#I think Shadow holds himself to some more old-fashioned standards

[generic-sonic-fan]

Shadow does swear, but it's very rare and only when he's well and truly pissed. Rouge is the one who swears 24/7, and yes, she's the one who taught him. Omega doesn't swear because he thinks it's boring and it pisses him off that most swear words have double meanings relating to biological functions.

[whatifyoulivelikethat]

snake | myg

pairing(s): yoongi x reader

summary: Your parents have no qualms on doing whatever they can to climb the social ladder. That includes assigning you a betrothed you've never met, an offering to the crown prince. You, the one the gossipers whisper under their breath... the Snake Princess.

warnings: implied parental emotional and physical abuse; language; non-idol!AU - prince!Yoongi x aristocrat!reader, ft overprotective (but secretly soft), tattooed, little brother!JK; based on this

–

“I don’t care what our father said, you’re not marrying him!”

You scratched your ear, partly shielding it from the loud voice of your brother.

“He’s an asshole!”

“You don’t know him?” you offered, affixing your earring, somewhat annoyed. The yellow gold wasn’t quite your style. Your parents liked such gaudy, ugly things.

Both in fashion and tradition, unfortunately.

“Do you?” your brother shot back, throwing himself up from your bed where he was yelling at the ceiling about nothing he could change. It was a favorite past time of his, along with following you around like a talkative shadow.

“No, that’s why I’m meeting him today,” you replied dryly. You switched to the other ear, adding the dragon-shaped ear cuff above the gold earring. Your parents hated it when you added such aggressive accessories – they’re not womanly, they would say – but if you were going to be betrothed to some guy on the sole basis that they had ambitions and he was the man who so happened to be the next-in-line for the throne, you weren’t going to lie about what kind of woman you were.

“Aren’t you pissed?”

You shrugged. “Is it so bad?”

“Yes!”

You sighed and flickered your eyes to the mirror, seeing Jeon Jungkook’s furious expression, long black hair tied back with lingering strands framing his high cheekbones, his black and gold robes wild, poorly tied and revealing half of his tanned, toned chest. His dark brown eyes flashed, pressing his cherry-painted lips together, jawline sharp and defiant. That’s how Jungkook always looked, messy, undone, borderline furious.

Everyone called him the Reckless Prince.

You just called him little brother.

“Noona…”

“Hmm?”

You saw him frown and you looked away, running a hand through your hair, browsing your hair accessories. You used to have an aide to help you at one point, but you told your parents to get rid of them, preferring to get ready by yourself. And besides, Jungkook liked to burst in and interrupt you with his relentless tirades about how unfair your arranged marriage was. There was no point in having hired help when you could coerce your brother into doing things as you put up with him.

“Can I brush your hair?”

“You have arms and hands, so you’re physically capable, yes.”

You heard him click his tongue in annoyance and smirked, shifting your eyes to the mirror. He was behind you now, face no longer visible. It didn’t matter. You already knew his cross expression quite well. He snatched the ornate comb from your vanity, the black snake head clearly visible on the side of his right wrist, inked near his thumb. Your parents scolded and beat him for getting it, but Jungkook could care less, breaking the wooden paddle with ease, right out of your mother’s hand.

You hadn’t said anything.

The rumors called you the Snake Princess.

Quick-witted, sharp, vicious. Not to your face though, because that was just foolishness. It wouldn’t be only your wrath they would be evoking.

Jungkook ran the comb through your hair, gently separating the strands, careful not to pull too hard. He was better than any aide anyway. They merely yanked and pulled you into their standard of beauty, ignoring your opinions or input, always citing that it was important to not look like a peasant, important to always look above your status, using your beauty to save face.

Saving face.

You hated those words.

“What if he’s a horrible person?” your brother asked quietly, tucking the strands away from your eyes only for them to slip back stubbornly.

“Then he’s a horrible person,” you replied, applying your makeup. “And you’ll probably do something about it.”

Jungkook made a noise between an aggravated bear and an injured tiger.

“If he so much as puts one fingertip on you, I’ll kill him.”

You snorted. “I’d hate to tell you what marriage entails, Jungkook.”

The comb in your hair paused.

His anger subsided, just like that.

“You’re really going to do it?” he asked softly. “Really, really?”

You heard the pain in Jungkook’s voice.

You recalled when you received the news many years ago, silent fury as your parents gave you away, turning you into a transaction to raise their own reputation and status. Your reaction was nothing to your little brother’s, him running to your room and crying in your arms, distraught and upset that you were leaving him, declaring he hated your parents, everyone, and everything.

“You’re supposed to protect me,” Jungkook had sobbed, already too big for you to hold like this but you did anyway, patting his head and wiping his tears with your sleeve. “You’re supposed to be here, with me, forever and always.”

He had taken your hand, tucking his fingers in yours, pressing your pinkies together.

“You promised me.”

And you had, from the very beginning, the shy kid always following after you and making you speak for him, your parents yelling and scolding him to be a man, but you defending him, taking the slaps meant for him, sneaking him sweets when he was hiding his tears, telling him it was okay to cry and that noona would stay here and listen to his worries, no matter if it was as stupid as a butterfly flying away or the teacher once again reprimanding him for his poor scores.

The amount of pressure they put on him just because he was the son was immense.

“I wanna play,” he had cried softly. “I don’t have to study anymore.”

“You want to be stupid?” you had teased, patting his head. “What if I had my lessons with you? I can make that happen.”

“R-Really?”

So, you made it happen, telling your parents and tutors that it would be better for him to be exposed to more complex concepts earlier rather than later and watching someone learn would improve his own scores. You made yourself a better student for his benefit and he, in turn, followed obediently, doing what you did, always overjoyed to hear your praise.

You and your snake tongue could made anything happen for him.

“This servant is bothering me.”

You found some questionable information on that servant and they resigned rather quickly.

“I don’t like the girl our father introduced me to.”

Suddenly said girl was no longer interested in Jungkook. For… reasons.

“I wish I could go on vacation, even for a couple days.”

That one got you both beaten for your three-day adventure to the sea, mostly because you had to run away from your duties to do it. But it was worth it to see the smile on Jungkook’s face.

Then Jungkook became a teenager.

You might have taught him that rules were for old people, for the generation too uptight.

He wanted to do a whole lot of things and you made it happen. Getting him out of those sticky situations was a bit tough, but nothing unmanageable. And now Jungkook was a young adult who did not care about anyone’s opinion other than yours, getting tattooed and spending all of his time with his friends, lackadaisical and free, your parents giving up and calling him a disgrace, relying on your marriage to restore the reputation they valued so much, the face they themselves ruined with their own poor decisions, taking out their frustrations on you and Jungkook, sometimes without warning.

You stayed home, playing good daughter so Jungkook could be the bad son.

Ah, maybe it was your fault he was the Reckless Prince.

You turned, looking up at him now from the corner of your eye, up his loose robes and exposed collarbone, up the line of his jaw that was similar to yours, his lips not quite as full, his round brown orbs that were actually much more innocent and purer than he liked to admit, similar to your eye shape.

But not the same.

Because your eyes were sharper, cold-blooded, predatory.

Even with Jungkook, there was no mistaking the power behind your gaze.

“Do you think just because I’m married to some man that he can control my life?” you said with a sly smile, your lips painted lush red. “I’ll come visit you whenever I want. You can come whenever you want. You can live with me if you want.”

You turned back, sweeping your hair and twisting it in place, deftly and quickly pinning it back, leaving some strands loose and messy that your parents would highly disapprove of, but why did that matter? If this man was to be your husband, then he would see you completely undone at one point, so he should get used to it.

Your parents wouldn’t approve of the black and dark green combination you had chosen either, but that’s why you learned how to sew to dress yourself as you liked. You have to be a lady. You were a lady. Just your version of a lady and not theirs. They tried to gatekeep you by saying that the pink and yellow fabrics were all they could afford. They had a tendency to underestimate your craftiness.

No obstacle was too high for the Snake Princess to slither over.

“Really?” Jungkook asked as you stood up, smoothly adjusting the tie at your waist.

You chuckled at him as he began to follow you out of your bedroom.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it for you.”

-

“You brought your brother.”

“I don’t bring him anywhere. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

Jungkook was sitting behind you, arms crossed, glaring at the dark-haired man sitting in front of you. You had mildly fixed his appearance before entering only from him to push up his sleeves so he could reveal the entire snake tattoo wrapped around his arm, a black snake surrounded by thorned vines.

“Hmm.”

This man had requested to meet you first, alone, without the parents. Untraditional, but as long as his father agreed to the request, it was done. Your father had no say in the matter, although he did protest rather loudly and uncouthly.

You had poured the tea for your future husband and you.

Neither of you were drinking it.

The man before you had a piercing gaze, cloud-white skin, shapely lips. Somehow, he surprised you by being dressed in black and gold as well, although he was much neater than Jungkook, black hair tied back in a the usual, curated traditional style.

“I intend in marrying you, you know.”

He had a deep, rough voice, reminding you of dead leaves and winter.

“Is that not the point of this meeting?” was your dry response.

A dark eyebrow lifted.

Jungkook clicked his tongue dismissively.

Those shapely lips curved into a slow smirk.

“I thought I wouldn’t like you,” the dark-haired man mused, reaching over to the teacup and pulling it to him. “I was fully prepared to refuse this proposal and put your family more in the dirt than your brother has already put them into.”

“You bas–” Jungkook hissed, but you held up a hand, cutting him off.

You kept your eyes on those dark brown orbs, cat-like and predatory. He took a deep inhale of the aroma of the tea, letting out a satisfied, smokey sigh.

“I thought you would be like the others. Prim, proper, begging for me to take your hand.”

You raised an eyebrow. “What do I need to beg for? You either will or you won’t. It has nothing to do with me.”

A dark chuckle. “Indeed.”

He took a long sip of the tea, savoring it. You watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing, tongue flickering out to lick his lips. Slowly lowering his head, scrutinizing gaze on you. He made you wait for his words.

“And besides, snakes can’t kneel, can they, Snake Princess?” he purred.

“Don’t you dare call her that!”

“No, they cannot,” you replied calmly, ignoring Jungkook’s outburst, staring into the eyes of the man who was going to decide whether or not you were going to be his wife.

“They can’t pray either.”

The dark-haired man tilted his head, intrigued.

“I have no need for gods to be able to live the life I want, Min Yoongi,” you said quietly, venomous edge to your voice. “The ties you put on me cannot restrain me from living as frivolously or ambitiously as I like.”

Min Yoongi, the man who would decide whether you would live an honorable or disgraceful life, the man who was next-in-line, the crown prince. You were meant to be his, but, unlike you, he was free to refuse. Unlike you, he had nothing to lose. Unlike you, he could destroy your life in a heartbeat with a simple no.

“You believe that?” Yoongi questioned, daring you.

You didn’t back down, small serpentine smile on your lips.

“I do not need to believe when I know.”

Silence.

Then Yoongi’s shoulders shook, raspy laughing bubbling from his throat, smirk on his lips.

“You want me to refuse. You want to ruin your parents’ lives.”

You didn’t say anything, your smile fading.

“Ah, but the problem is, I really do like you, Snake Princess,” Yoongi hummed. “You sharp tongue and you even sharper mind. A simpler man would have been tricked by you.” He tapped his long fingers against the table, keeping his feline poise directed at you. “I did not want some placid, useless little thing but a real woman, someone who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. Why have a trophy when you can have a weapon?”

He placed his chin on the back of his other hand, clicking his tongue thoughtfully.

“What shall we do then? You absolutely must be my wife.”

“You–” Jungkook hissed, rising up behind you, glaring at Yoongi over your shoulder. “You know she doesn’t want to marry you and yet you’re going to do it anyway?”

The dark-haired man raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t want to marry me because she wants her parents to pay for using her so carelessly to further their status. However,” he added with a sweep of his hand on the table, palm upward towards you. “Has she actually said she has no interest in me as a person? During this entire meeting, has she declared that I, the crown prince, am not to her liking?”

Yoongi gave Jungkook a sharp look.

“Do you think she would hide her disdain for me if she had some?”

Silence.

“N… Noona?”

“Yes, Jungkook?”

“You don’t like him at all… right?”

Silence.

You let out a deep breath, slow and controlled.

“Hmm, you are very intuitive.”

Yoongi grinned. “You know we would be a good match, you and I. Here,” he murmured, pointing to the table. “On the throne.” Pointing outside, indicating the land. His cat-like eyes locked with your snake-like gaze, lips forming his next words slowly and deliberately.

“In bed.”

Your eyes trailed from those glittering dark eyes to his pleased smirk. Not a malicious expression somehow. An exciting one. You fully expected to be walking into this room to tear down an arrogant, gaudy man with grandiose self-centeredness.

Instead, it was Min Yoongi.

He ticked his chin to Jungkook, now right next you instead of behind you, clutching your arm tightly.

“Do you want him to be with you? That could be arranged. I can make that happen.”

You really thought you would hate Min Yoongi and yet it seemed as if you were being drawn closer and closer to him. You pursed your lips, not ready to give up yet. He continued.

“And, of course, there’s no reason for your parents to enjoy luxuries that they didn’t earn, is there?”

You narrowed your eyes at him. Yoongi smiled, calm with an underlying slyness.

“That would reflect on you if you treated your in-laws poorly,” you responded coolly.

Yoongi shrugged. “And so? I still have you.” He tilted his head. “Why take a wife if you’re not prepared to do anything for her?” He nodded to himself, tapping his fingertips on the table once more. “Whatever you want, I can make it happen. Be it your brother tagging along, your parents’ lives in ruins…”

Yoongi’s eyes found yours and there was a kindness, already knowing your and him were meant to be.

You weren’t so sure.

And yet.

His next words made you fall in love.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it for you.”

--

masterpost

[sellyoursoulforagoodfic]

Shelbys at Somme: Chapter 10

Thomas X Reader

Word Count: 1451

Summary: Reader almost gets shot.

by @adventuresintooblivion

Y/N watched as Thomas approached, a heavy weight settling in her stomach. She wanted nothing more than for the floor to swallow her up; only the ivory beneath her fingers kept her grounded.

He flashed her a small smile as he gestured towards the piano, "Hey, Y/L/N. Does she hold up to your standards?" 

She nodded. "Yeah, actually it's even better than I could've hoped for. Probably the fanciest instrument I've gotten the pleasure to play. A real beauty she is. Can’t believe you bought this."

Thomas' brow furrowed as he joined her on the bench, "You're rambling."

Y/N flashed him a weak smile. "Tired."

"You don't wanna tell me what's bothering you."

"No…" 

He glanced down, reaching back to rub the back of his head. "Will you tell me when you're ready?"

She didn't answer at first. "Today is the best day I've had in a long time. It feels selfish to be upset."

Thomas chuckled, "You almost got beat to death a week ago. I don't suspect the bar ought to be that high."

She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "You don't know the half of it."

He didn't move. Something inside him refused to let him enjoy the moment. Then he caught Grace's reflection in the polished wood, watching them.

He cleared his throat. "Ready to head upstairs?"

"I think so. The Pub has been busy, and I've been filling requests all day." 

He looped an arm around her waist and soon enough he was depositing her onto her bed.

"Do you need help?" He gestured to her dress, only the slightest pink tinging his cheeks.

"Can you get the back? I don't think I'm flexible enough to reach it right now."

He nodded and after getting her initial layers off he began unstringing her corset. He cursed softly.

"I thought these infernal things were out of fashion." He growled. 

Y/N chuckled, "It's starting to go, yeah. I've had this thing from before the war.  It seemed wasteful to throw it away."

Once it was finally loose enough, he slipped the undergarment over her head, mildly teasing her for her old fashioned chemise.

"We're going to have to get you some new clothes." He tossed her a robe.

She slipped into it easily, rolling her eyes. "That's the plan. Though I might have to invest in another dress or two. I don't get as many compliments when I'm dressed like a man."

