#For how much time I spent agonizing over things I did or did not do I sure don't remember all that much

[humanmorph]

I wish I could visit the school library at my old school one last time I wanna know if it looks literally any different

[nerdy-novelist017]

Perfect (Benny Cross x Shy! Reader pt 7)

The chapter we've all been waiting forrrr! 🤗 I won't lie to you, I'm slightly terrified to post this chapter, but you all are so kind. I hope this is everything you wanted it to be! 🫶

Benny X Bunny Masterlist

Word Count- 3.8k (woah, got a little carried away)

Summary- You've lived your whole life according to what everyone else wanted you to be. Tonight would be the first night of your new life -- one where you decided who you were.

******

You took a deep breath, holding it in for a few moments in an attempt to calm your quickened pulse. You had spent the whole rest of the day yesterday thinking about nothing but your future. What was set in stone and what was up to you. You knew what you didn’t want, that much was clear to you now. But could it be possible to have what you wanted when you weren’t even sure if that was what you were?

By the time you had dressed and made your way downstairs for breakfast, you felt as though you were being torn in two. One side was what your head told you to do, the more sensical side. And the other was what your heart wanted to do, the more exciting side. You entered the kitchen where your mother stood at the stove, her hair still in rollers and an apron tied around her waist as she prepared breakfast. 

“Morning, Mama,” you greeted quietly as you approached her to help. Cooking breakfast was your usual routine with your mother, a time spent with secretive giggles and never-ending stories. It was a time where the two of you would be uninterrupted, consumed by only each other in your own world. A place where you would complain to her about your boy troubles at school or how the popular girls were mean to you that day. And as you grew older, and things like high school drama no longer seemed to matter, it became a place where you could talk to her about her life. Where she would tell you how to be mindful of the world around you as she taught you to make poached eggs. A place where she had mentioned numerous times how happy she was because of her family, because of you.  A safe place – home. 

“Morning, honey,” she replied as she shot you her usual cheerful smile. “Coffee’s on the table.”

You thanked her as you poured yourself a cup. You put your apron on and began to help with the homemade pancake batter. You were so lost in the endless sea of thoughts that when your mother mentioned a familiar name, you nearly spilled the bowl of batter. 

“What?” you asked as you looked over at her. 

“I said Pete came by, asking for you,” she repeated as she did a double take at your crestfallen expression. 

“He did?” you inquired in a small voice. “Did he . . . say anything?”

“He asked if he could speak with you. He seemed real insistent,” she laughed. “I had to tell him you were in the shower to finally get him to leave.”

At your silence, she continued hesitantly, “How did your date go?”

You sighed, “It was . . . okay.”

“He seems like a real nice guy.” 

You nodded weakly, feeling oddly reluctant to tell her what had happened at the golf course, the anger in his eyes, the sudden volume in his voice as he slammed his hands against the car.

She lowered the spatula she was using to stir the scrambled eggs, and she turned to face you fully. “Is everything okay, (Y/N)?” 

You nodded again but when you glanced up at her, you could see the disbelief in her eyes. You could fool a lot of people, but your mother was never one of them. 

“What’s going on?” she prodded in that controlled mix of gentle firmness that only mothers can conjure. You were silent for several long beats, unsure of how to vocalize your feelings. 

“I don’t think I want to go out with Pete anymore, Mama,” You admitted softly and being able to speak those words aloud for the first time felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted off your shoulders so you go on, “I don’t like the way he treats me compared to others. I can’t see myself being married to him.”

She fell quiet for a few agonizing moments, and you worry that you might have said too much. You avoided her gaze, looking down at the raw batter in front of you as you tried to figure out how you can fix what you’ve just said. 

But then, “Is there someone else you met?”

You looked back at her face, your heart sinking at the sight of her serious, unreadable expression and your mouth suddenly felt too dry to speak. You only nodded. 

She looked down at her pan of eggs for a moment. “Was it that blonde boy? The one with the motorcycle?”

Your mouth fell open in shock. “How–?”

“I saw him drop you off last night,” she explained. “I was reading in my bedroom when I heard the engine pull up. And when I looked out the window, I saw the two of you standing there.”

Your heart skipped a beat at the realization that Benny was not a secret of yours anymore. He was living in your reality now, a figure to receive the scutanty of your parents, of your neighbors, of your family. The thought left a pit to form in your gut. 

“Your father will never approve of that, (Y/N),” she said, firmly shooting down your outlandish hopes. “You know that.”

“I know. I just . . . ” you trail off with a sigh as you sink into one of the chairs at the small breakfast table in the kitchen. “He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before, Mama. He’s fun and exciting. He just seems to understand me so perfectly. And the way he talks to me, the way he makes me feel about myself . . .”

Your mother abandoned her position at the stove to sit in the chair beside you. “That isn’t a practical choice, honey. It’s not going to guarantee you any stability for your future. I want you to have a good life, to live in a good house with a husband that has a good job. He isn’t that and who knows if he will ever be able to provide you with those things.”

You swallowed the painful lump forming in the back of your throat as you looked down at your lap, knowing that she’s right. 

Her hand slid across the table to grab yours tightly. “But I also saw the look on his face as he watched you walk up to the house. That look of pure devotion and love.” There were tears shining in her eyes as she struggled to speak. “And I realized I have never seen your father look at me the way that boy looked at you.” 

Your heart shattered at her admission, and you squeezed her hand tightly, stunned into silence. 

“All I want in life is for you to be happy. That’s all I want. Every time I see a shooting star or blow out the candles on my birthday cake, I make a wish for you to live a happy life.” She swallowed thickly as her eyes fluttered over your features. “I understand that your happiness might not look the same as mine, and that’s okay. Your father won’t approve of this, and you know how he gets. But I will always support you – always.”

“Oh, Mama,” your voice cracked as you stood quickly to wrap your mother in a tight hug. 

As you stood in the embrace of your mother’s arms, you realized it had been a long time since you had been consoled like this by her. And in this moment, you felt like a little girl again, still in need of your mother’s infinitely understanding advice and kind hugs. Muffled by her sweater, you whispered, “You make me happy, Mama.” 

“You make me happy too, my girl,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. She pulled back eventually, holding you by the shoulders. “I want you to choose the thing that will bring you happiness.”

You nodded and she reached out to wipe the tears that had fallen down your cheeks as she said, “Now, help me finish breakfast before those eggs start to burn.”

“Yes, Mama,” you laughed, sniffing as you watched her move back to the stove, noticing the undeniable actions of her swiping at her own tears as she did. 

And now you stand, at the threshold of someplace you’d never expected to be, you’re nervous, but sure of yourself. Thunder rolled through the sky as a storm brewed in the distance, and you almost laughed at the realization that you had successfully outran the storm, a strangely comforting irony. Releasing your breath, you push open the door before you could give it another thought. 

The inside of the Vandals clubhouse is bustling with people, more than you had ever seen in one small place. Cigarette smoke filtered through the air, covering the environment in a haze. Loud voices, glass clinking, cue balls clacking against the pool tables all mix together with the music playing from the jukebox in the back. Overwhelmed, you stand in the doorway for a moment, eyes scanning through the sea of bodies covered in the infamous Vandals colors. After a moment of hesitation and a brief thought of turning around and going back out the door you came in, you pushed on, sliding into the room like a boat into a river. Weaving your way through the packed bar, you passed a few tables where someone bumped into you as they stood from their seat. You apologized and tried to move by, but the unfamiliar man reached out and grabbed your wrist.

“Where are you off to, pretty little thing?” he asked, his voice slurring as he tried to grin at you but he must have been seeing double because his eyesight was staring at the spot over your right shoulder. Before you could respond, someone else from the table spoke up, his voice barely heard over the noise of the bar.

“Hey, I know you,” he said, his dark slicked back hair and clean shaven face familiar, but you couldn’t place his name. “You’re Benny’s girl.”

You felt heat rise to your cheeks at his words and you shrunk into yourself a bit, losing a bit of your already wavering confidence.

“It’s Wahoo,” he clarified as he too stood from his seat, moving to grab his drunk friend and pull him away from you. “Don’t let him bother you, he didn’t know who you were, was all.”

You nodded, grateful for his help. “Is Benny here?”

“Yeah, ’was over by the pool table in the back last I saw,” Wahoo responded as he pointed in the general direction. 

You tried to steady your pounding heart as you made your way to the back of the bar. Brushing into a temporarily clear path, that’s when your eyes found his tall, lean figure, that dirty blonde hair and wicked grin. Your steps faltered a bit. He hadn’t seen you yet, you could still turn around and go back to your ordinary life. But that wasn’t what you wanted anymore. You were scared, but you were here anyway. You approached the table where you saw other faces you recognized (Johnny, Brucie, Gail, Zipco and a few others whose names you hadn’t committed to memory yet) but none of them were your primary focus. 

Gail was the first to notice you nearing, and she elbowed her husband to get his attention as she said something you couldn’t quite detect in the loudness of the bar. But her commotion with Brucie garnered Johnny’s interest as he two turned to look at you, a smile breaking out across his face. Benny turned from his sidestance, his eyes scanning over the crowd in an attempt to see what was so important to distract the players while the game continued. His eyes roved over your face for a fleeting second, continuing on before jumping back to you in a flustered doubletake. 

Then suddenly, you were on the other end of the pool table, directly across from Benny who looked at you as though you were an apparition. You leaned your hands to rest against the pool table, trying to look more confident than you were as you felt the eyes of every person near the pool table on you. 

“Bunny?” Benny asked, almost speechless as he handed his pool stick off to Zipco. He rounded the table to be closer to you as he continued. “What–what are you doin’ here?” 

“I came to speak with you,” you respond, eyes glancing at the others around the table before landing on him again. “To ask you something.”

He got the hint loud and clear. “C’mon,” he said as he grabbed your hand in his own and pulled you through the room to the backdoor where he pushed it open and motioned for you to go first. 

It had already begun to rain lightly, tiny droplets hitting the concrete with a gentle pitter patter. The coolness of the outside air surrounded you in a pleasant way compared to the atmosphere inside. There were a few bikers out back smoking and talking, but Benny didn’t seem to mind their presence as he led you down the way, keeping under the dry safety of the overhang. 

“Is it always that busy?” you ask when you both stopped. With your back against the brick wall and Benny standing just in front of you, the overhang didn’t offer much room from the rain. But that didn’t seem to bother him either as his eyes were locked onto you despite the roof runoff hitting his jacket. 

“No.” He shook his head. “There was a convention in town today and most of those guys in there are from Columbus. I’m sure that’s pretty overwhelming for you.” 

Your heart fluttered at his gentle squeeze of your hand and you were acutely aware that he hadn’t let you go since pulling you along out here. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Did you walk here?” he asked, and thunder rumbled somewhere behind him.

“No, I rode my bicycle,” you replied. “Bike, I should say, makes me sound cool like you guys.”

“You’re way cooler than me, Bunny,” he said, his voice low as he wore a lopsided smile.

You couldn’t help but mirror his expression as you looked up at him, realizing just how close the two of you were. The scent of his cologne tickled your nose in a way that sent butterflies fluttering through your stomach. It was almost unfair, you realized, that he was so effortlessly attractive – he looked good, he sounded good, he smelled good – and you don’t think he even knew the effect he had on you. And he had the audacity to look at you like you were the gem. 

“What?” he asked after your beat of silence, his eyes flickering to your lips.

“Nothing,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper as you blurted out the question that had been burning inside you the entire ride here. “Do you want to go to California with me?”

“Right now?” 

“No.” You tried to cover your giggle. “I mean, some day. I do want to go. Remember when we talked about it?”

“I remember.”

Benny’s unwavering gaze caused your heart rate to speed up but you trudged on, “I’ve always thought it wasn’t a practical dream, that somehow it couldn’t be me who walked down the beach because I'd been too busy with school and then school became work and work would become marriage and keeping house.” Your carefully rehearsed speech began to fragment as you spilled your jumbled thoughts. “But I realized that is so silly because it’s my life, and I–I can do whatever I want with whoever I want. And I want to go to California to see the Pacific Ocean, and I was wondering if you’d want to go with me.  So . . . what do you say?”

He stepped closer to you, his face just inches from yours, his voice incredibly gentle as he said, “I think I'd go just about anywhere you asked me to, Bunny. But are you sure it’s me who you’re wantin’ here?”

Your brow furrowed slightly at his response. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because I’m not the kind of guy girls like you fall for. I’m the exact opposite.” His free hand reached out and brushed a tendril of your hair behind your ear as his voice dropped an octave. “But when I'm with you . . . I feel like I could do better. Like maybe I could be better. Not perfect, but something closer to worthy.”

“I’ve been perfect my whole life. Perfect grades, perfect smile, a perfectly quiet doll on the shelf.” You look at the biker standing before you. The exact opposite of what you’ve been surrounded by your entire life. The exact person you’ve been told to stay away from. But there were things that you noticed about him now that you hadn’t when you first saw him at the picnic. Those hands, calloused and scarred from years of fighting, were holding your own gently as if you were made of glass. That mouth, capable of verbally hurting just about anyone who got in his way, only ever spoke softly to you. Those eyes which have undoubtedly seen their fair share of the worst of humanity, gaze at you as if you were the moon. This man, the excitement you feel you’ve been unknowingly waiting for your whole life. You stepped closer to him, your noses brushing together softly as you whispered, “I don’t think I want perfect anymore.”

“What do you want, Bunny?” he asked, an unmistakable vulnerability in his raw voice. 

Your answer to him in nonverbal as you closed the gap between you, lips pressing against his softly. The world seemed to pause as you gently kissed Benny, your heart pounding in your chest. The kiss was soft at first, tentative as you both seemed to test the waters of something new and uncharted. Overcome by your overthinking, you began to draw back, but Benny’s palm cupped the side of your face, pulling you back to him with a more meaningful kiss. His lips were warm and rough, a stark contrast to the gentle way his hand held yours early as he deepened the kiss with a sense of urgency that sent a wave of heat to fill your core. His hand moved to protect the back of your head as he backed you up to the cool brick of the wall behind you. 

Benny’s mind was racing with a whirlwind of emotions he wasn’t used to feeling. He had been careful, so careful, to keep his distance, to remind himself that a girl like you would never be with a man like him. He had hoped, prayed, that you might return even an ounce of his feelings for you, but he had to be realistic. You were a beautiful dream, so far out of his reach. But now with your lips on his, your fragile hands clutching the fabric of his jacket, he couldn’t deny the truth any longer. You were breaking down every wall he had built, showing him that just maybe, he was worth more than he believed. 

He had never kissed anyone like this before – with a mix of tenderness and passion that made his heart ache in a way that both terrified and galvanized him. He moved his hand down your side, gripping your hip tightly. He didn’t want to let go, didn’t want this moment to end. Because in this kiss, he felt something he hadn’t in a long time: hope.

He’d spent so long believing he wasn’t good enough– that his life was too rough, too messy for someone like you. But in this moment, as your breath mingled with his own and your heartbeat racing against his chest, he started to believe, even just a little, that he could be the man you saw in him. That he could be worthy of this, of you. 

Your lips parted slightly, and Benny took the invitation, kissing you with a newfound fervor, pouring all his sentiments into it – the longing, the fear, the hope. The connection between you felt electric, and for the first time in a long time, Benny didn’t feel lost. He felt found. Found by you, found by this moment. 

This is real, he thought almost in disbelief, She chose me. He could hardly comprehend it, but the evidence was right there in the way that you kissed him back with equal intensity, the way you clung to him as if he was the only thing grounding you. His lungs burned and he had to pull back, but he kept his eyes closed as he rested his forehead against yours, his thumb stroking your cheek. I don’t deserve her, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, but for the first time, another voice – a stronger one– countered, Maybe I could someday. 

He opened his eyes, seeing the softness in your gaze, the way your parted lips were slightly swollen from the kiss. It hit him then, like a bolt of lightning. He wanted to be better, not just for himself, but for you. Because you deserved more than just a rough-edged biker, you deserved the world. And if you’d let him, Benny was determined to give it to you. 

“Was–was that okay?” you asked breathlessly, unsure if you’d done it right, but hoping he had felt what you couldn’t put into words. 

His eyes softened even more as a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It was more than okay, Bunny.”

Your smile grew, a little more confident now, despite the heat tinging your cheeks. Suddenly the backdoor squeaked open and Brucie poked his head out the doorway. 

“Benny, you’re up to shoot, kid,” he said and must have seen the closeness of your bodies, the way Benny still held onto your waist because he smirked smugly. 

Benny didn’t even glance over. “Tell ‘em to hold my spot.”

“Pool?” you asked, tugging on his jacket lightly as Brucie disappeared back inside. 

Benny nodded, grinning lazily down at you. “Yeah, you ever played?”

You shook your head, feeling a little shy. “No, never. But . . . I’d like to try.”

He raised his eyebrow, clearly intrigued. “You want me to teach you?”

You nodded, this time with more certainty. “I think I’d like that.”

