#I suspect it’s just the ‘oh I actually have extra energy again’ problem because this is very much what it was like for me before I got sick

[tj-crochets]

So it turns out if I make this pattern with actual canvas instead of what I thought was canvas (it’s duck cloth) it’s a softer, more “reusable grocery bag” kind of bag and less of a tote?

This one is for my grandma! I think I’m making them for pretty much everyone on my list for the holidays this year

[weaselle]

Ant Cthulhu

Tumblr ate my story! Goodbye to. just. so many thousands of notes. This was one of my first stories that people on tumblr liked. So I’m making it a new post, so that people can find it. Plus, of all the thousands who read the first one or two installments, not nearly as many discovered that I had written a third and final installment that ends the story, so here is a chance at that. 

The story was inspired by a pair of observations on Tumblr, where users probablybadrpgideas and 20thcenturyvole said, respectively 

“if Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can’t humans be summoned by ants? The answer is they should be.” and “Well if a bunch of ants formed a circle in my house I’d certainly notice, try to figure out where they’d all come from, and possibly wreak destruction there.“

It gets just a little dark, but any story named for Cthulhu surely must have some death and destruction, right?

ANT CTHULHU

That’s why knowing and correctly pronouncing the true name is so important to the ritual. Imagine how impossible it would be to not go take a look if the circle of ants started chanting your name. And they’re like, you can’t leave because we drew a line made of tiny crystals - now you have to do us a favor. And you’re like, let’s just see where this goes “yup, you got me… what’s the favor?” and usually the favor is like, “kill this one ant for us” or “give me a pile of sugar” and you’re like… okay? and you do, because why not, it isn’t hard for you and boy is this going to be a fucking story to tell, these fucking ants chanting your name and wanting a spoonful of sugar or whatever. And SOMEtimes you get asked for things you can’t really do, one of them, she’s like, “I love this ant but she won’t pay any attention to me, make me important to her” and you’re like… um? how? So you just kill every ant in the colony except the two of them, ta-da! problem solved! and the first ant is like *horrified whisper* “what have I done” …. _____________________________________________________________________

Meanwhile another colony of ants invades your house, and evidently that last ant has gotten some of them to join her in a circle and taught them the ritual because you’re coming out of the bathroom one day and you hear the ants singing your name. Sure enough it’s that ant, but she’s dark and fucked up now, and she’s like, “kill the queen. I will rule this colony” and you’re like, sure, I guess I kinda owe her, and you do it. And she manages to become queen, and they worship you. Which is cool, you’re not, you know, very important in the human world, but to these ants you’re practically all-powerful.

Your beloved Naya doesn’t understand your fascination with the ants at all, but you easily train her to leave them alone. She’s such a good dog. The ants are horrified that you command such a beast.

You begin to realize can’t be just, doing everything a bunch of ants tell you to all the time. When would you watch Netflx? So you tend to only show up for super important ants; you teach them some extra words and when hear them you go see what’s up. Usually. Also though, you’ll show up to just your name, if you’re bored and you hear it. And, sometimes some of the ants are like, tell us more human names, and you’re kind of jealous of the idea of some other human diluting your private godhood, so you refuse. Your roommate Greg is like, yo, that’s fucking awesome, I want ant worshipers! But whenever he approaches any, they run away, because it turns out that the illusion of control from the named summoning is what makes them feel safe around you. That’s great, because Greg is a dick who never does the dishes, and one day you decide to teach Greg a lesson. So you show up at the colony, and you’re like, “yo, witch queen, did you think there would be no price for all these things? Your colony must do something for me, go to the Room of the Housemate, I will meet you there.” And you go sit on the couch and play Overwatch for a while. You’re like, right there, you can clearly see the ants all marching along the wall to Greg’s room, but to them you’re not even there, you’re so far away they can’t see you. It takes them, like, an ant week to make the journey. They have to figure out ways to get over and around things. Some of them drown, or get stepped on by the dog, or whatever. You win a game, you lose a game, you look over, and they’re trying to get through some cobwebs… looks like they’re mostly going to live, you keep playing, you look over, okay they’re all in there, and you stand up and walk over and by the time they’ve chanted your name once, you’re there. “right, hold on” and you look around and you see a twelve-pack of Greg’s precious fucking soda, that he keeps in his room and refuses to ever share, even though it’s a communal food household and you share your hot chocolate with him all the time. So you gather the ants unto you, and you poke a little hole in each of the sodas and you leave the room to the sound of the ants rejoicing. Greg will suspect of course, but he’ll never be able to prove the ants didn’t chew holes in the plastic and steal his stupid drinks.

He actually tries to blame it on Naya. What a prick. You insist with wide eyes that the ants must have found it somehow — maybe he shouldn’t leave soda pop laying around his room. But later, while you’re at work, Greg destroys most of the colony in a rage, and you come home to find the witch queen gasping her last. “The Dew of the Mountain, which you had us steal, was cursed - and so I lay my curse on you” she manages, and then she dies. Well first of all, you don’t really believe in curses, but last month you didn’t believe ants could know your name, so that’s unsettling. And second of all, you feel kind of bad. You know, not SUPER bad, cause she’s like, an ant. But still. And most importantly, third of all, Greg must pay. Like some kind of movie villain, you pet your loving Naya and say out loud “Oh yes, and pay he will.”

But Greg has done more than kill a bunch of the colony. As you wait for eggs and pupae to replenish the ant population, you discover he has found some ants that didn’t go on the Mountain Dew raid, and he’s spared them, told them his name.

He’s made himself a good sized cult in YOUR fucking ant queendom. Greg has started locking his door. So now you NEED the ants. Once again you direct the ants loyal to you to journey to Greg’s room. You meet them at the door. A locked door means nothing to the ants, they don’t even know there is a door, and can barely perceive the difference between it being open and shut - either passing the threshold on the floor regardless, or being on its surface no matter the position. But you need them to get inside. You’re going to put itching powder in his underwear drawer and leave a raw fish under his bed. So you instruct the leading party of ants how to go into the Cave of Keyhole, and position the Magic Megaliths inside just right to enable the opening of the Great Door and allow you to pass into the Realm of Housemate. Crouched by the door, you can hear when your ants are met by a party of Greg Cultists, who insist that if the Great Door is opened, the colony will be doomed. There is fighting. Your ants prevail, the lock tumblers are moved into place, and you swing the door open… To find Greg! In his room all along! It’s a trap! His cultists attack you! I mean, they can’t do much real harm, but it kind of hurts and it’s super annoying. You order your ants to attack him, and they do, but he storms over and pours bleach down the colony entrance.

It’s the end of their world. Now you and Greg are at war, and you both understand the unspoken rules to your fight. You can’t do things directly to each other, why, that would be assault. But anything you can get your ants to do is fine, because “she told the ants to do it to me” isn’t going to get very far with any authority figures that get involved. Later, nursing your anger, you confer with your few remaining ants and stare moodily at your new prize, the ant farm that came in the mail. It will take time to integrate them- your ants have to get access to the new ants’ scent marker chemicals and go undercover. Meanwhile, you’ve got a laptop schematic to go over with your high priestess. It’s finals week, and if you time it right, he’ll lose everything. … You look down into the summoning ritual. The current high priestess, Zé, is an ant of great influence and personality - you quite like her, inso far as a human can be friends with an ant that worships them. You thought the new queen would become the next high priestess, but according to Zé the queens don’t like to come out of the colony after they shed their wings. Plus they are very busy laying eggs and supervising the care of their ant larvae. Zé says it’s a better deal for you, this way your high priestess can have the time and energy to really serve your interests, and wield an authority among the colony that is purely yours - no conflict of interest, and no baby making duties. It’s really just what’s best for both you and the colony queen to have her as high priestess, she informs you, making you laugh at her flattery-wrapped ambition. There’s no laughing this evening though. It’s serious business on the docket tonight. “O wise and ancient entity of power, you grace us with your presence!” and for formality’s sake, she intones the additional ritual greeting from their holy books “You Look Fantastic, Have You Done Something New With Your Hair?” Ants don’t really understand hair. You respond as you have become accustomed “Thank You, Yes.” It’s just easier. They mean well. Mystic greeting complete, Zé and the rest of the dark clergy move straight to business. Several 10s of them line up in formation, creating a diagram of the apartment complex. You had to coach them into how to make it, as far as they are concerned it’s a complex sigil that conveys knowledge to you - for creatures that traverse the building in long journeys along the pipes in the walls and in the spaces between the lower ceiling and upper floor, it looks nothing like the apartment complex as they know it. Zé claims to understand it, but secretly you suspect she’s just mostly cementing her authority among the clergy. She has, usefully, memorized which parts of the sigil correspond with what parts of the building, and that’s good enough for your purposes. “O mighty being, we have done as instructed. Our scouts had to search wide for them, but we have left the corpses of many termites in all the locations you specified, every night this week. “Very good,” you assure them, “and the Greggorites?” “Our spies among them have learned of their next attack. We should be able to influence their timing somewhat.” “Good. And..” your eyes narrow, “the other thing?” “Ah, yes.” Zé’s antennae wave and dip in that way you know means she is uncomfortable. “to the best of our ability to find out, the… Antifreeze initiative was entirely conceived of by the Demon Lord Greg.” “Just Greg,” you tell Zé with bitter hatred as tears threaten to spill down your cheeks. “Greg is not a lord, just a fucking prick who’s going to get what’s coming to him. I swear by all of creation he will.” “Is there…” Zé trailed off and tried again. “O Deity of my heart, far be it from me to question Your Exaltedness, but help your poor servant to understand… your plans have become, ah, they seem perhaps, I am sure I am wrong, but they seem, overly audacious? Your recent change in demeanor has made some of us nervous - not me! - but some of the less devout among my sistren, have become… concerned.” Your fists clench. “I don’t expect you to get it. I’m pretty certain none of you could possibly understand.” Your voice breaks. You clench your teeth. You won’t, you won’t cry in front of your ant worshipers. You lean down and say in the strangled half whisper that is the only way you can force the words past the lump in your throat, “He killed my dog, Zé…” The ants flee the sound of your terrible wailing. The great Finals Erasure had worked to more devastating effect than you had anticipated, and things had… escalated. Then Greg proved himself to be less human than the ants , who themselves had turned out to be such surprising little beings. So. The orders for the heinous deed did in fact come from him. Now, there are things that have to be done. You call the ants back out of hiding and get to work. In the end, it was easier than you thought it would be. You talk to all the neighbors, without Greg. You hide the relevant pieces of mail. You have the scuba gear and the stuff from the sex shop shipped to a friend’s house. You ensure your spies among the Greggorites have escape plans, though Zé assures you they are ready to sacrifice themselves to the cause. “I’m not that kind of Deity,” you tell her. The night before, your ants slip a double dose of tylenol p.m. into Greg’s milkshake. You almost laugh; all your efforts to make sure there is only soup to make for dinner, and he comes home with Burger King. He sleeps so soundly that he never comes close to waking the whole time you are attaching the padded bondage equipment to his limbs and hiding with him in the closet. The walk through by the company inspectors that morning is a tense moment, but as you suspect, they don’t open the closets. After they leave to do their work outside, you finish your work inside, tying Greg to his bed. By the time he starts to wake up, you are sitting in a chair in the doorway to his bedroom, with your mask on. The air is beginning to thicken and discolor. Greg coughs around his ball gag and opens his eyes. You feel curiously calm and empty. “Hi, Greg.” Your voice is muffled, “You like my dive mask?” Greg makes an angry questioning noise, spread eagled to the full extension of his limbs. “Oh, yeah, that must be uncomfortable. Can’t give you enough slack to jerk against the ropes, though, or you might leave tell-tale bruises through the padding.” More angry noises, coughing. “Hhhmm? Oh, did I forget to tell you? It’s termite day, Greg, they’ve tented the house. That’s Sulfuryl Fluoride you’re breathing. You’ll cough for a bit, you’ll throw up, and your heart will stop.” He’s thrashing around as much as the ropes will allow, which isn’t a lot. He’s pretty energetic about it, though; maybe he can’t hear you over his efforts. “You shouldn’t have meddled around with godhood, it didn’t suit you. Power compromised your judgement. You definitely shouldn’t have fucking killed my dog, Greg” You’re suddenly filled with rage. You need to know he hears you. You stride over to the bed and grab him by the throat. Not too hard, you try to remember through your anger, no bruises. The grip is enough to make Greg stop thrashing and look at you with wide wide eyes. “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE FUCKING KILLED NAYA YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! WHY? WHY? HOW COULD YOU!? SHE NEVER DID ANYTHING TO YOU!” Just as suddenly, your anger is gone. You feel tired. You look down at him and shake your head.”Time to die, Greg.” You cross the room and sit back down in your chair in the doorway. Watching him die isn’t easy, but it’s not as hard as watching Naya suffer through acute kidney failure. Afterwards, you take off all the bondage gear, throw it in a duffel bag. You leave through the back, rolling out from under the fumigation tent against the back fence, and packing the scuba gear into the duffel before you climb into the neighbors yard. A month later, you’re moving from town to town. The colony has become so large you’re going to need a bigger truck full of clay for them to live in. Maybe an old Uhaul. The ants bring you a newspaper. They bring you everything now, food, money, information. Word of how you value the life of each individual ant has spread through the colony, and reports brought back from the apartment by scouts confirming your status as a godslayer has …elevated… their worship of you. You open the newspaper to find Greg’s death has made the papers. No suspicion of foul play despite the exterminator company lawyers insisting on an autopsy. Tylenol p.m. in his system accounted for his presence in the building, it was decided, and the failure of the inspectors to notice Greg in bed during their walk through was settled out of court, paid off by their insurance. The ants bring you a conga line of grapes, peeling them for you while you stare off into space. A small line of ants brings the peels back to the colony larder. You’re going to have to teach them how to disable cameras - the leaked security footage of hundred dollar bills slipping themselves out under the bank doors has caused a bit of a stir on some parts of the internet… you eat another grape, and count your money. As usual you put half of it in an envelope, uncapping a sharpie to write “From Naya” on it. The ants will slip it under the door of the local animal shelter for you tonight. END

_____________________________________________________________________

so, looking back, I feel I should tell you that when I wrote the final chapter of this I had just become homeless and had to leave my dog in a better home than I could provide. It’s cool, we still see each other a lot these days, I was just real sad about it and it effected what I wrote. Anyway, that’s the Ant Cthulhu story

[yaimlight]

Rating: M

Pairings: Bakugou Katsuki x fem!reader / Todoroki Shoto x fem!reader

A/N: part of the Twos Company, Threes a Crowd series but can be read on own. Masterlist can be found here.

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“I can’t believe we got to see the Shredder and Dark Star fight” Midoriya said happily, chattering away about the video Aizawa had made them watch and analyse in today’s class but Shoto wasn’t listening. Instead his attention was focused on the girl just to the side of them, sat at her desk and staring longingly out the window.

He had been stealing glimpses at her all class, twisting in his seat as discreetly as possible but he was sure Momo had caught him a few times if the way she kept smiling at him was anything to go by. Thankfully she hadn’t said anything and Shoto trusted her enough to keep his secrets. He didn’t want the hassle that would come if the rest of the class found out about his and Y/Ns midnight meetings, even if they were all by accident. Well on his part anyway.

He had been surprised to find Y/N concentrating on her school work every time he looked round but then she had been acting a little odd the last few days. She hadn’t even tried to touch him last night when he walked in on her in the kitchen at 2am, making herself a cup of tea. Instead she had smiled tiredly at him over her shoulder, mumbling a quite hello before going back to her task.

He had been so shocked by the subdued meeting that he had been unable to move until she had brushed past him, hot cup in one hand and a bowl of what looked like the stir fry Bakugou had made for dinner that night in the other. She offered him another gentle smile as she said goodnight and disappeared back up the stairs to her room without Shoto having uttered a word in return. Five minutes later when he had finally remember why he had come down stairs in the first place Shoto discovered a cup of steaming green tea waiting for him on the side. It was strange to think she knew him so well already after such a short amount of time.

He knew it shouldn’t but the thought made his stomach flutter and his pulse race. He was the only one she had bothered to get to know, to talk to and spend actual time with. He didn’t know why she had picked him, what it was about him that had drawn her in but he was glad for it and would try his hardest to stick to the strange rules of that she had set, unless she withdraw from even him. He wanted this odd friendship to last because that’s all it was, friendship.

She sighed, folding her arms on top of the desk and lead her head down on top of them. She looked breath-taking, with the midday sun shining down on her and making it look like the sun was a bright halo above her head. Shoto had thought she looked many things since meeting her, beautiful, dangerous, melancholy but never angelic, not until this moment. No that wasn’t quite right. Y/N was many things but he wouldn’t say she was angelic, more like a fallen angel who had embraced all the mortal sins of man and looked good doing it.

“You okay Todoroki-kun?” Midoriya asked worriedly, placing a gentle hand on his arm. Reluctantly Shoto tore his eyes away from the glum looking girl and looked down at his friend, finding the smaller boy smiling softly up at him. Was he okay? He didn’t quite know. Physically yes he was fine but he defiantly felt confused maybe a little sad but they were nothing new, he often felt like that every day. Yet something felt a little off today and he couldn’t quite place his finger on it.

“Sorry” he said simply and Midoriya’s smile widened. “Oh don’t worry. Shall we go get some lunch?” Shoto hummed his agreement but honestly he wasn’t really that hungry but they had sparring practice afterwards and he would need the energy, especially if he ended up pared with Bakugou again. The angry blonde seemed to take it as an insult every time they were placed against one another and often come at Shoto with a ferocious tenacity that Shoto would always meet head on.

As they turned to make their way from the class movement out of the corner of his eyes caught his attention and Shoto turned back to look at Y/N as she quickly got up from her desk and shoved all her books into her bag. Maybe he could ask her to join them? It would be the friendly thing to do and she might say yes if he asked. She swung her bag over her shoulder, kicking her chair back in and turned towards him, heading for the door. Shoto sucked in a deep breath, readying himself but before he could even open his mouth to call out her name she was gone, breezing past him without even a glance.

Frowning Shoto followed after Midoriya as they headed towards the cafeteria, the other boy lost in his mumbling that he hadn’t seen Shoto’s complete and utter failure. Shoto was hurt and slightly confused by her sudden avoidance of him. Normally when he looked up at her during class he would at least catch her staring back at him a few times, a smug little smirk on her lips and eyes sparkling but today there had been nothing. No teasing smiles or little winks, not even a sideways glance. Well not for him anyway.

He had caught them twice, Bakugou twisting in his seat to scowl at her and every time Y/N smirked back, lifting her head up from her work and focusing all her attention on the angry blonde until he turned back with a huff. Shoto had never seen them interact before but then no one had ever seen him with Y/N before so there was nothing to say that they hadn’t been. Shoto didn’t know why but the thought of them two sneaking around upset him, made him angry even.

Most of their meeting happened at night and though sometimes it would be in hallways or training rooms the majority where in the kitchen. She was always so tactile, invading his personal space and pushing against him as she spoke, arms looping around him to hold him in place or hands pressing against his chest or sometimes his stomach. She would always greet him with ‘hello handsome’ or some variation and then proceeded to tease and taunt him, getting Shoto to say more in a few stolen moments than he did to his friends throughout the rest of the day.

That was until last night when something had changed. Shoto had thought maybe he had done something wrong or maybe she had grown bored of his cold demeanour and limited social skills but now he suspected maybe something else, or someone else was the reason for the sudden shift in her.

“Hey have you and Bakugou had another fight?” Shoto’s head snapped up from where he had been poking at his soba, surprised at Uraraka’s concerned question. He couldn’t even remember getting to the cafeteria let alone ordering his food and sitting down with friends. It seemed like that had been happening a lot though this last few weeks, Y/N occupying most of his thoughts.

Tipping his head to the side slight Shoto frowned. “No, why?” Uraraka nervously glanced over at Midoriya before her eyes snapped back to Shoto. “Well, Kacchan keeps staring at you” Midoriya looked up at Shoto through his eyelashes as he spoke, looking just as nervous as Uraraka had. Shoto’s frown deepened as he turned in his seat, looking behind him for the aforementioned boy. Sure enough Bakugou was glaring angrily at him, stabbing at his food with his chopsticks.

“Isn’t that just how he normally looks?” Shoto asked as he turned back around and started to eat in earnest. Bakugou glared at him a lot, at everyone actually so to find him doing it was nothing unusual but now he was aware of it Shoto could feel the other boy’s eyes on the back of his neck, the skin prickling under the intensity of it. Now that was unusual, the blonde wasn’t prone to staring for long periods of time and this had definitely been going on for longer than it should have.

“I don’t know, he does look pretty angry” Uraraka frowned as she spoke, looking over Shoto’s shoulder. Shoto didn’t know what the blonde’s problem was, he could only assume that him breathing the same air as the other teen had caused him some sort of offence. Though maybe he had found himself in the same situation as Shoto, thinking he was the only one then suddenly discovering you are not. It would explain the sudden hostility though with Bakugou it could very well be that he had just heard someone say that Shoto was good at something and his bizarre drive to be the best at everything had left him seething.

“Well whatever his issue I suggest staying clear of him. He will only get riled up and attempt to start a fight” Iida pushed up his glasses, looking seriously at them as he spoke. The three of them murmured their agreement, turning back to their food. The other three chatted happily around him, Shoto adding in odd words to show them he was paying attention but only just. He could still feel Bakugou’s eyes on him, his skin prickling with the heat of it. Shoto’s mind wandered trying to understand what had the other boy staring so intently at him but try as he might to come up with any other explanation his thoughts kept circling back to Y/N.

Now that he was really thinking about it there had been signs over the last few weeks that something was going on between Y/N and the other boy, the most noticeable being that Bakugou kept making extra food for her. She always moaned at the first bite regardless of what the other boy had made, her eyes fluttering closed and body relaxing. She always looked so content when she was eating and Shoto often found himself wondering what he would have to do to make her react the same way.

There had been the looks as well. Shoto knew that his observation skills were a little lacking outside of hero work but how he had managed to miss them up until today was beyond him. Maybe it had just been sheer luck on their part that he had never looked up at the exact time they had been gazing at one another. Well maybe not gazing, more like Katsuki scowling and Y/N teasingly smirking.

Really he should have known something was going on two weeks ago when Bakugou had slammed into him as he stalked out of the training rooms, cheeks flushed, pupils blown wide and growling. Shoto had thought nothing of it, not even when he stepped into the just vacated room and found Y/N sprawled across the floor, a wide smile on her lips as she stared up at the ceiling. He had thought they had been sparing but now he wasn’t so sure. He had been jealous at the time, that she would give that experience to the angry blonde instead of him but maybe that wasn’t the only experience she had given him.

Shoto could feel himself getting angrier at the thought of the two of them together, so lost in it that he didn’t even notice as they left the cafeteria and headed towards the changing rooms. Didn’t even say goodbye as Uraraka went into the girl’s looker room. He operated on autopilot, following after his friends as he went to his own locker and began to strip out of uniform.

Realistically he had no right to be angry, he had no claim to Y/N, no monopoly on her time but still he couldn’t shake the red hot ball that sat heavy in his stomach. How long had he been stupidly believing he was somehow special, unique in his ability to get the girls attention when in reality he was just one out of what? Two? Five? Ten? Hell maybe she had been secretly meeting up with the whole of the class, stringing them along and making them believe they were the special one. Shoto couldn’t quite believe that though, didn’t seem to fit the girl he knew. He always got the feeling that there time spent together, no matter how brief, was a rarity even for her.

So what made him and Bakugou so different from the others? Why would she seek them out instead of more social and friendly people like Kirishima or Midoriya? What exactly did she want from them? Shoto could probably guess what she wanted from Bakugou and what he would want in return.

Despite what some people would like to think Shoto wasn’t completely unobservant. He knew that Bakugou was attractive in a purely objective sense. He had heard the girls talking about it before, about his muscles, sharp jaw and large rough hands and how if it wasn’t for his rotten personality some of them might have tried to peruse him in the romantic sense. Then there was Y/N who was just stunning in Shoto’s eyes. The majority of the male students, and some of the girls from what he had heard, in the class could agree to that. Even Iida had said that her physical attributes were pleasing and coming from the prim and proper teen that was something, though he had blushed and stuttered through the whole statement.

Shoto knew that the two of them would look good together, could already imagine it. The two of them pushed together, cheeks flushed and lips kissed red. Their personality’s would complement the others perfectly, her teasing and playful nature only serving to driving Bakugou’s dominate and aggressive nature higher as he took from her whatever Y/N was willing to give him.

Shoto was the complete opposite of the blonde, quiet and subdued where he was loud and vigorous. The same went for their looks. Though he did have muscles they were nowhere near as prominent as the other teens, Shoto instead more lean and graceful. Momo had said he looked deceptively delicate, that it added to his beauty and that was why the girls always gushed over his looks. Shoto knew she was just being nice. He knew he wasn’t beautiful, the large scar on his face making that impossible. He had come to terms with it long ago but he knew how others looked at it.

The point being Shoto was nothing special when it came to looks, easily blending into the background where Bakugou always seemed to command the attention of the entire room every time he walked into it so he couldn’t really blame Y/N from wanting that kind of thing from him. Didn’t change the fact that Shoto didn’t really like the idea of it though.

The hot and heavy ball in his stomach seemed to tighten at the thought of them together, his anger bubbling up once again along with something else, something darker perhaps. Envy and sadness swirling together and mixing with his already burning anger. Sure Shoto was reserved, a little too blunt at times but out of the two of them he was the nicer person so why did Bakugou get to have Y/N in such an intimate way? Shoto may not have any experience in such things but he was a quick study and was confident he would be able to satisfy her better than the angry little mutt would be able to.

“Todoroki’s spoke to her”. Shoto froze at the mention of his name, hands hovering over the zipper of his jump suit. He had no clue what Mineta was talking about, hadn’t been listening to any of his class mates, so absorbed in his own thoughts that he had practically forgotten they were even there. “What! When?” Kaminari shouted and Shoto winced. He could feel himself starting to panic as he tried to recall what the others had been speaking about. From what Mineta had said and knowing how things tended to get when it was just the guys Shoto could only assume they were talking about the girls, well one specific girl but witch one. Shoto had spoken to the majority of the girls in their class over the last week, even some from other classes so they could be on about any one. Franticly he tried to think of who they could possibly be singling out but he was coming up empty, his mind suddenly going blank under the others attention.

“It’s true. I saw them the other night in the hallway and they looked pretty cosy if you know what I mean” Mineta said smugly and suddenly realisation dawned on him. Shoto knew what he was talking about, knew what it would have looked like to anyone else. They had passed in the corridor as Shoto made his way to Uraraka’s room for a study session with her, Midoriya and Iida. He had barley glanced her way before he had found himself pushed up against the wall, Y/N pressed up against him and pinning his hands to the wall at his side. She had pushed up onto her toes, lips brushing against his ear as she whispered. She had asked him if he knew what time the library closed, something so trivial but said in such a way that Shoto had had to close his eyes, trying to prevent the shiver that had run down his spine. It was the first time she had done something in such an open place, at a time where anyone could walk past and see them.

He had worried at being found in such a way but as soon as he had stuttered out the answer she had been gone, disappearing quickly down the hall and leaving him feeling cold without her warm body pressed so tightly against his. The encounter had lasted no more than a minute or two at best and he had thought he had gotten away with it, continuing onto Uraraka’s room and trying to will his blush away and calm his racing heart. Evidently Mineta had seen them though and now everyone knew his secret. He would never hear the end of it now and they would all renew their efforts to get Y/Ns attention. He didn’t want that though, didn’t want to share her limited attention with the rest of them. It was bad enough now he realised he had been losing out to Bakugou, he didn’t need the extra hassle of competing with the rest of the class. Didn’t think he would be the one who would come out on top.

“Dude you’ve been holding out on us. Come on spill”. Shoto took a deep breath, trying to gain some sort of control of his racing thoughts. Sighing he zipped up his jumpsuit, turning back to his locker to pull out his boots. “I would hardly call it a conversation, we barley exchanged words”. He was amazed that he managed to keep his voice steady and it hadn’t been a lie either. He had said maybe two or three words to her and that had been it. Definitely not a conversation.

“Do you normally let people push their chest against yours and whisper in your ear to exchange a few words?” Shoto was actually contemplating freezing the little pervert solid at this point. He knew he was blushing, could feel his face heating up and it didn’t help that he could feel Bakugou’s intense glare on the back of his neck again. Maybe he could just grab his belt and make a run for it. “Dude are you banging the new chick?” Shoto almost choked at the other boy’s loud question.