Thomas paused. "You got compliments today?"

"A few." 

He leaned against her bed posts, feigning a casual expression. "What're their names?"

Y/N frowned, "Why does it matter?"

"I just don't think they should be bothering you." He shrugged.

"I can handle myself." Y/N folded her arms. "Besides, you don't get to act like that if you're looking at Grace the way you were."

He snapped, "And how was I looking at her?"

Y/N huffed, "You were undressing her with your eyes Thomas."

He knew he had been but getting caught didn't make him feel any better.

Thomas stood. "Am I not allowed to look at other women?"

Y/N recoiled, pulling her covers closer about herself, "No, Thomas you're allowed to. Just don't be a hypocrite about it."

Then it dawned on him, "Wait, is that what you're upset about? My talking to Grace?"

"I…" she looked away. "I know I have no right. That's why I didn't want to bring it up."

Thomas deflated, "What do you want?" 

"Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to."

"If I didn't want to know I wouldn't fucking ask," he growled as he stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

〜

Y/N was once again awoken by muffled shouts coming from the room beside her. Something cruel curled inside her chest and bid her to stay still. To listen to his screams and do nothing.

She shook her head and stood, eyes blurry with sleep as she shuffled down the hall. Y/N wasn't paying attention, why would she be? It was her own home. 

"Thomas?" She knocked on the door yawning.

Two shots rang out. The wood just above Y/N's shoulder exploded as bullets ripped through them.

She didn't say anything, hell she was afraid to move. To make a sound. What if he isn't awake yet? Is he gonna shoot me if I breathe too loud?

There was a long moment before the sound of metal clattering on the floor filled the night air. "Y/N? Fuck Y/N!" Thundering footsteps. Then the door flung itself open. Thomas stood there in the dark gasping for breath. Dark shadows made his already angled face more severe.

Y/N just stood there shaking. She didn't feel the raw pure pain of being shot. Tears stung the corner of her eyes as she blinked them away, the sound of shells hitting packed earth rang in her ears.

"Tommy?" She stammered.

Her words broke a spell. He closed the distance between them in a single quick stride. Thomas' arms circled around her. He curled his fingers in her hair, pressing her forehead against his shoulder and murmuring into her hair, "I'm so sorry. I swear I didn't mean to… I would never hurt you."

Y/N shook her head. "I know you didn't want to shoot me Tommy."

His voice shook, "I should've been more careful."

"Stop blaming yourself; shit happens."

His thumb brushed ever so gently across her cheek, "Then why're you crying?"

Y/N didn't answer. She let him tilt her head back as he turned her towards the light. His skin left behind burning trails of fire. The concern in his eyes shredding every wall she'd put between Thomas and her feelings.

"Tommy." Y/N felt a tremor run through her as he brushed his thumb over her lower lip. 

She wasn't sure who moved first, but she found she didn't really care; he was kissing her. His chapped lips were rough against hers, but she didn't mind; it helped ground her in the here and now. The echo of bomb shells slowly faded away.

Y/N blinked as she pulled away, her thoughts muddled. 

Thomas let out a shaky breath in an attempt to collect himself. "Does this mean I'm forgiven?" She could hear the smirk in his voice.

She gently tugged on his lower lip in retaliation. "I don't think I was properly mad to begin with."

Thomas groaned as he pressed his forehead against hers, "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Make me want more," he growled before tilting her head back once again.

This kiss was tender. A slow exploration of each other that drew out her darkest secrets. Everything she wanted to say but didn't dare swam in her head, battling with the need to enjoy this. 

Suddenly she was in the air pressed tightly against Thomas' body. She let out a soft hiss of pain. His grip lessened slightly. "Sorry, love."

"Don't call me that." Say it again. Please.

He flashed her a smile that took her breath away, "Whatever you say, love."

Y/N snarled and captured his mouth in a hungry kiss. He gasped softly as her tongue brushed against his lower lip. Thomas fumbled as he carried her down the hall to her room. The occasional impact sent a small wave of pain through Y/N's torso, but Thomas managed to take the brunt of the force.

It wasn't until he sat on her bed, pulling her close to straddle him, that her mind cleared enough to understand what was going on.

"Thomas," she gasped, her words silenced by a kiss. 

His fingertips slid beneath her nightgown, sending sparks up her body. Her hand reflexively clutched at his shoulders. 

How the hell does he still remember?

Y/N tried again, "Thomas, wait."

He paused before pulling away just enough to catch his breath, "What's the matter?"

Her heart shattered as she spoke the words, "I'll not be second best. I can't, hell, I won't share your affections."

Thomas cleared his throat, "I… I understand." 

He glanced around a moment. His movements were uncertain as he lifted Y/N off his lap and deposited her onto the bed. She winced as she shifted into a more comfortable position. 

Thomas waited patiently before he stood. "I should go." 

The need for each other was still evident as Y/N reached out for him. "Why don't you sleep here tonight? I... don't feel like getting shot through the wall because of a nightmare."

The excuse was a weak one at best, but she didn't miss his smile as he crawled into bed beside her.

[boop-le-snoot]

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 8

Releasing two chapters today in honour of my birthday! I am officially 23 years old. Oh my God, what the fuck? I feel ancient.

Rating: Explicit.

‼️TW: Reader is EIGHTEEN! Recreational drug use, smoking and alcohol consumption, deeply internalised self-loathing, very questionable moral standards. Daddy kink taken half-seriously. BDSM themes in later chapters - explicit content will come with it's own TWs. FIRST PERSON POV.

Summary: You're Peter's classmate, a child of rich and famous but uncaring parents. Getting paired up for a lengthy project with the boy was an interesting turn of events and you don't know whether to feel blessed or cursed when you develop, seemingly, a perfectly normal, harmless crush on Tony Stark. Fueled by feelings of inadequacy and boredom, your life spirals out of control - and you're lucky your newfound friends are there to pick up the pieces even if you cannot find it in yourself to believe these amazing human (and not so human) beings voluntarily give you more than a fleeting glance and an offhanded thought. And they brought cake!

A/N: I started writing this for porn and now? Look at all this plot. Disgusting! Featuring: the Hulk, more Bruce fluff, and DISASTER PARENTS. It's gonna get worse before it gets better y'all.

My beta, @miscmarvelwritings is the Peter to my Tony. Love you 3000, baby.

The beeping startled me awake, the haze of my recent memory made me very unsettled. Last thing I remembered was laying down on the couch and Peter's admission - the little! Guy! Was! Spider-Man! Holy! Shit!

Beeping intensified and I heard grumbling and shuffling coming from the side of me. A warm sensation engulfed my right hand and I smiled. I'd recognize that hand anywhere. Bruce was in the room with me so I was definitely in a safe place.

Me eyelids parted meeting a set of oddly fluorescent green eyes. Holy fuck, that was no Bruce, it was... But how? His form was slouched in an uncomfortable position over the bed, crease marks on his face. It was Bruce's body, Bruce's face but who held control over it - he was no Bruce Banner.

"No worry, Princess is safe," The voice that left his mouth was much more primal, with an unmistakable growl underneath. He watched me, alert, scanning my face with unblinking eyes. "Bruce asleep now. I keep watch."

I swallowed the unease. "Hi, Hulk, and thank you," Squeezing his hand very, very gently. "Nice to meet you, by the way."

He grinned, all teeth and sharp canines. He looked like a wolf. The look was so out of place on usually gentle Bruce's face that I had to study it, had to memorize that stark difference between Banner and his alter ego. The smile faltered slightly as he closed his eyes. "Bruce waking up now. See you soon." And with that, his head fell onto his arm, dead weight and limp.

His hair was tousled, a curly mess, and he wore the same shirt I remembered him in. Upon closer inspection it still bore minor stains of what I assumed was my blood. It was probably the only time I would get to look at him, really look at Bruce without the fear of being caught, being weird or getting misinterpreted. He was really handsome, the five o'clock shadow silver on his usually neatly shaved chin, his jawline was firm and... He really was beautiful.

His eyes slowly blinked open, the usual colour brown. Noticing me awake, Bruce immediately perked up. "Morning. How do you feel?" He asked, voice croaky and sleep-drunk.

It sent shivers down my spine. "I'm good, nothing feels amiss besides the left part of my face. That's kind of puffy," I admitted, failing to describe the full-and-pulling sensation I was currently experiencing. "I met the Hulk. He was nice." I added as an afterthought. Thought he should know.

Bruce frowned. "He does that sometimes. Sorry."

"No, it's okay. I think, I think I'd like to meet him properly one day," I admitted my biggest curiosity. After all, I've already met real aliens.

Bruce seemed speechless for a moment. "Are you sure?" He stuttered. "He's...a bit much," He parroted my previous comment about my house, much to my amusement. "You sure it's not the concussion talking?" Banner squinted at the monitor at my bedside, avoiding my eyes.

"I'm very sure," I squeezed the hand I was still holding in quiet affirmation. "Besides, he promised to see me soon."

"Oh did he," Bruce muttered darkly but I could see his face brighten nonetheless. "Right, so I'm going to call in Strange and we can see about unhooking you from all these things," Bruce gestured to the various wires and monitors.

True to his word, Strange waltzed in no more than ten minutes after Bruce called him. Seeing me, the usually stoic man began snickering, unsuccessfully attempting to hide his amusement by swirling his cape in an unnecessarily dramatic fashion. I was not impressed, Bruce was not impressed and neither was Tony who walked in shortly after all the wires were removed from my persona.

"So... Is someone going to tell me why is Dumbledore so joyful this fine morning?" I crossed my arms under my boobs.

"You don't remember?" Tony snorted at my negative head shake. "Before you passed out, you demanded cake and said Wizard here looks like Benedict Cumberbatch. To be fair, I see the resemblance, but you...." Tony paused to snicker multiple times. "You managed to butcher up the guy's name multiple times, I swear to Thor, what came out of your mouth was..." The engineer laughed, making a broad and vague gesture with his hands. "What did she say? Bubble-butt Orgy-pants?" He asked Bruce who was as unsuccessful at hiding his laughter as Strange himself. Even the wizard's cape was bouncing.

I wheezed, suddenly coming to a realization. It wasn't a concussion induced lucid dream, I had actually said that. "It's really bold of you to assume I can pronounce and remember his name while I'm sober," I said. "I just call him British-guy Funny-name." Tony cackled at that, giving me a hearty thumbs up and ungracefully plopping down at the foot of my hospital bed.

"How do you feel, Buttercup?" He was looking earnestly at me now, his sparkling brown eyes big and round and worried.

I had to distract myself to keep from literally face-planting into his lap then and there. "Good, actually." Tony nodded happily, and I raised my finger. "But for the record, Doctor Strange..." I addressed the man who turned to me expectantly. "Please don't get pissed off, I have a request..." He nodded warily. "Don't shave? I mean, now that I can clearly see the resemblance between him and you... Please don't shave off the beard or you'll look like an angry aardvark."

The men in the room gaped, most of all, Stephen - his face was somewhere between resigned suffering and surprised disbelief.

"Angry... Aardvark..." Tony fuckin' WHEEZED. "Fuck a duck..." The engineer clutched at his stomach in an obnoxious fit of laughter, Bruce was snorting too. "The fuck is an aardvark?" The lone word seemed to have a magical effect on Tony, increasing his laughter with every time he repeated it out loud.

"Duly noted," Stephen nodded with as much seriousness as he could before cracking a reluctant smile. "I see that the healing technology Tony developed has worked well, if judging only by your sense of humour returning. Good," With that, he waved his hands about and the puffy feeling from my face disappeared. "I took some liberties and added a healing spell with Loki's help." Seeing my raised eyebrow, he elaborated. "Loki was deeply touched by your kind gesture towards his teammate and offered his help. You should be good to resume your daily activities by nightfall although I recommend you take it easy. And call your mother, she stopped by and instructed me to request you communicate at the first comfortable opportunity."

The mild pity and disdain on Strange's face told me that he was the one who had actually spoken with her. She must've been especially icy and bitter considering I had interrupted her daily routine with getting punched in the face. How inconvenient.

With that, Stephen left me with a parting pat on the shoulder, taking Tony with him - the engineer managed to squeeze a whole hug out of me before being bodily (magically?) dragged behind Strange. I was really uncomfortable with all the attention I was receiving wearing only a thin hospital gown and I told Bruce exactly that - promptly, Natasha arrived with a bag I recognised as my own, an ostrich Birkin that held a cute, soft cashmere loungewear set, some basic toiletries along with a set of underwear and a pair of slippers.

Evidently, my mother packed this bag. Never in a thousand years I would wear a $1200 worth of leisure clothing at a hospital. Even Natasha whistled when I first examined the bag's contents.

"Yeah, yeah, my mother's a bit much," I said, immediately cringing at how obnoxious that sounded.

"No shit," Natasha rolled her eyes. Something told me she'd met her too.

"Wait 'til you see my dad," I replied in an identical tone, disappearing behind the door to the bathroom. It was all very luxurious, extra and overall very Stark. Friday's voice coming from the ceiling made it known that I was still in the tower, the AI informed me of the date, time, weather and the further instructions to follow Natasha after I was done freshening up.

Showers had never felt so good.

I was greeted by muted cheers and a hefty brunch on the common floor. Lots of hugs, too, even Loki paused his brooding to give me an awkward, albeit very genuine embrace. I whispered a thanks for the spell which made the moody god considerably less moody - in fact, he smiled like a child on Christmas Eve. Suddenly, I felt much less out of place with my disaster self.

The pleasant part was done and I geared up to call my own personal curse.

"Hello, mother, it's kind of you to pick up," I started the usual. I could literally feel the confusion and concern of the people in the room piercing my back. "Sorry for interrupting your meeting. Yes, I am quite well now. No, Josh can keep running your errands, I will stay at Mr. Stark's for the time being. Tomorrow morning, probably, don't wait up. I will, absolutely. Oh, is he? Wow, that's amazing. I'm so happy," I chirped. My face was one of the suffering kind. "Yes, dinner on Friday night. Okay-I mean, yes, I will ask. He's actually right next to me." I paused to turn around and look at Tony, mouthing 'she wants me to invite you for dinner'.

Tony's speed was breaking the laws of physics as he snatched the phone right out of my hand. "Hello, this is Tony Stark speaking. You know, maybe you should come over to Stark tower. Yes, the whole family. Thanks, bye." He promptly pressed the end call button right as mother had started her goodbye-have a nice day-live long and prosper speech. "How the fuck do you put up with that woman?" He started at me with a mix of concerned incredulousity.

"She's an acquired taste," I groaned. "You just wait. My dad. I..." I literally had no words to describe the upcoming disaster. Tony had no idea what he just had condemned all of the tower's inhabitants to. "Why am I like this? Why are they like this?" I raised my head up to the ceiling as if the AI living in it could give me all the solutions to my life's problems.

"Get some rest, Princess," Bruce was kind enough to spare me any more misery as his warm, broad hand steered me towards the elevator by the small of my back.

As he dutifully fluffed my pillows and handed me a glass of water and my smartphone, I unashamedly basked in the soft attention I was receiving from the older man. I still felt somewhat groggy; best case, I'll fall right asleep and if the dreamland avoids me, I would browse tik tok and Instagram until something else would strike my fancy. The gentle murmur of him describing the latest lab incident I missed out on and the hands combing softly through my hair were the best sleep aides I could have ever asked for.

Bruce is too precious for this world. Too pure.

Friday rolled in with the force of a pissed off rhinoceros. Dad had flown in on a Thursday afternoon, stopping by the house to drop off his suitcase and happily dangle the keys of a brand new Chevrolet Corvette in front of my face before briefly stopping to ruffle my hair, kiss mother on the cheek and drive off into the sunset to "catch up with people at the studio". Jetlag wasn't a word in that man's vocabulary, he probably snorted a line or three as soon as he stepped out of the airport.

