#I need more than bleach to recover from that

[marianadecarlos]

What is Aguila Roja? Is it a show or a movie? Because in your posts you ranted about Aguila Roja's portrayal of Mariana.

Is there TV shows and Movies about her aside from that? I feel like Habsburgs in 17th century was often ignore by media because I don't see shows about them. There is Versailles series though if your interested.

"Águila Roja" is a Spanish adventure television series set in 17th-century Spain. Produced by Globomedia for Televisión Española, it aired on La 1 from 2009 to 2016 and has earned its status as one of the channel's most successful shows, with broadcasting rights sold in multiple countries. I must express my strong dissatisfaction with the portrayal of Mariana, as it is historically inaccurate and misleading. While I recognize that the show is a work of historical fiction, it is essential to accurately depict real-life individuals, especially lesser-known historical figures. The portrayal of Mariana as vain, selfish, and promiscuous—engaging in an affair with the fictional character Cardinal Mendoza. This plotline creates a distortion of her character. In reality, Mariana was a devoted wife, loving mother, intelligent, strong, loyal, dutiful, strict, tactile, and pious. These traits are glaringly absent from her depiction in the series. Although some scenes show her as a caring mother and wife, particularly when she comforts Felipe, these moments are far too few and are overshadowed by their frequent conflicts. Shows like this must uphold historical integrity, as misrepresentation can lead to widespread misconceptions.

Beware my friend as the worst is yet to come, I stumbled upon this video on YouTube. To those who are curious to watch this scene, it features graphic content.

There is more than one scene but I refuse to post the links because as you can see this one is already terrible. The other scenes just featured her getting kidnapped, tortured, tying her to a tree, and lifting her up in the air.

I was mortified upon witnessing it! The need to showcase the character getting tortured and almost burnt at the stake! I do not understand the reason or context of this scene at all! This scene is not only inaccurate and degrading, but It is also an insult to her name, real-life experiences, and legacy.

Apart from her portrayal, her costumes were as expected inaccurate, The outfits that Lucía Eliana Sánchez wore in the series, in my opinion, did not fit the way of dressing at the time. Both the exaggerated neckline and the shapes of the silhouette did not correspond to the attire worn at that time, and even more so, by such a leading figure.

In Spain, women did wear a neckline, as we can see in some paintings, but a plunging neckline would not have been common for the queen herself. The feminine style of the dress at the time was the so-called guardainfante, a huge frame in the shape of an inverted basket on which the basquiña (skirt) was placed. The bodice or sayo was tight, between the fabric and the lining there was a rubberized cardboard that literally crushed the chest. According to the historian Maribel Bandrés: “… it was so hard and flat that the body lost its natural shape. To give it even more rigidity, it had two whalebones coming down to a point in front: the busc .” The neckline was covered with a striking collar called a valona cariñana with a beautiful decoration of pleats called abanillos. This type of collar was very flattering and a large brooch was placed in its center.

Diego Velázquez. Mariana of Austria. Detail of head. Circa 1652. Prado Museum. Madrid.

Eliana Sánchez is characterized as Mariana of Austria.

In this particular scene, I noticed Mariana's dress. I've seen that dress before in other Spanish shows and on Pinterest, which led me to believe they recycled this costume. While I appreciate when costumes are reused in different shows, in this case, the setting is in the year 1660, as they discuss Maria Theresa's upcoming marriage and mention that Margarita and Prospero are present. They look completely different from their historical counterparts.

Yes, apart from Aguila Roja, She was featured briefly in documentaries such as Memoria de Espana and Habsburgs heimliche Herrscherinnen- Auf fremden Thronen

I agree with you this century is often ignored by the media or the ones that usually don't get that much attention even though their stories are good and interesting. My favorite portrayal of her, Is the Memoria de Espana's Mariana, The costumes and mannerisms are perfect.

[bellysoupset]

"Hey man, you busy?"

Daniel's head snapped up so quickly he felt his neck cracking. He winced, grabbing it to rub it and tried not blush out of embarrassment. Monacelli was hanging at his door, looking incredibly amused, his bag slung over his arm and falling near his hip, blocking most of the sunlight from entering the classroom.

Max recovered quickly, clearing his throat and looking back to the task at hand. He was putting away the dried dishes utilized during his chem experiment with the 14 year old kids, the bell having already rung signifying the end of school day, "No," he dried his hands on his bleach stained jeans and crouched down to put away the beakers, "just finishing up here, why?"

"You got any plans for tonight?"

Max thanked god his head was inside the cabinet and Vince couldn't see his surprised expression. Without looking at the man, he shrugged, "nope..." in truth, he had plans alright. Make himself dinner, get high and watch a movie in the tv, probably crash his own couch.

"Great, I'm taking you out!"

Now Max straightened up, hitting his head in the inside of the cabinet. He let out a whine, rubbing at the sore spot, "...What?" the words came out strangled and Vince let out a chuckle.

"So, turns out it's your birthday today?" Vince leaned against the door, "I'm guessing you're aware of that."

"No, first time hearing it," Max rolled his eyes, "I don't care about my birthday, man, you don't ha-"

"I'm not asking," Vince squinted at him and Max gulped down, cursing himself. He hadn't realized how much... How nice Vin was to look at, "get your shit, I'm waiting for you in the parking lot!"

Max felt ridiculous as he grabbed his bag in the teacher's lounge and went to meet with Monacelli in the parking lot. He hadn't had a crush in a lifetime, since his high school years and Max hated the clammy feeling in his hands or the fluttering in his stomach. Not only it felt childish, but it was completely out of place, Vince was very very taken. He needed to digest those butterflies.

"So what's the plan?" Max walked towards his own pick-up, noticing Vince had already put away his bag under his bike's seat.

"I wasn't sure what was your style, so I came up with a couple ideas," Vince scratched as his cheek in an embarrassed manner and Max raised his eyebrows. More than one option?

"Let's hear them," he leaned against his car, throwing his bag in the passenger seat.

"We hit the bar down your street, what's the name again? Stache's?"

"Uh-hu."

"So yeah, Stache's, then we go up La Dolce Vitta for cake," Vince raised his thumb in order to mark it as option 1, then uncurled his index finger to show it was a new option, "or we can go to the community soccer game and finish it up with beers at the Stache's," he uncurled his middle finger, "or we can go bowling and order the cake from La Dolce Vitta. I'm open for ideas, too."

Max's mouth was dry like a desert. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had remembered his birthday and here was Vince, just some dude he had met nearly six months ago and actively disliked for five of these, with three options of celebration.

"All of them suck?" Vince pouted, misunderstanding his silence, "I don't know, what do you do for fun? Go to a shooting club?"

"Sometimes I hike," Max answered unhelpfully, feeling completely thrown out, "soccer- Soccer's cool."

"Oh yeah?" Vince brightened up like a labrador puppy, opening a huge smile, "okay. Soccer it is -" he squinted then, "but don't expect me to go easy on you just because it's your birthday."

"Oh nooo, whatever will I do," Max rolled his eyes, sarcasm dripping from his words and Vince brushed him off, sitting on top of his bike, so they could drive separately.

Doveport had a big community sport's center, but Max didn't frequent it. In fact, he was very antisocial. The opposite of Monacelli, who jumped from his bike and immediately was greeted by five other men, whom Max had never seen in his life, of various ages. Young kids just fresh out of high school, older retired men...

"Do you know everyone?" Max frowned, as he followed Vince to the locker room's that led to the small outdoor soccer field. It wasn't big, but made do, much like the other fields. One for tennis, one for volleyball, one for basketball and a pool that clearly had seen better days and no one was using.

"I talk with people," Vince shrugged, turning around and walking backwards, "you should try it, it's a wonder what being nice to other's can do."

"Yeah, sure Mary Poppins," the blonde rolled his eyes, then paused as they entered the locker rooms. He definitely couldn't play in jeans-

Vince stripped down his shirt, balling it up and throwing it in the bench in the middle of the room and Max's thoughts vanished. The brunette turned around, undoing the fly of his own jeans and frowned, pausing, "you're not gonna change?"

"I don't-" Max looked away, grimacing at his own fumbling, "I've never been here, I don't know-"

"Ah, you can't go in the field wearing jeans," Vince gestured to a big locker open in the opposite side of the room, "see? They have gym shorts and vests for you to grab. They're smelly, but whatever, I don't mind. Do you?"

"Oh, no- We just grab them?"

"Yeah," Vin nodded, "but we need to return them when we're done, of course -" he pointed at a wall with smaller lockers, "here you put your clothes and take the key, there's a board near the field to hang them up and write your name under... I can't believe you've never been here, you lived in this town your whole life, dude."

Max shrugged, glaring at his feet, "team sports are not very my speed."

"Uhm," Vince let out a judgmental huff, "c'mon, hurry up, they're about to leave the field."

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

Max was going to throw up.

Not just because of the fucking-ridiculous-damned butterflies, but because he had forgotten Vince was a football star. How had he forgotten that?

Sure, this was soccer, not football, but that meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. He had erroneously assumed he'd be more fit than Vince, given the man was chubby, while Max fairly slim. Wrong.

"My nonna runs faster than you, Daniels," Vince teased him, not breathless in the least, slamming that huge hand of his against Max's back. The blonde groaned, bracing against his knees, sweat running down... Well, everywhere. He was drenched in sweat, couldn't catch his breath and his lunch was threatening to come back up.

Max let out a groan, raising his middle finger and causing Vin to let out a cackle, "c'mooooon, you can still win!"

No, he couldn't! The game was mano a mano, meaning there was no goalie or other player, and yet the points were 8 goals for Vin, versus Max's measly 2 points.

"Fuck. You," Max groaned, walking out of the field and collapsing down on a bench. The older men who had been watching them snickered, other people entering the field and patting Vince's arm as they passed him by.

Max spread out his legs, clutching his chest and struggling to breathe, "fuck. Why did I pick this?"

"I don't know," Vince's voice was full of glee, "should've gone bowling, I suck at that."

The blonde raised his head, it was already past sunset and there were crickets chirping and people shouting and laughing in the background, although mostly he only heard the blood drumming in his ears.

"You fooled me."

"Nope," Vince grinned, passing him a paper cup filled with water, "you just didn't think it through."

"You're such an asshole," Max groaned, greedily chugging the water and the letting out a small burp, "I feel like I'm gonna barf."

The other man only laughed, thumping his back once more and sitting down next to him, "we'll go bowling some other night so you can stop being a sore loser."

"Shut the fuck up," Max scoffed, straightening up once he managed to let out another small burp and his lunch seemed content staying put. Sorta, the queasy feeling was still there.

"Beers now?"

He should've said no. Come up with any excuse and bailed.

However Max was having fun, even if he was dead on his feet and his head pounding from running that much, and Vince's face was all blushed, his curls sticking to his forehead and... Well. Yeah.

Stache's was a seedy bar next to Max's place, the name wasn't even actually Stache's, but everyone called it that given the sheer amount of men wearing ugly mustaches that frequented it.

Max was still dizzy from overexertion when they sat down in a little table near the door, in order to enjoy the cold night air, and Vince went to the counter to get them beers, insisting he'd buy since it was Daniel's birthday.

"Here you go," Vince planted a cold bottle in front of his eyes, then messed his hair and Max ducked his face, trying to move away from the touch.

Vince sat down in front of him, clinking their beers together, "cheers man, happy birthday."

"Thanks," Max's cheeks hurt with a blush and he busied himself chugging his beer, "how'd you find out anyway?"

"Shelley, from the front desk," Vince raised his eyebrows, "she's suuuch a gossip and happens to adore my cookie recipe."

"She is such a gossip, uh?" Max snorted, "pot calling the kettle black here," he took another big gulp, "when is yours?"

"In a month," Vin rolled his eyes, "4th of July."

Max opened a smirk, "America's most patriotic immigrant," he teased lightly, causing Vin's brows to meet and him to hesitate, "you are an immigrant, right? I'm not remembering it wrong...?"

Vince's frown cleared up, "No, I am, just didn't think- Didn't think you remembered."

"Hard to forget, I have your kid sister swearing at me in Italian every exam season," he leaned back, starting to relax. This didn't have to be weird, he could small talk.

Eight beers, each, later and Max's cheek was resting on his hand as he heard Vince prattle on about his family.

"No-" Max shook his head, then grimaced as the movement made his stomach roll. A burp sneaked up and he curled his hand in front of his lips to let it out, "we still talk, just not-" another thick burp rolled up and he made a face, hating the sensation, "not much."

"Ah, that sucks, I'm sorry," Vince sounded so sympathetic and Max rolled his eyes, knowing the guy couldn't relate in the least to Max and his distant relationship with his parents.

"Eh, it's fine," he shrugged, finishing off his beer, "we're very different people anyway."

"Do you still keep contact with those guys you used to hang out with-" Vince's squinted, trying to remember, "the big ginger kid and the asian one-"

"Tyler and Lee," Max cleared up, shaking his head, "hell no, nobody from high school. Lee's kid is in your class, though. Little girl, super cute."

Vince looked like he was trying to figure out whom out of his students, before he shook his head, dropping the subject, "met with my high school sweetheart in the grocery store the other day, that was an experience."

Max chuckled at the sarcasm, then regretted it when his stomach churned uneasily and caused him to jump with a painful hiccup, "sorry- HIC! So-Hic!- how was..." he trailed off, moving a hand under the table in order to press on his belly and Vince leaned back on his seat, finishing off his own beer.

"She seemed happy, but tried to pretend she didn't see me, so-" he raised his eyebrows as Max jumped with yet another hiccup, this one ending with a frothy burp, "you alright there, bud?"

Max groaned at the condescending nickname, before lowering his head in shame, "drank too-HIC!-fuck-" the hiccup brought with it a splash of alcohol and it burned his throat to swallow it back down.

"Aww, shit, I forgot you got the world's most sensitive gut," Vince cringed and despite his teasing words, he looked genuinely concerned, as Max's alcohol flushed cheeks started to pale, "I'm gonna get the bill."

"Here-" Max reached for his wallet, agreeing wordlessly it was time to call it night, but Vince shooed him off.

"I invited you," he circled the table, "my treat."

"Nons-" before he could complain, Vince had already left and Max was feeling too queasy to insist on the matter. Instead he collected his keys and walked outside, to the familiar bush he had already thrown up more than once in. He was a regular at Stache's.

Max braced against the brick wall of the side of the seedy bar and took a deep breath, staring at his sneakers. He wasn't drunk, far from it, but quickly decided he was gonna leave his pickup there and walk to get it in the morning. His house was just around the corner anyway.

His stomach was burning and it felt tight to the touch, letting out an upset growl when Max pressed on it. He spat in the curb, cringing at the taste, then belched deeply.

"Oh, there you are, I thought you left!" Monacelli's voice was loud, in every setting. Like he had a microphone inside his chest. Max groaned, his throat bobbing dangerously.

"Gonna hurl."

"Really? Couldn't tell," Vince teased him lightly and Max flinched when he felt the other man's hand coming to rest between his shoulder blades, the pressure causing another belch to come up, this one with a mouthful of stale beer with it, "there you go."

"Uuuurgh-" Max squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fist to his stomach, trying to hurry the process along. Faintly he heard Vince saying in a distant voice "hey, don't do that", but finally his belly threw in the towel and the next wert burp brought up a rush of liquid.

Max curled up, jumping back when the pressure caused the vomit to splatter and he whined as he felt his hair tickling his cheeks, falling from the knot he had loosely made a couple hours prior.

"I got you," Vince planted a hand on his shoulder, then the strands of hair vanished, just as Max coughed up another powerful stream and hiccupped once more.

"Fucking- Embarrassing," Max thumped his chest, until a burp came up and then stumbled back, until he was resting on the opposite wall of the alleyway, "sorry."

"Why are you apologizing, you're the one getting sick in your birthday," Vince frowned, then raised up a bottle of cold water, "got you this."

Max's eyes stung at the gesture and he cleared his throat, snatching the bottle and mumbling a little "thanks," as he started drinking it, "gross."

Monacelli shrugged, "your stomach's better?"

"Eh," Max sighed, wiping at his face and cringing when he felt his beard was humid. He wiped it with the hem of his shirt, "it's gonna be a bitch for the rest of the night, but it's not as bad as before."

"How do you live like this?" Vince wrinkled his nose and Max let out a chuckle, moving so he was standing next to the man and realizing Vin was walking him home.

"Don't ask me," Max huffed, continuing to sip the water, "make it a sport. Last month I only hurled seven times," he grinned as Vince gave him a horrified look.

"You're a champ," the guy said, shoving his hands in his pocket, "I mean, in everything but soccer."

"Oh fuck you," Max cried out, but he was smiling from ear to ear. This was the best birthday he had had probably ever. He was so fucked.

[judeatheatos]

darklina - 1026 words - rating: t - boss/employee sickfic au

Aleksander got the text five minutes before his first meeting of the day and ten minutes after he got the email with all the notes he needed, something his assistant would usually be there to deliver in person.

hi mr morozova im sorry im really sick im not gonna be ghere

Another, before he can respond. 

im sorry pls dont fire me intried totake some meds this mornign but they didnt do anyhting im sorry

Alina, who never so much as misses a semicolon, sent him a text. With a typo.

He hesitates on what to say for only a moment considering his 9 o’clock is already waiting out in the hall for him, the white 8:58 looking up at him like a timer from the top corner of his phone screen.

It’s alright, Alina. Please stay home today, I’d rather you were recovering than trying to do your job half asleep and on cold medication.

The grey typing bubble appears and disappears several times before she finally responds at 9 on the dot. 

thank u sir mr morozova ill be in tomorrkw i promise thank uou

Aleksander sighs, and places his phone face down on his desk. He’ll have to call her at lunch and tell her he can survive without her for a few days. 

His call at lunch went unanswered, ringing until all he got was the familiar voice of his assistant saying a very unfamiliar assortment of words: hi, you’ve reached Alina Starkov! I’m not available at the moment, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as you can!

Not available. 

Aleksander’s worried. Maybe too much so.

Alina is only his assistant. Sure, he remembers the New Years party as well as she does, the champagne fuelled horribly cliche incident of fucking his assistant in his office while getting even drunker off the sounds she made and off of the taste of her, but after the holidays, when the office opened up again, Alina was quick to tell him that they should forget it ever happened. Aleksander was going to promote her when he had called her in. Bring her closer to his position. Make their…relations a little more acceptable, but he respects her wishes, so he shouldn’t be this worried about someone who’s only his assistant. 

Maybe he’s been lying to himself about how much he respects her wishes.

If he truly did, he wouldn’t be standing outside apartment 308 right now holding a hefty plastic bag and a paper cup of green tea that is currently burning his hand. The door opens after a minute, a confused looking man with short, bleached hair staring out at him. 

“Can I help you?”

Alright. Aleksander cannot embarrass himself. “I’m here for Alina, I heard she wasn’t feeling well,” he hesitates. “I’m a friend. From work.”

The man nods, then lets him in. 

Aleksander toes off his shoes at the door the second he sees them all piled up there, knowing this must be a household very much like the kind he grew up in where wearing shoes on the carpet will get you a smack to the back of the head. 

“She’s down the hall,” the man says. “First room on the right.”

“Thank you,” Aleksander says, and follows his directions. 

Thankfully, considering his full hands, the door is already open a crack.

“Alina?” he says softly, poking his head through, “are you awake?”

“Mal?” Alina mumbles from the bed, barely visible in the mix of dull pink from the fairy lights and dimmed laptop screen playing a cartoon where two children are currently having ramen made for them. 

“No, sorry.”

Alina sits up slightly, and turns to look at the door. It takes her a second, then she’s quickly sitting up and slamming her laptop closed, “Mr. Morozova? What— what are you doing here?”

Maybe he did overstep. 

“I had called you at lunch to check on you and you didn’t respond. Maybe I got a little too worried, uhm—” Aleksander holds the plastic bag up higher so she can see, “I brought you some food.”

Alina reaches over for her lamp, washing the room in a soft yellow and showing just how sick she looks. The purple under her eyes, the exhaustion clear on her face. Sympathy curls in his chest, the urge to care for her flaring up to an inappropriate degree. 

“What is it?” Alina asks, moving her laptop off of a small lap desk and holding out her hands for it.

“Well,” he hands her the tea first, lets her open it and sniff it to the best of her ability when she’s as congested as she is, “I know you really love that Vietnamese place by our office, so I—”

Alina gasps as she unties the bag. “Mr. Morozova, you brought me pho?”

“I… I did. Is that alright?”

She grins up at him, taking the big container of broth, slightly smaller container of noodles and brisket, and much smaller container of bean sprouts from the bag.

“I would hug you right now but you probably don’t want to get sick,” Alina says, then takes a sip of the broth. “God, you’re my hero.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Aleksander says quietly, “after all you’ve done for me.”

Alina blushes, or maybe she’s just warm. She’s probably just warm.

He should go. He’s definitely overstepping her boundaries now—

“Pull up a chair,” she gestures behind him to the one at her desk, something high-backed in a soft pink. “I’m watching Ponyo, you’ll love it.”

Aleksander does as told, sitting what he hopes is a respectful distance from her.