He didn’t know what to do, had never been the centre of this kind of conversation before. Shoto knew he should deny it. He hardly spent a few minutes with Y/N when he saw her and that really wasn’t long enough for a kiss let alone the two of them to bang, as Kaminari put it. Not that he had ever kissed her to know it wasn’t long enough. Though he imagined if he ever did get the chance he would want to take his time, just enjoying the feel of her lips against his. His tongue poking and prodding at her until she would open up and let his tongue slip into her mouth. No this wasn’t the time for those sort of thoughts, he needed to say something and quickly. The longer he stayed silent the harder it would be to deny the fact. Oh god he felt sick.

“I don’t think that’s really any of our business” Deku stuttered out, coming to his rescue. He was always such a hero, coming to the aid of those who needed it and Shoto couldn’t be happier than to call him a friend right now. Sighing he turned round to face the rest of the room, finally ready to deny their accusations but before he could say anything Bakugou shot up from the bench he had been sat on, grabbing his gauntlets and slamming his locker shut. All eyes turned to him as he spoke, growling out his words and clearly angry. “Who gives a shit if he’s getting his dick wet. Just hurry the fuck up and get your arses out there so I can beat them”.

Shoto stood, stunned at the other teens words. Was he trying to help Shoto out or was he just angry that he was having to listen to their classmates talk about Shoto with the girl he was clearly with? Shoto grunted as Katsuki slammed into him on his way towards the exit, not even bothering to yell at him to get out his way as he stormed past. So definitely angry then.

“How rude” Iida stated, frowning after the blonde. “Are you okay Todoroki-kun?” Midoriya asked, lifting a scared hand and gently placing it on Shoto’s arm. Rubbing at his shoulder Shoto mumbled “I’m fine” before moving away from his friend to quickly pull on the rest of his hero costume. The changing room fell into an odd sort of silence, the rest of the class breaking of and mumbling to one another as they finished getting ready. He could feel Midoriya keep glancing at him and knew that his friend was worried about him but in all honesty he was just glad Bakugou had gotten most of the attention off of him. His classmates would be sure to bring up his and Y/Ns clandestine meeting but for now it was over and done with and hopefully he would have time to come up with a reasonably excuse.

Almost as one they filed out onto the field, the sun beating down on them but Shoto’s mind was still stuck on the blonde and Y/N. Katsuki had no right to be angry with Shoto, it wasn’t like he had known. Y/N and Shoto weren’t anything to each other anyway, friends at a push but more like acquaintances actually. Shoto frowned at the thought. Was that all they were? Nothing had really happened between them, no declaration of what it was that was building between them but he knew that he wanted more from her but he wasn’t quite sure what.

Friendship would be nice. From the brief conversations they had had he knew that he would be able to talk to her about almost anything. He felt mostly comfortable around her, though still a little awkward sometimes but that was just him. It would take a lot to get to the level of comfort and ease he felt around his friends but he knew that given time they could form a strong friendship but was that enough? Shoto couldn’t deny that he found her attractive, his dreams and wondering thoughts making that much clear and he wouldn’t be opposed if that was the way things went but if she was already doing that with Bakugou then all he could ever really hope for was friendship. He had never been jealous of the blonde before but when it came to Y/N it seemed he wasn’t below resenting the other teen for his luck.

“You’re finally all here”. Shoto looked up from where he had been frowning down at his feet as Aizawa spoke. Instantly the teacher lost his attention as Shoto’s eyes landed on the girl who haunted his every thought. Y/N was stood next to Aizawa, staring intently up at him and taking in every words he was say, unlike Shoto who was unable to pick out anything but odd words, too focused on Y/N to really register what was happening.

She looked beautiful in the early afternoon sunlight, head tilted back slightly and skin almost seeming to glow. She had on a generic U.A training outfit and trainers so he could guess that finally she was here to train with them. A thrill of excitement ran through him at the prospect. No one knew what her quirk was, Y/N keeping it a secret and Aizawa refusing to tell them but finally he would get to see it first-hand. Shoto had little to no doubt that it would be something spectacular, probably a little flashy after all how could it not be when it was hers.

Aizawa was still talking but Y/N seemed done listening, wordlessly spinning on her heals and heading towards the middle of the pitch. Shoto’s eyes tracked every movement as she twisted and turned, stretching her body as she got ready. Her eyes fluttered closed, back bowing as she stretched her arms above her head and bent backwards, forcing her chest out and mouth open slightly as she let out a small groan. Shoto’s mind stuck on that image, imagining what it would be like to have her under him and doing the same thing, offering up her neck to him as she tipped her head back.

He felt tugging on his arm and wordlessly stumbled after Midoriya as he tugged him towards an awaiting bench. The rest of the class followed only leaving Mineta to nervously waddle to the middle of the pitch. Though he hadn’t really been listening to his teacher Shoto was able to piece together what would be happening from the conversations going on around him and he was concerned at what was to come.

All twenty of them vs Y/N. Sure it would be one at a time but it still seemed rather unfair. She would grow tired and weak as the battles went on and surly by the end she wouldn’t be able to defend herself adequately against her opponents. It wasn’t like Aizawa to put a student in such an unfair situation so it only stood to reason that he knew she would be able to take the beating. It must have something to do with her quirk, maybe something to do with endurance. Whatever it was Shoto hoped that it would protect her from the onslaught of pain heading her way.

He had been surprised as she began to strip, smiling down at the smaller boy the whole time. It was a rather intimate act and Shoto could easily imagine her doing this for him in the privacy of his room, slowly exposing inch after inch of perfect, unblemished skin just for him. The choked of squeak that Iida made was a harsh reminder that this wasn’t just for him and that the whole class got to watch as she stripped down to her black sports bra and matching shorts. There was so much skin on display that Shoto didn’t know where to look first, his eyes dragging across her from head to toe as he tried to commit it all to memory, in case he never got to see it again.

Mineta screamed as she grabbed his collar and swung him round, throwing him from the pitch. He crash back to the floor face first, crying out as he skidded across the dirt. No one went to help him, all of them staring dumbfounded at his crumbled body. “Wow” Midoriya whispered and Shoto had to agree. She hadn’t seemed to use a quirk, just brute strength and the smaller boy’s momentum against him. “Hagakure you’re next” Aizawa called and Shoto turned his attention to the gloves and shoes that made their way across the pitch.

Hagakure was a good fighter, not the best by a long shot but still good. With her invisibility quirk stealth was her main attribute, if she could successfully sneak up on Y/N she stood a good chance of managing to get the other girl across the boundary lines but that all depended on what Y/Ns quirk was. They had yet to see any evidence of what Y/N was truly capable of. She must have skill to get into U.A, especially transferring in for just the last year but to what level they didn’t know. Shoto got the feeling that they were going to find out today exactly what Y/N was capable off and he truly hoped she didn’t hold back, at least when it got to his turn. He didn’t care if she restrained herself with the rest of the class just as long as she came at him with everything she had and he would do her the same for her.

The two girls exchange pleasantries, Y/N checking if Hagakure was ready and the other girl confirming she was after stripping her few remaining bits of clothing off and disappearing completely. Shoto sighed as Y/N closed her eyes and stood perfectly still in the middle of the pitch. Was she just giving up? He had hopped for more, some sort of display of power and skill but it seemed like he wasn’t going to get it. Suddenly her hand snapped out, Hagakure’s surprised cry sounding loud in the open space and Y/N smirked.

It didn’t take long for Y/N to win, dragging the girl across the boundary line by her hair in a brutal display of strength and skill. She had been nice enough afterwards, her gentle actions and soothing words a complete contrast to the harsh beating she had just given the other girl but Hagakure excepted it and Shoto got the feeling that by the time she sat back down by Ojiro that Y/N had made a friend. Shoto didn’t quite know what to make of that, confused at the mix of jealousy and happiness he felt.

What came after could only be called the complete and utter annihilation of the class. Y/N was precise and officiant in her take downs, matching her movements to suit each individual opponent. Some took only a few minutes to dispatch some, were others warranted a little more effort on her part but they all ended the same. Each and every one of his class mates ended up outside the boundary lines whilst Y/N stood triumphant still inside the pitch. Not one of them had managed to get her even remotely close to the line let alone over it and still no one had managed to guess her quirk. Each failed attempt only seem to spur her on, making her push harder against those who faced her and quite frankly Shoto found it both equal parts beautiful and worrying. She was just one girl yet she was almost effortlessly tearing through the class like they were dolls.

He had realised early on that she had been studying their fighting skills just from the way she had defended herself against Asui. Y/N had known before the girl had even launched her first attack what was going to happen, stepping to the side and darting a hand out to grab her tongue. She had quickly wrapped it around her arm a few times, smirking as she yanked the panicked girl forward and swung her round, Asui stumbling and falling across the boundary line. Asui didn’t often lead with that attack but she had a tell, smacking her lips together and tongue poking out briefly before she did it. It would be impossible for Y/N to know this unless she had been watching their practices. She had yet another advantage over them, staking the odds even more so in her favour.

Her fight with Uraraka had lasted longer, Y/N effortlessly avoiding the other girls touch whilst keeping her from being able to touch the floor. Uraraka had managed to make herself float a few times but Y/N had been there, yanking her back down to earth and slamming her against the ground every time. At some point she had managed to get Uraraka’s helmet off and a look of triumph had fluttered across Y/Ns face, like that had been the goal of the fight instead of getting her across the boundary lines. It hadn’t taken long after that for Y/N to get the upper hand, her fist connecting with the side of Uraraka’s face and knocking her off balance and sent her stumbling backwards and across the boundary line.

Y/N was always gentle and friendly after each fight, offering every opponent a soft smile and constructive criticism whilst also complimenting their quirk and skill. She hadn’t been any different with Uraraka but there was something about the way she gently turned the other girls head, delicate fingers brushing softly at the bruise that was already forming on her cheek that sat uneasy with Shoto. He didn’t know what is was about the action that he didn’t like but it made him scowl at the girl.

She wasn’t one for touching. Shoto had learned quickly that she had to be the one to initiate it but now she was touching everyone. She wasn’t shying away from their touches or getting angry like she had when Midoriya had tried to shake her hand on her first day. No, instead she was welcoming it, laughing and smiling. She had even allowed Ashido to wrap her in a tight hug and Kirishima to sling an arm over her shoulder as he called their fight manly and begged Y/N to tell him what her quirk was.

Shoto had bristled at the other boy being so casual with her, even more so as she had placed a hand over his abs, fingers splayed wide across his naked skin and far too close to the top of the teens trousers. Kirishima hadn’t seemed to notice or care, just asking her to spare with him latter in the week because he wanted her to teach him how to flip someone over his shoulder like she had done to him. Shoto liked the idea of that even less than the touching.

As time passed Shoto became more agitated as he was made to wait. He watched every fight with sharp and calculating eyes, occasionally exchanging words with Midoriya as they discussed how Y/N had won yet again and what possible quirk she could be using to aid her in the task. When Iida had been called forward Shoto had been convinced that this would be the one where she was finally pushed across the boundary line, quite literally in this case. He had seen his friend do it before, running full speed and forcing his opponent in the direction he wanted them to go. Shoto expected this time wouldn’t be any different and he felt a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be the first to defeat her.

In reality Shoto couldn’t have been more wrong if he had actually tried to be. Iida had run rings around her, trying to confuse the girl so she wouldn’t know what direction he would be coming from but it hadn’t been enough. As soon as he had started to charge her Y/N had spun to face him, moving out the way and sticking her leg out at the last moment. Iida hadn’t had time to change direction, tripping over her outstretched leg and falling to the floor with a loud thud. Y/N had wasted no time, sweeping in and yanking the boy’s helmet off him and throwing it to the side. She had grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back and grabbing his chin with her other hand as she leant over him. She had whispered in his ear, too low for Shoto to hear but he could guess what kind of thing she had said from the way Iida blushed a deep red, clearly embassies and flustered.

She had allowed him to get to his feet, even griping his hand and helping him steady himself. That had been a mistake on Iida’s part, Y/N grinning like a manic as she tightened her grip on his hand and yanked the larger boy forward and head butted him. Iida had stumbled back, shocked at the sudden aggression but he didn’t have time to recover, Y/N kneeing him in the stomach. From then on it was just blow after blow as she forced the other boy back, not giving him time to think let alone use his quirk and all too quickly he was forced across the boundary line, falling to the ground as she slammed her foot into the side of his head.

She had helped him up, slinging his arm over her shoulder and wrapping one of her arms around his waist, the whole time apologising about the beating. Aizawa had sent Ojiro and Sato out to take him from her and between the two of them they had carried him off towards Recovery Girls office. Apart from Hagakure, Iida was the only other person who had been sent off to get looked at, his injury’s worse than the rest of the classes combined. It had been a sombre moment as they all watched their class rep get lead of, groaning and stumbling, a small trickle of blood running down the side of his face. Aizawa had snapped them all out of it, calling for the next person and they had all looked back to the girl stood in the middle of the pitch, frowning as she watched Iida be lead off.

She was a bit more restrained afterwards, reigning in her attacks and refraining from being too aggressive in her pursuit to get the others across the line. Shoto could tell that she was upset with herself, could see her second guessing every blow she dealt. Any normal person would have lost it by now, falling victim to their own hesitance but still she kept winning, kept forcing her class mates back until she was the only one left standing on the pitch.

After what seemed like hours there were only three left. “Alright” Aizawa called and Deku, Bakugou and he all leaned forward, waiting to find out which one of them was up next. Despite Aizawa saying the order they would be going in was picked at random, Shoto found it a rather odd coincidence that the top three in the class had been left till last. “Todoroki you’re up”. Shoto let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he had been holding as he was called forward.

“Good luck” Midoriya mumbled, patting him on the back as he got up and slowly made his way to the middle of the pitch. He had been looking forward to his chance to finally fight Y/N but he wanted her to give it her all, not hold herself back like she had been with the others. He could understand why she was doing it, clearly having over done it with Iida but Shoto wanted to face her on even footing, well as even as he could get without knowing her quirk. He would just have to go all out and force her to meet him at his level.

“Well hello handsome” Y/N practically purred as he came to a stop in front of her. She was all wide smiles and sparkling eyes, a look of excitement about her. Shoto could hear Mineta shouting ‘I told you so’ and he groaned, glaring at her. He didn’t understand the sudden shift, how she could go from being so closed off and secretive one day, then open and friendly the next. Something must have happened yesterday for her behaviour to suddenly shift like that but the question was what?

Wordlessly he took up his fighting stance, scowling at Y/N. Her smirk grew wider as she took her now familiar stance, both hands coming up in front of her and curled into fists. “Show me what you’ve got hot stuff”. Her voice was pitched a little lower, a seductive purr to it as she winked at him. Shoto sneered, his anger getting the best of him. Now the whole class would think they were something they’re not and he would have the likes of Mineta and Kaminari on at him for days, harassing him about it and trying to find out things that Shoto himself wouldn’t know. Bakugou should think himself lucky they didn’t know about his relationship with the girl or he too would find himself on the receiving end of their annoying persistence.

He would probably know the answers to their prying questions though. Know what she looked like, sounded like. Would know if she preferred being on top or having him looming over her. He would know where to touch and kiss, how to tease and excite her. Would know every intimate detail about her for them to prise out of him.

Full of anger and jealousy, Shoto lunged forward throwing an arm up and sending a sheet of ice barrelling towards her. He had hoped to catch her off guard with the fast moving sheet of ice but she had been too quick, dodging to the side as it barrelled past her. “You’re going to have to do better than that” she teased, grinning widely as she turned to look at him, tapping her finger against the ice.

Growling Shoto set off after her yet again. Ice and fire flew across the pitch as he tried to drive her back but she kept dancing out of the way. She was incredibly light on her feet and fast to, effortlessly avoiding all of his attacks with a bright smile on her lips. It looked like she was having fun, laughing as she used the sheet of ice he had just sent across the ground to slide closer to him and despite his earlier anger Shoto could feel a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips, her enthusiasm infectious.

There were so many walls and shards of ice scattered across the field that it was difficult to see the rest of the class but Shoto was fine with that. He could almost pretend that they were the only two there, almost like they were playing a game instead of doing school work. He was having fun, the first time in a while that he had really enjoyed sparing with someone. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning out moves or trying to strategies. He was just reacting letting his adrenaline and excitement dictate what he was doing and it was exhilarating. Even if her constant evasion of his attacks was starting to get a little annoying.

Darting forward Shoto spun, sending a wall of fire towards her. He was expecting her to dodge the attack, sending another wave of ice to the side in hopes of cutting her off. What he hadn’t been expecting was for Y/N to leap directly through the wall of flames, her fist contenting with his jaw and sending him stumbling backwards with a grunt of pain. He felt like he had been hit with a brick, his head snapping to the side and throbbing in pain.

Steadying himself Shoto glared up at her, rubbing at the sore spot. She smirked down at him, quirking an eyebrow at him and Shoto felt the challenge she was throwing at his feet. She looked shockingly beautiful with the ends of her hair singed and her clothes smoking, the last fading flickers of his flames behind her. She patted at a few spots of her clothes that had caught as she jumped through the flames, clearly not caring that she could have easily been severely burned.

“You good?” She asked, not even bothering to look up at him. Scowling he straightened and dived for her, his left side consumed with flames. He didn’t need her pity, her false act of caring. He had been through worse before and probably would again. He could take whatever she could throw at him and give it back tenfold.

With a snort of laughter she easily dodged his fists, jumping back as she swung her own arm up to block him. Jaw clenched Shoto perused her, moving quickly as he sent a spiral of fire chasing after her, his foot slamming down onto the ground at the same time and sending sharp spikes of ice right for her. It should have slammed straight into her, sending her backwards and over the boundary lines. Should being the important part but she had run straight for him instead, effortlessly weaving around both attacks and lunging at him.

She had moved quickly, a lot quicker than she had been and almost seeming to float through the air. Shoto had reacted as quickly as he could, throwing up his right arm to send out another wall of ice but she was already to close. She knocked his arm away, fingers wrapping around his wrist as her body slammed into his and sent them crashing to the ground. He cried out as his back hit the floor hard, arching up at the sudden sting of pain shooting down his spine.

Y/N grunted as she forced him back down, legs spread on either side of his hips, her weight holding him down. Both her hands were curled around his arms just under his wrist guards, pinning his arms to the dirt by his head. Blinking a few times to clear the slight haziness that had crept into the edges of his vision Shoto glared up at her, trying to yank his arms down but she just tightened her grip on him, pushing down harder to keep him in place.

“Hey handsome” she said softly, smiling down at him in what Shoto could only describe as gentle amusement. “Get off me” he grumbled, trying to tug his arms free once again to no avail. He could easily use his quirk to get her off him but by doing so he could seriously hurt her and though she had proven to be a little reckless, jumping through his flames and allowing his ice to graze across her exposed skin he didn’t think she wanted to be in hospital with third degree burns or a shard of ice through her chest.

“No, don’t think I will” she said teasingly, shifting slightly on top of him. As her weight settled, Shoto’s eyes widened as he finally registered the position they were in. She was sat on his groin, legs spread wide around his hips and leant forward slightly. If he flickered his eyes down Shoto had a clear view of the swell of her breasts. He had been pinned before but never had it felt like this. Never had he enjoyed the weight of his opponent baring down on him or the slide of their body against his.

Eyes wide in shock he glanced over towards his class, embarrass to be in such a position with all them watching. What he found though was a solid wall of ice that stretched across the entire side of the pitch and then some, completely blocking them from view. Shoto’s embarrassment quickly faded away only to be replaced by confusion. He was sure he hadn’t put enough power behind his attack to create something so big. He had been aiming to knock her off her feet, not squish her.

It worried him that he had lost control like that. The fact that he hadn’t been able to control his ice let alone remember putting so much force behind it sitting heavy in his gut. He could have hurt her if she hadn’t have moved his arm from its original trajectory. That couldn’t happen, he wouldn’t let it. He couldn’t allow himself to get distracted like that, he had to focus and not allow Y/N to invade his thought.

“Just me and you. Just how I like it”. Shoto slowly turned his attention back to the girl above him. Her smile was soft, the gentle amusement still sparkling in her eyes. Shoto felt trapped in her gaze, more so than he did in her grasp. He could spend hours looking into her eyes, tracking all the flecks of colour. “Would you not prefer Bakugou” Shoto snapped, the words escaping before he had even know they were forming.

He slammed his mouth shut, eyes wide as he began to panic. Why had he said that? He hadn’t meant to, had wanted to tell her to quit messing around and get on with the fight but they had just come tumbling out. It wasn’t the first time he had spoken without thinking with her and last time he had gotten the distinct impression he had done something wrong.

Y/N stared down at him, a whole string of emotions passing across her face. Surprise, confusion, doubt and the whole time Shoto could feel his face getting reader, unable to look away as he waited for her to say something. She blinked and then she was smiling again, her eyes alight with amusement. “Are you...jealous?” She asked joyfully, her smile only getting wider as he failed to answer her.

She laughed at his obvious discomfort and embarrassment, her whole body shaking with it and Shoto was once again reminded of the position they were in. He clenched his jaw, tipping his head back and trying to hold in a gasp as her arse moved across his groin. She didn’t seem to notice his predicament or even care and that was fine but Shoto needed her to stop moving or things were going to get even more embarrassing for the both of them.

With one last huff of laughter Y/N stilled and Shoto chanced a look up. She looked genuinely happy, with the sun shining behind her, a faint blush to her cheeks and a thin sheen of sweat across her skin. Somehow Shoto had done that, made her look so relaxed and at ease, he might even go as far as to say carefree. It was a beautiful sight and though he liked the teasing smirks and playful winks he much preferred these genuine, unguarded and soft smiles. He hoped that he would be able to see them more often, instead of the sad and lonely looks of longing she often wore in class.

“Don’t worry hot stuff, you’re not missing out. Mine and his meetings are quite similar to ours, except he yells at me a lot more. Swears to”. She let go of one of his wrists as she spoke, using her now free hand to tap him gently on the nose. Shoto huffed, scrunching up his face slightly at the rather odd action. She was laughing again as she reached back up, her cool fingers wrapping around his arm once more. He hadn’t even attempted to move when she let go, just left his arm where she had placed it like an obedient little puppy.

He felt a wave of relief wash over him at her words, Shoto not having realised how displeased he had truly been with the idea of them together. He had been rash, too hasty with his assumptions. The truth was Shoto liked Y/N, was interested in her and it had felt like a blow to the stomach to think he had somehow missed his chance to develop some sort of a relationship with her because there would have been no way that Bakugou would have allowed Shoto to get close to Y/N unless it was to taunt him with what he couldn’t have.

Above him Y/N sighed, shifting back slightly and looking at the wall of ice that separated them from the class, her eyes seeming to land roughly where Shoto remembered Bakugou to have been seated. Her smile had fallen, a small frown tugging at her lips. Shoto thought she looked lost almost, maybe even a little scared. He missed her smile already, the way it lit up her face and made her eyes sparkle. He wanted it back, he just didn’t know what to do to make that happen. “I didn’t intend to make friends here but there is something about the two of you that intrigues me. I can’t help but want to be around you”. Her voice was soft as she spoke with a tinge of sadness running through it. It was almost like the fact that she had made friends was something to be ashamed off, to worry about.

Shoto didn’t understand but then he rarely understood others emotions. He had gotten better over the years, his friendships with Midoriya, Iida and Uraraka having gone a long way to fix some of the damage done in his childhood but still he struggled sometimes, unsure if he was readying other people correctly or if he had missed the mark completely. Shoto didn’t feel like that was what was happening here though. He had spent so much time over the last three weeks watching Y/N that he was sure he would be able to tell the moment her emotions shifted though maybe not how to deal with them. He was still rather awkward but maybe she would accept a hug. He knew she didn’t like it when others were the ones to initiate contact but maybe they were close enough now that she wouldn’t punch him if he tried.

Shoto bent his legs, getting ready to push himself up and pull his hands free from her lose grip but before he could do anything Y/Ns head snapped back round, a wide and mischievous smile on her lips. “Now, I have had something on my mind to and it’s been keeping me up at night trying to figure it out”. As she spoke she moved Shoto’s arms up until his hands were above his head and she could hold them in place with one hand.

Y/N was practically lead on top of him now, her body stretched across his. Shoto could feel his heart racing, a blush spreading across his face and down his neck at the rather intimate position they were in. Shoto didn’t know what Y/N was talking about but suddenly he was very grateful for it.

He sucked in a breath as her cold hand came to rest on his chest, Y/N playing with the zipper of his jumpsuit. “Your quirk splits your right down the middle, yeah?” Shoto gulped at the question, eyes wide and stuck on her as he nodded instead of answering her. Her smirk grew as she shifted to the side slightly, lifting her body off of his so she was now hovering over him. Her face was above his now, impossible close and Shoto knew that if he were to lean up he would be able to kiss her but his mind was short circuiting, hyper aware of her delicate fingers stroking his chest.

Shoto wasn’t afraid to admit he was a virgin. Unlike most of his class he just hadn’t found the appeal of sex and after a few people’s failed attempts to get him in bed people had just stopped perusing him. Sure he had notice that some of his class mates were pleasing to look at but he had never wanted to be intimate with any of them, his hands always being good enough for when he actually felt the need for relief. Then three weeks ago he hand found himself with a lap full Y/N, her arms wrapped around his neck as she whispered in his ear, asking if he could give her directions to the teachers’ lounge.

She had felt good pushed against him and in his shocked state Shoto had only just about managed to stutter out a reply. She had winked at him as she thanked him and then she was gone, as suddenly as she had arrived. He had just sat there dumbfounded, staring out at nothingness until Midoriya had found him an hour later. From then on something gave and Shoto found himself constantly thinking about Y/N, every chance encounter making it worse than the day before. He knew it wasn’t very gentlemanly to think of her in such ways but it seemed like he was making up for lost time and now wasn’t any different, his mind racing with the possibilities this situation could lead to.

Y/N slowly began to drag her fingers down his chest, following the line of his zipper and Shoto barley managed to keep in a moan. He slammed his eyes closed, head tipped back and mouth slightly open. His hands were flexing above his head, fingers trying to grasp at something but there wasn’t anything there. “So, if I was to put my mouth here would half of it be hot and the other half cold?” Shoto’s eyes shot up, a gasp escaping his parted lips as she dragged her finger tips across his already half hard dick. He knew the answer to that but the words stuck in his throat, unable to make it past the pathetic whine as she pushed a little harder against him.

She had a wicked smile on her lips, her pupils’ blown so wide that Shoto couldn’t barely see the ring of colour around them. “Or can you control it, decide whether it’s a shaft of ice or a red hot poker?” Her hand moved away from his groin, sliding back up to his chest, pushing against every muscle as she went. Y/N was the first person other than himself to touch him in such an intimate place and Shoto found himself missing the pressure already.

She leaned down closer, the tip of her nose brushing against his. Shoto watched her eyes darting over towards the wall of ice, her smirk getting wider at the muffled sound of yelling. It sounded like Bakugou, the blonde probably getting annoyed that he couldn’t see what was going on. He was probably worried about the lack of noise as well, was most likely getting suspicious of what the two of them could be doing whilst out of his sight.

Shoto probably shouldn’t find it as appealing as he did, the prospect of doing something like this whilst the rest of his class were just a dozen or so feet away. He should feel ashamed, definitely not exhilarated. Embarrassment, adrenaline and arousal swirled together with a smug sense of satisfaction of getting something Bakugou hadn’t.

“What do you say handsome? If you win will you let me satisfy my curiosity?” Y/N nipped at his ear and this time he really did moan, tipping his head to the side to give her better access but she pulled away quickly, letting go of his wrists so she could push herself up and onto her feet. She moved to the side, staring down at him with an amused smile, waiting for his reply. Shoto blinked up at her, her words only just sinking in. She couldn’t be implying what he thought she was because people didn’t go around just offering that sort of thing out. Shoto could already see it though, all those stupid lollipops he kept finding her with giving him enough of an idea of what she would look like. What he couldn’t do was imagine how it would feel but he wanted to find out.

With a renewed sense of determination Shoto pushed himself up into a sitting position, readying himself to get back up and continue we’re they left off. They had been silent for too long now and Shoto was surprised Aizawa hadn’t come looking to see what was going on, or even Bakugou for that matter. He could still hear the blonde shouting at someone, probably getting ready to blast the sheet of ice apart. Y/N held out her hand towards him, wiggling her fingers when he failed to take it and just stared up at her sceptically. He wasn’t stupid, he had seen what she had done to Iida after helping him up and he wasn’t about to fall for the same nasty trick.

Huffing she rolled her eyes at him, holding out bother her hands to him now. “Don’t worry I’m not going to hit you, promise”. Giving her one more suspicious once over Shoto reaches up and grabbed her hands, letting her pull him up as she pushed. They were close when he was finally stood, chests almost pressed against one another’s. Now they were stood Shoto had to tip his head forward slightly to look at her, Y/N about half a head shorter than him. Shoto liked the idea of that, he would be able to rest his head on top of hers when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a hug.