He took your hand, leading you back inside as the rain continued to pour around you. As he lead you back into the bar, the noise and constant chatter engulfing you once again, you felt reassured by the steady warmth of his hand in yours. And he didn't let go of your hand even when you got to the table. A few members cheered and teased Benny, but he only smiled and shook his head, his focus on you, instead. He stood behind you, positioning you gently. 

“Here’s the thing,” he murmured, his voice low and just for you. “You don’t have to know everything right away. Sometimes it’s about the journey, not just the win.”

You looked over your shoulder with a small smile, your faces only inches apart. “I think I’m ready for the journey.”

Benny’s gaze gentled. “So am I, Bunny. So am I.”

-Tag List-

@ironmooncat @elizabeth916 @jaiuneamesolitaiire @dudii4love @imusicaddict @beebeechaos @astrogrande @pearlparty @themorriganisamonster @sillylittlethrowaway @ughdontbeboring @penwieldingdreamer @charmingballoon @eugene-emt-roe @sunnbib @semperamans @groovyangelkisses @killerqueenfan @cynic-spirit @pomtherine @m00npjm @justsomewritingblog @thepassionatereader @rebecca-hvnstn @nethanybear @dreamlandcreations @buckysteveloki-me @simsiddy @zablife @sansaorgana @autumnleaves1991-blog @butler-trouble @lindszeppelin @wavyjassy @real-lana-del-rey @ilovehyperfixating @xcallmetaniax @lovenewfandoms @youngestxhearts @abaker74 @ateliefloresdaprimavera @thefallofthedamned @hottpinkpenguinreads @nctma15 @vendylewin @capswife @alexa4040 @sweetestrose569 @18lkpeters @thedreamingfish99 @mrsalwayswrite @pearlstiare

[lunarmoves]

who i see, looking back at me (ch1)

pairing: sebastian solace x reader

mentions: post-urbanshade fic, no use of y/n or pronouns, u are his partner <3, hallucinations, grief/mourning, non-sexual intimacy, touch aversion, hurt/comfort, ooc sebastian probably, i took creative liberties with his mom and siblings, tentative reconnecting :), check masterlist for fic summary

a/n: this is something i decided to write after scouring ao3 and tumblr for anything like it and finding nothing. i was just- (thanos voice) "fine i'll do it myself." hope you guys enjoy! i cant believe im simping for a roblox fish man in the year 2024, literally who am i.

word count: 9.5k+

masterlist

ao3 link

When your husband was executed for a crime he did not commit, you decided to move out to the seaside. 

It was a way to just… get away from everything. Start fresh. His face was plastered all over the news after his death sentence. Everywhere you went, it felt as though people were staring at you. Judging you. Hushed whispers followed you just as much as the haunted look on Sebastian’s face when he’d taken his mugshot. It was—unbearable. You needed to get out and away from all the people who only saw you as the partner to a murderer.

His presence lingered everywhere, back at your tiny apartment in the city. From the framed pictures on the wall, to the green toothbrush next to yours, and the faint smell of cinnamon attached to your bedsheets. It was—overwhelming, in more ways than one. You itched and itched with the urge to get out. You stayed only as long as you needed to after his death to go through the process of moving out. It took a couple of weeks. The you from the future would applaud you for lasting longer than a few days, you were certain. 

You didn’t know what to do with all of his things. You sold his expensive belongings unclaimed by his family, like his laptop, electric guitar, and gaming system. The more materialistic items were packed into bins to donate to charity—his old textbooks, binders of sheet music, clothes he seldom wore. The rest you separated into two boxes. One had some things you figured would be appreciated by his mother. The album of his family he kept tucked away in his desk. A small teddy bear he’d had since he was a toddler. Some of his favorite shirts and jewelry he’d been gifted from his siblings. 

The other had things you could not bring yourself to part with. 

You spent a while hovered over that box, tracing the worn edges of a red and black flannel that he always wore around your apartment. There was a small panda plushie that you won at an amusement park on one of your dates and decided to give to him when he said it was ugly-looking. A sketchbook he doodled in from time to time that you didn’t have the heart to open, but knew you would regret giving away. A crumpled piece of paper with hastily scribbled vows on them. Each and every item in the box held some amount of sentimental value—you wondered if it would ever haunt you, keeping them. Part of you already knew the answer.

When you dropped off Sebastian’s things at his mother’s house, you couldn’t help the way your heart sank deep into your chest when she opened the door. Maria was a beautiful woman, and you saw traces of Sebastian in her every time you saw her. The warm honey of her skin, the crinkle of her blue eyes, even the way she smiled. It made your eyes sting and ache with something fierce. Agonizing, even now. Especially now.

She looked at you with a sad smile, gratefully accepting the small box you offered her. “Gracias, sweetie,” she said, hands tightening on the edges of the cardboard. “I appreciate you coming out all this way.” 

“It was no problem,” you told her, shifting slightly on your feet. You hadn’t seen her since—well… You cleared your throat, doing your best to ignore a pang of guilt and this ever so tightening feeling in your chest. “How are you doing?” 

She hummed, a weary thing that matched the dark circles under her eyes and the new streaks of gray in her hair. She looked down at the box. “No muy bien,” she murmured, “but who would after losing a child so wrongfully? I can only hope it gets better to handle with time.” Her gaze lifted up to meet your own. “What about you, hm? Almost done packing?” 

Blue eyes the same shade as his. You looked away, staring down at your shoes and her slippered feet. “Yeah,” you said quietly. “Just gotta put a few more boxes into the car.”

“I do not blame you for wanting to get away,” she chuckled. “I would too, if I could.”

As though on cue, there was the sound of a crash somewhere behind her, immediately followed by raised voices. Sebastian’s siblings causing havoc, no doubt. Maria whipped around to shout into her house. “Isidora! Lucas! ¡Comportense!” After she got two distant apologies, she turned back to give you a look. “See what I mean?”

You could only manage a stiff nod, not quite trusting your voice. That feeling in your chest was growing by the second, and you were not sure how long you would last. Maria didn’t deserve this, but you couldn’t help it. You felt like you were being stifled under a large, unforgiving pillow.

You could feel the way she watched you—that same probing stare that Sebastian often wore when he could sense you weren’t feeling well. You continued to stare resolutely at the ground, not wanting her to crack you open like a book to see the way you just couldn’t stand being here right now. She sighed, and you had to suppress a wince.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” she finally said, turning slightly to head back inside. “No eres una desconocida, you hear? You are always welcome here.” 

“Right,” you whispered, and when you finally managed to pull your gaze back up to her face, she only gave you a small, melancholy smile before gently closing the door. You stood there for a moment more, heart beating in your throat as you cursed yourself for being a coward.

The drive down to the seaside was only a few hours. It was relaxing, in its own way, as you passed by concrete buildings that slowly melted away into wide, open fields. Rolling hills and staggering cliffs. You could almost taste the change in the air the closer you got. The stale, musty scent of the city was replaced by a fresh, salty breeze. If you listened close enough, you could hear the distant roar of the ocean as its waves crashed against rock. And once you arrived at what would be your new home for a long, long time, you took a moment to just stand outside and breathe. 

One breath in, one breath out. The seaside air felt cool on your heated face. Out here, you felt like everything could be put behind you. A breath of fresh air to chase away the way you hurt inside. You could finally shed the layer of muddled emotions and thoughts that had surrounded you for weeks. 

If only it was that easy. Still… Baby steps, you reminded yourself.

The cottage you were moving into was a quaint thing, with just enough space for you to live comfortably on your own. It was more than a steal, and you were thankful that you’d managed to snatch it up before anyone else could—and at a reasonable price, too. It sat near the top of a small cove, overlooking miles and miles of open water. If you walked down to the shore—away from the cove—there was a small dock that jutted out into the sea like a pirate’s plank. It was old, though, covered in mold and made of rotting wood that creaked ominously in the breeze. You didn’t dare risk venturing out on it. 

It took you most of the rest of the day to bring all your belongings inside and unpack everything. You stood in what would be your living room, a mess of boxes scattered all around you, and felt a mixture of emotions that you couldn’t make heads nor tails of. Your eyes landed on that small box of Sebastian’s things, and you turned away with this twisting sensation worsening in your gut. 

Getting properly settled in and starting your new job in the nearby town’s clinic took up most of your time. Your energy and thoughts. But at night, when it was just you laying in a too small bed in a too small room, your mind wandered. The moon peering through the small, curtained window into your bedroom bore witness to the way you stared and stared and stared—unblinking at the popcorn texture of the ceiling. Always twisting the gold band that remained on your finger in absentmindedness. 

There was a gnawing ache in your chest that waxed and waned, but it never truly disappeared.

You thought about those final days a lot. They didn’t let you see him. All you got was a single phone call, sometime before his scheduled execution. The contents of that call would follow you no matter how far you tried to run from them. How hard you tried to forget. 

(The phone felt locked in your grip—your fingers tight and stiff. There was a silence that was broken by your name spoken on the tailend of a choked breath. Your teeth clenched so hard you felt a muscle spasm in your jaw.

“I-I didn’t—” Sebastian’s voice stuttered thickly, hushed into the microphone. Something sank down to the soles of your feet, then continued on in an endless spiral. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t.” 

There was something so devastatingly helpless about talking to him like this. Divided across miles and miles, nothing but a thin connection between you and him. Your words his only comfort.

“I know, baby,” you told him miserably, raising a hand to palm at your wet eyes. “I know.”) 

You couldn’t even host a proper funeral for him. His body was never released to his family—for what reason, you were unsure. It felt as though you never had any proper closure. You could scream and cry about the injustice of it all, but… no one would listen. It was done. It was over. There was no getting him back. It was a grim thought that you grappled with on the daily, always present at the back of your mind. At the front of your mind. Suffocated you in gallons and gallons of grief. You did your best to work through it all over time, but sometimes it felt like your best just wasn’t enough.

And then… a couple of years after his death… you got a call. 

You were lounging around in your little living room after a long shift at work, a book splayed out on your lap as you relaxed. Your phone was sitting right by your legs, just out of sight. So when it buzzed with an incoming call, you did not bother to glance at the screen before you answered it.

It was Maria.

The tremble of her voice made you instantly freeze. 

You couldn’t understand what she was saying—so rushed and stifled through choked sobs. You sat up, both your hands gripping at your phone. 

“Maria— wh-what—” you stuttered out, a sinking feeling slowly making itself present in your gut. You stood up, barely registering your book falling off your lap and onto the floor. “What’s—” 

“They— they were wrong,” she hiccuped out, breathless and hysterical. “We knew they were and they— they—” 

“What are you—” You tried to make sense of her words, but she quickly dissolved into more incoherent crying. You swallowed thickly, a cold sweat erupting along your back.

It took you a few minutes to calm her down enough so that she could strangle out a “Check the news.” Your eyes snapped to the darkened television sitting against the wall across from you.

Your throat felt drier than a desert. The remote was wedged between the cushions on your couch, and you fumbled around for it before finally managing to press the power button. Channel twenty-one, the news. You punched it into the remote. 

There was a picture of Sebastian on the screen. His mugshot, actually—black hair messily scattered across honeyed skin, dark eyes that glistened in the dim lighting, thin lips downturned into an unsteady frown. A ringing sound erupted deep within your ears, drowning out all else as your gaze narrowed in on the bold headline. 

Innocent man wrongfully convicted for murder of nine. 

A short, disbelieving laugh escaped from your lips. This was how you found out? They didn’t bother to contact you first? You almost couldn’t believe it. Two years after he’d already been imprisoned. Two years after they’d decided he should die via electric chair. You laughed again, and your phone slipped right from your fingers as you dropped onto your knees. You barely felt the impact—barely heard Maria’s questioning sniffle above the racing of your heart.

You laughed and you laughed and you laughed and you laughed because wasn’t that just the funniest fucking thing? They found out the truth after what had been done to him could never be taken back. After you and his family had fought so desperately to prove his innocence. 

Funny! It was funny!

You bit at your bottom lip to suppress the way it violently quivered. 

Years passed and you continued to live on without Sebastian.

You thought time would help you heal—would dull the ache you experienced at every waking moment of the day and night. But there were times where you just felt infinitely worse. It was awful. It was so utterly miserable, and you were tired. You were just… tired. You couldn’t think about him for too long before you’d feel that familiar sting to your eyes. So you tried not to think about him at all. 

It didn’t work. 

You were plagued by him. Awake or asleep—it did not matter. 

“You’re still up,” he murmured into your ear at night as you laid curled up on your side. Like this, you could face the window of your room—where the moonlight filtered gently through your thin curtains to brush against the walls like the hand of a ghost.

You hummed in response, face partially buried in your pillow. You tried in vain to ignore the presence you felt at your back. Making the hairs prickle on your nape. If you closed your eyes, you could almost feel light breaths against the side of your face. 

“You’ve got work in a few hours, you know,” he said, matter-of-fact. His voice lowered, gentle and calm. “What’s bothering you?” 

There was a pause. Distantly, you could hear the waves of the ocean as the tide rose and fell along the shore. A constant source of white noise. 

“Nothing,” you eventually whispered back, closing your eyes momentarily to breathe in the faint smell of cinnamon. “Nothing at all.”

It wasn’t real, you told yourself. Over and over and over again. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t.

He didn’t stop there. 

He sat across from you at your little dining table in the kitchen, grinning at you as you forked spoonfuls of pitiful dinner after dinner into your mouth. He was in the bathroom, sitting on the lid of the toilet as you showered or brushed your teeth. He was in the living room, sprawled across the floor in front of you as he gazed at you with his face propped atop his palm. 

He accompanied you to work, a pair of blue eyes staring at you in the rearview mirror of your car as you drove. He lingered over your shoulder as you pushed paperwork or chatted to other nurses. Close enough to touch, yet never crossing that line. Always present. Sometimes silent, sometimes not. You weren’t sure which was better.

He was haunting you, and you could do nothing about it. 

The only place where you seemed to have any kind of reprieve was down by the little cove or the shore. You liked taking walks along it—when the walls of your cottage seemed to loom too close for comfort. It was refreshing, being able to just… breathe in the sea air and take in the rolling waves from the sand. A healing balm for your enervated soul. It became a habit no matter the weather, every evening after work. Soaking in the sun, basking in the mist, watching dark clouds grow closer on the horizon. You were oftentimes alone, but occasionally you’d pass a few people also enjoying the fresh air. They never bothered you, so you never bothered them. 

Once you returned home, however, he would be waiting for you at the door—all warm smiles and crinkled eyes that made your insides ache like they never have before.

You contemplated going to grief counseling many times. But something held you back. You just… didn’t have the energy to pick yourself up and go. Didn’t want to come to proper terms with it all, you supposed. Or maybe you were desperately holding on—afraid of letting go completely when you could look in a mirror and see him standing somewhere behind you. It hurt. It soothed. It was a push and pull that you learned to deal with as time went on. 

You often caught yourself staring at the tiny closet in your room—where you’d buried that small box of Sebastian’s things so deeply, it would never see the light of day again. Most of the time, you could drag yourself away from it, pushing it to the back of your mind once more. But one night… you couldn’t help yourself. You caved. You just… needed to.

You pulled the box out from the depths of your closet and sat on the floor, eyeing it warily as you clutched a pair of scissors in your hand. It was just as you’d left it—flaps tightly sealed with packing tape. You hadn’t bothered to label it. You knew what was in there and that was enough. 

You took in a deep breath and stabbed the point of the scissors into the box’s top to pry it open. Then, you stared down at its insides. 

It simultaneously felt like you’d packed his things away in this box just yesterday and a hundred years ago. In any case, the tender ache at seeing it all still persisted.

The panda plushie, which you picked up gingerly and ran your fingers over its short fuzz before setting it off to your side. It used to sit on a shelf, back at your shared apartment, picked up only occasionally when he wanted to throw it at you to bother you. 

(“Sebastian!” you shouted, startled out of your focus on your book when that goddamn panda nailed you directly on your face. You glared at him, setting your book to the side to snatch up the plushie when he laughed hard enough that he doubled over. 

“Oh my god, your face!” he wheezed, swiping a finger under his eyes to wipe away an imaginary tear. “Come on, you didn’t see that coming? You’re losing your game here, babe.”

“Shut up, you ass! I was reading!” you fumed and stood up to pelt the plushie at him. It smacked him right on the arm, and he only laughed even harder.)

The sketchbook, rarely ever seen by your eyes because he was so protective over it. Abashed, more like, you came to realize a while ago. And for a good reason, you supposed, your lips twitching as you flipped open the thick cover. 

There were some landscape drawings at the start—places you recognized at your old university. The café near the library, the statue at the center of the main quad. A few students walking around or sitting outside on benches. Some components from his engineering projects—designs with their associated dimensions, fluid mechanics calculations, free-body diagrams. You saw a handful of drawings of Lucas and Isidora, either fighting or sleeping against each other—gaping mouths and all. 

And then… once you hit a certain point in the book, there were drawings of you. 

He’d been so embarrassed when you caught him sketching you one day, though he’d tried to play it off. It was before he’d asked you out, you remembered. You’d thought it was flattering—at least what you could glimpse on the open pages. He’d slammed the book shut pretty quickly once he’d realized you were peeking over his shoulder.

It wasn’t until years later that he’d finally let you flip through the sketchbook properly. 