They watch the movie together in silence, Alina devouring her pho like she hasn’t eaten all day. He knows her. She probably hasn’t. When she’s finished, all her cups and bowls stacked together and her lap desk moved aside, Aleksander nearly jumps as she reaches over and takes his hand. 

Alina looks at him, a silent question of consent in her gaze. 

Content he isn’t overstepping, perhaps now stepping perfectly in time with her, he squeezes her hand. 

She squeezes back.

[seireiteihellbutterfly]

These Lonely Nights

ft Jushiro Ukitake

A/N: Well I felt a little called out today when I saw how many people were asking if I write for Bleach anymore. I get it, I've been on a JJK kick lately, but I have not, and WILL NOT, forget my first anime crush. So here's a piece for my beloved Ukitake taicho. This may look a little self-indulgent and it is, ngl, but the reader is still quite featureless.

Warnings: 18+, sex, vaginal fingering, oral, mentions of illness and losing a loved one

Pairing: Jushiro Ukitake x thick!fem!reader

Word Count: 2786

Jushiro Ukitake is a man who understands duty. Duty as a captain to his subordinates. Duty as a mentor to his students. Duty as a friend to those in need. But for the past few weeks, he felt like he had been inadequate in his duties as a husband. It was an insecurity he always felt whenever a sickness spell came over him and all he could do was rest and stay in bed.

As his wife, you knew what it meant to marry him. And there was never any regret there. Jushiro was many wonderful things; kind, considerate, and gentle. And oh so handsome, with his long beautiful hair framing his oval face and perceptive eyes. His commitment and dedication to squad 13, his craftsmanship with a sword, and a sharp sense of wit to top it all off. And he was in love with you. Some nights when you are getting ready for bed, all you can do is stare at his sleeping face, the ridiculously long eyelashes resting on his cheeks, hardly daring to believe that he is yours. 

You knew marrying him meant having to care for him, that sometimes, it meant you would find yourself doing things on your own, and learning to not be needy when he had to rest. You knew it would mean sometimes you would wake up at night because his breathing sounded off and it frightened you that something would happen to him if you dared fall asleep. It meant that sometimes, all you could do was spend time at home instead of going out and pursuing other forms of entertainment. 

But it also meant having a tight-knit circle of people who accepted and embraced you. Sentaro, Kiyone, and Shunsui were frequent visitors. His lieutenant Rukia became your best friend. People were always coming and going, and it made it easier to cope during his bad days. It meant having him, all to yourself. 

The past couple of weeks had been rough though. Some members from Squad 4 had practically lived in your house during this time. One of the aides had slept on a futon on your bedroom floor, and the thought of sleeping together with someone else in the room had made you uncomfortable. So you slept in one of the guest rooms that the large Ukitake household had. You missed him at night, missed his warm body spooning you, his soft breath on your neck. But you knew he needed the aide from Squad 4 more than you at the moment, and you couldn’t begrudge him for this. 

Once squad 4 had confirmed Jushiro’s health, they had moved out a few days ago. Jushiro seemed to be in good standing, and you were relieved that you could finally share a bed again. But you missed other things. You wished for physical intimacy but given that he had just started to recover, you settled for snuggles, and long talks while lying down together, looking deeply into each others’ eyes. You didn’t want to rush him or make him uncomfortable. 

Jushiro notices the shift in you. You talk to him normally, are as open as ever with your affection, and not ignoring him in any way. But he knows something is bothering you. And it makes him guilty. He knows you have never, nor ever will, hold his illness against him but he does wish he could do more for you. With his strength coming back now, he knows he must open the conversation. 

It’s night. You have just finished having a bath and stepped back into the bedroom from the attached bathroom. Jushiro is already in bed, finishing his cup of tea. As you enter, the towel wrapped around your body, his gaze wanders, looking at the beautiful curves of your body, the generous hips and thighs, and the long cascade of ebony hair coming down your back. Thoughtlessly, you let the towel fall and begin to rub lotion on yourself. The way things had been the past couple of weeks, Jushiro was already asleep, or too weak to really admire you, so stripping down in front of him had just become part of the process. You couldn't let your disappointment show, that he didn’t seem to take an interest in your body. That was a selfish thing to think, given what he had gone through.  

You hadn’t really thought about it since this had become your norm. But he was looking at you now. The fact that you did all of this so mechanically, not even glancing back to see if he was watching you, made his heart ache, made him see how lonely you had been during the last spell. 

“Y/n”, he said softly.

You turn around, eyes immediately widening in concern. Your breasts swing slightly with the motion, the lotion bottle clutched in your hands. 

“Are you all right?” Not even thinking about your nakedness, you hasten towards him, one hand reaching out to check his pulse, the other going to his forehead. 

“I am fine. Please stop fussing over me.” His warm hand gripped your wrist. Your face relaxed after hearing his words but a look of confusion took over. 

“I should finish getting ready for bed. Do you need anything else? More tea?”

“All I want right now is you.”

Your heart skips a beat and all you can do is stare at him. “Ok. Just give me a minute to get into my pajamas.”

“You’re fine the way you are.” Jushiro smiled at you and his grip on your wrist tightened. His eyes beckoned you to join him. 

There was no way you could refuse him. You allowed yourself to be pulled under the sheets. His loosely tied kosode was open and laid your head against his bare chest, your naked body pressed against him. Longing stirred in your chest but you didn’t want to initiate anything for fear that it might be too soon and you would cause him to over-exert himself. You breathed in the scent of his skin, a kind of musky, floral scent that you had become familiar with. 

His hand stroked your back, sending tingles down your whole body. Damn, the hold he had over you. Here you are, using all the strength you had to not do anything, and it seemed like he was trying his hardest to break you.

“Jushiro,” you say, looking up at him. He had a soft smile on his face. “I think I should-“

“Talk about how you are?” He asked, cutting you off mid-sentence. You stare at him, at a loss of words.

“How I am?” You ask incredulously. “You just recovered from a really nasty spell. I’m fine. It’s you that went through hell these past few weeks.”

“Ah. But it wasn’t just me, was it? You went through hell too.”

A knot formed itself in your chest. Truth be told, yes, the past few weeks had been hell for you too. The feeling of being helpless, of losing this man who took too long for you to find, the worry of how long you had between this spell and the next.

“I know you hide your feelings from me.” Jushiro pressed a kiss on the top of your head. “I know how much you’ve gone through. I know that you bore most of it alone.”

To hear it said out loud, the validation of your experience, almost brought you to tears. Instead, you shook your head. “I married you knowing everything. I do not mind bearing it alone. I just need you to be all right.”

“And I need you to be all right too.”

Your eyes met and unconsciously, the gap between both of you started to get smaller. At the very last minute, you hesitate. “Jushiro, I don’t want to do something and set you back. You just started getting better.”

“Didn’t I tell you to not fuss over me? I am better. But I know I will be even better if my wife kisses me.”

So you obliged, and the sweet meeting of your lips caused the tears you had been fighting to rush through. You missed him so much. His hands ran through your hair and he pulled you closer, molding your body to his.

“If everyone is taking care of my needs, then who takes care of yours, darling?” He whispered the words against your lips before kissing you deeply again. You open your mouth to receive his tongue and every soft movement triggers the want you had been shoving down. 

You break apart, his thumb softly wiping away your tears. Your foreheads touch. “I am your husband. Let me show you how much I missed you.”

He twisted his body so that you were pinned under him. Gracefully, he shrugged out of his kosode, his hard chest pressing against the softness of your breasts.

“You are so beautiful, love.” He leaned up on his elbows and gazed lovingly down at your face. “Let’s give you some attention.”

He kissed you again, and the kiss was full of longing. You are not fighting it anymore. Your hands comb his hair, running down his back, your nails lightly scratching him as you do so. You could feel his hardness pressing against your thigh.

He broke the kiss to nibble at your neck, your ear, your collarbone, each small bite sending delicious shivers down your body. His beautiful, large hands were stroking your shoulders, your breasts, coming down to your stomach. He took his time, placing small fluttering kisses all over your neck, coming back to your lips, and leisurely coming down to the valley between your breasts where your heart was beating like butterfly wings caught in a strong breeze. 

You shiver at the feel of his mouth, his lips, his hands, feel his reiatsu climbing as desire claims him. His slowly moves from the valley up to the curve of your breast, then you feel wetness gently playing with your nipple and a moan escapes you. Your hands tangled in his hair; it had been so long and his movements were making you needy. He stayed there for a minute, letting his tongue do the work, listening to your sighs, and the way your body wriggled under his. Deftly, his long fingers hold your other nipple captive, softly squeezing and pulling, until you feel yourself melting under the sensation of it all. 

“Jushiro…” You manage to gasp, and you feel his mouth curve into a smile against your breast. He keeps this up for a little while longer before moving his mouth back to your lips. His other hand takes over your abandoned nipple as he moves his tongue over yours, swallowing your sensual cries. The intimacy of everything after the time apart was unbearably sweet. You can’t hold back your greed as you curl your fingers around his neck, as though he’d slip away in between your fingers if you didn’t. 

Your body twitches under his as he runs his hands down your sides, mouth coming down to the softness of your belly, gripping the luscious flesh of your plushy thighs, lips kissing every inch of your sensitized skin. His hands part your legs, squeezing possessively, and licked up your inner thigh, fingers stroking the softness on the other. 

He seemed to have gotten his full strength back, because the hands that gripped your round ass were firm, the muscles in his body on display, his skin no longer having that pale, sickly quality to it. This was Ukitake taicho, leader of squad 13, your husband, showing you in whose possession you belonged. Your breath strangles in your throat as he nudges your sex with his nose, inhaling, remembering the sweet smell of your arousal, before licking a wet line up from your core to your clit. 

“Jushiro…!” His name tumbles from your lips like a prayer, and he lays his tongue over the perked bud, lapping softly between your slickened folds. For you, its the relief of knowing you get to experience him like this again. A cathartic release after the stress and tension of watching him struggle to recover his health. 

You moan, gripping the sheets, rocking your hips against the rhythm of his tongue, sweat slickening your body as he pleasures you. A wanton sound leaves you and he gently closes his lips around your clit, sucking devotedly, his green eyes never leaving your face as you sob with delight. Your entrance is moist and fluttering, desperate for something to help ease the throbbing need of being empty. Ukitake’s long, beautiful, fingers insert themselves and your moan turns into a loud whine, feeling stretched out as they make scissoring motions inside you before probing that sweet little patch inside you. 

The combined stimulation had you cumming instantly. There was no warning, just the gradual buildup before it felt like you were pushed off an edge. You cry out in pleasure, his name slipping from your lips in reverence as waves of gratification flood your system. Ukitake places a tender, final kiss on your clit before coming back up and closing his mouth over yours. 

You taste yourself on his lips, hands impatiently pulling down his underwear to free his leaking cock, tip dripping with precum, standing at attention, waiting for your direction. Your thumb swipes over the tip, hear him groan loudly before you grip his length and pump him softly. It’s been a while and he bucks into your hand, teeth gritted at how sensitive he is. You keep this up, lips unwavering as both of you move and adjust your bodies, the familiarity of each other not requiring the kiss to break. Your legs part, your fingers gently resting on the underside of his cock, and tip him into your wetness. He loves this gesture, the small push of your fingers like an invitation, giving non verbal consent, and he slips in, buried to the hilt, his breath tickling your neck as he gives himself a minute.

The soft, wet, velvet of your sex hugs him securely and he moves, the intimate touch stealing the breath from both your lungs. There was no need to rush. His subordinates had made sure to finish his reports, and he intended on making good use of their hard labor. His hips rut into you lazily as your fingers trace his face, his lips, his jaw, pushing back the long white curtains of hair from his face as soft sounds of pleasure escape you. His eyes are hazy as he looks at you, love drunk and amazed at how responsive you are to him, bringing your foreheads together, your breath exchanging in the air, as your breasts bounce with each passionate thrust. 

“I missed you,” he whispers as he leans up and arches his body into a perfect CAT missionary position, your legs wrapping automatically around his waist to enable the motions as the base of his cock rubs against your clit while the rest of his length strokes in and out of your pussy. It was all slow and romantic, losing yourself in those intense green eyes that reminded you of forest leaves.

As you feel your pussy start to spasm regularly, your grip tightens on his back, and he continues the slow, constant rhythm, friction hitting your clit. He was close too, and it was taking all his effort to not bury himself into you and fuck you for his own selfish pleasure. Your whimpers turn into mewls as you finally hit a peak, second climax of the night pulsing through you, almost lazily and leisurely, pussy fluttering as you cum around him. 

The little spasms around his cock make him lose control, need taking over sensuality and he chases his climax, primal instiinct taking over as his fingers dig into you body, leaving bruises and he allows himself to succumb. He makes a guttaral noise as his climax grips him, abdomen tensing and cock twitching as he cums, spilling into you. 

The night is filled with heartfelt catching up and several more rounds of lovemaking. As you see the faint sliver of the sunrise peeking in through the window you sigh and snuggle against him. 

“Better try to get some sleep, before those subordinates of yours come barging in for duty.”

He chuckles, pulling your naked body against his. “Oh don’t fret. Just tell them I’m still not up to resuming my duties just yet. Let’s use tomorrow for ourselves.”

“Oh?” Your eyes sparkle as he smiles mischeivously. “Why taicho how…unruly of you.”

You squeal as he flips you onto your back, ready to show you again how much he had missed you. 

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[fatphobiabusters]

Gotta say, as a fat person and a writer, one of the most healing things I've done is writing fat characters of my own and giving myself the representation I never got to have. My two favorites are: a stereotypical 80's/90's skater guy who calls everyone "dude" or "bro" and fucking loves classic rock and has fluffy bleached hair that always covers his eyes and he's kind of got Bill and Ted vibes, I'm just realizing.

And a chronically ill lesbian whose weight is viewed as super positive because it's a sign she's recovering from her most recent bout of illness and she's artsy and passionate and geeky and her girlfriend absolutely adores her soft, round face because it reminds her of the moon.

We need more fat characters who get to be more than just The Fat Guy, I don't get why people just seem to refuse to give their OCs actual human traits and instead revolve everything around their fatness and how funny or bad it is to be fat.

I'm glad to know there are people who are actively working on bettering the miniscule positive fat representation we have in media currently. I especially love when people make fat characters who are the opposite of all of the stereotypes and tropes forced on us. The athletic character being a fat person whose body has stayed fat all these years, a fat video game character who isn't forced to be a tank, the fashionista character is a fat person who grew up having to sew their own clothes and now is a sewing master with the best sense of style on this side of the Mississippi river. The fat person with an eating disorder who actually gains weight in recovery, the popular girl in school who's fat and not the bully, a love interest who isn't stick thin for once. I hope you continue to write fat characters you enjoy!

-Mod Worthy

[cloudbersoo]

easy for you to say｜sung hanbin

synopsis: what happens when bloom dance academy's golden boy sung hanbin needs a new duet partner and y/n is the only one available? 

or; will y/n be able to fall in love with dance again? perhaps they'll fall for someone in the process.

tags: sung hanbin x gn!reader, dancer au, fluff, attempt at angst, insecure reader, miscommunication, happy ending, featuring: zb1 matthew and jiwoong, twice momo, exo kai, itzy yeji, ryujin and chaeryeong!!

word count: 5.4k

a/n: this whole fic was inspired by the ‘i like that’ dance hanbin recreated on weekly idol. i’ve never been more attracted to a man in my life, so here is a very self indulgent fic i wrote!! also this is barely proofread, so sorry for any grammar mistakes! hihi enjoy

my playlist while writing: easy for you to say & bleach by 5sos, sugarcoat (natty solo) by kiss of life, thanks to by woodz, blooming day by exo-cbx, anywhere but home by seulgi

i. that’s not good

every dancer has their bad days. but when those bad days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, suddenly your entire dance season has been nothing but awful. that’s how your previous season went, and this year hasn’t been any different either. you weren’t chosen for any of the small groups this year for any competition. you didn’t even dare to dream of a solo, even when you had one just a few years ago.

you used to be at the top, one of the coaches favourites. you’ve danced at bloom dance academy since you were three, and had gained a good reputation at the studio over the years. though, now that seems so far in the past. you were in a deep slump, one that you couldn’t get out of no matter how much you practiced. you think you’d do anything to love dancing again the way you used to. 

you were currently at the studio, waiting for the full group rehearsal to start, while one of the small groups was going over their dance with coach momo. you were sitting in a corner alone, while others were socialising or going through other dances on their own. your eyes were completely fixated on one particular dancer, one that probably made you more insecure than any other – sung hanbin.

hanbin was basically your complete opposite. he only started dancing in middle school, and joined bloom dance academy only last season. everyone around him loved him, and rightfully so, as hanbin was truly amazing. his body control and facial expressions were something you could only dream of right now. his skills didn’t come out of nowhere though, everyone knew how hard he worked. and unlike you, his hard work paid off.

looking at hanbin made you feel horrible about yourself, but you couldn’t look away. he was so mesmerising to you, the way he carried himself through choreography, and how he helped those around him. you were in too deep thought to notice a couple of your teammates approaching you. it took for one of them to speak for you to finally notice your friends. “y/n, did you hear about yeji?” your teammate matthew asked you as he sat down next to you. 

“no i haven’t, did something happen?” you responded, finally taking your eyes off of hanbin. you noticed besides matthew, chaeryeong and ryujin had approached you. “she injured her knee really badly at practice yesterday, she’s still at the doctors, they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong” chaeryeong opened up, clearly worried for her friend. injuries at this point of the season were the worst, but they happen every time. last year jiwoong dislocated his elbow a week before competition and all formations had to be redone.

“that doesn’t sound too good” you said, taking a sip from your water bottle. yeji won’t recover in time for the competition in four weeks, you assumed. not only will you have to redo all the formations for the full group performance and for her small group, your team will need a new female soloist and a duet partner for hanbin as well. “yeah, she’s out” ryujin confirmed your suspicions. “momo asked me for the solo, but i don’t think i can do it” she continued, brushing her hand through her hair. 

“i feel so bad for yeji, but at least there's a little more time than last year” matthew said in an attempt to lighten the mood. his comment did get a few chuckles out of you. 

after a moment of silence, ryujin spoke once again. “how about you y/n? could you do the solo?” ryujin asked a question that almost made you laugh. “coach would never even consider me, and… i don’t even have anything ready” you replied lowering your head in shame. it was true though, you were probably the last person momo would consider as yeji’s replacement for anything.

“okay guys! let’s start going over the new formations!” your coach declared, clapping her hands to get the whole room's attention.

ii. y/n coming to the rescue!

you were exhausted, just like everyone else in the room. your coach had said “one more time” at least ten times tonight, but finally practice had officially come to an end. today’s rehearsal had gladly eased most people's minds from yeji’s injury. however, you could only worry about your own performance, as today’s practice had barely helped you improve at all. you were packing your stuff, as you heard your coach calling your name. “hey y/n, could i talk to you for a second?” momo asked.

your mind could only think of the worst. momo was going to tell you that you’re cut from the full group completely, because you can’t get your shit together. it made sense, today’s new formations were going to look better with one less dancer, and obviously you were the first in line to go. you tried to hide your nervousness, answering her with a hum. you stuffed the last of your things into your bag and walked to your coach. “yeah, is this about the full group?” you went straight to the point.

“actually no” she started, sitting down on a chair. you were relieved, but only partly, as you had no idea where the conversation was going. “it’s about yeji’s and hanbin’s duet” momo continued, your coach visibly stressed. you could only imagine what had been going through her head the past 24 hours since yeji’s injury. she let out a loud sigh. “y/n i know you’ve had quite rough year, but i think it could be a great challenge for you”

“what do you mean? sorry coach, i’m not following” you questioned. she couldn't possibly be offering you a spot in a duet, let alone one with hanbin.

“you should do the duet with hanbin, i think you could handle it” momo said hopefully. she took your hands into hers, looking at you with pleading eyes. it was almost working, but something in you couldn't agree to it. you couldn’t possibly handle the duet, not when someone else could do a much better job than you. “i don’t know momo…” you responded.

“hanbin! please convince her to do the duet with you” momo suddenly said, her eyes leaving yours. while your talk with the coach, you had failed to notice the presence of hanbin behind you. you freed yourself from momo’s hold as you turned around to see the boy. “i just think someone else would be a much better match for the duet, i’ve seen it myself” you tried to reason.

“no! i think you’d be perfect!” hanbin said, which felt like an exaggeration to you. truthfully, you’d love to do a duet with someone so amazing as hanbin, you would be dumb not to, but your insecurities were holding you back. the duet was difficult, and with the little time you had, you weren’t sure if you could pick it up. few years ago it would’ve been easy, but now you weren’t so sure. “c’mon y/n, i need you” he begged. 

“you don’t have any other dances besides the full group, so you’ll have enough time to rehearse” momo added. you looked at both of them, the two of them looking at you hopefully. while you still didn't quite understand why they were so determined to get you to do the duet, you were beginning to yield to them.