She let go of his hands, her own slowly sliding up his arms until one was curled around his bicep and the other pressed flat against his rapidly beating heat. “You lot really are too trusting”. She sounded a little disappointed as she spoke, her fingers flexing on his chest. Shoto frowned, confused at her words but he didn’t have time to ask what she meant. Her hold tightened on him, nails digging in slightly through the fabric of his suit and then suddenly he was spinning, Y/N using her grip to pull him round and throw him against the wall of ice.

Shoto grunted, as his body connected hard with the ice, the sound of a loud cracking ringing in his ears. She was on him quickly, chest pressed against him and one leg shoved between his. Her hands were on his shoulders, keeping him pinned in place, her nails digging in and just on the edge of painful. She had ripped at his jumpsuit, the fabric giving way under her tight grasp as she flung him round.

Shoto growled at her, trying to push forward but she just pressed herself tighter against him. “You lied” he grunted, annoyed at his own stupidity. Y/N was right, they really were too trusting. “Did I hit you?” She quirked an eyebrow at him in question, looking at him expectantly as she waited for him to answer her. Grunting Shoto turned his head to the side, eyes dropping to look at the ground. So technically she hadn’t lied, still didn’t change the fact that he had been far too trusting of her. That sort of blind trust could get him killed out in the field.

Sighing Y/N frowned at him, the disappointment clear in her voice when she spoke. “After everything I have seen I expected more from you, seems I was mistaken”. Narrowing his eyes Shoto rolled his body towards her, letting both aspects of his quirk go at once. She had no choice but to let him go, taking a step back and bringing her hands up to protect her face from the raging flames and sharp spikes of ice.

He didn’t give her a chance to recover, darting forward and gripping her shoulder tightly. He pulled her towards him, stepping out the way and slamming her against the spot he had just been pinned against. The ice creaked loudly under the impact, the cracks getting bigger and fanning out along the large sheet. He grabbed her wrists, twisting them behind her back and grabbing them tightly with one hand. He could feel the heat radiating off of her, it prickling uncomfortably against his cold side. Shoto could have sworn she had been ice cold just moments ago. Y/N grunted as he kicked her legs wide, pressing himself along her back, her hands splayed out across his stomach and her fingers tips just curling around the edge of his belt.

Disappointed, that’s what she had said with that disapproving look on her face, just like his old man used to when Shoto failed to meet his expectations. Well, was she disappointed now? He was the first to pin her. The first to get the upper hand. The first to even get this close to winning. It would serve her right, to get beaten by him. Clearly she was confident in her ability to beat him, which was probably why she had made that offer. Y/N believed that she would win so there was no risk for her and it had the added bonus of getting him riled up, thinking with his dick instead of his brain. Well there wouldn’t be any more of that, at least not whilst they were still fighting anyway. He would win and then he would make her pay up.

Her laughter pulled Shoto from his thoughts and he frowned at her, confused as to why her current situation was so funny to her. Y/Ns head was turned to the side, cheek pressed against the ice and a wide smile splitting her face in half. “That’s more like it” she said excitedly and Shoto got the distinct impression he had been played. Snarling he tightened his grip on her wrists and yanked her hands back even more, her bracelets clinking against his belt as her hands moved lower. He expected her to grab at him, to rub her hands against him in an attempt to distract him but she never did, instead keeping her hands splayed wide and pressed against her arse, actively trying not to touch him.

“Don’t hold back, I can take it. You don’t have to worry about hurting me, I’ve been through worse”. Shoto jerked back slightly at her words. What exactly was she giving him permission to do? He hadn’t thought he had been holding back all that much, not enough for her to notice anyway but somehow she had and had been disappointed by it. If that was what she wanted from him Shoto could give her that but he didn’t want to hurt her. Though the prospect of that didn’t really seem to bother her. She had recklessly charged into his attacks, literally jumping through fire to get to him with a confidence that Shoto had only ever seen on people who knew they couldn’t get hurt.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You can heal” Shoto stared at her as he spoke, confident in his guess. He didn’t notice his grip loosening on her wrists or that the cracked sheet of ice was starting to melt, droplets of water running down it and pooling on the ground. Y/Ns smile softened, turning her head more so she could actually look at him. “That’s not my quirk” she said smugly, the emphasis she put on ‘my’ confusing him.

Shoto didn’t get time to process her words before Y/N was jerking her head back, slamming the back of her head into his temple. With a surprised grunt Shoto staggered back, her hands slipping free of his grasp as she spun round. Shoto ducked, only just missing the kick she had aimed at his head. Y/N didn’t let up, stepping in close and slamming her hard elbow into his stomach. Shoto didn’t even think as pain shot out from where she had hit him, he just acted. He aimed a punch at her face, letting his ice cover his hand and arm. She didn’t see it coming, Shoto using his fire to block her view and he landed the hit on her jaw.

Y/Ns head snapped to the side from the impact, stumbling back into the wall of ice. There was a loud crash, the ice breaking and crumbling to the floor. As it gave way behind her Y/N stumbled, falling to the dirt and rolling to a stop just before the boundary lines. Shoto hardly noticed the rest of his class, his eyes flickering from the girl on the ground to the stunned looking blonde stood just the other side of the boundary lines. If he wasn’t breathing so heavily Shoto might have smiled at the obvious annoyance on Bakugou’s face but he couldn’t afford to get distracted now. She was so close to the edge, it wouldn’t take much to push her over.

He was about to step forward, ready to send a fast moving spike of ice towards her when she moved, Y/N pushing herself to her knees. He watched in horror as she dragged the back of her hand across her lip, smearing the blood oozing from the cut across her hand and lip. The bright red stood out against her skin, glaring prof that he had hurt her. She let out a small huff of laughter, turning to face him with a wide smile.

She looked so happy about the hit and all Shoto could do was stand there and stare as she pushed herself up onto her feet, glancing behind her to Bakugou. Y/N dragged her eyes over him, taking in every inch of the blonde. She looked at him through hooded eyes and smirked, her tongue poking out to run across her split lip. Shoto felt the anger and jealousy that had been lying dormant start to bubble up again. This was their fight, she should be paying attention to him. She winked at the clearly flustered blonde before turning back to him and started running towards him. Shoto was ready though, running to meet her and sending a wall of fire towards her.

Everything was fast paced from then on, each of them landing a few hits but Shoto was starting to grow tired, the excessive use of his quirk starting to take its toll. The worst thing was he was losing control of it, his fire seeming to curl around him instead of barrelling towards Y/N and his ice shooting off in directions he hadn’t been aiming for. He didn’t feel like he was losing control though, he felt like he always did when using his quirk but something was definitely wrong. It was almost like his quirk had developed a mind of its own and decided to turn on him.

Shoto rolled to the side as another wave of flames twisted, having no choice but to throw up a small wall of ice to protect himself. Y/N didn’t give him time to recover, already there when he got to his feet and slamming her body into his, forcing him back towards the chunk of ice behind him. He shoved her off him, his shoulder slamming into hers as he tried to knee her in the stomach but her hands were there to stop him, shoving him back. Shoto grunted at the sharp sting of an electric shock shot through his knee and down his leg but he couldn’t afford to let it stop him.

Shoto ran toward her, throwing a wall of ice towards her but suddenly his feet slid out from under him and he went tumbling backwards, sliding along the smooth path of ice until he rolled off the end and tumbled into the dirt. Groaning at his own inability to control his quirk Shoto quickly stood up, ready to launch another attack but Y/N held up a hand and Shoto instantly stopped. She laughed nervously, eyes darting down to his feet and Shoto followed, tipping his head forward to see what she was looking at. There just in front of his boots was the boundary line and he was on the wrong side of it.

His fists clenched tight at his side, nails digging into his palms. He had lost and all because he couldn’t control his own dammed quirk. Y/N looked at him apologetically, a sad smile on her lips and Shoto was reminded of her earlier words. A disappointment, that’s what she had called him. He had aimed to change that but here he was, a failure. She had wanted more from him, wanted him to beat her and he had been unable to do so.

Y/N lifted her arms above her head, lacing her fingers together and stretched. She moaned loudly, eyes fluttering shut and lips parting slightly. Shoto wanted to look, wanted to see the roll of her body but he didn’t deserve such a reward for his incompetence. Instead he set about melting all the ice he had left dotted around the field, making quick work of getting rid of it for the next person. He could feel Y/Ns eyes on him, watching him move around the field. It felt like a weight on his shoulders and for once he just wanted her to stop looking.

“Hey”. Shoto stilled at her gentle voice, her delicate hand landing gently on his shoulder. He didn’t turn to look at her, couldn’t stand to see the disappointment there. “Thank you”. Shoto’s head snapped to the side, eyes wide and failing to comprehend what she was saying. “What?” She smiled sweetly at his confused word, moving to stand between him and the half melted sheet of ice. “I said thank you. No offence to the others but that was the first fight I really had to work hard to win. I had fun and that’s because of you, so thank you for giving me that”. She sounded so sincere, a slight blush forming on her cheeks but she never looked away from him, her eyes determinedly staying on him.

Shoto wasn’t quite sure what he should do with that information. She had had fun because of him and that was good, had him tingling with satisfaction that he had been the first to make her feel that way. But the small cut on her lip and the dried smear of blood across her chin reminded him that he had hurt her and that left him feeling torn between guilt and elation. He wanted to reach out and touch it. Cup his hand over her cheek and swipe his thumb across the abused flesh but he was unsure if the action would be welcomed. He was unsure of so much now and he didn’t know how to correct that. Didn’t know where he stood with Y/N and how her interest in Bakugou would fit into whatever was happening between them. He didn’t even know if he could trust his quirk any more. He would have to talk to Aizawa when class was over, maybe even go back to some basic training to fix whatever had gone wrong.

“And I’m sorry for how it ended. I know that it wasn’t what you had hopped for but maybe next time yeah?” Y/Ns smile feel into a frown and when she spoke she sounded genuinely sad, if not a little guilty and Shoto couldn’t understand why. It had been his fault, she didn’t need to apologise for his lack of control. “Yeah” he managed to mumble, still confused as to what was going on.

She gave his shoulder one last squeeze before she let go, heading back to the middle of the pitch and leaving him to finish melting the last bit of ice. Shoto didn’t stop watching her as he let the flames consume the ice, melting it in a matter of seconds. She looked so at ease back out there, rolling her shoulders and stretching as she prepared herself for whoever was coming next. Shoto would guess that it would be Bakugou, Midoriya being left to last as he was the most powerful out of the class and would probably be the hardest one for Y/N to win against. “Bakugou, its’ your turn” Aizawa yelled.

With one last glance at the girl Shoto headed back to his seat, sinking down between Midoriya and Uraraka. At some point during his fight Iida had returned, looking tired but otherwise intact. “That was amazing Todoroki” Midoriya gushed, smiling brightly up at him and practically vibrating in his seat. “Thanks” Shoto murmured, unable to muster up any sort of enthusiasm. Frowning he looked down at his hands. He let his quirk burst to life, ice covering one hand whilst flames danced in his other palm. It all felt normal and as he willed them to move they did exactly what he wanted. There was no resistance, no acting out on their own. So what had gone on out on the field?

“Are you okay?” Midoriya asked tentatively for what felt like the hundredth time today. Sighing Shoto turned to look at his friend, offering the worried teen a small smile. “It’s’ nothing. Just having some issues with my quirk. Nothing some extra training won’t solve”. Midoriya frowned at him, gripping his chin and tilting his head to the side slightly. “What do you mean?” Shoto looked back down at his hands, flexing his fingers as he tried to find the correct words. “It was like they had a life of their own and I couldn’t control it. They kept doing things that I didn’t want to and I don’t know why”. Next to him Midoriya hummed before dissolving into mumbling. Shoto couldn’t keep up with it, only picking out odd words but he was used to his friend’s odd habits by now.

“Bakugou, let’s go” Aizawa yelled. Frowning Shoto leaned forward to look at the still seated blonde. The blonde frowned as he looked out to Y/N in confusion and she rolled her eyes at him, making a come here motion with both her hands. “Well? You coming or what blondie?” she demanded, looking at him expectantly. That seemed to get the blonde moving, snarling as he stomped his way across the field to her. Shoto wondered what had had the other teen so out of it that he hadn’t noticed his name being called. Normally he would be up and darting across the pitch before his name had even finished being called.

“Finally decided to join me then. Thought you were going to chicken out” she teased the blonde, smiling brightly even as he scowled at her. It was brave of her to antagonise him before their fight, the teen likely to be even more aggressive if he was annoyed but Shoto suspected that was what Y/N was trying to do. She wanted their best and she was prepared to do whatever it took to get it off them.

Bakugou took a threatening step forward, his fists clenched at his side as he yelled at the girl. “Ha! Like hell I would. Your perky arse is mine”. Y/Ns eyes widened at his words, along with Shoto’s and probably half the classes. “What did he just say?” Uraraka whispered next to him, sounding just as surprised as Shoto felt. Well that answered that then, Bakugou was clearly interested in Y/Ns assets.

The blonde blushed as he realized what he had said, clearly embarrassed about what he had let slip. It was a good look on him, the dark red on his cheeks almost matching his intense eyes. Y/N seemed to think so to if the wide smirk and look of amusement was anything to go by. “If you want it that bad all you have to do was ask” she winked at Bakugou, dragging her tongue over her lips then sucking the edge in between her teeth and biting down on it. Shoto felt the jealously rearing its ugly head again as she practically offered herself up to the blonde.

She continued to tease him, riling Bakugou up as she taunted him with the fact she had been stealing his food and not that he had been making it for her like Shoto had thought. Finally the blonde seemed to snap, demanding that she get on with it and fight him. Y/N looked bored with the prospect, having been enjoying the teasing and angry banter they had been having. “Fine, have it your way blondie. Just try not to disappoint me”. Her voice was cold as she spoke and Shoto wondered if faced with her disappointment Bakugou felt the same he had, like he failed her.

She lunged at him, moving so suddenly that Bakugou hardly had the time to dodge. Their fight was brutal, fast paced and explosive. It was hard to keep track of what was going on with the large explosions sending chunks of ground flying and dust clouds billowing through the air. She was being just as reckless as she had been with Shoto, jumping through explosions like they were nothing and he once again thought about the healing quirk but she had said no. It wasn’t her quirk but what did that even mean? If it wasn’t hers than how could she possibly be using it?

At some point Bakugou must of made the same assumption as he had, his attacks getting bigger and more dangerous, aiming directly at her and not seeming to care about the possibility of her getting hurt. Then suddenly the pitch went quite, the dust settling to reveal Y/N sat atop Bakugou, the teens chest pressed against the dirt and arms twisted behind him.

Midoriya gasped, hand darting out to clutch at Shoto’s arm as he leaned forward, a worried look on his boyish face. It always amazed Shoto that he still cared so much about the angry teen, even after everything he had been put through by him. Frowning Shoto turned his attention back to the two on the pitch, his eyes connecting with angry red ones. It only lasted a few seconds before Bakugou was screwing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw but Shoto had seen the panicked look in his eyes, the disbelief that this had happened to him. Bakugou was always so confident and to find himself being beaten was probably a large blow to his ego.

Y/N shifted, pressing her body tight against the other boys until she was practically laying on top of him. She lent in close, her face hovering next to his and then proceeded to lick across his sweat covered cheek. Bakugou’s eyes shot open and Shoto expected him to explode, quite literally at the action but instead he seemed to welcome it, gasping at the sudden contact. He had to wonder how often something like this had happened for the blonde to not care that she had licked him. If anyone else had tried to do something like that they would have got a rather large explosion to the face but not Y/N. No Bakugou liked it, that was clear enough but so did Y/N, moaning at the taste. Bakugou always smelt sweet, like burnt sugar so maybe he tasted like that to.

Shoto frowned as he watched them, Y/N grabbing his chin and turning it so he could look at her as they spoke. Shoto couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could see the smirk on Y/Ns lips and the blush on Bakugou’s cheeks. “Hey Jiro?” he asked, turning to look at the girl sat on the other side of Midoriya. Her eyes widened slightly as he called out to her but before he could ask for her to use her quirk she started to shake her head, a dark blush forming on her neck and cheeks. “No” she said flatly, refusing before Shoto had even had the chance to explain what he wanted.

Frowning he eyed her suspiciously. Her onyx eyes refused to meet his, instead darting towards Y/N and the ground, her ear cords seeming to twitch. Shoto’s eyes widened as he realised what was wrong, his own blush spreading across his cheeks. She had been asked to do that same thing when he and Y/N had been hidden behind the ice and she most likely had complied to the others request. That meant she had heard what Y/N had said to him, knew what he had been offered if he had won.

Panicking he darted his eyes down to Midoriya who had started muttering again, staring intently at whatever was happening on the pitch. Had she told them? Did the whole class now know what kind of things he wanted to happen between himself and Y/N. He looked back at Jiro, the panic probably clear on his face because her eyes widened before she started to shake her head. Shoto felt the relief crash into him, his shoulders sagging. He inclined his head towards her, mouthing a quick ‘thank you’. He would have to thank her properly latter, make sure she understood how grateful he was that she hadn’t gone blabbing to the rest of the class. It had probably been what Bakugou had been yelling about, getting annoyed with the girl if she had refused to tell him anything. Shoto was sure the other boy would have been able to guess what had been said between the two of them, just like Shoto could probably guess what Y/N was saying to him to get the normally unflappable blonde blushing and flustered.

A loud bang and a surprised cry had Shoto’s head snapping back round, just in time to see Bakugou scrambling to his feet and charging towards Y/N with an angry cry. He seemed angrier, his attacks getting bigger as he grew more reckless but Y/N didn’t seem to care, laughing as they danced around one another. Punches were thrown, kicks executed with precision and an almost constant cacophony of explosions raining down on them. Shoto could see they were yelling at one another as they fought, could see their lips moving but the sound of Bakugou’s quirk drowned out any words. Whatever it was Y/N was saying seemed to be making him angrier.

Her body glistened with sweat, just like Bakugou’s as they crashed together again. Bakugou threw her away from him, Y/N going with it and rolling across the ground only to dart back onto her feet and charge at the blonde. Shoto sucked in a breath as Bakugou lifted his arm, palm flat and his other hand curling around the pin on his gauntlet. Y/N was to close, unable to change direction but she didn’t seem to care, her smile just as wide as it had been for most the fight.

The explosion was loud as it ripped through the stadium, the force of it sending a large gust of wind slamming into the watching class. As Shoto turned his head, eyes half closed to protect them from the sting he could have sworn he could see a dark shadow move past the blond in a blur before another explosion came from behind him. Midoriya sucked in a breath, eyes widening as he lent forward and Shoto knew that Midoriya had figured it out. He knew what her quirk was.

As the smoke and dust cleared Y/N came into view first. She was stood motionless in the middle of the pitch, head held high and not a single scratch on her, even the split lip had gone. Bakugou growled, ready to launch another attack but Aizawa’s booming voice had him coming to a stop. Y/N relaxed, smiling widely a she pointed to her feet. Shoto’s eyes darted down, already knowing what he was going to find, what he didn’t expect was for Bakugou to drop to his knees, staring at the boundary line with a mix of disbelief and defeat.

He looked broken, knelt on the floor and just staring down at the smudged white line before him. Shoto couldn’t remember the last time Bakugou had lost a fight, his determination to be the best at everything driving him to stay at the top of the class. It would probably do him some good to learn a little humility but Shoto worried that it might break his fragile grip on his emotions first. “To bad, so sad, better luck next time” Y/N sing songed, shrugging her shoulders as if it was no big deal that she had just beaten the best in the class. It seemed a little cruel to rub his face in it like that but the blonde didn’t seem to hear her, staring at her in a daze.

Kirishima was the first to move, slowly making his way over to his friend’s side. “Come on man” Kirishima mumbled, slipping his arm around Katsuki and hauling him to his feet. Shoto watched as the blonde allowed the redhead to practically drag him back to his seat, the blonde dropping down into it with a huff. Instantly his friends were on him, chattering away and not seeming to care when he didn’t answer them.

“Midoriya” Aizawa said solemnly. Next to him Midoriya squared his shoulders, a look of determination about him as he pushed himself up of the bench. “Good luck Deku” Uraraka gave him a thumbs up and smiling brightly up at the green haired boy. Shoto expected him to return the smile but instead he nodded his head once and turned to stalk towards the waiting girl who was watching him in interest. “I hope he’ll be okay” Uraraka mumbled, frowning after their friend. “Midoriya has faced much harder foes before, this will be nothing for him” Iida said confidently and Shoto had to wonder who he was trying to convince, the girl next to him or himself. “Yeah your right. If anyone can beat her it will be Deku”.

Shoto wanted to agree with Uraraka, he really did but he had the distinct impression that Y/N had been holding back on them and Midoriya was about to call her out. It was likely the class was about to find out how lucky they had actually been.

“Well if it isn’t the leader of the welcome committee, ready to get your arse handed to you?” Y/N said teasingly as Midoriya came to a stop in front of her, his head held high and a determined glint in his eyes. “I know what your quirk is” he yelled and everyone seemed to suck in a breath, waiting for the green haired boy to answer. Shoto knew he had worked it out. If any of them were going to it would be Midoriya with his keen and astounding analytical mind.

Y/N laughed gently, running a hand through her hair, the light glinting off her bracelets. He leaned forward slightly, listening intently. Shoto had been wrong with his guess, as had everyone else and he desperately wanted to know. She had kept it hidden so well but finally the suspense was over, the secret out and hopefully he would have a better understanding of her once this was over.

Y/N shrugged, smiling at the green haired boy in amusement. “I knew you would, that’s why I saved you till last”.

[laceymorganwrites]

Dämmerlicht - Choso´s part

Word count: 5, 212

Pairing: Choso x reader

Warnings: swearing, happy what if scenario, description of a panic attack

A/N: okay so. Choso is my second fave. I am MAD AS HELL at Mappa for animating him the way they did. But alas, I still wanted to get this out since it is his first anime appearance. So, have this as a celebration <33

Taglist: @miyaniacs

Choso didn´t know what to expect when he read the text message from one of his brothers.

“A really nice person prevented us from getting killed and now we´re having drinks with them and the attackers. You should come over”

What the hell was that even supposed to mean? His day was already stressful enough and now he was beyond worried for his brothers. If anything were to happen to them the people responsible wouldn´t be able to think about taking their next breath as it would be their last one.

On the way to the described area his head was full of questions about their well being, what had happened, had he failed as an older brother?

It was quite the long way and he wondered what kind of bar would be situated this far up a hill, hidden in the woods nonetheless.

But then again, it wasn´t just any bar as he would learn later.

You were a teacher at jujutsu high in Tokyo, arriving just in time to stop Yuuji and Nobara from killing innocent curses.

Everyone else was occupied and at first you thought the kids would finish the mission without any problems. But as always it got more dangerous than anyone had bargained for.

Since you were the only one available right now you were dispatched to the location.

When you arrived you saw that Megumi was fast asleep, he probably exerted himself, that was a first. You wondered what motivated him that much. You would ask him tomorrow when he was awake again.

For now you had to search for the other kids, so you followed the great amount of cursed energy you could feel.

Luckily you were in time.

“They´re being manipulated! Back off, you guys” you announced your presence and got ready to defend the kids since you could still feel a bit of violence from the curses, albeit forced.

Sensing cursed energy was your specialty, you could tell the intentions clearly which is why you realized sooner than others that not all curses were bad, most were just as bad off as you were.

You have been part of the movement for a long time, the Dämmerlicht was like your second home.

It seemed like you would introduce the kids to it too, not that you minded. Gojo and you talked about this a lot, when the right timing would be, whether or not they´d understand.

But you trusted those kids, you believed in them, they were good people.

You were glad you could talk to the curses and help them defy Mahito and his group.

It was a relief, but also so much more than that. It meant peace, even if it was just for a moment.

Trusting didn´t come easy for you, growing up in such a corrupt and cold system you weren´t surprised in the least.

Though you found comfort in the fact that you weren´t alone. It was nice teaching the way you wanted to, the right way, teaching the children everything you have learned, exposing the elders as much as you could get away with.

“Alright, is everything else here done?” you asked, looking at your watch since you didn´t want to leave Megumi unguarded for long.

“Uuuh I think so…” Yuuji replied, he still didn´t quite grasp the situation. Megumi should have exorcised the curse that was plaguing his sister and so many others, so that didn´t leave any other tasks.

After some time the kids got used to the curses being just like them, meaning no harm. It felt like going home with friends as you squeezed them all inside your car, honestly it was quite the miracle they all fit in there.

“Someone wake Megumi. I need to talk to you” your voice got serious, you reckoned now would be a good time.

Megumi yawned and was kind of confused as to how he got in the car and why there were curses around him. Mostly he was just a tad bit annoyed that he was woken up.

“Listen, I know you must be confused right now. But you have to listen carefully to what I will say next. And keep this a secret. If this gets out of the car we and all my friends are going to be dead.” you started, the kids were focused now and nodded along with you.

“Forget everything you´ve learned, about this world, about curses. Most of it isn´t true. Yeah, there are vengeful spirits out there, but there are just as many sorcerers that are as bad as them if not worse. Don´t trust anyone, learn to trust your gut. You need to learn how to read cursed energy better. That way you always know what the intentions are. I will show you a very special place now. A safe space for people like me, people like us. I´m showing you this now and not later because I want you to know the truth, I want you to do better than any of us ever could. You should realize it before it´s too late. Maki´s already in on it” you explained, going into further detail about the history of the bar and the movement and how Gojo is part of it as well.

The last part seemed to fully convince them luckily, after all Gojo spent even more time with them than you. You just taught them basic things like combat, when it came to missions and such Gojo was the one to do that.

When you arrived you immediately relaxed, the familiar veil had you at ease, feeling a bit of peace.

“Come on now, guys, if we stand around too much we´re risking being seen” you warned them and hurried inside with them.

“Damn, that´s a strong veil…” Megumi said out loud, looking around and as suspected taking a defensive stance as soon as he saw the customers in the bar.

Though he relaxed when he couldn´t feel any malice from them.

You guided them to the backroom where the meetings were held and introduced them to the owner.

“Oh, recruiting already, I see how it is” they grinned at you and explained everything in more detail to the kids and the curses.

After the initial shock they accepted it and were more calm about it than you had thought. It brought a smile to your face.

You decided to hang out a bit more and get to know each other, it should be fine since Gojo would let them sleep in either way, he had the first lessons tomorrow.

He even volunteered to pick them up, after all he still needed to pay his daily visit to the bar.

Nobara and Eso got along quite well, already making plans to hang out more. She promised to go shopping with him once or at least get him one of those tops with an open back.

She was good at encouraging him to show it more and be proud of it, he appreciated it, though was far from being as confident as her.

He envied her a bit, but not in a vengeful way, it was more of an admiration for a new friend.

Eso would like it if they would hang out more, maybe he would get over his insecurities that way.

Megumi also wasn´t that much on edge as he usually was, you saw that as a massive win and were in a good mood.

“I think Choso would like it here, do you think we should invite him?” Kechizu asked his brother who nodded. “Choso´s our old brother, he´s the eldest. You can trust him”  Eso assured you, usually you´d be distrustful towards such statements but since you didn´t feel any bit of lying intentions you agreed to it.

You wondered what their brother would be like and listened to the other´s fond words of him while you waited for his arrival.

Choso arrived at the destination and looked around, no one followed him. Good.

His brothers told him that he should be extra careful, so he was.

He had to admit he was quite curious about this place, so he entered through the curtain, it was very strong and only let people with good intentions in.

As soon as he saw his brothers laughing with you and your students he felt at ease and approached your table, greeting you politely and sitting down next to his brothers, checking for injuries just in case.

“You must be Choso, it´s nice to meet you” you smiled and reached out your hand he reluctantly shook.

Choso was naturally rather on guard, especially around sorcerers like you. Though he couldn´t sense any malice from you.

But that didn´t mean anything.

The last time he met someone like you it got him and his brothers sealed. It was his fault and his brothers had to pay for it, it wasn´t fair. If only he paid more attention.

But that was about a hundred years ago already, he couldn´t remember.

He didn´t know what to feel when he was unsealed. All his life he spent protecting his brothers and spending time with them, he didn´t know anything else to do.

And now they were supposed to follow some newbie? Not with him. Nobody gave him and his brothers orders, they were free after all.

And, even though he hated playing that card, more experienced and older than the new curse.

He didn´t know anything about the world yet while they had experienced it all. Though really, what did he experience? It wasn´t much.

It would be sad if he cared. He couldn´t know what he missed if he didn´t even know how to.

Choso decided to shake your hand, what did he have to lose? Maybe not all sorcerers were lying and manipulative scum.

