Samhain, killing Alastair, killing Lilith. He knows what to do.

Azazel dies screaming. Mom and Jessica are avenged. It’s not as satisfying as he thought it’d be.

Dad is on his hands and knees, taking in deep lungfuls of air. Sam knows from experience that being possessed isn’t pleasant.

“Sammy?”

He forces himself to look over, sees his brother approaching him with hands outstretched. The fear hasn’t gone anywhere even with Azazel dead, even with Dad alive, even though he doesn’t have any of the devastating injuries he sustained last time.

He doesn’t have the emotions to go along with the memory of the first time Dean saw him drinking demon blood, but he imagines it was something like this. “I’m sorry.”

“Sammy,” Dean says again, but Dad’s getting to his feet, Dad’s looking at the Colt, and Sam can’t die yet. He still has work to do.

It’s not a conscious thought, not something he actively tries to do, it’s just one minute he’s there in a cabin with his father and brother and the next he’s in the middle of a field, the night air crisp and clear and a million stars shining above him.

He couldn’t do that before.

There’s something wrong, he thinks, because he doesn’t remember what drinking demon blood felt like, but he remembers describing it, and this isn’t right. He should be drained after that, should feel almost normal again, but instead it’s like there are bees pinging around inside him, like there’s molten lava in his veins, like he’s dying.

He’s dying, he realizes suddenly, the power threatening to eat him alive. He looks down at his arms, like he’s expecting to see them crisping up beneath moonlight, but they look normal, like skin. Of course it’s not killing him, no matter what it feels like. He’s Lucifer’s perfect vessel. There’s no power his body can’t contain, none except God’s, maybe, and it looks like he’s long past making house calls.

It won’t kill him, but it hurts like hell, and he can’t think, he needs to burn it off somehow. He’s never had this problem before, not even when he drank all that blood for Lucifer.

He’s standing in Bobby’s living room and he doesn’t understand why until he sees the body on his kitchen table wrapped in a white sheet. He doesn’t know how Bobby got rid of the paramedics, if he’s maybe holding the body for her family, but Sam thinks he knows how to get rid of some of the itching along his skin.

Sam died a lot, in those weeks he and Dean were apart. Lucifer was true to his word. Sam came back every time.

He pulls down the sheet, sees the ways Meg’s face has settled into death in the past day, how decay has started to take hold and left her blue and cold and her skin slack. He leans down, presses a kiss to her cheek, and thinks that this is the least he owes her, for what she endured because of him, for trying to help him even at the bitter end.

She gasps to life beneath him, warmth flooding her skin and air stuttering into her lungs. “Sam?” she asks, fear and confusion and a pain that’s not physical.

Maybe she won’t want to live, considering everything she’s been through, but at least now the choice is hers and not a demon’s. There are footsteps and he turns to see Bobby standing in the doorway, gun pointed to the ground and mouth open in shock. Sam doesn’t have time to worry about it, instead he’s gone, the same burning still clawing its way out of his bones.

Caleb lies slumped in the chair Meg had tied him to, throat slit and eyes empty. Sam puts his hands on his shoulders, presses his lips to his bald head, and feels the moment his heart starts beating again. He sends the ropes falling with barely a thought and he’s gone the moment he hears his first confused groan.

Pastor Jim is laid out in his home, church workers Sam vaguely recognize huddled around him in prayer, his final send off. He’s just glad he got here before they burned him. They start screaming when they see him but he leans down, internally wincing at how Jim’s going to explain his way out of this one, and kisses his forehead, a reversal of the paternal tenderness Jim had shown him as a child.

His chest rises and his eyes open and his eyebrows push together. “Sam, what-“

He doesn’t stick around to hear the end of that question, figures it’s not anything he can answer anyway.

It takes him a long moment of staring out at the snow covered peaks and too close sky and the brilliant sun hitting his face even though it was just the middle of the night for him to place himself, even though it shouldn’t be enough, but he knows where he is even though he shouldn’t.

The air’s too thin and he’s going to give himself altitude sickness if he lingers and he should probably be freezing to death but his blood is still running too hot. Not burning, not like it was before he brought three people back from the dead, but still far from comfortable.