“well, when would we start then?” you asked carefully. your words made both of them squeal out of joy. hanbin wrapped his hands around you and squished you into a hug. “thank you thank you thank you” he rejoiced, spinning you around in the air. you weren’t sure if this was going to work, but having people who believed in you definitely helped.

iii. cries and confessions

the duet was not going well, at least not as well as it should be at this point. you had rehearsed for almost a week with hanbin, and while you had picked up some of the choreography, most of it was still not clicking for you. hanbin had been more than patient with you, but his patience wasn’t getting you that far.

you groaned out of frustration for the thirtieth time in the past hour. you were having difficulty with your footwork for a fast part in the choreography, and no matter how many times hanbin went slowly over it, you were not getting the timing right. “y/n it’s okay, you’ll get it eventually” he tried comforting you once again. you sighed, wiping the sweat off your forehead. “no hanbin, i’m not getting it” you snapped back, your words coming out much harsher than you intended. “i’m sorry, i just- i hate that i can’t seem to get anything right” you apologised, covering your face with your hands out of embarrassment. 

“do you wanna talk about it?” he asked carefully. you’ve been asked this question many times over the past two years. your teammates, momo, your parents, even the studio head, jongin had asked you if you needed to talk about whatever mental block you were going through. but you never did, because there wasn’t anything to talk about, at least that’s how you felt, and you told hanbin that. “you sure? i mean there’s clearly something going on… i get it if you don’t want to talk to me about it, but i’m here for you if you need me” he responded to you.

“what would you even know? you joined the studio after my good days” you mumbled, choosing to sit down onto the dance floor, not expecting hanbin to hear you. the boy sat down next to you, sitting close to you, your shoulders almost touching. the close proximity shouldn’t have made your heart race the way it did, at least not after dancing so close to each other for hours to an end for the past week.

“i saw your solo couple years ago at a competition, and i thought you were amazing” he confessed. hanbin was looking at you delicately, his words filled with sincerity. you never thought someone so skilled and awesome dancer like hanbin would ever say something like that to you. “you’re pretty much the reason i'm here, at bloom” he continued, his words making you speechless. “i mean, if the studio had someone as cool as you, the teachers must be something too” hanbin kept rambling, getting slightly shy over his confession, his cheeks flushed. 

hanbin’s confession made you feel appreciated and sad at the same time. your eyesight was getting blurry from the tears that were about to break through. “well, that was me few years ago” you started, trying your hardest not to start crying in front of him. you locked eyes with him and he was looking at you with sorrowness. “and this is me now, someone that can barely keep up with everyone” your voice cracked, tears finally sliding down your cheeks. 

hanbin didn’t say anything after that. he wrapped his hand around shoulders, lowering your head to rest on his chest. he just held you as you sobbed. it was slightly uncomfortable, the two of you were still sweaty from practice, but you couldn’t care about that for now. you were starting to calm down as hanbin stroked your arm up and down. you brought your hands to wipe out your tears, apologising to the boy for drenching his shirt even more. “i’m just wasting our time by crying like this” you said.

“it’s okay y/n, you know, sometimes letting your emotions out can help you to move on” hanbin claimed, smiling softly at you. letting go of your shoulder, he brushed some of your hair behind your ear. “should we end practice for today? i could drive you home if you’d like” the boy suggested.

“i think i’d rather walk and cool down a little, but thanks” you gave hanbin a weak smile and started getting up. he seemed to take your word, as he got up as well and started cleaning up the practice room with you. the room was filled with comfortable silence, and you were glad you had someone like hanbin to rely on.

iv. nothing happened!

after your heart to heart with hanbin, rehearsals had started to go much smoother. some days were better than others, but at least you weren’t pouring out your frustration onto him. aside from a few lifts, you two had finished the whole choreography, and you felt good about it. even momo was pleased with your work, after you had shown her your progress. while the duet was still far from perfect, you and hanbin were confident you could do well at the competition. 

hanbin had also become more friendly with you over the past few weeks. he always greeted you with a hug, asked how you were doing, and kept insisting on driving you home after you were done, which was something you could no longer deny. he’d come up to you during practice if he ever noticed you frustrated, cheering you up and giving you much needed advice, while also offering to refill your water bottle. thanks to hanbin, you were slowly starting to enjoy dance again, and you think you’ll be forever grateful to him for that.

it was late friday night, only you and hanbin were left at the studio. hanbin had convinced you to stay for another hour to practice one of the lifts for your duet. while you thought it would be safer to practice with momo around, hanbin assured you he wouldn’t let you get hurt. so there you were, forty minutes later, probably at your hundred attempt of the lift. you had never been the best at any tricks or lifts, and at this point you didn’t think you'd ever quite get them.

however, hanbin was determined to get the lift right before you went home. “it’s not that hard y/n” he said, his hands on both sides of your hips. there was no hint of impatience in his voice, while he looked at you with such care. “easy for you to say, mr. i’m perfect at everything” you teased, getting a laugh out of him.

“hey! none of that!” he scolded you with a pout. “just trust me, i’m gonna catch you no matter what, okay?” he continued, squeezing your hips for reassurance. you only nodded, and on the count of three, hanbin lifted you in the air again. everything was going well, until you felt one of your hands slip, and the next moment you were laying on top of habin on the floor.

his hands were tightly wrapped around your body, and you could feel his heart beating fast into his chest. hanbin’s face was mere centimetres away from yours. “oh my god! are you okay?” you worried, trying to get off of him, but his grip only tightened. the act made you stop in your tracks, your cheeks warming up. “h-hanbin” you stuttered, now worried the boy had hit his head or something. 

“see? i said i wasn’t going to let you hit the floor” he only laughed. sighing out of relief, you brushed his bangs out of the way of his eyes. hanbin looked beautiful, even when he was all worn out from the hours of practice. you’ve always thought so, but now seeing it up close you were certain about it. he smiled at you, showing off his famous whisker dimples. you smiled back, as your hands laid against his chest. you noticed his eyes travelling down your face, to your lips, and at that moment you couldn’t stop yourself from hesitantly leaning into him. 

“oh sorry, didn’t know you guys were still here” you heard a voice coming from the door. being snapped back to reality, hanbin finally let go of you. you standed up and helped hanbin to do the same, the two of you now recognizing the person that had entered the room as jiwoong. “did i interrupt something?” his voice was filled with amusement. 

“no not at all, we were just about to finish” hanbin’s whole face and neck hued the colour pink, as he spitted out the biggest lie of his life.

v. flirting 101

you couldn’t stop thinking about hanbin all weekend, how the two of you almost kissed if only jiwoong hadn’t interrupted you. when did you even start liking him? 

while you could’ve just texted him, you never found the right thing to send. what were you supposed to say to him? you thought about asking for advice from some of your teammates but eventually decided against it, knowing they wouldn’t have anything smart to say. you could almost hear chaeryeong’s teasing words just thinking about it. 

you had yet to find time to rehearse your duet together, as hanbin needed time to practice his solo. you had tried to talk to him multiple times, but snitched out last second each time, claiming that it was only because you couldn’t bother him at the moment. in reality, you felt nervous around him. you don’t remember the last time you’ve felt this way towards someone, let alone almost kissed someone.

you had stayed at the studio after practice to help momo with your team’s costumes for the competition. it seemed that you struggled with saying no when someone asks for your help. it was late again, the studio nearly empty, when you were finally ready to go home. walking towards the exit, you noticed one of the practice rooms was still in use. curiosity getting the best of you, you decided to take a look at who was still practicing at the late hour. in the room was hanbin, rehearsing alone again. 

hanbin was fully focused on the music, his body hitting every beat of the song. the way he moved was captivating to you, like he was putting some type of spell on you. it wasn’t that surprising that you fell for him so easily. you thought hanbin was the most beautiful when he was in his element, when he danced.

he was too concentrated to notice you at the door. as the song came to an end, he was completely out of breath. you couldn’t help but to clap, finally revealing yourself to the boy. the act made hanbin burst out of his own bubble, seeing you in the mirror first, giving you a tired smile before turning around. “that was amazing” you praised the boy as you fully stepped into the room.

“thank you” hanbin shyly responded, walking towards his stuff and taking a towel to wipe the sweat out of his face. you went up to him and offered him his water bottle. he smiled at you before speaking up again, “what are you still doing here this late?” his voice was filled with worry, but he was still glad to see you regardless.

“you should worry about yourself” you replied, your comment getting a small chuckle out of him. hanbin seemed tired, his eyes sleepy and hair all over the place. he must’ve had a lot of pressure on him, when so many people were counting on him to do well. you took a step closer to the boy, reaching up to fix his hair. “you’re doing great hanbin” you felt the need to reassure him, his face finally relaxing from your touch. after a while of playing with his hair, you lowered your hand to his cheek, wiping the last of sweat that was left. 

“i didn’t take you for a touchy person” hanbin said teasingly, making you quickly retreat your hand from his face. your cheeks started to warm up from embarrassment. was this how you acted when you liked someone? you made an attempt at hiding by turning your face away. the boy in front of you just giggled, mumbling about how cute you were being. 

“do you have time tomorrow? to practice our duet i mean” you asked, trying to change the subject. 

“hmm, let me think about that” hanbin pretended to think about your question for a while. “yes! but only on one condition” he said with a mischievous smile. his behaviour made you suspicious, you had yet to get used to hanbin’s playful side. hanbin took your confused face as a sign to continue, “when we win with our duet, i can take you on a date”

his straightfulness caught you off guard, but you couldn’t hold back the smile that broke into your face. knowing there were mutual feelings between the two of you gave you butterflies in your stomach. there was a hint of nervousness in hanbin, so you didn’t want to keep him waiting for an answer for too long. “if we win” you said, emphasising the word if.

“so it’s a date?” his wide smile matched yours. you nodded as confirmation, and before you knew it, hanbin quickly embraced you in his arms. you laughed how gross and sweaty he was, as he leaned back to look at you, with a pout on his lips.

“let’s go home then, i’ll drive you.”

vi. heartbreaks

your heart dropped the moment you saw yeji walk into the studio, her knee seemingly fine. everyone was shocked to see her going into jongin’s office. it was one week before the competition, and no one knew what yeji’s return could mean for the team. were jongin and momo going to let her dance? what could that mean for you and hanbin’s duet? you couldn’t hear their conversation where you were, and the suspense was killing you. 

deciding you could no longer sit around waiting, you went over to the office door to eavesdrop. “we finally got the formation to work for the full group! we can’t just go and change them all over again for you!” momo’s voice said, notably worked up by yeji’s sudden appearance. yeji kept on pleading for the two to let her come, as she didn’t want to miss the competition, “then at least let me do the rest!”

“i don’t think it’d be fair for the others, ryujin has worked hard on the solo” jongin tried to explain. 

“i already talked with everyone! ryujin, hanbin, they’re all okay with it!” yeji claimed. 

hearing hanbin’s name mentioned made you freeze on your spot. your insecurities were starting to creep in again, your mind filled up with questions. did hanbin rather do the duet yeji instead? when did they even talk about it together? it hadn’t even been twelve hours since you last saw him. 

maybe hanbin was relieved after hearing that yeji was okay. he had a much bigger chance to win with her than with you. maybe this whole time you’ve just been one big project to him, while he waited for yeji to get better.

you thought you were already over all this, being the second choice – but no, you weren’t even an option at this point. the past weeks have been the first time in years when you’ve felt great when you danced. you felt like you had finally improved, able to move on from your slump. you must’ve been just a joke to him, to everyone. tears were falling down your cheeks, your chest feeling too tight to breathe. 

“there you are y/n!” you heard a very familiar voice calling you, but you couldn’t even move to see him. hanbin sounded out of breath as he finally approached you. “i was looking for you, there’s something i need to tell you” he continued, putting his hand on your shoulder. his touch finally made you shift, as you moved out of the boy's touch, you saw his concerned face. you could only watch him for a second, before you knew you had to get out of there. 

“good luck with that duet” you said before taking your leave.

vii. making up and making …out?

since getting cut off from the duet, you've been avoiding hanbin like plague all week. he had tried to talk to you multiple times, but you ran off each time. you’ve tried to distract yourself by practicing on your own, and offering to help chaeryeong, matthew and jiwoong with their trio. it only helped you for awhile, because most times hanbin would show up and try to explain himself. you don’t know how many times you’ve told him to just focus on the competition instead of running after you.

you weren’t really mad at him, it wasn’t his fault that yeji came back. deep down you knew he probably had an explanation for everything, he wouldn’t have tried to talk to you otherwise. after calming down you could no longer blame yeji for losing your duet either, you would’ve likely done the same thing if you were her. she worked hard too, even to the point of injuring herself. you were mostly just mad at yourself, embarrassed how you’ve handled the whole thing, and letting your insecurities get the best of you again. 

it was the last day of competition, and you were sitting in the audience, as you didn’t have any dances left. there was a small break between the small group category and the solos. your team did well, however, you could tell something was off with hanbin as he danced. it wasn’t something the judges could notice, but you knew hanbin, and something was clearly off. you were worried, but you didn’t think it would be a good idea to talk to him right now, as he was somewhere probably getting ready for his solo. 

“hi, can i sit with you?” you were surprised to see yeji out here in the audience, let alone approaching you of all people. you nodded as a response, and she sat down next to you. there was an awkward silence between the two of you. you thought about what you should say to her, if you were even supposed to. both of you sat stiff, looking everywhere but each other. “shouldn’t you be getting ready for your solo?” you tried testing the waters.

“i’m not doing it” she replied, her hands gripping the corners of her chair, as she looked down to her legs. it quickly got quiet again, neither of you saying anything. you wondered if yeji’s knee wasn’t as fine as she made it seem or if something else was going on. yeji didn’t let you think for long as she finally spoke again, “i couldn’t take it away from ryujin…”

“but you could take it from me?” your words coming out of your mouth more harshly than you intended. regretting what you said, you shook your head, telling yeji to forget what you just said.

“no y/n, i should’ve asked you first, i’m sorry” she interrupted you. “i just- i was so excited to dance again… too excited even, i failed to notice that hanbin would’ve much rather danced with you. but you know him, he’s too nice to say anything” yeji explained, the last bit making you both chuckle. you were glad yeji apologised to you, even when you were never angry with her in the first place.

“do you really think that? that he would’ve rather danced with me?” you asked, wanting to believe what she said, you just needed some more reassurance. 

“obviously! i might not have been around when the two of you got closer but i’ve heard some stories from jiwoong and chaeryeong” she teased, nudging your shoulder. your cheeks blushed, as you figured yeji was referring to the night jiwoong had caught you two almost kissing at the studio. “i bet he’s already halfway through choreographing your duet for next season” she continued. yeji’s words made you feel shy and giddy, they gave you the sudden urge to see him, to talk to him.

“i think i should go find him” you stood up from your seat, looking around for the fastest route to your team’s dressing room. yeji gave you an encouraging push, telling you to hurry before he needs to go up on stage.

you ended up finding hanbin before you even got to the dressing room. you found him warming up close to the stage, already in his costume. he noticed you coming right away, giving you a small smile and a wave. saying your hello’s, you stopped awkwardly few steps away from him. “how are you feeling?” you asked carefully, not sure how he’d react to you suddenly showing up.

“i’m okay, just a little nervous” he answered quietly, continuing his stretching. you just stood there, awkwardly, not knowing what to say. you didn’t really plan ahead when you suddenly decided to find him. hanbin got up, now fully looking at you, but he didn’t say anything like you hoped he would. the two of you just stared at one another, neither knowing what to say. you could no longer bear the silence, so you finally spoke, “i’m sorry.”

“no, i’m sorry, i should’ve talked to you” hanbin took your hands to his, holding onto them like his life depended on it. his eyes were sorrowful, all this must have pained him the past week, and it was mostly your fault.

“i mean you tried to…” you reminded him, hoping that he would stop blaming himself. he let out an airy laugh, a smile finally breaking to his face. announcement could be heard in the background, telling everyone that the solo category would be starting in a few minutes, and you could see hanbin tense up. 

“you’re going to kill it, don’t worry” you reassured him, deciding to embrace the boy in a hug. he wrapped his arms around in a second, squeezing you tight. “you think so?” he mumbled next to your ear.

“hanbin, let’s go!” you could hear jongin yell from a distance. you took a look at hanbin, not quite ready to let go yet. “yes, and i’ll be right here watching” you said, with one more thing in your mind that you thought would help him. you looked around your surroundings, hoping that jongin wouldn’t be looking, before doing something you should’ve done weeks ago. you leaned in and kissed the boy, wrapping your arms around his neck. 

hanbin kissed you back after a moment of shock, and you could feel him smile against your lips. parting ways, the two of you now giggling like little kids. “I’ll be back” he let go of you, starting to walk towards jongin, who had an amused smile on his face. 

to put it simply, hanbin had never danced as well as he did then, and he was sure it was all thanks to you.

viii. lets dance

“are your eyes closed?” hanbin asked you for the fifth time, as he was moving you towards his surprise. it had been a few days since the competition, and today hanbin had been acting really suspicious. you were informed by matthew that you should stay at the studio after practice, and he left without telling you why. your questions were finally answered, when hanbin started dragging you out of the dressing room, putting his hands in front of your eyes. 

“yes, you’ve made sure of it” you answered, acting bothered by his antics. “okay okay, but no lurking!” he said excitingly, helping you to get over a higher threshold. you could tell you had entered one of the practice rooms, but you had no idea what hanbin had planned. you two stopped walking, and hanbin finally let you open your eyes, “you can open now!”

once you did open them, you wouldn't believe what laid in front your eyes. the entire room was decorated with fairy lights all over the room. the view was beautiful, and you were in complete awe. you never thought hanbin would do something like this. “hanbin…” you were completely speechless. 

“shh, that’s not all” he said, as a familiar song started playing from the speakers. you turned to hanbin as you recognized the song, it was the song for your duet. he smiled at you, offering you his hand. “dance with me”  he said quietly. you took his hand without hesitation, and he pulled you into the middle of the dance floor. you started dancing the choreography, the room filling up with laugh and giggles. 

dancing with hanbin just felt right. it made you feel at ease, moves coming easily to you as the two of you spinned around the dance floor. you never wanted this moment to end, that’s how much you were enjoying it. for a long time you haven’t enjoyed dance as much as you did right now, with hanbin. and suddenly it hit you – you loved dancing again. 

…and maybe you loved hanbin too.

- end

bonus:

“y/n, will you be my duet partner?”

“only if you’ll be my boyfriend as well”

“i like this deal”

[tozettastone]

This is the scene that explains the basic porny premise of the silly Bleach fic that has been possessing my brain.

(Heads up for it being very dubcon, like, the whole concept, but there is nothing "on-screen" in this post).

Uryū wasn't sure what he'd expected, but somehow despite throwing himself into the power of an arrancar he'd tried quite hard to kill not very long ago, he had not really expected that... well, that certain activities would be demanded of him. Sex. He meant sex. "You want... to have sex?" It wasn't quite sinking in. "With me?" Uryū could feel his red his face was, burning in the chill of Hueco Mundo's endless night. Szayel raised one eyebrow. He crossed his arms. "From the look on your face, you'd think that was a fate worse than death. It meets your criteria, you know." No physical harm he couldn't easily recover from. That was... regrettably true. What could he even say to that? No, sorry, losing his virginity to a hollow would damage him in a mysterious non-physical way he couldn't articulate? It ...would, was the thing. Ishida Uryū did not think of himself as a very romantic or idealistic person, but deep down (very, very deep down, if you asked anyone who knew him) he was. Romance might have been relegated to the parts of himself that valued his pride over his wellbeing and thought wearing a mantle made him look incredibly cool, but it was still a fundamental part of his personality. Hollows were creatures who knew only hunger, but these arrancar were evolved enough to have more sophisticated desires, and as far as he had seen they were cruel, conceited, and selfish. He had expected a certain amount of, well, bullying and violence, within the limits of the agreement they had made. He had just not expected... this sort of demand. And for a young man who still blushed when friends talked about who they wanted to kiss, this scenario was deeply alarming. He had... sort of thought he'd be married? Before he ever had sex with anyone? He wasn't such a prude that he felt marriage a necessary component of sexual activity, exactly, but it certainly seemed the safest and most natural progression of that part of his life. It was what his grandfather would have expected of him. "It does," he said slowly, feeling his stomach twist a little. "It does meet the criteria in our agreement." A deal was a deal. And if he withheld his participation in these 'experiments,' would Szayelaporro then withhold water? Uryū already knew the answer to that. "Then we're in agreement. Take your clothes off," he ordered. "Now, a quick survey while you do that. Age?" "Eighteen. In November." Szayel wrote this down. "Have you ever engaged in sexual intercourse with a member of your own species?" "I... No." "Good, we can strike off the sections about communicable diseases, reproduction, and prior emotional attachment conferring bias. Wonderful. You're still wearing clothes, I see." He smiled faintly, just a sinister curve of his lips. "Do you need help, quincy?" Szayelaporro twirled the pen in his fingers and his hand drifted towards the hilt of his sword, which heavily implied the kind of 'help,' he would provide. "I don't," he said, and then, blinking rapidly, face red, he began unlacing his mantle. There was a part of Uryū's brain that was screaming that he should fight or run, anything to avoid this surreal and terrible fate. But if he was good at anything, it was keeping a cool head. There was a cold mathematics going on behind his eyes, and it told him that now was not the time for bold action. He needed Szayelaporro's skills and resources, he'd made a deal with Szayelaporro accordingly, and he was going to have to keep up his end unless circumstances changed significantly. So. He was going to fuck the hollow, and he was going to live. (One of the other things Uryū was great at was compartmentalising his feelings.) A different part of his brain said that surely this could not happen to him, that surely something would interrupt before he had to submit to whatever a hollow's idea of sex was. His belt came free with a whistle. He noticed distantly that he seemed to be breathing faster than normal. He coiled the belt neatly and put it on the floor at his feet.