Doodles of you sitting around campus, doing homework or looking at your phone. A sketch of you walking down the street or staring out a window. Upper body shots of you smiling, or laughing, or talking to one of your friends. The level of detail always blew you away—he managed to capture details about you that you never quite paid attention to yourself. The crinkle of your eyes or the pull of your lips. 

You gently brushed a finger over a rough doodle of you and him—sitting back-to-back as you did your respective work—then closed the sketchbook to set down next to your legs. 

Next was the crumpled, smudged paper of his vows—that you lingered over for a moment, reading it briefly with a small smile. 

There were the silly ones, where he promised to be the best pain in the ass you could ever ask for. To make fun of you for being shorter than him or annoy you to smithereens everyday because he loved the face you made when you were mad.

Then there were the sincere ones, promising to always love you unconditionally. To take care of you whenever you were sick, or encourage you to be the best version of yourself you could possibly be. To hold your hand whenever you were scared. To always be by your side, no matter what. 

You wiped at your eyes with your sleeve, sniffling slightly, and let the piece of paper flutter down to the ground.

And finally… you picked up the flannel. 

Even after all this time, the material was still soft in your hold. You squeezed it between your fingers, tracing over the lines where patches of black met patches of red. If you closed your eyes and imagined hard enough, you could almost feel a warmth coming from it—like it had just been shucked off a warm body. Raising it up to your face to take a deep breath, you could faintly smell that familiar cinnamon. A comfort. A heartache. 

“You know,” Sebastian started, and you lifted your gaze briefly to glance up at him standing a ways in front of you. “I’ve always liked how you looked in my clothes.” He wore a sharp grin that made his cheek dimple on his right. He winked down at you. “Always liked how you looked outta them too, but that’s neither here nor there. Go on, put it on.” 

You rolled your eyes, but found yourself complying anyway. You stood up and slipped the flannel over your arms, fixing it properly over your shirt. Closing your eyes, you wrapped your arms around yourself. 

You could almost imagine him embracing you. Something in your stomach twinged.

“There you go,” he whispered, a breath of air just barely out of reach in the fragile twilight of your room. “Just look at you.” 

You only smiled sadly at the ground and hugged yourself tighter.

In recent years, the small dock by the shore was stripped down and built anew. 

You saw them doing construction from your cottage’s window when the project was first launched and spent many nights fantasizing about dipping your feet into the water from the dock’s edge. And once it was finally complete—after months and months of waiting and watching—you did just that. 

Your evenings were kept mostly the same with your walks along the shore or within the cove. But now you could trudge out onto the now sturdy dock and embrace the ocean in its entirety. You could let the tips of your shoes protrude off the far end of the dock as you breathed in and out. Salty air. The hint of rain in the distance. The spray of water against your face as the waves ebbed to and fro. It was refreshing. The perfect way to let the incessant buzz of your mind die down in preparation for a quiet night.  

The dock, from what you could see whenever you were at home, was mostly used during the bright hours of day. A couple of fishermen during the afternoon. Teens from the town who wanted to jump off and swim to the shore. Either way, by the time the hush of evening fell as people prepared for bed, the dock was empty and perfect for some alone time. 

It was nice, being able to sit down and soak your feet in the cool water when the weather was warmer. You liked watching the sun as it sank beneath the horizon, painting the sky in shades of burnt mandarin and dusty magenta. The last vestiges of gold light would make way for inky darkness that sparkled with hundreds and hundreds of stars. You were never able to appreciate the night sky in the city—so you took every chance you could to sit and stare up at it. Trying your best to identify constellations or just admiring it all until you got too cold to stay out for much longer. 

Sometimes you ate your dinner out on the dock while you chatted with Isidora or Maria on the phone. Sometimes you brought along a book or sketchpad. You missed listening to Sebastian strum away at his electric guitar at times—always filling your apartment with music—so you impulse bought a ukulele and sat by the sea plucking awkwardly at its strings. The dock became a place to pass time. It became a habit that you stuck to for many years. 

You were familiar with it all after spending evening after evening after evening out on its wooden platform. You could count the number of planks it was made of, the number of nails you could feel under your hands. You learned how to read the sea—when it hinted at an oncoming storm or calm night. In a way, it became a safe space for you, away from the stifling walls of your cottage. 

So naturally, when something disrupted it, you noticed almost immediately. 

You were sitting on the dock, half a sandwich on your lap that you’d scrounged up for a late dinner. Your feet idly swished through the water, cool against your heated skin. The dock was high enough that it only submerged your feet up to your ankles, but you did not mind.

You took another bite of your sandwich, then felt an odd prickling sensation on the back of your neck. Pausing, you noticed the hairs on your arms were standing straight up. It… felt like you were being watched. You glanced around—at the wide ocean before you, then the sandy shore behind you. There were a few stragglers in the distance, but they were far enough that you were sure they were not the cause for your sudden unease. 

You swallowed your bite and decided it was probably nothing. 

The following evening, however, it happened again. Then the next evening. And the next. 

Like clockwork, almost, every time you sat down on the dock to relax after your shifts at work. It did not matter what you were doing, or how late you were there. Even for how long. You would always feel that prickle along your nape, and it would not leave until you walked back down the dock to make your way home. Sometimes it followed you up until you shut the door to your cottage. 

You tried testing to see if you would still feel this way walking along the shore, or lounging on the sand of the cove. But even if you completely avoided the dock, you would still feel that familiar prickle of your hairs standing on end. It was… stupefying. You wondered if you were being paranoid. Or maybe you were losing it, just a little. 

“If it’s any consolation,” Sebastian said one night, watching you with half-lidded eyes as you both sat at your tiny kitchen table. “You might have already lost it, sweetheart.” He only grinned at you when you told him to shut up. 

After weeks of enduring this strange sensation, you decided it was best to just pretend it wasn’t there. You could ignore a little unease if it meant your routine would remain undisrupted. So you sat at the dock and minded your own business. Stared out at the rolling waves, read a book, laid back to stargaze. You were able to find peace again. 

Then, one night, you noticed something. 

It was by chance, really. You were staring out at the sea, watching as the waves crashed against an outcropping of rocks in the far distance. It was dark, the only lighting coming from the moon and the stars. It caused the waters to turn black—void-like, almost, if not for the gentle moonlight. Maybe that was what had ultimately allowed you to see it. 

There, just behind the rocks jutting up from the sea like a jagged line of teeth, was this teal glow above the water. 

It hugged along the wall of rock, barely visible from your vantage point. You paused and found yourself squinting at it, trying to make out what the hell it could possibly be. The moment you stared at it for a second too long, however, it ducked under the water before disappearing out of sight. 

You were confused, yes, but you brushed it off as some sort of reflection. Maybe even a marine animal or bioluminescent plant of sorts, though you weren’t sure what. 

You saw it again some nights later, this time just under the surface of the calm waters by the outcropping. It was oddly hypnotizing, in a way, even muted under the deep, navy waves. A constant presence, throughout the entirety of your time on the dock. You could even see it from your cottage window if you squinted. 

The underwater glow became another upset in your routine that puzzled you to no end. You tried to ignore it like you ignored the prickle along your nape, but it was almost impossible to do so when it was so blatantly present in the water. No matter where you looked, the glow always lingered in your periphery. And it wasn’t like it stayed in the same place either. Some nights, it stayed near the rocks. During others, it seemed to draw closer. Farther. Closer. Closer. Farther. 

Definitely not a plant, you concluded one night as you warily eyed the teal glow as it lingered several meters away. A trick of light? You cast a glance up at the vantablack sky dusted with twinkling white. But no, that would be impossible. It showed up no matter if the night sky was clear or cloudy. 

Maybe you were imagining it after being on your own for so long. You grimaced as you thought about your cottage and the inhabitant waiting for you to return to it. Him. As real as your mind could make him. 

In any case, the glow was not a priority. Not with the way the days cycled on—a twisting, gnawing feeling soon growing in your chest that you were well acquainted with by now. Though you wished desperately that you weren’t. 

You woke up tired. 

Not atypical for you, by any means. But this was a different kind of tired—that lingered deep within your muscles and tissue, even your very soul. It made every single motion feel as though you were lugging along hundred pound weights. You were slow in getting out of bed for this reason, taking a few moments to blink wearily up at your ceiling and rub at your temples in a vain attempt to ease the headache you could feel trying to manifest. Already you were not off to a good start.

Steadily, you sat up and immediately spotted Sebastian looming in the far corner of your room. Smiling at you with his hands shoved into his pockets. He opened his mouth to say something, but you lifted up a hand to stop him. Your throat felt like it was lined with cotton.

“Not today,” you told him, voice barely over a whisper. You closed your eyes, then reopened them to give him a weary look. “Just… Not today.” 

He only closed his mouth and continued to smile at you.   

Once you picked yourself up and trudged over to your bathroom, you took a second to regard your reflection in the small mirror. Dark circles that lined the area under your eyes. A small wrinkle between your creased eyebrows. A dullness to your complexion and a hollowness to your cheeks. You rubbed an eye and sighed, a deep thing that didn’t make you feel any better. The day must go on, as much as you didn’t want it to. 

Your coworkers knew not to pester you too much once they saw you arrive at the clinic, so you were granted the relief of a somewhat quiet day. But that did not make things any easier for you—forcing you to be with the overwhelming spiral of your thoughts. You kept yourself busy with work around the clinic, but by the end of your shift, you somehow felt even worse than you had before. 

On the drive home, you stopped by a store to pick up a couple of groceries you needed. And once you returned home and unpacked everything into their proper places, you whipped up a quick dinner and spent some time sitting at your little table poking at it sluggishly. You weren’t all that hungry, despite only having some crackers and water earlier. Your stomach churned, your chest ached. You feared if you ate too much, you would just end up throwing it all up. 

It was quiet. You took your time to clean up and shower. Procrastinating, you registered faintly at the back of your mind. You slipped on some comfy clothes, then snagged Sebastian’s flannel that you’d never had the heart to pack away back into the box with the rest of his things. It hung on a hook on the back of your bedroom door, next to your towel. Forever a haunting presence in the corner of your world that you grew accustomed to with time. You slipped it on, the sleeves lolling past your hands.

Making your way back to the kitchen, you glanced out the window over your sink at the steadily approaching sunset. You’d gotten home slightly later than usual, but it was fine. You shuffled over to your fridge to grab a small, two-pack container of cupcakes and pried it open to take one out. You rummaged around in a nearby drawer for a few things, then slipped out your front door to make your way down to the dock.

It was a bit colder today, especially with the sun dipping closer down to the horizon to make way for night. You took a moment to stand at the edge of the dock and breathe. The fresh air helped, if only a little. The swell of the waves eased some of the tension lining your shoulders. You sat down, crossing your legs, and set the cupcake atop the small space in front of you. 

Leaning back onto your palms, you watched as dusk bled across the sky until it was overtaken completely by night. The moon painted the waves in a milky glow that highlighted their crests and shadowed their troughs. You could faintly register an ache behind your eyes that worsened bit by bit every time you blinked. You leaned forward and rubbed your cold hands along your upper arms before deciding it was time.

From your pockets, you pulled out a single candle and a lighter. You stuck the candle into the top of the cupcake, then—with a flick of your finger—used the lighter to set it aflame. The tiny, orange bud of fire flickered in the gentle wind and washed its soft glow along your hands and legs. Your wedding ring glinted in its light. You stuffed the lighter back into your pocket and sank into a slouch as you stared at the cupcake. 

Faintly, you could smell cinnamon. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Your eyes stung, unblinking as they were. You swallowed and it was like choking down a bucket full of thorns.

He would have been thirty-two today, you thought miserably to yourself as you stared and stared and stared. The fact settled over you like a particularly suffocating blanket. That fatigue you'd felt earlier came back full force, accompanied by a wrenching feeling in the pit of your gut.

Thirty-two. Your face felt hot and cold all at once. You rubbed at your cheek and your fingers came away wet. You exhaled a shuddering breath.

All those years of missed opportunities and moments. No waking up to his slumbering face or to his gentle kisses on your eyelids. No playful teasing or hugs that stole the breath right out of your lungs with how tightly he squeezed. No midnight dances in your little kitchen, swaying back and forth to an imaginary tune. No being loved by him. 

Your heart ached.

“Happy birthday, my love,” you whispered out into the still air, closing your eyes momentarily as your jaw trembled. “I miss you. So, so much.” 

You leaned forward and blew out the candle. 

Then, you buried your face in your palms. And you cried.

You weren’t sure how long you stayed there, hiccuping into your hands. It hurt, god, it hurt so much. It always did. You were sure even years down the line, you’d find yourself trapped in the same wallowing pit of despair. The pain dulled, yes, but ever so sharp and present when the time lined up perfectly—as much as you dreaded it. Your chest hurt with the way you suppressed your pain.

When you finally managed to pull the shaking pieces of yourself together, everything felt numb with cold. Your head was stuffy, your eyes were bleary. You sniffed and had to choke back another sob. It truly never got easier, even after all this time. You needed some painkillers and a long, long rest.

Sighing, you plucked the cold candle from the cupcake along with its paper wrapping to toss into your trash later. You stood up and hugged yourself, giving the lone dessert another long glance before turning on your heel to head back into the warmth of your cottage. Come morning, the birds will have eradicated all traces of the cupcake from the dock, as they tended to do.

As you walked, the back of your neck prickled all the way up to your door.

In the following days, you noticed the teal glow you’d been seeing underwater was growing closer and closer—even moreso than it had been before. 

This would not have alarmed you too heavily—after all, it wasn’t like it hadn’t been going back and forth in terms of distance for a while—but it was getting to the point where it was only a few meters away. You could slip into the water and swim over easily, you mused, as you warily eyed the glow. Just in case, you decided to avoid sticking your feet into the water for now. 

You couldn’t kid yourself anymore. It was weird—really weird. Pair up the glow with the ever present prickle along your nape and Sebastian’s haunting presence at home, and you had a recipe spelling out… well… mental disaster. It was all you could do to hang on. There really wasn’t much you could do about it anyways, you figured. These days you were just too tired to care.

Currently, you were sitting cross-legged in your usual spot on the dock, aimlessly scrolling through your phone’s notifications as you enjoyed the night air. You had a couple of messages from Maria to respond to—you’d been trying to get better at maintaining contact with her every so often. It was a work in progress, but at least texts were easier for you to deal with than phone calls.  

You thumbed through the rest of your notifications. Lucas had sent you a meme around one in the morning last night that you’d missed. He was in his last year in university, you mulled. How time has flown. You remembered when he was still an annoying preteen, bugging Sebastian to use his no doubtfully expensive guitar. It was difficult to get Sebastian to ever part with it. The thought made you smile slightly to yourself, then you sobered upon remembering you’d had to sell it. In hindsight, Lucas’ guitar phase hadn’t lasted all too long—or maybe he hadn’t wanted something that reminded him of his older brother so much. Sweet memories turned sour after the execution. You sighed and sent him a meme back after liking the one he’d sent. Something about weird-looking cats. 

Oh, one of your coworkers wanted to grab dinner in a couple of days. Hmm. You checked your calendar, then sent off a response text in agreement. The distance you were from the nearby town was not large by any means, but it was enough that you rarely sought exchanges outside of work. You really needed to get out more. Most of your other interactions were online, especially after moving from the city and away from everyone and everything. It certainly was not doing you any favors. 

As you typed up a comment on one of your older friend’s social media posts, you noticed something. 

Just over the top of your phone screen—reflected in the dark water of the ocean. You paused and lowered your phone to stare at it. 

It was the teal glow, brighter and closer than it had ever been before. You eyed it for a moment, apprehension taking root in the pit of your stomach. But there was also this sense of tentative curiosity. You leaned forward just enough to peer down at it beyond the dock’s edge, submerged as it was beneath the gentle waves. It was almost underneath you, oddly hypnotizing as you tilted your head at it. You felt as though you could be sucked right into it, lulled into a trance as the glow encompassed all that you were. 

Brighter and brighter the glow grew. There was the distant thought in the back of your mind that maybe you should be more wary—maybe you should lean back or stand up to gain some distance. But all you could hear were your steady breaths, feel the way your grip tightened on your phone. Maybe you could see if what you were seeing was really an animal of sorts or just some figment of—

There was a head. Sticking out of the water.

You froze immediately, breath caught in your lungs. 

For a moment, you couldn’t process what exactly you were looking at. But then you realized you were staring at a gray-blue face framed by raven hair stuck to its sides. A rather large face, in fact, nowhere near the size of a regular human’s. A… mermaid? You weren’t entirely certain, and even then, there was a lot to unpack with this realization that you were in no way prepared to do. 

There was some sort of lure attached to the top of the creature’s head that drooped down into the water in front of it. Two—no, three, you noticed—eyes were trained intently in your direction, pupils indiscernible in a way that made it difficult to tell where precisely it was looking at. The back of your neck prickled.

Ah, you thought faintly as teal light gently washed across the nearly black surface of the water from the creature’s eyes. That’s what that was. 

You weren’t sure how long you and the… mermaid… stayed there, staring at each other, but eventually something had to give. You were just surprised it wasn’t you first.