Still. He can’t say he ever thought he’d ever get to see the view from Mt. Everest.

“Castiel,” he says. “It’s Sam Winchester. We need to talk.”

Nothing. Typical.

“I know about God’s plan, about Lucifer and Michael, about my role as his vessel. I know about you, Cas. You’re going to want to hear me out.”

There’s the rustle of wings behind him and he turns to see Cas, younger than he looked before. Jimmy Novak younger than he’d been before. He wonders about that for a moment. He’d half expected Cas to show up as a sherpa rather than nip to America for a vessel, but Cas had kept the shape of Jimmy Novak even after his physical body perished, so maybe there’s a deeper preference there than just convenience.

His face is as cold as their surroundings. “You have strayed from God’s light.”

“Yeah, well, what good has he ever done me?” he asks tiredly. He used to believe. He believed yesterday. He prayed this morning. Even when he met Cas the first time, he believed. “I can’t explain. Can you just read my mind? We don’t have time.”

His eyebrows push together, but Cas has to be curious, otherwise he wouldn’t have said anything. He steps forward and presses two fingers against Sam’s forehead. He doesn’t feel any different, but when Cas lowers his hand, he’s lost his stoicism. Shock, despair, and anger chase themselves across his feature and Sam can’t blame him.

He’s not the only who lost his faith in the future.

“You said there were thousands of seals,” he says. “How many exactly?���

His eyes snap to Sam’s. “What?”

“God loved Lucifer,” he says. “It’s why he imprisoned him rather than destroying him. It’s why he left him a way out. Maybe it’s why he set up the apocalypse in the first place. I don’t know, I don’t care. All I know is that I’m not letting him out, ever. So we’re going to destroy every seal we can.”

Some can’t be undone, like the first one, a righteous man torturing an innocent soul in hell. But there are plenty that can, hopefully enough, hopefully most. If there are less than sixty six seals available, then Lucifer is never getting out of his cage.

“There were originally ten thousand seals,” Cas answers and Sam gets lightheaded for reasons that have nothing to do with thin air. “Only two thousand and thirty four seals are still viable.”

Okay, that’s better. Not great, but better. “Let’s get that number down to sixty five.”

“You are different,” Cas says.

Of course he’s different. His father’s alive. His brother never went to hell. Sam has never known the utter desolation of being completely alone, of grief and guilt so heavy he’s surprised it didn’t break his spine as surely as Jake’s knife in his back. He doesn’t actually remember feeling it, which is no small mercy, but he saw the effects of living with it, which is almost as bed. He'd thought what he’s feeling because of Jessica is as low as he could get. It’s not even close.

He wants to dig up her bones and breathe life into them, but at almost a year dead he thinks that’s beyond even this strange new power. Even like this, he’s failing Jessica one more time.

“Got any ideas?” he asks. “It wasn’t like this before. With the blood.”

He’d drank Ruby nearly dry more than once. It had been a high and then a crash and never did it give him access to this type of power.

“Azazel is – was a prince of hell,” Cas answers.

Sam frowns. “I thought he was king?”

“He was regent,” he corrects, “but to be a prince is separate from being ruler of hell. Lucifer created Lilith from bone, as Adam and Eve were made. The princes were created from his blood. Azazel’s blood is, in a way, Lucifer’s.”

Lucifer’s blood. Sam, his vessel, drinking down Lucifer’s blood, as a baby and now. Except as a baby he’d only had a few drops. He’d consumed a lot more than that back at the cabin.

Demon blood always wore off. The few drops of Azazel’s blood he’d gotten as a baby never had. He probably should have taken that into consideration, but there hadn’t been any time.

“Lucifer is evil but he is not a demon,” Cas continues.

Sam realizes suddenly that he did have power like this once. When he locked away Lucifer inside of him and took his power for his own. It’s not the same, not even close, but it’s similar. “This is what angel blood does?”

“No,” he says. “This is what Archangel Lucifer’s blood does to his perfect vessel. I believe. This has never happened before, so I cannot be certain. You are, as always, one of kind, Sam Winchester.”

It’s not quite a compliment, but it’s not as combative as he remembers Castiel being in the beginning. He’ll take it. “Guess we’ll figure it out together, then. If you’re sticking around to help prevent the apocalypse.”