[crispybonkeggllama]

I wanted to do a little sketch for my Bleach Canon Divergence AU but then decided to add color TT

TimeTravel!Ichigo who, because of his injuries and reiatsu exhaustion took a form of a child (like Nell), thus remembering the future, but unable to control his emotions and acting accordingly.

He regains his mental stability later with the help of the Soul King - yeah, he time travelled THIS far - and became a member of the Zero Squad, though unannounced.

Also not-so-subtly called 'your highness' or 'prince' by Zero Squad since Soul King took him under his wing (who also not-so-subtly is being a doting parent) and him being a clingy child most of the time.

He hasn't recovered fully, hence he usually sleeps on the SK's lap or in his arms, surrounded by non-threatening reiatsu so much similar to his (which SK picked up on, already realizing that this child is trully his, needing to be coated in parent's reiatsu to recover faster)

After The First Sin, Yhwach's sealing and establishment of C46 and Gotei, Ichigo lowkey says "fuck it" and just-

Wakes the King.

Yeah.

By bombarding the crystal with huge amount of his reiatsu whenever he has the moment.

The funniest thing? He also translating his thoughts and emotions of how everything will be fucked up in about a thousand years and that the King will be killed. But the thought that finally wakes the King up is when Ichigo got too stressed and desperate.

"I need you. Your own son is SEALED and I fought him, I KILLED him, he lost it and he is your fucking son and he needs you even more than me so wake the fuck up- PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO KILL HIM AGAIN HE WAS SO LOST AND DROWN IN MADNESS AND HE LOVED YOU HE JUST WANTED HIS FATHER- PLEASE-"

And it happened quietly. Soul King gently hugging the sobbing kid, peaking a look in the futures.

Yeah... Maybe this was not the best descision he made in order to protect the worlds.

He then proceeds to find his first son which he didn't do to not be 'too bothering of a parent', breaking suspicouisly familliar spells and wards intended to not let HIM find Yhwach, and yanking him in the Palace, also coating him and the youngest in his reiatsu, contemplating his life descisions as to why in the world he listened to Ichibe to let his son wander the world 'a little'. Like, yeah, his son has enormous amounts of spiritual energy but it's expected, and even if Yhwach was absorbing a little too much from him as a toddler that only proved him having a pote-

Oh.

OH.

Wasn't he weakened enough by that to try finding his son and not being able to see even his soul ribbon before being sealed?..

*Somewhere, Ichibe felt shudder runnig down his spine*

***

So the Gotei 13 an C46 aren't aware of Ichigo's existence, he slept through a lot of things (not to mention hawking Soul King being paranoid after disappearance of his first child).

SK's physical body parts slowly deceasing (Ukitake lives yay!).

Yhwach is sane, not fatherless anymore, they talked things through, and very much a doting older brother as much as his father even if he doesn't like to admit it (the braids with flowers and colourful ribbons admit it for him)

Ichigo is having a long-lasting childhood since his soul 'matured' even before time travel and he looks younger than Toshiro for like forever (until he figures out how to grow up, waiting for Urahara to become 12th captain to ask him), cringes every time Yhwach calls him "brüderlein" (as if being called his son wasn't traumatizing enough), thinking what to do with Aizen while waiting for the tea-lover to appear.

Oh, and he's also Zero Squad member with privileges (obviously).

Seriously, i made up this whole AU just because i wanted kid!Ichigo in captain haori XD

Anyway, here're the sketches

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

For What the Future Holds

Prompt: forgiveness

Rating: K/General with mild themes

Setting: Starts Ichigo defeats Yhwach, continues into the very beginning of the ten year time skip. There’s also flashbacks to Toshiro and Momo's past dotted throughout.

Synopsis: Momo notices Toshiro is acting out of sorts ever since the war against the Quincy ended. Meanwhile, Toshiro tries to look to the future.

AN: It’s finally DONE!!

I had the idea for this ages ago (around the time of Horizons, which is why they have a similar structure as you’ll see), but it wasn’t until the 'forgiveness' prompt for the @yearoftheotpevent came up that I finally sat down and wrote it out. It didn't turn out to be the main or overarching theme and the fic itself turned into quite the emotional piece to write ^^;

This was also partly written in light of my headcanon becoming canon! I was aware of the question from Klub Outside a long time ago, but Kubo has confirmed Toshiro and Momo were neighbours rather than living under the same roof, which has always been the scenario I saw for them when I was reading BLEACH and writing fic.

Finally, this fic also has a flashback that slightly ties into When the Souls Sleep and the World is Our Own, but only in that it was a deleted scene and I found a way to include it here instead. You don’t have to read that fic to understand what happens in that scene, just that the setting is not long after they met.

Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy it!

____________________________

“I should’ve told you about it earlier.”

Momo blinks, both at the quietness of Toshiro’s voice and the bowing of his head in her peripheral. She raises her gaze to his face from the now healed over wound on his arm, cancelling the kido as she shifts over to sit next to him. “Told me about what?”

He rolls the tattered sleeve down. He contemplates what to say, staring down at his lap. Behind him, Hyourinmaru’s hilt glints, and beyond, Shinji and Kyouraku watch over those they’d dug out from the ruins earlier. Next to them, Nanao is communicating with someone in the Seireitei – Iemura, Momo suspects – trying to coordinate transportation for the injured, and Isane, bandaged up and still recovering from her own injuries, heals Aikawa. Far away at the Reio’s Palace, she can sense Rukia about to be reunited with her brother.

“That form is why I was training in the caves,” Toshiro says, diverting Momo’s attention back to him. “I should’ve told you about it sooner.

“You mean Hyourinmaru’s Completed Form?”

He nods.

Was that all? She thinks to tease him, to make light of something he seems to be treating with more seriousness than needed, but she halts at his gaze. It’s not the usual icy, determined one she’s used to.

He’s tired – and who could blame him after what they’d gone through? – and it makes him look vulnerable. Something trembles within him, something he’d likely keep hidden behind many walls.

She offers a sympathetic smile. “Why would you need to tell me about it?”

“The way you reacted before…you were startled. If you’d known before, it wouldn’t have been as much of a shock. I apologise.”

It’s true, she’d been stunned, had even flinched with a loud gasp when she first saw him, and was perhaps even a little frightened. She’d stood there, mouth agape and speechless, unable to take her eyes away from him, even as her captain swore and asked who he was. She hadn’t known how else to react, but later as he motioned her towards a piece of rubble to sit on as he explained how he had somehow become an adult, the shock wore off.

She had to resist the urge to hug him out of sheer relief, this was not the time or place for such high emotions. So she’d gotten to work on healing his wounds after he’d transformed back – but only after the others had been found and pulled out from under the rubble.

“It’s all right,” she reassures. “It was startling, yes, but I knew it was you. It was incredible, actually, but also not too surprising now that I know what it is."

He’s stunned, but hides it quickly with a clearing his throat and a deepened frown. “How so?”

“I didn’t see all of the battle you and Captain Kuchiki did with the Quincy, but what I did see was amazing. You froze the Quincy’s shield in mid-air, within a second. A-And then you froze the Quincy completely! I thought for sure he was defeated then, truly.”

He nods to himself, remembering. “So did I. He gave us more than we bargained for in the end.”

 “At least he’s gone.” Momo sighs, and with it, a weight is released. “At least…it’s over.” It’s like a vice has loosened around her head and chest. She lets out a shuddering breath and her eyes become watery. “We’re okay, now.”

“We’ll have a lot to do when we get back, it’s not…” Toshiro trails off when he meets her gaze again. His hand twitches at his side, clearly resisting moving it. After a beat, his lips shape into a faint smile and he let’s out a short, tired chuckle. “You gonna cry, bed-wetter?”

She can’t even be mad at the nickname, she becoming too overwhelmed. “No, it’s not the time and place to.” Even as she says this, she’s furiously wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

He shrugs. “No one would blame you.”

“But it’s like you said, we need to focus on the task at hand.” She gestures to the others a short distance away. “On transporting the injured back and figuring out what our next steps are.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” His smile widens a fraction. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Despite herself, she can’t help but grin back. She sniffs and looks down. “I’m just so glad it’s over.”

He only nods with a hum.

A silence passes between them, and Momo slowly realises her own exhaustion. She has enough energy to cast lower powered kido, but even then she might be pushing it. She finds herself sitting back against the same piece of broken wall Toshiro is, listening to the distant chatter amongst their friends and wreckage crumbling and falling. She cranes her neck on the rubble’s edge, looking up at the sky.

She’d seen him soar across it hours ago, only a spec at times, and a more recognisable figure at others. At one point, the cold of his reiatsu had washed over her like a gust in a blizzard, freezing and chilling her to bone. It ebbed away minutes later, but it made her realise the magnitude of his powers. She'd wondered if he had this power this entire time and had chosen not to unveil it until now, when he needed it most to protect the Soul Society. If he was capable of this now, who knew what he could achieve in the future.

But then her mind rolls into another thought, one that makes heat rush up the back of her neck to her ears and try to suppress a chuckle.

“What is it?”

By this point Toshiro had closed his eyes.

“It’s nothing important.”

He opens one eye, unconvinced. “The spike your reiatsu said otherwise.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, chastising herself internally for not keeping it under control. She’s tired, but it’s no excuse. She lets out a small chuckle. “I was thinking that, in a funny way, Hyourinmaru’s Completed Form has given us a glimpse into the future. It’s shown us what you’ll look like when you grow up.”

She had meant it as a tease, to try and lighten the mood, but Toshiro’s frown deepens. As if realising his reaction was unexpected, he let’s out a snort. “Anything can happen between now and then to change how I look.”

The usual bite is not there. The response itself is strange, too.

Before she can ask, her captain comes up to both of them, asking for her help with moving Aikawa’s injured leg into a makeshift splint.

As she rises and leaves with her captain, Toshiro’s smile fades away, and he stares into his lap. No, into something else.

___________________________________

There was a time where future went as far as Granny.

What would she need today? What days was she planning to go out and shop? Would he need to help her with?

When would she pass away?

Toshiro never lingers on that last thought, always distracting himself with whatever he could. At the moment, it’s with sweeping the house and yard.

He’s up to the front porch, pushing the dust and dirt off the edge with the broom. Granny is inside, sewing a new garment together for him.

“You’ve grown again,” she’d remarked earlier with a smile. “You’ll need new clothes now.”

As far as he could tell he hadn’t. The ground seemed to be as far away as it was a week ago, and he hadn’t put on any weight. But he had to admit his clothes the last few days had seemed a fraction shorter at his legs and tighter around his shoulders.

It’s a few minutes later when he hears yelling. A group of children rush past his house, some giggling, others chattering about Momo, who's at the center of attention. She excitedly tells them her application exam date, beaming so wide it must hurt her cheeks.

When was she going to the Academy?

That one stung, and he ignores it with a sweep of the brush.

Months ago, he’d asked Jidanbo what it took to become a Shinigami. The giant was just as surprised as Toshiro had expected him to be.

“Have you changed your mind about not going, Toshiro-kun?” Jidanbo had asked.

“No,” is all he said.

Realising he wasn’t going to elaborated, Jidanbo had shrugged and said, “First, you must have spiritual potential and the ability to show it. You go to the Shinigami Academy, where you learn to become a Shinigami. The exam to get in is tough, sometimes you have to take it multiple times --” he'd rubbed the back of his neck “ -- like I did. My brother was more lucky, he only took the exam once and got in. Once you’ve passed, you’re enrolled in the next semester and that’s about it.”

Toshiro already know even if Momo didn’t get a pass on the exam the first time, she’ll go for it again and again and again, until she was enrolled.

He’d seen her enthusiasm long before this. The day she’d rushed to him, her cheeks flushed and her hair whipped around her from running to find him, and taken him back to his house to show him what she’d just accomplished. She’d cupped her hands together, and several seconds later, a white glow emanated from between the gaps in her fingers. When she’d pulled her hands apart, the orb radiating in her palms broke apart into smaller orbs that floated away. Momo chortled in delight, and Toshiro almost did the same. When she was this joyous it was often contagious, especially when he eyes are so wide with wonder and elation.

What had stopped him was a single thought, one that shot through him and made him realise just how far he’d let her into his life.

One day, she’ll be gone. 

____________________________

The next time Momo sees Toshiro is on her way to the First Division. Shinji runs ahead of her on the walkway, listing off the topics they will need to discuss with Kyoraku. She’d been listening intently, but got distracted as they passed Twelfth Division.

From this high up, she couldn’t recognise most of Shinigami out and about, but the moment she saw one with white hair and a short stature and his cold reiatsu faintly emanated up to her, she knew it was Toshiro. He steps out of Twelfth Division’s main barracks, followed by Rangiku. There’s something morose about the way they hold themselves and in their slow walk to the division’s main gate entrance. They come to a stop just as a building blocks Momo view.

“You all right back there?” Shinji asks.

“Sorry, sir! I just saw Rangiku-san and Captain Hitsugaya.”

“Ah.”

“…Are they coming to this meeting too?”

“Nah, just us, Third, and Eighth.” She can hear his grin when he continues after a beat, “Were you hoping to socialise with them?”

“Of course not!” Momo scoffs.

It’s left at that. Still, she thinks back on how they had looked. She’d be sure to visit them sometime soon, if all goes according to plan with the reconstruction of the Districts.

________________________________

Momo found him sitting on the front porch of his house, peeling chestnuts. He hadn’t noticed her at first, but when her footsteps scrapped against the dirt path, he looks up.

“What’re you staring at?” Toshiro asks.

“Sorry, I just came to visit,” she says as she comes closer. “What are these for?”

He senses there’s more to this than just a visit, but he puts it aside for now. “Baa-chan is making chestnut rice tonight. She was going to ask you to come take some back to your house. She always does it in big batches.”

Momo grins. “That’s kind of her.”

Toshiro only shrugs with a huff. Momo’s grin falls into a small, unsure smile. He’s quick to pick up a nut from the tub in front of him, peel the shell off with a small knife, then put it with the others ready for Granny.

“In that case, do you mind if I help?” Momo says. “I can’t let her do that for me and my friends without helping her.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I want to.”

She makes herself comfortable next to him. She takes a spare knife from the tray he’d brought out, then collects several chestnuts from the tub. He opens his mouth, but shut it after she starts peeling. What had he wanted to say? Did he want to tell her to leave? Did he want to ask about the Academy?

Save for the knifes cracking open and peeling the shells, there’s silence between them. In front of her, the day passes, clouds moving across the sky and the sun shining down on the swaying trees and lively Junrinan a short distance away.

After a moment, Momo pauses as she takes another chestnut. In his periphery, she fiddles with it between her hands, as if trying to wring something out of it. She puts the knife to the chestnut, but is slow to peel the shell away.

She nervous, perhaps gearing herself up to say something. He already knows she’s going to Academy, remembers her loud declaration to Granny several weeks ago that was equal parts ecstatic and anxious. He didn’t want to reflect on his behaviour since she announced it, but he knows he’s become more sullen towards her.

Granny chastised more than once him, saying he should be happier for her and congratulate her; but he can’t ignore the tightness in his chest every time he thinks about her leaving. He hates that she had become a annoying and welcomed constant in his live for the last few decades, and even worse, that he had imagined what the future – whether it was the next week or the next year – would be like, and she was there in his imaginings, along with Granny and Jidanbo. Never used to even think about the future, his life had been repetitive until she came along.

After taking off the chestnut’s shell, Momo stops. “Can I ask you something?”

Toshiro continues peeling. “Hm?”

“Even if you don’t become a Shinigami, can we still be friends?”

Toshiro halts. His brows furrow, but he still doesn’t look at her. “What’s with that question?”

“I mean, while I’m at the Academy we won’t be seeing each other too much. And when I become a Shinigami, it’ll be even less. We’re friends, and, um…I want to stay friends, even when we’ve grown up.”

Her voice wavers towards the end, losing what confidence she’d built up to speak to him.

Toshiro blinks down at the chestnut in his hands. Somewhere around them, the leaves rustle in the wind, and a bird chirps and another caws back in response. The last parts of the shell fall away.

“You might be different by then,” he says solemnly, still unable to look at her.

Momo presses her lips into a tight line. “Well, of course. Everyone changes as they grow up. They become more mature and responsible.”

“Not all adults are.”

“Most though.” She drops her chestnut into the peeled pile. “I don’t know how often I’ll be allowed to visit, but I’ll write to you as often as I can.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll be doing your Shinigami stuff, you won’t have time.”

“B-But I want to.”

He finally looks at her. At the hurt that flickers through her eyes, he wants to take it back. She obviously hadn’t expected this coldness from him. Yes, his usual bratiness can make him say some hurtful things on occasion, but this is different for her. This was a side of him she rarely saw, and it’s a side she is never on the end of.

But what’s the use? She’ll go to the Academy and forget about him. She’ll make new, better friends. Ones she can go into the future with and who can understand the struggles and triumphs she’ll experience as a Shinigami.

“Do whatever you want then.”

His comment doesn’t ease the turmoil in her, with her gaze falling off to the side and her shoulders slumping. She’s on the verge of a sob, but she bravely keeps it back. “Are you saying you don’t think we should be friends anymore?”

It’s an opening he should take. He has to start letting her go, so it won’t hurt so much when she turns away, and stops being a part of his future.

“I…I’m not saying that.” He’s weak. “I’m just being realistic. You’ll be busy, you won’t have the time to write to us.”

It’s not the answer she expects. Her eyes widen and her lips part, but she doesn’t speak for several heartbeats. She's stuck between being confused and stunned. “I-I’d make time. Of course I’d make time!”

Her earnestness and fierce determination fracture what little resolve he had left. “Well then, let’s see you try.”

_____________________________

Momo glances at Toshiro from across the meeting hall.

He’d just stepped back into line after reporting on his areas for reconstruction. His division is doing well, ahead of schedule in fact.

Normally the thought would make her happy. He’s always been a hard worker; never for the sake of wanting to one-up another or show off, but because he wanted to do good for others. It was one of her favourite things about him.

But something about him is different. The war against the Quincy and taking in the total devastation it had caused had affected all of them, changing each of them in both subtle and obvious ways.

Toshiro holds himself differently. There’s the usual stoicism on his face, and the straight, pulled back shoulders and slightly raised chin that have been a part of his posture since he became a captain.

It’s his hands. They’re curled in loose fists at his side. Something is on his mind, and whatever it is, it’s causing him to be tense. His gaze shows he’s present, now listening to Mayuri give his report into his latest findings, but there’s something going on in the back of his mind he can’t escape from.

She wishes she could cross the room and take one of his hands.

_____________________________

“Don’t bother coming back, bed-wetter!”

Please come back.

And she must see through him, because her high spirits aren’t dampened as she continues to smile and wave at him. He’ll never understand how she can be so cheerful so often.

Eventually, she has to turn away from him and navigate her way through the growing crowds. After she vanishes and as Granny gently chastises him for his rudeness, he can’t dismiss the thought that haunts him. The same thought that had made him try to disconnect from her weeks ago.

What if she doesn’t?

_____________________________

Momo watches Toshiro ponder over the map of the North districts. Each was outlined in the colour of the division that has jurisdiction over them, Fifth Division’s in turquoise and Tenth Division’s in dark green.

“So we’ll tackle this area together,” Shinji says while drawing his finger along the border between the North districts nineteen and twenty. “It makes sense seeing as our jurisdictions are night next to each other. Also, saves us on costs if you go with shared resources, right?”

Both Toshiro and Rangiku nod.

“Have you brought this up with the Captain Commander yet?” Toshiro asks.

“Not yet. We went to a meeting about…” he lifts his gaze to the ceiling of Tenth Division’s office, trying to recall.

“It’s was a month ago, sir,” Momo quietly offers.

Shinji snaps his fingers. “Yes, thank you, Hinamori! Geez, we’ve been to so many meetings lately I’m getting them confused.”

Toshiro scoffs. Momo tries not to smile in response; it’s the first normal, in-character thing she’s seen him do since they arrived.

“Anyway, at that meeting, the Captain Commander suggested a few ways we can save on costs for the reconstruction efforts, one of which was shared resources. Sure you got told the same whenever you went to you met with him yourselves." Shinji jerks his thumb towards Momo. “My lieutenant here suggested we collaborate on the districts that border with other divisions, like yours.”

Momo can’t help but lift her chin a little at the credit her captain gave her. Sometimes he had a way of making one feel accomplished, even over the smallest things.

Rangiku grins. “It’s a great idea, and not surprised that it came from you, Hina-chan.”