I could carry my groceries in the bags under his eyes. He just waved off any of my attempts to get him some rest only showing mild interest when I spoke about my friendship with Tony Stark, absolutely disregarding the rest of the team sans Captain America and the billionaire himself.

I might as well have been in front of a trainwreck, watching it happen second by second. The moment all three of us stepped out of the elevator onto the tidied up common floor, I had the sudden realization of exactly how much we weren't a family.

We were the exact opposite of that.

My mother, tall and slim and perfectly posed in a sleek blue dress with diamonds glittering around her chin, neck and fingers, her obnoxious greed proudly on display. My father, in his early fifties, well-groomed and fit, in his tight designer pants and a plain white t-shirt under a stylish tweed blazer. He looked ridiculous. Only Tony could pull off something like that (I shuddered. Sigmund Freud sends his regards!). And me, little old me, in my $900 jeans, $1500 Gucci sneakers and a mesh crop top I got at Hot Topic. At least, amidst this mess, my eyeliner game was on point.

I smiled sardonically at Steve who came to greet us. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

"Captain Rogers," My father greeted him with his Hollywood smile.

"Steve," An equally fake and toothy grin came from the superhero as he gallantly greeted my mother and swept me into an unnecessarily tight hug.

Point one, my father smirked. Somewhere in the corner, Wanda made a gagging noise - quietly, of course, I only knew about it because she did her telepathic mumbo-jumbo to make me aware of her stance on this particular matter.

Point two, my mother loudly announced she was vegetarian while simultaneously praising the catering services that Tony used. Clint had enlisted Bucky and Thor to help him cook and now all three were smiling awkwardly as mother spoke about the "incredibly talented immigrant workers".

Point three, dad made it his JOB to brag about my skills and achievements as if he was the one encouraging me to pursue them. It was fair, I suppose, since he paid for it but alas, it sounded a lot less like he was a proud father and more of a "look at what my puppy can do". I had to tip my proverbial hat to Tony and Bruce there, they both began to describe our lab work in such unnecessary detail, using so many long words, even Loki began quietly chipping in with totally random, long, difficult words. Confusion was beginning to seep through the eternally cheerful facade that my dad wore.

Or maybe it was the coke and Adderall wearing off. Who knew.

"Peter?" Came the dreaded question from my mother. I shook my head in quiet despair as Peter visibly cringed at my mother's voice.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"That vile boy has been taken care of," I could absolutely see Natasha saying the same thing and the only difference laid in the fact that I knew my mother wouldn't actually kill a person. She would hire someone to do it for her. "It's really unfortunate my daughter got in the middle of that sort of situation."

Wow. My mother just called Peter a coward. Wow. Tony briefly went cross-eyed with anger.

"Baby, why you bein' so quiet?" Dad, the mitigator that he was, intervened before a real shit storm could start. Which meant, as usual, putting me on the spotlight. It was me between a rock and a hard place: nothing, and I repeat - nothing I ever did or have done was good enough for both of my parents at the same time.

"I'm fine, dad, just chillin'," I replied, pushing my food around on my plate. He hated it when I ate too much, which was really anything more than two glasses of water and a salad. Being around models on a strict avocado and coke diet really skewed his sense of normal.

"Nah, baby, you're brooding," His teasing tone could've fooled anybody. Just messing around with a teenager. "Come with me tonight, there's a party, Billie Eilish is going to be singing. Not my style but you like that weird goth shit, might cheer you up a lil'," Dad joked and everybody around the table smiled happily at last. Everyone except Tony that was - his press-tour smile was still glued to his face. I hated it. It was unnatural.

"No, dad, you go have your old people fun," I rolled my eyes.

"Jesus Christ," I heard mother mutter on my other side but she kept quiet beyond that.

"C'mon, don't be a spoilsport," Dad insisted.

"Actually, we have a project planned up in the lab..." Tony trailed off, attracting confused looks from his teammates and friends. Pete looked at me in pure envy.

"Alright, alright, dad, I'll go with you, jeez," I mumbled, flushing from the sheer amount of embarrassment flowing through me. Partying with your own father, how sad and pitiful is that?

"I'm very upset at you ditching me," Tony poked a fork in my direction but didn't press the matter further. I avoided the looks of my friend's friends. I avoided the hell out of Bruce who kept making his perfect, round puppy eyes and radiating so much kindness and support I nearly choked on my intermittent sips of water.

"Alright, we will be waiting downstairs with Josh, say your goodbyes," Mother announced as she subtly towed my father towards the elevator. He'd had a whiskey too much and felt particularly chatty much to Tony's displeasure. "Thank you again for your hospitality."

As soon as the doors closed behind my parents, the group of superheroes erupted into a confused debate. I saw Tony blankly staring at the ceiling. Bucky cursing. Thor overly calmly talking with Loki.

Beyond caring about anything, my face flamed as I made a beeline for my dad's latest, untouched glass of whiskey (single malt, neat, double) and downed it in one go. The conversation stopped promptly, people eyeing me with visible concern. Steve was outraged.

"No," I announced, stopping any and all questions, slamming the glass on the table and departing towards the elevator that had made its way back upstairs. "Just no." Were my parting words as the doors closed once again on a startled and disgruntled group of superheroes.

Please check your blog settings before requesting to be added to the taglist. I can't tag some of y'all.

THE TAG LIST IS NOW OPEN! @another-stark-sub ​ @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit @littlegasps @pilloclock ​ @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads ​ @hermione-grangers-wife ​ @individualistfem ​ @as-i-layhereinyourbed @sleep-i-ness @gigglyfox01

[reydjarinkenobi]

Prompt: codywan, accidental baby acquisition? Love your writings!

Thank you for the prompt, I hope you like it!

---

Cody shared a glance with his general, conveying his confusion through the slightest way he tilted his chin back.

 "I think we have a stow away," General Kenobi chuckled, gazing down warmly at the small Mon Cala child floating in mid-air, giggling. They had fallen out of the vent and been reflexively caught by the Jedi with the Force, the general letting out a surprised gasp.

 They were almost a full day out from the planet they had left.

 "We don't have time to turn back, sir," Cody muttered, making tighten the 212th's guard duty whilst on planet. "Ryloth needs these supplies since their trade routes have been compromised."

 The general hummed as he floated the child towards himself, examining a dark blue bracelet on his arm that made his shoulders slump almost imperceptibly.

 "We won't need to worry about distressed parents, at least," the general observed.

 Cody frowned. "Pardon, sir?"

 There was a sad sheen in the general's eyes when he looked up at him.

 "They're an orphan," General Kenobi informed him, his lips flattening into a thin line.

 Cody twitched, something inside of him twisting. General Kenobi had informed him of what the word meant some months ago, and, whilst he couldn't relate to the feeling of losing a parent, he could relate to not having any at all.

 "What do we do?" he asked the general.

 There was nothing in the regs manuals to cover a situation like this.

 General Kenobi glanced down at the squirming child in his arms. Cody assumed the fact that it hadn't spoken yet was normal for their age. He really had no idea how old they were, nor any frame of reference for what that meant for their development. He had a hard enough time determining the ages of natborn children.

 "I suppose we'll just have to take care of them until we get time to return them to their planet, or get them somewhere safe. They unfortunately don't keep official record of refugee orphans on Lycesta, so there won't be any legal ramifications," the general mused, bouncing the child lightly, as it had begun fussing in his hold.

 The child twisted, reaching out a webbed, peach-coloured hand from over the general's arms, threatening to tumble out of General Kenobi's grip.

 The general followed the direction of the child's flailing limb, grinning at Cody when his gaze landed on him.

 "It seems they want you," he observed, taking the few steps towards Cody and depositing the child in his arms.

 Cody scrambled for a few seconds, trying to get a good grip on the still wriggling body. His guts churned as terror coursed through his veins at the thought of dropping the child. He shot a desperate look at the general that he hoped conveyed the depth of his alarm, but obviously failed to communicate the true scope of it, as the general stepped away.

 However, before the general could get any further than a single step, the child squawked, launching themselves at the general and forcing the Jedi to catch him. They then proceeded to turn around in his hold and make grabby hands at Cody until he had stepped back within touching distance of his general. Only then did the child finally settle, leaning back into the general with a sigh.

 General Kenobi cupped the back of the kid's head, a small, high sound escaping from the back of his throat.

 Cody glanced up at him sharply. He'd never heard the general make a noise remotely like that before.

 "Their scared," the general murmured, his voice almost a whisper.

 Cody swallowed back the stickiness that had suddenly latched onto his throat.

 "What now?" he asked, voice equally quiet.

 "We should get them up to the healers," the general decided after a moment's hesitation. "And organise some food for them."

 Cody nodded. That sounded logical.

 "It's lucky that we've already completely our paperwork, isn't Commander?" the general assessed with a small smile as they begun to walk, shoulders brushing as they did. "It seems we will be indisposed for the foreseeable future."

 Cody felt his lips twitching upwards. "I've always greatly enjoyed our efficiency, General."

 ----

 That night saw Cody bunking with General Kenobi.

 After a warm meal and a lot of cuddling, the child had eventually let them stray more than a metre apart, but she would still cry out if either him of the general left her sight.

 Helix had checked her out and thankfully, she seemed to be in full health, or at least she was according to the manual on Mon Calamari children that the healers at the Jedi Temple sent over to Helix. General Kenobi had sat with Cody as they both poured over it whilst the child played with a few soft toys that a few of the vode had fashioned out of offcuts of cloth from the storage lockers.

 "We will try and send someone out to retrieve her," General Windu had informed them during the hasty meeting that had been slapped together once General Kenobi had informed them of the situation.

 "Optimistic that the Senate will approve such a mission, I am not," General Yoda hummed, frowning. "Especially obstinate they have been as of late."

 Both Helix and the Temple Healer that they had commed said it could be hugely detrimental to the child's wellbeing to force her apart from either him or the general for any length of time when she had already clearly latched onto them. So, for now, Cody was stuck with the general, both of them with their shared tiny shadow.

 Not that Cody minded.

 His chest had been filled with a weird glowy feeling all day, and he'd smiled more than he ever had before, his cheeks warming whenever the General looked at him.

 He really didn't know what was happening to him.

 "That should be it," General Kenobi announced with a grunt, standing up.

 The general's bunk was only slightly bigger than the standard issue ones in the barracks, not nearly large enough to comfortable fit both of them and the child, as she'd been demanding. So, they'd pushed the general's small desk out of the way, pulled the thin mattresses off each of their bunks and pushed them together on the floor. The general had just finished arranging as many blankets as he'd been able to scrounge up into a sought of nest.

 "It looks good, sir."

 It really did. Cozy is the word Cody would use to describe it. Another bit of vocabulary picked up from his general.

 "There's need for such formalities in private," General Kenobi assured him. "You may call me Obi-Wan, Cody. It seems if we are to be co-parents for the time being, after all."

 Cody frowned, contemplating that for a few seconds, before he nodded. "It looks good, Obi-Wan."

 It was worth it just to see the way the general beamed at him.

 The child let out a huge yawn from where she had been sitting on the general's now bare bunk.

 "I think it's time for bed," the general observed and Cody nodded, walking over and scooping the kid up into his arms before kneeling down and gently depositing her in the centre of their makeshift bed. He'd shed his armour when they'd begun rearranging the room.

 The general - Obi-Wan - puttered around for a few more minutes, turning off the lights and making sure the night light that Waxer had given them, which cast a dim but warm orange glow across the room, was plugged in properly, before he finally joined them both.

 It took a bit of shifting as they negotiated their positions around the small body which had already curled up on the bed, but eventually they settled.

 Both their bodies were curled protectively around the little girl in between them, with Cody's chin resting on Obi-Wan's head.

 He ran a hand through the Jedi's soft hair, feeling the warm glow in his chest intensify as his eyes slowly slipped shut.

[itswildwinters]

Hello lovelies and welcome to my October 2020 fic recs. These are the fics that I read these last few months. The main pairing is Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles.

This is also an appreciation post to all writers out there. Thank you for contributing so much to the fandom, for making all these incredible pieces of work for us all to read!

I’m wishing you all a happy Halloween in advance!

If you check out any of those incredible fics below, don’t forget to leave kudos and comments to show your appreciation!

Enjoy!

From What I’ve Tasted of Desire by @evilovesyou 

When Louis moves to the small Scottish town of Fortrose to spend some time with his father, he thinks he's come to terms with the fact that the next two years of his life will be rainy and dull. That changes when he meets the ever-elusive Harry Styles in his Biology class and he makes it his goal to find out the big secret surrounding him and his family. Louis unexpectedly finds himself in the eye of a storm of secrecy, age-old myths, friendship and romance.

Twilight AU / Vampires / Werewolves / Slow Burn / Highschool & College AU

eyes off you by @soldouthaz

“Just promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to keep us all safe while we’re in there,” Liam says.

Through the crack in the door, Louis can just barely make out the broad curve of Harry’s back, the slope of his curls as they tumble down all sleep-soft and lazy, and the sharp twist of his arm - all leading down to where he’s got his pointer and middle finger crossed over each other behind his back.

“I promise,” he tells Liam firmly, “I promise.”

--

or; a charlie’s angels inspired fic where louis is the brains, harry is the charm, liam is the muscle, and niall drives the getaway car - and zayn is there, too. sometimes.

Action / Pining / Assassins (kill bad people)

Walls by Travis_Crux 

Following his line of sight, he frowned and shook his head, "What's wrong?"

"Wasn't your timer on your ring finger?" Liam asked, at that the Alpha immediately swapped the tumbler and looked down at his finger which sported a string of tiny blue flowers on the underside of his ring finger.

The two of them looked at one another.

"You could've touched nearly fifty people by the time you grew delirious," Liam advocated, always the voice of reason. "Comrades, nurses, doctors."

Sighing, he turned away and continued drinking the water. Literally, the only fucking thing remaining in the middle of a fucking war.

Or

Harry has his soulmate timer stuck at zero from the beginning of time but suddenly the fates show mercy and a lovely forget-me-not takes the place of his timer. In between finding his soulmate in a war camp and solving the puzzle of the charismatic doctor who is treating him, all he can hope for is to live.

ABO / World War I / Soulmates / Angst / Hurt-Comfort

works like a charm by @falsegoodnight

Ever since Louis joined the team in fifth year, a few facts have become set in stone.

One: Louis is the best chaser in Hogwarts.

Two: Harry is the best beater in Hogwarts.

Three: They do not get along.

So it’s really unfair of Liam to think that forcing them to spend time together as Louis recovers from his injury will make them the best of friends. The last thing Louis would do is get along with that git.

Harry Potter Setting / Porn With Plot / Enemies to Lovers

(quiet like a fight) fingers laced together by @letthemkissyou

It’s a thin hope, frail and as thin as the silver strands of a spider web, desperate in the way Louis keeps clinging onto it even when he’s already expecting and preparing for the worst. Maybe one day, he’ll have a home, a place where he can feel safe and sound, tucked away safely from the world that has the tendency to treat him horribly and then even worse, that maybe there will be someone in his life who cares for him, even if in the smallest of ways, and does not just use him for whatever they tend to need at the moment.

Or, the one where Harry is gifted a hybrid and it's a whole new world for the both of them.

Hybrid Louis / Past Abuse / Fluff / Angst 

We’ll Cast Some Light (You’ll Be Alright) by fondleeds 

There’s tense silence, the whole room completely hushed. The other teams on surrounding tables look between each other. Then, Louis pushes himself away from the table noisily, chair scraping. His face is angered and crumpled, red at the ears. The door slams behind him as he rushes out. The surrounding teams look at Harry simultaneously.

“God, Simon is going to kill us if we don’t die on this mission first,” Niall moans into his hands.