If he’s not, this is going to be more than difficult. Tracking down all the seals without an angel on his side isn’t going to be impossible, but pretty damn close. And he doesn’t know how much time he has. Hell is going to be pissed about him killing Azazel. Heaven is probably going to take notice once he starts destroying seals so they can never be opened. Not to mention, he’s definitely going to be on hunters’ radar. Even if Dad can keep his mouth shut about him drinking demon blood, which he knows better than to rely on, him bringing back people from the dead is going to spread quickly. He’s going to be hunted at all sides, just like last time.

At least last time he had Dean, even broken, even when he was broken himself. He still had his brother.

But this is the price for saving him. For making sure that Dean is never in the position to kick off the apocalypse in the first place, to make it so Lucifer never again walks the earth even if heaven and hell reincarnate him and Dean and try and start this all over again.

He’s going to be killed for it, he knows, by demons or angels or hunters. But that doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.

“Yes,” Cas says. “It is better for us all if the future you saw never comes to pass. I will help you.”

He grins, clapping Cas on the shoulder, and only laughs at the glare he receives in return. They have to get out of here before the altitude makes him loopy. Maybe it already has.

He’s going to save the world for his brother and he’s not even going to get to keep him.

How fucked up is that?

[girlwhorizzed]

can you write something with babydaddy!jj where he like kind of abandoned r & the baby then came randomly like at 12 am at her doorstep and wins her back?

this is s1 jj!! the timeline where the pogues r really deep in the gold thing so yhat should explain why hes not there for his kid :p . p.s. sorry this is so short💔💔💔

babydaddy!jj always came back to you, or at least found his way back. in some special way that made you feel warm inside, he considered you his light— christ, you were the woman who carried and birthed his baby. you'd always be his light, through thick and thin you were the woman he'll retreat back to in the end.

so, it's no surprise when on a random friday night at one a.m. that he's at your doorstep. he's wearing his typical gray muscle shirt that's original color is beginning to fade— with a pair of cargo shorts to go along with it. of course you open it, he'd probably stopped by to do his annual three-week check-up on your shared baby that you'd started to think he forgot about. although your baby is long asleep now and you should blow him off, scold him for being absent in your babies life after during the creation of your sweet girl all he'd done was promise he'd be there, hell even hit him. he'd left you alone a quarter of your pregnancy, returning and playing 'dad' role all of a sudden once your baby was due.

you've rehearsed this exact scene in your head more times than you can count. while you were holding your babygirl for the first time and he hadn't been there, you'd lined up words that never even had been in your vocabulary to cuss him out once he came around, your anger and sadness balanced perfectly. instead of marching down to john b's where you knew he'd possibly be, you exchanged all those emotions for love and comfort for your daughter. she'd deserve that.

your face falls, as he stands on your doorstep. you’re tired, as you open the door— tired of his empty promises and tired of him coming back again and again to repeat the same cycle. but your heart skips a beat at the sight of him, a mix of anger, sadness and relief coursing through you. “come to pay us a visit?” you speak up with a quirk of your eyebrow, arms folded over your chest. he shrugs, his gaze flickering over you — taking in how your frame, now curvier, looks in those clothes, his eyes lingering a fraction longer than you would expect. “yeah. figured i’d pop by, say hello.”

he pushes his hands into his pockets, gaze drifting to the window he knows is you and your little girl’s room, before returning to your face. “she sleep?” you nod. “has been for hours.” he seems to soften at that, his eyes still looking weary yet he can’t help the warmness tugging at his heart to think of his daughter tucked up in her cosy room. he hums, nodding his head. a heavy silence falls, before he’s clearing his throat to speak. “can i come in?”you nod, shifting your weight from one foot to the other, taking in the sight of him. you step aside, the door slowly swinging open.

he gives you a smirk before stepping past, brushing against you, taking in your perfume that he can recognize from many months ago from a night he'll never forget, his hand grazing yours and sending a shiver up your spine — your body betraying you with its response. the shiver doesn’t go unnoticed by him. he feels proud of himself, at how he still affects you even after all the distance. he steps fully inside, his eyes scanning your living room as you close and lock the door behind him, watching him take a couple of lazy steps around it, running a hand over the back of the couch. “place looks different.” he speaks up, before stopping to look at you. “you get some new furniture or something?” he quirks a brow, eyeing you up.