The mermaid’s jaw seemed to tense. It regarded you with an unreadable gaze that you could feel flicking over your face. Then, it parted thin lips to say a quiet “Hey.” 

It was like getting punched in the gut—harsh and utterly unforgiving. 

It sounded— It sounded just like Sebastian. Raspier, maybe. A little lower in timbre. But unequivocally him. It was unmistakable—his voice so deeply cemented into your mind when you lived day by day listening to him speak over your shoulder. You felt like you couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t force the air you so desperately needed into your lungs. 

He seemed to take in your silence, appraising you for a moment before speaking again. 

“I know this has gotta be… weird as shit…” he said slowly, voice stiff and slightly stilted. “But I”—he swallowed thickly—“I can explain.” 

You weren’t sure what expression you were making, but you saw the way the skin above his eyes seemed to crease together. You wanted to force yourself to spit out something, anything, but you could not hear yourself think over the rapid ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump of your heart in your ears. The vice-like grip on your insides with how much this mermaid sounded like Sebastian. How it made you hurt. How it made you ache. 

What the hell was going on right now?

“You—” you eventually choked out, your eyes taking in what was before you. A membranous fin at the side of his head flicked slightly at the sound of your voice. “You— I—”

He said your name quietly, and it was like another vicious twist of your gut. The sounds of the sea became white noise, distant and weak. “It’s me. Sebastian. You know? Love of your life?” His face scrunched up, sharp mouth turning into a strained grin as he stared at you with wide, imploring eyes. “Come on babe, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?” 

Just like him. He talked just like him.

But that couldn’t be right. That couldn’t be right. He was dead. He was—

Something suddenly clicked in the far recesses of your mind. 

“Ah.” The syllable dropped from your lips like a rock from a high place. You slumped like you’d been cut from a few taut strings struggling to hold you up. “I get it now.” You exhaled deeply, willing yourself to gain control of your mind and your heart. You knew exactly what was going on here. 

No need to panic. You were in control.

“...Do you really?” he asked warily after a minute or two. You ignored him to focus on yourself.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. You released the tight hold you had on your phone—line etched into your palm from the pressure—and shoved it into your pocket so you could lift your hands up to rub at your temples. 

You were tired. Of this, of everything. 

“I thought this was supposed to be a safe space,” you grumbled under your breath, your eyes closing in a vain attempt to stave off the building headache you were experiencing. “You had to follow me out here too?” 

Sebastian made a sound—a questioning, confused little thing that made you open your eyes to gaze down at him. He looked hurt, almost. “I— What?” 

Your hands dropped from your temples, and you leaned back onto your palms so you could look out at the calm sea. A few clouds passed over the moon from above, temporarily casting a shadow over you and him. You eyed him after a moment of letting yourself relax from the previous adrenaline spike.  

“You’ve never looked like this before,” you eventually mused as your eyes traced over the shadowed line of his nonexistent nose. The way his skin glistened in the dim lighting. “Did something change from yesterday?” You didn’t think you were capable of imagining him like this. Inhuman. No honeyed skin or rough scar bridging his nose. You wondered why it was happening now, of all times. If maybe it was the result of staying by the sea for so long, alone to deal with everything that had happened.

He opened his mouth as though to respond. But then he closed it and just… stared at you. Observing you. Analyzing you for something you were not privy to. A probing gaze that made something under your skin itch. You watched him back, then found you could not hold his gaze for much longer. You looked away and cleared your throat. 

“I’m thinking pasta for dinner,” you remarked casually to fill the silence, eyes shifting skywards in thought. “The alfredo we made last week was pretty good. I got the sauce on sale at the grocery store.” 

Another pause. Another moment where your skin prickled with the sensation of being picked apart, piece by piece.

And when he spoke, his voice was barely over a murmur—a grim realization to his tone. “You… You’ve really lost it after all this time, huh?” 

You made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Don’t be mean. I’m— well…” You gave him a smile, something melancholy lining your lips. “Doing just fine.” The words were bitter across your tongue. He only gave you a look like he didn’t quite believe you, something indecipherable in his gaze. 

“Right,” he snorted. “Like I’m gonna believe that after whatever the hell you just said.” A hand lifted from the water to gesture at you, gray-blue just like his face. 

Rolling your eyes, you shifted on your feet and stood up, brushing off your pants as you shoved your hands into your pockets. You hadn’t realized, but there was this twinge building in your stomach with every minute that ticked by. You needed to sleep this off… whatever this was. You sighed, long and weary. “I should not be entertaining you.” But it was so hard to resist—has been, for years now. 

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Sebastian muttered to himself, pinching at the bridge of his nonexistent nose with two large fingers. When you only raised an eyebrow at him and took a step in the direction of your cottage, intending to head back to get started on dinner, he lurched forwards in the water. “Wait. Where are you going? Y-You’re leaving?” 

You didn’t intend on answering him, so accustomed to ignoring him in your cottage whenever he spoke into the air. But when this Sebastian snapped out your name in a warning tone, you gave him a look. “I’m not leaving, silly. I’ll see you inside, won’t I?” 

“God, do you even hear yourself right now?” he rasped out, voice betraying a certain incredulity as he lifted himself up in the water just enough that you could see what looked like a waterlogged scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. That couldn’t be comfortable. “Listen to me. I’m here. I’m real.”

Real, huh? 

You closed your eyes and thought about a figure standing in the corner of your living room, watching you with a small grin. You thought about the endless nights of him standing near your bed or hovering just beyond your shoulder, whispering at you to close your eyes and sleep. You thought about a lot. You thought about nothing.  

And so you hummed, a distant thing that you did not quite register as you started to turn away, unwilling as you were to continue this. But before you could make it even a couple of steps back down the dock, Sebastian made a noise—ragged and disbelieving. There was the sound of rushing water directly behind you. The roar of a small waterfall, almost. It made you turn back and blink in surprise as your head craned back.

The wood beneath you creaked and groaned in an ominous manner. 

“We are not done talking,” Sebastian growled as he loomed over you. Like this, you could take him in his entirety—from the brown jacket covering his torso that was dark with seawater, to the three arms he had that held himself up atop the dock’s surface. The shirt he had on was translucent enough to appear gray in color. If you looked close enough at the sliver of his unclothed body before it disappeared beneath the dock’s edge, you could just barely make out the shine of scales. 

This was—like nothing you have ever seen before.

Your lips parted when a drop of water landed on your cheek, startling you for a moment. A glance up at the sky showed clear skies above you. Maybe you’d imagined it. You shook your head slightly and focused back on Sebastian.

Water continued to run down his body, each drop soaking into the wooden planks of the dock, before it eventually eased into a trickle.  

“What is there to talk about?” you asked lightly after contemplating his words. 

His grip tightened on the dock, enough that you could almost hear something splinter. “Much, in case you were not aware.” He surveyed your open face with narrowed eyes, a soft teal glow dusting across your features. It was like you were being held open like a book, all of your innards exposed for him to analyze. You weren’t sure what he found there, but it made him suddenly soften like butter atop a warm stove. 

“I just…” He sighed, something long-suffering that came from deep within his chest. “This wasn’t how I’d imagined things would go, believe it or not.” 

You cocked your head at him and watched him slouch from his rigid position. Still dripping water. Still with that raven hair plastered to his face. There was a sort of exhaustion to him that you’d never noticed before. It made something pang in your chest—caused you to clench your hands into fists in a vain attempt to focus on anything else. 

There was the pungent smell of fish, raw and metallic.

Not real. This was not real.

Sebastian shifted, and the hand attached to his torso—smaller in size and covered sloppily in stained bandages—raised as though it was going to reach towards you. Your heart nearly skipped a beat at the motion. But then he stopped, staring down at his palm. Big and gray and consisting of four thick fingers with sharp ends. There was the glint of something gold around his fourth finger. Your own hand twitched inside your pocket. 

Always just out of reach. Never crossing a line. 

His hand clenched into a fist, and he lowered it back to the dock with a quiet thud.

He said your name. “I know this is difficult to hear, but… It’s me,” he whispered, voice strained like it was on the precipice of breaking. “It’s really, really me.” 

You swallowed heavily, feeling as though the world was unraveling by the seams beneath your feet. 

This was not him. It couldn’t be. 

Why would you ever imagine him like this? 

“No, it’s not,” you eventually said bitterly, breaking eye contact so you could glance back at your cottage. You closed your eyes, then reopened them as you turned your back to him. And when you spoke again, your voice teetered like you were one step away from falling into a never ending pit. “You’re dead.” 

And then you walked away.

Each step you took felt like eternity, something heavy weighing you down. He called out your name. First so quietly you almost didn’t hear it, a tinge of something fragile to it. Then again with frustration lining his voice—louder and aggrieved. There was a sharp crack of something behind you, but you were determined in your march back home. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Your jaw clenched to suppress the tremble you could feel working its way throughout your body. You refused to look behind you, and you succeeded right up until you stood before the door to your cottage. With one hand on the metal knob, you twisted around to look back at the shore—the dock you could see a ways behind you. 

It was vacant, not a soul in sight. 

Your lips pursed together, and you opened the door to slip inside with a heavy, grim feeling taking root in your stomach. 

Sebastian was waiting for you already, sprawled atop your couch as he grinned at you wide enough that you saw each and every one of his white teeth. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said amusedly, one of his hands raking through the wavy mess of hair on his head. His voice lowered, gentle and sincere. “Maybe take a break from the dock, yeah?”

You only slowly shook your head and moved past him, suddenly feeling queasy and lightheaded and so frazzled that you couldn’t bear being awake for much longer.

Your thoughts lingered on the shore. Teal eyes and the sound of breaking wood that felt so real in that instance. You forced yourself to breathe.

It was fine. It was fine. 

You would deal with it as you always have.

part two

[inconveniently-discorporated]

My heart hurts so bad for Aziraphale because I can honestly just relate to him so, so, so much.

(not putting this one under a cut so warning season 2 ahead, I'll tag it at the bottom too)

Aziraphale says, "Nothing lasts forever," but I don't believe for a second he doesn't wish that it did.

He WANTS things to go back to how they used to be. He WANTS the seraphic Crowley squealing with joy as he cranks up the universal machine and sets the stars aflame. He WANTS there to be no sides, he WANTS to believe in the idea of the host united, he WANTS to go back before Crowley got himself in trouble by asking questions. He wants, I think, to be in that moment of creation and adoration forever.

Change seems to frighten him. There's an aspect of uncertainty. There's an element of chaos, the loss of control. I understand this deeply. And what the Metatron offered him was just that: certainty, control, the ability to dictate his own narrative.

I used to be in a toxic job. On top of it, I had intense anxiety and other undiagnosed neurodivergencies that made it even harder to fit in and understand the untold rules I was supposed to follow to get along. When I first got there, it wasn't so bad -- perhaps I was, like Aziraphale, also a bit idealistic. Then there were some changes that brought instability, significant more anxiety, and a lot of nights spent agonizing over my lack of control over it all.

My friends and significant other tried to convince me to leave, but I didn't want to. I didn't know what else was out there. I didn't know if it would be worse. I didn't know what kind of stability it would have.

Then my manager left, so that spot opened up. I had worked there for a long time, and honestly, I never saw myself going into management. I didn't think I could. I wasn't sure I even wanted to. All of that extra stress, on me? Not to mention, getting FURTHER into the job that was taking a massive toll on me? But then...

Then I would have control. Then I could run things the way *I* had always thought they should run. I wouldn't need to worry about who would replace my manager and whether my life would be a living hell -- I would make it what I wanted it to be. Upper management was really pushing for it, so I applied.

To make a long story short: I don't think it went very well. I didn't have the support I needed. I didn't have the emotional skills I needed. I think I did my best, but I'm not fond of those times. At the time, I was SURE that I wanted to move up even more, I was SURE this would make it all better. I thought this was what I REALLY wanted.

But that's not what I needed. What I needed was to get out, and eventually I did. Even as ready as I was to leave, it was absolutely agonizing. I could barely stand to handle the unknown. I was going to work together with my spouse, actually, and I was so excited for that, but I still... I still was upset and worried sick over the dramatic change that would befall my life, after I had made the decision to leave.

That's where I can relate to Aziraphale. I wonder what would've happened if, before I had actually left for good, the head honchos had come up to me and said, "We want to keep you -- how about we offer you (an even higher position)?" -- would I have said no, or would I have wanted to make a difference?

Funny, I said exactly that, too. That's almost why I didn't change jobs in the first place. I said, "But I feel like I'm really making a difference with what I'm doing now." But what pushed me over the edge was realizing that none of that mattered to them, it was all about THEIR control of ME, not the other way around.

I'm so intensely curious to see what happens with Aziraphale next, but I'm sure he will learn what Crowley understands: nothing lasts forever, and sometimes it's good that it doesn't -- even if sometimes we wish it did.

[band--psycho]

Sylus x Reader -Black Tears And Pleasure

Masterlist / Sylus Masterlist / Join My Taglist

Please be kind (it's been a while since I've written a smutty story); reblogs are always welcome and greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for the continued support and I hope you all enjoy this! 💛

Requests are open so if you have any ideas/requests, you're more than welcome to send them over.

I do not give permission for any of my works to be copied or translated onto this site or other platforms

For the lovely @the-slytherin-poet who requested this a few days ago! Thank you for the request!

Warnings: Kinks, choking, edging, overstimulation, smut, swearing (18+), smut without plot

Sylus had kinks and he wasn’t ashamed of them, nor was he shy in sharing them with you, this time was no exception. 

That’s why you couldn’t help but knowingly smirk at him from across the room after noticing that all of your mascaras had been replaced with non-waterproof ones. 

You knew he’d been the one to do it; and you knew why. 

He couldn’t help it. 

Out of all of his kinks; watching mascara mix with your tears as you cried in pleasure was one of, if not the biggest kinks he now had. 

You knew that tonight, you were in for a long, blissfully torturous night; one that would leave you absolutely ruined…and you were so ready for it. 

So ready, that even though you’d spent the past hour or so getting ready, you didn’t actually want to go out anymore.

“Maybe we should stay in tonight,” you temptingly suggested, seductively walking over to Sylus, who was sitting in his chair; completely captivated by you. 

“Really?” he answered; quirking an eyebrow, an all too familiar glint gleaming away in his ruby eyes at your words.

He was hoping that you would say that. 

He was hungry. 

But food could wait. 

Especially if it meant he got to ruin you sooner.

“Yeah…” you breathed, placing yourself on his lap, allowing you to feel his already hardening length, before leaning in and kissing him.

It didn’t take long until the expensive black dress you’d purchased for tonight had been ripped from your body and discarded to the floor, as though it was nothing more than dirty laundry.

“That was expensive,” you scolded playfully between kisses. 

“I’ll buy you another one, kitten, don't worry,” he chuckled darkly; revelling in the small gasp that fell from your lips when he lightly touched your already swollen clit through your panties.

In the space of ten minutes he’d tied your wrists to the bedpost and made you cum over and over again until you were nothing more than a moaning mess for him; and he’d done so without even properly touching you yet. 

That was something that he prided himself on, ruining you…wrecking you to the point that tears were falling from your eyes because you were experiencing so much overwhelming pleasure. 

And the best part was, he was the only one that ever got to see you like this. 

Desperate.

Needy.

Begging for his touch.

Willing to do pretty much anything he told you to do. 

After what felt like hours of agonizing teasing, he finally got on top of you; wrapping one his hands around your throat (not tight enough to cause you any pain, but tight enough that it made your head feel a little woozy from the lack of oxygen), and fucking you. Hard.

This wasn’t the first time you’d had sex with Sylus, in all honesty you’d lost count of how many times you’d been intimate with him. 

One thing that you did know though, was that every time he seemed to fuck you better, taking you to a new high each and every time. 

This time was no different. 

He was edging you so much, you could already feel the tears brimming in your eyes from the overstimulation.

“You look so pretty like this,” he groaned, ramming his hard, thick dick in and out of you, relentlessly. 

He watched you with lustful eyes, as the tears began falling from your beautiful eyes, mixing with the black mascara you’d put on a few hours prior. 

He could've cum right then.

But he wasn't done with you yet.

He needed you to cum at least once more before he could even consider reaching his own high.

You looked like a wreck; but right now, you didn't care, and neither did Sylus. 

He loved it. 

You were so lost in your pleasure that all you could do was moan in response to his words.

He knew you were close, he could feel your pussy tightening around him like a vice, so after an evening of edging you, he thought he would allow you to have what you were clearly craving so desperately. 

“Why don’t you be a good girl and cum for me?” 

Almost instantly your body obeyed him; allowing you to reach the release you’d been chasing for most of the evening.

He reached his own release soon after; not being able to hold back any longer, especially not when he saw your mascara stained cheeks. 

“So fucking perfect,” he drawled, moving his hand from around your throat to your face, smudging the black tears that had were still falling down your cheek. 