-

There’s a standard procedure for this. Scan, track, kill. But with a solar eclipse and a Greater Demon with unfinished business looming, the path to keeping England safe from harm becomes complicated and shadowed by mystery and secrets. For Harry and his team, times have never been harder, especially when a few old friends turned foes show up. Harry is left with just over forty days to overcome the hurdle of tension between them and reconcile their past, and figure out just what Louis is hiding from him before it’s too late.

Demons / Enemies to Lovers / Violence / Angst / Fluff / Demon Hunters / Smut

Three Days in February by @mercurial-madhouse

“We have to get out of here, outside,” Harry whispered, turning his hand in Louis’s grip to hold on and pull them both to their feet. “And how do we fucking do that?” Louis hissed, carefully rising and pulling Harry to his feet before Harry could do it. His gaze darted to the front then back of the arena. “None of the doors are where they’re supposed to be.” “What?” Harry looked around again too, couldn’t see any doors, only knew that they must be there, somewhere. “How do you know?” Confusion slid over Louis's features. “Because we’ve been here before, Haz. It’s the O2.” The show. It must be the first night of their tour. They were too late; they were out of time.

Louis is cursed after a night out with the lads and the five have just three days to figure out what happened and how to break it before Harry and Louis both lose their sanity and maybe something more. Louis can hear everything Harry thinks and Harry isn’t sure he can keep his feelings for Louis a secret from his own mind.

Ridiculous amounts of banter and angst, a lot of Harry and Louis alone together, a healthy dose of OT5 friendship, and one very magical weekend.

Friends to Lovers / Fluff / Angst / Action / Adventure / Magical Realism / Hurt-Comfort / Slow Burn

Soaked In The Blood Of Angels by @crazyupsetter

The boy looks drugged, caught between a man who’s almost twice his size and a girl who looks like she wouldn’t even break a sweat snapping him in half despite her small stature, eyes closed and mouth open as he pants, arching up between them almost as if he’s trying to escape.

Normally, Harry would ignore it and continue on his search for someone to drink from, someone who wouldn’t mind his sharp teeth and rough hands. He’s seen plenty of boys like this one, ones who picked the wrong playmates, and if he stopped to rescue every single one of them he would have died from thirst a long time ago.

This one, though. There’s something about this one, the sheen of his bright blue eyes as he blinks slowly, looks around as though he doesn’t know where he is, the weakness of his hands as he tries to push the girl off of him and make his escape.

Explicit Sexual Content / Vampires / Incubus / Dubious Consent / Blood / Violence

The Compulsion to Find Love by Toomanytears

The most prestigious English third-level institution, Candling University, accepts omega students for the first time and Louis Tomlinson applies with bright eyes and brighter ambitions. There he encounters personal obstacles, traditional mindsets and a beautiful boy who inverts every prejudice Louis has ever known.

ABO / Omega Louis / Alpha Harry / Worldbuilding / Slow Burn / Fluff / Angst

Just a bit of work by missyoutoosweetscheeks

It was quite painfully pathetic, really. Twenty five, stable job, stable flat, stable mind (well, quite), a painfully non-existent love life with an even more painfully intact virginity.

Marcel didn't think his life was going to get better with his painfully aparent sociopathic tendencies to block anyone who showed interest in him.

Until, of course, he became Louis Tomlinson's next prey.

OR

In which Marcel is a virgin, and becomes his office's amorous co-worker's next big conquest.

Top Harry / Bottom Louis / Office Sex / Dubious Consent / Porn Without Plot 

Fuck U Betta by @jacaranda-bloom

There’s something about having Louis like this, exposed and desperate, that makes a primal urge bubble up from deep inside Harry’s chest. Desire mixed with something else, something unquantifiable. It’s the thing that makes them want this, need this. Nothing else will satisfy them or quench their thirst.

OR the one where Harry likes the thrill of the chase, Louis likes to be chased, and everyone gets what they need… in the end.

Porn Without Plot / Light BDSM / Top Harry / Bottom Louis

push you out, pull you back in by @behisoneandonly

Harry grips his head in his hands helplessly, yanking the base of his dark curls and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Fucking hell,” he whispers, knuckles turning white from how hard he’s gripping the strands of his hair.

“Hey, hey,” says the petite stranger in front of him, quickly standing up. “Stop, you’re hurting yourself.”

–

Or Harry hates feeling vulnerable. Louis is set on breaking through his tough facade.

College/University AU / medical student Harry / Fashion student Louis / Strangers to Lovers / Pining / fluff / slight angst / Hut-Comfort / Anger Management

might we be stardust stories by ryanreynolds

"It was easier being at war."

In which werewolves and vampires have been fighting each other for a century, and Harry and Louis' marriage is what's gonna bring peace to the realm. Hopefully.

Werewolves / Vampires / Arranged Marriage / Slow Burn / Falling in Love / Pining / Fantasy

Like Candy In My Veins by littlelouishiccups

“Um…” Harry said slowly after a moment. “Okay. That’s… this is… Let me get this straight.” He lifted up a hand and swallowed. “You told your family that you have a boyfriend… and my name was the first one you thought of?” “Harry Potter was on TV, alright? It wasn’t that much of a stretch.” Louis pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t believe he was explaining himself to Harry fucking Styles. He couldn’t believe he was stooping this low. “Forget it. I’m sorry I even thought about bringing you into this.”

Harry snorted. “What? Did you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend or something?”

(Basically the A/B/O, enemies to lovers, fake relationship, Christmas AU that nobody asked for.)

ABO / Fake-Pretend Relationship

until this blood runs cold by @soldouthaz

In a town as small as Louis’, everybody knows everybody and gossip spreads faster than the wildfires that rage on just outside their backdoors in the sweltering heat of summer. When something happens here everyone knows about it within seconds. Neighbors call neighbors and notes are left on doorsteps, old telephone lines ringing until there isn’t a single person who is left in the unknown.

So it’s definitely hot gossip when a vampire moves in across the street from him, the very same one who’s just become Louis’ boss.

Vampire Harry / Frottage / Blood Drinking

call you mine by @falsegoodnight

“I have a request.”

That’s what Louis Tomlinson says to Harry when he opens the front door a bit too aggressively. The latter feels justified after a round of annoyingly incessant knocking that was much too loud in the drowsy sludge of early Saturday morning.

“Zayn’s asleep,” is Harry’s tired, hoarse reply, irritation prickling at his skin. Less than a minute ago he was in bed, feeling perfectly content sprawled out on the mattress with the chilled air from the fan cool against his bare skin. And now he’s leaning up against the wooden door frame in nothing but his briefs because Zayn’s best mate decided that showing up unannounced at seven in the fucking morning was a brilliant idea.

“I’m not here for him,” says Louis curtly.

-

Or, Louis’ curious about how it feels to be bitten. Harry’s going to need more than just one bite.

Plot What Porn / Vampire Harry / Bottom Louis

your biggest fan by @soldouthaz​

Just like everyone else, Louis has a few habits that he can’t seem to break. Guilty pleasures, rather. His nails are perpetually short because he can’t quit biting them, the bottom of his shoes scuffed from tapping his foot constantly. Sometimes his leg gets a cramp from bouncing it so often underneath his desk. That isn't too bad, he reckons, just some average teenage coping mechanisms.

And also, occasionally, minor instances of theft.

Top Harry / Bottom Louis / Porn What Plot / Nerd Louis / Jock Harry

give me love by @falsegoodnight​ & @soldouthaz​

Despite being an omega, Louis’ always had a blatant dislike of alphas.

-

Or, Louis doesn't feel like a good omega, Harry doesn't remember how to be an alpha, and they figure it out together.

ABO / Alpha Harry / Omega Louis / Bottom Louis / Past Relationship Trauma / Slow Burn / Angst / Fluff

The Stars Look Very Different Today by @kingsofeverything​

For Harry Styles, child genius turned glorified spaceship mechanic, rescuing lost or broken down ships is a fairly common occurrence.

There’s nothing common about his latest mission, the ship, or that ship’s captain.

The last thing he expects to find in a distant galaxy is the one thing he’s been missing on Earth.

Space / Time-Travel / Science Fiction & Fantasy / Enemies to Lovers

The cat is out of the bag by 28sunflowers

Harry somehow gets himself stuck as a black cat on Halloween and needs help from Louis to change back into his human form.

The problem is: Louis doesn’t even know witches exist, much less that Harry is one. And there’s also the fact he thinks Harry is ghosting him after they had sex for the first time.

So the situations isn’t ideal. But it’s okay. Harry will figure something out.

Light angst / Witch Harry / Potions Accident / Fluff and Humour 

[anonymous-note]

A Valley Song

Chapter 3: Tandem in Lucem

Masterlist

The mystery that is Klaus Hargreeves only seems to grow more mysterious as time goes on. The more Dave finds out he doesn’t know about him, the more he wants to pick the man’s brain and learn every detail of his life.

There isn’t much Dave can surmise on his own, considering Klaus keeps some closely-guarded secrets. However, what little he does learn, he buries deep into the recesses of his mind, committing every tiny thing to memory as he slowly constructs a puzzle that he can eventually put together. The puzzle that is the man he loves (and even though he hasn’t even known Klaus for very long, Dave is absolutely sure he’s in love with him).

Some things Klaus does reveal about himself is he used to do drugs, as well as drink alcohol, which he is well-versed in. He was a severe addict, ever since the age of about thirteen years old, in and out of rehab ever since. That was just his way of coping with the abuse he endured as a child, held under such strict regime that getting high or drunk was his only escape. He’s sober now, considering he has no access to those resources since coming to Vietnam, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s clean.

He hears voices, too. Dave doesn’t know the psychology behind it, but he hears Klaus muttering to himself, especially when he thinks no one can hear. It’s mostly things like “Shut up,” “Go away,” and “Leave me alone” that he whispers into the darkness. Sometimes Dave finds it unnerving. Most times, he resolves to help Klaus however he can.

But then in the mornings, he’s okay again. He’s back to the nonchalant, flirtatious, coy man that Dave is most familiar with, somehow making their standard army fatigues look like high-end fashion, fit for royalty. Even with dirt and grime on his face, there’s no hiding that lazy grin, the one that makes Dave’s heart stutter, and there’s no indication that Vietnam is having any affect on Klaus. If anything, it’s the other way around.

And then comes the night that they’re on watch together, armed with guns and helmets. They’re standing just outside of the light, surrounded by leaves and undergrowth, separated by a few trees. Dave is trying his best to keep his eyes focused on their surroundings, peering through the shadows in case there are threats just beyond his line of sight, when he hears the sound of a body dropping from Klaus’s direction, and his stomach drops with it.

There’s Klaus, writhing on the ground, hands clapped over his ears. He’s repeating the word “no” under his breath, over and over, sounding like panic and terror are just a few heartbeats away. Even when Dave is standing right in front of him, it’s as if he’s staring straight through him, to something Dave can’t see.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus moans, tears streaming down his face. “I didn’t mean to. I never wanted any of this to happen!”

“Klaus, what are you talking about?” Dave asks, trying to fight off the fear bubbling up in his chest, shaking off the urge to look behind him. He’s not a child anymore, and he has no reason to fear the dark. “Snap out of it!”

“Please, no,” Klaus sobs, curling into a ball. “Just go. Please, just leave me alone!”

Dave drops to his knees at Klaus’s side, pulling the man towards himself. “C’mon, Klaus, you have to snap out of this. Please, whatever’s wrong, just wake up. I can help you. Please let me help you!”

He cradles Klaus as he continues to mutter, desperation clawing its way up his throat. Then, it’s as if a curtain lifts, and Klaus is suddenly staring up at Dave, his eyes watery as his creases his brow in confusion.

“Dave?” he croaks. “What. . . . Where did they go?”

“Where did who go?” Dave asks, willing himself to breathe now that Klaus is okay.

“The men. The soldiers.”

“What soldiers, Klaus?”

“The ones we killed.”

Chills raise goosebumps along Dave’s arms, despite the jungle heat, as he shakes his head at Klaus. “What are you talking about?”

Klaus’s lip trembles as he clutches onto Dave. “I can see ghosts, Dave. They’ve haunted me since I was a kid. My dad locked me in a mausoleum to try and teach me not to be scared of them, but it didn’t work. I take drugs to block them out, but I can’t block them out here. They keep coming to me and yelling at me.” He’s crying now. “I didn’t mean to kill them, Dave. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

“I know,” Dave whispers, holding Klaus tight as he cries into his shoulder. “I didn’t either. But we have each other here, and we’ll be okay. We will be. I promise.”

Klaus never explains what happened after that, and Dave never asks. He doesn’t know if it’s mental illness, the effects of long-term drug abuse, or if Klaus can actually see ghosts, but he decides he doesn’t care. Even with all of that, there’s no one as ethereal in the world as Klaus, and Dave would rather that he be haunted than to not have him at all.

They talk about their futures often. Klaus talks about returning home to his family, though he isn’t really sure that he wants to. It’s the same for Dave. As much as he loves his uncle, he can’t truly be himself around him, or happy. Not if he has to hide who he is, lie through the rest of his life, pretend to be someone he’s not. There’s no life like that. There’s no life without Klaus.

So they start to talk about a life together. Moving somewhere far away, where no one will care that they’re two men who love each other. Spending the rest of their lives together, doing whatever they want, with no one to answer to. No more war. No more Helen Weaver. No more ghosts. Just the two of them, Klaus Hargreeves and Dave Katz, together forever.

If only that’s how it could’ve gone.

[hellowkatey]

Febuwhump Day 21

Prompt: time travel (alternate 7)

Warnings: brief description of minor PTSD episode

Read on AO3! (this one is long so I didn’t spend as much time on reformatting when copying it here) 

Not Much Has Changed, Except for Everything

Anakin is angry. He knows he isn't supposed to be angry because "anger leads to the dark side" and whatnot, but he can't help that he is seething. He should head straight into a meditation room and deal with his anger the way he is trained. Or even lock himself in a training sala and work out his emotions constructively.

Instead, he barges through the door of his apartment, and when his master isn't in the living room or kitchen he barges into his bedroom.

Obi-Wan sits on the bed in a lotus position, a datapad balanced on his knee and a cup of tea in the other hand. He looks up with a raised eyebrow like he expected him to end up here eventually.

"Hello, padawan... what--"

"Don't," Anakin says sharply, so worked up he's bobbing back and forth on the balls of his feet. "You recommended passing me over for trials again."

Obi-Wan's shoulders drop and he rests the mug on his thigh. "Anakin we have talked about--"

"You know I'm ready! I have the highest marks in combat and control of the Force. I even got my grades up in philosophy. How could you do this to me?"

Obi-Wan doesn't answer him a moment, just does the endlessly annoying thing where he ever so carefully and calmly puts away whatever he was doing to give him his full attention. And to make sure I don't throw his hot tea across the room... again.

"Are you going to let me speak a full sentence, or are you just here to yell at me?" Anakin crosses his arms over his chest. It's enough of a response. The Jedi knight sighs. "Anakin, we've talked about this. You are a fine senior padawan and very close to being ready for your trials but as you are very relevantly demonstrating, you still have some work to do on managing your emotions."

"I'm only mad because you went behind my back!"

"Went behind-- " he shakes his head. "I never told you I was going to recommend you for your trials this cycle, I only said you were getting close, and the council agreed with my assessment."

The idea of his master and the council discussing him and how unready he is for the knight trials only pours salt in the wound.

"I basically command my own battalion like a Jedi general at this point. I have done everything you say, and you still treat me like I'm a kid."

"Need I remind you that if you were knighted at your current age, you would be one of the youngest human Jedi knights?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing!"

"I don't mean--I am just saying, you talk as though I'm holding you back from your peers when many of your age-mates are years from being considered for knighthood."

"I don't care about my age-mates?" Anakin huffs.

"You just need more time to mature--" Anakin rolls his eyes. He's heard this exact lecture a billion times from Obi-Wan.

"More time to mature. Much more to learn. Master, just because I don't have a lightsaber up my ass and recite the Jedi Code in my sleep, doesn't mean I'm not ready!"