you can’t help but roll your eyes at the small talk. you can feel his gaze roaming over your body, can see how his focus lingers in key places, causing your cheeks to flush with heat from how his blue eyes rake over your curves through your thin nightshirt. you clear your throat, forcing him to meet your gaze, though it doesn’t seem to stop him much — his gaze flickering down to your bare legs. “only difference is all our babies stuff.” you simply respond, your eyes boring into his.

he chuckles lightly, finally returning his gaze to your face and meeting his eyes with yours, holding your gaze intently. “mmm, so she gets the special treatment around here now, huh?” he murmurs, taking a small step towards you. you back up against the door without much thought, his smirk spreading on his face — clearly enjoying getting a rise out of you. he takes another step. and another. he doesn’t stop until he’s in front of you, now invading your space, his body so close to yours that the fabric of your nightshirt brushes against his chest.

your breath hitches, his proximity making you dizzy. his gaze softens, his eyes drinking you in. he reaches out a hand, his thumb skimming across your lower lip, the gesture so tender that you almost forget who you’re dealing with. "course she gets special treatment, she's m'baby."

he chuckles, his laugh is soft. he leans in closer, the hand on your chin now going to grip your waist, his fingers digging into your hip. “yeah, she is.” his eyes are locked onto your own, his touch igniting a wave of familiar sensations that you'd been trying to forget for months. “she gettin' everything she needs?" he murmurs, his other hand resting against the door. he has you trapped between his arms.

“she's healthy. despite the fact her daddy been missing for months on end.” your retort is sharp, a defensive shield that you’ve built up over the months, as his hands on you and close proximity throws you momentarily off guard.

he winces at that, shaking his head. he opens his mouth, as if to say something, but stops himself. he looks torn, and for a moment, it almost makes you feel guilty. he drops his gaze, before looking up at you again, a glint of something in his eye you only just catch. a quiet moment passes, before he takes a deep breath, stepping closer, your body squished against the door as his body now presses against yours. "i ain't mean to… be gone so long, okay?"

you want to scoff at him. you want to push him off of you and tell him to leave. but the truth is that you missed him. you missed his laugh, the way he would look at you. you missed having another hand around to help with the baby, the emotional support you’d always gotten from him. you sigh, your head tilting back against the door as you look at him, your eyes searching his face — hoping to find something, anything "can't go in-n-out her life.”

he knows you’re softening. he knows he just has to keep you talking to him. he knows he just has to keep himself pressed up against you like this, his touch making you feel things you’ve tried your best to forget for so long. he watches you closely, his gaze flicking between your eyes and your lips. “then lemme stay, darlin’. lemme stay tonight.” he murmurs, moving to trace his nose along your jaw.

you can practically feel the tension leaving your body as his words wash over you, the fight leaving your eyes. your shoulders drop and you find yourself leaning into his touch, your mind screaming at you that this was a bad idea, but your body simply responding to the way he’re touching you. “stay.” you manage, voice barely above a whisper.he speaks softly, his grip on your waist tightening slightly as he ducks his head, resting his forehead against yours.

you feel every breath he takes, the scent of him filling your senses and sending your head spinning. he's so close, closer than he's been in months, and you can feel his breath warm against your skin. he closes his eyes, his voice a low rumble as he speaks again. “missed ya. missed this, missed our baby.”

with your defenses lowered and your emotional barriers crumbling, you give in to the overwhelming feeling of wanting to be close to him, needing to feel the comfort of his presence again. you nod weakly, your voice soft and vulnerable. "i missed you too. missed you and her. missed being close to you like this." you swallow hard, tilting your body towards him — silently inviting him closer.

his gaze softens as he takes in your vulnerability, the way you’re just crumbling in front of him, the way you sound like you need him as much as he needs you. he can’t help the wave of possessiveness that washes over him. he growls softly, his arms wrapping around you tighter, pulling you more firmly against him. “m’here now, mama.” he murmurs, his lips skimming across your exposed shoulder, a small shiver running through your body as he begins to pepper you with light kisses up your neck.

the reassurance in his tone soothed you enough, at least enough to end up on your back with him in between your legs yet again.