Momo laughs nervously. “Rangiku-san…”

“Stop, you’ll make her overheat,” Shinji teases.

“Sir, honestly!” Momo retorts.

He only laughs, but he eyes Toshiro. So he’d noticed it too. Normally situations like this riled her childhood friend up, made him shout something along the lines of ‘We need to focus right now!’ or simply glare at him. Toshiro’s eyes were on the map, jumping to all the districts under his jurisdiction.

It was barely perceptible, but Momo could see with each district he eyes, a little more weight is added to his shoulders.

Shinji quickly returns things to the business at hand. Several minutes later, her captaina nd Toshiro agree to do reconstruction together.

As Shinji and Rangiku start on a plan, Toshiro stands up rorm the couch. “I’ll go get a pot of tea.”

“Do you need assistance with that?” Momo asked, ready to rise up.

He shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

He leaves while Rangiku and Shinji continue to hash out a plan. His walk would not seem out of the ordinary to most, Momo saw the weight in his shoulders from before, and just as she’d noticed when she first arrived, that he forced himself to stared straight ahead, and not once at her.

___________________________

He regrets every bad thing he’s ever said to her. Every angry exclamation. Every promise or important day he’d forgotten. Every time he scared her for a laugh when they were children. Every tease about her.

He barely manages a landing, his whole body numb with horror. Ice keeps breaking around them. He can hear yelling, but it’s muffled around the ringing in his ears. For the first time in his life, he’s too cold.

She finally stirs, and her hazy, fading eyes stare up at him. He shakes and can barely breathe. He might collapse, but she’s keeping him rigid and frozen in place. She says his nickname, a pierces through him, hitting a part of him that he always associated with first meeting her. The memory of it, the feeling of someone finally looking at him like he wasn’t so different, and letting it warm him into a fleeting sense of security.

“…Why?”

Something in him shatters. 

He should’ve been kinder. Why hadn’t he been? Because he’d been a child who didn’t know better when they first met. Because he’d been alone for so long he didn’t know how to interact with others. Because he’d been scared. Because he’d let her in too far. Because he didn’t know a life without her anymore.

____________________________

An evening breeze blows through the streets of the South Second district, swaying the lanterns of restaurants and brushing Momo’s hair over her shoulders. It reminds her she needs to get it cut, but then she had thought of –

“That was a really good meal.”

Momo looks over to Rangiku , who interlaces her fingers and stretches her arms over her head with a grin.

“It was,” Momo says with her own smile. “I’m glad you recommended that place. We should take the other Women’s Association members there sometime.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. I wanted to try it out with you first.” She winks as she lowers her arms. “It’s been a while since we had a girls night out, huh?”

Momo’s smile widens. After recovering from the battle in the Fake Karakura Town and being discharged from Fourth Division, Rangiku had arranged for the two of them to have lunches and dinners together. They’d be casual mostly, chatting about work for only a short while before moving on to longer discussions about their hobbies, who they’d caught up with lately, and there were a few times they’d left wherever they'd eaten from and gone shopping together. Every now and then, particularly in the beginning, their chatter would turn sombre. They’d reflect on what had happened, whether it was Aizen’s betrayal or Gin’s death, and it took some effort to return the conversation back to something lighter.

Momo remembers the look that would come over Rangiku’s face during those moments. As her friend stares ahead into the growing crowds, she can see hints of that old expression. Her eyes are hooded, her eyes take on a glassiness, and she ignores things – like the loud cheering of an izakaya they pass by, or the sprinting children that almost bump into them before dodging off to the side. What was most telling though was Rangiku didn’t comb her fingers through her hair and complain about the wind ruining her hairstyle.

Like Toshiro, something had been bothering her, but unlike him, she seems to be bouncing back from it quicker. Still, she had moments like this where she grew quiet and solemn. It sends a twinge through Momo’s chest. “Can I ask you something, Rangiku-san?”

Her friend blinks and “Hm?”

Momo’s hesitation catches up to her. She’d wanted to ask before she’d come to dinner, but at seeing Rangiku being her usual boisterous and jolly self, the question had faded into the background.

“I was wonder…”

If she asks her now, she can finally know what happened. Of course, it wouldn’t be Rangiku’s place to say what happened to Toshiro…but what if it was the same thing that affected her?

“…I was wonder if you, uh…”

Momo recalls the two of them leaving Twelfth that day over a month ago, and the chances are whatever it was…

“Do you have any style recommendations for my hair? I was thinking of growing it out rather than getting it cut again.”

Without realising, Rangiku had brought them to a stop in the middle of the street. Souls pass around them, some with skeptical or awed looks, others completely ignoring them. The wind dies down, leaving Rangiku hair slightly frizzy. There’s a gentle smile on her lips, and a knowing look briefly comes across her eyes. Had she known what Momo truly wanted to ask?

But she couldn’t bring herself to, not when it occurred to her that asking Rangiku would potentially expose what has been bothering Toshiro too. She didn’t want to put her friend in an uncomfortable position, but with a tightening of her heart, it dawns on her that asking Toshiro would only do the same for Rangiku.

She’d trapped.

“Yeah, I can think of a few,” Rangiku eventually says. "I'll bring some ideas at the next Women's Association."

Momo blinks.

Rangiku had spoken quietly, uncharacteristic given that hair and fashion were topics she often spoke fervently about. Momo manages to take a deep breath in that looks natural enough, and then a small smile. “I thought you would. Thank you.”

____________________________

Come back.

Toshiro pleads it in silence to the night sky on another sleepless night.

He’d known her for so long, had let her become his closest friend. Her being there as they grew older, as they rose up the ranks of the Shinigami and protected the Seireitei, was an inevitability. How naïve he had been. For all of his posturing and talk of responsibilities and knowledge that any of his subordinates could die on missions, she had somehow become the exception.

Somehow, she would live on forever with him.

How can he have clung to such childish ideals?

Come back, he pleads again. I know now. I want things to be different.

_________________________________

Shafts of the sunrise spill into Momo’s room. She sits up before her alarm clock goes off. Rubbing her eyes and lifting the blanket away, she starts her day.

Nerves thrum through her, and no matter what she tells herself or how many times she goes over the plan for today, they don’t settle.

Today is their first day working together with Tenth Division.

After bathing and changing into her uniform, she steps up the mirror to brush her hair. After a few minutes, she takes up her hair clip and clips it in place.

She stares at her reflection, and after a beat, worries her bottom lip. She sighs and lowers her head with tightly shut eyes. How is she going to get through today?

_____________________________

Momo bound up the stairs towards him. Her recently cut hair tousles around her, and she beams widely. She’s obviously dying to tell him something, even shouts his nickname. Perhaps because they’re not in vicinity of his subordinates or the other Captains and Lieutenants, or perhaps because her joy is so often infectious, he chooses not to shout the usual correction at her.

In fact, Toshiro can't help but smile. He’s been doing that more lately.

He decided to be more open, with her first, and eventually with others.

When she stops in front of him and began to gush over a new project she was working on with her division, he has trouble covering up the reaction he has to the relieved, cathartic ache in his heart. Her forgiveness is still raw, even after all these months. Thankfully, she’s so caught up in her excitement she doesn’t see him briefly glance away to regain his composure.

The future was brighter, but the fact there was even a future with her after everything is a blessing all of it’s own.

_____________________________

From a distance, Toshiro orders his and a few of Fifth Division’s officers to do various tasks, and after they disperse, he goes to the next group.

Momo looks back to the map of North District Nineteen and continues outlining the area she and her subordinates will work on. In her periphery, Shinji finishes speaking with Takaya and Katsuro, and makes his way over to Toshiro before he can reach the group.

She tries to ignore the exchange, but her ears unwittingly tune in, catching bits and pieces of their conversation over the shouts of subordinates, sandals crunching in the dirt, and equipment being unloaded from carts. From what she’d (unintentionally) been able to tell, they discuss their findings so far.

She keeps a wince from reaching her face and she recalls their brief meeting this morning. She only gave Toshiro a glance, keeping her eyes either on Rangiku or somewhere behind the two of them. Toshiro retained a stoic exterior, even made a few pointed comments towards Shinji like he did when her captain annoyed him, but that heaviness in his shoulders and eyes is still there. She wishes she could just wave it away, like the wind pushing the clouds across the sky overhead.

It had been over a month since the war ended. He hasn’t said anything to her, and she can’t tell of it’s because of the work they’ve had to do or because he doesn’t want to. Was he concerned for Rangiku? Was it something he didn’t think she’d understand? Would it hurt her?

She shakes her head. She repeatedly tries to tell herself it’s none of her business, but her concern and burgeoning frustration doesn’t waver. Both grow when she can sense, for only several seconds, his gaze on the side of her face.

_____________________________

He doesn’t recall anything of his time as a ‘zombie’ to the Quincy, nor does he want to.

The last thing he remembered was collapsing, his ice shattering around him. Time slowed, as in that moment he thought about how this could be the end. It certainly felt like it was. He was so weak, so very tired and hurting, but he was still awake when the shadow fell over him.

However, the old cliché he’d been told about didn’t happen. He didn’t think on or remember his past. He didn’t despair that he was dying.

He'd thought about Rangiku, dying below, with no one to help her.

He'd thought about his subordinates, who would be without a captain again.

As a darkness began to settle around the edges of his blurred vision, he thought about Momo. He’d sensed her before, she’d been far away from where he was. She reiatsu had been strong, she was all right.

He didn’t need to protect her. Yet he still wanted to see her. For the last few seconds before the darkness took over and muffled footsteps and a sickly sweet voice reach his ears, he thought about the fact he won’t be there in her future.

His next memory is of being put in the recovery tanks along with Rangiku. At the time he’d been exhausted from the procedure Mayuri had made him endure – he vaguely recalls Mayuri half sarcastically marveling, “I’m quite surprised you’re conscious right now.”

He was lifted and secured into the tank by Nemu. Mayuri had watched him, and didn’t approach until Nemu stepped aside. He’d spoken at him, but Toshiro wavered between consciousness and falling into a warmer darkness and only caught sections of his sentences.

“The tank will complete the de-zombification…Consider yourself…Lieutenant is…My procedure took…years off your lifespan, but…we’ll take you to the Palace, no doubt you will…”

And the tank lid had lowered as Toshiro bowed his head. As he drifted into unconsciousness, his mind clung to one part of what Mayuri had said.

My procedure took…years off your lifespan…

He vaguely remembered thinking he must have misheard.

He hadn't focused on it when he awoke again and left the tank, choosing instead to thank Mayuri and rush off into the fray with Rangiku. She surely heard too, but he'd kept quiet about it. He’d been truly grateful and yet, that piece of information, it lingered quietly in the back of his mind.

He’d focused on the fight against the Giant Quincy, and had to resort to using Hyourinmaru’s Completed Form. He thought only of battle strategies and ways to keep his enemy distracted from either destroying the Soul Society below or from causing further harm to those still in the area. 

It's now hours after the Quincy had evaporated away, and he and Byakuya found Momo and Shinji, safe.

She's been clearly startled by his appearance. He didn't know what to expect, had never really thought about her reaction to seeing him like this, but he dislikes her being so confused and unsure. Certain there's no immediate danger in their vicinity and with Byakuya scouting the area, takes her aside to explain the Completed Form.

Shock turns recognition, and then finally to relief. He can't help but feel she same moments later when he's transformed back and she heals his injuries. It's only a few minutes later when Mayuri’s words fully hit him. From then on, he can barely look her in the eye.

_____________________________

The setting sun halos Toshiro's hair, and his shadow casts long over the rubble. He stands alone, arm folded and back facing those a short distance away, clearly lost in thought.

In different circumstances, it would’ve posed as quite the striking image for Momo; one she would be tempted to capture in either her drawings or as a photo on her denreishiki.

His subordinates walk around her, gathering up the materials and equipment they’d used. She didn’t have to interact with him at all today, and even if she did, she’s not sure how she would go about it.

Somewhere behind her, Shinji calls out for officers to help with lifting some of the ruins into carts to be cleared off. She turns to go and assist, but its hard to take her eyes off her friend. The turmoil from earlier arises. She can’t ask him what's wrong, and he won’t even look at her unless she doesn't notice. Still, she can’t leave him as is.

With a deep breath in, and then out, she walks to him.

Her steps crunch from the smaller pieces of rubble and dirt, and alert him to her approach. He half twists around to her, and it causes her to stop more than an arms length away.

“I was wondering…” She hadn’t thought about what to say. But with a light snort, she manages. “Sorry, I was wondering if you had any further plans for Higuchi-san or Takagaki-san. We need some help with clearing the wreckage into the carts.”

Toshiro blinks, as if coming out of deep thought. With a small shake of his head, he turns back to the sunset. “No, I have nothing for them. Their performance was good, if you need to know.”

“Oh, thank you. I’ll be sure to tell my Captain. They’re both hard workers, so that isn’t too surprising to hear.”

“I sent them with Narita to set up the rations for distribution. They should be finished by now.”

Momo swallows against the growing tightness in her throat. She gives a nod, not trusting her words, and only lingers for a few seconds more before turning to go. She wants to kick herself for not coming up with something better, something that would make her stay with him a bit longer and force him to talk with her.

She’s taken ten steps when Toshiro calls to her.

“Wait, Hinamori.”

She looks over her shoulder, squinting against the setting sun. She can’t make out his expression, but his arms now rest at his sides, and his shoulders are higher, straighter. There’s a resoluteness there, but somehow also a reluctance.

He approaches her, but stops after a few steps. He speaks lowly, and it’s hard to make out what he says. She has no choice but to come closer.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said, Captain.”

The corners of his mouth fall and tighten into a scowl – not directed at her, she’s certain.

“When we’re done here, I want to discuss something with you,” he repeats. “I assume you don’t have time for today so I –”

“I do!” Momo would normally balk at her boldness – especially for interrupting someone, let alone a Captain. But it was if she’d been holding her breath on the brink of passing out, and now she was desperate to get air. “I-I’ll have time after we’re done here. We can talk.”

Toshiro had been surprised, but shifts his expression back to neutral. “It won’t take long. Let’s load those carts first and get back to Tenth Division.”

He walks past her, and for a moment, it's as if the heaviness within him lingers over her. Whatever this would be, she's both eager and dreading to know.

____________________________

“How long do Souls live for?”

Toshiro rolls his eyes. Ever since she got here, Momo had been full of questions. She’s more curious than the average Soul, wanting to know every little detail about her new world she called home. Just a few minutes ago she’d asked a range of questions about what rules she needs to follow she didn’t end up in trouble – as he answered her, it reminded him of telling Jidanbo the Rules of City for the first time.

Before he answers her current question, he kicks a small hill of snow just in front of them, sending a white spray into the care tree they stood under. “It depends. Some live for a few decades, others live for thousands of years.”

Over the many layers she wore up to her the bottom half of her face, Momo’s eyes widened in wonder. “Really? That’s such a long time.”

“Not to them,” he says. “Time here is different to the World of Living, or so I’ve heard.”

“Thousands of years…you can do so much in that time!”

She starts listing off various activities and adventures one could do for over a thousand years, all the while her eyes shone, and when a scarf loosened from around her face, it revealed her wide grin.

He doesn’t understand her glee. Was this something specific to Souls that came from the World of the Living? Humans lived far shorter lives than Souls; perhaps the idea of being able to live that long appealed to them. He’d been born in the Junrinan, he knew only this world, and from what Granny had told him, ten years here likely felt like a year in the World of the Living.

He let’s her go on and on with her list, but when she comes to an end, breathless, she says, “Do Souls know how long they’ll live for?”

He lets out a bewildered snort. “Of course not!”

“Oh…” That dampens her enthusiasm, as if he’d popped a bubble. Before he can feel any guilt, she turns her attention back to the silhouette of the Seireitei in the distance. “So, I guess this means the Shinigami in there have been alive for a long time then.”

He shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”

It’s several heart beats later when her grin returns, but there’s a softness to it. “I hope we get to live for over a thousand years.”

He’s taken aback. We? Why 'we'? Why not ‘I’?

He wants to ask, but fears he’ll embarrass himself. So instead, he ponders on it in silence as she continues to admire the Seireitei’s silhouette. Did she mean it as a friend? That she saw them being in the future together?

Granny had been the only person who saw a future with him, planning their days with what items he’d have to go out and buy and what shrines or places they needed to visit together in the coming month.

Something about another seeing him in their future made bite the inside of his lip against the painful pang in his chest. Somehow, though, it also made him happy.

“What if we did?”

He hadn’t realised he’d asked the question aloud until Momo swivels her head back to him. “Hm?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“You mean if we live for over a thousand years?” He cringes inwardly as she considers. Her grin widens after a beat. “We’d have a lot to do, I’m sure of it!”

____________________________

Momo stares mutely at Toshiro, and then at some point, through him, and then into nothing. He shifts his gaze to the side, staring hard at the corner of the training room.

Just behind them, Fifth and Tenth Division officers shared a meal together in one of Tenth Division’s courtyards around a fire, chattering and laughing amongst themselves. Even in her shock, Momo ended up hearing her captain laugh loudly at one of his own jokes, but she can’t bring herself to smile or cringe.

She and Toshiro sit by the training room's entrance, mostly in the shadows. A strip of moonlight comes between them through the doorway, falling over his left foot and her folded knees. He sits half against the wall, his left knee bent and his arms resting in his lap. It would appear to some as the most relaxed he’s ever looked, but this is one of the few times she’s seen him look resigned.

He’d just recounted to her how a Quincy had taken control over him with her blood, and then how Mayuri had restored him. It had all made sense up until that point, but not what he’d just said. No, it was more like she didn’t want the sentence to be true, refused to let it be a part of what he'd already said.

She brings her gaze back to him as a small tremor runs through her hands. “I don’t understand,” she struggles to say. “What do you mean? How can you live for only three hundred more years?”

She thinks he won’t answer her, too overcome by whatever emotions rush through him. However, he takes a sharp breath in, but continues to stare off to the side. “Kurotsuchi says that’s at most, but it’s at least one hundred and fifty years. The procedure he used on me was crude by his standards, something he cobbled together while we were battling the Quincy. As a result of that and what the Quincy did to me, my lifespan has been reduced.”

“You’ve acting differently lately --” her voice catches, and her vision becomes misty “-- now I understand why.”

A quiet, strangled sound comes from Toshiro. “Matsumoto thought it was best to tell you.”

And it’s all the confirmation she needs that Rangiku is facing the same tragedy. She must have seen Momo’s dilemma that night they ate out, and decided to make things easier by encouraging Toshiro to tell her. She could cry for that alone, but she won’t; she’ll speak with her later.

She bows over, fisted hands bunching her uniform at the knees. “I-I don’t know what to say,” she laments. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

That strikes something within him. He shifts, his back fully pressing against the wall and moving his foot out of the moonlight. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she can make out the furrow in his brow twitching and the corner of his mouth dropping into a grimace.

His gaze goes to the ceiling. “I didn’t want to say anything,” he admits. “There’s nothing I can do.”

The catch in his voice is enough to make her move over to him, coming to sit next to him, their shoulders grazing and her knee bumping up against his. She rarely sits so close to him, feeling they should maintain a small distance between them, but this felt right. And judging from his lack of comment or shrugging away, he thinks the same.

“I’m sorry for what I said at the Palace.”

He blinks and finally looks at her. “What?”

She can’t help but be a little relieved he’d forgotten her comment, but winced at having to bring it up now. “I said Hyourinmaru’s Completed Form was a glimpse into the future. How careless of me.”

He shakes his head, but still doesn’t seem to remember. “It’s fine, you weren’t to know.”

“Even so, I should have been more considerate. That form is part of your zanpakuto, not something to be joked about.”

“You were shocked by it, and we’d come out of a battle and Yhwach was defeated, it’s understandable.”

She considers, and then admits, “And we were really tired, I guess.”

That gets a huff of a humoured snort out of him, but it doesn’t reach his eyes or shape his into a faint smile.

The urge to hold his hand comes over her again. Unlike that meeting from a few weeks ago, she doesn’t resist it this time. She takes the one closest to her. It’s the one that been regrown with hojiku-zai, the original lost on the battlefield at the Fake Karkura Town. She doesn’t hold his conventionally, choosing instead to lay her hand on the underside, and her fingers loosely come between his.

She watches him tilts his head down, staring at their hands. Something soft flits over his face, something akin to being pleasantly surprised.

For not the first time, she thinks on how she never imagined all those decades ago he would lose and replace a hand. Just as she’d never imagined what they went through because of Aizen, or the battles they fought against Hollows and Quincy, or the people they’ve lost under their watch. They’d been through so much, perhaps too much for Souls their ages.

Despite the time and effort it will take to rebuild the Soul Society, she had been thinking that peace was finally going to be restored. She was going to be happy again, with her friends and subordinates. She was going to ask Toshiro out to lunches more often, and finally sit with whatever her feelings for him were. The ones she’s can’t put a name too, but feels she’s just on cusp of doing.

Had he thought about these sort of things too? About what he had been through and the future he may not have anymore? If that was the case, it’s no wonder he didn’t want to bring it up. It’s enough for one of her tears to roll out the side of her eye.