Tagging some people who might enjoy this:

@xacatalepsyx @book-dragon03 @fangirlsfandomsss @albert-moriarty-fan @elegantangelenthusiast @worm-in-a-bug @darkphoenix2332 @deathkat657 @xenasolos @tasha-1994 @randomruff @mrs-masen-cullen @okaydokey @taronyuhunter @reverbsworld @serenitymaria @babygirl-panda19 @themagicafox @kisukiis

[nevertheless-moving]

unable to stop dwelling on the discworld trouser leg of time where, in the penultimate fight scene in Nightwatch, Carcer manages to kill teenage Sam Vimes.

Which means that the future that Duke Vimes came from can no longer exist, which means he can’t go home. Meanwhile you’ve got a bunch of history monks with stored up temporal energy, a prepared space outside of time, and the need to do some desperate damage control before the Auditors get involved. Death shows up, reality is unweaving, Sam is reading Carcer his discworld miranda rights because what else is he supposed to do.

and finally, with little other option, the monks de-age Sam so he fits the time period and send him back out into the fray.

(they didn't call it deageing of course. His memory is hazy, splintered during that terrible in between moment, They....took the time out of him? Sanded away the edges of his self for a terrible, workable fit? It...wasn't a good feeling.)

Just—damn. Sam Vimes having to live his whole crapsack life over again, but this time as his disillusioned-reillusioned, unwillingly-character-developed, noir-epic, Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes self. 

Younger (Older? He's never felt so Old, His steps so Childlike, reality twisting in his gut like one of Dibbler's pies) Sam Vimes walking around in a haze after the revolution. Desperate to go home, knowing he can’t. Wanting to drink. Knowing he can’t.

The whole precinct feels pity, he really took Keel’s death hard, hardly speaks except to do his job. Eventually he has to grit his teeth and start being present, because what else is there to do?

Resists the urge to drink until Colon takes the whole watch out to celebrate because -he’s going to be a father!

Come on Sammy, one drink won’t kill you— and after the first drink he’s cracking jokes and after the second hes smiling and after the third hes honestly the life of the party and sometime after that he’s crying about how he was going to be a father and my wife would be ashamed if she saw me drinking like this and— 

Oh shit, Did anyone else know he had a wife?? A PREGNANT wife??? What—aren’t you like 12—no you're 17 now aren't you but when did—

You guys n’ver met ’er—oh gods none if you ev’n know ‘er, is jus’ me...

What—when did you lose—

I lost her the same damn day I los’ ev’rythin else, whadya think...bleeding Carcer...the fuckin revolution...

So! That! Sam only vaguely remembers the night, but rumors travel faster than light on the disc, so by the next day the whole damn city knows about poor Sam brung low by the loss of his poor, tragic, pregnant wife, so young to be a widower, and the Seamstresses nod because they already knew, don’t ask them how, somethings you just have to know in that trade.

And his mother—I don’t know, sue me, I’m a time travel fiend but there’s something deeply intriguing about a man meeting his dead parent, who is somewhat younger than him, and stepping into the old relationship like a badly fitting thing that's supposed to fit well. She would know, right? How would she deal with her son’s impossible grief? Maybe she wouldn’t know—he spent most of the time out of the house, running with different street gangs, maybe he avoids her until she dies and lives with the guilt twice over. God, we don’t even know her name. There’s just so much narrative and emotional potential that I don’t even know where to start.

When he’s on duty, which is most time - it’s agonizing because at first he remembers cases, saves lives that would have been lost. But the more time passes, the hazier his memory because in the original timeline he was becoming an alcoholic. Fuck! A kid dies and he could have saved her if he hadn’t been such a drunk, if he had just remembered where the asshole lived, but it’s all a haze, and he wants to drown out his guilt, but that’s what caused this in the first place.

Good young Sammy, who spends his rare off-time in dusty libraries (and yes, the irony that he’s apparently Carrot now is not lost on him) reading gods-only-know.

It’s not like he can ask the wizards for help, cutthroat and vicious as they are now in the not-so-distant-past.

Good young Sam, who...talks to the Broken Drum’s pet Bouncer like he’s a real person and not a dumb rock? That’s a bit weird, but he’s a bit of a funny guy.

Good old Sam, who believed the testimony of the dwarf who said the humans were trying to rob him and let the dwarf go??

the PROBLEMS this man would cause, good grief. Can you imagine a moderately progressive middle aged man with some degree of begrudging diversity and equity training that he did, for all his sins, pay attention to, suddenly going back to like, 1990, going back just 30 years, and going...oh damn this is kind of fucked up, no man you can’t say that, holy shit.

Except Sam’s lived through even more rapidly shifting social moroes! There’s no seamstress guild, there’s no women allowed inside the university, there’s no black ribboner’s society. People hunted trolls for their teeth! But Sam can’t just unlearn everything, and he can’t shut up, and he has no real luck and anyway he would absolutely get himself (temporarily) fired.

FUCK. Sam has no idea what to do with that. None. Zero clue. Wanders around in a haze until that dwarf he saved from police brutality finds him and insists on repaying the debt. No, he insists, do you have any idea what debt means to a dwarf?

“Sort-of?” he replies hesitantly, and that honest admission of incomplete knowledge shows a hell of a lot more respect and understanding than any self proclaimed dwarf-expert ever did.

Gets a job as a surface man, hauling rocks into the city. It’s backbreaking work, but, in true Discworld fashion, it’s also one hell of a workout (again the irony of being Carrot is not lost him. he freezes for a minute while hauling a rock cart, when he remembers he's technically Lost Nobility too, in a strict sense, but someone curses at him in the street and he's comfortingly grounded)

And here is where this au slides into a SPECTACULAR romantic comedy, BEAR WITH ME. Because in his time on the Watch he’s already done noir, action adventure, war story, detective who dunnit, psychological horror, but guards guards only allowed him to be a romance protagonist in an extremely limited context.

Give me righteous, twenty-something-looking, can’t-say-he-doesn’t-have-style, young Sam Vimes, not an alcoholic,  being fed three square meals a day by his dwarven forced found family, hauling rocks. He is startled to find him bumping his head on a low hanging bar that he doesn’t think used to be there, eventually realizing that he’s an inch or two taller than he remembers. Huh. Guess all that bearhuggers really did stunt his growth.

Still doesn’t get what some of the looks from women he’s getting are about, sure, he’s dirty but so is everyone else. Fine, he took his shirt off, but it’s hot out, there’s far wrinklier than him hauling heavy loads, get a life. 

Happens to glance in the Ankh one day when it’s particularly slow and shiny and is startled to realize that he might be turning heads for a different reason. Oh. Right, not that he was ever a heartbreaker, but he did alright for himself... when he was a younger and his face hadn’t been broken so many times. Which...it isn't now.

Is mildly disturbed by the revelation.

Especially once things blow over at the precinct and what with high mortality rates, he ends up with getting hired again. The boys are delighted to have him back, nevermind that he’s an odd one, noone is ever quite in your corner like Vimsey, absence makes the heart fonder, no one else works that hard, and he’s not even competition for promotion. All around great guy, we should set him up with somebody and just, no.

It just keeps getting worse! He’s literate! He’s a feminist! He believes abuse victims! He’s got a tragic backstory! He’s unreasonably good in a fistfight! He’s kind to animals! Word gets around that there’s a good man on the watch and he’s just waiting for a good woman to come snap him up. The widower excuse doesn’t hold people off completely, and for some it’s its own sort-of appeal. 

Things REALLY become stressful after he rescues that carriage full of noblewoman.

What’s he supposed to do? Let them get robbed? Or worse? Chasing down and beating up 10 goons is as easy as beating up one, when they’re that stupid, getting separated like that, drunk and distracted, and he knows these streets better than anyone, really it’s nothing. And oh lord he’s Modest too.

I mean, they were genuinely greatful, as genuine as people like that are capable of being, the skill having grown rusty. And then there is something...magnetic about the man. An air of command.

So, soon enough you get Lady Marigold of Marigrave calling on Treckle Road for that gallant young officer who rescued them, she really needs to thank him. And Viscountess Elanor Thitzferal specifically requesting that he guard her at her next soiree. And Baroness Julieta van Shoeholten insisting that he come to her home while her husband’s away, for... manly protection.

Aaaah just zero sympathy from the guys. None. 'It’s become a competition, they’re just trying to see who can get me into bed first, it’s like I’m a piece of meat, you can’t send me sir, the Marquess greeted me in a nightee last time you made me go to—' and 'small gods Vimes are you even listening to yourself, shut the hell up'.

Simultaneous to this, (again this is several years into the timeline) swamp dragon accessories come into style. Which means abandoned swamp dragons scrounging on the street. Vimes takes one back to his apartment, blows his paycheck on dragon medicine, and eventually, heart in his chest, brings it to the Ramkin estate. The sunshine orphanage doesn’t even exist yet and he’s just standing outside the gates like an idiot, what is he thinking. Turns around, but her carriage is pulling up and—

well. they meet. it's cute. he's never felt so young. he's never felt so old, too old for her, too poor—

and certainly her thoughts linger too long on the awkward, kindly, handsome young commoner, but is it any wonder she doesn't quite connect it to the stern, dangerous, sexy young guard the ladies seem to be in some quiet, cuthroat competition over?

i have this gorgeous, absurd scene in my head in which Vimes is strong armed into standing guard at some high society soiree and one of the pushiest ladies insists he dance with here, or, if he prefers, if he's not confident about his skills, he can dance with her in-private at her home and he’s like [grinding teeth, looking for a way out, seeinf one] “I would be honored to dance with you.”

Steps right into some ultra-complex dance with multiple partner swaps (she never thought he'd pick this one, devilishly intimidating to one not strictly trained, and you barely spend anytime with your first partner).

But he does alright. Better than alright, for a common man, sometimes misstepping but his hands and feet always end up where they need to be. Raises several eyebrows part way into the song because he's throuwing in some slightly scandalous, no innovative, extra lifts and twirls that wouldn't become fashionable for another decade or two. Who even is that guy? Some out of towner? No, no he's in a guards uniform...how very strange.

Gets to Sybll and she's used to embarrassment during these dances, she tries to get out of them when she can... but can't always. Men awkwardly skipping the lifts, or worse, trying and failing. But him — oh it's him, the one who helped little Erold, and looked at her like—like—well like she was someone beautiful. And he's doing it again, and he's strong and there's a quiet moment where she's in the air, they lock eyes, and the rest of the room melts away.

And then the partners change again, the moment ended.

Just...living throught it all again. To the left, a dance he almost knows the steps to, throwing others off balance with erratic moves , honest mistakes, and delibrate stepping on toes. Improvising. Ruining. Improving. Getting far, far too much attention.

Hes almost excited when the first assassains start coming after him. It's like a hobby.

Everyone tells him he should get a hobby.

Interactions with young vetinari...I don't have the energy to write it all down, the slow circling in on each other, both burning with the need to fix the city, save it, their city.

needless to say he ends up fired again, life under real threat after offending some high lord.

Conveniently enough he has an employment opportunity- bodyguard to fucking Vetinari on his 'grand sneer.' The bastard knows vimes isn't what he seems, though sam is pretty sure that he doesnt know the exacts.

Vetinari hypothesis:(the ghost of keel? Keels son, with some hereditary curse? Or a larger spirit of justice possessing a string of unrelated souls? He knows things he shouldn't- mind reader? Fortune teller? Havelock once arranged for a wizard to bump into him on the street, the magical fool gave an odd double look and then muttered something about destiny looping in on itself giving him a headache. Destiny? Lost noble? And hes far too familiar with sybyl, one of the few bearable noblewomen in this city. And his thoughts on guilds, when havelock can trip him into speaking... Most of all, if hes reading him at all correctly (for all the mystery hes not that hard to read, unless thats a very clever cover) then it seems that behind those dark haunted eyes is Respect. Loyalty. For vetinari. What an interesting man. A puzzling asset. An intriguing threat. )

Did I mention the timeline is changing, healing slowly around the place where it was torn? Healing enough around scars to perhaps get some flexibility back, with some painful stretches and...massaging of said scar tissue?

And hes heading to unresting uberwald, a place where a werewolf pack still hunts humans and, truely unrelated but perhaps equally exhausting, an eldritch spirit of vengeance just might be looking to stretch its legs in a hapless vessel?

Opening drabble Vimes Vetinari Meta (Unwell) Scene from the Uberwald Grand Sneer

[latin5mamii]

Later - Carlos Alcaraz

Summary: He just doesn’t care, if he wants you, he’s having you.

Genre: Carlos Alcaraz x you, Juancarlos!Daughter x Carlos Alcaraz

Warnings: slightly smut, suggestive talk

Author’s note: Had this in mind and i had to write it down😌

“Estás tan hermosa esta noche”

••••

He was so fucking hot, and he knew it. He knew the power he had over you, the way a single look from them dark, big eyes could make your heart race and your mind spiral out of control. No matter how much you wanted to resist his charm, to not feel the way you did whenever he spoke to you, you always failed.

He had become your biggest weakness, an addiction you couldn’t shake no matter how dangerous it was. ‘Dangerous’ because you were his coach’s daughter, and if your father ever found out what had been happening between you two over the past few weeks, there would be hell to pay. But that didn’t matter. The thrill of sneaking around, lies over lies, kept pulling you back to him, time and time again.

Tonight was no different.

His voice snapped you out of your flashbacks of last night, a night spent in his arms, his touch still fresh on your skin. You turned to him with a disapproving look, knowing exactly what he was trying to do.

Not that you minded, if anything, you craved it,but not here. Not at this dinner where both your families and his team were present.

“Don’t do it,” you warned him, your voice barely above a whisper, trying to keep your composure.

“What shouldn’t I do?” he replied innocently, his hand already sliding onto your thigh, fingers trailing lightly across your skin. The contact made your breath hitch, and you shot a quick glance at your father, who was thankfully engrossed in conversation with Carlos’s father.

Carlos’s hand continued its exploration, moving up and down your thigh with agonizing slowness.“Carlos, stop,” you said, your voice lacking the conviction you so desperately needed it to have. But your body betrayed you, your legs instinctively parted slightly, granting him more access. Why did he have this effect on you? Why, when you knew better, did your body respond to him like this?

The truth was, the risk of being caught, the danger of what you were doing, only made it more thrilling. And that was the problem.

"Tu cuerpo no parece querer que me detenga",

(Your body doesn’t seem to want me to stop,) he murmured, that infuriating smirk you both loved and hated tugging at his lips. His hand moved higher, brushing against the delicate fabric of your panties, the touch sending a shockwave through your body.

"Si tan solo tu padre supiera las cosas que haces... probablemente ni siquiera te reconocería a ti, su chica inocente y obediente. Es una pena que no sea así" he whispered, his hand still teasing your skin.

(If only your father knew the things you do… he probably wouldn’t even recognize you,his innocent and obedient little girl.It’s a pity that it isn’t so)

You grabbed his wrist to stop him, your grip firm, but inside, you were unraveling. You were fighting a losing battle, and you both knew it. All you could think about was how, if you were alone with him right now, you’d be begging him for more, abandoning all pretense of resistance.

“Carlos, please,” you whispered, your voice shaking. “Not here. Someone will notice.”

His eyes darkened with desire, but there was a teasing glint there as well. “I love when you say please,” he murmured, leaning in closer so his lips were almost brushing against your ear. “But you know as well as I do that you don’t really want me to stop.”

You hated how right he was. How, despite the fear of getting caught, despite knowing this was wrong, you couldn’t help but want him. Crave him.

Carlos’s fingers traced along the edge of your panties, and your grip on his wrist tightened, trying to push him away, but it was no use. The fire he ignited in you was too strong, too overwhelming. You closed your eyes, taking a deep breath to steady yourself, but it was impossible with him so close, his cologne filling your senses, his touch driving you mad.

“Imagine,” he continued, his voice, "Si deslizara mis dedos un poco más... ¿qué harías? ¿Podrías callarte? ¿Podrías seguir fingiendo que no pasa nada debajo de esta mesa?"

(if I slipped my fingers just a little further… what would you do? Could you keep quiet? Could you keep pretending like nothing’s happening under this table?)

The thought se your body on fire, and you swallowed hard, struggling to maintain your composure. But you were losing this battle, and Carlos knew it. He thrived on it.

Just when you thought he was going to surpass your limit, a familiar voice from the other side of the table made you feel literal fear.

“What are you two talking about so intensely?” Your father. You opened your eyes, your heart pounding, and forced yourself to push Carlos’s hand away.

Carlos turned toward your father with his usual easy smile, completely unfazed. “Oh, just discussing a few plans for after Wimbledon,” he said smoothly. How could he be so calm when you were fighting yourself only for smiling?

Your father’s gaze flicked between the two of you, a slight frown creasing his brow. There was an edge of concern in his eyes, but no immediate suspicion. “Plans for the future, huh?” he said, his tone more curious than accusatory.

It’s not that your father was jealous or thought anything bad about Carlos, but Carlos’ a handsome, rich and young man, he wouldn’t even want to imagine his daughter suffering for him.

“Nothing more,Juanki. I swear,” He says laughing like he just doesn’t care, which is true.He doesn’t care at all.

He wanted you to be his, and nothing and no one could ever change that.

Juan Carlos nods and smiles back to Carlos.He quickly looks at you, and turns back to talk.