[girlietips]

What I would do to get healthy for summer 🏃🏼‍♀️🧘🏼‍♀️

So I’ve seen a lot of summer body talk on tiktok and while I think the way a lot of people are going about it in a very toxic manner I do understand the want to get healthy and fit for summer.

Here is my routine that I am doing to get fit and healthy by June as someone who prioritizes adding value to my life instead of taking away things.

So since I am posting this late February I’m just going to say we have three months until summer. I also recommend tracking your progress in some way. You don’t have to use the scale a tape measure is a great way to measure progress. I also recommend keeping track of non scale victories such as any improvements with a certain exercise, clothes fitting different and mood improvement.

March

We are gonna start slow and mindful.

I think it is good to track your calories. Not going into a deficit just yet but tracking your maintenance calories (the calories to maintain your weight) and your protein (about 1 gram per pound of body weight). This will make you more mindful of your choices and help you understand some of your eating habits.

THIS IS NOT TO MAKE YOU FEEL ANY SHAME AROUND EATING!!! This is to show how you can fit your favorite foods in with moderation.

For example I recently was one a calorie deficit where I made great progress I still ate my favorite foods. Every Friday night me and my sorority sisters would split two medium dominos pizzas. I still wanted to enjoy that time so early Friday morning I would plug into my app that I was going to eat 2 slices of pizza. Then I would make sure my breakfast and lunch would be lighter but still high protein.

Also if you have a history of EDs follow the advice of your doctor and your plan.

Getting your steps in is a very easy way to raise your base metabolic rate (the number of calories your body uses just by existing)

10,000 is a great goal but if you find that too intimidating or you have other health concerns I recommend starting with just adding 2,000 steps to however many you normally get. So if you normally get 5,000 try for 7,000

I also think if you have access to a gym you should start going there to walk on the treadmill this way you can begin to get over gym anxiety and build the habit of going to the gym.

Water is literally so important and unless you are making a conscious decision to drink water you probably are not getting enough.

2 liters is the goal so buy a big water bottle and make sure it is always with you.

Also if you don’t like the taste of water I like to add lemon juice to mine and there are also great water flavoring options.

This is weird and might just be a me thing but get a straw I drink 10x the water if I have a straw than if I don’t.

You need protein to maintain muscle especially if you are going on a deficit. Like I said you should eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.

If that is really difficult aim for at least 100 grams.

I also recommend finding a protein powder and bar that you like. Also I am not trying to sell you that they are more enjoyable than a candy bar or milkshake but I will say they are more enjoyable than eating a chicken breast. If you have a sweet tooth or don’t eat a lot of meat this is the way to go.

Also really important that you are still getting a proper amount of fiber to keep your digestion moving. Highly recommend Metamucil if this is something you struggle with. But also just making sure you are eating enough fruits and vegetables

April

Now that we have built up some good habits we are going to add some more.

Now you are going to add some kind of resistance/strength training to your routine.

If you’ve been going to the gym to walk start going to the weight room and grabbing some dumbbells. There are a lot of easy 1 dumbbell full routines on YouTube and TikTok so you can be in a corner and get a full workout.

If you go for a walk outside maybe end it with a YouTube workout video.

Start doing this 3-4 times a week on top of your steps goal.

This is also the time I would look towards your goals and adjust your diet and calories. Maybe you want to lose weight maybe you want to gain some weight.

If you want to lose weight don’t go extreme a deficit of 300 calories is still a deficit. No grown human can survive on 1000 calories or less. Also make sure you are eating enough protein and healthy fats still.

If you want to gain weight make sure you are strength training and upping your protein and calories so you gain muscle and strength.

If you just wanna maintain but improve your diet I suggest making healthy swaps (such as trying different higher protein ingredients, fun healthy snacks, or eating less processed food). There are so many delicious whole food recipes to try I recommend trying a new one a week.

May

May is about consistency and discipline. By now you most likely have a decent workout schedule and have made some real change with your diet. I recommend making a schedule for the month and sticking too it completely.