If anyone could convince him it would be you.

He was looking at you as if to find evidence that would prove him wrong, anything, signs that this was a trap and not just a dream too good to be true.

In his life he learned not to trust things, feelings and people that were too good to be true. Cause they never were.

Sighing he relaxed in his seat and took part in the conversation, though he didn´t talk much. He never did, not really seeing the point in it. He never liked being the center of attention, preferring hearing others talk.

Yuuji reminded him of his brothers, he was full of hope, so optimistic still.

Maybe it was because of this place though, he didn´t seem like someone the elders could control like a puppet, telling him to kill every curse in his way.

No, he actually thought he could be a dear friend.

“Before I forget, I still need to cut your ties to Mahito” you told them, you didn´t like the thought of him finding this place.

“You can do that?” Eso asked curiously, so jujutsu had also improved since back then.

“Yeah, I just have to concentrate, but it´ll be over quickly” you remarked, focusing your cursed energy in your hand, forming it to a sharp blade. Then you turned your attention back to their energy, making out the ties that bound them to Mahito clearly, you held your breath as you carefully cut them. Though you were quick about it, not wanting to hurt them any more than they already have been.

Choso was very defendant as always, wanting to be the first one to be freed so that he could see if your technique was harmful or not.

He was more than surprised when he realized that it wasn´t. Why would someone like you help them?

Though maybe it was because of you, you really were special, huh?

“So now that we´re free again we should get a place to stay again. Do you have any recommendations, (Y/N)?” Eso asked you, they previously talked about how they would support you in defeating Mahito to free the curses from his chains.

It was strange to think that they would be able to have a life now. It´s been so long that theirs was taken away from them.

Eso wished he never went into the human village to make friends…

Though Choso never held it against him. No one did.

“Hmm, you could try it in the outskirts, most of the costumers live there, they have a little community there, it´s protected by a veil too. Everyone´s nice and would love to welcome you there” you smiled.

Your smile irritated Choso, why did you smile like that? As if everything was fine even though it clearly wasn´t? What were you trying to hide? Or were you just pretending? And for what? What use did it have?

He didn´t like people he couldn´t read, it made him uneasy.

“That sounds great, thank you so much. For everything” Eso said.

“I could show you around tomorrow actually! I´m only teaching the later lessons then” you offered.

So you were the friendly type, huh. Or were you? It could all still be a trap.

What even was that? A place where curses could live in peace? Yeah, right…

You´d have to be stupid to actually believe that.

Only later would he learn that you and the organization worked that hard so that it wouldn´t be a dream anymore.

“Well, it´s getting late. The kids should get back to the school. It was nice meeting you, I´ll see you tomorrow then” you announced, standing up with the students and being joined by Gojo who said goodbye to the owner.

Before leaving you were smiling at Choso again, was he just a joke to you? You did that on purpose, didn´t you? You really were an irritating individual.

“Thanks for joining us, Choso. It was nice to meet you” you said and sounded so genuine he almost believed it.

He just nodded until Eso nudged his side a bit to which he rolled his eyes.

“You´re not so bad either…” he gave in and once again was thankful for his brothers to get him out of his head.

Overthinking was easy, especially with a past such as unfortunate as theirs. But this wasn´t the past. Things changed. People changed.

“Man I never thought I´d be friends with a curse…” Yuuji laughed, his hands behind his head.

“See, I told you they´re not as bad as you think they are. Oh, Gojo, I´ll show them to the veil tomorrow, you go ahead and start teaching the reading technique” you reminded him and he nodded.

“Hmm I still think it´s too early for that, but alright. Who knows, maybe they´ll surprise us.” he answered, usually they would only learn this in their second year but why not? After all those kids had a lot of potential, he was sure they could do it.

Nobara exchanged contact information with Eso and made it her mission to spare some nail polish for him, maybe she would get to do his nails for him, it was nice to have someone with the same interests as her.

They went to sleep immediately after arriving since they were still drained from the mission while you and Gojo talked about everything that happened that day.

“If they manage they´ll be able to free other curses as well, we would get so much closer to our goal” you reminisced, a hopeful undertone in your voice.

“Don´t rush them. They´ll learn it in their own time” Gojo reminded you, he didn´t let it on oftentimes but he really did care about the children.

“Of course, I´ll see you tomorrow then” you waved goodbye and then went to your room.

Yeah, the kids would have it rough, there was no avoiding that. But you would try your best that they would only have it rough, not traumatizing and horrible.

It was the least you could do.

You thought back to Choso and his brothers, they were such a nice bunch and you couldn´t wait to meet them again tomorrow.

You were so happy that the students liked them too.

Sleep came easy to you that night, you just wished every day could be as peaceful as that.

Maybe you were living in a fantasy world that was so bright it made you lose any connection to reality, but you didn´t care. You would make it into a reality.

The next dame came quick, you were refreshed and ready for your mission.

Hurriedly getting ready and saying goodbye to Gojo and the students you made your way to the Dämmerlicht once again.

“Are you guys ready to go?” you asked, smiling the same way you did yesterday but somehow even more energetic.

The three brothers nodded, two more enthusiastically than the other. Choso still was on guard. And who could blame him? He didn´t want to trust you, didn´t want to repeat the same mistakes he made.

You were very adamant on changing that though, without meaning to that thought made him smile a bit.

Perhaps a little trust wasn´t all that bad.

On the way he looked around carefully, it was so loud and crowded, he didn´t like it one bit.

Choso was on edge until they arrived at the veil.

Everything had changed so much, there were so many new impressions that he couldn´t yet place.

It was just like back then, maybe even worse.

He could hear them whispering, he wasn´t wanted here, his brothers neither, at least he looked a bit human, it was so cruel… hurt so much.

Air.

He couldn´t breathe. Not that he needed to but still, it was so familiar, the breath in his lungs that was one of the few things left of his human side, he desperately clung to it.

It was his responsibility to provide for his brothers, to take care of them and he failed. He failed oh so miserably.

He always would… he wasn´t good for anything, why did he even exist? Nobody wanted him anyway.

No, quite the contrary, they wanted him and his brothers gone. They didn´t belong here, they never did. They were an anomaly, only born into this world to be killed.

If only it was enough that he died… his brothers were innocent, they would live in the shadows, not bothering anyone, they promised. Only spare them. Please.

I´m sorry, I´m so sorry. I´ll be good, I promise, I won´t cause any trouble, just please… don´t hurt us.

Choso was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to get out of his thoughts, his eyes were wide but he was looking through everything, his hands were shaking and his mouth was dry.

Help…

Somebody help him, anyone, he would do anything. Please just make it go away.

“Alright! There we are!” your chipper voice was like a hand reaching out to him, he desperately took it.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I owe you my life.

You didn´t notice that Choso was having a panic attack since you walked ahead, but you definitely saw the tension leave his body and his face relax as you turned around to them to show them inside.

Choso didn´t know what to expect of this place.

He had thought it would be dirty and horrible, like a ghetto for curses, but it wasn´t anything like that.

After entering the veil he saw a quieter version of what had happened outside. It was like a hidden town within the city.

Suddenly he felt at ease.

Looking around he saw houses just like he knew from back then, but also modern ones. There were all sorts of shops and a park, even a cinema.

It felt like a dream.

“There are a few empty houses near the woods, but we also have an apartment building is you prefer that. Just make yourselves at home” you smiled and for once Choso was grateful for it, if you smiled it meant everything was alright.

Everything would be fine. They were safe.

You showed them around and talked about everything, told them who they should ask about the living situation and such.

“Can we really live freely like this?” Choso asked, he wanted to wish they could, wanted to be hopeful but he knew where that led.

“Well, I wish you could live with us, but that´s way in the future. For now we´re all working together so that you can at least have peace and quiet here. You shouldn´t have to hide, but anything else is impossible right now. People fear what they don´t understand. And vengeful spirits are born from that fear, they could destroy everything we have worked so hard for” you sighed. It just wasn´t fair. You hated how you practically contained them, that it was the only solution you could come up with.

You had failed.

It was hard for you to see this place in a positive way.

Sure, the curses that lived here were happy and free, they built an own community, stood together and it was beautiful. But there was so much more out there that they couldn´t enjoy and it made you mad.

You smiled and waved to some curses you knew.

“Thank you for showing us here, it´s nice to know that we can have a place to live in peace” Eso smiled.

“No problem at all! At least it´s a beginning…” you shrugged, hoping you would be able to make it even better for them.

The three bothers talked among themselves a bit, deciding that Eso and Kechizu would go ahead and talk to the curse in charge already to get a place to stay.

Choso told them to be careful and then turned to you.

“Why are you even doing all of this? Didn´t your people tell you we´re monsters and dangerous?” he asked, this has been on his mind from the beginning and quite frankly irritated him.

“Yes, they did. They tried to make you out to be the bad guys. But I always asked myself: if the monster is under my bed, isn´t it scared too? Doesn´t the monster feel just the same as I do? What makes us different? If it´s already near me why shouldn´t I make friends with it? Besides, my teachers really didn´t do a good job at the whole hate speech against you. I mean they tell you that every curse is evil and then teach you how to read cursed energy” you laughed and shook your head. Yeah, the elders and leaders of the clans were stupid. So was the whole clan system. It was so old already and yet nobody dared defy them. Because they were wiser than them apparently.

You always hated the hierarchy of old people sticking to what´s been taught to them. After all things changed. You had to adapt to and accept it, not just keep going with your old traditions and teachings.

“You know that way of thinking gets you killed, right? You can´t just say that every curse is good. Why do you so desperately want to believe in the good in people? Especially when they´re moved by fear and greed?” Choso questioned. Sure you seemed convinced enough and did the right thing, but still, was it worth dying for?

“Because I´ve seen so many people suffer from my kind, sure some curses are bad, but only some. My whole world is corrupt and based on lies. How can you expect me to stand by idly?”

Choso smirked at your words.

“Keep that attitude. If people like you existed back then…” he started, almost trailing off.

“Never mind. You do now, that´s all that matters” he stated, seeming lost in thought.

You didn´t want to pry so you stayed quiet.

“Thank you. For trusting me. I know how weird this all must be for you, thank you for giving it a chance” you smiled, though this time it was more soft and gentle.

“Well, if you´re taking a step towards us, I might as well take one towards you” he said, he no longer was on edge.

Now you understood what his brothers meant when they said he was kind.

“I have to get to work, but I´ll drop by later to see how everything´s going!” you waved goodbye and went back to the school.

In the following weeks you spent a lot of time with the brothers, helping them move in with your students. Nobara brought a lot of decoration that she didn´t need anymore and also the promised nail polish. Eso and her would spend the day shopping in the small clothing shops on the main marketplace while Megumi, Yuuji and Kechizu carried the moving boxes and furniture.

Choso and you did the rest of the organizational things.

During those weeks you learned more about him and grew closer, he had a calm presence that you liked being in.

He didn´t talk much, but when he did it was heartfelt, you really appreciated that about him.

And he told you about his past, about the human village they wanted to visit. His little brothers wanted to make friends there even though he had warned them about it. But instead of going after them, he left them alone. They returned home heavily injured. They were lucky that there was no sorcerer in town back then.

Since then they were moving a lot, never being able to stay in one place, too scared of being cast out or even worse. Sorcerers were omnipresent to them.

And even though Choso was being more careful than ever, he made one big mistake.

He trusted someone he really shouldn´t have, being invited to the village where the citizens even talked to his brothers before sealing them, giving them false hope and betraying their trust.

Sorcerers were the worst.

But you convinced him otherwise, showed him that there were others like you, who wanted to live with them, who not only tolerated them, but actually liked them.

You really were special, weren´t you?

At first he didn´t think anything about it, it was normal to spend that much time with a person, wasn´t it?

Still his brothers wouldn´t stop teasing him about his apparent crush on you. He didn´t know how to react, after all he never had a crush before, love and relationships were the last thing on his mind.

How did you even notice these things? Even Nobara teased him about it whenever she came over, but also told him that you were in the same boat.

He was glad that Yuuji was there too, he at least understood him and didn´t make him only more confused than he already was.

So what if he enjoyed your presence a tad bit more than he did everyone else´s? That didn´t have to mean anything.

Though now that the thought was inside his head, he just became hyper aware of it.

Nobara told Eso about a new ice cream place that would open inside the veil soon and how they needed to go there with everyone.

“Choso you should really ask (Y/N) out already, that´s the perfect place to go!” she encouraged him, but he just sighed.

“I never had ice cream before” he admitted, though it was more of a neutral statement, shocking Nobara and Yuuji.

“No way! You need to change that immediately!” Yuuji said.

“Yeah, that´s a crime!” Nobara added in the instance you walked in.

You were used to the commotion already, if you were being honest you liked it. If the kids were so at ease and comfortable everything would be fine.

“What is?” you questioned after joining them.

“Choso never had ice cream before, can you believe that?” Nobara told you, still in shock.

“Really? We need to change that” you said determined.

“If you say so, how about now? I could use some fresh air” he smiled, he would take any chance to be alone with you, especially after such an embarrassing conversation. Maybe they were right after all. But what should he do about that?

“Is it really that weird that I never had ice cream?” he asked, not understanding why everyone made such a big deal out of it.

“Hmm not really actually. I mean it´s so usual for us since we´ve grown up with it, but you´re from a different world, so it´s not surprising. But I have a feeling you´ll like it” you smiled.

“Everyone just talked about a new shop that opened… do you maybe wanna go there?” he said, thinking a bit and then taking a deep breath of courage before uttering his next word: “As a date?”.

You blinked twice, looking at him questioning, did he really just say that? It wasn´t just your imagination? It was so sudden but you couldn´t say you minded that in the least.

On the contrary, it excited you. “I´d really like that” you said, smiling the same way you only did when you were around him.

So he didn´t just imagine that, maybe his siblings were right, they were definitely more perceptive than he was when it came to such things.

“Heh, my first date. Just a warning though, I´m not good when it comes to those things, so please don´t be too disappointed with me” he told you, after all he didn´t know how he was supposed to behave now, was there anything he should do different?

“Don´t worry about that, you can´t disappoint me. I´m just really glad to be able to spend time with you. I… I like you a lot, Choso” you admitted to which he smiled. Usually he didn´t smile so openly, but with you he just couldn´t stop.

You made him do things he normally wouldn´t and somehow he enjoyed that way more than he thought he should.

It wasn´t a long walk to the ice cream place and it was almost empty too, which was nice.

“There are a bunch of different flavors, you can choose whatever you want” you smiled, telling him about your favorite flavors.

“I think I´ll try vanilla first” he said after looking at the menu.

You nodded and ordered for both of you, you decided to walk around the park a bit, the weather was really nice today.

Choso was a bit hesitant to try it, it was so cold… but then again it probably was supposed to be. He watched you eat your ice cream and wondered if your teeth didn´t hurt from all the cold.

Before it could melt though, you had warned him about that, he tried it.

It was something he never experienced before, yes, it was cold, but somehow that didn´t make his mouth numb like he feared.

Instead it melted in his mouth, the flavor was so simple yet immaculate.

“And? How is it?” you asked curiously. “I think I like it. It´s a weird texture but… it´s fun to eat” he chuckled slightly, imagining how stupid he must sound to you right now.

But he didn´t care.

It was you after all, you would never hold it against him.

No, you were excited and happy that he was having fun. You two decided that you would try a lot of new things together.

[joyful-soul-collector]

I’ve never known a kid like you to stay down for long

By @joyful-soul-collector for @pookiethefrickinbunn

@friendly-neighborhood-exchange

Relationships: Tony & Peter

Characters: Tony, Peter, Friday, Karen

Summary: Peter runs away after his identity is revealed, and is just trying to get by

It took longer than you’d think it would to find a roof that normal people couldn’t climb easily onto. Most places had some sort of roof access point, and Peter had been chased off them enough times to look for one that he literally couldn’t be kicked off of.

Though he was seriously considering leaving this one despite how safe it was. He was on a pretty tall building, tall enough that most people didn’t see him, and it didn’t have a roof access point either. But this seemingly perfect safe haven of a building was right next to a restaurant.

And Peter hadn’t eaten in days.

Peter pressed his hands to his belly as it rumbled for what must’ve been the millionth time that day. The smell of the food wafting through the air was practically torturous, making his mouth water so much he had to lift his mask up and wipe drool off his face at least every five minutes.

He was so hungry he’d spent the last half hour just sitting on the edge of the roof, inhaling the scent of food deeply and listening to his stomach growl.

But eventually he knew he had to leave. He’d already spent a week on this roof, and as safe as it was, nowhere was safe for very long. Not when everyone was trying to hunt you down for something you didn’t do.

It’d been a couple weeks after his identity was revealed that a video surfaced of Spider-Man supposedly beating up an unarmed, defenseless man. What the video didn’t show was the man dragging a screaming little boy into an alleyway, and Peter saving him. Videos like this had actually happened before, usually edited to make him look like the bad guy by The Daily Bugle. But this was the first time people had an address to attack. And because of that, the video stuck around, circulating around New York, until suddenly he didn’t feel safe anywhere at all.

And not only was he in danger, his friends and family were starting to be accused of supporting a horrible villain, and Aunt May had even considered moving. Even Mr. Stark had been pressured to fire Peter from the Stark Industries Internship Program. He didn’t, but the damage was done. Rather than put everyone through the pain of being his friend, his family, Peter left, with a vague plan to head west.

The hardest part was actually taking the tracker out of his suit. He knew how upset Mr. Stark would be that he broke his trust. Again.

That was two weeks ago, and now the only problem was the health alert in the suit. The health alert sent out a signal of Peter’s location if he were to lose consciousness while out on patrol. Peter had to take off the suit to sleep without having the alert go out (which really sucked, as the heater would’ve been nice on cold nights) but he also had to make sure he never fainted, passed out from blood loss, got knocked out, or straight up forgot to take off the suit before going to bed. Or, roof.

Which was easier said than done when you’re exhausted and starving and freezing to death. And unfortunately the health alert was too complex to remove without compromising the rest of the suit, possibly rendering it completely useless.

There was no way he’d survive without his suit.

And even if he didn’t admit it, Peter liked the idea of having a fail-safe in case anything really bad happened. He liked the idea that he might get to see Mr. Stark again.

But until then, he was tired with nowhere to sleep, hungry with nothing to eat, and sad with nobody to comfort him.

Peter sighed, massaging his empty stomach as he stood up shakily. Might as well leave now instead of torturing himself over the food. He walked over to where his backpack sat, and pulled a map out to make sure he was still going the right direction.

Peter’s complete lack of plan for when he arrived at this vague “west” was starting to bother him, but he didn’t have the energy to try and think of a plan now. All he knew was he needed to get some food, and fast. And for food, he needed money. He’d already spent everything he’d brought with him within the first week, and if he didn’t want to starve he needed to find somewhere that’d be willing to pay him for a couple odd jobs.

Like he’d ever be so lucky with his face plastered on every tv screen, the word “menace” echoing in every watcher’s ears.

He wondered if a store would be willing to help him out. Maybe they could pay him to restock some shelves or something, he’d done that plenty of times at Mr. Delmar’s.

Peter’s stomach grumbled loudly at the thought of one of Mr. Delmar’s sandwiches, and he gripped his belly with a hiss of pain. Yep, bad idea thinking about that. But still, a store was a good option. Especially a big one, one where an extra face wouldn’t look too suspicious. He might as well head out and look around now, nighttime was always the best to travel in. A lot less eyes on you.  

Peter slipped off his shoes and pressed the spider emblem on his chest, breathing a small sigh of relief as it well away. Having his shirt and pants on under the suit was always uncomfortable, but it made it so he didn’t have to change into his clothes to sleep. It was warmer too, but he needed to be in street clothes now.

But Peter started shivering almost immediately, his trembling hands having difficulty pulling his hoodie out of his pack and stuffing his suit in to replace it. He quickly forced it on, teeth chattering as he pulled up the hood and rubbed his arms.

He really shouldn’t be this cold. It was springtime, but no matter what he did, Peter was always freezing without the heater in his suit to warm him. It made sleeping practically impossible, but there was no way he would risk Mr. Stark finding him. He couldn’t put everyone through the pain of just… being around him.

When he’d stopped trembling enough to actually get moving, he yanked off his mask, swung on his backpack and slipped back on his shoes. Looking down at himself he grimaced at the splotches of dirt and grime all over his clothes, and the fact that his hoodie pocket was ripping, and his sleeves were stretched too wide, and his shoes were peeling away from the soles.

He actually felt his eyes starting to sting at the sight of himself.

How could things have gotten so bad? All I wanted to do was help people. I just wanted to save people, I was helping, so why am I here? Why am I running away from the people I’m trying to save, sleeping on rooftops and freezing to death and so fucking hungry my belly hurts? Why do I fuck up everything I touch?

Peter sighed and brushed a tear off his face roughly, pushing the thoughts away as best he could. It’s just his Parker Luck, that’s all. Fucks everything over as best it can, as usual.

I just hope it doesn’t get me discovered. I don’t care what happens, as long as Mr. Stark and Aunt May and my friends can’t find me, they’ll be safe, he thought, swinging his leg off the roof and carefully climbing down. Normally he would just web his way down, which is a lot faster, but he didn’t have a lot of web fluid left, and there was no way for him to make more.

The scent of food was growing stronger and stronger as he climbed down, to the point where he felt a bit lightheaded with hunger. Maybe… maybe he could sneak in and grab something. Or not even that, he could just walk in and ask for a table for one. Order and eat, then book it. People dine and dash all the time right? And it looked so warm and cozy there.

He wondered when the last time he actually felt comfortable. His joints and shoulders constantly ached from sleeping on the rooftops, not to mention that food would definitely ease the pain in his belly. But what if they suspected him? Or recognized him from the news? He could still sneak in, and if someone caught him he could beg them not to tell, beg them to keep quiet, beg them for something to eat--

“Oh my god, what am I thinking?” Peter said to himself, finally setting foot on the ground. He couldn’t do that. Any of that. He’s supposed to be the hero, heroes don’t steal food, or dine and dash, or beg people for things.

But when his stomach rumbled loudly again it seemed to be saying “heroes gotta eat too.”

Peter was still weighing his options, staring at the restaurant and rubbing his belly, when he heard a shriek split the air.

“HELP! Help, someone please!”

Peter groaned, for once feeling like he’d rather not be a hero now. If everyone was just gonna turn on him, why should he waste his time trying to save them? Hell, why should he even consider whether or not he should steal food? He wanted to eat dammit, why shouldn’t he just ignore them, and instead go order eight cheeseburgers, and three milkshakes, with a side of five fries?

But when the person screamed again, Peter seemed to snap out of it, suddenly realizing his thoughts.

Shit.  

Peter quickly yanked off his hoodie and shoes and threw his suit back on, gasping at the wave of heat that spread over his skin as the heater started up.

“Karen! Tell me where those screams are coming from!” he said as he frantically pulled on his mask.

“Plotting route now,” she responded, a blue arrow pointing him across the street and into an alleyway. Peter webbed his way there as fast as he could, cursing under his breath.

“Dammit Parker, what the hell is wrong with you? Oh my god if they got hurt--Fuck, man!”

He dropped into the alleyway to see a woman pointing a gun at a man and what must’ve been his son behind him. The man was pleading to her, begging her not to hurt his baby. Peter’s guilt only got heavier as he realized if he’d gotten here sooner then maybe him and his son wouldn’t be so terrified.

“HEY!” Peter shouted, causing all three of them to start and look at him. The woman’s eyes were glassy and drunken, the same look Peter saw on a lot of drivers he saved people from. “Put the gun down! Drop it, you don’t want to hurt them!”

“Spider-Man?” Peter heard the little boy squeak.

“SHUT UP!” The woman screamed shrilly, whipping around to face them again and gripping the gun tighter.

“No! Look at me! Point that at me!” Peter cried, running forward and forcing himself between the gun and pair trapped at the end of the alleyway. The woman seemed to be so stunned at this move that she didn’t even react.

“Eyes on me,” Peter said calmly, staring wide at her. As he went on he slowly began to turn around her, and she instinctively followed him with her eyes and gun. “Everything’s fine, just keep… looking… at… me.”

When she’d made enough of a turn for the boy and his father to run behind her and escape, Peter snatched her arm and yelled “GO!”

The woman tried to turn as the pair took off, the father holding his child to his chest, but Peter held fast, gripping her arm tight enough for her to cry out in pain.

BLAM!

The force of the bullet nearly knocked Peter off his feet, as if the white hot pain wasn’t enough to do that. Every bell and alarm in his head was ringing, his Spidey Sense spiking to the point where the pain made his vision swim in front of him.

If you asked Peter now what he did after that, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. He doesn’t remember webbing the woman to the wall and clutching his shoulder as he stumbled out of the alleyway. He doesn’t remember hearing sirens and dazedly thinking he has to hide before they see him. He doesn’t even remember climbing into a dumpster and falling with a whimper on a pile of black trash bags out of sight.

And he sure doesn’t remember the roar of repulsors just outside his hiding place.

In fact, all he remembers after that is realizing he forgot to take off his suit, and that his shoes, backpack, and hoodie, were still sitting next to the restaurant.

~~~

Tony hadn’t slept since Peter went missing. He spent every minute, every second looking for Peter. Even when Pepper urged him to sleep, even when Rhodey came in to give him another meal to be left uneaten, he didn’t stop. God, all he wanted was for his baby to come home. He knew why Peter left, he knew Peter thought it was the right thing, but sometimes he wondered where the hell he got all the self-sacrifice from.

In the back of Tony’s mind he knew Peter had gotten it from him, but that only made him feel worse. He hated that he may have inspired Peter’s idea to go off on his own, to throw himself at the mercy of the world just to keep people from being inconvenienced.

“Friday scan the latest news articles for sightings of Spider-Man please?” Tony said, drinking what must’ve been his fourth cup of coffee that day.

“There are 32 articles, Boss,” she responded promptly.

“And how many of those are real?”

“None, sir.”

“Right. Awesome.”

Tony set down his coffee, and pulled up a hologram, running his usual searches and scans for Peter. Every day was looking more and more hopeless, and Tony’s last thread to cling to was that someone would spot him and he’d be able to get there in time before Peter slipped out of his grasp. Again.

There was also the possibility of the health alert going off. But for that to happen Peter would have to either get seriously hurt, or happen to fall asleep in the suit, which he seems to be taking very careful steps not to. He’d hate for Peter to get hurt, even if it meant being able to find him.

“Boss!” Friday said suddenly, startling Tony so much he knocked his mug off the counter and it smashed to the floor. But he ignored it, knowing Friday had never used this amount of urgency in her voice before.

“What is it?! Where is he!?”

“His health alert went off, I’m sending coordinates to Mark 42 now!”

Tony rushed to the suit room and stepped into the Mark 42, blasting off of the launchpad and turning the repulsors to full strength, headed straight for Peter’s coordinates.

“Talk to me Fri.”

“Peter has been shot in the shoulder, no major arteries hit, but he is losing blood. He seems to be extremely sleep deprived as well as malnourished, and will lose consciousness soon.”

“God kid, what have you gotten yourself into?” Tony muttered. He was surprised at how close Peter was, he thought in the two weeks he’d been missing he might’ve gone farther, but he seems to have only made it just outside New York City.

“Land here, Boss,” Friday said suddenly. Tony looked down and saw a pitch black alleyway, and quickly descended down, landing a few meters away from a dumpster. But from what Tony could see, nobody was here.

“C’mon Fri, I don’t fucking have time for puzzles--”

“The garbage, Boss,” Friday interrupted. Tony felt his skin go cold as he turned around, staring at the dumpster. He quickly went over and peered inside.

And there he was.

My kid, my Peter.

He was sprawled limply over a mound of trash bags, blood leaking out of a bullet hole in his shoulder. Tony pulled off his mask and took in his pale, thin face and dark circles under his eyes.

“Oh my god--Oh Pete.” He lifted him from the trash, feeling tears of both relief and fear spring to his eyes. “Hey kiddo, we’re gonna get you home now, okay buddy? We just um… we gotta stop this bleeding first.”

“Karen says Peter’s possessions are next to the restaurant across the street, there’s a hoodie there that you can use to stop the bleeding,” Friday said quickly. Tony flew gently to the spot she indicated, and found a discarded hoodie that was nearly threadbare, a pair of shoes that were barely recognizable as shoes, and a ratty old backpack where Peter must’ve kept his extra things in. He almost thought it’s where he kept his food too, but the kid was practically a sack of bones, there’s no way he’s been eating much.

“Okay baby, I’m just gonna set you down so I can get this hoodie tied around you,” he said, knowing Peter couldn’t hear him but feeling too relieved that he could talk to his kid again to stop. “We’re gonna stop the bleeding and get you home okay? It’ll all be okay, I promise Pete.”

Once Tony got the ratty sweater tied around Peter’s shoulder enough to keep constant pressure on it, he quickly shoved the shoes into Peter’s pack and swung it over his shoulder. Then he gingerly picked him up, cradling his head and hoping the metal fingers weren’t too uncomfortable for him.

“Okay Pete, we’re gonna go now okay? We’re gonna go and get you patched up now, you’re safe now alright?”

Tony’s helmet clanked shut and he blasted off, headed straight for the Tower again, still speaking comfortingly to Peter, hoping somehow he could hear.