As soon as your father was distracted again, you shot Carlos a look that was half exasperation, half something else entirely.

“You’re impossible,” you hissed under your breath, trying to regain some semblance of control over your racing heart. “And so a pathologic liar .”

Carlos only grinned, leaning in close enough that his breath brushed against your ear. “And we didn’t got caught” he murmured, his voice filled with that familiar, dangerous amusement. “And that’s what makes it fun, isn’t it?”

You wanted to argue, to tell him off for taking such a risk, but the truth was, he was right. The thrill of almost being caught, the danger of it all, was as intoxicating as his touch. And it scared you how much you craved it.

Before you could find the words to respond, Carlos’s hand found yours under the table, his fingers intertwining with yours in a gesture that was both intimate and possessive. He squeezed your hand gently, his thumb stroking your skin in a way that made your breath hitch.

“Más tarde” he whispered, his voice a low promise.

"Encuéntrame más tarde. Ya sabes dónde".

[esoteric-oracle]

//long rambles ahead!

I think what really lingers with me about MDZS is that it's not a novel with a cathartic ending at all. It's a bittersweet story that leaves you slightly hollow. Yes, it's a beautiful and epic romance. It's a piece of social commentary interwoven with a love story and murder mystery. It's a cautionary tale. But it is also very much a tragedy. It's a story about being too late, second chances, and moving on.

By the time the truth of everything JGY and JGS did comes to light, it's 13 years too late. Everything that mattered has already happened. Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan are long dead. Jin Ling is still an orphan. Wen Ning is dead, and sometime in the future, his death will be permanent. Wen Qing was burned to death at the stake for no fault of her own. Nie Mingjue has already spent ten years in a no-doubt agonizing state of un-death, and Lan Xichen will have to bear the guilt of loving both Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao, and by doing so, forsaking them both. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's once-close bond is irrevocably broken, and the woman who sowed the seeds of resentment when they were still children will never face the consequences of her vitriol.

People sometimes say MXTX was too hard on the side characters, and only gave the Wangxian a happy ending, but what stuck with me after finishing the story is how… sad things are. Yes, Wangxian finally get the happy ending they've deserved for nearly 20 years - but at the same time, it's not a happy ending where the people who've wronged them get the consequences they deserve.

Wei Wuxian will spend the rest of his life haunted by guilt and loss, over what happened to Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, over the loss of the Wen remnants. The rest of his years won't even be lived in the body his parents gave him.

Lan Wangji will spend the rest of his years wondering if he'd chosen to stand with Wei Wuxian when it mattered - would his son have had to grow up without his birth family?

Nie Huaisang is left wondering if his brother had been a little less trusting and had never taken Meng Yao in as a Nie deputy, would his brother have died a less wretched death? Would he have been forced to stoop to ruthless machinations and manipulations to seek some semblance of justice?

Wen Ning will have to live with the knowledge that if he'd been a little less kind, if he'd let Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng die that fateful day - his family would still be alive. The Wens would've won the war; Wen Qing might've even succeeded Wen Ruohan.

No one really gets the ending they deserve. MDZS isn't a story where good people get happy endings, and bad people get their dues. Sure, Jin Guangyao's crimes are revealed and he faces the consequences of his actions. But what about the people who stood by and made him into a monster? If anything, the side characters and antagonists who survive get better than they deserve. The real villain of MDZS - society - will never face retribution. Those cultivators who always believed in their own bigotry and righteousness over and over again, will never face justice.

Do you think those cultivators and the public will ever feel any regret for the innocent people they condemned to death in their own prejudice and blind self-righteousness? Do you think the people who gathered at Nightless City to call for Wei Wuxian's death considered for one second that he was the biggest reason they won the war? When the cultivators who sacked the Wen settlement at the Burial Mounds threw the bodies of the Wens into the blood pool, do you think that was a sign of shame?

Do you think Jiang Cheng will ever regret leading a siege on a small settlement of innocent farmers? Do you think he's haunted by condemning to death the same people whom he owes his life to?

Do you think those people like Yao-zongzhu will ever feel an ounce of remorse for so easily believing rumours and hearsay, and spreading speculation and vitriol about innocent people?

Do you think that unnamed cultivator out there will ever lose a single minute of sleep over smashing in Wen Popo's head?

In the years that follow, Wen Ning will have apologized a hundred times for lives he did not take, crimes he did not commit, because of the name he bears. People, both in-universe, and even readers, will condemn him for actions he could not help, for doing the right thing. But did Jiang Cheng ever apologize for killing his family? Did the Jins ever apologize for their horrific treatment of people in the labour camps?

People will continue to demand that Wei Wuxian apologize for causing the deaths of their friends and family. But how is Wei Wuxian meant to do that? No one ever apologized to him for taking his family away. No one ever apologized for condemning the Wen Remnants to death for crimes they took no part in. The Wens were his family too.

There's so much potential for bitterness and corruption in MDZS. Instead of saving everyone, Wei Wuxian could've stood aside and let the people who tried to kill him die. MDZS could've been a story of succumbing to hatred and grief, but it wasn't. MXTX could've gone on and on about how society wronged the protagonist, but she didn't. The narrative is one of forgiveness and moving beyond past grievances. The story chose to close the story on a positive note. I truly love that aspect of MDZS, where MXTX leaves just enough room for hope and love at the end.

A-Yuan will finally get his closure about the family he lost as a toddler. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian get their happy ending together after being separated by nearly two decades by war, miscommunication, cruelty, and death.

Wei Wuxian will never regret protecting survivors of an attempted genocide, because it was the right thing to do.

And Wen Ning will still stand in the way and take a fatal blow meant for Jin Ling, despite everything the Jins and Jiang Cheng did to the people he loved.

Because they chose love. Characters like Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning and Lan Wangji have the chance to move on and live a happier life because when they could've succumbed to hurt and fury and resentment, they chose to be kind and do the right thing. Wangxian get their happy ending because they learn to recognize the toxicity of the cultivation society's self-cannibalizing prejudice, and chose to pursue righteousness above personal benefit.

MDZS isn't a story about good people getting good things. Just look at what happened to Xiao Xingchen. There's really nothing satisfying or cathartic about everyone's fates at all. There's no promise about society facing the consequences of their mob mentality or Wangxian actually changing the world together. Even in TGCF, for all its makings of a love story, we get the promise of societal change once Jun Wu is deposed.

It has all the makings to be a tragedy or tale of vengeance of epic proportions - but instead, it's a love story. It's a story about making the best of what you've got, and staying true to yourself and your morals, even if that's sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. It's a story where everything that could go wrong went wrong, but the characters still managed to fight their way to a better ending by choosing kindness. At its core, MDZS is a testament to choosing compassion over cruelty no matter how tragic and hopeless life gets, no matter how long the journey gets. Even though the happy ending is more personal and only applies to the specific characters, even though we don't actually get the promise of their society becoming a better place - we still have the hope that Wei Wuxian's second chance brings. The hope that sometimes, no matter how cruel the world is, some people who deserve it still get their happy endings. That's what makes MDZS such a memorable work of art. That's why it stays with you.

[hellish-sunsets]

You're an Asshole - Pt 2 - First Attempt

Pt 1

Summary: Adam goes to a concert and tries to win reader over.

Warning: swearing

Word Count: 1,302

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

This was fucking bullshit.

He glared at the stupid list in his hand, squinting at the smudged and blurry ink. The room was quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the shelf somewhere above his head. The only light was from the desk lamp, dim and just enough to light the old wooden desk. It wasn’t the grand mahogany desk of his office at work, but the worn pine of the desk shoved in the corner of his bedroom. The corners were covered in dust, telling of how rarely this desk was used. Why would he? There was plenty of better shit to do.

He was supposed to be going to a concert later tonight. That should be a fuckton more fun than agonizing over this bullshit.

Misogynistic, egotistical, sex obsessed, demeaning, condescending (he was almost certain those two were the same thing but whatever), hateful, violent, foul-mouthed all around rude.

He was sure he wasn't always like this, was he? He huffed, scratching at the stubble on his chin. He chose not to dwell on that thought.  What mattered right now was proving to that stuck up bitch he wasn't an asshole. Even if… he was starting to think maybe he was. But what did that matter? No one was perfect. Besides, he was the first man himself! He was allowed a few more assholeish mannerisms, right? 

Fuck that stupid bitch! This whole thing was fucking with his head. He would just got to this lame ass concert, prove to that bitch he was the most charming, not assholish person in existence, they would fuck and he could be over with this whole fucking situation.

He smirked at himself, leaning back in the chair, the old wood creaking under his weight. He would be sure this night would be worth it.

‐‐—--------------------

Just as he suspected, the concert itself was lame as fuck, some whiny emo bullshit he just couldn't get behind. He spent most of the time looking around for her. What even was her name again? He couldn't remember, not that it mattered. 

He didn't catch sight of her until the concert was almost over, the chorus of the last song clashing over the audience and drowning out their cheers. She was towards the front, the lights flashing and playing across her skin, lighting up her face and broad white smile, long white hair  and wings reflecting the various colors, mostly blues and purples. She almost looked like she was glowing, but that was corny ass couple shit or something. It was just another chick at a concert, just like all these other bitches. 

He let her enjoy the rest of the song before approaching her, the last clash of the cymbals his signal to swoop in.

“Watch this, Lute.” He said with a smirk, elbow digging into her side and making her scowl and roll her eyes. “I'm gonna have this bitch eating out of my hand.”

“I know, sir, just get going before she runs off.” She said with a huff, fighting off a smirk of her own. He gave her a mock salute and headed towards his latest victim, the picture of innocence as she happily chatted with the few winners around her, unaware of how hard she was about to fall for him. He shoved through the crowd, earning scowls he ignored. 

Just be nice. Don't talk about yourself too much. Pretend you care. He could do this, just for one night.

“Hey, ti- uh, toots!” He said with a cocky grin, sliding in next to her. He mentally congratulated himself for not calling her tits. Most chick's didn't like it. He wasn't wearing his mask tonight, figured it would be easier to win her over if he could use his naturally good looks. That, and maybe she was stupid enough to think he was someone else. 

The group around her seemed tense when he showed up. One of them, another chick, tried to grab her arm and drag her away, but she gently nudged them off and offered them a warm smile.

“Hi, Adam. Gotta say, bit surprised to see you around here. Didn't think you liked this type of music.”

Not stupid then. Good, more fun that way. 

“Ya know, just figured I'd try something new.” He said with a half shrug. 

Her eyes lit up, a sparkling sort of blue. He couldn’t make out the exact shade in the dim lighting of the venue. “Good for you! I love hearing new music, it's so interesting to see all the different ways humans come up with to make songs! I also just really like finding what new instruments they come up with! How did you like it?” 

He could feel the smirk slip from his face as he huffed. He had a lot of words to describe this donkey shit of a concert: whiney, pathetic, shit, stupid, fucking lame. But he couldn’t voice any of that. He had to be polite. Eventually he managed another shrug.

“Yeah, definitely not my thing. Still going metal and rock and roll all the way.” That cocky smirk of his returned to his face and she gave an understanding nod. 

“Yeah, fair enough, but I'm glad you gave it a try! Life’s boring if you never try anything new.” She said with that flashing smile. Her friend's hand was on her arm again, but she still wouldn’t follow their lead, not yet anyways. He smirked to himself. He was reeling her in nicely, he was sure. 

“Yeah? And what music do you find rockin'm?” It was a trick question, of course. He had already heard her music before, but he wasn’t about to let that slip. Don't want to give her a big head or something or give off the impression he was some fan. 

“Ah, I don't usually have a genre preference.” She said with a wave of her hand, feathers ruffling slightly as she thought. “It's more like… I have specific songs I like, but no favorite genre. I don't really have a favorite band either. That's kind of fucking lame though, huh?” She said that last part with a nervous chuckle, wings drooping slightly, finger scratching at her cheek.

“Of fucking course not, don't be fucking stupid.” He said with a frown. It was a rather lame attempt at reassurance, but that was the best he could do. Her eyes widened in surprise and he was sure he had fucked it up, but then she flashed that bright smile of hers. 

“Aw, thanks Adam! I guess you're right. Anyways.” She waved it off and continued. “I'm in a band and we do stick to a specific genre, I guess, but that’s just for image, you know? No one likes a band that's constantly changing genre. It's like… folk… punk? I think that's the best way to describe it.”

“Fuck yeah, sounds badass.” And he might have actually meant it? He wasn’t entirely sure. Probably not. “Anyway, want to take this party on the road or something?”

And for a moment he really did think he had her. She gave him that pretty little smile, her wings fluttering slightly.

“Nah, I can’t.” He could feel his face fall and she giggled at that look. “Awww, come on, don’t look so disappointed! I’ve got work to do before bed, but we can hang out another time, okay?” 

It took every fiber in his being to remind himself to keep his cool, play it off, it wasn’t a no. He could still win her over yet.

“Yeah, alright, no biggie. Catch you next time bitch!” He abruptly turned away and marched off, managing to hide the scowl on his face, at least from her.

Next time, bitch. He would fucking get her next time.

[sailing-through-hawkins]

✧ sequel to my vampire eddie microfic because i had the urge to write a scene from steve's pov and make it super sweet so have 1k of a fluffy morning after ✧

Everything is so warm.

Steve rubs his nose deeper into the sheets with a content sigh, basking in the glow of a soft morning.

"What are you still doing here?!"

Blearily, Steve pulls his eyes open, slowly shifting in place to survey the room around him. He's alone, which is a major bummer, he's gonna have to dock points from Eddie for that. Then again, he muses as he looks over the clothes that are hanging from everywhere, including on top of the ceiling fan, maybe a few points don't matter much when he's definitely up in the hundreds already.

Oh shit, that's the brand new outfit, the one he and Robin spent hours agonizing over before their night out, thrown across the floor, isn't it? Fuck.

"Be polite, he's a guest -"

Steve stretches out his back, lifting his sore arms up towards the sky where his hands brush against the muscle tee, the one on the ceiling fan, that Eddie was wearing last night. Oh, now there's an idea.

With a smirk, Steve pulls the tee down and onto himself, fluffing out his hair and hoping today is one of those days he can pull off the bedhead look.

"Eddie?" he calls out softly as he steps out of the bedroom, rubbing at one of his eyes, the one on the side that was squished up against Eddie all night (well, not all night...).

"Stevie!"

His voice is loud and happy, far more chipper than Steve expected from a vampire after a long night. He blinks, looking up to see Eddie beaming at him with flour dusting his hair and a whisk in one hand. The sunlight filters through with the shades to cast lines of light across him and with the way he's smiling, Steve doesn't think he's ever seen a prettier sight.

"I was just making breakfast for you, I wasn't sure if you were a morning person but I figure, y'know, sun-kissed skin and whatnot, it'd make sense if you were -"

He can't help it, Steve lets out a giggle, something small and light, something he used to never let himself have. But Eddie's smile makes it so worth it. Steve smiles back shyly, gliding in closer and stroking a hand up Eddie's arm (he's wearing a different shirt, maybe he took it out of his closet?). "You're making me breakfast?"

The vampire sighs dreamily as he looks into Steve's eyes, his fangs peeking out from his dopey little smile. There's so much flour in his hair, did he forget to tie it up before starting to cook? "Yeah..."

"That's so sweet," Steve coos, bringing his hands up to cup Eddie's face, pull him in closer and nuzzle their noses together. "Thank you, Eds."

He slowly opens his eyes and stifles back a giggle at how desperately cute Eddie's expression is, eyes flickering between Steve's face and his own shirt, cheeks flushed pink with Steve's blood. He has a feeling that if vampires had tails, Eddie's would be wagging uncontrollably right now.

"So, what're you making me?" he whispers, dragging his nose down the curve of Eddie's jaw, breathing in his scent of iron and cranberries (did he have some juice? or does blood just smell like cranberries on a vampire?).

"I - uh, ha -" Eddie swallows and Steve tracks the motion with the bridge of his nose, peeking up over Eddie's shoulder to look at -

"Shit, is that the time?!"

"Wha -"

Steve shoves himself away from Eddie, rushing back into the bedroom and slamming the door shut. He frantically pulls off the tee (goodbye cozy morning, sigh) and grabs his skirt from last night - no stains on it, or on his top, thank fuck.

"Stevie?"

"Gimme a sec!" Steve calls out, crawling out from under the bed with his shoes in hand. Fuck, fuck, fuck, how did it get so late, Robin's gonna be so mad -

"What's -"

"I'm so sorry, Eddie!" Steve yanks the door open, guilt curdling up his insides when he sees Eddie waiting outside his own bedroom door with a hopeful-turned-distressed expression. He walks past him, hopping on one leg as he puts a shoe on. "I have a thing I need to get to, I honestly forgot until I saw the time -"

"Pfft, likely story," a random voice says.

He spins to stare at the sofa, where three people are strewn about, legs and arms overlapping each other. Only one of them is awake, a bleary-eyed, wavy-haired guy that's glaring at Steve.

"Shoulda thought of that excuse before he started nagging at us."

"It's not an excuse," Steve snaps, finally managing to get his second shoe on. "I have brunch -"

"Told you, dude," the guy lazily rolls his eyes over to Eddie, sending a hot flash of anger through Steve.