Keep track in a journal or habit tracking and see how many days in a row you can maintain your routines and health.

Also set yourself a reward for keeping up. My reward is going to be another piercing once I get back to my home state but it can be really anything that you really want.

If you mess up DO NOT THROW AWAY THE MONTH. Discipline and consistency are hard to build but your hard work does not disappear because you missed a day. The sun will set and rise the next day and it is better to start the day like any other rather than being hard on yourself. You only fail when you give up completely.

This will also be a great time to compare your progress.

Maybe you run faster or lift heavier.

Maybe you actually found healthy food that you like and enjoy making

Maybe you feel more confident in your skin and being active

Whatever it is take notice of the little wins and the big wins

This is what I will be doing to boost my health coming out of winter. I welcome you all to join me. I can’t say I’ll be the most active but if you dm I will see it quicker than my asks if you need to chat.

While diet culture seems to be getting a little extreme rn becoming more healthy is always good and that looks different for everyone.

Xoxo sorry I’m not that active been in a writers block where the only thing that comes to mind is all my chem homework tbh. The summer I should be back to my usual posting schedule but for now I’ll just post when I can. Love you all💋💋

[corviiids]

omg what are your thoughts on the phantom thieves becoming adults and getting jobs :0 i'd love to hear them!

thank you so much for asking. here is one billion words. i will remove my bumper sticker from your car

i am also working on a project which nudges on some of these ideas so shhh! shhhhhhhhhh

ryuji

successfully gets through rehab and recovers enough to launch into a pretty decent competitive track career, which he does for a while, but i think he retires early after deciding he doesn't want that to be his life forever. while spending time with ren doing volunteering, he realises he really enjoys working with kids, so he picks up some qualifications and becomes a gym teacher and track coach for kids. i think for ryuji when he gets older he gets more and more disgusted with the person kamoshida was when ryuji starts working with kids and struggles to understand how anyone could treat them so poorly when ryuji just loves them and wants to help them thrive. anyway he becomes a deeply beloved teacher and coach, basically what someone like kamoshida could have been if he'd been good instead of shit, and spends the rest of his life doing that. he and ren are roommates for a while but he eventually moves out to pursue his career.

ann

she finishes out the game pretty ambitious so i do think she launches into a successful international modelling career. after gaining some notoriety in that space and building up a ton of experience and good contacts i think she starts branching out into launching her own fashion and beauty lines. eventually i think she should become the editor of her own fashion publication too... the others see her on billboards and in magazines and on buses all the time. briefly dips her toe into an acting career after being invited to a film but her performance is so poor she wins an equivalent to the golden razzie which she shows up to accept in person laughing and gushing about what an honour it is so everyone loves her even more for it although she decides not to continue acting after that. important to me is that she gets new cool haircuts. imagining her with close-cropped hair. like not exactly a buzzcut but getting there. she's an icon. she splits her time between LA and tokyo and has apartments in both places but usually prefers to crash at ren or makoto's place in tokyo and be a loving nuisance to them for a while

yusuke

i feel very strongly that yusuke needs to experience the world and branch out because the game kind of goes "yusuke's personality is art" which frustrates me as 1) to be a good artist i think breadth of life experience is valuable and 2) i want yusuke to do fun things. so i think yusuke postcanon tries to immerse himself fully in art for a while but then has kind of an existential crisis about his work feeling superficial to him despite his successes and so he ends up going on extensive sabbatical backpacking around the world and meeting lots of people and experiencing new things and then returning to pour his newfound knowledge of life and wisdom into his art and reaching new depths and takes the art world by storm. and also he always has money for food forever. starts out with an art foundation but eventually gets his own studio apartment which lies abandoned while he's gallivanting. haru furnished it

makoto

to me makoto is one of the characters who finishes the game with the most growing left to do, which makes her really fun to explore postcanon, personally. anyway i think she does become a cop and does it for quite a few years but before long starts to get extremely disillusioned about the work she's doing until she eventually hits quite a severe depressive spiral about the direction her life has taken. then sae and her friends talk her out of her crisis by convincing her that it's never too late to change your life. so she quits her job and in her late 30s/early 40s she goes back to school and gets her law degree and eventually becomes a criminal defence attorney. she also figures out that she is gay. i think this takes her less time than the cop thing but still like probably longer than she'd care to admit. lives alone with a pet. i want to say she either has a dog or some kind of cool reptile like a bearded dragon.