"Anakin," Obi-Wan's calm demeanor turns colder. A warning tone.

"Where did being the perfect padawan get you anyway? Qui-Gon didn't even try to knight you until you were what, twenty-five?"

"Anakin--"

"And you didn't even do the trials, it was basically just a pity--"

"Enough," Obi-Wan stands from the bed, his tone severe. Immediate regret trickles in at the sight of Obi-Wan's intense stare. He's gone too far. "You're lashing out and certainly not acting like a Jedi Knight. This is not me asking you to be perfect this is me asking you to be reasonable. Think about it in any other way besides The Galaxy vs. Anakin and you'll see you are acting like the child you so desperately don't want to be!"

Anakin doesn't quite know where to go from here because usually Obi-Wan sits there and lets him go on until he runs out of steam or makes a fool of himself. But this time... Anakin has never seen him snap into action and actually fire back so hard. He didn't want to hurt his feelings he was... just frustrated.

"Obi-Wan I--"

"Anakin can we talk about this tomorrow?" he massages his temple with his pointer finger. "My headache is becoming a migraine and you have some meditating to do."

He sighs. Not really wanting to leave things that way, but when Obi-Wan gets his migraines there isn't much talking that can actually happen. He walks over to his dresser and grabs a pill bottle.

"Yeah, Master. Tomorrow." he places the pill bottle in his hand and leaves the bedroom. The door closes behind him.

Obi-Wan probably thinks he's going to bed, but he isn't. Instead, Anakin leaves, taking deep breaths as he walks through the halls of the Temple. The Force is especially pungent today. It feels like he's wading through a foggy bog with all the negative emotions he's stirred up, and meditating in his room isn't going to resolve that. So he heads to the Room of a Thousand Fountains. It's a weird time-- the younglings should be at dinner, it's evening briefings for the knights and padawans out on a campaign, and the council is usually in session, leaving the massive fountain room basically empty.

He climbs a few levels up, already feeling better with the mist of the waterfalls against his skin and the activity of climbing. His favorite place is a little nook on the fourth level where an upper fall cascades beside it. The constant water noise is soothing-- something he never thought he'd ever hear when he was a kid. If he's going to do the old-fashioned meditation, it's going to be here. Anakin settles down on the rocks, breathing in slowly and letting the Force saturate around him. With how pushy it's been acting, there's no surprise he's pulled into a good, deep meditation quickly.

Anakin awakes lying on the ground. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but meditation is pretty boring so it's not uncommon for him. He groans, letting his eyes adjust to the light streaming in from the window-- he must have slept here all night... whoops. Hopefully, it's still early or else Obi-Wan will have a whole other reason to be mad at him.

But strangely, when his eyes adjust he realizes he isn't in the Room of a Thousand Fountains anymore. He's laying in the middle of the hallway that leads to the council chambers.

Did someone carry me down or... No that would be difficult and I would have woken up. Maybe I sleepwalked? Anakin has never done that but he supposes there's a first time for everything. He straightens out his wrinkled robes and tries to fix a few parts of his braid that are trying to unravel.

Voices approach. He looks down the hall to see a tall master walking with long strides. Beside him, a little boy trails slightly behind and to the side-- the padawan position. But this boy doesn't look like much of a padawan. His hair is long, unevenly cut and falling into his eyes and down to his collar. If he has a braid, Anakin can't see it. While he wears some Jedi robes, they're mixed with pieces of civilian clothing. A blue undershirt paired with a the standard-issue outer robe and black pants with mismatched patches on both knees. And he's tiny-- concerningly skinny from the way his robe is hanging off of him. The boy's bright eyes snap to him as he stares, and Anakin adverts his eyes from the strange kid.

"Excuse me, padawan," the master says, brushing past him, and Anakin's entire body freezes. The voice is familiar, one he would never forget. He'd been so busy trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the padawan's wardrobe that he didn't get a good luck at the Jedi Master's face. Anakin whirls around.

"Master Jinn?"

The master stops, and turns around, his eyebrow raised. "Yes?" He blinks. This isn't possible. Qui-Gon is dead. Has been for a decade. Qui-Gon steps forward, cocking his head to the side. "Are you well? You've gone pale."

"Yes," Anakin chokes. "Yes, I'm... I'm fine. Just... uh, have you seen Master Windu?"

His brown eyes scan over Anakin critically. "In a council meeting. They should be done soon."

He can't stop staring at the dead master. He looks younger than Anakin remembers. Grays are only beginning to invade his sideburns, and there are far fewer wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and across his forehead. This must be a dream... a really vivid dream... but how could Anakin possibly dream about Qui-Gon if he never knew him at this age?

The realization dawns on him. He looks down at the shaggy padawan. Bright blue eyes shine back, silently watching Anakin's awkward encounter. A blank stare that Anakin would recognize anywhere. "Obi-Wan?" he blurts out.

Now the kid looks alarmed. He can't be older than twelve or thirteen. "Uh, yes..."

"Manners, Obi-Wan. Senior padawans are to be respected, too." Qui-Gon corrects, and the padawan's eyes widen, and then he bows. Master Jinn turns his attention back to Anakin, still looking at him funny. "Where is your master? And what is your name, I'm sorry, I thought I knew most of the senior padawans."

"I, uh, my name is Ani. My master is a shadow, so I'm... gone a lot."

It's a threadbare excuse that any reasonable Master would as follow-up questions to, but Qui-Gon seems to be in too much of a hurry to go through the trouble. He just nods. "Right. Nice to meet you, Padawan Ani, but we must be going. Master Windu should be done momentarily, though, if you wait outside the council chambers.

"Thank you, Master," Anakin replies, bowing. He still can't believe he's really talking to Master Jinn again... and padawan Obi-Wan? This just makes it even weirder. Why is he dressed like that? And how did Anakin get here? When even is here?

It has to be some trick of the Force. There really isn't another explanation. For some reason, it has sent him back in time, and he has a feeling it has something to do with Obi-Wan.

The pair turn and continue on in the direction they were before. He watches them go, Obi-Wan trailing with his head staring at the ground.

"As I was saying, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says in a low voice, but the acoustics of the vaulted hallways make it sound as though he's talking directly to Anakin. "The council may have accepted you back on probationary status, but I am not yet ready to accept you again as my student. Do you understand this?"

Anakin's brows crease in confusion. The Force must have sent him back in time and to another dimension! If he heard Master Jinn right then... Anakin needs to talk to little Obi-Wan and find out what's going on.

It's harder to track down the kid than he thought it would be. He passes the time by taking a quick lap around the Temple to check out what else is different in this new time-- he figures out it's about two or three years before he's actually born, which is weird. Not much has really changed besides the Temple being much fuller. Like when he first was brought here. His first stop is the Archives, which surprisingly doesn't contain Tiny-Wan. He passes by the mess, the padawan training sala-- nothing. Then he gets an idea.

He strolls into the initiate training sala and smiles. Obi-Wan is on the other side of the room, his back to the door and a training saber in hand. He goes through the Form I katas slowly and smoothly.

As Anakin strolls in, Obi-Wan stops, dropping his saber at his side and turning slowly around. "Oh, hi Padawan Ani," he says in the same Core accent but a few octaves higher. It seems he hasn't had time to change, so he's stripped down to his undershirt and pants, Jedi robes cast to the side. He seems to also have gained a strip of cloth he's fashioned as a headband to keep his hair back. It makes parts of his hair stick up in wild directions. Definitely, a look that isn't characteristic of his usually tidy Master. He tops off the greeting with a polite bow.

"No need to bow when we're not around the Masters, kid. And you can just call me Ani. We're both padawans."

Obi-Wan's eyes drop to the ground, his face falling. He can't get over how young he looks. "Oh... you didn't hear?"

"Like I said, I've been away."

He traces a saber mark on the ground with the toe of his boot. "I, uh, left for a while. My master doesn't trust me anymore."

Out of all the things he expected to come out of Obi-Wan's mouth, this was not one of the possible options he contrived. "Doesn't trust-- I mean, what could you have possibly done?"

"I said I left," he says, his blue eyes snapping up to him with surprising intensity. Anakin raises an eyebrow.

"You're angry."

"I'm not angry."

"You're upset."

Tiny-Wan doesn't reply. Anakin gets another idea. He pulls out his lightsaber and turns down the power into training mode. The kid watches him carefully.

"Wanna spar?"

"Now?"

"Helps blow off some steam so it's easier to meditate later." Anakin ignites his saber, waving around the blue blade in a quick spin. Obi-Wan's long face turns to a grin, and he ignites the training saber again. They stand in opening positions, Obi-Wan sticking with Form I, which makes sense for a thirteen or fourteen-year-old. Anakin decides maybe doing a form he isn't as good at would even things out a little more-- he raises his lightsaber above his head, turning his body to the side and pointing his arm straight out toward Obi-Wan. The kid's eyes widen at the Soresu stance.

In taking a defensive form, Obi-Wan is the first to make a move. He moves swiftly, naturally, testing out the clash of the sabers against one another with simple blows Anakin is meant to easily deflect. He's testing me, Anakin realizes as he keeps pushing him in a tight circle. He lets the kid get warmed up to the spar, giving him a few more offensive moves to mix things up, which seems to excite him.

"Been a while since you sparred?" Anakin asks.

"That obvious?"

"Oh, no, Obi-Wan I didn't mean you were doing bad you just seem... happy to be doing it." The Force is singing right now.

The kid does a slightly more advanced move, grinning wildly. "I've missed fighting with a lightsaber."

Slowly, Anakin is picking up clues. He "left", didn't have his saber with him (or he did and just had nobody to use it against), and whatever he did got him in trouble with the council.

"What form do you wanna learn first?"

"Four!" he says, demonstrating a classic Ataru acrobatic move with his answer, which surprises Anakin enough that Obi-Wan manages a combo move.

Anakin smiles. If only he knew he'd be a master of Soresu a handful of years from now.

"Very impressive, young one. You stayed in shape while away."

Once again, his face falls, and he puts his energy back into the fight. Their actions start picking up, Obi-Wan funneling more of his young energy into quick movements and acrobatics. Though his forms have fallen out completely by this point and turned into less controlled jabs, Anakin is struck with how smart he's fighting. He is selective with diversions and fakes, fighting well enough that Anakin is actually having to put some effort into maintaining his Soresu form. He's strong too. He slams his saber into his with surprising force, but never still long enough for Anakin to return the blow.

It's like he's used to fighting those much larger than him. He uses his size and speed to his advantage, knowing exactly how and where to strike that makes it difficult for Anakin to counter. It's fascinating, and not at all like how Obi-Wan spars now. Anakin even starts to forget who he is crossing swords with after a while until he speaks and the Tiny-Wan accent reminds him.

"You're holding back," he says, his forehead sheening with sweat.

"You're a kid."

"It's harder to practice real sparring when you're fighting like a training droid."

Anger? Taunting? Who is this kid? Anakin smirks at him, and when they reach a lull, he shifts his position into an offensive. Now, let's show him how Ataru is done.

The fight ends minutes later. To Tiny-Wan's credit, he held him off well, but Anakin is a senior padawan, trained by one of the best swordsmen in the Order, and Obi-Wan... well, he hasn't found out he's one of the best swordsmen in the Order yet. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he lays on the training sala floor. Anakin peers over him, and finds a toothy smile on his face.

"That. Was. Awesome!" he says, jumping up. "You moved so fast I couldn't even see you sometimes! You and my master--" he trails off, biting on his lip. His mood deflates. "You and Master Jinn should spar sometime. He also specializes in Ataru."

"Do you feel less upset now, at least?"

He nods. "I have a lot of catching up to do, but it... helped. Thanks, Ani."

Obi-Wan walks over to the bench to get dressed again. As he picks up his robe, his belt falls and clatters against the durasteel bench, making a loud singular bang. He doesn't think much of it until he looks at the padawan and sees his entire body has gone rigid, his eyes darting around the room.

"Obi-Wan?" Anakin asks. When he doesn't move, he walks up to him and crouches down to eye level. "Obi-Wan, what's wrong?"

The kid clears his throat, his eyes finally focusing on the senior padawan. "I, uh, nothing, Ani. Just... loud."

Anakin reaches down and picks up the belt. "The noise this made... Did it scare you?"

"Jedi don't get scared."

"That isn't true. What just happened? Your face is white as a sheet."

With a deep, shaky sigh, the padawan sits down on the bench and buries his face in his hands. "It sounded... it sounded like the invasion bell."

"Invasion bell?"

"The scouts would ring it when they were attacking in the night."

"Obi-Wan, I don't know what you're referring to."

"The--The Melida. Or the Daan!" he exclaims, his head popping up from his hands. "They attacked so often in the night, we could never sleep well. What if we missed the bell?"

Cold sweat is beading on his forehead. Anakin has no idea what to say. He puts a comforting hand on his shoulder instead, rubbing softly.

"Hey, hey, you're not there anymore. It was just your belt. You're in the Jedi Temple. You're safe now. Just... breathe."

He guides him through deep breaths in and out-- something that his own master has gotten him through as well. It's strange to be preaching his own tactics back at him, though he doesn't seem to notice. Probably hasn't learned them yet.

Obi-Wan recovers. Finishes getting dressed. Seems embarrassed to have him kneeling beside him rubbing circles on his back from the flush in his cheeks. "I should... go home now. But thanks for fighting with me Ani."

"Anytime, kid. You know, things with your master are going to work out."

Tiny-Wan looks up at him with those big blue eyes. "You think so?"

"I know so."

Obi-Wan leaves with a spring in his step. As soon as he's out of the room, Anakin deflates. How did this kid-- shellshocked and emotional-- become his steadfast master? How has he never heard any of this before? He decides the best way to figure this out is to go talk to the council. Tell them he's here somehow and try to figure out more.

But suddenly the sala starts to sway, and he begins to feel like he's being put under a sleep suggestion. Uh oh. Not now! Not yet! I just need to talk to--

Anakin gasps awake, a headache pounding at his temples and his sleeve soaking wet from falling into the spray of the waterfall. He's back in the room of a thousand fountains, back in his own time period, assumingly, and now with a million questions going through his head. Light is streaming in from the skylights-- he really did spend all night here. He wastes no time jumping up and climbing down the falls.

Obi-Wan is awake when he bursts back into the apartment, sitting at the kitchen table eating sliced fruit. He looks up apathetically when Anakin enters, half soaking wet, only raising an eyebrow. The Obi-Wan blank stare that apparently he's had mastered since he was a kid.

"Where have you been?"

You wouldn't believe me if I told you. "Early start."

"Mmhm." he doesn't sound convinced, but he chooses to stuff another piece of fruit in his mouth instead of questioning him further.

"Obi-Wan..." Anakin doesn't even know where to start. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he says, gesturing to the chair across from him. Anakin sits down slowly. It's early enough that Obi-Wan is still in his nightclothes and his hair an unorderly mess. In this state, Anakin can see a flash of his padawan self, long messy hair, and baggy clothes hanging off him. "What is it?"

"What's the Melida?"

Obi-Wan lowers his fork slowly, "In... In what context?"

"Like... Melida or the Daan. Maybe a war?"

Obi-Wan goes completely still. He stares forward for a long time, not looking at Anakin or anything in particular just staring. What can Anakin do besides sit there and wait for him to say something. Anything.

"Well," he finally says. "Melida/Daan was a planet that had a civil war spanning generations."

"Had?"

"Well, it ended years ago. By a third group that fought against the other two for peace," he swallows dryly. "The Young. Why... Why do you ask, Anakin?"

"Well, I..." he didn't think he'd get this far if he's being honest. From the way Obi-Wan is looking at him, he seems to not have expected this to ever come up. "I heard something. About you as a padawan."

He's quiet for another moment. Not as long as the first, but just as haunting.