"Oh fuck you," he hisses, pointedly grabbing Eddie's hand (the one without the whisk, why is he still holding it?) and pulling him in closer. He glares at Eddie, who's staring at him with big doe eyes, softening at the gaze. "I'm really sorry I can't stay, Eds."

"But...waffles?" he says quietly, like he's confused, like Steve isn't making any sense.

And he isn't, not really, but he can't afford to be late to the Robin-and-Steve-Monthly-Gossip-Brunch after they both missed the past two months already, third time's the charm and he does not want to find out what that charm would be for.

"I'm sorry," he says again, wincing when Eddie visibly deflates. Steve presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, just so he doesn't get distracted and lose even more time, and pats his chest. "I was really looking forward to breakfast with you."

A little bit of shine comes back to Eddie's eyes, flickering over from Steve to the window. He speeds away, whisk clattering somewhere in the kitchen, as Steve blinks and suddenly he's back, holding up his leather jacket towards Steve with a shy smile.

"'S cold out. Take my jacket?" Eddie asks and Steve pulls him in, flour-hair and all, for the deepest, filthiest kiss he can give, swallowing down his gasp, his moan and every last sliver of his minty breath.

"Thanks, babe." Steve whispers, pulling the jacket on (at least it makes up for the muscle tee failure) and relishing in the warmth. He opens the front door, presses one final, chaste kiss to Eddie's lips and walks out, the smell of cranberries sticking to his skin.

Eddie watches Steve leave in his jacket with a sigh, already longing for that pretty voice to say "Eds" to him again.

"You know," Gareth says from the couch, which pops the blissful balloon Eddie was happily floating in. He turns to glare at his three friends, all lounging on the couch even after he told them to be presentable. Gareth continues, "You know, you could have offered to drop him off. He'd get there faster and you'd get more time with him too. I mean, did you even get his number?"

Silence. Then -

"Fuck!"

[evilkitten3]

Mutual, I'm lowkey obsessing over your tags about akatsuki Tsunade, can you elaborate more the basic timeline? Like how this would affect Tsunade's arc in classic and such

tbh i hadn't really thought about it lol

but.... let's say it happens during the search for tsunade arc? orochimaru and jiraiya are both gunning to get her on their side but you know what? the shark man said please. get your shit shizune we're going with these guys if you poison the little red-eyed shit on the way no judgement (kisame: maybe don't though?)

jiraiya is pissed, orochimaru is torn between being amused bc wow and being in agonizing pain bc his arms still don't work, naruto keeps trying to get her to come heal lee (and now sasuke) but she's having none of it so she just throws a file of miscellaneous notes at his head and tells him "find someone with good chakra control and pray" (sakura: omg i have good chakra control!!!!)

weirdly the member of team seven affected most by this is sasuke bc sakura has absolutely no fucking clue what she's doing at first and it takes her like an extra month to wake him up, so he needs to get back on his feet before he can decide if he wants to run off to orochimaru or not. lee is.... kinda sol, frankly. sakura works really really hard to help him out, and she's eventually able to get him to a place where he can do a few things, but by the time she's good enough to really be able to help him it's way too late. fortunately he's adapted somewhat, and being lee he's surpassed what anyone thought he'd be able to, but he's never going to be what he could've been. gaara feels terrible about this ofc but lee isn't the sort to really hold a grudge, even if pretty much everyone agrees he'd be perfectly justified in doing so. gai never forgives tsunade, though, not really.

concerning tsunade's role in the akatsuki.... the thing is, it's her own grandparents who started the whole jinchuuriki mess. and she's seen with her own two eyes what konoha did to places like amegakure; she was part of it. she doesn't like that the jinchuuriki die post extraction, so she starts looking into how to make that not happen, but if she does succeed, it isn't until after the gaara debacle, so chiyo still dies. her biggest motivation here is naruto - she doesn't agree with him, but he reminds her of nawaki, so she really doesn't want him to die if at all avoidable. she doesn't get too involved in the actual jinchuuriki capturing process tho; she's more useful patching people up after.

having said that, she doesn't fully agree with pain and konan's plan, she just can't really think of anything better. tobi tells sasuke about itachi while tsunade is patching him up, and since it's her family that led to this, she's pretty on-board with the whole "fuck this stupid baka village" thing (ofc she's been heading down that path since joining the akatsuki, so this isn't like canon!tsunade suddenly making this call; there's a couple years of character development first), so.... she's effectively on team sasuke at this point, and once he splits from the akatsuki she does as well.

iirc, post danzou, sasuke spent about eight and a half volumes just kinda adjusting mostly offscreen to his recent ert (eyeball replacement therapy), before skewering og white zetsu and fucking off to go accidentally reunite with zombitachi, but aside from decking itachi through a few trees on sight, idk how much about all that would change. immediately after, when sasuke brings back orochimaru, they have an awkward reunion, followed by yet another awkward reunion when orochimaru brings back the four dead hokage. she's both very happy to see her granddad again, but it's hard for her to tell him (and hiruzen, for that matter) that she deserted the village completely, even if she doesn't regret her decision.

now you may be wondering: weren't shizune and tonton also around? yes! but when sasuke went after danzou, they stayed behind, leading to shizune finding and managing to save konan after tobito killed her. there's a potential romance subplot there as well but i accidentally ruined it for myself by saying aloud "two girls one pig" and then regretting my whole life.

the other survival is jiraiya; he becomes hokage instead since it's either one of the sannin or one of the elders, and as much as he doesn't want the job, he really doesn't want them to have it. this in part means he can't go spying in ame himself, although he very nearly does after orochimaru's death gets reported, but instead he sends someone else. that person dies, but manages to get the information back to him (it has to be someone important to naruto, and it can't be kakashi, so maybe iruka? but idk how he'd be in espionage. maybe one of naruto's classmates did spy training offscreen? it's entirely possible with jiraiya as hokage instead of tsunade but idk). since jiraiya isn't a healer, he'd either need to be injured badly enough for danzou to be able to step in without him being able to object, or sasuke would just need to have his fight with danzou somewhere else (so the raikage's arm might survive also).

the final thing is that, unlike in canon, this version of tsunade never got naruto therapy'd, so while she does eventually get over the hemophilia somehow (maybe just existing in the relative vicinity of hidan did the trick), she never really dealt with the grief that caused her to leave konoha in the first place, so that's still very much there. however, i think maybe this could work to the story's advantage - instead of just naruto vs sasuke, it could be naruto and sakura vs sasuke and tsunade. tho in this instance sasuke really isn't alone, and isn't really trying to be by that point. it's more a battle of "do we try to fix the system from within, or do we really need to start from scratch for things to improve in any meaningful way", but ultimately the winner is the realization that four people from konoha not only shouldn't but honestly can't be the only ones making this call. if the world is going to move forward, it can't be dragged by a single person, or even two people. it's gotta be a group effort. idk if the story should go into the details of what they decide on, bc i'm definitely not politically savvy enough for something like that, or just have an open ending leaving whatever happens next up to interpretation.

(sorry this took so long lol i kept having to do things XD)

[noa-ciharu]

For the ask game: fyolai 24 + 35 (you can choose)

fyolai + "you don't even have a clue about the things you did to me"

Post Meursault arc + angst on the max

- - - - - - - - -

The demon is still alive.

If Nikolai didn't know better he would have claimed he's dreaming. But no dream could sting this much - nightmare was distressingly real. Such labeling wouldn't be apt under any other circumstances but at the moment Nikolai couldn't find more proper words - for months he was haunted inside mind, now in reality too. How would it not be suitable to call Fyodor a demon when he plagued psyche day in, day out no better than one? If he wasn't informed beforehand Fyodor is indeed alive Nikolai swore he wouldn't have believed his eyes - surely would have presumed stricken mind is conjuring tricks on the very trickster, mayhap as karma.

Same old gentle smile, the very one honeyed that led his heart astray. "You seem lost", ah there it is, that velvety tone he replayed inside head during darkest hours to the brink of madness. In a way it was refreshing to hear it outside own tormented psyche, but Nikolai wasn't foolish enough to hold his breath for a miracle - miracles are reserved solely for divine beings, not mortal souls filled to the brim with hideous stupid selfish cravings.

Yes I am, and you like that.

For once Nikolai found himself lost for words. Not only would joviality be unsought at the moment but also taletelling - speak volumes how nonplussed he is. How could he not be when everything that he knew turned out to be a lie? When a performer ended up being the fool of own show? Even if he wished to present a false front and open curtains to another charade he'd be unable too. Voice too tremendously, head too woozy, heart pounding inside ears driving up the walls - very fettering humanity prevented from achieving even illusionary freedom. Any hope of attaining genuine one has been squashed on the day of Fyodor's alleged demise - that day Nikolai realized not even death could erase Fyodor from his heart.

Fyodor advanced towards him with that tender smile meaning to beguile. It's all an artifice, yes Nikolai knew that excruciatingly well but his heart still danced; signed his most cataclysmic downfall in advance. "Don't lose sleep over me" - too late for that, I already did more than even you could imagine. "It was just my ability", explained Fyodor nonchalantly, still with reassuring smile that did nothing but distress more.

Nikolai gulped slowly; tried to find his voice but to no avail. As if sinner before the very God he found himself quivering; conscious of every gesticulation, every pained breath he took, every impious thought. No way Fyodor could know of every agonizing second he spent obsessing over him; of every time chest squeezed so much he felt like suffocating, every tear he didn't allow to slide, to the point where throat and eyes stung just from freedom he denied himself. No way he could know - yet confidences Fyodor carried himself with implied otherwise, even if nothing but an illusion.

"Is that so Dos-kun?", eventually he managed to murmur, albeit with voice humblingly high and cracking. No need to berate himself for betraying affect, devil knew nonetheless - always did. By this point it was ludicrous to even attempt to hide something from those piercing eyes, they always made one feel bare to the very bone.

Knees gave out. Before he knew it gaze was glued to the floor; away from Fyodor's penetrating stare. Beyond mortifying to exhibit something this raw, especially in front of the man that'd doubtlessly hold it against him when he least expects; but not a thing could be done. If this is how he's reacting to seeing Fyodor after all this time while knowing he's alive somewhere out there Nikolai couldn't even imagine how much worse it would have been if he wasn't informed beforehand.

"No jesting?", Nikolai heard Fyodor chaff; tables have indeed been turned for jester to be unamused down on his knees with demon hovering above him, rubbing salt into wounds. Dry scniker, then he continued just as callously. "No welcoming hug?", Fyodor tilted head and ribbed dulcetly. "Not happy to see me alive and kicking?"

I shouldn't but I am. And that part bothers the most. He should be livid Fyodor is alive but since revelation not once has rage coarsed through veins. If he found himself sweating and trembling it was all due to overwhelming happiness he could not contain - needless to say it'll sound the death knell in long shot, he'd never be free of hoping.

Snorting Nikolai lifted chin, shook head and offered a sad smile. "Ah, you don't have a clue what you've done to me", broken and beaten confessed what should have never left mouth. However after months of torment he was that exhausted he couldn't bring himself to mask the anguish anymore.

That piqued Fyodor's interest - understatement Nikolai was in two minds whether holding devil's attention boded for anything promising or being shackled in most rigid chains. "What I've done to you?", footsteps grew closer until Nikolai found himself gazing straight into those very eyes that unremittingly haunted whenever he closed very own.

Fyodor cupped his cheek, caressed with tenderness that could only be artificial. "Oh Nikolai" - don't murmur my name like that, I might as well believe every word you lie.

"I'm afraid you did this to yourself"

[that1garrulousfan]

This is that self-indulgent AU-

I was heavily inspired to make this into a written form by @doodledoesthing3 , @ninjablasterzx , @daydreamer36 and @guppieishere .

Also one last thing to clear up possible confusion, since I’m so indecisive, HyperHumor has a different backstory in every AU she’s in to specifically fit the context/plot. So this is fresh outta the oven, baby! :]

Sorry if it’s cringe, I haven’t written in a while!

23 minutes.

HyperHumor was created for the sole purpose of being a close friend of the Bubba Bubbaphant character in the Smiling Critters series produced by PlayTime Co., celebrating the new collection of colorful, scented plushies.

They didn’t have to know each other; it was automatic. With no need to understand or know her own identity, or anyone else’s, all she had to do was exist and play her role.

Her first and only appearance took place on the fourth episode, “The Spotlight Shuffle” where she’d reunite with her pachyderm pal and ask him if he’d like to perform with her on a big stand up, which causes him to spend more time with her over his friend group in the process, leaving them to worry if he considers her over them.

23 minutes.

“It’ll be alright. And I can visit you whenever!” Hyper chirped with a bright smile, holding her friend’s hooves. Bubba smiled back in response, “Mhm. And we’ll be here once you do.”

And it was over. All wrapped in a pretty little bow and done with.

She spent the next five years in isolation and silence.

-

She couldn’t feel anything at first. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t piece where she was. Her ears barely picking up a single wave of coherent sound. Not that she knew what it would be anyway. There’s only so much one can remember from 23 minutes. A few measures of music, bits of scripted lines, a handful of colors, the elephant’s name for sure…

Hyper shuffled on the ground, struggling to stand up without falling back down. It was weird. Her body felt numb, yet everything hurt. Another thing she wasn’t used to. Back in the cartoon, her home, pain was exceptionally temporary and minor, but here, every waking moment was agonizing.

She felt as if an unbearable weight was keeping her in place although she was certain nothing was near her. Weird. She thought.

Which was weird as well! It’s been so long since she’s even heard her own “voice”. Or thought. Let alone for herself. Everything was usually predetermined to be true and that was who she was. Whatever the creators wanted her to be.

Did she even have control of herself? Are these thoughts even her own?

Every move, every word, every problem, every solution was written and planned. And she was aware of it!

Was this planned too?

Why is she thinking like this then?

Hyper couldn’t recall walking towards the door, she simply found herself there, her hand pressed against the wall that she couldn’t even feel. Her senses were disconnected. Was she… standing? Probably? Maybe? She should be, right? How else could she have gotten there?

And why did her head hurt so much? The constant throbbing sensation made her want to tear her way through her fur and rip her brain out of her skull. Her vision was blurry, everything around her was seemingly fading away into the darkness.

None of it made sense.

What is this place?

Why was she here?

Why does she feel this way?

Her heart rapidly pounded in her chest, her breaths were shallow and uneven, as if daggers were stabbing into her lungs.

She rubbed her temples with her fingers in slow motions, humming something to herself, too tired to form any actual words of consolation.

The more time she spent trying to calm down, the more time she spent fantasizing about being back home. A place she could hardly remember all on its own.

Thinking of things that brought her comfort, helped her forget about the distress she was in in order to stay calm. However, this was always seen as “problematic” according to the creators. They believed that behavior would cause the children to develop unhealthy ways of coping and destroy their mental health. Not that it mattered anymore, right?

It’s not like they can read her mind anyways.

She took slow, deep breaths.

Home.

Home was nice.

Her ears rang, a loud sizzling, high-pitched noise.

They were punishing her for her sinful act.

The walls bore nice messages.

Were there pictures?

Her breathing quickened and heaved. She could barely feel the sweat dripping down her face.

Pictures would be nice.

Maybe she could take pictures of her with her friends and hang them up when she went back.

She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, blinking a few times before everything finally came into focus. Cold sweat ran down her face as it immediately when pale.

Dark. Very dark.

And… red?

She heard voices.

Voices!

People were here!

What are they talking about?

Maybe they can explain what’s happening!

Yes! She could get help!

She had so many questions and—

Wait.

They’re not talking.

Not at all in fact.

Are those…

“S-Screams…?” Hyper muttered to herself in confusion. She shuddered a bit, wincing in pain.

She hadn’t spoken in so long, it scared her how raspy and quiet her voice was.

Suddenly, her hand slipped, the door she happened to lean on swung open much too fast for her to react. She fell face first into the other room. More red. A lot of red. Everywhere.

She was breathing it in!

Her body gave out, her senses intensifying as the situation did.

Screams.

Sobs.

Shrill cries of names.

Thuds.

Slashes.

Splatters.

Roaring.

More screams.

Even faster footsteps.

The last thing she saw before blacking out was a clock dead center across the room, which read 10:13am.

🚫Please don’t repost, trace, steal and/or use my artwork for AI!🚫

🚫Do not plagiarize my work!🚫

if you want, please give me feedback

[ryry-rebel]

Can we get revenge on sukuna or just make him regret it🥲🙏

I Am No Longer Yours (part 2)

Ryomen Sukuna x Reader

Part 1

My Masterlist -> Masterlist

You ask and you shall receive!

This is a two-part series. A link for part one is above. I would suggest reading that before you continue here, thank you!

Synopsis- You had finally come to the realization that Sukuna would never truly love you. You were over him, but now, he wasn't over you.

Warnings- Cussing, mention of sex

Pronouns- she/her the reader is female

Word count- 1,153

Content- mentions of oral sex and penetration

The passage of time can heal the deepest of wounds, but if the wound is not properly healed, it can make the cut deeper.

It has been 3 months...