futaba

i have a running joke with myself that akechi puts her onto r/overemployed and so futaba has like six or seven remote IT jobs at major companies around the world, none of which know about each other, all of which she does from the comfort of her house. anyway she gets loaded off a series of extremely good and mysterious investments that she refuses to explain so she's mostly just working for fun. gets back into hacktivism also mostly just for fun. sometimes she anonymously drops entire indie games for free online which go viral without fail. moves out on her own in adulthood but still spends most weekends and days at sojiro's and has a WFH office set-up in his house which he complains about and doesn't mind at all.

haru

so i think haru spends a long time working to restore okumura foods to the vision that her grandfather originally had for it and does succeed to a good extent in the sense that it becomes a more ethically-run company with an improved reputation, but okumura foods is a major global corporation and by nature it just cannot attain that local mom-and-pop vibe that her and her grandfather wanted. so i think after a while she retains her shareholding in the company but gives up her directorship to other trusted board members and uses okumura foods as a launching off point to branch out into starting her own much smaller company, which she keeps local and runs herself, and it does become the well-loved community hub she always wanted it to be. doesn't live in tokyo directly because she prefers quieter areas on the outskirts but commutes there merrily all the time to work and see her friends.

sumire

i personally don't think sumire ever achieves her and kasumi's dream of being number one in the world. i think she competes at an international level and comes very close many many times before she eventually comes to peace with that, decides that that's enough for her, and retires from competition. for a while she follows a similar path to ryuji and becomes a children's gymnastics coach, but after a while of other people encouraging her that she could be applying her skills to more competitive pursuits just in a different way, she eventually becomes an olympic-level professional coach and ends up helping many of her students achieve her and kasumi's dream in their stead. also doesn't live in tokyo but visits frequently and has an active whatsapp chat running with ren and akechi on top of the thieves chat.

akechi

decides he's had enough of being dead after a minute. takes a gap year and starts college at the same time as ren. studies law and goes into criminal practice, but bounces between defence and prosecution before getting fucking sick of it and deciding to quit law. he starts his own small private detective agency instead. years later he writes a book and eventually re-enters the media world with a significantly different image to his detective prince years. is surly the ENTIRE time. somehow this doesn't hurt his popularity. no longer has a food blog. moves in with ren after ryuji moves out but not initially romantically, just as roommates with a Tension that makes everyone else extremely uncomfortable

ren

i think ren struggles for a while to work out what his career should be before he eventually figures out he is not the type to get fulfilment from his professional life, and wants to focus more on what he's doing in his personal life, which is helping people. basically after graduation he moves back to tokyo and goes to college and changes his mind a whole bunch of times before eventually settling on some kind of psychology/sociology degree, but then mostly just continues doing a lot of part-time jobs to keep himself afloat while he figures out his life plan. during this time he starts getting into volunteering and social work and spends more of his time working with vulnerable and at-risk youth, basically whatever will put him in most contact with people who need him in a non-paid capacity. eventually when sojiro is set to retire ren takes over leblanc and runs it peacefully as his day job, and the rest of his time is spent on non-profit work. living with akechi.

morgana

the damn cat lives forever. the sakuras and ren's parents have a shared custody agreement. he disregards this and spends most of his time with ren. he and akechi are fine with each other but do not get along vis a vis homemaking decisions mostly because morgana has opinions about their lifestyle choices and akechi doesn't take well to being told where to keep his dishes by a small creature without thumbs.

[honourablejester]

Honestly, this (the crafting, modifying and inventing rules) is one of the most exciting parts of BitD so far for me. The rituals were what first sparked for me, because the idea that I can just invent spooky magic rituals for my character is delightful, but the gadgets and alchemicals are also delightful. Both Whisper and Leech were the playbooks that first called to me, and this kind of thing is very much part of why.

Vague gadget ideas I’ve been dabbling with:

The obvious, goggles that let you see into the ghost field. No self-respecting Leech is going to leave that the preserve of Whispers and their spooky masks! There is nothing magic has wrought that science cannot equal! Potential details: will highlight ghosts in red if they’re feral?