"Qui-Gon and I had a mission there when I was thirteen. Master Tahl had gone dark, and we were sent to find her. I saw what was happening on this planet. That children had taken it upon themselves to fight the war their great-great-grandparents waged. And I felt my place was there with them." Obi-Wan stands from the table, walking toward the window that faces out onto the skyline of Coruscant. "Qui-Gon didn't agree with me. He gave me a choice, and I chose to leave the Jedi Order and stay on the Melida/Daan."

"You... left the Jedi?" Anakin whispers in awe. Suddenly Tiny-Wan's cryptic words make sense.

"For about a year, yes. And then my feelings changed. I wanted to return, and we needed the help of the Jedi to lock in peace for the planet so I called Qui-Gon again. And he came for me... not without consequences, though," he mutters the last part.

"You. You left the order?"

"That is what I just told you, yes."

"And Master Jinn... he was hard on you about it?"

Obi-Wan's lips press together into a thin line. "Master Jinn and I were on scant terms before I left. He feared I would turn out like his previous padawan who turned to the dark side."

This almost makes Anakin laugh out loud. Obi-Wan? Turning to the dark side? He literally can't think of a person less likely.

But he thinks about how when he met padawan Obi-Wan his emotions were strong, easily read across his face. He was upset and a little angry and Master Jinn certainly wasn't doing anything to help him with that. Now Anakin feels horrible for what he said to his master the night before. Not only was it out of frustration, but it was also completely incorrect.

"Master, I'm... I'm sorry. For what I said earlier. I didn't... I wasn't--"

"Not many do," he says serenely. "And maybe I should have told you sooner I just..." he shrugs. "I suppose it's not my favorite topic to think about. I was far too young to be in a warzone. And when I returned, my guilt often got the best of me. It took a long time for him to trust me again. It's not a way I wanted you as my padawan to see me."

But when Anakin looks at Obi-Wan now, he isn't let down by this new context. If anything, it makes him respect his master even more. He always believed that Obi-Wan was hard on him because he wanted him to be as perfect as he was... but obviously, Tiny-Wan wasn't the saint he thought him to be, and Master Jinn didn't exactly give Obi-Wan the benefit of the doubt. But now he knows, even if it was just a glimpse, that maybe he knows more about needing to keep emotions under control than Anakin previously thought.

"Will you tell me more Tiny-Wan stories?" Anakin asks, making his master look at him funny.

"Tiny-Wan?  Why are you assuming I was small?"

Because I met you, Master, and you were pretty tiny. "Just... a hunch I suppose."

"Well, I'll have you know I was perfectly average for my age group." he pouts.

"Fine," the padawan groans. "Will you tell me more of your padawan stories?"

Obi-Wan walks into the kitchen and puts a kettle on the range. "I'm sure something of that sort can be arranged."

He watches him pull out two mugs and start to make some tea. He picks out Anakin's favorite as well as some milk-- just the way he likes it. And then his own. He watches his master with a new admiration. This must have been what the Force was trying to lead him to.

[nso-csi]

201111 hypebea twitter update

Taemin on the Making of ‘Never Gonna Dance Again : Act 2’ The K-pop artist breaks down the inspiration behind his solo project.

For Lee Taemin, Never Gonna Dance Again is the dawn of a new era. The title is an antithesis for a performer marked by his ability to entrance audiences with movement, and the 27-year-old hopes to demand attention with a concept both provocative and unimaginable. Led by the prologue single “2 KIDS,” followed by the release of Act 1 in September, Act 2 serves as the final installment of the series. Shortly after its launch, the nine-track effort quickly went number 1 on Apple Music charts around the world. Clearly, his third Korean studio album has already proven to be his most successful project to date. Taemin is more than the youngest member of SHINee, the legendary K-pop group that debuted under SM Entertainment in 2008, nor is he limited to the iconic “MOVE” dancer that set the K-pop industry aflame in 2017. His solo aura is almost unrecognizable from his role as a member of supergroup SuperM, his fourth debut across three generations. The common thread is that all of these eras are true to Taemin’s greatest gift: range. He is malleable in a way that breeds experimentation, but doesn’t adhere to standards. This is the reason Taemin has become a household name, and a muse to both idols and fans alike.

About an hour before Never Gonna Dance Again : Act 2 dropped on Monday evening in Korea, Taemin entered our Zoom call harboring a clear excitement in his tone. After working hard for so long, it’s only natural to anticipate the world’s response to your work, especially if every release is as risky and groundbreaking as his. Lead single “IDEA” screams arthouse and intensity, with featured vocals from legendary performer and labelmate BoA, who laced the track with her lines “Killing me” and “Killing me softly.” Avant-garde fashion accompanies the tantalizing hook, and aesthetic reminiscent of both heaven and hell add to the visual prowess in the music video, elevating the narrative Taemin aims to tell and harboring a ferocity matched only by the sharp and fluid choreography. “The title track ‘IDEA’ was inspired by the allegory of the cave (Plato’s Cave). Instead of ‘being trapped in a cave’ and living in the shadow of the truth, I want to free myself from the darkness and embark on a journey of enlightenment where I discover a new ego, identity and meaning,” Taemin explains, referencing Greek philosopher Plato’s theory of ideas. “IDEA” is a follow up of “Criminal” from Act 1, which had an equalizing parallel that was haunting yet seductive. “IDEA” is just as visually demanding and hypnotic, but levels up from the previous title track.

Throughout the conversation, it becomes clear that Taemin’s youthfulness has not begotten him despite his wisdom. The care with which he approaches talking about his music could be surprising given the mature vibes of his sound, but this duality should be expected from someone who forwent the typical teenage experience to pursue music professionally. There’s a sweet charm in the way he expresses himself, and an eagerness to continue innovating as a result. “I participated in the writing of three tracks: ‘Heaven,’ ‘Think of You,’ and ‘Pansy.’ I’m always writing and taking notes in my notebook when I have time between schedules, so a lot of the inspiration came from that.” Taemin says, breaking down each track he worked on with a noticeable passion. Describing “Think of You” as a warm song that expresses honest and sincere messages for his fans, and “Heaven” as giving positive energy and strength, he goes on to talk about “Pansy,” a song that holds a little extra weight. “The significance behind the flower is ‘remember me.’ I wanted to tell a message to my fans who have waited for me for a long time, because in between there are periods where I’m not working on my solo music. So for those fans who have been waiting patiently, I wanted to show that gratitude and how I’m very appreciative of that. I wrote the chorus part, and when I was writing it that day, the weather and my surroundings were the main inspiration.” Beyond nature, the flower serves a more sentimental value. “The pansy flower has a specific day, Pansy Day, and that’s also the day of SHINee’s debut, so it worked perfectly.” Taemin also believes these three songs stand out the most compared to Act 1 due to their warmth and fuzziness, a bright contrast from the powerful and dark undertones heard previously.

Speaking of his creative process when working on new music, Taemin has a unique approach to finding inspiration: searching his mental state in the current time. “When I watch a movie, I’m not inspired by the movie itself, but the feelings that I have as I’m watching it. That’s what plays the most important role.” Looking back on recording for Never Gonna Dance Again, he adds, “I had that period where I was going through a slump of trying to create something new, so I wanted to make that experience artistic and useful and incorporate it into my album.” He combines his real life thoughts with his signature drama, a method that can’t be duplicated as it’s unique to him. For his involvement in Act 2, Taemin describes it as “writing a personal letter to my fans.” He elaborates, “Rather than creating perfect lyrics or a perfect song, it was more about sincerity and delivering that comforting message and being very honest with my feelings.” The feelings showcased are the most up-to-date represenation of Taemin’s artistry, but even that’s open to change. “I’m always thinking about what I’m good at, what are some things that other artists didn’t try,” he reflects. “I’m not an artist that’s limited by genre. I’m not just an R&B or K-pop artist, but I’m one who likes to experiment with different genres and styles to diversify my portfolio.” For Taemin, sharing his own thoughts and emotions is one of the biggest reasons he wanted to become a performer, and it’s what steers him away from following what’s trendy or high in demand.

Of course, this doesn’t mean Taemin doesn’t respect the other artists he’s worked with. In fact, he treasures both his past and his present, and recognizes them as equally important to his current sound and image. “SHINee is a big part of who I am as an artist. For example, in one of the teaser photos for the new album, I’m wearing this military uniform outfit which alludes to SHINee’s single ‘Everybody.’” Fans immediately recognized the 2013-inspired getup, and it’s just another treat for both Shawols and Taemin. He hasn’t forgotten his roots, nor does he plan to even as he evolves. “For the past 13 years, I’ve been spending a lot of time with them and creating music together as a group.” It’s only natural that this influences his career, and his Shawols are still his most fervent supporters even after such a long time. “With my solo career, I don’t want fans to think that I’m throwing all that away. It’s more about creating something new and different than what I’ve been showing in my past with the group. In the past years, I learned a lot, and I always had things that I wanted to try and experiment with. It’s not about the end of SHINee or moving on, but a new beginning.” His consideration of the fans’ feelings doesn’t negatively affect his progress, but proves how he hopes to continue growing with those who helped him get this far. Sincerity is probably the most important message Taemin wants to send as he embarks on this new journey. “For a new beginning, something has to end. I want fans to know that this is not goodbye, it’s not the end. I will continue to bring great music and show something new to the audience.” What that may be, we’ll just have to wait and see. But if Never Gonna Dance Again is any indicator, the future of soloist Taemin will continue to keep us guessing.

Ashlee Mitchell

[jediryssabean]

may death never stop you

hi everyone, i’ve risen from the dead. back on my bullshit with some naruto and some healing. 

happy holidays!

-

Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke Rating: T Summary: (Tea steam condensed on the window, and a thin line of moisture had dragged itself down on a misshapen path, led by a bead of icy water. Through the haze, there were shapes of patrons, shapes of dishware, shapes of shopowners—a figure haloed in light and another swallowed by the shadows of a back room, barely glimpsed in the brief clarity given by the condensation, fogging up again as the steam again sighed against the window.

“did you hear?” the window carried the conversation through its panes, a murmur against wood and glass. The news had traveled slowly here to the Land of Snow, if only because the village was remote enough to miss, and yet even this was delayed by those standards. The snow had known for eons, it seemed—because there were flakes of it born from the Valley of the End. “the uchiha clan is done for good. last one kicked it not too long ago.”

The window’s tone had changed, delivering a different timbre, a different patron rumbling deep from the back of their throat. “jackass,” the window relayed like the shifting of the earth, so low was it spoken. “that news is three fucking years old. you’re late.”)

Or you can [Read on AO3]!

(The windows of the shop had been foggy at the edges, snow sitting on the windowsill with picturesque practice, an almost-constant winter giving it the time it needed to perfect its exact placement on this exact windowsill. Until recently, the shop over which the snow lived had sat empty, because that’s what shops did when there was no one to fill them. But snow had never minded, because the building occupied the same space regardless of whether or not it was occupied.

A door shut and the snow had rustled before settling back into place, the same place it always settles into. The sound of a bell followed a patron in. The snow had ignored it.

The windows hummed with the noise from inside, not disturbing the snow whatsoever, because the snow is older than the people inside the building, older still than the building itself, living a thousand lives and dying a thousand deaths year after year, after year—

A teacup had been placed next to the window to cool. On the outside, the snow had begun to ease itself into a softer shape, going liquid against the steam. A quiet death, like most of them, despite the noise that made the glass tremble when someone laughed particularly loud. Occasionally, the snow can feel whispers through the glass, small vibrations of sound that carry nowhere except into solid things, melting some of the flakes against the windowsill with the force of it, passing along rumors to its kin.

Tea steam condensed on the window, and a thin line of moisture had dragged itself down on a misshapen path, led by a bead of icy water. Through the haze, there were shapes of patrons, shapes of dishware, shapes of shopowners—a figure haloed in light and another swallowed by the shadows of a back room, barely glimpsed in the brief clarity given by the condensation, fogging up again as the steam again sighed against the window.

“did you hear?” the window carried the conversation through its panes, a murmur against wood and glass. The news had traveled slowly here to the Land of Snow, if only because the village was remote enough to miss, and yet even this was delayed by those standards. The snow had known for eons, it seemed—because there were flakes of it born from the Valley of the End. “the uchiha clan is done for good. last one kicked it not too long ago.”

The window’s tone had changed, delivering a different timbre, a different patron rumbling deep from the back of their throat. “jackass,” the window relayed like the shifting of the earth, so low was it spoken. “that news is three fucking years old. you’re late.”

A click of a tongue, sharp against the glass. The snow shifted, startled, before relaxing again. It had waited with bated breath, footsteps and the rumble of snowmobiles falling into the background in the middle of nowhere, swallowed by gossip and the clatter of ceramic plates. An embarrassed cough had fired off, making the window creak. “about fucking time, though, if you ask me, right? three years ago or now, it just means one less thing to start a fucking war over. it’s been so quiet since.”

Another bead of condensation, another glimpse into the tea shop.

A smile, mostly teeth.

Blue eyes, glittering like light refracted off of snow melt.

“can i get you anything else?” the owner had shown a dimple before the fog hid him from sight, obscuring a grin so wide it could’ve swallowed the sun. Whiskered scars folded into the laugh lines beside his mouth.

The window had shivered against the melting snow, straining to listen. 

“no thank you, uzuha-san,” the patrons answered, almost in unison. The weight of it had caused the snow to shift again. “delicious, though, as always.” A little bit out of sync, but genuine, for all the brief-yet-eternal time the shop had been there it its current state, warm, and full, and creaky with people. The snow outside could feel it in the grain of the wood underneath it.

“glad to hear it,” Naruto had replied, beatific and shameless and, reportedly, dead. “always good to have you.”

The shadow in the back of the tea shop had rolled its eyes, a ghost from this distance and inaudible.

The snow had listened anyway, living and dying with the thrill of it.)

“You look like an old man, Uzuha-san,” Sasuke tells him, their fake name rolling off his tongue with the mocking sort of softness that carries the echo of a patron while also doing the warm-and-fuzzy thing in Naruto’s stomach that patron voices do not do. All the while, of course, looking like a gloomy but very hot barista, apron and everything, like they hadn’t decided to open up a traditional tea shop, instead of something like a ramen shop. Both of the things are warm, you know? Both of the things are a dime a dozen in a climate like this! Either one would’ve sold like hotcakes, or—or a hotcakes shop? Or—

“Well, we can’t all look young and hip like you, Uzuha-san,” he mimics back, shifting dirty plates from his good forearm to the one that doesn't feel much, its joints more-or-less responsive to changes in chakra pressure, but hardly precise. It does what it needs to, in a pinch, and, actually, helps him pinch things, so a solid choice for a person that has to grab plates and teacups all day, much less a person that has to grab plates and teacups all day while in very standard and very fashionable hakama, unlike some people, whose idea it was in the first place.

Sasuke rolls his eyes, closing the practically ancient register with his hip, carrying the till to the back to the shop, using his shoulder to part the curtain, as his arm is occupied with other business, and the empty sleeve at his side wouldn’t be much different anyway. As the curtain shuts, Naruto thinks he can see a little dusting of pink on the tips of Sasuke’s ears and a glow partway down his neck; it’s the sure sign of embarrassment, the sign that Naruto had returned the warm-and-fuzzy right back, or whatever Sasuke calls it in his own head when he thinks about these things. 

It’s true, to some degree, Naruto tells himself as he lifts the curtain aside with his left wrist, balancing dishware atop the aluminum plating just above his right wrist joint—Sasuke really does look at least a couple years younger surrounded by brewing supplies and an immaculately kept snack-kitchen. Naruto can’t tell if it’s the well-worn clothes, or the beautifully tied apron, or the work-flat hair, or the lines by his mouth that speak a little less of tension and a little more of relief. It could be anything, a sight or a sound or a feeling, but it’s there somewhere.

Naruto always finds the words for things later than he means to, so this time probably isn’t any different in that respect.