~~~

Peter woke very slowly, slipping in and out of consciousness for what could’ve been seconds or days. Ultimately what woke him was realizing that he was far more comfortable than he should be. He should be freezing, his shoulders should be aching from the hard rooftop, his face should be sticky and wet with grime.

He shouldn’t feel a familiar warmth in his hand.

Peter finally opened his eyes, the action much harder than it sounds. He was in a hospital. No, not a hospital, it wasn’t quite the same. A medbay. Stark Tower’s medbay.

And the person holding his hand was Mr. Stark himself. He had his head on the hospital bed, snoring softly and holding Peter’s hand firmly, as though terrified if he let go, Peter would simply fade away.

No. No no no no no, I shouldn’t be here, no, oh god--

Peter’s eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t even hold back a sob. His small whimpers were what woke Tony.

“Peter?” he mumbled, lifting his head quickly and blinking sleep away. When he caught sight of Peter’s face his expression softened and he quickly stood up, reaching over and wiping away Peter’s tears. “Oh god, Peter, hey it’s okay, it’s okay baby, you’re okay.”

“No, no, Mr. Stark I can’t be here, they’re gonna--”

“Shh, none of that kiddo--”

“No, no no no I have to leave Mr. Stark, you shouldn’t have taken me here, they’re gonna hurt--”

“Nobody's gonna hurt anybody, baby. I know what you were trying to do, I know you want to keep us safe,” Tony said, pulling the blankets higher up on Peter, and tucking them in. “But you don’t have to run away. I’ve taken care of everything.”

“W-What do you mean you’ve taken care of everything?” Peter said. It was then he noticed he was still absolutely starving, making it much harder to focus as he looked up at Tony.

“I mean I’ve made sure your friends, Ned, MJ, your school, and Aunt May, all of them are protected. If a villain comes anywhere near them, if news reporters bombard them, I’ll know. You don’t have to leave to keep them safe anymore, I’ve taken care of everything, kiddo,” Tony said, squeezing his hand. “Well almost everything. You sir, have not been easy to take care of, as you haven’t even been around for me to care for you.”

Peter looked down, fidgeting with his covers as his face turned bright red.

Mr. Stark had it covered. Of course he did, he’s a billionaire, he can just hire people to keep everyone safe. Why didn’t Peter think of that before?

“I-I’m sorry. I thought it would be better for everyone if I just left, I thought you guys would be happier--”

“Pete, we could never be happy without you,” Tony said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re too nice kid. Always thinking about others and forgetting to think about yourself. You don’t have to help anyone else right now, just let me take care of you okay?”

Peter smiled and nodded, wiping a few stray tears from his eyes.

“Okay,” he said softly. Tony smiled and squeezed his hand again before speaking again.

“You feel comfortable? Is there anything I can get you? Extra pillows or something?”

“Oh um, actually could--”

Peter’s stomach cut him off with a loud rumble, and he could feel it squirming hungrily under his skin. He felt his face flush a deep red and Tony gave a small chuckle.

“Jeez, can’t believe I forgot, you’re starving aren’t you?” Tony said. He patted Peter’s belly, and reached for something below the bed. When he pulled an entire paper bag full of food up Peter thought he might just cry. “How many cheeseburgers do you think you can fit in that tummy of yours?”

Tony helped Peter sit up, careful to keep his injured shoulder still, and gave him a burger. Peter ate like he never had in his life, shoveling mouthfuls of bread and meat and cheese down as fast as he could.

“Woah, kid, you might wanna slow down there,” Tony said after a moment, but Peter wasn’t paying attention. His heart was pounding and his stomach was aching and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything other than eating and swallowing as much food as he could. The guilt of wanting to steal from a restaurant instead of saving that little family seemed to bubble to the surface of his mind, and he quickly distracted himself with more bites of food, hoping to bury the guilt under it all.

“Peter? Hey, Pete, baby you gotta slow down--”

His eyes began to sting, and his breathing soon became hyperventilating, and he tried to ignore it, ignore the horrible feeling in his chest at the sight of the terrified father and his son, hoping it would go away if he just made the ache in his belly stop.

“Peter!”

A hand snatched his wrist and Peter looked up wildly, a desperate whine in the back of his throat. Tears were streaming down his face now, and he swallowed the bite he still had in his mouth. The endless mountain of guilt that had been collecting in his chest since he ran away was finally topped off by the look of worry in Tony’s face.

Why did it remind him so much of the father in the alleyway?

The dams broke, leaving Peter to curl up and sob into his knees.

“Oh no, hey, kiddo, what’s wrong? It’s okay baby, you’re not in trouble I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself, I promise,” Tony said gently. When Peter didn’t answer he crawled up and sat on the bed next to him, wrapping his arms around Peter’s trembling shoulders.

“I-I messed up Mr. Stark,” Peter said in a trembling voice. “I fucked up, I fucked up everything, I ruined it--”

“Woah hey, what’re you talking about? What’s going on?”

Peter turned and clutched Tony, sobbing into his shirt as he explained all about the restaurant and the father and his son, and the woman in the alleyway. How he’d wanted to steal, how he didn’t go to save them right away, how he wanted to just leave them and go inside the warm, cozy looking restaurant and forget it ever happened.

When he eventually finished Tony didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead he just reached into the bag and brought out another cheeseburger, holding it out to Peter. Peter didn’t take it, still feeling guilty for having wanted this instead of wanting to help.

“Eat up kiddo, it’s okay. Just go slower this time.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes you do. Everyone deserves to eat, and that includes you. You didn’t do anything wrong back there Pete, it was just a moment. Doing the right thing can be… extremely hard sometimes. I’m telling you the truth when I say that most people in that situation would’ve left someone else to take care of it and gone inside without much of a second thought.”

“But I’m not most people Mr. Stark. I’m supposed to be the ‘someone else’, I’m supposed to be the hero. How can I call myself something like that if I didn’t want to help?”

Tony rubbed his hand over Peter’s shoulder, and held the cheeseburger right under Peter’s nose, causing his stomach to growl again. Peter took it with a sigh and started eating again to quell the monster in his belly.

“Like I said kid, it was just a moment. You were cold, tired, starving, and worst of all you felt betrayed. The people you’re trying to save turned against you, so of course you felt less inclined to help them. But the thing about you is, even if you get knocked around, you never think it’s okay to hurt them back. That’s why you changed your mind. You knew that even if they hated you, you couldn’t handle the idea of them being hurt when there was something you could do to stop it. Not everyone is like that kiddo, you’re special. Just because there was one moment where you felt bitter, doesn’t mean you’re not a hero anymore. You still saved that little boy and his dad, you were still a hero. Everyone falters, it’s just a matter of if they stay down.”

He put a hand under Peter’s chin, coaxing him to look up into his eyes.

“I’ve never known a kid like you to stay down for long.”

Peter gave a watery smile and buried his face against Tony’s chest as they clung to each other, each finally feeling like they could relax.

Peter spent the next few days recovering in the medbay, his Aunt having arrived at the Tower only half an hour after he woke up and making him swear never to pull something like that again. His friends also came to visit, and MJ sketched Peter and Ned as they built an Avengers Lego Quinjet together.

It was on his last day in the hospital that he woke up to see Tony slumped in a chair and his Aunt May snoring on his shoulder, and he finally felt at home again.

[browniefox]

The Spectral Turnabout 1/?

I did it. I’m writing a lil fic for an ace attorney and paranatural crossover

oOo

Okay, Phoenix thought, I’m having a mental breakdown. That’s fine, this is fine.

To be fair, it’d been a stressful few hours. It wasn’t everyday you walked into the office and found your boss dead with her sister sitting next to her body, and then stayed there as the body became cold, the scent of blood so strong and present that at some point you stopped noticing it. To be so close to death, and of someone you knew...

Then there was the questioning after the police arrived, going over the same facts again and again and again. It dragged on for hours, caught in that system, cold and judging people staring at him. He’d been on the scene, it was natural he might've looked a bit suspicious. It was morning by the time he was let out, a weariness weighing him down from not having gotten any sleep that night. The original shock had worn off at some point, but there was still this numb disbelief. Mia… Mia was dead.

There were also the hallucinations, and what made him conclude he'd lost some marbles sometime over the night.

For the few days, Phoenix had sworn he’d been seeing things. It had started small, just flashes of pale-purple at the edges of his vision. They’d started to appear with increasing frequency, and no rest seemed to solve it. Phoenix had figured it was just stress from work.

Well, Mia’s death had officially pushed him over the edge.

Ever since the police had taken Phoenix in for questioning, the purple figures had resolved into full-blown monsters. They ran around, seeming to only occasionally care about things like doors and walls when it suited their need. Some just stayed up at the ceiling, looking down with mild interest, while others were more active. And absolutely nobody else seemed to notice them.

“What the hell?” Phoenix hissed under his breath as an odd gecko-looking thing skittered across the room, going right over his foot. He swore he’d felt the weight of it as it’d done so, and the creature had paused for half a second and looked back at him before continuing on its way. He shook his head. Just his imagination. After he talked to Maya, he’d go home and get some sleep, and if the problem persisted then he’d probably see a doctor about it…? No, he couldn’t do that, not when he was probably out of a job now! Okay, he’d just ignore the problem then. Maybe it’d go away eventually.

Maya entered the visiting room looking just as glum and sad as when Phoenix had last seen her, but that wasn’t much of a surprise.

“Oh, it’s you. The lawyer.” She said, clearly surprised at seeing him there. Phoenix nodded. She sat down in the chair on the other side of the glass. He’d followed Mia to meetings with defendants before, he was vaguely aware of how this went.

“G-good morning!” He rubbed his eyes, trying to stay awake, and also trying in vain to make the hallucinations go away. There was a particularly strong one hanging around Maya, a dark-purple mist seemingly coming off of her and falling to the floor like dry ice. All of his hallucinations seemed to carry with them some form of that mist, although the color changed from figure to figure, and there was something about Maya’s that was just… sad.

Then, suddenly, she perked up a bit, looking him over. Phoenix flinched back a bit at the sudden interest in her eyes.

“Mia didn’t tell me you were a spectral.” Maya said.

“I-, uh, I’m an a-attorney?” Phoenix corrected.

“I did know that, but you’re a spectral.” Maya insisted, brow furrowing a bit, and gestured to Phoenix. He looked around himself, trying to pinpoint what made her think the word ‘spectral’, whatever the hell that was. He was in his suit still, he’d stopped by the bathroom to make sure his hair was still in decent enough condition. His hallucination did seem to extend to himself, indigo-vapor that wasn’t really there floating off of him in spikey and nervous waves. He looked back at Maya, still very much confused.

“I- you’re, uh, I’m an attorney, and I think you might need one…?” Phoenix fumbled awkwardly. She was still looking at him oddly and it made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. The mist coming off of her started to morph and shift, and right before Phoenix’s eyes it formed the words ‘Can you read this?’

This was starting to get a bit too weird for him, but Phoenix was tired, and probably still in the denial part of the mourning process which wasn’t doing him much help, and before he knew what he was doing he’d opened his mouth and said,

“Y-yeah, how’d you do that?”

“How long have you been seeing things?!” Maya demanded, sitting forward now and close to the glass, and Phoenix flinched back.

“For a couple days, but it’s gotten really clear since sometime last night.” He admitted.  Maya gasped.

“Oh my gosh, you don’t know.” She said.

“Know what?” Phoenix was sitting forward now, because he wasn’t going crazy, except he still sort of felt like he was, and his boss was dead, and he was talking to his boss’ sister who was being accused of murdering her, and he was hallucinating but hallucinations couldn’t really be shared and Maya clearly understood what he was going through, and it had been a very long night.

“You’re a spectral.” She repeated.

And then she explained.

oOo

The details were a bit hard to take in, but Phoenix managed to grasp the gist of it - Maya had been a little quick during her explanation, but that wasn’t too surprising considering the whole ‘murder trial’ they were both preparing for.

So, he was now something called a ‘spectral’, which meant he could see spirits. Yes, ghosts did exist. No, spirits weren’t really ghosts per se. Maya and Mia were from a long line of spectrals who doubled as spirit channelers, capable of pulling ghosts from wherever ghosts went when they died and allowing them to speak through them. It was probable that he’d become a spectral due to being around Mia, but there were several factors that went into it. Colors of spectral energy - the mist he’d been seeing - didn’t mean anything he needed to worry about, and she’d promised to show him some tricks to it when the trial was over.

Actually, Maya had offered to show him some tricks before the trial, but Phoenix had insisted that they wait until she was declared ‘not guilty.’ She’d looked away from him at that moment, but Phoenix had insisted again he’d get her free.

He couldn’t let Mia down like that.

Seeing Miles in court was a shock, but in another way, Phoenix had to admit he'd badly wanted to. If only it wasn't such a high-stakes case like this. The bigger surprise was the spirit that stuck around Miles.

It looked a bit like a borzoi, but much longer to accommodate an extra pair of legs and an insanely long and fluffy tail. The back two pairs of legs were more like a bird’s instead of a dog’s, and its ears were replaced with wings. It had wrapped itself around Miles, head near one of his shoulders and then spiralling around him. A muted purple spectral energy poured from the spirit in calm and steady waves, and it kept its eyes on him.

Miles didn’t react at all to the spirit, although it seemed to be fairly in sync with him, responding to Miles’ moods and such. Phoenix wasn’t sure how normal that was. There were spirits everywhere. Not enough that any place felt crowded, but more like mice or spiders, always there somewhere. So far, though, none of them seemed overly concerned about people other than watching the trial like the rest of the spectators.

Well, again, none other than the dog-like spirit who seemed intent on hanging around Miles.

During the recess, Phoenix asked Maya about it.

“Well, sometimes a spirit will hang around somebody they find interesting, especially if that person is a spectral.” Maya told him.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Phoenix sighed, shaking his head, “Edgeworth didn’t seem like he even realized it was there. And he doesn’t have spectral energy.” The spirit had floated off of Miles when he’d left for the recess, landing on the floor and following at his feet. On his shoulders, it’d given Miles the illusion of maybe being a spectral, but separated it became clear the essence was coming only from the spirit. “Could it be the ghost of one of someone he knew?”

“No, ghosts always look like they did in life. Occasionally, they’ll have minor changes in their appearances depending on how they perceive themselves, especially if it’s been a while since they died, but I’ve never heard of one changing shape that much.” Maya shot down.

“Well, no reason to dwell on it,” Phoenix shook his head, “We need to stay focused on proving your innocence.”

oOo

Being a spectral was, surprisingly, not all that different from not being a spectral. Having magic ghost energy didn’t mean he didn’t have to pay rent, and he still needed to eat, and he couldn’t fly or anything.

Maya kept her word, and they spent most of the days in the office teaching him the ins and outs of the world he was now a part of. She was a pro, easily able to create ‘compressed spectral energy burst shots’ - or ‘spec-shots’ - while Phoenix fumbled his way through the motions. It was a bit odd at first, being taught by somebody younger than him, but Maya was a surprisingly decent teacher. She was clearly experienced in the craft, having been raised a spectral.

He found himself thinking a lot about how Mia had been one too. Some late nights, when they were eating in the office, waiting for a client, Phoenix sore from the training, they’d talk about her. Apparently, Mia had noticed that something was up with Phoenix and had suspected he might be becoming a spectral. She’d planned to talk to him about it the night of her death.

Well, the best laid plans and all that.

“So, can things really be haunted?” Phoenix asked her one day while trying to focus his energy into a specific shape. He was trying to make it look like a dog, and it more closely resembled how he used to draw them back in kindergarten.

“Oh yeah, that happens all the time. Here, I actually have a tool on me.” Maya pulled a jade green gem from somewhere in the folds of her robes. She handed it over to Phoenix, and he turned it over in his hands. It was smooth to the touch, and shaped like a teardrop or a comma with a perfect hole in it, big enough for Phoenix to fit his pinky through. “This is my magatama, and you could say that it’s ‘haunted’, although the technical word is that it’s now a tool. A spirit was injured long ago, and now they live here! They’ve been passed from Fey to Fey for years.”

“Huh.” Phoenix said. It didn’t look particularly special. He handed it back to Maya.

“You probably won’t have to worry about that, though. Tools are usually used by people who are fighting spirits and stuff!” Maya smiled.

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick to being a lawyer.” Phoenix gave a small laugh.

oOo

So, maybe Phoenix had come to the conclusion about Miles not being a spectral a bit too quickly.

[silverkoushi]

haikyuu!! headcanons

⇢ scenario: how you’d spend the holidays with them!! pt.2 | read pt. 1 here! ⇢ feat. : tsukki (karasuno), bokuto (fukurodani) & kuroo (nekoma) x gn!reader ⇢  wc & warnings:  3.3k, slightly suggestive for kuroo

ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ not @ me having the phattest crush on kuroo as you can probably tell here... dear god that man is something edit: omo for some reason the paragraphs got messed up n i just checked it after hours of posting... i fixed it now so hopefully it makes more sense ahh my apologies!! ><

tsukishima kei

୨୧ ˻˳˯ₑ*॰¨̮  idk about you but i think tsukki secretly enjoys the holidays? like he’d think the music is overbearing, the movies are disgustingly cliche, and the amount of people gathering in places is one of his worst nightmares— those aren’t the things that he looks forward to. i think tsukki loves winter, maybe because i see him as a softie who collects sweaters, hoodies, and sweatpants that keep him comfy and cozy during cold nights and chilly mornings! WITH THAT BEING SAID, tsukki dies inside when he sees you wearing any of those following outfits of his. he might get annoyed at first that you don’t ask because he was planning on wearing them that day, but when you show up at his dorm clad in his night blue sweater with a little moon stitched on the side, there are no words coming out of his mouth. he will try to look menacing, eyes in a deadpan expression but you know he’s lying, and just stare at him with a doe-like face and put his hands in yours, swinging it back and forth as you drag him out of his room and into the snowy field. you don’t even think twice about getting matching sweaters because the boy will hate you for the rest of his life, but at least you got him to wear a reindeer headband for 2 seconds in the photobooth!! most of the time, you basically just bring him to anywhere you want to go. you guys look at the humongous christmas tree they placed in the center of the plaza, and you ask someone walking by if you can get a picture of the two of you in front of him. this way, tsukki can’t complain and will be semi-forced to pose with you hehe. you thought he’d just be standing there, arms to his side with a nonchalant expression but you actually feel him put his arm around your waist and lean his head down on top of yours. 

you can’t help the cheeky smile show on your face as you tiptoe just enough to reach his cheek, and once the guy said, “ok one more!” you steal a kiss on the side of tsukki’s small smile. “hey, what was—” “thanks, mister!! happy holidays!!” you avoid his stare, and get your phone back from the guy as you scroll through the pics he took (thank god only a few were blurry). tsukki keeps glaring at you, and you understand he’s not big into pda but uh, he started it with holding you close to him like that >:( “what?? you look so cute here, though!!” you whine to him, hoping he doesn’t ask that you delete it :( tsukki gives it a once over, a warm feeling creeping on his cheeks as he studies the picture: damn, is he whipped for you. he dismisses the overreaction on his part (for once), and takes your hand in his once more, asking where it is you wanted to go next. you’re surprised he left it like that, but you’re taking advantage of this situation and drag him to more festive stuff around the plaza <3

with your parents spending the holidays abroad and working overtime, tsukki’s mom invited you to their place instead and you’re!! more than happy and oh so grateful!! tsukki doesn’t show it but he’s actually extremely nervous,, what if you don’t like his family?? what if his brother is too annoying for you, what if this isn’t the kind of in-laws you were expecting— wait, he’s thinking too far ahead and you’re looking at him with raised eyebrows. quick! he turns away from your gaze, biting his lip at getting caught with his overthinking. “tsukki, you okay?” you ask gently, looping your arm around his as you guys near his house. “yeah…” he responds lamely, and you’re not sure if he wanted you at his house for the holidays or what… but you shake the negativity away and tell yourself that this is an opportunity to show your own personality to his family!! you’re greeted by a boisterous even taller guy at the door, and his also really tall mom waving at you from the kitchen, finishing up the grand dinner. “mom and i thought you were just pretending about your relationship, tsukki~” akiteru nudges him, and you chuckle at your boyfriend’s helpless look on his face, as if telling you this is what i dealt with during my childhood. but the holiday celebration with his family went super smooth!! his mom cooked amazing homemade dishes, and tsukki was actually smiling and laughing along the poor jokes akiteru made, it was so endearing to watch. you asked to help with the clean up as tsukki and his brother play volleyball outside in the cold. 

“i’m so glad he has you,” his mom comforts you, and you nod your head in thanks while you wipe the plates clean. “i’ve never seen him so… cheerful like this, you know?” what a heartwarming thing to say :(( and yet you thought he was just finally letting loose because he’s at home!! his mom turns in early that eve of christmas, and his brother goes out to have a nightly beer sesh with his hometown friends before christmas morning tomorrow. you and tsukki are left alone in his room as you marvel at the many dinosaur related merch, posters, and even stuffies he has in his childhood room!! “don’t say it,” he threatens you lightly, even though you’ve been well-aware of his fascination for the species. a little tired from the trip earlier and ngl you’re both full from the food, you lay down on the floor, pillows supporting your sleepy heads as tsukki shares the other side of his earphones. you listen to calming, lofi music for the night and at some point, he finds your fingers in his again. “thank you for having me, tsukki,” you whisper with a yawn, remembering the night days ago where you cried into his shoulder about missing your own family during this season. tsukki doesn’t respond as he hears your light snoring, and instead turns his body towards you as he caresses the side of your face, smiling at the beauty before him. “you’re always welcome here, dummy. you’ll always have me.”

bokuto koutarou

୨୧ ˻˳˯ₑ*॰¨̮  oof!! so many holiday parties!! gift giving exchanges!! dancing and singing, drinking and having the time of your lives! of course, bokuto asks first and foremost if you’re okay going to all of these celebrations with him as he has gathered a lot of friends from different majors, clubs, and such. you didn’t expect to come with him to all of them, tbh, but since he seems so excited to bring you along you found yourself nodding along! OOPS, what a wild ride it was to meet friends you didn’t even know he had. first, bokuto asked you to help him find some gifts for the exchange parties and you comply— you love thinking up presents for diff kinds of people! “would akaashi want this?” he points at a set of compression socks for sports “you’d want that more, bo” “oh oh!! how about this for kuroo?!” he leads you to the beauty section, hairspray littering the aisle “i think that’s more of an insult than a gift…” he’ll pout at his failure to think of the best gifts for his friends, but you cling to him with your linked arms and tell him not to worry— you kinda figured the kind of people his best friends are, so you suggest things off the bat: film roll for akaashi the photography minor, a mug with a pun-ny chem joke for kuroo, and a new case for kenma’s switch lite!! “wah! you know them better than i do,” he exclaims, eyes shining in excitement as you bring the gifts and other extra stuff to his apartment to help him wrap them. with this, bokuto came up with an idea to wrap the presents in the most creative way possible, and you just stare at him in awe as he tries to disguise the mug as.. a gingerbread man?? you don’t even know how he did it! as you tape up the finishing touches with the others, you eye a small gift wrapped box on the island counter along with a card next to it, all glittery and a name scribbled on top that you can’t make out where you were seated. 

“hey, bo, who’s that for?” you point at the suspecting box, and almost immediately bokuto body slams you on the ground, obstructing your view of the gift. “bokuto i can’t breathe—” you wheeze, laughing at the way he scrambles to get up from the position but his feet slips against the unused wrapping paper on the floor. “sorry, sorry i just— STOP LOOKING” he pleads, caging you with his arms either side your figure. the both of you pause, realizing the predicament you’re in until bokuto unleashes a sly smirk, eyes pointed at you with a mischievous glint. you know that look, so you start wiggling out of his way until he plops down on you again (mind you, he’s MANY inches taller than you and his built...whew, but that’s part of the problem right now!!) and blows raspberries on your neck, the audacity!! “tell me,” he whispers against your ear after a while, voice suddenly low in tone and your senses perk up. “have you been naughty or nice recently?” he continues hoarsely, and it doesn’t take long until you burst out laughing at his attempt of being flirty right now. he finally releases you, feigns hurt from your reaction but he knows what a goofball he is.

anyway, you put all the gifts in the car and head to the many parties he was invited to!! and honestly, you enjoyed yourself albeit it got really tiring to show up with much enthusiasm compared to the last. but bokuto on the other hand never runs out of energy for some reason!! he’s still winning the games, singing his heart out with his friends, and trying all the foods in the potluck, even shamelessly!! feeding you too! it’s embarrassing >< but in a way your heart swells with the thought of bokuto being very openly proud of his relationship with you, and how his friends seem to like you as well! pictures were taken, holiday spirits and gifts were exchanged and finally, he’s free for the night <3 you’ve been waiting for the right moment to give him your personal gift to your boyf (it’s an edited picture of the two of you at one of his winning games!! you can’t draw for sht but you are the best at adding lil stickers and cute petnames all around the photo hehe) you had it inserted in a picture frame too so the gift was relatively medium sized and rectangular. when you crash at his place, you ready yourself to give it to him, having second thoughts with how corny it must seem like… as you psych yourself up on the couch, you feel his arms suddenly wrap themselves around you as he starts peppering your neck with lazy kisses. your chest tightens, eyes closed at the warmth of his lips on your skin but— you can’t get distracted!! “bo, i have something for you—” “i saved the best gift for last—” o, you say it at the same time and so you look at each other with blank stares, and then laugh at your awkwardness!! 

he lets you go first, your nerves slowly dissipating at the excited gleam in his irises, he’s so cute!! as he unwraps it, he hitches a breath, looks at you then the picture and you again and— let’s say your face was just full on bokuto territory only ;-) as much as you were enjoying his attention all on you, his gift wasn’t opened yet!! bokuto went from confident to shy mode again, hiding his face with only one eye peeking out to watch you…. for some reason, since it was a tiny box you blurted out, “don’t tell me it’s a ring, bo.” as a joke but bokuto suddenly freezes at your words. and you had to stop unboxing to make sure he doesn’t go all pale on you, but also??? was he really???? GOING TO???-- “DID YOU WANT ME TO GET YOU A RING?? I CAN RETURN THE EARRINGS TODAY, I THINK I STILL HAVE THE RECEIPT—” “bo, it’s okay!!! omg no T_T” you take his hands off his face to look at him lovingly, a kiss on his pouty lips as you reassure him his presence is all that you can ever want, but whatever it was he gave you, you’ll cherish just the same!! so finally, once you take the lid off the box you see an adorable pair of owl earrings!! it’s so cute and it reminds you of him and thats probably why he got that for you :’)))) “i also wrote you a letter but please read it when i’m asleep or something…” aww shy bokuto!! >< you never thought you’d see the day :’)

kuroo tetsurou

୨୧ ˻˳˯ₑ*॰¨̮  man.. i just know this guy wouldn’t want to let leave… the bed… with him… on christmas day. imagine something like having to stay until he can for his duties at work which ended up til late christmas eve :( you were looking forward to spending time with him back at his hometown since you don’t necessarily celebrate the specific holiday, but being with tetsurou for almost a year now and knowing he does— you wanted it to be special and memorable for him! he felt really bad making you stay at his apartment until he finishes up work, really zooming through all the documents and stuff he needed to complete just so he can spend at least a few hours of christmas eve with you. when he got home, his heart dropped to his stomach at the sight of you falling asleep on the couch, right next to the lit up christmas tree you two decorated a week ago (thats how busy he has been! you opted to fix the tree yourself, but tetsu insisted on doing it together since it’s your first holiday with him!). your favorite blanket was wrapped around you but your feet were dangling midway with no socks on and he just >:( had to carry you to bed and tuck you in— all of you!! 

he changes to a sweater and pjs before readying himself to carry you against his chest. his own body is exhausted from working non-stop, but he doesn’t let it get to him as he passes by the hallway and plops you gently on your side of the bed. you stir groggily, eyes refusing to open but you notice your surroundings are different. the room is dimly lit but the figure walking around the place isn’t amiss; with his hair sticking up and his wide shoulders, you know it’s your tired boyfriend finally home for the holidays. you smile, still sleep-induced but you try to reach over for him. “tetsu… come to bed, please,” you mumble but he hears you, and his back is against you but he smiles at your half-awake tone. “i’ll be right there,” he lets you know softly, and true to his word you feel the dip in the mattress with his warmth slowly exuding onto your own body, his hands easily finding themselves over you. you wiggle into his grasp, head against his chest and hands holding onto his waist. he feels warm, he feels like home, and you press a kiss where his neck meets his collarbones. “mm, merry christm…” you mutter, losing consciousness but he doesn’t mind. he lets you snore your way into dreamland, watching your eyelashes tickle the surface of your skin, lips partly open as you breathe in and out. suddenly, his tense muscles relax with your presence oh so close to you, and he sleeps soundly after a few minutes of admiring your face.

as the sunlight filters thru the windows, kuroo wakes up first but knowing it’s his day off (finally), he relaxes into the bed and just observes the tiny details of your face, same as the night before but with some of the brightly shining rays of the sun hitting the right spots— you’re breathtaking to him. he feels you stir in his embrace so he pretends to snore because he knows you like to get up as soon as you feel awake. “tetsu…” you mumble, popping out your head from his grasp to peer your eyes at him pretending to not hear you. “you’re a lousy liar, i know you’re up,” you tell him, rubbing your nose against him as a form of an eskimo kiss. it takes so much out of his restraint to bite his lip in pure love for you, so he gives in and kisses you on the lips. 

you are taken aback for a split second until you comply to his request, and you spend your first christmas morning with him in bed just like that <3 he still asks if you guys can spend the whole day just tangled into each other’s embrace but you lecture him playfully, knowing that he had a christmas party to attend to in the afternoon with his closest friends (bokuto, akaashi, kenma, and others) and you have a lovely dinner planned in the evening. he wiggles his eyebrows, fingertips tracing the exposed skin on your chest, “what if we skip all of that and i just have you for dinner instead?” “KUROO TETSUROU IT IS TOO EARLY FOR YOU TO SAY THAT RIGHT NOW—” you swear to god, it is his teasing and malicious intent that will kill you one day. but the blush on your face doesn’t go unnoticed, and yet kuroo complies with your light nagging, getting up and getting ready for the day. you’re happy that he finally has the day off, and being with his friends during the party truly lightened up his mood. afterwards, he then asks where you got a reservation during the busiest time of the year, and you just winked at him and zipped your mouth. 

since you ate a bit at the party, you knew you had some time to finish prepping the food you had prepared the night before, it all just needed to bake or be cooked on the pan. and bec of his exhaustion last night, he didn’t even open the fridge at all so there were zero suspicious at your surprise dinner. urging him to take a long, hot bath, he drags you with him. “you seriously want me to take a bath by myself?” he says in shock horror, and normally you would join him hah but you tell him that your parents are calling, just wanting to say hello. a little sad, kuroo nods in understanding and so he goes about his way while you cook the food with haste. he likes to take his time in there but you know you won’t finish beforehand, so once he’s out of the bathroom, you immediately go right in front of him to hide the view of the kitchen. you played yourself, seeing kuroo only in his bathrobe with his chest exposed, you slap him right at the center to ignore the sensation in the pit of your stomach. “what?? what’d i do???” “existing right in front of me like that!!” kuroo laughs at your embarrassment, but kisses you on the forehead nonetheless. he ignores the obvious smell of pasta and chicken in the apartment, ignores the messy apron you forgot to take off because he thinks you really wanted to surprise him. so he goes to the room to change, thinking about how lucky he is to have you in his life. the rest of the night ends up with the both of you having a romantic dinner in the dining room, talking about everything you already know about each other—but it never feels repetitive. he always feels so renewed with you, falling in love every day. 