She’s quick to wipe it with her free hand, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by Toshiro.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps.

She shakes her head. “Why are you apologising? You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“No, it’s not that. I didn't want to...”

He hesitates, and when he doesn’t continue, Momo finishes it for him. "Hurt me?"

He blinks, surprised she had guessed the rest. It still astounds her that he can't see the good within himself, but always in others.

"You don't need to apologise. When I saw something was bothering you, I wanted to know."

She senses there's more, a second apology he wants to make. When he doesn't, she stares straight ahead.

“We Shinigami are taught and prepared to die in battle for Humans and our friends,” she continues. “If we’re lucky, we can reach an old age with our accomplishments. Thinking about how long we'll live for is not something we're supposed to contemplate, our focus is on our duties and responsibilities. Even so, we’re not meant to die like this. You’re not meant to --”

He snorts again, and the faintest, saddest smile shapes his lips. “You’re not Reio, Hinamori,” he says, and she can imagine in another setting it would be a tease. “And even if you were, you doubt you would have the power to change this. I have accepted it's a likely possibility, and I will plan ahead accordingly. I never thought about how long I would live for --" his shoulders deflate with a shaky breath "-- and I shouldn't."

"Nothing is set in stone," she says, fiercely.

She’s always considered herself an optimist, perhaps to a fault. She remembers being more hopeful for the future when she was younger. Maybe that’s what came with growing up, you lose a little bit of hope every year, and cling to what still remains – foolishly, she suspects some think, but not her.

With a thick swallow, she lists her head up to the ceiling. “You said before that Captain Kurotsuchi was working on a way to restore your lifespan, right?”

“Yes.”

She mirrors the faint smile he'd had moments ago, but in her misty eyes there’s something less fragile. She tightens her grip on his hand. “Then let’s hope he does.”

It doesn’t dissolve his grief and cynicism -- she knows he hates leaving something he feels responsible for in the hands of others, and she can’t imagine what it must feel like to put your life in the hands of Twelfth Division’s captain. She has not words she can offer to console him or give him a new perspective of this. She has her own emotions to deal with too, ones of helplessness and a flickering hope, small but bright.

Her heart throbs when he flips his hand around and interlaces his fingers between hers in a tight grip. It's all they can do for now as a cloud passes over the moon and the laughter continues outside.

[dropout-if]

NSFW alphabet for Statler, pretty please?

There you go anon 🕴🏻

NSFW below obv

A = Aftercare.

Very attentive, Statler loves taking their time, taking care of their partner—cuddling, sharing lazy kisses, tracing their fingers over their s/o’s hickeys. In the heat of the moment, Statler adores whispering affectionately against their partner’s ear.

B = Body part.

Eyes. Statler wants eye contact, they want to see every faint trail of emotion in their partner's gaze.

C = Cum.

M!Statler loves cumming inside (he’s a bit in denial about it, but he wonders how it feels too). F!Statler loves having cum inside her, swallowing it too. Other than that, Statler doesn't have a strong opinion about it.

D = Dirty secret.

Not a dirty secret per se (though they do feel as though it is), but Statler has a navel piercing that they've only shown to two people at best.

E = Experience

Statler has only ever had a sexual relationship with Noir—who is a bit more experienced than them, but not much. Everything Statler knows they've learnt with Noir. As someone who adores taking care of other people, it comes natural for Statler to assume the same role during sex.

F = Favorite position.

Facing their partner, having their partner on their lap.

G = Goofy.

Sex is just another means to give affection, in Statler's mind. They don't do casual, they thrive in the intimacy. And so, though Statler tends to take it more seriously, they do enjoy

H = Hair.

Statler's hair bleached blonde. They shave their legs. M!Staler has untrimmed curly black pubic hair, and a bit of equally curly chest hair. F!Statler has natural curly black pubic hair.

I = Intimacy.

Every affectionate thing Statler does with their partner is often the epitome of romanticism. They like to tell them just how fondly they feel for them—how good everything feels with them—how much they want their s/o… Statler is very flirty when they're having sex.

J = Jack off.

Masturbation is something Statler seldom does— only when they're too stressed and need to relax a bit. They usually keep it a secret from their partner for some reason.

K = Kink.

Statler doesn't really acknowledge their kinks as kinks, but as things they happen to enjoy but hate discussing. So— they happen to enjoy praise (perhaps a bit too much) and breeding (no actual pregnancy, but the idea of breeding).

L = Location.

A bed. Statler is often so burnt out from their jobs that they secretly daydream of doing it at the store or the bar, behind the counter.

M = Motivation.

What turns Statler on the most is pleasure, but not their own. They adore seeing their partner writhe in pleasure, they get so wet/hard when they know they're doing a good job.

N = No.

Degrading and hurting their partner is where Statler draws the line. Even if it's something their s/o wants, Statler can't handle the idea of possibly doing it wrong.

O = Oral.

Doesn't know it yet, but Statler loves receiving oral. They do prefer to be the one giving it. As someone who's very observant and in tune to their partner's reactions, Statlers learns very quickly how to please someone with their mouth.

P = Pace.

Typically slow and sensual. Statler does tend to like it an itty bit rougher—sharper, harder—whenever they're really pent up.

Q = Quickie.

Doesn't really mind them. Quick is something Statler wouldn't do as their first option, though. They like taking their time, making the experience last as long as they can until both they and their partner are slightly overstimulated.

R = Risk.

Statler is open to try some things if it's something their partner wants, but they wouldn't propose it themself.

S = Stamina.

They were an athlete. The only thing Statler has left of high school is their stamina. Statler can and will most likely last longer than any possible partner. M!Statler also recovers quite quickly.

T = Toys.

Statler doesn't own toys. They do feel a little curious toward some of them.

U = Unfair.

It's not really teasing, though Statler does love to whisper sweet nothings to their s/o. They are quite talkative during sex.

V = Volume.

Rarely makes sounds themself, they prefer hearing their partner. When Statler is on the receiving end of pleasure, they do get a bit louder—as if overwhelmed by the need to moan and groan.

W = Wild card.

M!Statler secretly fantasizes about being pegged. F!Statler secretly fantasizes about owning a strap on.

X = X-ray (this. This is about tits and dicks right????).

M!Statler is big, nearly 9 inches—he's thick around the base. F!Statler has a C cup.

Y = Yearning.

Statler is often so tired that they don't have that high of a sex drive. They're often at a 0, though they go to a 100 really quickly.

Z = Zzz.

Again— if they're usually tired, Statler is exhausted after having sex. They love and enjoy aftercare for as long as it lasts, and then they fall asleep almost immediately (5-10 minutes of cuddling).

[the-smallest-star]

"Why is hospital food so ropy, like... food thats meant to be solid is either mush or a rock." Patch sighed, glancing at Gritt. Though his brother seemed to be in his own little world, "You alright G?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. I'm good." "Mhm... you might be the better liar of the two of us, but I see through you. Whats rattling in the ol' cranium?" "It doesn't matter, you need to focus on getting better." Gritt pushed back, trying to close off the subject.

Patch wasn't having that.

"My body fixes itself on its own clock, whether I want it to work faster or not. You're upset... and its not just cos of me." He reached over, prodding the superstar's head, "Tell me or I'll keep poking you." A few pokes was all it took, and Gritt took a deep breath. Patch wasn't going to drop it.

"... I dunno if I should of accepted being Baron." Gritt confessed, making the younger twin blink. "I accepted it for three reasons. I didn't want to loose my friends, I wanted to keep you and my family safe, and no one else was being offered it. Imps, Hellborn, they need a voice. But... I feel I accepted it for the wrong reasons, like I did it because I felt I had to. To do the right thing and look out for everybody. But I just... bleached myself to do it."

".... you want my honest opinion?" Patch asked, Gritt nodded in reply, "You shouldn't of accepted it. You're not a baron."

"I'm... not?"

"No, you're not. And no fancy title is going to change that." Patch continued, "You care about the people sure, you touch their souls with your music, and if you come across somebody who you can help, you will. Because you're a good person. But you're a free spirit, a wildfire that does what they want. Suppressing that and pushing yourself into a fitted suit is going to hurt you."

"But what can I do? I can't just quit. Who'll help hellborn? Who'll keep you safe, I-... I don't even know what I can do. You do charity events all the time with your friends, you used to cater royal banquets and know the decorum and shit, and... I'm not you."

Patch mulled it over, tail flicking, "... I mean... this is just an idea. Royalty is all about bloodline right? So shouldn't you be able to pass on the title to someone else? Stay as Gritt the rockstar. I could be Baron."

"You'd want to be Baron?" Gritt said, stunned at the suggestion. "Well I like royal festivals, I like fancy clothes and big palaces. I'd want to use power and influence if I had any to help fix things. And maybe some people would stop throwing gazpacho at me for being cold. Plus, no offense, I'm not still recovering from a lifetime of trauma. I've got a therapist, I'm as stubborn as you. And I've lived in Pride even longer than you, I know where its problems are for hellborn. I could still have a restaurant, annnd given you're my brother, it should keep the birdy happy if your friends want to talk to you and hang out as 'The Barons brother'. And it'd be a big fuckin' middle finger to Gillian for throwing out and disowning her 'Baron' son."

The... suggestion did make sense. While Patch's contributions were unnoticed, he really did focus on making Hell a better place for people. The first argument Gritt had made at the start; There were others who'd done more for Hell than he had.

Patch was Gritt's blood. Gritt could step down, let Patch take his place... if he could get royal approval. His brother was better suited to support hellborn on a royal level, Gritt knew this. Patch was good at holding his own in a battle of wits and words.

"... I'll talk to Lucifer."

[johannestevans]

The Prince's Crown: Chapter Three

Fantasy/Romance serial. Forseti slowly heals from his fever and rises from his bed.

On WorldAnvil / / On Ao3

---

“Ansgar,” Father nearly exclaimed as Forseti entered the dining room, and he stopped in the doorway, his head inclined slightly forward. His father’s eyes were wide and uncomfortably blue in the soft light of the candles made up for dinner, and his jaw was slack as he looked at Ansgar, concern writ on his features. “Out of bed so soon, boy?”

“It seemed best,” Forseti said, giving his father a neat inclination of his head, and he watched as one of the servants scrambled to set an extra place at the table. “I may not be wholly recovered, but I’m well enough for dinner – please, worry not on my account. I feel leagues better, and you know as well as I by now that gentle exertion is better than none at all.”

Forseti was pale as a sheet, and his skin still had a light sheen of moisture on its surface, he knew, but his breathing was even, and his chest didn’t ache. It didn’t dizzy him at all to stand.

Nonetheless, he was glad to lower himself into the seat beside his brother, and he felt Tor’s hand reach for him, touching against the back of his neck for just a moment, a reassuring squeeze.

Father and Mother shared a concerned glance, and Forseti wondered if Father was going to argue, but he didn’t: he simply nodded his head, and gestured for Forseti to eat. Ordinarily, he was quiet at the dinner table – it had long-since been his habit to keep his activities to himself, and it was easier still to do so when he hadn’t been able to accomplish any – so he simply contended himself listening to the conversation between Tor and his parents at the table.

After chattering on about various sundries – Mother sharing some idle updates from the other members of her needlework group, that Mrs Smith’s daughter had taken up arranging flowers, that the widow Penton’s eldest was getting married in the spring; Father talking about all the happenings in the factory, and discussions amongst some of his friends about a trip a few of them were taking to Norway.

Tor, as he was wont to do, talked about Hilde.

“She’s looking well of late,” he said when Mother asked a mild and teasing question. “Her hair is beginning to darken again, without the summer sun to bleach it so, and what with her wearing heavier hats, and the effect is to make her eyes… shimmer.”

“Shimmer,” Forseti repeated dryly.

“Shimmer,” Tor repeated back, confident and unashamed. “And such a strong girl, she is—”

“Perhaps if she lacked the strength of a cart horse, her arms would not be quite so masculine and heavy with muscle under her sleeves,” Father muttered.

“Those arms of hers make her all the more beautiful,” Tor insisted. “In days of yore, Father, you would not have looked so poorly upon them – our people were warriors, and she is from the same stock.”

“She is not to be a warrior today, nor you, boy,” Father said. “Unless it is your intention to abandon our factory and go a-viking in Ireland with Hilde as your bride.”

“The latter point, perhaps,” Tor said. “We need not go a-viking – if we have four children, I might hoist two on my shoulders and she might hoist the other two on hers.”

“You think you can carry only four children between yourself and your warrior-bride, Tor? You’re losing your ambition,” said Forseti, and Father laughed – Mother was trying not to laugh herself, clucking her tongue in disapproval, and she kicked Forseti’s foot under the table.

Tor was anything but deterred: he was beaming brightly, the sun all but shining from his face. He was doing his best not to show it, but Forseti could see that Father was somewhat pleased with the tone of the conversation as well, his lip twitching slightly although it didn’t dare attempt a smile.

Forseti thought about the invitation on his pillow.

Come to the wood, it had said, but at what time? In the morning? At night? He hardly knew. Surely, at night – this was a party, after all, a faerie revel, if it was real at all and not merely a figment of his ailing mind, but how was he to take his leave of the house once the sun had set without one of the servants noticing, without some note being made of it?

It was one thing for him to depart before the sun was set and fail to come back, but to leave at night – and particularly with his health as it was of recent – without some remarks of concern, without someone insisting on following him, escorting him?

Even if this was a real invitation, a real revel at the end of it, the whole situation was wildly improper. His parents not invited, not alerted, Forseti departing in secret… Were fae revels not the best time and place for impropriety?

He should arrive at sunset, perhaps. Take a promenade some hour before the sun was due to fall below the horizon, early enough that no one would baulk at his taking a walk alone, and then be late upon his return.

If he returned.

If he didn’t, dizzy from the cool air and the exercise, fall and crack his head open in the wood again – if these creatures weren’t real, and ready to whisk him away as they did in tales.

“Have you been reading much, Ansgar?” Mother asked, and Forseti glanced up from his plate.

“Some,” he said, doing his best not to seem overly evasive as he met her gaze and smiled at her. “I confess, I’ve found it difficult to concentrate on most pages – the words swim before my eyes, but I hope to be better suited to it soon. I plan to read as I can in the coming weeks and balance my study with short promenades, the better to mend my health.”

“I shall accompany you,” Tor said cheerfully, and Forseti glanced at him, aware that his smile wanted to freeze on his face, but forcing his body to remain relaxed.

“Oh, you needn’t, brother,” he said, smiling despite the sudden fear that struck at his heart. What would happen, he wondered, were he to arrive at the wood, according to his invitation, with Tor at his side? What would be done with him, with no invitation extended him?

No, no.

The very thought was inconceivable.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tor chided, shaking his head. “Ansgar, I could hardly expect you to sojourn alone, particularly not with your health as it has been – and time spent with my brother is no time wasted.”

“You warm my heart, brother,” Forseti said wanly, his heart sinking slightly in his chest. What now?

 *

It was raining outside. Forseti listened to the patter of rain against the wide windows and against the dark roads outside, and he saw cross-legged on the window seat. Over his quilted smoking jacket, he had a heavy blanket around his shoulders and over his lap as well. The window was made of very thick glass, the better to keep out the cold, but he still found himself prone to shivers and shakes now that he was spending more time out of bed, and still he preferred to ensconce himself in blankets like this.

The book rested heavy in his lap, and he studied its pages with care.

Despite his ailing health in childhood, he’d never been a particularly well-behaved child. Outwardly studious, undoubtedly, and the very image of good behaviour and good breeding, but only because he was never caught when he did choose to stray – handsome though the wide shoulders of Hilde and Tor both were, they did not lend themselves to grace or concealment, and Murmel knew the meaning of many words, twisting them about his tongue and his fingers, but such ones as “furtive” or “clandestine” were often well out of his reach.

Forseti had natural skills not exactly befitting a young man of his station – as a school boy, he and Murmel had taken perhaps the wrong lessons from Mr Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and had spent one particularly passionate summer remaking Fagin’s test of coats strung with bells, returning to school in September treated with various school masters to test their newfound skills on, and test they did.

They never stole money, of course – much of the fun they found for themselves was in fact swiping something from a difficult target in an easy moment and then challenging the other to subtly return it – but more than once they’d gotten lucky in stealing a particularly interesting letter or someone’s diary (Mr Leach, it had turned out, bet not only on horses but a great many other things besides, and had a diary written up with his winnings and losses and all manner of odds on various bets), or some manner of amusing curiosity, the sort that any man might keep in his pockets.

It was only natural for a boy to graduate from pickpocketing to burglary – a natural gymnast, Forseti had never found scaling buildings any more challenging than climbing trees, and many times he had moved with fleet feet from his boarding school lodgings in the dead of night, or crept from this very house via the guttering or a trellis when he was meant to be confined to his room.

He thought about that now, leaning his temple against the glass of the window decorated with pretty frost and frozen snowflakes, and looked down against the wall. A trellis was pinned beneath his window, roses growing on it, coiling their way through the criss-crossing pieces of white-painted wood.

It had been a long time since he’d last climbed down it to meet Murmel surreptitiously in the wood – not for at least a decade – and he was a good deal larger and heavier since last he’d used that method.

He really was going mad, wasn’t he?

Not only considering this business of seeking out faeries in the wood, as though he were truly to meet any, as though this were anything more than some strange set of fever dreams, not only sneaking out in the dead of night without a word to anybody, caution to the wind when he was liable to fall down in the woods and go without being found for hours, days, even, but to creep out of his own window by the trellis like a child?

When one was going mad, why stop at one element of madness?

His gaze flitted back to the page.

“The Faerie is concerned, above all else, with Manners and Politeness. Although they are beings of Chaos, made as they are of all that Nature should cast aside and being as they are the disgraced Children of Eve, they Seek to create Order in their life through matters of social polity. Faeries have complex social structures, with a regimented understanding of class and status, and any member of good standing should follow every Rule of polite Society.

One should take Care not to give into Social Nicety too easily, however, some Rules of the Fae are not mirrored in our own Society, and one must take care not to Sign a Contract through ignorance. One’s Name, for example, is the representation of one’s Soul in Faerie Society and therefore one must take care not to give it away – better that one should say what one wishes to be called, and to not “give” one’s name away.”

Forseti had read this page before. He’d studied this page a dozen times, hoping it would reveal more to him, for there were scarcely three pages in the entire book on the subject of faeries and how best to approach them, how best to deal with them.

This was a book about practical magic, after all – what poppycock – and not about mixing in foreign societies.

Faeries, the book maintained, delighted in music and dancing of any kind, as well as sport, and bets, and violence. As much as faeries maintained an outward appearance of polity and gentility, it was little more than that outward appearance – as creatures of chaos, in-touch with the ebbs and floes of magic and their own primal desires.

Their lust for blood sport ran deep within them.

He thought of the Silver King’s hand warm against his lower back, thought of his fingers sliding lower, dipping between his buttocks, pressing, pressing—

Delicately, Forseti interrupted his own train of thought with a cough against his hand, and turned the page.

“A Spell to Douse a Fire.

Hold the left hand open with Palm to the ceiling and imagine the flame, complete, against the fingertips. Imagine not only the sight of it but also the feel of hot flames licking the skin, the scent of the oil or charred wood in one’s nostrils, the very soul of the burn against the flesh.

Very slowly close the palm until one is stifling the flames with the clench of the finger and thumb, and so shall the true flame mirror the act.”

Forseti looked at the four oil lamps that kept his bedroom lit, stationed about the room’s walls, high up and close to the ceiling. Focusing on the one closest to him, he studied the glass and the golden haze shining out from within – the glass was a little dirty, in need of its monthly cleaning.

This was ridiculous. He was ridiculous, playing at being some manner of magician – oh, like any child, Forseti had had fantasies of acts of magic, would often play at being Merlin where his brother might be Arthur or Gawain, where Hilde might be Morgana le Fey or the beautiful Guinevere, where Murmel was… Well. At Forseti’s side, any thought of taking a chivalric name for himself forgotten, more often a nameless sorcerer’s assistant or some manner of druid.

Much as he had played at sorcery, he had never believed he might actually perform any – and in any case, as a child, Forseti had taken many of his Father’s wise words to heart in that arena, long lectures as to what such men as Vikings or the knights of old in England thought of as magic, but what was actually early medicine, meteorology as compared to augury, the political importance of the appearances of magic for one ruler or other.

Now that he thought of it, he didn’t know that he had ever even played at performing a spell.

In between petty burglaries and thefts, he and Murmel would play at different games – reading fortunes in stones or dice or fallen twigs (Forseti had once or twice attempted to scry in the entrails of some poor dead squirrel or other creature in the woods, but the sight of such things made Murmel go pale and faint even if he didn’t outright vomit); encoding messages and ferrying them to one another; attempting to tame or speak to crows and ravens (unsuccessfully) or to tame local cats (perhaps too successfully. Some of the local moggies still followed Murmel as soon as they saw him).

Had he ever tried to say magic words whilst waving his hands or making theatrical points and gestures? Surely, he must have – such pantomimes were natural for children to do. Had he?

He didn’t think so.