But there is a part of him that acknowledges that Sasuke was right about one thing—he’d be really easy to recognize in hakama, considering how long he’d worn one, and the look he’s working now is something just different enough that he looks everything and nothing like he used to, all at once. The most disarming thing about him now is how comfortable he looks about seventy-five percent of the time. 

“What're you thinking?” Sasuke says, taking Naruto’s expertly designed and not-at-all flawed stack of plates and teacups and dipping bowls. They rattle only slightly when Sasuke puts the dishes in the sink to rinse them, a co-opted drying rack poised under the faucet to hold the dishes in place before they wind up in the dishwasher to his right. “I can smell the smoke from here.”

“Ha ha.” Naruto rotates his right wrist joint, the socket squealing a little between his flesh thumb and forefinger as he loosens the chakra pressure there. The joint pops enough for him to flex his fingers in a semblance of what they used to do. “I was thinking about dinner.” A lie, because something sappy might make Sasuke drop a plate, or might make him cry, or might make his face tighten and obscure the softness there. “I can cook tonight.” The truth, because there are still countless things that they have to catch up on for all the time they spent running toward or hiding from glimpses and reflections and echoes of one another—namely the fact that Naruto can, by a now-less-than-limited margin, cook.

“Oh yeah?” Sasuke’s eyebrow does that thing it’s so good at, a perfect arch above perfect eyelashes above depthless eyes. There’s a smile on his face that is most evident in the hints of lines that’ll be crow’s feet sometime in the future, though there are pieces of it hidden in other places—the corners of his mouth, the tilt of his head, the lift of his shoulder. Even so, there’s something curling slowly around his pupils that doesn’t match; a conversation that could be waiting to happen. 

Naruto lets it wait, his palm ready to grab for it when it comes.

“Oh yeah,” he replies. “I don’t know if you know this, but I can make my own ramen noodles, which, by the way, is why we should’ve opened a ramen shop.”

That eye roll again, caught in the same motion that Sasuke uses to shut the dishwasher with one foot and untie his apron with a tug of his thumb. Sasuke’s eyes are so clear and exactly like Naruto remembers them that it’s easy to forget that he’d had the Rinnegan for less than a day, instead taking back a left eye that could barely make out shapes, much less channel chakra, all in the interest of opening a tea shop as far away from the Land of Fire as possible. 

It sounds almost like a laugh when Sasuke says, “would’ve been super subtle. Three months after you die, a random ramen shop opens up in the middle of nowhere, almost as far away from the Fire Nation as you can get. That doesn’t have the name Uzumaki Naruto written on it anywhere.”

“That’s Uzuha Naruto to you.” The electricity on his tongue pops against his teeth, a sensation that’s contagious in its own right, just like the pink on Sasuke’s ears is contagious, just like the twist of his mouth to hide a wider smile is contagious. 

wow, Naruto can hear himself say on a sigh lost to time, his voice much higher and the crack of it very youthful in its fervor, he’s so fucking pretty. The phantom sensation of a smack to the back of the head, a request to repeat himself, a named-and-unnamed itch at the curve of his shoulders. 

“Dinner it is,” Sasuke says with a voice like snowfall with icepack sitting underneath, tossing his apron across his unarmed shoulder as he heads for the stairs where their home is. “What do you need help with?”

The sun burns at the back of Naruto’s throat when he smiles.

(The rocky earth had been beginning its slow freeze that autumn, beaten by steady, barely-liquid sheets of rain. The shower whispered among itself, relearning the slow shifts in pavement and sediment, memorizing the shape of rainboots that would be snowboots before long. The boots’ soles tickled the dirt-specked puddles that were swallowing information and news and chitchat along their greedy edges, collecting things to hide under the pine needles, drowning in water that was too cold to let them rot.

The squall had been able to feel a relative, tucked inside the shape of a tea shop, tucked further still into the shape of arms and legs and pointed teeth as it sat in a booth, a wave given life in another form. The clouds above the village itself shuddered to shake itself free of the last of its rain before the snow started, straining itself to catch the murmurs in trembling palms.

Birch leaves, stuck to the shop’s floor, passed information to the water droplets, curling themselves around conversations that were familiar and different, the kind that other trees had heard much farther south. Migrating birds had brought their perceptions and conceptions and spins on things, twittering to themselves among seeds before fluttering away again, leaving behind only their gaps in knowledge and the urge to know more, to pass along to seasons forward.

The rain had hissed to and between itself as one birch leaf drip-drip-dripped rainwater into a negligible puddle forming beside a well-loved rainboot. Its edges, browning in the pondering death at the end of a fleeting autumn, trembled out words that would’ve been otherwise lost to the cold, the wet, and what, in a warmer climate, would be the sticky grip of mud.

“what are you doing here?” the shadow had said, for once outside the confines of the payment counter and the kitchen, and the birch leaves and the rainwater had felt a memory, somewhere, seen by them-and-others, passed along on wind streams and river paths—the shadow in a different light, shoulders held differently, its mouth a harder line.

“is that any way to talk to a paying customer?” The person-shaped water system flashed pointed teeth in a smile, the birch leaves peeling away from the floor to land in a warm palm. The rain had found itself caught in Naruto’s palm print, tucked away in his lifeline—somehow shorter and longer than expected.

Red hair had snorted, glasses slipping down the thin bridge of a nose. The shadow’s eyes had glittered, even though one of them was unable to see. “you haven’t paid me yet.”

Naurto had coughed a hidden sound of humor against the birch leaves in his hands before he’d tossed them back into the rain, the cold, the almost winter. The birch leaves shared their sights with the puddles in which they landed.

The rain itself, themself, had reached a cacophony against the glass. listening, it said. listening.

The eddy-that-wasn’t, the person-that-was, had cocked his head, a slightly crooked tooth poking out through his lips. The water in the grooves of the roof, the glass, the steps, the porch could feel his attention, his awareness, and his voice when he replied, “do i need to speak to your manager—sorry, what was your name again?”

Glasses again pushed up a nose, sharp words getting sharper against the woman’s teeth. Naruto, eyebrows arched with something like mischief, from what the rain could see between itself and the foggy chill. 

“none of your business,” the shadow said, and the autumn shower hissed with the sound of laughter.)

Naruto can see the way that Sasuke is looking at the flour in his hair, on his face, on his eyelashes, all evidence of noodles made beautifully, by the way, if messily. There’s a combination of things on his face—no flour, or anything like that, despite being on clean-up duty, that bastard—but, like, feelings. They’re smoothed along the underside of his eyebrows and pulling the skin tight, a little bit, by his eyes. The feelings are probably not about the flour, not with the way that his lips thin a little bit like that, but the words are still hiding somewhere under his tongue—under Naruto’s or Sasuke’s own, well, he isn’t entirely sure.  

“You’re getting good at this,” Sasuke says, which is not what Naruto had expected at all. It doesn’t quite match with the thoughtful tilt of his eyebrows or anything in his posture, but he says it anyway. Unreal. “The old man at Ichiraku would be jealous.”

The hum of something, simmering in Sasuke’s tone—but it doesn’t taste like what Naruto thinks it should taste like. It’s both familiar-and-unfamiliar, the-same-and-different. It’s absolutely not the feeling that Naruto thinks it is, because he would be able to hear it, the way it takes long and heavy steps across a lake that’s barely frozen, the ice cracking beneath it. It’s always been able to rattle windows and shake the earth around them.

Whatever this is, it isn’t that.

(It had been a feeling that all the seasons had remembered in equal detail, so sharp had the sound of it been. The sunlight remembered it as a singular feeling, held tightly by the shadow with both hands. But the seasons knew it had been pulled taut between the both of them.)

“I’d had to learn something,” Naruto tells him, and he can feel the flour in his palm scraping against his chin when he drops it there. “Otherwise, I’d’ve had to start freeloading, which would demolish my ‘vagrant with a heart of gold’ reputation.” 

A smile that touches Sasuke’s mouth like the springtime. “I don’t think that was your reputation.”

“It’s my version of events, so I get to decide what my reputation was.” Naruto grins when Sasuke wrinkles his nose in a silent scoff. He blinks and can see the afterimage of it on the back of his eyelids. “But I guess you got me. Teuchi wouldn’t’ve ever called me a vagrant. He was too nice.”

And oh shit, there’s a laugh, clinging to the surface of the table like dew to a blade of grass. Quiet, singular, and gone in a heartbeat, even still. “Nobody would’ve called you a vagrant, because nobody fucking talks like that.” 

Sasuke shifts his body in his seat, pushing it away from the table, stacking dishes as he goes. There’s a structure there that Naruto has memorized, the way that all the weight has to be stacked to be carried tucked against his chest, but it’s still impressive to see in action. Maybe that’s another thing that keeps him out of sight or behind the register—to watch him move is to catch a glimpse of who he had been, a ripple across a reflection from years before.

Before Naruto can catch himself, he’s half out of his seat, his flesh-and-blood fingertips resting atop Sasuke’s own.

Sasuke blinks. Naruto blinks in kind.

“Uh,” Naruto says, like the buffoon that he’s been called for his entire life. “Do you need help?”

This blink is much slower, reminiscent of the cat that he catches Sasuke feeding in the summer. His eyelashes go on for a hundred thousand years, which Naruto always seems to forget and remember at least as many times a day. They kiss his cheeks when he blinks like that, a lingering touch against his skin, and it’s wild. Something burns in the center of Naruto’s chest, something currently indefinable but familiar, like he’s been holding his breath for too long. 

“Um,” Sasuke replies, but doesn’t move his hand away. His fingertips are freezing, like always. “No? You cooked.”

If Naruto leaves his hand where it is, Sasuke’s fingers will eventually warm up underneath all the calluses and scar tissue, leftover from probably several-too-many fights. His skin will soften infinitesimally, not enough to matter, but Naruto will notice anyway, like always.

Sasuke blinks for the third time, a frown starting to draw itself along the line of his lips. “Are you okay?”

Naruto lets go. 

Sasuke watches him with that enigmatic expression on his face. There are so many different versions of himself that Naruto can see echoing in the arch of his eyebrow, the downward tilt of his lips. It’s a face that could mean anything—literally anything, from ‘I am literally about to leave you behind forever without telling you’ to ‘I cannot believe you feel any kind of affection for me and might cry.’ It’s uninterpretable, hooked into the lining of his guts and tugging, tightening all of his muscles in a panic response.

It isn’t until Sasuke turns around to make his way to their residential dishwasher (fancy) that’s probably older than the both of them (less fancy), that Naruto swallows whatever kind of melancholic bile had been rising in his throat. He coughs against the weight of it, the thickness of it, pushing his chair away from the table with one foot. The rattle of it against the floorboards breaks the almost-silence and background faucet noise. When Naruto walks across the kitchen to stand at Sasuke’s right side, his legs don’t shake.

There’s a pause that lingers between them, Sasuke’s attention apparently focused entirely on the dishes in his hand, transferred between the sink and the dishwasher with a little bit too much care. The skin under his fingernails has gone white with the force of his grip on relatively delicate ceramic bowls, the muscles of his wrists straining with the frustration of it all.

As the dishwasher squeals itself closed and there’s no more dishware to occupy Sasuke’s focus, he does that thing—that thing where he bumps their elbows, his right to Naruto’s left; that thing where he loops an arm around Naruto’s waist and presses their hips together; that thing that’s a lot like a conversation, dropped into Naruto’s open palm.

“Sasuke,” Naruto says, scattering his tone around their shamelessly tiny kitchen like dandelion seeds, light, airy, and a stone’s throw away from relieved-and-hysterical laughter, “are you worried about me?” 

A scoff, and Sasuke shifts his arm from around Naruto’s torso to drape around his shoulders. “How could I not be? You keep staring at me like I’m the one with flour all over my face, or like you’re waiting for me to break your nose or something.” The skin tightens at the corners of his eyes as he narrows them. “But when I ask, all you do is look like I smacked you.”

Their position is a little awkward, what with Sasuke’s arm where it is, and their hips where they are, and the fact that, yes, Naruto still definitely does have flour on his face and probably in his hair. Regardless, Sasuke’s pouting a little (probably shouldn’t say that out loud), and Naruto reminds himself once again that his eyelashes go on forever. It gets more awkward still when Naruto lifts his arm to loop across Sasuke’s shoulders, but that doesn’t matter either.

“Sasuke,” Naruto says, with all the seriousness in the world.

“Naruto,” Sasuke replies, with significantly less seriousness, but he speaks softly enough that it presses embers against the soles of Naruto’s feet.

“Can I kiss you?” A question that isn’t anything like the ones that are on Naruto’s mind, like the way that Sasuke’s been looking at him lately, or the way he can’t possibly tell what’s on Sasuke’s mind most of the time—but it’s close enough, kinda.

Sasuke huffs a breath between his teeth and tilts his head, turning it just enough so that their noses brush. He looks radiant in that singularly intimidating way, you know, like—like sunlight swimming around a void, or something. “Is that supposed to be a response to my statement?”

“Yeah, a little,” Naruto tells him, and he can feel Sasuke’s breath against his lips. It’s warm, warmer than the tip of his nose by a longshot. “It’s supposed to lead into my next question about whether or not you wanna shower with me.”

Sasuke’s eyes are searching his face contemplatively. Naruto watches them draw lines around the shape of Naruto’s eyebrows, down the bridge of his nose, across the curve of his mouth, around the jut of his chin. The space around them is warm, even though the living space itself is more-or-less freezing. The wood stove in the teahouse will need restocking before bed, for sure. Naruto can tell by the pallow of Sasuke’s cheeks.

“Will you let me wash your hair?” Oh, that’s a weakness—Sasuke’s methods of reciprocity hit Naruto right in the chest, grabbing his solar plexus hard enough to pop it out of place and throw it against the closest flat surface with a wet slap. 

“Um, duh.” Naruto meets his eyes with his best solemn face, schooling everything about his expression back into smoothness. “Can I kiss you now?” 

Sasuke laughs and tilts his head just a little bit further—and then Naruto can taste the laugh on his lips, his teeth, his tongue. It’s dry in their apartment and their lips are chapped beyond belief, especially with the way that Naruto’s always chewing on his own, but the kiss is perfect. They’re always perfect in a different way, even if it wouldn’t be perfect with anyone else. It relaxes Naruto’s muscles, drops the tension from his shoulders like too-heavy coat, weakens his knees just enough to remind him why he’s even here in the first place.

Sasuke’s arm shifts from his shoulder, down his back, toward his front, and the knot at the front of Naruto’s hakama is undone, like magic. Sasuke’s dexterity is beyond reproach, like he doesn’t have to think about anything before his body just moves, entirely different than the way that Naruto’s does the same thing: clumsy, graceless, and with unrestrained enthusiasm. 

“You know,” Naruto says, stupefied and delirious with a kiss like that, as usual, “you kiss pretty good for a dead guy.”

Sasuke’s palm is still wet with dishwater when he shoves it against Naruto’s face, smothering his laugh with skin.

(Summer, or what passed for it in the Land of Snow, had been brief, like a sigh, and punctuated by a village with numerous open doors, letting in lukewarm breezes and birdsong. The tea shop is no exception, its single door propped open wide with a wooden sign, the entry bell ringing softly in response to the summer wind’s gentle touches, its fingers leaving nothing behind as it moved through the shop itself. 

An observer had sat near the entryway at a table bathed in sunlight, two birds perched comfortably on the table’s edge, preening their feathers against the warmth. The cushion underneath the watcher’s knees had been limited in decoration, but comfortable, at least as far as the birds themselves could tell. The summertime itself stretched further along the floorboards, traced the graining in the wood with smooth feet, and it listened.

The birds sung to the stranger of the coming autumn, lamented the way in which summer was only a held breath between a chilly spring and an almost freezing autumn. They told stories of where they’d been and who they’d seen. They’d spoken of the shadow behind the tea shop, sitting next to a cat that had been too shapely to be unfed, too lithe to be kept. The stranger nodded, letting the summer shift around his shoulders to pull at the edges of his well-worn cloak.