Exactly three months since you were left lying on your bed, naked, crying and alone. Your heart had been ripped out and stomped on from the man you truly longed for.

Since then, you had convinced yourself to move on.

To completely forget about him and all the memories you shared.

It wasn't easy, seeing as though you had to see his human vessel, Yuji Itadori every day.

Sukuna's painful resemblance to Yuji was a hard pill to swallow. The only difference being Sukuana's strange black markings.

But, eventually, with the passage of time, you did get over it, the pill becoming easier to swallow with just a little water.

Finding different people and substances to take your mind off the pain truly did suffice. Each time you had slept with a different man, it became a little easier. And each time, Sukuna strayed further and further from your mind, until he was nothing but a distant memory.

A memory that no longer held any importance to you.

People say that time can heal the deepest of wounds, and for you, that rang true.

But for Sukuna, he couldn't say the same.

While the days have been short and peaceful for you, they have been truly grueling and agonizing for him.

Each passing day led Sukuna more astray. He was losing his mind, and it didn't help that most days all he could do was sit on his throne, watching Yuji go about his day.

Watching Yuji interact so causally with you.

His thoughts began to eat at him, rotting his brain until there was only one thing remaining.

The only thought he had that was of any importance to him was of you.

Ever since that grim night three months back, you had slithered your way into his thoughts, consuming his entire being like a parasite.

All he could think about was you.

All his thoughts were of your naked body.

Your body exposed to him and him alone.

Only available for his viewing pleasure.

His thoughts kept returning to the pretty sounds you would make while he ruts his cock deep into your cunt. Those lovely cries and sobs as he would eat your dripping wet pussy, licking every last drop as though it was his final meal. Those choked moans that would escape your mouth as you took every inch of his thick cock.

Oh, how your legs would shake when you were on the verge of cumming, and how you fit him so well.

Moreover, all he could think about was the crestfallen look that was rested upon your face as he slapped you and told you how much of a useless human you were.

Sukuna couldn't deny it any longer, despite his constant inner battle telling him his feelings of compassion and infatuation were nothing but the feeling of lust.

He missed you, and he was starving without you. You were the only meal that could feed his insatiable hunger.

Three long months without getting to feel you, to taste you, to ravage you.

Three long months simply not being in your presence.

Sure, you hung with Yuji all the time, but it wasn't the same.

It wasn't good enough for him.

Every time he got the chance to control the body, you would turn the other cheek. You wouldn't even give him a second glance as you strutted away with your head held high, which bothered him to no end.

You had taken a liking to Gojo too. You spent way more time with him, and Sukuna definitely suspected a platonic fucking happening between the two of you.

In fact, almost every Jujutsu sorcerer in Tokyo Metropolitan Tech. knew about you and Gojo canoodling.

The screams emitting from his room at 12 a.m., and the banging sounds from his headboard hitting the wall says enough.

The fact he couldn't do anything about Gojo drove him to his wits ends.

Which leaves you here, back where it all started three months ago...

You were pressed against the wall with Sukuna's hands pinned on both sides of you, rendering you unable to move. His knee was placed in between your legs for extra measures. Your dorm door was shut and locked, which meant Sukuna was surely to catch you if you tried to leave.

You couldn't fight him; he was stronger by 10-fold.

So, all you could do was bare your teeth and wait for this to be over.

"Why have you been acting like a bitch you worthless worm!"

"Geez Sukuna, I don't know. Maybe it's because you're a total self-centered dick who only cares about himself!"

Your faces were so close you could feel his breath on your face. His intense stare alone would have been able to make a grown man back down.

But not you. You stood your ground, not giving him the satisfaction of winning.

You were done letting him win. He would have no control over you anymore!

"I'm a curse princess. I take what I want, and I want you, so get on your damn knees!"

You grabbed Sukuna's shoulders and kneed him in the groin.

"No, I will never bow down to you again! I am done being your plaything!" Your voice echoed throughout the room. A single tear slipped past your eye, but you weren't sad. That tear was not from sadness.

More so, it was a tear of anger, relief, and freedom.

Sukuna faltered a bit, but your attempts to remove him were not enough. His head snapped back towards you; his rage-induced eyes said it all. Before he could make his move, there was a faint knock at the door, which froze both of you in your places.

"Is everything all right in there."

It was Gojo's voice.

"Gojo come in!" you yelled.

The door being locked posed no problem for the white-haired sorcerer. He was easily able to gain access. Once he was in, his eyes wandered the room in confusion, his brow lifting every so slightly.

Yuji was lying on your bed, while you stood awkwardly at the foot, giving him a small wave. Gojo hummed before turning on his heel and walking out. You could hear him mumbling down the hall about how disgusting the two of you were.

Unbeknownst to him, that was not what had happened. But Gojo didn't need to know that. In fact, if you were to tell him what had actually occurred, it would no doubt boost his ego higher than it already was, and nobody wants that.

No one.

So, deciding to claim your victory today, you let Yuji be as you walked out of your room.

You had won the battle and that's all that matters.

It was a small price to pay for the rumors of you and Yuji that would circulate around the school.

[sshadowritestoriess]

if u do angst: may we please have Rama, despite the miraculous loving relationship with his dear human reader, being hit with the reality of the mortality of their partner, what he does to cope with it and how he deals with the inevitable loss from natural/unatural causes (i sowwy i wanna HURT) tysm!! ;w;

Aw nooo 😭 I hope I did this one some justice

Ramattra and Morality

“Our lives are short, will you share yours with me?”

When he had asked, the sappiest he had ever been, he had mostly spoken in assumption that he would sooner be forced to shut down by human hand before ever finding out if he even had a lifespan.

But years into his cause, and years into this war he had waged, he was seeing his dream become fabricated before him— slowly, but it was there. And he had hope

You were always there beside him, by some miracle you decided to stay, and he knew you were probably the one thing keeping his sanity tethered to the earth— the one thing preventing him from ensuing mass genocide in his agonizing hunger for justice- no, revenge.

And with you he was seeing his goal come to fruition, a world where omnics could live in peace. He could see an end to the fight

But then he thought, what would he do after? Could he settle with you if the world would allow it? Would that be his life from then on?

And what of you? Is that what you wanted? Would you stay with him still, for the rest of your life?

It dawned on him then, a harsh realization that stung and boiled like ignited oil in his chest. He became awfully aware of the taught wires in his throat, the placement of his vocalizer wrapped safe within them. He would lift a hand to his neck, his mind practically spinning with thoughts of you growing older, and older, until you weren’t there anymore

You would not last forever. He knew this— he had said that from the beginning. But you— You would not last. And that scared him

It continued to bother him for months, though refusing to talk about it.

It was obvious something was wrong, and this made things seem a little off for some time. He was already so kind and gentle with you as your partner, but then he suddenly became sweeter? Gentle gestures became somewhat touch-starved, he’d hold you closer. He was more passionate in nights he spent pleasing you, and far more intense and attentive to whatever you had to say— all as if it would be your last.

It was overwhelming, and you had demanded several times to know what was wrong. But he would lie, and lie again, until you finally turned your head from him and he recognized disappointment.

And so he caved, and his hands would shake as he reaches toward you in a rush to explain. “I do not want you to die.”

It broke your heart, and his. His processor was burning the more he spoke about it, every word he spoke felt forced and stuttered— his vocalizer defensively attempting to restart in the midst of every sentence— and his fans were loud as he tried to stop himself from having an internal meltdown. He could not stop shaking.

This behavior you recognized as crying, for an omnic. You’d never seen him so frantic, you’d never seen him cry.

You could only assure him there was still so much time left for you both, that he had so little to worry about for now. What time he spent in his head agonizing over the passage of time, was time taken from appreciating what he had right now.

He would have sighed and agreed, you were right. But it was so hard to let go— a fatal flaw, of his. He could never just forget.

But he took your words to heart, and as always he took them seriously. Things returned to normal, relatively, but he remained far more eager to spend time with you

He reached a point of hoping that he would not outlive you. How privileged you were as a human, to enjoy life knowing roughly how much time you had to live it. He had no idea. He didn’t want to live forever

He had experienced more loss than most people have on the planet. Approaching a breaking point that not even he knew if he could recover from, how much time and healing it would take if he lost one more thing dear to him

You would get over his death far easier, he believed. And he could happily go to rest knowing you were safe and loved— this was the death he began wishing for

This imaginative dream was what put him at ease. Deciding that, in a handful of decades, he would ensure his passing before yours. Morbid, but it helped. After reaching this decision he could be truthful in saying he felt fine, when you asked. No more lies

You had said he had more time, and he believed that

But unpredictability was a bitch of a factor, and he had lost you so much quicker than he was prepared for. He had just been ridden of his paranoia, and now everything has suddenly slammed on its breaks and shattered him at his very core

An ambush, masses of explosives that wiped out most of his forces, hundreds of his omnic brethren lost in the fire

But he did not search for any familiar metal bodies, he passed the unmoving forms of friends and dared not reach for them. He went straight to you. He collapses to his knees and pulls you into his arms— but he knew better than any other model of omnic what a dead human looked like.

And even while he knew, and stared into a lifeless gaze that would not recognize him, he still shook you and demanded you to wake.

Even while his dream crumbled around him, his ideal vision of the world for his brothers and sisters fading back into nothingness, he still held tight to your body in a grip that would have squeezed the air from your lungs. He wanted you to tell him that he was hurting you, he wanted to hear your voice tell him to calm down, he needed to hear that you were still there

But this treacherous grip that he would never have done to you on a day that you were breathing, evoked no such reaction. He was holding nothing but a body in his hands.

You were a death so wholly undeserved, yet there was nothing he could do about it. There was no way he could have prevented this outcome

But when his comrades finally found him and pried him from your bruising husk, guiding him to somewhere safe, his mind spiraled toward all the possible ways he would have stopped this from happening

He’s pretty sure he hurt someone. Several of his people, actually, for tearing him away from you. He remembers hearing screaming, likely his own.

And then he would be wordless for days, leaning into weeks. He could not lead what was left of his movement. So it moved on without him

He died, too, to the rest of the world: The last ravager lost in a successful ambush on the Null Sector. One human casualty.

He was thankful he had such loyal allies that would carry on his efforts. He could not bear to lose anymore— he had so little left. So Ramattra would disappear for quite some time

But he would eventually resurface from a long period of silence, going first to find the last being who still cared for him, Zenyatta. The monk would only find the shell of what his brother once was, weakening by the moment, struggling to find a purpose for himself

Zenyatta might have known of you, but never met you. Through his brother’s haunting grief for this human, he could easily guess what you might have been like, if deemed so ‘perfect’ by this broken ravager

Zenyatta’s wisdom and company kept him afloat. It was a long road to finally accepting his partner’s death, but from him Ramattra would soon learn to think that you wouldn’t wish for him to suffer in your absence.

He would never be the same. But he would try and find happiness again, for you, believing his brother’s words true.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

I’m never going to be over Ray and Emma both having visions of Norman when they both desperately needed the comfort of his presence.

I could have gone with manga panels for both of these for uniformity, but yet again CloverWorks takes advantage of the medium shift to add such beautiful nuance to (hallucination!)Norman and Ray’s exchange in the S1 finale—Norman speaking to Ray so, so gently in both the English and Japanese dubs with his final remark featured here, Ray being so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened in the past hour already and now topped with seeing one of the two people who was most important to him reappear, after he thought he’d never see him again, that he nearly cries at his words. I can’t express how much I adore the way they handled this scene.

By turning out to be a hallucination/dream as opposed to a ghost, we’re shown Norman’s departed spirit isn’t actually guiding them as its own independent entity with an agenda in another incorporeal form, but instead how they both internalized his character and personality and, most importantly, how they wished to see him again that manifested his appearance (see this post for further differences between their perspectives of him on this particular night).

Ray has spent over half of his life utterly loathing himself for the choices he made in order to save Emma and Norman. So much so he built up a bravado around the act of his self-immolation for years, resulting in the manic fervor he displays when giving his speech to Emma in the few minutes before the clock strikes midnight on his officially listed birthday (this is also fueled by his fraught relationship with Isabella, but that’s for other posts). He not only believes he deserves to die for his actions and perceived inaction, but that he should do so in a violent, agonizing way.

Ray knows Norman, knows his sense of rigid morality well enough to account for him discovering his alliance with Isabella and using that to his advantage, to further push Norman away so he’ll be more comfortable with using him (he even chides Norman for not keeping his original plan to do this a secret) and so his death will hurt him and Emma less. And for roughly the entire back half of October 2045, Norman did genuinely hate Ray for his betrayal in the same way he hated Isabella, his reaction so visceral at being deceived and hurt by people he had loved all his life. He would have been willing to sacrifice Ray if not for intervention from Emma, which opened him up to directly confronting Ray and, in turn, led him to discover Ray’s true motives. He was so humbled and taken aback by the depths of Ray’s love and loyalty he returned to his original categorization of him: a dear friend who needed to be saved from his intended fate in their cruel world. Even if saving him came at the cost of his own life; even if he desperately wanted to live.

One could argue Ray hallucinating Norman up on the wall was to assuage his own guilt at being unable to save him as he originally planned (something that, on his darker days, I think Ray himself would believe), but I prefer to view it as the final marker of his truly internalizing one of the deepest desires in his heart that he had locked away for so long. After living under that oppressive reality of dehumanization and exploitation and believing that there was nothing else for him, that this was all there was, that things would never get better and after everything he did up to that point, he didn’t deserve better, on top of Isabella throwing him completely off balance by shipping Norman out early and just being this incredibly conflicting and painful presence in his life, to have his siblings come together for this escape plan and without putting it explicitly in words convey “you’re worth saving, Ray, and we love you,” and that they gave him hope back

(Chapter 36)

it fucks me up something fierce.

Emma’s hallucination of Norman is much more brief during this time.

No words are exchanged, but none are necessary.

(Chapter 31)

After two and a half months of grappling with the real, palpable grief she felt at his death, seeing him around every corner and hearing his voice, and sublimating it into her efforts to ensure the success of the escape, she’s able to find solace in her vision of him before the wall.

(Chapter 119)

It’s why she sheds no tears for him until their reunion nearly two years later.

(TPN Light Novel 1: A Letter from Norman - “The Day Emma Cried”; translated by @1000sunnygo​​)

But up until that point, she repeatedly draws strength and comfort from his memory.

Even before chapter 93, she’s unconsciously reaching for him in her fevered dreams.

(Chapter 45 Side Scene)

Him and Isabella, predominantly in black due to her belief they’re dead, and Ray and the rest of the escapees who she hopes are still alive, predominately in white.

(Chapter 50)

Though she had to compromise on their original plan by only bringing along those over five at its outset, she’s committed to their end goal. She was the spark that pushed them to strive for the ideal outcome instead of settling for the safest one that would be tinged in regrets, and he gave up everything to facilitate it.

(Chapter 53)

The three-panel overview of her thought process ends on her final handshake with Norman. It’s painful enough for this man to be insulting her living family, but when her thoughts drift to the boy who had given his life so they would have a chance to live freely, who came to believe in all those things the man was disparaging, it’s the final straw that breaks her silence. She won’t stand and let her family be disregarded so casually or let Norman’s memory be desecrated like that.

(Chapter 64)

She eventually brings him up to Yuugo in an attempt to connect with him over lost friends, and her framing of it is interesting because while viewing Norman as having agency in making his choice (as much as they can have under the circumstances in that he went willingly, which isn’t much, but from her perspective as a traumatized child), she states simply that she let him go. (Shoutout to the way SKATES delivers said line in the manga dub. Wonderfully heartbreaking. </3)

(Chapter 30)

After she and Ray both knew how much he wanted to see the world beyond their walled existence and live on with them.

So when we get to chapter 93 where she’s on the brink of death, having visions of all the suffering experienced on the grounds of Goldy Pond before finding refuge and strength in visions of her family, the one who catches he when she begins to sink is Norman.

Unlike with the hallucinations at the end of the escape arc that were meant to obfuscate his fate, at this point we as an audience know he’s alive at Lambda, so this is all coming from the perception of Norman Emma holds deep within her heart. Even from beyond, even if it meant being separated from her longer, she sees him guiding her out of the unknown, murky depths so she can continue fighting to actualize their plan. (To say nothing of the way she imagines him delicately intertwining their fingers upon reaching her as the way he catches her. The association with safety and gentleness is always present and yet another valued refuge in light of the violence she’s in the middle of.)

Minor tangent to end on, but it’s interesting to me how when Emma brings up Norman’s name among people she misses, during the only time they privately mention him, Ray takes a beat to gather himself before focusing on what’s still obtainable in this life.

(Chapter 55)

There’s zero chance she blames him for Norman’s shipment, but he’s still not ready to look her in the eye and delve into it where they could potentially draw attention from others when he considers it a failure to his two most precious people after years of meticulous planning.

(Chapter 65)

But Norman’s still in his thoughts too as he adamantly refuses to fail Emma again.

(Chapter 93)

Though he comes very close.

(Chapter 123)

And he’s the one to remind Emma of how special their bond is when she’s having doubts about voicing her disagreement with Norman’s plan.