Forseti set out his palm.

He imagined the heat of the oil lamp in his hand, considering how it would creep out over the flesh, imagining the way it would slowly begin to settle liquid hot upon his palm. He imagined the regular set of the flame, different to a fire in a grate that crackled and danced – no, the flame from an oil lamp was ever still, roaring quietly as it burned through the fuel thrown out of the little pipe to meet it. He smelt the scent of burning oil heavy in his nostrils, that coal-tang, and he closed his palm – not slowly, as the spell had instructed, but all at once.

Enveloped suddenly in darkness as every night in the room doused itself at once, Forseti let out a soft, disbelieving breath.

When he opened his palm again, the lamps flickered back to life, and he laughed.

 *

“Murmel,” said Forseti as he stood on the landing, looking down the stairs at the other man, and Murmel smiled up at him with his dandy’s smile on his face. He was implacably, impossibly handsome, at times, and he was overwhelmingly so now, standing at the foot of the stair with his hat in his hands, the light shining on his cheeks. “I’ve missed you these past weeks of bedrest. You’ve neglected me, your bosom friend.”

“In favour of my studies, I’m afraid,” Murmel said apologetically, spreading his gloved hands as Forseti carefully descended the stairs to meet him. “If you stacked the legal tomes Mr French had had me read through this year atop one another, they would be tall as Tor and you together, and perhaps your father, too.”

“Poor thing,” Forseti said teasingly, wrinkling his nose. “You do seem the paler for lack of sun.”

“The pot calling the kettle white, it seems to me,” said Murmel dryly, and Forseti laughed. “I’m told you must take promenades for the sake of your health – the rain will not relent for much longer. I thought I ought invite you whilst I was able, and with a spare few minutes.”

“It’s good of you,” said Forseti with mild reluctance, hesitating, and Murmel’s charming smile grew wider.

“Come now, for your health.”

“Very well,” he said, giving a polite nod of his head.

Before the footman could come forward, Murmel was acting in his stead, taking Forseti’s quilted smoking jacket in exchanging for his overcoat, offering him then his hat, his scarf, his gloves.

When Murmel offered his arm, Forseti took it. It ought have embarrassed him, interlinking their arms as though Forseti were a young woman, but Murmel was perceptive in more ways than one, and Forseti saw the measuring expression in his face as he glanced down to Murmel’s knees – stronger today, but not cured of weakness – and his chest before looking up to his face.

For a scant moment, as they stepped outside, Murmel’s hand settled over the one Forseti was gripping the inside of his elbow with.

“Take care, Mr Wright,” said Forseti, scarcely moving his lips, “that you overstep not.”

So impugned – his smile was gentle, his eyes a little sad – Murmel drew his hand away.

They stepped out into the street, and although the rain had only just faded away, the sun was shining so brightly one might believe it had been sunny the day through, were it not that the streets beneath them were still slippery with moisture. Murmel’s pace was slow and even as it ever was, offering Murmel a steadying hand, and he held an umbrella at his side as if it was a walking cane, just in case.

“Has Tor gotten the rhythm of walking with you, yet?” he asked. “He said he’s been accompanying you on your morning walks.”

“The man lopes like a clown on stilts,” Forseti muttered. “You’d think after twenty years he’d shorten his gait a tad.”

Murmel laughed loudly, and Forseti shook his head fondly despite himself.

“It was part of what prompted me to offer my companionship on a walk rather than just coming over with a book and some biscuits, I admit,” Murmel said. “I was very worried when you were taken ill – scarcely a day would pass when your brother was not in our drawing room, seeking comfort as my sister’s breast.”

“Comfort was not all he ought, I’d wager,” Forseti muttered, and Murmel chuckled now. His body was warm beside Forseti’s own, and Forseti recalled long nights in the chilly air of their school dormitories, where Murmel would slide into his bed alongside him, and Forseti’s heart would soar at the contact, even as he caught fast Murmel’s wandering hands.

He had the measure of Murmel Wright, no matter that he considered him so close a friend.

“Lose sleep over me, did you?”

“Always, my friend,” Murmel said quietly, with a very grave expression, carrying little of his usual flirtation. “Doctor Hemming seemed convinced you’d die this time, you know. He did not say as much, but I read the fear in his features as you read between the lines of essays and diary entries. Never have I seen him so afraid.”

“He grows too attached to his patients, I fear,” Forseti said, “particularly the sickly ones.”

“It is difficult for any man not to grow attached to you, Forseti.”

“Is this the medicine you bring me, Murmel? Flattery and false words?”

“As good a medicine as any,” Murmel purred. “And not as false as you so often accuse me.”

“Perhaps not,” Forseti allowed, and Murmel gave him a soft smile, a gentle haze in his eyes, making the dark green of them seem rather misty, fog over one of Albert’s forests. “Have I told you lately how beautiful your eyes are?”

That took Murmel aback – his pretty lips parted under the blond hairs of his carefully groomed moustache, his eyes widening. “Not for quite some time, no,” he said softly, and then, somewhere between jocular and really quite afraid, he went on, “Forseti, darling, are you dying?”

“I should hope not,” Forseti said. “I’ve been having such queer dreams and fancies of late, you know.”

“Fever dreams?” Murmel asked, tapping his hand against the back of Forseti’s – not so obviously improper, this such, this a glancing but comforting touch, a squeeze of his fingers.

“They ought to be,” Forseti said. “I confess, they haven’t felt that way – they’ve felt very real.”

“Hallucinatory, you mean? Or…” Murmel trailed off, searching the air ahead of them for the right words as they continued to walk together, wet leaves barely making any crunch beneath their feet. “Prophetic?”

“Closer to the latter than I like the idea of,” Forseti said.

“That must be difficult to stomach,” Murmel said. “I know you don’t go in for all that.”

“It’s why it feels so disorienting, I’m sure,” Forseti muttered, and Murmel clucked his tongue, wrinkling his freckled nose. “Strange figures in the wood, odd dreams, and they feel very solid, quite whole and complete. The touches, the voices, the feelings of it.”

“You’re not sleep-walking, I hope?”

“No, no. I wake in my bed, where I ought be.”

“What does Doctor Hemming say?”

“The man can’t read my mind, Murmel.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“Mother and Father already want to confine me to my bed – it need not be the bed in a madhouse.”

Murmel made a displeased noise, shaking his head, but Forseti felt all the lighter for having shared these small details with him, even though he hadn’t unburdened himself of all the details. What would he say, were Forseti to tell him the whole of it, to tell him about the book and its contents, the Silver King in his dreams, tell him of the magic, the magic Forseti had cast?

He would say you were mad, says a quiet voice in the back of his mind.

But no, replies another. He wouldn’t. You know he wouldn’t. Hear how easily he speaks of prophecy in your dreams – he would jump for joy at the thought of magic as something real, something tangible, and he would write you so sweet a poem that your eyes would water and your heart would burst from your chest. He already thinks you magic, without a spell between your fingers.

“I wish there was some cure for you,” Murmel murmured softly, his tone positively tortured.

“Priests and doctors are always wishing for cures for men the likes of us,” said Forseti, and Murmel’s laugh lacked humour.

“I have the perfect cure for you, darling,” he said. “A doctor might not prescribe it.”

“Filthy.”

“You know it.”

Forseti’s gait slowed slightly, his chest feeling a little bit tighter than it had done, and Murmel stopped immediately, changing the angle of his arm that Forseti could better lean on it without the shape of them looking too unusual in the street, without it being too obvious at a glance that Murmel was holding up as much of Forseti’s weight as Forseti was himself.

“We’ll sit a while,” Murmel said. “The bench on the corner. You can make it there?”

“Yes,” Forseti said.

“Your lungs? Is the air too cold for them?”

“No, no, just fatigue, I think,” Forseti muttered, and he didn’t bother to keep the irritation out of his voice as he might with Tor – Tor was always liable to take such frustration as a personal insult or a jab, interpret Forseti’s irritation as irritation with Tor himself rather than the weakness of his own traitorous body. He took in a few slow, deep breaths, and Murmel stood very still and very patient, his expression not changing, and not making too much of a pantomime of his gentle concern, either.

“Perhaps your knees are weak because my overtures are so ensorcelling.”

“You couldn’t bewitch a sheep, Murmel.”

Murmel gasped loudly, theatrical, but when he leaned back, Forseti gripped tighter at his arm and he immediately straightened again, taking a step closer. “Sorry,” he said.

“You’re forgiven, but only because I didn’t collapse,” Forseti said in very low tones, and Murmel’s expression showed a great deal of consternation this time. His free hand twitched, and Forseti knew that if they were alone together, Murmel would probably reach up and cup his cheek – he ached for it, in truth. His eyes stung with how much he ached for it, how much he craved that comforting touch.

“I don’t know what I’d do if you died, you know,” Murmel whispered. “Even with this fine country air in your lungs, you’re so prone to illness – your heart remains weak, your lungs so easily overpowered, your stomach turned by anything you’re not well-used to. It seems like even a strong wind might kill you, and then where would I be? Alone and weeping like a widow.”

“Not alone, you’re making too much of a drama of things now,” Forseti said. “Hilde and Tor would look after you.”

“Not as you do,” Murmel said. “My sister doesn’t soothe my ills as you can, nor your brother my heart as you do.”

“Cure me as you have before then,” Forseti whispered. “Pleasant company and leisurely exercise, Murmel – t’is all I need.”

“A break on the bench first,” the other man told him, as stern as he got, and Forseti nodded, letting Murmel take a good amount of his weight as they went around the corner and sank down on the bench together. He undid his scarf and retied it tighter around his throat, and Murmel went to untie his scarf as though to tie that around Forseti’s neck as well, but Forseti slapped his hand before he could.

“Do you have any care for what we look like?” Forseti asked, laughing helplessly despite himself.

“Oh, we look terribly handsome together,” Murmel assured him. “You more than me, of course, but a perfect portrait, I’m sure.”

“Shut up,” said Forseti, and Murmel laughed. “An invalid I may be, but there are limitations to what improprieties might be forgiven us nonetheless.”

“Always such a concern for appearances of impropriety.”

“You’d be even sadder than a widow weeping put to hard labour,” Forseti reminded him. “The last nail that would be in my coffin, too.”

“Hard labour? I should think so. You wouldn’t even survive a night in the cell.”

“I meant the loss of you,” Forseti told him, adjusting the set of Murmel’s coat lapel to disguise the emotion in his face, to displace the amount of emotion he felt stirring in him, contrasting the weakness of his lungs, the ache in his chest.

“Good Lord, you’re Wednesday’s child today,” Murmel whispered. “This prophetic dream you’ve been having – you’re not actually dead in it, are you? You’d tell me if you genuinely thought you were at death’s door?”

“I don’t dream of dying, no,” Forseti said. Murmel opened his mouth, and Forseti spread out one of his hands. “Please,” he interrupted him. “Spare me further thought of it, would you? Turn my mind to more pedestrian things. How’s your work, apart from Mr French’s reading list for you?”

“I might kill myself,” Murmel said after a moment’s consideration, and Forseti laughed so hard it did hurt his lungs, and they had to wait a few minutes before Murmel felt it was safe to talk on again.

 *

Forseti laid on a bed of stone, his naked skin touching the marble sprawl beneath him. It was very cool against his skin, which felt incandescently hot, so hot from within, in fact, it threatened to warm the altar he was laid on. Lying on his belly, Forseti slowly raised his head and looked lazily, indolently, about his surroundings.

This was an ancient altar, as the Greeks and Romans laid out their sacrifices on, and the altar was amidst an olive grove. Sun shone down through the thin leaves of the gnarled and twisted trees, and it was hot on Forseti’s back, a pleasant kiss, surprisingly. He didn’t know that he’d ever felt such pleasant warmth on his back – in the waking world, even a sunny day was liable to burn him near to cinders if he chanced out from beneath a parasol.

“Is this what I am to you?” he asked, his voice coming out casual and easy as he set his chin on his palm. “A sacrifice on an altar?”

Forseti felt his length between his legs, soft and heavy where it rested on the stone, and it made him prickle with a strange discomfort, uncomfortably wrong, not quite right at all. He cast about the clearing to look for a mirror – although why there should be one, he had no idea – and exhaled a relieved breath when assured there was none.

There was no verbal response – the clearing in the olive grove was eerily silent, and although the breeze stroked through Forseti’s loose hair and played over his unsweating skin, it didn’t touch the leaves of the trees nor disturb the dust on the ground.

“Give me a cigarette,” he said.

The Silver King’s voice betrayed some mild surprise as he repeated, “A cigarette?” Caught out and made to reply, although he remained as invisible as he often did, he appended, “Why?”

“Because I want one,” Forseti said simply.

“You’re not asking very nicely.”

“I wasn’t trying to ask.”

The laughter came from nowhere and everywhere at once, but Forseti of course recognised the silver voice of the Silver King, molten and shimmering although he couldn’t see its source.

“Please,” Forseti drawled out, drawing out the single word and letting the sibilance hiss on his tongue, tingling against his teeth. “Do give me a cigarette, your majesty.”

There was so much syrup on the words they threatened to drip, but he got what he wanted – the cigarette was placed neatly between Forseti’s index and middle fingers, already lit, and he took a slow drag from its butt.

He had once been told to smoke for the sake of his health, but Doctor Hemming had belayed that order as soon as Forseti got a taste for it, said smoking too often – or at all, really – would leave him ill and short of breath. Mother and Father detested the scent of tobacco, and Tor and Murmel always refused smokes out of a misplaced sense of fairness, but he knew Hilde adored to smoke a pipe from time to time, and very handsome she looked while she did it, too.

This cigarette tasted of nutmeg and cinnamon, sweet on his lips and tongue, and when he exhaled, he made a ring out of the pastel pink smoke.

“Very clever,” said the Silver King.

“I can only do it in dreams,” said Forseti mildly, tapping the end of the cigarette and watching lilac ash drop down onto the marble surface of his altar. “You know, your majesty, it is considered the height of bad manners to enter a gentleman’s bedroom without at least knocking first. You seem to be stepping into something far more intimate – a gentleman’s mind.”

“Well, you invited me, didn’t you?” the Silver King asked, voice very smooth indeed, even more syrupy than Forseti’s was, the two of them apparently making a competition of it. It was rather strange, hearing his voice coming from Forseti’s left and right at once, before and behind him, all at once.

Why was it that he felt such confidence in dreams like these? It wasn’t just for the sake of his health, his body no longer feeling quite so awful to inhabit, his lungs and heart and other organs rebelling against him – it was more than that. Power felt as though it were crackling within him, perhaps the source of whatever was heating him from within.

There was some extra power afforded him here, as though the universe itself was sympathising with his weakness in his waking hours and sought to balance the table when he was laid in bed.

“Is that so,” Forseti replied. It wasn’t a question.

He took a longer drag of the cigarette this time, and he imagined the pink smoke filling his lungs, coiling like a serpent behind the cage of his ribs – when he exhaled he painted the snake on the air with his tongue. It slithered forward and then – mad! – began to coil in upon itself, swallowing down its own tail.

The sight filled Forseti’s heart with a strange melancholy, Jormungandr writ on the air before him. He was far from England, here in some Greek olive grove, and far from Norway too, but here was Jormungandr nonetheless, encircling the world.

“Are a kind man, your majesty?”

“Me, a man? Oh, no.”

There was sudden breath, cool, against Forseti’s left ear, his neck, and he struck out with the cigarette out of reflex – he heard the hiss and sizzle of burned flesh before he heard the Silver King’s groan of pain and saw the dust disturbed as he stumbled back.

“Ow,” he groaned, a curiously childish exclamation for such an aged and apparently dignified figure. “That wasn’t very nice, young man.”

“I’m not very nice,” Forseti agreed, and something else didn’t quite sit well with him about the statement either – young man? Him? Nausea bubbled in the back of his throat, and although he knew there was no mirror about him, he looked down at the stone beneath him to save himself from glimpsing his own body nonetheless. “See that you ask permission, your majesty, before you seek to touch me again – or before you invade my dreams.”

Forseti flicked the remainder of the cigarette away from him, and the olive grove went up in flames around him like so much tender.

Forseti closed his eyes and sighed in satisfaction as he didn’t roast upon his altar.

[melanie-ohara]

A Hunt for Gold

Whumpuary2024, Bonus Day - Prompt: Flinching

Shin struggles to find her place with Sabine and Ahsoka

That's right, there's more! At this point I am mostly just using the prompts, this doesn't technically count as a challenge entry

AO3 Here

Sabine sat at the desk in Huyang's workshop and carefully soldered the powered plates back into her beskar's harness. She was right: the damage was too severe to be properly repaired and unless she could somehow build a forge out of twigs and shrubbery she couldn't reclaim the metal to start again. The remnants might give her enough protection from a glancing blaster bolt, but that was it. She had patched it together as best she could, and for now its appearance reminded her a little too much of Thrawn's reanimated storm troopers. She shuddered at the image. A new paint job would hide the scars, at least. Only her helmet and vambraces were still intact enough to stand up to a lightsaber - but now that Shin had started to settle in on the ship - uneasily, but it was a start - she wasn't sure how much she needed to worry about lightsabers any more. Sabine leaned back in the chair and her hand dropped to rest on her stomach, above the stab wound Shin had gifted her when they first met. Now we match, she thought to herself. 

"I want to dye my hair."

Sabine jumped at the sound of Shin's voice. She had been so wrapped up in herself, she didn't even notice the door opening. Now that Shin had properly recovered from the surgery and didn't need the compression vest any more she had started wearing whatever she could find that was clean, which today was most of Sabine's training clothes with one of Ahsoka's robes draped artlessly over the top for warmth.

"Um… okay," she said, taken aback. 

Shin paused and looked down at the workbench and Sabine's armour. "You're busy," she said, and turned to go.

"No," Sabine said quickly, standing up. "I have time, I mean." Shin didn't like being cooped up and it was rare to catch her in such a good mood. She was quickly learning to make the best of them.

"Your armour," Shin said, but Sabine waved her hand dismissively. 

"It can wait." Shin stepped aside so Sabine could leave the room and lead the way back to her cabin. "Are we just bleaching your roots, or did you have a colour in mind?" 

Shin touched the braid that hung down over shoulder, her fingers playing over the gemstones woven into it. "Green," she said.

Shin sat in the chair at Sabine's desk and talked more about how she wanted it to look while Sabine mixed the dyes and loaded them into applicator capsules for her spray tool. She got to work on her dark roots first. Shin shuddered a little as the first puff of cold pigment made contact with the top of her head and tensed as Sabine gently combed it in, but she settled in after a moment and let her work.

"What's with the gems?" Sabine asked, to distract herself from the strangely intimate feeling of carefully brushing bleach-white into Shin's hair. 

"Baylan gave them to me," Shin said. "I didn't know what they were at first."

Sabine watched the teeth of the comb part Shin's hair and slip easily through the strands. "And what are they?"

Shin didn't answer for a long time, and Sabine saw her hand travel up to the crystals again. She rolled one between her finger and thumb for a while like she was thinking. "Something he gave up."

Sabine let her have the cryptic answer and backed off. She knew Shin didn't really like talking about Baylan - his leaving hurt much more than her stomach wound, and Sabine didn't want to push her. Instead, she slid the bleach dye out of her spray tool, replaced the nozzle and picked up the cartridge of green dye. She passed Shin a towel to put over her shoulders to protect the tank top she was wearing, though it belonged to Sabine and she wasn't too worried about it getting a burst of colour. With anyone else, Sabine might have draped the towel herself, but Shin didn't like to be touched.

"I'm surprised you're letting me do this," she said, and immediately wished she'd kept it to herself.

"Why?"

Sabine shrugged and fiddled unnecessarily with the settings. "I just… well, you don't like being touched, that's all."

Shin said nothing, and Sabine cleared her throat awkwardly. Just get on with it and shut up, she thought to herself, and started to carefully coat the lower strands of Shin's hair with a faint mist of green. She hadn't dyed hair this way since before the war, when she had given herself a purple ombré in the Ghost's refresher. Hera had been furious at the mess, but she had a lot more experience now - as well as better tools. While the dye was still wet, she back-combed it quickly but carefully into Shin's hair, varying the lengths of her strokes so the dye reached higher in some places than others, so the fading colour didn't look too neat. That had been her own idea: Shin was too wild for the Coruscant-salon perfect look Sabine had been trying for as a teenager. 

Working on Shin's hair felt like painting. Like art. There was the same connection she felt to the canvas and the paint, only this time it was a living, breathing person under the hissing tool. She wanted to touch her, and comb her hair with fingers instead. To rub the dye into individual strands, one by one, until it was exactly how she envisioned it.

"I don't mind you," Shin said suddenly. It had been at least five minutes since either of them had last spoken.

"Sorry?" 

"Touching." Shin's hands were in her lap and twisting over each other awkwardly. "It's okay, if it's you."

Sabine almost dropped the spray tool, and she was glad Shin was facing away and couldn't see the blush on her face. "Oh," she managed dumbly, and then, "good." 

"Yes," Shin said. "Otherwise my roots would still be showing."