On a similar theme of goggles, goggles that give you something like Dishonored’s Dark Vision power, the ability to see the presence of living people through walls (it works by sensing Plasm, obviously), basically giving you a sort of life-focused x-ray vision.

A palm-mounted device like a shock buzzer that acts as something of an inversion of the Lurk’s ‘Ghostly Veil’ ability: it temporarily forcefully shunts someone else into the ghost field, rendering them insubstantial, for those moments when you need someone to let go of you right now or you desperately need to not be fighting them. Might have unfortunate effects on the victim, which will undoubtedly invoke long-term consequences.

Higher level, but if we’re thinking weapons and we’re already in the realm of lightning, gaslamp fantasy, demon-slash-lifeforce powered weaponry … I mean, is it too much to ask for a death ray? Some sort of hideous little thing that forcefully rends someone’s ghost from their still-living body, or drains them of Plasm (and stores it as power, because then we could have a self-powering hand-held murder machine). How does that interact with the spirit bells of the crematorium? (This one’s obviously going to be a long clock and several interim stages to develop).

… I promise I’m not looking at the Leech playbook purely to play a monstrous Victorian-esque mad scientist? Honest, yer honour. But. Well. A life of crime probably would be necessary to fund and advance my research? And in my defence, the first thing the book itself suggests trying to invent is a flamethrower, so I don’t think a death ray is all that out of left field?

I do think fiction is the answer here, alongside building on things suggested or built from other abilities/items in Blades itself. What Dishonored power to you want to replicate? What crackpot silver age of comics device do you want to cobble together and power by demon blood in your semi-flooded underground lair (that you must perforce share with the rest of your crew, do try not to blow us all up or summon some sort of horrific demon on top of us, darling)? Do you want to rip off Stephen Strange and make an arcane amulet that allows you to rewind time a few seconds? How would you feel about a death ray?

This is a steampunk fantasy setting where electricity exists and is literally powered by demon blood, where ghosts can be captured in bottles and sold on the black market, and the light from the shattered sun has been replaced by fish bioengineered with life energy until they glow bright enough to grow plants. Go nuts. Play with life, death, lightning, magic, machinery, biology! Frankenstein your way to a hideous future funded and inspired by your life of crime!

(Or, you know. Be a little bit more practical and focus on simpler things like glass cutters and breaching charges and sonic grenades that can confuse and delay the deathseeker crows. Or a contact vapor that instantly erases the last, say, 30 seconds or so of someone’s memory. Or a watered-down version of Drift Oil that instead of making you float for an hour simply makes you lighter and more agile, as if you were operating in moon gravity. It takes all kinds, you know).

But yes, I do understand the difficulty. When I was homebrewing a class for Heart: The City Beneath, a similar fiction-focused ttrpg, I found myself trying to nail down the concrete limits of various abilities as if they were for a more mechanical system, before realising that Heart does not work like that. You can just say ‘if you succeed your roll, this ability turns you invisible until you’re out of the current situation’. It’s a genuine shift of mindset. You have to pull back out of stats and bonuses and durations and ranges, and just go ‘this lets you do [cool thing], tell me what that looks like in this situation’.

Have to say, one of the biggest hurdles in introducing one of my usual gaming groups to a system like Blades in the Dark is the idea that items don't have defined stats and are instead props to twist the fiction in interesting ways. It often feels like I'm using therapy speak on a very literally minded engineer.

Player: Alright, I've spent some downtime crafting, what can I make? Me: What would you like to make : ) ? Player: Like, is there a list? Me: Nope : ) , you're limited by your imagination and what we agree would be best for the story. Player: Well are there suggested guidelines for what an appropriate item would be? What Bonuses It can give me? Me: Items don't really give bonuses : ) , now how about you tell me what emotions finishing this project stirs in your character? Player: What was even the point of this? Also stop saying ": )" I don't know how you're doing that with your mouth.

Honestly it's a fascinating study in what assumptions ttrpgs make about the people playing them: Namely that a prospective BitD player has some personal skill or desire to act as a storyteller, and doesn't put much emphasis on the nitty-gritty of the rules.