[brawltogethernow]

Xiyao bodyswap (not sure if this is quite AU but let JGY be tall)

[I love your mind, anon. I initially misread part of this ask very wildly and followed that to some places where I would not have ended up otherwise. Novelverse, end of story spoilers.]

It had been triggered, they suspected, by Jin Guangyao’s conflicted attempt to tie his fate to Lan Xichen’s, and executed by the uncomfortable roil of resentful energy building in the temple. That was as far as theorizing had gotten, because their resident mad genius and resentful energy expert had declared that “If we’re all done trying to kill each other for now, I need to go ride your brother into the sunset,” and left, dragging the Second Jade of Lan behind him by the hand and leaving the First Jade looking slightly queasy.

Of course, that could have also been from the stab wound inflicted by his own sword.

“I’m sure once they’ve...uh...sorted things out...Wei Wuxian will help fix you,” said Jin Ling supplicatingly. Supplicating was a strange look on Jin Ling. He was not good at it. (This might have been for the best - otherwise one might start to suspect that their problem was spreading and the speaker was actually Lan Sizhui.) His eyes darted between them, his expression conflicted, unsettled, and itself not entirely unlike nausea.

Sect Leader Jiang did not try to hide his dubious scoff at all, and then busied himself herding Jin Ling away from Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen while eyeing them suspiciously like he thought their condition might be contagious.

“Is this really so bad?” asked Jin Guangyao, his demeanor once more calm, in control, and inoffensive. It looked wildly wrong on the First Jade’s face. Which was odd, since if you asked just about anyone they would testify to Lan Xichen being all three of those things. He tried a slight, disarming smile, which was a poor move, tactically, because it was much more noticeable while looking like Lan Xichen, who smiled genuinely and often, that it was not reaching his eyes. “We can just each return to our own lives - that is, each other’s - and then, once this has been sorted out, we can...revisit the question of my future.”

Jiang Cheng barked a laugh from over by the door, which he was trying to push his nephew out of. “And let him take the fall for you? Get fucked! Every cultivator alive is after your blood right now. You’d have been luckier to die tonight.”

He looked very happy about this.

Jin Guangyao’s appeasing expression grew more strained. The tightening of his mouth made him look a little like Lan Wangji, and the wide displeasure of his eyes just made him look bizarre. He opened his mouth to make another bid.

Nie Huaisang wailed loudly and swooned bodily against him. He thrashed his head in distress, and his hairpiece clipped Jin Guangyao hard across the cheek. A cut bloomed across Lan Xichen’s pale skin, inches from Jin Guangyao’s furious eyes.

“No, no,” he gasped, eyes wide and wet. “Er-ge, no, san-ge, no, I don’t know, I don’t know anymore, what if something happened to you two?” He grabbed Jin Guangyao hard by both wrists and sagged against him, saddling the Jin sect leader with supporting all of his weight in a way that would have dragged him down if he hadn’t been borrowing the infamous Lan arm strength. He ignored Lan Xichen, who was standing still and upright with Jin Guangyao’s remaining hand applying pressure to the gut wound Nie Huaisang had walked him into inflicting and looking like his world was crumpling around him, entirely. Nie Huaisang swayed, further imbalancing Jin Guangyao.

Lan Xichen’s expression finally grew a little less lost, and firmed, his eyes settling on where his own body was staggering awkwardly.

“Sect Leader Jin,” he said. Firm, but teetering on the precipice of the gentleness he would have put into A-Yao, and wounded in a way that could not be addressed with medicines and spiritual energy. His soft speaking manner, curated for a deeper voice, rang very differently from Jin Guangyao’s mouth. He sounded oddly young, and wore solemn disappointment with a simple sincerity the face’s true owner had never applied. “It would certainly sew confusion, if we made people aware of this situation. Perhaps enough for you to escape repercussions entirely.”

Nie Huaisang moaned as if this was both a complete shock and unbearably overwhelming, and threw himself harder against Jin Guangyao, who grunted. His eyes stayed locked on Lan Xichen.

“I assure you,” he tried, “I will do everything to see this is resolved quickly.”

“Oh yeah?” said Jiang Cheng, striding back into the room sans nephew. “Sounds great! Let’s start.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes widened and he scrambled out of the way.

Zidian did not remove Jin Guangyao from Lan Xichen’s body. (Jiang Cheng did not seem too cut up about this.) It did incapacitate him and make him easier to transport back to Gusu.

.

Which led them to...where they were now.

Jin Guangyao stared into the mirror in the hanshi. The upper rim was closer than he was used to.

The First Jade really did have a very nice face, even robbed of its usual aura of warmth, and with a cut across the cheekbone. This was not the worst outcome. He could make this work.

The monstrous leftovers of Nie Mingjue had sensed whatever had happened on some level and hesitated long enough that Lan Xichen, deposited unceremoniously into Jin Guangyao’s body, hadn’t been sealed with him. Instead the two men had tumbled just barely out of harm’s way together, white and yellow fabric patterned alike with rusty splatters of blood. Objectively, this was too bad, because being able to escape his reckoning by stepping into the First Jade’s life would have been like having the board magically reset just as you were messily losing a game.

Subjectively... He would prefer Lan Xichen live. If possible.

Though he didn’t cater to such preferences when they were inconvenient, or even when they came into conflict with other feelings. And Lan Xichen carried no love for him for having been the only exception to that.

As it was Lan Xichen was having his wounds attended to (Jin Guangyao’s wounds, rather) in secret. Covering up that important people were receiving treatment of grievous injuries was hardly new for GusuLan, he knew from years as Lan Xichen’s close confidant. Jin Guangyao had been firmly requested to keep to the hanshi. Though only after half the things in it were relocated or bound up with seals. He imagined the word was being put out that Lan Xichen was in seclusion. He had tried to smooth talk his way to some extra freedoms on the grounds of how someone as important as him really ought to have their own cover story, and been rebuffed in light of being the new most hated figure in the cultivation world.

He suspected Wei Wuxian, the old most hated figure in the cultivation world, could resolve this situation with forty minutes of deliberate concentration, which was galling. And when exactly would the man deign to come back?

“I’m not sure,” Lan Sizhui had supplied with an air of deep peace. The Ghost General seemed to have abandoned Wei Wuxian and had been hovering over Lan Sizhui’s shoulder since the temple. “They said they were eloping. How long does it take to elope?”

Everything about Wei Wuxian was infuriating. Maybe someone would kill him again soon.

He raised his hands - Xichen’s hands, fingers longer than his, and elegant, also he had two of them which Jin Guangyao was going to have to get used to being novel if they fixed this - to hover around his head, and paused.

He kept good track of where all the lines that must not be crossed were. He just didn’t care about them.

Deliberately, he smoothed his fingers over Xichen’s forehead ribbon. He would make this work.

[On AO3]

[fixaidea]

10. Wings for the one word monster prompts ^^

(Please disregard the amount of time this little nothing of a ficlet took.)

***

After getting rid of his cursed shackles, Xie Lian had some vain inkling of hope that his luck would improve. And certainly, on most days, it was not as catastrophic as it used to be.

Today was not ‘most days’.

Today Xie Lian ran out of spiritual energy right in the middle of experimenting with shapeshifting, which left him with claws, yellow eagle eyes and, most notably, a pair of wings sticking out of his back.

Which was an interesting news in and of itself because logically he would have expected his arms to sprout feathers and morph into wings, eagles generally did not have six limbs. Not to Xie Lian’s knowledge anyway. He suspected he must have misinterpreted something in the manuscript - an old, crumbling, smudged piece of text - either in the methodology, or the creature he was supposed to end up as.

Ah well - there was nothing to it, now he had to go find Hua Cheng and ask him to replenish his spiritual powers.

...Which in turn led to the day’s second surprise: Hua Cheng’s reaction. Xie Lian expected some gentle teasing and the quick clearing away of his unwanted new features, not dumbfounded shock. Hua Cheng’s mouth hung open for a good ten seconds as Xie Lian explained his problem. Finally he managed to get a grip for long enough to close his mouth, tried to say something, let his jaw go slack again, then finally snapped his mouth shut again.

Xie Lian was getting worried - was the problem so much worse than he thought? Would he remain permanently disfigured? Why wasn’t San Lang saying anything, did he look so repulsive? Was San Lang disgusted? He was about to say something, but Hua Cheng finally shook himself out of his shock and stepped up.

‘May I...?’ he asked, extending a hand towards the wings.

Xie Lian blinked.

‘Of course’ he said. He wasn’t quite sure what the actual question was supposed to be, what he just agreed to, but it was San Lang, and San Lang surely knew what he was doing. At any rate, it would not be anything that harmed or hurt Xie Lian.

Hua Cheng slowly extended a hand, and ran it down the length of the wing nearest to him. He dug his fingers into the soft feathers, his one eye wide with gleeful wonder.

‘Don’t worry gege, I’ll fix this in a minute, just...’

Xie Lian chuckled.

‘Take your time.’

Hua Cheng continued to admire the new limbs, petting and scritching in ways that made Xie Lian’s toes curl. Now he was almost glad he misread those old texts. Almost.

Meanwhile Hua Cheng’s wandering hands found the spot where the wings tore their way through Xie Lian’s robes, and started to rub at the joint where they sprouted from his bare back. Breath hitching and furiously blushing, Xie Lian spun around, trapping his over-eager husband in a soft cage of feathers.

‘You... you really like these, don’t you?’

Hua Cheng sniggered and pulled him even closer.

‘They are... interesting. Would you mind keeping them for a while?’

Xie Lian ducked his head and rearranged the wings so they were wrapped around Hua Cheng’s waist, like an extra pair of arms.

‘Oh well... Maybe I can be persuaded to live with them for a bit.’

[bigskydreaming]

For @imashittalkingmushroom who requested some Tim content. Excerpt from one of the seemingly endless WIPs I toil away at in my downtime because me pace myself, in this economy, hah. This one’s called “The Vienna Game” and is Batfam ensemble versus a new rising threat, which Tim has a revelation about here. This part is just a rough draft for the moment, but you get the idea.

THE VIENNA GAME

Chapter Five: Pawn Storm

Barely five minutes after Tim’s head hit his pillow, he sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering in his throat.

“They’re all connected,” he said, wide-eyed to an empty room. The lack of a response bequeathed by his surroundings was a bit, well, lacking, so he leaped to his feet and raced down to the hall to the Batcave’s nearest access point.

“They’re all connected,” he shouted again as he took the rough-hewn stone stairs three at a time. His words bounced and rattled off the walls of the cave, winging upwards into its darkest recesses and rousing the bats from their nests overhead. They scattered in every direction, deeper into the darkness, as they reacted to his urgency and intensity with shrieking complaints.

If only his actual family could be similarly moved. But no, they had to suck instead.

“Whozit whatzit howzit?” Dick swiveled in his chair, just enough to shoot the younger boy a quizzical eyebrow but not enough to necessitate removing his feet from next to the Batcomputer’s keyboard, where Bruce was currently drilling holes into them with a patented (and thus wholly ineffective) Batglare.

“What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall down the well again? One bark for yes, two for no,” Jason said brightly. He bent at the waist and braced his hands on his thighs as though actually talking to a dog; it had the unfortunate side-effect of making his stupid brother a stupid firmly planted rock that did little more than shift the merest micro-meter when Tim rolled his eyes and brusquely shouldered past him.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. I’m Timmy,” he said irritably. Too late he realized the trap he’d blearily wandered into as his jackass brother practically cackled with glee. Tim reddened and quickened his pace to the Batcomputer. “Oh shut up.”

Jason swivelled, but whatever his intended follow-up, he abruptly cut off as an apple core arced out of the shadows and bounced off his head. The second eldest pivoted sharply once more and scowled in the direction it’d come from as Tim absently took note of the several other apple cores scattered around Jason’s feet.

“Would you stop that?”

Cassandra, target of his ire, merely contemplated him for a beat before shaking her head. 

“No thank you,” she politely declined, and she bit into a fresh apple with a loud crunch.

“You will be cleaning those up, not Alfred,” their father said, wearily enough Tim got the sense this had been going on for quite some time. His sister just shrugged. 

“Worth it.”

Bruce exercised the better part of valor and shifted his attention back to Tim. “And didn’t you say you were going to bed?”

“I did say that,” Tim said agreeably as he barreled forth unto the Batcomputer. He batted (hah - oh no, the sleep deprivation was real) Dick’s feet aside and rebutted Dick’s injurious expression with an apologetic one of his own; apparently appeased, Dick just lithely shrugged and lifted his linked legs straight off the desk’s surface and then just never stopped. Instead he kept lifting his legs up, up and away until he’d transitioned into a perfect handstand on the seat of the chair, which he then transitioned out of by gracefully flipping over the chair’s back and onto his feet. Because see, Tim’s eldest brother’s middle name was not in fact ‘John,’ it was ‘Just That Extra.’

“I even did that,” Tim continued as he set his fingers to dancing swiftly across the keyboard. “But then I realized something.”

“You look ridiculous when you pop your collar,” Steph said knowingly.

“What? No. Wait, when have I ever done that?”

“Umm, the last time you were drunk, duh.”

Tim paused just long enough to shoot his ex an absolutely baffled look, over where she was lounging bonelessly next to Cass. 

“When was I drunk?”

Steph tilted her head to the side and squinted in thought. “Drunk, concussed....whatever. It was definitely one of those two. I have pictures. They’re not good.”

Perhaps sensing his impending spontaneous combustion, Bruce interceded, raising a hand to quiet the perpetual storm of sibling (and Steph) nonsense.

“What’s this about, Tim?”

“Our newest Rogue, the one we just finally caught last week,” Tim reported, turning his attention back to the Dance of the Keystrokes. “We have a problem.”

Their father frowned. “Desperado? What’s the problem?”

“His name,” Tim said grimly. He finished pulling up the string of files he’d only minutes ago linked together in his own mind. Flashing into existence on the wall to wall screens before them were all the notes the various members of their family had compiled on the new villain in town, as well as a number of other files for a good dozen or so other relatively new or unknown villains scattered across the globe, with these latter documents pulled from the digital archives of various superhero teams and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Blitz, a speedster located in Southern California, their indistinct form pixelated and blurred virtue of the crackling halo of electrical energy they seemed to wear like a cloak of St. Elmo’s Fire. 

A Filipino man and woman purported to be fraternal twins operating out of a number of hotspots throughout Southeast Asia, with a combined name whose translation from Tagalog roughly amounted to ‘Double Check.’

A young brunette woman seemingly barely out of her teens, with eyes hidden behind an overly large pair of sunglasses, linked to a series of crimes in Argentina and Chile and allegedly going by the name ‘Swindle.’

A black man in his mid to late twenties, moving across the Iberian peninsula, with no reported name given, just a strange adherence to a symbol that appeared to be of a windmill, of all things, and that had local press dubbing him ‘Don Quixote.’

King March, a white man in his late forties to early fifties, with black hair and greying temples and a stern but smug disposition in all the files Interpol had compiled on him due to his frequent appearances as a person of interest throughout Eastern Europe.

A short, acrobatic Latino teleporter who offered up only the name ‘Castle’ in his sporadic run-ins with various hero organizations across the globe. 

Tempo, suspected to originally hail from Sri Lanka, and last sighted in Hong Kong of all places...and by no means the only one of this assortment of individuals engaged in criminal enterprises in a city known for its Batman Inc presence. 

Undermine, a masked man so far content to operate just out of Australia.

Flag Fall, another masked individual largely spotted in the Southeastern U.S.

An unseen person or persons known only by a calling card left in various Saharan regions, identifying them as someone named ‘Tabia.’

And lastly, a mature black woman out of the UK, sporting a wry, enigmatic smile in the only known picture of her, alongside her alleged pseudonym: Zugzwang.

“It was pretty much total coincidence I put it together,” Tim said as his family gathered more closely behind him to survey the assembled files over his shoulder. “I’d come across most these files over the past couple months, just in passing, as I like to familiarize myself with the various players in most Batman Inc. operating cities, and I was just reading this last file before bed, just to kinda wind down, y’know....”

“That sentence makes me so sad I don’t even have the heart to make fun of you,” Jason interrupted. He frowned. “Wait, that implies I have a heart. Hang on, that doesn’t sound right. And is this, what, sympathy I’m feeling right now? Eww, that is not the emotion I ordered. Take it back.”

Tim glared at him briefly, and then foraged on. “Anyway, as I was saying, I happened to be reading this last file before bed, and her name stuck out for me and from there I just started connecting some dots. See, alone, none of these names stand out as particularly significant, but put them together, and what happens?”

“They all have multiple meanings,” Damian said, scowling at the screens with focused intensity. “Mostly innocuous, but they’re also all....hmm. Chess terminology.”

Tim nodded enthusiastically. “Bingo! Ten points to Stabby Smurf.”

He bent over the keyboard again and started pulling up various video files, catching sight of reflections out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Duke seemed to be mouthing “Stabby Smurf” with a kind of horrified awe and Damian himself seemed unable to decide if he was offended or not. Whoops, that part hadn’t been meant to come out aloud. Tim coughed to cover a grimace slash smirk and hastened back to his point. 

“For instance, based on geographical location alone, Flag Fall seems to be an obvious reference to an actual flag, but the term also refers to timed chess matches, when a given player has run out of time to make a move. Swindle isn’t just a term for cheating or fraud, but in chess, refers to when a losing player tricks their opponent into falling for a decoy move that ends the game in a draw instead of a loss. King march is a term for when you advance your king up the board, tempo is a single turn or move, a double check is when two different pieces put an opponent’s king in check simultaneously, and undermining is when you capture a defensive piece of your opponent’s and leave their king undefended.”

He stopped for a breath and Damian quickly stepped into the breach and picked up where he left off, seamlessly following the train of thought. “And Tabia comes from the Arabic for ‘essence,’ but in chess is a key point, specifically a point of departure from which you can perform any number of signature moves. The windmill symbol utilized by this individual in Spain and its surrounding regions most likely then does not reference Don Quixote, but rather a looped series of moves, usually brought upon by a rook and a bishop, which forces an opponent’s king to ‘windmill’ back and forth between just two or three squares in order to keep out of check.”

“And then Blitz of course refers to a specific opening gambit, that can bring about checkmate in four moves or less,” Tim resumed. “And while Castle has so far been assumed to be nothing more than a surname according to various heroes who have encountered him, largely no doubt due to the fact that he doesn’t affect any kind of costume or disguise, when you consider that pretty much all his demonstrations of teleportation utilize a kind of ‘switching’ of two persons’ relative placement in space/time, either as a signature or an actual staple of his power, its far more likely his name is a reference to ‘castling.’ Which of course then just brings us back to Zugzwang, which is a German term that loosely translates to ‘compulsion to move’ and specifically denotes any scenario in chess in which a player has no choice but to move, even though all moves available to them are inevitably going to worsen their position.”

They all took a minute to absorb that then, speed-reading their way through the various files with all the quickness that made it an actual possibility one or more of them might someday make it all the way through a read-through of the entire Wayne Manor Library, even taking into account the minimal time any of them allotted to the having of actual ‘hobbies.’

It was Cass who found something new to seize upon next, though she never once flicked her eyes away from where they tracked the movements of one videoed individual to the next, screen by screen. 

“It’s not just the names,” she reported, scrutinizing each figure intently. “They move alike. When they fight. Its not a lot. But enough that they probably trained together, or at least shared a teacher.”

Tim nodded again. “I thought so too, but I wasn’t sure. I don’t have your eye for that, but it seemed like they might.”

“Reeet, record scratch,” Steph jumped in then. “Not to be all ‘talk nerdy to me, baby,’ since we don’t do that any more and whoops, totally forgot for a second that your dad is legit standing right here, wow, awkwaaaaaard, but for those of us still waiting to buy a vowel, why is this a problem with that Desperado dude specifically?”

“Because we’ve been operating off of the assumption that he chose his name as a more obvious reference to simply being some kind of outlaw,” Bruce said. “But in terms of chess specifically, a desperado piece is any piece that is trapped or in danger, and then sacrifices itself to achieve some kind of maximum damage or compensation that greatly outweighs the loss of itself.”

Steph nodded and pursed her lips. “Cool, cool. Okay so first off, let me just say how glad I am that it was you in specific that decided to follow up on that. Definitely the best of all timelines there, like just so, so absolutely stellar, that. It in no way compounded the awkwardness of the moment or contributed to my pending death by mortification. Secondly, oh, like. Yikes, so that’s not great, huh.”

“No, its not,” Bruce said seriously, with only the barest of twitches in the proximity of those things other people use to smile, aka lips. “If all of this turns out to bear fruit, as I suspect it will, the relative ease with which this Desperado was captured is nothing short of ominous. But luckily, we now have a chance to get ahead of whatever else might be in the works there. Excellent work, Tim.”

Tim squirmed, digging deep into the well of his bodily mastery and various techniques for exerting mind over matter. Don’t blush, don’t blush, you’re a super cool crime-fighting dude, not a total dweeb. “Like I said, it was mostly just dumb luck.”

“Hey now, none of that, Baby Bird,” Dick said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You still had to spot the pattern and connect the dots no matter how circumstantial you feel happening across the first dot was. That’s all you, kiddo.”

“Dick, I’m almost eighteen,” Tim whined. Ugh, his brother was the worst. He was going to be calling him Baby Bird when he was eighty at this point. And there went all his attempts at bodily mastery. Insult was added to injury when he stumbled to the side, then, though that had more to do with Jason hip-checking him out of the way so he could take over at the Batcomputer’s keyboard.

“Hey! What the hell was that for, Jay?”

“Umm, saving your ass, duh,” his other older brother said. Tim narrowed his eyes.

“That tracks how, exactly?”

“You were well on your way to immolation by way of embarrassment thanks to all the attention, so I’m stealing your thunder, double duh. Like I said, saving your ass. You’re welcome,” Jason said distractedly, busy with whatever else he was doing aside from being King of the Assholes.

Correction. That brother was the worst.

“Gee, thanks ever so much,” Tim intoned acidly.

“Don’t mention it, brat.”

Tim was still working on a return volley when Jason found whatever it was he was looking for and called up some more files onscreen.

“Okay, so check it out. Remember back in March, when we caught wind of some ‘new talent’ looking to establish a foothold in the local underground, and once we routed them, the only head honcho we could seemingly trace all of that back to was someone we assumed to be named Cassie or Cassandra based on what little we could decrypt of her communications? So now I’m thinking what if we filled in the gaps there wrong, and her name actually was Caissa?”

Tim looked around, but the name didn’t seem to be ringing any bells for anyone else either. 

“Okay, I’ll bite. Who the hell is Caissa?”

“The fictional regurgitation of some plagiaristic hack from two hundred years ago.”

“Jason,” Bruce sighed. Jason rolled his eyes.

“Fine, whatever. So there’s this poem by this untalented dumbass named William Jones back in the 1700s, about a made-up Greek goddess of chess, named Caissa. But really, its just a rip-off of a much older poem from the 1500s by an Italian dude named Hieronymus Vida, in which the character of Caissa was originally named Scacchia. So I mean, I’m just saying, if this chick was going by the name Scacchia, I would have pegged what that was a reference to right away, because like, I have taste and so I’m way more familiar with the original version than the ode of a derivative hack. But I guess you just can’t count on bad guys to default to the superior take,” he lamented with a mournful sigh.

“But wait, aren’t you a bad guy?” Duke inquired, all bright eyes and fake innocence. Jason shot him A Look.

“Not this week, duh. Keep up.”

“Oh, sorry, my bad. I forgot to look at the calendar again.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jason said magnaminously. “Anyway, might just be a hunch, but worth looking into, I’d say. If her name really was actually Caissa, this Desperado could be working for her, and he might actually just be Round Two.”

Cass nodded. “Makes sense. Also restores my good name. Thanks little brother.”

“Any time, little sister. This mean you’ll stop throwing shit at me now?”

“Nope.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Keeps me up at night.”

“You’re nocturnal, you bipedal asshat.”

Cass just smirked some more and sashayed away. Then flipped into a handstand and started walking away on her hands because clearly, she’d been spending too much time with Dick.

Which reminded him - Tim turned his attention back to his oldest brother, mortification forgotten or at least put on hold for the moment. 

“Hey, so, a lot of the files noted that several of these people are likely polyglots,” Tim said. “Since Cass thinks they have some kind of shared combat instruction in their background, I’m thinking there’s a chance we could get a better idea of what regions they all might have been in, in order to get that shared instruction, if we could isolate what languages or dialects or even accents they might have in common, y’know? You’ve got the best ear for languages, what do you think?”

Dick nodded thoughtfully as he perused several of the files. “Its a good idea. I’ll get into it. First though, I’ve gotta make a few calls.”

Their father shot him an appraising glance. “Harper?” He asked.

Dick nodded again. “Yeah, Roy, but also Helena and Tiger. Can’t hurt to have all three of them read in on this. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and where there’s chess, there’s bound to be Checkmate. I’d find it way too big a coincidence if there’s not a connection there somewhere, and if there is one to be found, I’d say those three are our best chance of finding it.”

Bruce made a sour face. Dick arched a challenging eyebrow. Bruce sighed.

“I’m not disagreeing, I just don’t like it.”

Dick laughed. “Well, you don’t like anything, so really we’re all just in awe of your dedication to your Brand, Pops.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and sighed again, before turning his attention back to Tim. “As for you, I think you’ve contributed enough for one night, don’t you? Why don’t you get back to what you were doing before this....what was that again....oh right, getting some sleep?”