Sabine wasn't sure if it was a joke - Shin delivered every word with the same inflection, whether it was a death threat or asking for a drink - but she let out an awkward chuckle. She brushed at Shin's hair a few more times, and then put her tools down to examine her work. 

"How do I look?" Shin asked, shaking her hair out and then rolling her neck to ease the tension from sitting still for so long.

Sabine stepped out from behind the chair and looked at her. "Beautiful," She said. It was the truth - the green highlights had an ethereal gleam amongst the pale blonde that made her eyes shimmer and her skin shine. The pale flush her words brought to her cheeks made for a very pretty contrast too. Sabine shook herself and picked up a hand-mirror to show Shin the back, and she nodded approvingly. Her oh-so-rare, oh-so-endearing smile spread on her lips and it was so infectious Sabine couldn't help smiling back.

"I like it," Shin said. 

Before she had even thought about it being a bad idea, Sabine had leaned over her head and gently placed a kiss on Shin's forehead. She flinched like Sabine had just slapped her and almost tripped over her feet in her rush to get out of the chair and then out of the room.

"Wait!" Sabine called out, but by the time she had followed her out Shin had disappeared down the ship's ramp and into the Noti camp below. She was about to run after her when Ahsoka cleared her throat. Sabine hadn't even noticed her, but she was once again standing in the doorway of her room. 

"Trouble?" she asked, one of her not-quite-eyebrows raised. 

Sabine made a face and awkwardly clasped her hands in front of her. "I may have done something," she admitted.

"Like what?" 

Sabine braced herself. "Like kiss Shin."

She didn't know exactly how she expected Ahsoka to react. Anger seemed unlikely, but not disappointment or frustration. She had taught her the Jedi code, and how it forbade attachment, and Sabine knew this looked like another of her arrogant rebellions. 

Ahsoka smiled with a strange, almost knowing look in her eyes. "Are you going after her?" she asked.

Sabine frowned. "You're not… annoyed?" she asked. "The code - "

"My Master was married," Ahsoka interrupted. "His Master had a son nobody knew about, and I… well, let's not go into that now."

"Oh, we're going into that now," Sabine said, a little stunned by the idea that the stoic Ahsoka Tano might have dalliances in her past. 

Ahsoka shook her head. "Not now." There was a hint of sadness in her gaze that convinced Sabine to drop it. Instead she dropped into a chair at the centre table and put her head in her hands with a sigh.

"I scared her off," she said, pulling her head up to look at Ahsoka. "I don't think she'll want to see me." 

Ahsoka pushed herself off from the doorframe and started towards the exit ramp. 

"Whoa, hey!" Sabine said, getting up like she was going to stop her somehow. "What are you doing?"

Ahsoka didn't say anything, just dropped down off the ramp to the ground below.

*

She thought Shin might have walked off, maybe down towards the river or out towards the mountains, but Ahsoka instead found her sat almost exactly in the middle of the Noti camp. They had all shut up their pods and powered them down, making her seem like the only living thing for miles around.

"Everything okay?" Ahsoka asked as she approached.

"They're all afraid of me," Shin said. Ahsoka looked around at the deserted camp and nodded a little. The Noti had locked themselves in as soon as they saw her.

"You were trying to kill them not long ago," she pointed out as she sat down next to her.

"Not them," Shin said. "That was the bandits. I only wanted Sabine."

Ahsoka looked across at her, taking in her new hair colour and the regret in her pale eyes. "Well you've got her now," she said. "Maybe not the way you expected."

"I didn't mean to run," Shin admitted. She picked at the scrubby ground in front of her and sighed. "I wish I didn't." 

Ahsoka resisted the instinct to lay a hand on her shoulder, the way she would have done for Barriss all those years ago. "This isn't training," she said. Though she wasn't sure how Baylan had brought up his padawan, she knew he was a dyed-in-the-wool temple Jedi, and suspected he had driven her just as hard as Anakin had her. Or Luminara had Barriss. "It's hard to see at first, but it's different." 

"I don't know what you mean," Shin said. 

"You don't have to push yourself," Ahsoka explained weakly. She was not the person to be giving this talk, and she could imagine the infuriating way Anakin would smirk at her inability to communicate. "Whatever is between you and Sabine isn't a challenge to overcome, it's not… a trial to endure." Ahsoka sighed. "I'm no good at this," she admitted. 

"No," Shin agreed, and Ahsoka smiled. Her honesty was refreshing, and reminded her not to try and make everything a lesson.

"Sabine doesn't want to rush you," she said. "She just doesn't know how not to rush herself."

Shin plucked a blade of grass and flicked it away. "I don't know how to feel this way," she admitted. "It's never happened before."

Ahsoka felt a sad smile creep over her face. She knew how that felt: there had been nothing in her training to prepare her for how it felt to see Barriss smile at a joke, and her training was all she knew. Before she had understood it, everything had changed. "Sabine knows," she said. "And you'll get the hang of it."

Shin stood up and stretched. "I'm going for a walk," she announced. "Tell Sabine…" 

She trailed off, unsure, but Ahsoka nodded. "I will," she said. 

Shin stared off at the ship for a while, and Ahsoka wondered what she was thinking behind her glassy, green-blue eyes. Without another word, she turned away and walked off. 

[kandisheek]

So here goes...

Bucky (to Natasha, Clint, etc) : "okay, What the hell was that? Why didn't nobody tell me it is THAT bad!!!"

The premise is this :

Post - Civil War (or Endgame but everyone is alive). After smoothing out the kinks of the Accord and their disagreement, Steve Tony is reliving their love in *ahem* their expletive (and loud) makeout sessions. All the rooms (private quarters or public) in the compound are being re-christened. Scarring all the other avengers, especially our duo beloved spies with their top of the notch "skills".

Bucky fresh out of cryo, blissfully unaware of this conditions first thought its just his paranoia and super hearing which fails him. Because he keeps hearing "things".

Till one fateful day, he REALLY need to bleach his eyes 👀

*evil laugh*

I like the way you think ;) Here we go!

---

Bucky still wasn't used to waking up in the Compound. After so many years on the run and then recovering in Wakanda, being back in the States was strange but wonderful. He hadn't really believed it at first, that Stark - Tony, he'd said to call him Tony - had managed to get them all pardoned, but it was getting easier every day to accept that yes, this was permanent, and he could stay.

Bucky showered, dressed himself and headed to the communal kitchen in silence, not really expecting anyone else to be up yet. Surprisingly, both Barton and Natasha were already there and having breakfast. Well, Natasha was having breakfast. Barton was hunched over with his head on the table and seemed to be having some sort of meltdown.

Yeah, Bucky wasn't touching that one with a ten foot pole.

“Good morning,” Natasha said, and Bucky nodded at her as Barton groaned, rubbing his temples.

“Yeah, right. Good fucking morning to all of us. And a happy new year too.”

Bucky cast a questioning look at Natasha who only gave him a serene smile.

“It's July,” he said, and Barton laughed humorlessly, raising his head with a thousand yard stare that Bucky had seen on many men who'd just returned from war.

“It's a new year. A new era. The reckoning has come.”

“What's he talking about?” Bucky asked Natasha, because he had a feeling he wasn't going to get coherent sentences out of Clint right now.

“He saw Steve and Tony last night,” she said. Bucky blinked.

“Yes?”

“Saw them.”

“So did I,” he said, confused, and Barton gave a laugh that verged on a sob.

“Oh, you sweet summer child. You have no idea.”

Bucky shook his head, grabbing his juice from the fridge and walking out. “Whatever. I'll be in the gym.”

“Don't say I didn't warn you,” Barton called after him, and Bucky shook his head. Weirdos, all of them.

He chugged his juice as he took the elevator down, headed to his locker, grabbed a towel and walked into the gym. Someone was clearly already training, rhythmic squeaks and grunts echoing out through the -

Bucky stopped dead in his tracks as he took in the scene. Neither Steve nor Tony seemed to have noticed him, which was fair. They were pretty occupied.

Bucky was begrudgingly impressed. Tony was a lot more flexible than he'd thought.

“That's unhygenic,” he said, and Steve yelped as he came to a grinding halt, looking over at Bucky with an expression of horror.

“What? Tony! You said you locked the door!”

Bucky didn't stay to hear Tony's indignant response. Now that he'd done his best friend duty and embarrassed Steve in front of his - apparently - new honey, Bucky turned tail and went right back into the elevator. He stepped out on the common room, and Natasha raised an eloquent eyebrow. Bucky stared right back at her.

“You could've told me,” he said, and Natasha shrugged.

“Where's the fun in that?”

Bucky sat down at the kitchen table, tossing his towel to the side. “Is it just the gym, or -”

“My working theory is that they're christening every room in the Compound,” she said, nodding at Bucky's stool. “I wouldn't sit in that if I were you.”

Bucky jumped up as Barton groaned into his folded arms. “Please tell me the shooting range's still safe.”

“Define safe,” Natasha said. Barton whimpered, and Bucky looked at the ceiling, silently wishing for strength.

He should've just stayed in Wakanda.

--

You can also find this fic on AO3, right here :)

[newspropaganda]

Welcome back to Roasting 101: Today’s subject—fake Yu-Gi-Oh! fans who don’t know the first thing about being real. This clown keeps crawling back like he has something to prove, but the only thing he’s proven is that he’s stuck in a loop of stupidity. I already know who he is—just another troll running the same tired playbook. You can tell from his posts he's probably got some messed up agenda. But here’s the thing: he milks the hate like it's going to make him matter. Newsflash, I’ve been hating this fandom’s nonsense since 2015, and nothing you’ve said has ever phased me. I’m the original OG, like Andrew Tate is to masculinity, while you’re just screaming into the void with your social justice warrior nonsense.

5D’s is peak fiction, and your whiny comments don’t change that. Over time, real Yu-Gi-Oh! fans will wake up to the greatness of 5D’s, but you? You’ll still be stuck in your echo chamber, crying about things you’ll never understand. 5D’s is the bread and butter of this franchise—more relevant than anything mainstream media throws at us because it’s a flawless show. You’ve clearly never appreciated it, and if you’d been around in 2014, you would’ve been booted from this fandom faster than that joke ScarlightCipher, who tried and failed to make a name for himself. Yeah, I crossed paths with him back in 2015—and believe me, I roasted him so bad, he never recovered.

You just got roasted, son. 5D's fans are on a whole different level, and your weak pity posts can’t touch us. There’s a reason I’m the WW5D’s champion when it comes to roasting. People like you fold under pressure while I’m out here on a higher level, making you cry with every word. Step your game up, or step aside, because 5D’s isn’t just a show—it’s a legacy. And you? You're just another footnote in it.

I bet 100 bucks he’ll be back under a week, trying to troll again. That’s why I blocked him—he’s too soft to respect 5D's legacy. Sure, it's a card game adventure, but unlike that Bleach trash, he can’t tell me anything. 2025 is going to be the year of 5D's, where fake fans crumble, and real ones like me rise from the ashes to reclaim our fandom. And don’t get me started on Zexal fans—they think they’re the ambassadors of the community, but it’s the first three Yu-Gi-Oh! shows that put in the work, week after week, to build this legacy. These newer gens don’t know the meaning of respect.

But hey, if you think you can roast me back, go ahead and reblog this post. Tell me why I’m wrong without being a coward. There are plenty of reasons you can try, but instead, you’re busy whining under some virtue-signaling post like that’s going to get you anywhere. This isn’t Twitter, where people hide behind fake maturity. I’m a Facebook guy—over there, we handle things like men. Here, it’s WWE Champion vs. Jobber, and guess what? You’re the jobber. I’m the heavyweight champion of the Yu-Gi-Oh! community.

Real men, like Andrew Tate, always said, 'Beta males like him are exactly why we need toxic masculinity back.' He'd probably throw in something like, 'Your lack of backbone is why the world’s getting softer—you need to wake up, hit the gym, and stop crying on the internet. Real men handle business, not feelings.

You see, this is why I can’t stand America when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh!. It’s not just politics and BS—it’s the fact that people here are so spoiled. Andrew Tate was right all along: people are getting softer. I roast the community because they attacked my show, and yeah, I admit I’m a little sensitive about it. I’m probably a '1% beta male' when it comes to other things, but when it’s about my shows, I stand my ground. It’s not all anger, though—I learned that it’s better to love a show than to support its fandom. I put my content out there, and people can decide for themselves if it’s good or not. It’s their choice to block, ignore, or support me. Personally, I love 5D’s, GX, OCG Stories, Pyramid of Light, and Bonds Beyond Time, but Zexal, The Dark Side of Dimensions, and the Rush Era? Total garbage. They just don’t compare.

And let me make one thing clear: I don’t support what anyone else says. They’ve talked trash about me, my show, and why they can’t respect me—but guess what? They’re the beta males, not me. Why do you think VoicesOfChaos, a Zexal fan, turned into a trans person? Because Zexal was like the American government, telling them what to do. Zexal is like a system that makes people feel stupid instead of giving them hope. That’s why I’ve always hated it. As for The Dark Side of Dimensions, it was just overhyped by clowns who thought it was good. I’ll take Bonds Beyond Time any day—it was more human, more real than Dark Side of Dimensions could ever be.

#Roasted

[captain-mj]

angels of digitalism part two please very very pretty please

Done!! Part 1 is right here

Soap pulled into the parking lot the next morning just in time to see Ghost fly by and park. Without Roach. He noticed a car he didn’t recognize and assumed they must’ve came separately today. 

“Hey Ghost!” Soap beamed at him as Ghost slipped off his helmet. He just had a neck gaiter on so Soap could see his fluffy blond hair. It was clearly bleached, having the unnatural platinum that came from doing so, 

“Johnny.” Ghost tilted his head at him and Soap almost tripped over air.

“Don’t remember telling you that name.”

“It was on your resume. Would you prefer I stick to Soap?” He looked at him, tilting his head. Ghost had the most puppy dog brown eyes that Soap had ever seen. It didn’t help that his hair fell in his face and that he could only be described as pretty. 

“No. It’s fine. Only you can call me that though, alright?”

Ghost’s eyes crinkled like he was smiling. “I’m glad I’m your favorite.” He started walking and Soap felt flustered as he started to walk after him. 

Soap looked up at him, hands going behind his back. “You uh… have any plans today?”

“Mostly rigging checks. I put the wires and harnesses up myself so I’m going to make sure they’re all solid.”

Soap frowned. “Don’t the venue owners handle that?”

“Don’t trust them. A lot of them don’t follow the same standard. Not putting Rudy and Roach at stake because of that.” 

“Also you. You’re also doing the fancy tricks this time right?”

Ghost shrugged. “Not the same. I fall, I recover. They fall and they… crack. I threw Rodolfo onto a bed once and it sounded like pop rocks.“ He sighed. Soap had to pause and really think about that. 

Did he have it wrong? Was Ghost dating Rodolfo and Alejandro was dating Roach? Where did that leave Alex? Was Alex dating anyone? 

Maybe if he was single… He was a strapping young man. 

Soap laughed and decided to change the subject. “You hurt your wrist so bad you can’t play guitar.”

Ghost was silent for a minute and Soap was wondered he offended him before laughed. “Fair enough. I did…” He rubbed his bandaged wrist. 

“How did you hurt yourself anyway?”

“Scraped it up on my bike. Someone pulled out in front of me too fast and I skidded across the road. More embarrassing than anything honestly.” 

Soap frowned. “You were in a fucking accident?? And that’s all that happened?”

“No. I’m just lying to you.”

“Oh.”

“Also, don’t trust any story Alex gives you about losing his leg. 50/50 chance he’s lying to you.” Ghost patted his shoulder and held the door open for him. 

Soap nodded and just got to work. He perched on the edge of the couch since Rodolfo was lounging on it, headphones in. Occasionally, he’d speak in spanish so Soap assumed he was on a call. Made sense, he was the manager. 

Soap started to draw again and tried out different methods and styles to see what might look best. 

Rodolfo sat up after a while and used the couch properly. He kicked his legs out and took his headphones off after saying goodbye in English. 

Soap hummed. “Who was that?”

“Alejandro Vargas. He’ll be dropping by later. You can ask for an autograph if you want but no pictures.” Rodolfo started to work on his tablet.

Soap shrugged. “Might get one for a friend of mine but I don’t actually like his music that much.”

“Me either but he’s a friend of everyone here.” 

Soap nodded and showed him what he had so far. 

“I like it. This it?”

“No. This is a rudimentary sketch.” Soap frowned, wondering if they seriously considered that worth the amount of money they were paying him and decided not to ask, lest his feelings get hurt. They didn’t really seem to get how art like this worked.

Rodolfo nodded and handed him roughly 40 bucks. “Coffee again. Need me to text it?”

“Nah, I still have the texts from yesterday.” Soap took the money and did a two finger salute. He once again got all of their drinks and handed them out. When he got to Ghost, he paused. “Uh, where is Roach?” He was trying not to look at Ghost who was hanging upside and shirtless. After working up there for the past hour, he must’ve gotten hot but that logical explanation did not erase that Ghost was fit and scarred and so damn attractive Soap was worried he’d get hard right then and there. 

Ghost glanced around. “He might be working with Alex. I think they were doing something with his outfit for the vocaloid.” He twisted himself in the ropes so he sat upright and took his drink. The position spread his legs and put a little strain on his arms, making them tense. Soap’s knees started feeling a little weak. 

Ghost drank some more and tilted his head. “You okay? You look really flushed?”

“I’m fine.” Soap smiled, noticing the tattoos circling Ghost’s arm. They were clearly covering some scarring. It looked rough, a bit like a dog or something had attacked him. “I’ll go find Roach.” He stepped away and went in the direction that Ghost pointed out to him. 

Soap watched Alex grab Roach’s hips and move him. Roach’s back arched a little and the image on screen just didn’t move. Alex sighed and put his head on Roach’s, almost pouting. 

Were they dating?? 

Alex glanced over, hand going around Roach’s waist. Roach leaned into him and they both either didn’t realize the position or simply didn’t care. Soap wasn’t sure how to handle that considering just yesterday Roach and Ghost had been tangled together. He stared for another minute before Alex snapped his fingers. “Hey, Soap, you alright?”

“Yeah. I’m good.” 

“Cool.” They took their drinks and got back to debugging the vocaloid. Roach would do certain moves and the vocaloid would just stop and freeze until it would snap into whatever position Roach was in. Alex was quickly getting annoyed and it was obvious. They went back and forth on it with them either moving around or standing still. 

Alex groaned. “Soap. Wear the costume.”

“What?”

“Wear the costume.” 

Roach started to strip and Soap stared blankly. “Why do I need to do this??” When he was down to his underwear, he handed them to Soap. 

“I need Roach to help me at the computer so someone has to wear the suit.” 

Soap slowly took of his own clothes and quickly put on the outfit. Roach was a little slimmer than him so it was tight over his shoulders and ass. It was just leggins and a long sleeve shirt with wires so it wasn’t the most revealing, it was just tight. He listened to Alex’s explanations and watched Roach sign back at him. Roach had no shame in continuing to stand there in his underwear. It was hard for Soap not to look at him. They were musicians and performers, it made sense they were attractive, had to be honestly, but it was ridiculous just how hot Roach was. Slim figure, the exact opposite of Ghost, nice thighs and an even nicer ass. And the entire time, he’d bend over the laptop, back arching slightly. 

Was everyone here trying to kill him? What next? Alex taking his shirt off and pouring water over his head? Rodolfo speaking to him in spanish?? 

Was this flirting? Or were they just oblivious? They couldn’t be, right?

After a bit, the vocaloid followed the movements like they were supposed and Roach beamed at Soap. He reached up and lightly bonked their heads together before helping Soap out of the clothing. It felt more like he peeled the shirt off and it made him really flustered. Roach’s hands were very cold and they brushed against his back before he politely handed Soap’s shirt to him. He was clearly smiling and that made Soap even more flustered when he pulled it on. Soap nodded at him and fled, running back to his couch and his laptop. 

Except… Alejandro was sitting there. He was playing what looked like a knock off of candy crush and completely ignored Soap as he walked past him. 

“Hi.” 

Alejandro nodded at him. He sipped his drink and Soap picked up the tablet to get to work. The silence was… actually kinda nice. Soap wasn’t usually one that could handle sitting there without talking, but he was deep in his art and Alejandro was deep in typing whatever it was he was typing. 

Ghost reappeared and Alejandro wolf whistled at him. “What are you doing walking around like that?”

Ghost glared at him. “Fuck off you slag.” 

“Not my fault you’re a fine piece of ass.” Alejandro grinned and Ghost rolled his eyes and pulled his shirt back on. His back muscles flexed as he did. 

“You’re so annoying. Why are you here?”

“Tour just ended so I’m hanging out with you guys. Obviously. Why? Don’t love me anymore?”

Ghost shook his head and sat between them. Three big men on a couch was a bit of a hard fit, but Soap wasn’t going to complain. 

Soap showed Ghost who leaned into him to watch him draw. The silence was slightly less comfortable so he started explaining what techniques he was using. Ghost didn’t really seem to get it, but he listened nonetheless. 

Soap was coming to terms with the fact they were all a lot less cool than he was expecting, but it was nice. Maybe they could be friends when this was over.