Tim made a face of his own. He was way too keyed up now - again - still - to go back to bed now. And again, must he reiterate, he was almost eighteen, helloooooo.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Oh good, I’m so glad that’s what’s catching on as the family motto.”

“Don’t see you going to bed,” Tim sulked in a most mature fashion. The absolute height of maturity. Nay, the apogee, the zenith, we’re talking orbital here.

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne,” Jason interrupted in a thunderous facsimile of their father’s impressive baritone. “This is a Do As I Say, Not As I Do household!”

“This from the son who makes an art form out of never doing either,” Bruce said dryly.

Jason shrugged and buffed his nails against his chest, blithely unconcerned. “I go my own way. Its part of my charm.”

“Oh cool,” Duke cut in excitedly. “Are we playing that game again where we just make up our own definitions that have nothing to do with the actual words we say?”

Jason gasped and pressed his palm flat over his heart. “Et tu, Daisy Dukes?”

Duke nodded gravely. “Et mi, Sweeney Todd.”

“Boys,” Bruce said wearily. 

Both stopped and shot him expectant looks.

“What?”

“I actually have no idea, to be honest. It just feels like one of those things I should attempt to say periodically. Never mind. Carry on.”

Jason snorted and rolled his eyes at Duke as the two of them wandered off towards the opposite end of the cave. “As if we were ever going to do otherwise. He’s so weird sometimes, I swear.”

Duke hummed in agreement. “I think its on account of him being an ancient eldritch being.”

“I’m only forty-two,” Bruce called after them, aggrieved. They ignored him.

“Did you know, he was actually there to witness the actual dawn of time,” Jason said. “And yet, wake him up before noon and its like you’ve committed murder. And I would know. I’ve actually murdered people.”

“That’s true, you have.”

[missjanjie]

These Words are My Own (From My Heart) | Crygi

Title: These Words are My Own (From My Heart) Summary:   Gigi brings a journal with her to the Drag Race set, intending to keep it as a way to express her thoughts during the competition and quell her anxiety. Instead, it becomes the narration of a love story that unfolded behind the scenes. Word Count: 2415 Relationship(s): Crygi (Crystal Methyd/Gigi Goode) Rating: M Notes: This is a diary/journal-style fic, so it’s written from Gigi’s POV throughout

read on ao3

July 22nd 2019

I don’t know what I expected from the first day of filming, but it was… a lot. The two group thing puts on that extra level of pressure, and I can already feel a little sliver of anxiety trying to wiggle its way in. Not that I’d ever let it show, of course. It’s way too early to worry.

As far as the other girls… I actually like them all, which, let’s be honest, is the biggest shock of them all. I almost kind of wanted an enemy. But I think I might have found the opposite. Crystal.

Crystal is weird. She’s so fucking weird, but she’s funny and kind and smells really nice and is super cute out of drag. I don’t know where I’m going with this. We just had an instant connection, and I think it’ll be a nice thing to have in a situation like this.

July 25th 2019

Holy shit. The first episode is done. I’m so fucking tired. And I fucking crushed it, oh my god. I didn’t expect anything less, of course. This is a sign for how the competition’s gonna be for me, I just know it.

But anyways.

Crystal told a joke during dinner that made me shoot water out of my nose. Nicky called me a sprinkler for the rest of the night, so fuck her. Besides, Crystal said it was cute. I know, I’m sounding like I have a crush on her, but I don’t. I just appreciate being around her, we get along well. So let me reiterate: I do not have a crush on Crystal.

July 26th 2019

I have a crush on Crystal.

They’re filming the other premiere today and we had some time to sneak away. I don’t know who she got weed from, but I owe them my life. We shared a joint and whenever she had it I just… stared at her. I don’t know how to explain it – she looked all glowy in the sunlight. Her hair – that fucking mullet – looked so soft and shiny, she looked like art.

I hate her. I want to hold her dumb hand and kiss her stupid face.

July 29th 2019

Crystal has a boyfriend. Of course she has a fucking boyfriend. Why wouldn’t she? There’s probably like, six other gay guys in Springfield and I bet they all want her. This is why I don’t do crushes. Crushes are bullshit. This is bullshit.

But… she held my hand in the van today. That was nice.

Fuck.

July 30th 2019

I kinda avoided Crystal on set today. I felt bad but it just made me sad and that’s not something I’m gonna deal with. I think Jackie suspects something’s up though. Her mama bear senses are tingling, I just know it. I thought it’d be annoying, but it’s nice having someone older and wiser keeping an eye on me.

Oh my god, Jackie’s my babysitter. Maybe I should talk to her about Crystal. I feel like she’d listen. She’ll probably try too hard to help, like it’s a puzzle that she needs to solve, but if I have to tell someone, it’d be her. And maybe it’ll make me miss Crystal a little less.

July 31st 2019

I was wrong, Jackie’s not my babysitter, she’s my mom. Not in a bad way, because obviously my mom’s the best, but in that she got very invested in the Crystal situation in the same way my mom always likes to hear about whatever guy I’m dating.

The good news is that Crystal’s relationship is open. I mean, that is good news, right? It feels like it should be, and my heart wants to latch onto the fact that I could have her in some capacity. Having her in any capacity almost feels like it’d be enough, at least for now.

She asked me if something was wrong, said I seemed ‘distant’. What was I supposed to do, tell her the truth? That’s ridiculous. I just apologized and said I was dealing with migraines. She offered to smoke me out next time she gets her hands on anything. And I know I’m not gonna be able to say no to her, there’s no point in even trying.

August 5th 2019

I think Crystal knows I like her. The energy between us has shifted and it… feels kinda good. She’s more touchy, more giggly. I think she even flirted with me today. I don’t know if she figured it out on her own, or if Jackie told her, but she’s onto me.

The thing is, I don’t know what to do about it. Yes, she’s in an open relationship, so it’s ‘technically’ okay, but it’s not the same. I don’t have anything against it, but… I don’t know, maybe I’m just selfish and want Crystal all to myself.

I feel guilty, then I feel stupid for feeling guilty, because I know I don’t need to be. Make it make sense.

August 6th 2019

If Jackie tells me one more time that I ‘need to talk to Crystal about my feelings’, I’m gonna blow up her spot about all those not-so-platonic gazes she keeps directing at a certain singing queen. She thinks I haven’t noticed, but she’s not subtle either. I wouldn’t do it on camera, though. That’d get too messy.

Besides, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to explaining how I feel anyway. I don’t like explaining myself and I don’t like all that ‘bare your soul’ type of emotional intimacy. All I know is that I want Crystal in every way you can want someone. But that doesn’t seem like enough to say. Like, if I’m gonna spill my guts, I’d have to go all out. And I don’t want to do that. So. I’m gonna stay quiet and wait for this to blow over, like a normal person.

August 9th 2019

Crystal kissed me.

We were in the back of the van. I was talking about… I don’t even remember what I was talking about, but out of nowhere, she just kisses me, like it was normal, like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was soft, gentle, but with this little hint of desire that still has me hot under the collar.

And I didn’t know what to say. What the fuck was I supposed to say? I asked, “what was that for?” And she just smiled and said “you look really pretty and I wanted to.”

I wish I could’ve said something smart and funny, or flirt and bat my lashes. But no, that’s Gigi’s confidence and attitude. This was all Sam, an idiot whose brain short-circuited after one kiss. “Oh, thanks,” was all I said and I’m gonna be kicking myself for it until I’m dead. And right now, I’m hoping that’s soon.

August 12th 2019

I kissed Crystal this time. I needed to gain some semblance of control here. She seemed surprised, but also kind of relieved. Had she been worried I was mad or freaked out? Funny enough, her being relieved made me feel relieved too. I think we’re on the same page now. I don’t know what this means for us now, but I feel like it means something.

August 13th 2019

The good news is I’ve got Jackie off my back for now. The bad news is it’s because her girlfriend is probably planning my murder. I mean, at the end of the day, a win is a win. But the bruise I had on my ass for a week is a poignant reminder that Jan was a jock who could snap me in half if she wanted to.

Which is also weirdly hot? I can see why Jackie’s ‘secretly’ pining for her and shit. Or maybe I’m getting too lonely and need to get Crystal’s mouth on me again. Not even in a dirty way, though that mental image sure is nice…

August 14th 2019

Maybe I thought about that mental image too much, because I had a sex dream about Crystal last night, like, a hot one.

We were in the werkroom, the only ones in there, and Crystal’s sitting up on one of the tables, I’m standing in between his legs and we’re making out. Then it’s kinda blurry, but next, we’re both naked and I have him bent over the table. And I can remember pulling his hair and listening to him moan while I fuck him. It felt real, and I haven’t had a wet dream since high school.

I just hope it doesn’t affect me when I get on set, I can’t afford to lose focus because I’m too busy thinking about jumping Crystal’s bones.

August 19th 2019

So… I guess in a way, I manifested more physical intimacy between Crystal and I. I was telling him how I was all stressed and wound up after not doing well in the last challenge, and that I don’t think I did well with this one, and he’s quiet for a moment, then goes “let me help you feel better.”

And I’m just like, okay? I didn’t know what to expect, but then he takes his jacket off and puts it over my lap and… I’m perplexed. I’m intrigued. I’m aroused. Even when he’s undoing my jeans, I’m thinking, ‘there’s no way he’s actually gonna do this, right?’ But the only person that keeps an eye on us in the van is Jackie, and he’s got his own problems to worry about.

Long story short, Crystal jerked me off in the back of the van. It was hotter than I thought it’d be – I guess having to stay quiet because four other queens and a PA could’ve caught us adds an extra thrill. Of course, I would’ve returned the favor if we’d had time. Next time, though. Next time.

August 21st 2019

‘Next time’ did happen, and it came back to bite me on the ass. I didn’t think people really had Freudian slips until the way I said “we’re fucking in the top six” in Untucked. It didn’t help that Crystal had this smirky grin. Ugh, I could’ve died.

I feel like everyone knows, honestly. That they’re just not saying anything to be polite. I’m sure once this is all over, I’ll never hear the end of it, though.

August 24th 2019

I think I’m in love with Crystal. I knew I loved her, admired her, but… it’s more than that. And I think I’ve known for a while, but I haven’t been able to articulate it. Because it feels so different from anything I’ve ever felt before. Crystal is so different from anyone I’ve ever met before.

I don’t know what this means for us when this is all over. It’s not like I expect her to leave her boyfriend and move in with me here in LA. But I wouldn’t say no to that either, you know? Right now I feel selfish, that I just want her all to myself. But maybe I’m just sad that come Monday, it’ll be the last chunk of time we’ll have together for a while.

It’s barely been over a month and I already can’t picture my world without her. And… yeah, I’m in love with her.

August 29th 2019

Crystal and I had one day together before he had to go back home, and we made the most of it. We did the cute shit like go out to eat and take a walk, but I also got to take him back to my apartment and fuck him like I wanted to since day one.

I don’t know what this means for us, now. He’s back in Missouri, getting ready for the next Get Dusted show. I’m here, still in full drag after a photoshoot. I guess this is ‘back to normal’, but I don’t know how anything is ever going to feel normal again.

October 18th 2019

Filming Drag Race feels worlds away now, it’s weird being too busy to write most of the time. But by the same hand, it’s nice to always be occupied, lord knows I need it.

I still talk to Crystal every day, either through text or calls or FaceTime. It’s nice to be reassured he thinks of me as much as I think of him. When I’m alone, I start to worry that maybe this was one-sided. But I don’t need to say that to him, he can tell when I feel weird and talks me down without even trying.

The thing is, I’ve always felt the most beautiful when I am Gigi, like it’s the best representation of who I am. But Crystal makes me feel beautiful even when I just woke up and he’s listening to me complain about greasy skin. I didn’t really think about something like that, about letting someone else make me feel the way I thought I could only do for myself.

Crystal is just that special.

November 2nd 2019

Crystal told me he’s in love with me for the first time. I knew, I think I knew, but I didn’t realize how much it would mean to finally hear it. I cried, and I couldn’t even be embarrassed about it.

What was funny to me was when Crystal apologized. He said he’d known for so long, and felt guilty that he kept waiting to say it. He told me he didn’t think he could give me what he wanted because he wants to stay in Missouri. I told him I don’t care how far apart we are, or who he was with.

We have something special. I don’t care what it is, we’ll make it work. And besides, the promo shoot is just two months away.

January 4th 2020

I can’t even begin to explain how good it feels to be back with the cast. Obviously I’m thrilled to see Crystal, but all of us together just makes me feel whole. Jackie asked me how things with Crystal are, I said they couldn’t be better. I asked how things with Jan are, she said there are ‘a lot of question marks’.

Compared to them, my relationship with Crystal really isn’t that complicated. We love each other, we don’t need to put a label on that. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the show airs, but I know I’ll have Crystal. Even when we’re sixteen hundred miles apart.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 8 - Burned Out

"One day I returned home to find my father staring through the blinds in terror. He claimed that someone was following him, told me that they were planning to stop his work. I asked him who it was, but he shook his head violently and said I’d know him when I saw him because “all the bones are in his hands”." - Statement of Ivo Lensik

That is such an amazing way to describe Distortion!Michael, though! "All the bones are in his hands". I absolutely did not make this connection on my first listen (I had forgotten this bit by the time the Distortion first showed up.)

"Over the next few years, the kids at the halfway house stopped causing problems in the area around Hill Top Road. It wasn’t an obvious change, but gradually the people living there were seen less and less. Raymond was still there and still seemed perfectly cheery. If anyone asked him about a resident who hadn’t been around for a while, he’d explain that they’d moved on or found a place of their own, and no-one really cared enough to follow up on his information."

Wait a minute, is this implying that the timeline is "Raymond starts running the halfway house" -> "Agnes arrives" -> "Raymond becomes an avatar of the Web and starts mind-controlling and then consuming the kids at the halfway-house" rather than the exact reverse? I had assumed that Raymond was already thoroughly Webbed by the time Agnes ever turned up, but then why did the kids only start disappearing AFTER she shows up? Man, I'll have to pay attention to the other Hilltop Road episodes, I am clearly misremembering a lot.

Climbing down, I retrieved what turned out to be a small wooden box, about six inches square, with an intricate pattern carved along the outside. Engraved lines covered it, warping and weaving together, making it hard to look away.

I absolutely did not make the connection between the box and the table at this moment, even though the table was described in a very similar way and the hole at its centre was explicitly pointed out. I think it had to be pretty much spelled out before I went "Oh. Ooooooh."

"Ah, head trauma and latent schizophrenia – the ghost’s best friends. Aside from excessive indulgence in psychoactive drugs, it seems to me that there is simply no better way to make contact with the spirit world." - Jon

I love how Jon is perhaps at his most dismissive about a story connected to a place that will keep coming back over and over again (and that he will keep coming back to over and over again). Just a bit of extra irony there.

Except… We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree. She had hanged herself. Her age is given at 26, which doesn’t match up at all. But tied by a chain to her waist was a severed human hand, a right hand. Its owner was never identified, but the coroner was apparently quite perplexed, as tissue decay would seem to indicate that the hand’s original owner must have died at almost the exact same time as Agnes.

Goddammit, I'm almost tempted to start a little timeline of "things happening at or in connection with Hilltop Road" for myself as I relisten to TMA. This is all very intricate!

My impression of this episode

Admittedly, when I first listened to this episode, I fell asleep, but I think that says more about my energy levels than the quality of the episode, because the episode is pretty damn good. It is, however, also very much a "We're setting up some ongoing plot" episode (Hilltop Road, Agnes, Raymond Fielding, the missing piece of the web table...). I suspect (and may be confirming this during this relisten, now that I actually know all the plot that's being set up) that those are generally not the episodes that leave me most unsettled, maybe because the writing is too busy setting up plot elements for later or because I was too busy going "Huh, there was a lot of content there, wonder what, if anything, they'll do with that later" or both.

[artificialqueens]

These Words are My Own (From My Heart) (Crygi) - Joley

ao3 link

July 22nd 2019

I don’t know what I expected from the first day of filming, but it was… a lot. The two group thing puts on that extra level of pressure, and I can already feel a little sliver of anxiety trying to wiggle its way in. Not that I’d ever let it show, of course. It’s way too early to worry.

As far as the other girls… I actually like them all, which, let’s be honest, is the biggest shock of them all. I almost kind of wanted an enemy. But I think I might have found the opposite. Crystal.

Crystal is weird. She’s so fucking weird, but she’s funny and kind and smells really nice and is super cute out of drag. I don’t know where I’m going with this. We just had an instant connection, and I think it’ll be a nice thing to have in a situation like this.

July 25th 2019

Holy shit. The first episode is done. I’m so fucking tired. And I fucking crushed it, oh my god. I didn’t expect anything less, of course. This is a sign for how the competition’s gonna be for me, I just know it.

But anyways.

Crystal told a joke during dinner that made me shoot water out of my nose. Nicky called me a sprinkler for the rest of the night, so fuck her. Besides, Crystal said it was cute. I know, I’m sounding like I have a crush on her, but I don’t. I just appreciate being around her, we get along well. So let me reiterate: I do not have a crush on Crystal.

July 26th 2019

I have a crush on Crystal.

They’re filming the other premiere today and we had some time to sneak away. I don’t know who she got weed from, but I owe them my life. We shared a joint and whenever she had it I just… stared at her. I don’t know how to explain it – she looked all glowy in the sunlight. Her hair – that fucking mullet – looked so soft and shiny, she looked like art.

I hate her. I want to hold her dumb hand and kiss her stupid face.

July 29th 2019

Crystal has a boyfriend. Of course she has a fucking boyfriend. Why wouldn’t she? There’s probably like, six other gay guys in Springfield and I bet they all want her. This is why I don’t do crushes. Crushes are bullshit. This is bullshit.

But… she held my hand in the van today. That was nice.

Fuck.

July 30th 2019

I kinda avoided Crystal on set today. I felt bad but it just made me sad and that’s not something I’m gonna deal with. I think Jackie suspects something’s up though. Her mama bear senses are tingling, I just know it. I thought it’d be annoying, but it’s nice having someone older and wiser keeping an eye on me.

Oh my god, Jackie’s my babysitter. Maybe I should talk to her about Crystal. I feel like she’d listen. She’ll probably try too hard to help, like it’s a puzzle that she needs to solve, but if I have to tell someone, it’d be her. And maybe it’ll make me miss Crystal a little less.

July 31st 2019

I was wrong, Jackie’s not my babysitter, she’s my mom. Not in a bad way, because obviously my mom’s the best, but in that she got very invested in the Crystal situation in the same way my mom always likes to hear about whatever guy I’m dating.

The good news is that Crystal’s relationship is open. I mean, that is good news, right? It feels like it should be, and my heart wants to latch onto the fact that I could have her in some capacity. Having her in any capacity almost feels like it’d be enough, at least for now.

She asked me if something was wrong, said I seemed ‘distant’. What was I supposed to do, tell her the truth? That’s ridiculous. I just apologized and said I was dealing with migraines. She offered to smoke me out next time she gets her hands on anything. And I know I’m not gonna be able to say no to her, there’s no point in even trying.

August 5th 2019

I think Crystal knows I like her. The energy between us has shifted and it… feels kinda good. She’s more touchy, more giggly. I think she even flirted with me today. I don’t know if she figured it out on her own, or if Jackie told her, but she’s onto me.

The thing is, I don’t know what to do about it. Yes, she’s in an open relationship, so it’s ‘technically’ okay, but it’s not the same. I don’t have anything against it, but… I don’t know, maybe I’m just selfish and want Crystal all to myself.

I feel guilty, then I feel stupid for feeling guilty, because I know I don’t need to be. Make it make sense.

August 6th 2019

If Jackie tells me one more time that I ‘need to talk to Crystal about my feelings’, I’m gonna blow up her spot about all those not-so-platonic gazes she keeps directing at a certain singing queen. She thinks I haven’t noticed, but she’s not subtle either. I wouldn’t do it on camera, though. That’d get too messy.

Besides, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to explaining how I feel anyway. I don’t like explaining myself and I don’t like all that ‘bare your soul’ type of emotional intimacy. All I know is that I want Crystal in every way you can want someone. But that doesn’t seem like enough to say. Like, if I’m gonna spill my guts, I’d have to go all out. And I don’t want to do that. So. I’m gonna stay quiet and wait for this to blow over, like a normal person.

August 9th 2019

Crystal kissed me.

We were in the back of the van. I was talking about… I don’t even remember what I was talking about, but out of nowhere, she just kisses me, like it was normal, like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was soft, gentle, but with this little hint of desire that still has me hot under the collar.

And I didn’t know what to say. What the fuck was I supposed to say? I asked, “what was that for?” And she just smiled and said “you look really pretty and I wanted to.”

I wish I could’ve said something smart and funny, or flirt and bat my lashes. But no, that’s Gigi’s confidence and attitude. This was all Sam, an idiot whose brain short-circuited after one kiss. “Oh, thanks,” was all I said and I’m gonna be kicking myself for it until I’m dead. And right now, I’m hoping that’s soon.

August 12th 2019

I kissed Crystal this time. I needed to gain some semblance of control here. She seemed surprised, but also kind of relieved. Had she been worried I was mad or freaked out? Funny enough, her being relieved made me feel relieved too. I think we’re on the same page now. I don’t know what this means for us now, but I feel like it means something.

August 13th 2019

The good news is I’ve got Jackie off my back for now. The bad news is it’s because her girlfriend is probably planning my murder. I mean, at the end of the day, a win is a win. But the bruise I had on my ass for a week is a poignant reminder that Jan was a jock who could snap me in half if she wanted to.

Which is also weirdly hot? I can see why Jackie’s ‘secretly’ pining for her and shit. Or maybe I’m getting too lonely and need to get Crystal’s mouth on me again. Not even in a dirty way, though that mental image sure is nice…

August 14th 2019

Maybe I thought about that mental image too much, because I had a sex dream about Crystal last night, like, a hot one.

We were in the werkroom, the only ones in there, and Crystal’s sitting up on one of the tables, I’m standing in between his legs and we’re making out. Then it’s kinda blurry, but next, we’re both naked and I have him bent over the table. And I can remember pulling his hair and listening to him moan while I fuck him. It felt real, and I haven’t had a wet dream since high school.

I just hope it doesn’t affect me when I get on set, I can’t afford to lose focus because I’m too busy thinking about jumping Crystal’s bones.

August 19th 2019

So… I guess in a way, I manifested more physical intimacy between Crystal and I. I was telling him how I was all stressed and wound up after not doing well in the last challenge, and that I don’t think I did well with this one, and he’s quiet for a moment, then goes “let me help you feel better.”

And I’m just like, okay? I didn’t know what to expect, but then he takes his jacket off and puts it over my lap and… I’m perplexed. I’m intrigued. I’m aroused. Even when he’s undoing my jeans, I’m thinking, ‘there’s no way he’s actually gonna do this, right?’ But the only person that keeps an eye on us in the van is Jackie, and he’s got his own problems to worry about.

Long story short, Crystal jerked me off in the back of the van. It was hotter than I thought it’d be – I guess having to stay quiet because four other queens and a PA could’ve caught us adds an extra thrill. Of course, I would’ve returned the favor if we’d had time. Next time, though. Next time.

August 21st 2019

‘Next time’ did happen, and it came back to bite me on the ass. I didn’t think people really had Freudian slips until the way I said “we’re fucking in the top six” in Untucked. It didn’t help that Crystal had this smirky grin. Ugh, I could’ve died.

I feel like everyone knows, honestly. That they’re just not saying anything to be polite. I’m sure once this is all over, I’ll never hear the end of it, though.

August 24th 2019

I think I’m in love with Crystal. I knew I loved her, admired her, but… it’s more than that. And I think I’ve known for a while, but I haven’t been able to articulate it. Because it feels so different from anything I’ve ever felt before. Crystal is so different from anyone I’ve ever met before.

I don’t know what this means for us when this is all over. It’s not like I expect her to leave her boyfriend and move in with me here in LA. But I wouldn’t say no to that either, you know? Right now I feel selfish, that I just want her all to myself. But maybe I’m just sad that come Monday, it’ll be the last chunk of time we’ll have together for a while.

It’s barely been over a month and I already can’t picture my world without her. And… yeah, I’m in love with her.

August 29th 2019

Crystal and I had one day together before he had to go back home, and we made the most of it. We did the cute shit like go out to eat and take a walk, but I also got to take him back to my apartment and fuck him like I wanted to since day one.

I don’t know what this means for us, now. He’s back in Missouri, getting ready for the next Get Dusted show. I’m here, still in full drag after a photoshoot. I guess this is ‘back to normal’, but I don’t know how anything is ever going to feel normal again.

October 18th 2019

Filming Drag Race feels worlds away now, it’s weird being too busy to write most of the time. But by the same hand, it’s nice to always be occupied, lord knows I need it.

I still talk to Crystal every day, either through text or calls or FaceTime. It’s nice to be reassured he thinks of me as much as I think of him. When I’m alone, I start to worry that maybe this was one-sided. But I don’t need to say that to him, he can tell when I feel weird and talks me down without even trying.

The thing is, I’ve always felt the most beautiful when I am Gigi, like it’s the best representation of who I am. But Crystal makes me feel beautiful even when I just woke up and he’s listening to me complain about greasy skin. I didn’t really think about something like that, about letting someone else make me feel the way I thought I could only do for myself.

Crystal is just that special.

November 2nd 2019

Crystal told me he’s in love with me for the first time. I knew, I think I knew, but I didn’t realize how much it would mean to finally hear it. I cried, and I couldn’t even be embarrassed about it.

What was funny to me was when Crystal apologized. He said he’d known for so long, and felt guilty that he kept waiting to say it. He told me he didn’t think he could give me what he wanted because he wants to stay in Missouri. I told him I don’t care how far apart we are, or who he was with.

We have something special. I don’t care what it is, we’ll make it work. And besides, the promo shoot is just two months away.

January 4th 2020

I can’t even begin to explain how good it feels to be back with the cast. Obviously I’m thrilled to see Crystal, but all of us together just makes me feel whole. Jackie asked me how things with Crystal are, I said they couldn’t be better. I asked how things with Jan are, she said there are ‘a lot of question marks’.

Compared to them, my relationship with Crystal really isn’t that complicated. We love each other, we don’t need to put a label on that. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the show airs, but I know I’ll have Crystal. Even when we’re sixteen hundred miles apart.

[krinsbez]

Work Stories

So, I’ve theoretically accumulated quite a few stories in the past month, what with the two weeks of working extra hours and having no days off owing to one co-worker having surgery and others leaving or turning into flakes because most of the Counter Crew are high school students and it’s summer, while also being HELLA busy. While I have a cold. As a result, I’m not sure I could recite them, as the last month has kinda turned into a bit of a blur, honestly.

(Wish I’d had the energy to share ‘em while they were still fresh in m’mind, but oh well. No use crying over spilt milk)

I can, however, share some stories from yesterday morning.

-Well, actually, it starts the day before yesterday, when someone calls asking to place a catering delivery for about 20 people about an hour after the kitchen opens the next day (that is to say yesterday). I spend twenty minutes helping him decide what he wants, going over basically every 9x13 tray we offer multiple times. At one point I have to hand the phone over to my boss to explain somethings because the dude keeps insisting that he wants the food in a form we don’t do. Ultimately, he settles on six 9x13s of stuff that’s relatively easy to do (and yes, I ask multiple times if he’s sure that enough, noting that a 9x13 constitutes roughly four servings). The guy gives a crappy delivery tip, but whatevs, it’s small order, I’m not gonna fight with him over it, especially as it was late and I was working a double-shift, and I’ve already spent 20 minutes on this.

-The next morning, I walk in (note: I come in about an hour and a half before the store opens, which is fifteen minutes before the kitchen opens). It seems two online orders have been placed for the moment we open (our systems are...not the best, to say the least). This is, of course, impossible to accommodate, so I call both customers and explain that it’ll have to be 30 to 45 minutes later. One explains that they placed the order because the moment we open is the latest time they can pick-up their food before they have to be at work. I offer to refund her, she asks if she can instead have the time changed to when she finishes work. I say it can, but there’s a high chance it’ll come out early and be cold by the time she picks it up, she says that’s fine.

-The next person tries to argue with me, stating that that’s too late, they have to be back at work half an hour after the latest time I stated, I say we’ll do our best to have it ready by the earlier time, they say fine.

-Note that we also have a trainee in, who I’m supervising (side note: the current crop of new hires KICK. ASS. We now have employees who’ve been here for three days who know what they’re doing better than the guys who’ve been here for a year). And also are opening after a hella busy day the night before that cleaned out certain items. And the boss is coming in a bit late. So things are, as you might imagine, a bit hectic. Plus, of course, getting that catering order squared.

-So, here I am, trying to modify the two tickets that came in before we left with the new times, show the new kid around, do my morning set-up tasks all at once, and get that catering order going...when the guy who placed it calls. Despite him having decided that those six 9x13s were sufficient last night, he’s decided he wants more stuff. I say I need to call my boss. The customer insists that no, no, it’s just one or two things, it’ll be fine. Since I don’t want to bother my boss, want to get this over with, and have a spine like a wet noodle, I let him bully me in to ordering more food.

-Once again, I have to go over our whole catering menu with him. He says he wants to add an item we don’t sell 9x13s of, and also only have a limited quantity of. He says that’s fine, he doesn’t need a 9x13, just four orders. Which, as I had pointed out to him repeatedly last night, is what goes into a 9x13. And also, we haven’t got. Note that I have to explain this to him THREE. TIMES.

-By the time he’s done, he’s added SEVENTEEN items to the order (granted, that included seven individual servings of soup, and six individual orders of dessert). He declines to increase the tip when he pays.

-My boss arrives. He is, to say the least, unhappy about my taking this order, and spends ten minutes (rightfully) calling me out on it, plus gently ribbing me about it all morning. He tells me to call the customer back, and tell him the now much-larger order might need to be up to an hour late. I tell the customer. He declares that we have a whole hour to prepare his order, what’s the problem? He makes noises about canceling the add-on. My boss looks over the order, realizes we maybe can do it in the original timeframe, albeit with difficulty, tells me to tell the customer this. The customer is pleased, and concedes that tripling an order an hour before it’s supposed to go out is maybe a bit unreasonable.

-OK, so we’re hard at work. We’re gonna make it, we’ve got most of the big order out, we just got to do the last couple items, and then pack them up. We’d have been done with it, in fact, except that by now we’re open and customers are coming in to order, and have to be helped. A customer comes in, and slowly makes a rather large order. I tell him it will take quite a while, he’s eminently reasonable about it.

-I’m about to finish packing the catering order, we’ve started working on the big order, the second lady who I called about her initial order time being impossible rolls up with her husband, half an hour after she said was the latest she could come (and forty minutes after it was ready; they turn out to be older folks, which I suspect is one of the reasons for what follows.

-Now, I’ve discussed out lunch special before, not going to recap it again, but suffice to say they come with a particular side, and for a small price that side can be replaced with a different side. So naturally, the first thing the lady says is that she knows it wasn’t on the initial order, but can she make such a replacement? I sigh, and say sure. But, when I call up her order...not a lunch special. Full-size everything.

-She says, oh, sorry. Thought I ordered a lunch special, never mind. They check the bag. Her husband demands to know where the sides are. I explain that said side comes with the lunch special, which they didn’t get. But we’re supposed to get a side he insists. SHE explains that it only comes with a lunch special. He insists that they did, in fact, order a lunch special. I show them that they did not. He finally, reluctantly, concedes. I ask them to pay. He insists that he already did. I tell him that he did not, and show him this. He spends ten minutes arguing with me, ten minutes I do not have to spend, because of all the other stuff to do. I’m about to lose my temper...and one of my coworkers, who would prefer I be helping with other things steps in and takes over arguing. (please note, she’s being reasonable and trying to get him to be reasonable, but he’s not having it). I finally get him to pay by promising talking with our technical people, and promising to refund them if it turns out he paid double. As they walk out my co-worker says to me that man it was hard not to yell at the guy.

[amour-de-tous]

Finally, the update on my health

TW: lots and lots and lots of talk about health, and bad health, in particular, below.  So I know I never really updated everyone on What Was (is) Going On With My Health. It’s been a huge mess, and I run out of spoons every day just trying to eat meals at the right times to take my meds.  Shortest version possible (believe it or not): at the end of May last year, 2019, pretty much all my joints and extremities swelled up unbelievably. Like I couldn’t put my feet on the floor because they were so swollen it felt like the skin would split open. I had to sit in a chair all day with my feet elevated on a stool and pillows just to keep them from continuing to swell, and I had to sleep with pillows under my feet to keep them from swelling more during the night. I say “sleep” loosely, because I was getting about an hour to two hours of very interrupted sleep every night. The swelling was so bad that just to leave my chair where my feet were elevated, and go sit at the table to eat meals, my feet would swell so bad it was hard for me to walk from the table back to my chair. Then my hands started going numb and tingly, but not in a “my hands are asleep” kind of way, but more an “this is excruciatingly painful but I still can’t feel my hands” kind of way. I couldn’t close my hands into a fist, and I couldn’t open my hands either, they were frozen in a sort of half curled position. There were several weeks where I couldn’t hold a fork or spoon to feed myself. There were months upon months were I couldn’t brush or wash my hair by myself. I spent months with my hands/wrists/feet/ankles packed in ice every 20 minutes to try to control the swelling. I also had this awful brain fog situation where I couldn’t focus on anything. Even if I had been able to hold a book, tablet, or phone (which I couldn’t, because my hands were so bad), I couldn’t read because I had absolutely zero concentration or focus or comprehension. Even watching TV was almost impossible because I would zone out and come back to awareness and so much time had passed I’d have no idea what was going on. I literally spent three or four months just sitting in that chair in pain, staring at the ceiling, crying on and off. So, so much more below the cut.

I could barely attend my niece and nephews baptism. We were there for as long as it took for the actual service to happen, and while I tried to stay for the meal and gifts and such, I was in such excruciating pain--and using a cane to even be able to walk--that we had to leave early.  My niece’s 4th birthday was a few weeks later, in late June, and again I was there with a cane and in excruciating pain. I’m my niece’s favourite person and having to tell her Auntie couldn’t get down and play with her, or hold her, was terrible. By the end of June, my PCP had run enough tests to be outside his area of knowledge and referred me out to a rheumatologist. The earliest the one I wanted to see could see me was January. This was the first week of July. So I looked around for whoever could see me first and chose them. The soonest someone could see me was, unfortunately, on my birthday last year, July 15th. So I spent my birthday seeing the rheumatologist, being diagnosed with carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and what he suspected was rheumatoid arthritis. Once I left his office, I spent my birthday getting bloodwork (8 vials, yikes, which continued monthly for the remainder of 2019), and then getting fitted for a set of wrist braces that I would have to sleep in for maybe the rest of my life, and wear during the day when the pain was so bad. The rheumatologist literally said to me “well, none of your labwork confirms this and we don’t really know, but we’re gonna treat you as if you had rheumatoid arthritis”. Although he kept running tests to try to confirm the RA, he didn’t look anywhere else to try and figure out what I actually have. So they started me on medication(s), and referred me to occupational therapy and physical therapy. I was so bad when I started going that my PT consisted of sitting in a chair and (trying) to flex my ankles in different directions, and then a lymph massage to try to reduce swelling. My occupational therapy, when I started, consisted of trying to pick up pieces of sponges and put them in a cup. I was so bad that was actually almost impossible for me. They also referred me out to have a nerve conduction test, where they stuck needles all through my arms and electrified them. It was the worst thing ever, let me tell you. Then I got referred to a hand surgeon (who is lovely, actually) for surgery. He decided to hold off on surgery and see if steroid shots would help (they did, to an extent, and I am so grateful for that). Fast forwards through months and months of testing and bloodwork and physical and occupational therapies and medications, and the swelling had reduced enough that I could stand up or walk to the bathroom or eat dinner without swelling up so bad anymore. Being at PT and OT still meant I came home and had to pack my feet and wrists in ice and elevate to take care of the extra swelling, but it was better. Not good, not right, but better. Fast forward more, still, and it’s December. At that point I could stand long enough to help cook dinner, or even run an errand or two before I was in too much pain and had to sit and elevate again. In mid-March they released me from PT and OT. Not because I was better--I still couldn’t (and can’t, now) bend my wrists at all--but because the prescription had run out. I’d basically used all the allotted amount I had. This ended up being alright in the long run, since aside from one trip to the lab for bloodwork, I haven’t left my house since my last day of OT on March 13th, due to Covid. Turns out having an auto-immune disease and being on immunosuppresants makes you REAL high risk for Covid, and I’m just not playing that game. At the beginning of April, I finally got to see the rheumatologist I WANTED to see all along (via video visit! Didn’t even have to leave my house and be exposed!). She’s awesome and is really set on finding an ACTUAL diagnosis for me and not just saying “we don’t know”. Had 9 vials taken from me in her first round of bloodwork, and then she said it looked like it could be Lupus and did more tests. She’s now pretty certain I DON’T have Lupus OR rheumatoid arthritis. I had an appointment with her at the very end of July (video, again), and it turns out she thinks I have something called sarcoidosis. This is going to require a CT scan, for my lungs and heart, to see if the disease is in them. Evidently with this particular auto-immune disease, your body overreacts and encapsulates what it thinks are dangerous foreign bodies (but really are just part of your own immune system) and creates “granulomas” around them. Basically think of an oyster creating a pearl around an invading body, except in this case instead of pearls, I have lumps of stuff that hurts me.  Horrifying to know I have to walk into a hospital at this point in time, of my own free will. Like I said before, aside from one set of bloodwork, I haven’t been exposed or been out where I could be exposed at ALL. All that goes out the window once I walk into a hospital for a CT scan. :\ After the CT scan, depending on the results, there’s other tests I’ll need. Chest x-rays, EKGs, pulmonary function tests, lung biopsies (YIKES) and others. She seems fairly confident that this is the correct diagnosis for me, but wants confirmation and also to see progression of disease.  At any rate, she’ll be changing my medication. Which sucks for so many reasons, not the least of which is I just picked up 360 tablets of it that I now won’t be taking. :| Also the fact that now I get to try a new medication and do the “am I having side effects or am I just anxious” song and dance. She’s also talking about needing to put me on steroids which I am REALLY unhappy about. I suppose it’s better to go on steroids than to die, but I’m still really unhappy about it. In other, related news, I’ve developed hypercalcemia. Which means there’s too much calcium in my blood, which can cause a HOST of other problems. So I’ve been put on a no-dairy, low calcium diet. Do you know how many items have calcium in them? Almost everything, that’s what. Also, they fortify all the non-dairy “milk” products with calcium. They all have as much or MORE calcium than dairy milk. It’s been a NIGHTMARE, to the point where I’m actually afraid of food now. I’m obsessively reading labels and doing research online. “How much calcium is in 81 grams of kiwi, after all?”. Nightmare. Dairy was my #1 love and foodgroup, and having to suddenly figure out all new things to eat and ways to cook while simultaneously being in pain and *exhausted* 24/7 because auto-immune is not. fun. at. all. It’s already all my energy every day to help make, eat, and clean up a meal. I literally have to sit in my chair after a meal with my feet elevated to recover. Now having to spend all this energy on a whole new diet plan is a nightmare. Basically this whole thing has been a MESS. It’s been 15 months, I’ve been being treated for the wrong disease for 14 months, the news I’m getting now is worse than the news that flattened my emotional response all those months ago, I still can’t function, and I can’t work. Oh, yeah. I haven’t played an instrument since May 2019. My whole life revolved around my music, and now I can’t even play to make myself feel better, because my hands don’t work. I’ve also been out of work since then, too: my last concert was April 2019. I haven’t made any money since. But I have had co-pays out the wazoo! Which reminds me that they raised the price on two of my meds, because of course they did. Thanks, congress. This has been really, really hard. My anxiety has skyrocketed through this, and my depression isn’t doing much better. Although physically I’m not as bad as I was, I’m nowhere near normal, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to my normal again, either. The best I’m hoping for at this point is to be able to eat calcium again someday, to not have my organs eaten up by this disease, and to continue existing. It’s been exhausting. It really, really has.  That’s not to mention the added stress and anxiety over Covid, and the fact that neither mom nor I can even go to a grocery store because of my high-risk status. We’re averaging getting groceries about once a month right now. It’s super fun now because I have to read the label on EVERYTHING but Aldi doesn’t post their nutrition labels online and!!! That means I have to either guess or not get things! Great!  All this to say that I miss being on tumblr. I miss all my friends here. I miss talking to you all and being able to laugh with you and geek out. Things have been really hard for me (and there are multitudes I haven’t included in here; even if my hands would allow that much typing, I’d probably hit a character limit. Just: I miss you all. I love you. I’ve been a wreck, but I think of you all often. <3

[mcsmmafia]

MC:SM Mafia - Round VI 🧠

THE 6TH ROUND OF MAFIA

On a chilling, but not yet snowy december day, a bus drived through the thickness of the swamp to transport eight patients to a asylum to which they have been relocated.

It was a confusing swamp… trees and vines everywhere, no proper roads… but the occupants felt confident that this was no problem for the driver. He was experienced… probably. I mean, he was responsible for the safe arrival of mentally ill patients, of course they wouldn't assign an intern with such an important task, right?

Anyway, the trip lasted the whole night, but just as the sun was rising, you finally arrived at the new asylum! … Which turned out to be a surprisingly old and bedraggled looking mansion? Geesh, talking about healthcare inequality.

Anyway, even though it was not snowing, the trees had frost on their leafs and the wind blew really cold, so you made your way inside without thinking about it too much. And thank goodness, it was actually warm inside! Ah, and there stood the receptionist, a girl with long red hair and a grey, comfortable looking beanie. You went on to line up - but suddenly, the girl turned around and activated a lever on the wall behind her. Huh? What was that all abou-

AND THEN IT WAS DARK AND YOU COULDN'T SEE AND OH MY GOSH I THINK I'M SEEING PUMPKIN FACES AND THERE WERE VOICES TOO, WE'RE ALL HEARING VOICES-

Oh, wait, that might actually be just your own voice… ahh, wait, you got a pumpkin stuck on your head! Well, how did that happen?? You sure didn't know!

… wait WHY ARE WE ALL WEARING PUMPKINS, WHAT IS GOING ON, WE CAN'T GET RID OF THEM, AHHHHH!!!!!

Meanwhile, it seemed like the red haired girl was trying desperately to announce something, but nobody would listen to her. She gave us a very annoyed glance and, in the next second, she put herself in a pumpkin too. And it didn't took a second for everyone to forget where the stranger was.

Dear patients, it is time.

To freak out.

AND-

GET REALITY AND HALLUCINATIONS MIXED UP AND BE EXTRA PARANOID AND PANIC!!!! A LOT!!!!

Oh, and also maybe you should watch out for stranger-danger.

☀ Results of Day 1:

After the patients were done freaking out, they played a nice little introducing game of saying hello to each other, but became bored quickly afterwards, so they split up to explore their new home on their own - I mean, they don't remember which one of them was the receptionist, so there was no other option really.

(Just for fun, I thought about why the MC:SM characters were in psychatric treatment in the first place for a bit: Stella has overwhelming seperation fear, Warden is not really mentally ill but a stalker, Nell has chronic fatigue syndrome, Harper has schizophrenia, Radar is not a patient but the bus driver XD, Ellegaard has bipolar affective disorder, Cassie is still a murderer, and Lukas has depression. (Sorry, Lukas, I couldn't think of any other interesting disorders 😂)

🌑 Results of Night 1:

Lluna wanted to stay in the entrance hall to monitor the front door. When Ellegaard and Lukas joined, Lluna noticed only an iron weapon in the room, so Stella knew she could trust her roommates and told them that she has the Flint & Steel. When she learned that Ellegaard has the iron sword, she asked for protection and stayed in the entrance hall to groom Lluna all night.

Warden ran after Winslow to pet him, and ended up in the attic, where he finally could give that good lil' boy Winslow a pet and happily fall asleep soon after professionally dabbing to his roommates.

Nell didn't have the energy to explore more than the surroundings of the living room, but when she spotted Radar entering, she decided the attic was probably a better place and used all her remaining energy to climb up there and hit the hay.

Harper desperately tried to outrun the creepy pumpkin faces she saw in all windows, and ended up in the attic, where there were no windows. Finally feeling safe, she was able to sink into a deep slumber.

After quickly peeking into every room to make sure nobody else was living in this mansion, Radar went back to the living room to sit down on the comfortable couch and spent the whole night trying to figure this blasted roadmap out…

Ellegaard did her best to protect Stella from stranger-danger.

CASSIE grinned when everybody decided to split up, so she wanted to make the best out of it and followed Warden and ordered Winslow to follow PAMA - but they all ended up in the attic together. Well, crud. With the night wasted, CASSIE decided to just grab her kitty and go to sleep.

Lukas didn't say anything to Stella's revelation, but didn't flee either; he just sat in a corner, silent all night.

☀ Results of Day 2:

The patients argued all day about who should cook breakfast. Before they knew, the sun was already setting, so everyone just grabbed whatever they saw first in the kitchen and scattered to find a good place to sleep. Very productively spent day.

Lukas has been suspended from the round due to inactivity.

🌒 Results of Night 2:

After Lluna reassured herself last night that the front door was indeed very safe and effective against the night monsters outside, she pushed Stella to go to an extra safe place to catch up on some sleep tonight, so she followed her to the attic. She was surprised to only see Radar there, but took the chance to ask for his identity. However, he did not respond… Stella eventually gave up asking and snuggled up to Lluna to visit the land of dreams.

Warden went to grab a snack like the others, but was disappointed by the insufficient selection… a few potatoes, some mushrooms… blergh! Where's the good stuff?? THEY DEMAND THEIR BREAKFAST CAKE! EVEN IF IT MEANS SEARCHING ALL NIGHT FOR IT!! 🍰 …However, they eventually got bored and fled to the gallery in hopes for more danger. (Little did they know that danger was coming right their way, had they only stayed!)

Oh great, Nell was already always tired, and now she's also gonna be hungry because nobody volunteered to cook the stupid breakfast! So, to conserve brain energy, she just went back to where she was last night and enjoyed her sleep in sweet solitude.

Harper couldn't shake the feeling of being closely watched by someone or something… she tried her best to hide her worries, but when night came, she skedaddled to the most isolated room she could find! …And, of course, that ended up being the gallery, because nobody cares for art, sigh. …But the feeling of being stalked remained - but now at last she realized where it was coming from: This weird calico cat in the corner over there with it's evil green eyes was watching her! What a creeper! 😼 She placed PAMA directly in front of Winslow to try and cover his glance, but this darned cat just walked around it. Welp, there was no way she would sleep with him around!

Oh gosh, everything is chaos… it's Radar's fault the patients are not safe in an asylum, and don't have regular meals, and now they can't stop arguing!! This is the absolute worst… and he was still really exhausted… maybe he should just go to sleep for a night. Perhaps, in the morning, things are gonna be better. So he chose a safe place to sleep, which of course only really can be the attic, and rested for a bit, after doing their best to ignore Stella's questions.

Oh my, Ellegaard was in full flow today! Was it the lack of sleep, or is she on her way to go hyper? Wherever this energy is coming from, it sure made her heat up the argument about breakfast today. Well, at least she snatched the only mushroom stew she found premade in the kitchen. Success! After being so harsh to everyone, however, she realized that she probably should try to calm down somewhere alone, so she went to the bed chamber. A big, nice pillow helps for meditation, you know? In fact, the pillows were so comfortable, ellegaard fell asleep almost immeditaly. That's how meditation works, right? 💤

CASSIE really had to contain herself to not burst out in laughter under her pumpkin mask when hearing the argument today. They're all distracting themselves, and CASSIE didn't even really have to do anything! Anyway, while the discussion was nicely heated, she had things to do. She needed to make sure that the next night would not be wasted! So she kept an eye on Warden to see where he would go this time. …And, as it turns out, he didn't go anywhere. He just stayed right here in the kitchen, searching for better food, CASSIE figured. So she ordered Winslow to patrol the hallway between gallery and bed-chamber and snuck up on Warden to cat-nap him… and was surprised when her hands could only grasp air! With the night wasted - again - she could only sleep her frustration away.

☀ Results of Day 3:

A new day dawned, and before anyone had the chance to address any hard feelings left over from yesterday, Harper spoke up to tell the patients that Winslow was following her everywhere she went. She also mentioned who else was in the room with her the past nights, skipping PAMA.

Stella then stated that she wanted to be locked up, and asked Harper to vote for herself too. Warden was quick to offer guarding them. Nobody else voted.

Warden also warned the group that he dabbed threateningly, and then tried to catch Winslow to throw him into the closet too, but he was fast to jump onto some high-laying shelf where Warden couldn't get him. 😼

🌓 Results of Night 3:

Stella had a hard time to going apart, but Lluna accomponied her all the way to the closet, and assured her with a bleat that she will reliably return in the morning to pick her up again. And she kept her word, to Stella’s great relief.

Warden regretted it a little to have volunteered as a guard, since he would rather do some detective word, but in the end he did not retreat from his duty and made sure to poke the prisoners the whole night through, even though he didn't really suspect them to be Cassie.

Nell just went to the living room again and slept like normal. She is really not afraid of traps.  

Harper was just glad to be safe from Winslow for one night, at least.

Radar took the chance and went to the entrance hall to see if there were any pets around. He could spot Lluna and PAMA, but also CASSIE - so he waited for a bit to see wheter CASSIE would leave and if one pet would go with her. As it turns out - Lluna and PAMA must belong to someone in the closet!

Ellegaard went back to the bed chamber, but when she saw that Winslow seemed to now be targeting her, she toyed with the idea of trying to figure out if she could activate a trap on Winslow - but of course, that grown kitty would be too smart to fall for his owner's traps. 😼 So Ellegaard dropped that plan and just climbed up to the attic instead.

CASSIE followed Radar - but of course he wouldn't go anywhere. CASSIE sighed in her streak of bad luck and sneaked away to the bed chamber to sleep.

☀ Results of Day 4:

Stella started the day by immediately confronting Warden about the sleeplessness-ordinance which he put her and Harper through, to which Warden apologized, stating that he didn't really suspected them to be Cassie.

Stella then went on to state that she suspects either Nell or CASSIE to be Cassie, since they are the only ones who haven't been checked by her best friend and pillow Lluna. Ellegaard vouched for this claim, only stating that she knew a thing.

Nell was about to vote Stella for the closet, but promptly retreated. Warden then voted to throw Nell out, stating that he is about 65% sure that Nell is Cassie, and 35% that it's CASSIE, which he subsequently voted into the closet.

Nell tried desperately to convince the others of her innocence, but had nobody who could vouch for her.

Stella voted for Nell to get thrown out too, but then retreated, saying that she wanted to lock her up first. CASSIE, Ellegaard and Harper agreed that there was not enough evidence yet. Harper then voted for the same thing.

(Oh my gosh, no offence to the person playing CASSIE, but I could hardly stop laughing about how they kept referring to Cassie and how nervous they were about her - and everybody just talked over that! I was so sure their cover would blow 😂😂😂)

🌔 Results of Night 4:

Stella realized that she has TWO arms, with which she was able to poke both Nell AND CASSIE at the same time! So she did that because IF STELLA COULDN'T SLEEP, THEY CAN'T EITHER! Also, it helped to distract her mind from Lluna and how she's doing.

Warden thought about sneaking to the closet and spawn-killing Nell… but realizing he had no weapon to do this anyway, he just went up to the attic and let the dream be a real dream.

Nell was really mad about being locked into a closet, and sang a song in order to try and annoy the guard so much that she would let her free - but was exhausted quickly and ended up just enduring the acupuncture. Stella really was NOT a great masseur.

Harper was paranoid when going to the gallery, but couldn't find a kitty anywhere - has he actually stopped following her? Harper was still a bit nervous, so she inspected some dusty, pixelated art about seven people with white pumpkins on their head before realizing how boring the pictures really were… but they freaked her out anyway, so she started counting all the pixels until she fell asleep.

Radar could barely follow the discussion that was going on… he was just too tired. He longed for the sun to set, and when it finally did, he concentrated all his strength to climb up to the attic before basically fainting on the floor face down.

Ellegaard was a little freaked out by seeing Winslow with her in the library, of all places. But she went to sleep anyway.

CASSIE very imperceptibly wishpered Winslow to patrol the hallway between dining room and library before she discontentedly followed Stella into the closet and endured being poked all night.

☀ Results of Day 5:

CASSIE started the day by complaining about being poked the whole night, which Stella interrupted saying that she didn't have Lluna with her in the closet, which was a problem. She also stated that Nell was singing "something about tissues", and that that was a crime because they were a Duck.

Note: The person playing Stella has a username referring to ducks.

After that, they realized that they (and it was totally not my fault) had overlooked a list that revealed that Warden and Radar were having a slumber party in the attic last night!

But that was quickly forgotten again when Warden decided to yell out loud that he wanted to throw Nell out. But when a voice from above told them to vote then, they retreated.

Stella went on to vote CASSIE into the closet, instead - but immediately rectified themself to Nell. Freudian slip? Warden voted for the same and asked Radar to guard, but Harper volunteered right after. They agreed to let Radar do it (even though Radar didn't use @Game Master ARRRGH but let's overlook that… this time.)

The patients then talked about cat-crazy people and the fact that PAMA was with them, but nobody claimed to own it, although Stella and CASSIE claimed to know who Harper is.

However, Radar revealed to have written the note last night. And then continued to ask if he could pet Lluna, because passing out is very exhausting. And thus, Lluna was promoted to stress therapy pet!

Warden also tried to vote to lock up the voice in his head. It wasn't very successful - Oh… nevermind. They put Alexa into the closet.

Radar also tried to order McMurder Fries. (Oh god, now he's losing his mind too…)

Nell brought them back on topic by loudly concluding that Cassie must be one of the people who have been locked up in the toilet, and that she's suspecting CASSIE.

Radar and Stella overheard everything but toilet and were so inspired that they wrote a survival guideline on how to survive murder and get rich. 🚽💰

Nell ignored them and voted to throw CASSIE out, to which Stella heavily disagreed.

Most patients were confused by Nell's use of the word "toilet" for the closet, but Warden approved the use of "toilet" for "closet" by saying how cruel society was for not letting him do his business in closets.

Stella brought up how she wanted to feed the zombies the flint & steel, and how a smooch would cure them… she was in her own world, for sure. She wondered if she could eat the zombies, and CASSIE too pondered how'd they taste.

Finally, the voice from above had enough and sent them all to bed. SERIOUSLY. This was long, but I had so much fun - doing this round in an asylum was the best idea ever. 😂

The Last Night 🌕

All Cassie ever wanted was to live a happy life with her 372,026,931 calico cats… but nooo, society had to declare that that was not "normal" and a sign of "mental illness" and that she should be put in an asylum for therapy. It was really their fault, not hers - the other patients constantly got on her nerves, and the staff wasn't much better as they treated everyone the same, no matter if they were sane, like her, or really crazy. So Cassie might have put up a few traps that killed a patient or two and maybe also the whole population of the house. It happens! She could impossibly have stood another second in this madhouse! Why does nobody ever seem to understand…?

Anyway, so she went outside - only to realize that she was stuck in this whole swamp dimension that was just created so that patients could never escape on their own. But the staff had to be able to get out somehow, right? She went back to the asylum, but it seemed like all their drops had disappeared already. Crud, she should've rushed to get them as soon as these people were dead!

She certainly wouldn't ever make that mistake again - but for now, she had no way to return to her home… luckily, however, her most beloved cat Winslow came to help. He risked being stuck in this mad-dimension with her for eternity! He was such a good cat. And he brought friends! 😼 😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼

Although that really cheered Cassie up, she still didn't want to accept her fate of living here forever. Maybe some day new patients would be admitted, then someone would have to bring them there and get out again afterwards…

And, look at that, they indeed came. Five more patients and one quite young looking bus driver.

Cassie spent days thinking and plotting how she could effectively eliminate them without being noticed… because even though this is an asylum we're talking about, the patients were not yet crazy enough to just let her do her thing. So she tried to cat-nap them, but it didn't quite ever work out.

As the days passed, the patients managed to narrow down who could be responsible for not cooking them breakfast and dinner - and they almost unanimously agreed that it's either Nell or CASSIE. And in night 5, Lluna followed CASSIE to the living room - she knew that was practically her death sentence, since everyone so far seemed to unquestionedly believe Stella everything she said.

So Cassie took her chance, and finally went to the secret passage ways to activate a trap on Stella, Warden and Ellegaard - all or nothing!

And, look at that… when Cassie went to collect their drops, she found the FLINT & STEEL where Stella was. That was… easy.

Well. Cassie wasn't complaining.

Finally. Finally she can get out of this dimension and back to her other 372,026,922 cats who surely are still patiently waiting for her to return home! (And feed them.) 😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼

Oh, and also, she may or may not have lit the mansion on her way out just for celebration. What, now that's making her a pyromaniac? OH SHUT UP, SOCIETY! SHE JUST WANTS TO MAKE SURE THE PATIENTS ARE WARM INSIDE!!! 🔥🔥🔥

Cassie has won the game! 🧠