A ceramic cup of chilled oolong was placed on the table with no fanfare. Its temperature had been such that condensation was beading at the lip of the cup, catching the summer’s eye. 

A mouth, split wide in a smile, sunlight peeking out from behind teeth. “you know,” Naruto had said, and the season listened, the shape of the floorboards becoming a memory on its palms, “this is the most highly recommended tea we have at this time of year.”

The man had looked up, the color of his hair set fire by the light coming in through the window at his back.

“how much?” A whisper. The birds noted that it had been a welcome change—or rather, it had been a return to something softer, for him. 

“on the house.” The summer had felt unasked questions hit the table like torn paper, fluttering against its surface to collect dust. When the stranger-that-wasn’t pulled his hands out from underneath his cloak, one of the questions had caught on the pad of his thumb.

He’d held it there, pressed to the shape of the teacup, and said nothing.

It’d been answer enough.)

-

(“holy shit!” Newborn flora had barely been able to crawl from the thawing earth before the sun startled them with its enthusiasm, their fragile leaves curling against their stems with its energy. Flowers that had already had the sense to bloom had found their petals stuck to the steel plating of a samurai helmet, resting on a table in a tea shop, almost newly opened, in the grand scheme of things. “holy shit!”

The samurai had glanced around the tea shop with pale eyes, his hair tied in a tight tail at the base of his skull. A strip of cloth was tied around his forehead, unaffiliated with anyone that mattered. His affiliations now extended only as far as the helmet did.

As far as the spring had been concerned, it’d been three dead men in a tea shop, out of place, finding new ones.

“thought you were supposed to be dead,” the samurai said to the sun, the only indication of his nerves being the way he picked his mochi into piece, after piece, after piece.

“could say the same about you.” Sasuke had moved like vapor does, as though his feet never really needed to touch the ground in the first place. For the Land of Snow, the spring had found itself something kindred in the tea shop. 

“never had you pegged for a samurai,” the sunlight agreed, catching the attention of flower petals with its motion. Outside the open door, new growth turned its face toward his hands. 

The samurai had looked at them both. There’d been white-pink flower petals in his hair, a sign that he’d taken off his helmet to breathe sometime before he’d gotten there. A risk, with a recognizable face like his. “i figured i was proficient in taijutsu.” His eyes settled on Sasuke, and an eyebrow arched, a little imperiously. “thought maybe i should take up swordsmanship.” 

Sasuke held his gaze only barely. There’d been something heavy on his mind, like a cloud filled with rain. 

A breeze pulled itself into the tea shop, catching the sunshine’s question in its path, said softly, almost secretly, to the empty eyes of the samurai helmet, “are you happier?”

The samurai had blinked, and in his eyes the sunlight glittered. In the space between these two moments, Sasuke’s eyes had dropped to the floor. 

“yeah,” the samurai replied, nodding once. “i think so.” His eyes had been clear when he’d continued, “how about you?”

When the sun grinned, he became so young, much younger than he was only a heartbeat before. Even with the time that had passed, the spring remembered the boyishness with perfect clarity. Perhaps the samurai did too.

“i don’t think i’ve been happier,” he’d said. The flowers had known he’d been telling the truth.

When next the spring breathed in, Sasuke was nowhere to be seen.)

Sasuke startles awake, as usual.

The dream that shoves him upright is always vague, but consistent. The shapes and sounds and sensations are forgettable—the feelings, of course, stick in his throat, hooked into the skin of his tonsils. They burn a path up from his chest to gather behind his teeth, tasting a little bit like bile when they flood onto the flat of his tongue.

Even with as thick as they are, the feelings are hard to distinguish, but Sasuke knows them anyway, just like he knows the shadows that linger at the edge of his periphery, even if his periphery has, obviously, been better. When he works his jaw around them, they bend into familiar shapes: i hate you so fucking much, i’ll kill you; i love you so much i can’t stand it; i love you so much i don’t know what to do with myself. 

He runs a hand down his face, because it’s the middle of the night. His fingertips come away bloody because he’d been startled awake—as usual. The space beside him is empty, because Naruto had woken up first. It’s a routine, almost down to the timestamp, the way this plays out; Naruto’s inability to sleep these days paired with Sasuke’s inherent neuroticism make for an interesting combination after dark, no matter how many bruises Naruto bites into Sasuke’s collarbone, or how tight Sasuke clings onto Naruto’s shoulders when he holds him like that.

No—that’s not a fair way to spin it. It’s getting better, the pattern of things. There are nights where Sasuke startles awake to see Naruto looking at him with that doofy, worried look on his face. Or there are nights where Sasuke wakes up first and gets to hold Naruto’s face or drag his knuckle along his cheek. Occasionally, there are even mornings where they wake up at practically the same time (rare) and Naruto kisses Sasuke’s nose (far less rare) and then shows off the dimples in his cheeks near his scars.  

Sasuke slides his legs out from under the comforter and brings himself to standing. The floorboards are fucking freezing, but not as cold as they could be. Naruto must’ve thrown more wood into the stove downstairs, with the way the air doesn’t bite at Sasuke’s cheeks as he makes his way to the bathroom.

He grabs Naruto’s jacket off of the floor where it always ends up and shrugs it on anyway, before he flicks on the bathroom light and squints against its brightness. The bathroom itself is a half-blurry mixture of surfaces and metallic finish, a combination of failing-and-standard sight. 

The mirror tells him what he pretty much already knew: his left eye is weeping blood, a classic response to a classic behavior. It means he’d tried to open the Sharingan in his sleep, for whatever reason, and this eye hadn’t been doing well before he’d switched them out. It’s hardly surprising that it struggles to function like this.

He splashes cold water on his face, paying special attention to his left eye and the cheek underneath it, clearing out the blood that’s starting to dry in his eyelashes. It’s quick work, the rhythm of all this, and any sleep that had been tying down Sasuke’s joints has slipped to the bathroom floor, left behind when he turns off the light to go find Naruto. It’s the middle of winter in the Land of Snow, so it’s no real guess as to where he’ll be standing—he says that it’ll probably never get old, watching snowfall in the almost-pitch darkness, broken only by streetlights and the glimpse of wood-burning stoves through windows.

Sasuke can smell incense as he cuts through the shoebox of their living room, passing by what passes for a shrine in a living space this size. Naruto’s mother looks like she’s smiling at him, which is uncomfortable. He doesn’t look at his own parents’ photo, framed off to the right; this is more Naruto’s area of expertise and, again, it’s uncomfortable.

His footsteps are silent against the stairs, a reminder about how difficult the death of old habits has been, can be, will be. They don’t creak when he hops the last two, and the tea shop only settles comfortably around him as he walks across the dining room on bare feet. It’s warmer down here, closer to the stove, regardless of the fact that heat rises, or whatever. The stove in the corner crackles softly—definitely refilled, certainly by Naruto.

Sasuke pulls on his boots, left very particularly by the front door, and lets the entry bell announce his exit.

The winter numbs his face almost instantly.

(That second winter had been unsurprising in its ferocity, though the building underneath the snowfall had groaned, a little, with the weight of it—the snow, the ice, and the snow again. The snow had just been relarning what it was like to have interlopers in this space outside its influence, and the murmur-rattle-chime of it all had been disorienting, had been disruptive. 

But some of the winter—some of the snow—had been tucked under the awning of the teashop-in-repair, not yet packed down by boots, or stones, or ice. It hadn’t yet melted and frozen and gathered again. It had only waited, pressed against the windows closest to the shadow of a cash register, fluttering in time with the almost-rusted ring when the register open-and-shut.

The sun’s personification breathed out a curse on a flame-curled tongue and was caught in a headlock by a flowered tree, her forearm tucked under his chin, her bicep pressed to the back-and-side of his throat. They’d been laughing, as far as the wintertime could tell. They’d been too far away to catch their laughter against the glass. 

Sasuke had been watching them almost as closely as the snow had been.

“he seems happy.” The artist spoke like curling paper, dried stiff with ink. The winter air only caught the words through the window itself. The wood around it had swallowed the words whole, refusing to let them go. “i wish i was surprised.”

Sasuke had said nothing. Or if he had, it’d been too quiet for the snow to even catch the memory of.

The pause between them had been frozen, three inches thick. The snow outside hadn’t known what weight it carried, but it was something—and it existed outside the reach of the sunlight’s smile and the flowered tree’s laughter. The floorboards creaked beneath the ice they’d shared.

“he’d’ve hated it,” the artist had spoken again, sharper than the first time, the pull of a brush against old parchment. “being hokage.”

The ice shuddered. It cracked, from the bottom.

“oh yeah?” Sasuke had leaned against the back wall, his bones speaking to the snowfall through the tea shop’s frame. “how do you figure?”

A scoff, the flutter of bristles casting aside excess droplets. “he’d only spend his time thinking about you. what you were doing, if you were hurt or not, if there was something he could’ve done.” The artist pitched his voice up just a little, thinning it out with the edge of a knife. “‘what good is a hokage if—’”

“‘—they can’t even save one friend.’ i’m aware.”

The ice cracked a second time, from the top. Whatever was pressing against it had increased its force.

Sasuke had shifted against the wall. Maybe he’d swallowed. The outside hadn’t been able to tell. “i can’t see why he likes you.”

The artist laughed, pressing an ink-dark thumb against his bottom lip. The shape of it had been unclear against the cold-fogged window, but it’d been clear enough to imagine. “just because he likes you doesn’t make you a good person.”

“case in point.” It might’ve been a laugh, in another life. Even then, it’d been close.

“case in point,” the artist agreed.

There may have been more that would’ve been said in that moment. They could’ve said anything else in that space, with the length of ice between them. The artist may have been about to see if Sasuke knew what Naruto had given up to be out in the middle of nowhere. Sasuke may have asked the artist what he’d known about the time before this, long after Sasuke had decided to bury himself alive, out of the sun’s sight. 

But instead, hair like flower petals had flashed before the window with sunlight to follow. The snow had been unable to feel anything but laughter, anything but shouting, anything but a welcome home said painfully. The tea shop’s frame had settled under the snow, had creaked at its joints, and had sighed out warmth against the cold. 

Behind the cash register, the tea shop had been able to feel the shape of a box of tea leaves tucked away on a shelf. While the tea shop had lived many lives as different things, it had known this—they’d been tea leaves dried for artian’s ink. 

They’d been wrapped in what could’ve been kindness in a different story.

In this one, it had likely been respect.) 

The heartbeat that underlies moments like these guides the teacup from Naruto’s hand into Sasuke’s like clockwork, ticking in the marrow of their bones. The teacup cuts through the chill with absolute impunity, which means that Naruto can’t have been out here that long, and Sasuke presses it to both of his cheeks to soak it up. 

“Smells like beef broth,” he says, and it feels like there’s steam coming out of his mouth with the teacup so close to his face. 

“That’s because it is,” Naruto tells him, sipping on his own teacup, using his prosthetic as a coaster as Sasuke leans against the side of the tea shop next to him. The snow huffs against the soles of his boots. “I was hungry, and this seemed like it would be toasty and satisfy my insatiable hunger.”

Sasuke takes a drink that almost scalds his tongue, but he can feel it warming its way down his throat and into his stomach. “Not a bad idea.”

“Well,” Naruto’s breath is smoky in the cold, his body temperature running too high to smother most of the time, “last time I made tea, you were like ‘this is disgusting’, because I oversteeped it or something, and it was, again, quote, ‘literally unpalatable.’”

“It was,” Sasuke says, taking another sip, “but I didn’t say it like that.”

Naruto snickers, sending clouds of white around his nose and mouth and cheekbones, catching frosted glimmers in his eyelashes. He’s beautiful, painfully so, and Sasuke remembers that at least a million times a day. Naruto will wink at a customer and Sasuke’s heart will quiver in the most unsubtle way, and it will remind him. Over, and over, and over again, it’ll remind him: god, i— 

He touches the shell of Sasuke’s ear, looping almost-too-long hair around his forefinger as he traces down Sasuke’s cheek. “Your hair’s getting long. Want me to cut it for you?” 

The softness is Naruto’s features pulls Sasuke’s stomach out from his body, leaving only a windfall where it ought to have been, and if he hadn’t been propped up against the tea shop, he’d probably go weak at the knees right about now. He takes another drink of molten beef broth to dislodge the stone that has made its home on the back of Sasuke’s tongue, threatening to close off his windpipe. 

Something overwhelming is crawling up, and up, and out of him: god, i— 

“Yeah, actually.” He sounds exactly like he’s supposed to when he speaks, and for that he is infinitely grateful. “It’s been starting to drive me up a wall.”

Naruto lets go, laughing, and brings his teacup back to his mouth, dusting snow from the windowsill behind him as he adjusts his position against the tea shop’s facade. There’s still some tiredness at the edge of his mouth, a little bit of exhaustion painted beneath his eyes, but even then he’s able to look comfortable, out in the freezing cold without a jacket around his shoulders. 

He’s always managed to look comfortable, even when his life had been under fire—maybe especially then. 

Sasuke clears his throat against the stone that’s struggling to move. It’s been there all day. All day, all week, a long time. It’s a thought and a question and every time he looks at Naruto’s face, he thinks about it. If he keeps thinking about it, he’ll run. If he speaks about it, he’ll die.

When he clears his throat a second time, it sounds like a hammer pulling back on a pistol. 

“You remember when I went to the store this week to get more milk?” Sasuke asks, pressing the teacup against the side of his throat for strength, for warmth.

“Sure do,” another laugh, this one more like a wheeze against the chill. “You were pissed about your stocking oversight, and were, like, going to swear yourself blue.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s not the important part.” Maybe the broth idea had been better than tea. He can almost feel its liquid warmth in his toes. “You know that elderly lady that owns the place?” Sasuke breathes and his voice doesn’t tremble. “She wanted me to ask how my husband was doing, since you never get sent on shopping runs.”  

It’s kind of comical, really—or it would be, if Sasuke’s hindbrain wasn’t threatening to throw him out into the street at a dead sprint. But Naruto has spit his beef broth onto the snow, coughing, and Sasuke is rooted to the spot, unable to go anywhere. It’s a feeling so far from panicked that he doesn’t even have a name for it, because the only thing panic has ever done is make him run away. He’s never quite been startled into stillness before.

The beef broth hisses into instant freeze against the snow. It steams into the nighttime.

Naruto’s cheeks are pink when he says, “oh, well, who could blame her, right? We share a last name,” which had been Naruto’s idea (“u-zu-ma-ki, u-chi-ha, so u-zu-ha. perfect, right?”), “we live together, i call you gorgeous all the time. Honestly, who wouldn’t make that assumption? I mean, you know, besides the fact that I think people still try to give you their number—”

If he doesn’t stop him, he’ll never stop talking. It’s his nervous habit, far off on the other end of the spectrum from Sasuke, who will literally shut his mouth for the rest of time, if given the chance. Naruto never gives him the chance; so Sasuke returns the favor, and tries to keep Naruto from talking himself to death.

Sasuke coughs up the stone in his throat and lets it hit the snow like deadweight.

“So,” he says, his breath competing with the beef broth currently still scalding his palms, “do you wanna get married?” 

This time, Naruto has nothing in his mouth to spit-take into the snow. It’s only silence, and the way Naruto is looking at him, and the screaming of his own abject stupidity in his ears. There’s a siren pressing against his eardrums, and he really, honestly, might just drop dead here. Naruto’s blinking, and his eyes are shining, and his jaw has gone slack with a complete lack of brain activity. He’s still breathtaking, even with an expression that could be described as almost vacant, if his eyes weren’t sharp enough to cut glass. 

“What?” The question lays itself atop Sasuke’s own, a snowball dropped from a low height. It barely even whispers when it hits the ground. god, Sasuke thinks, an echo of an echo of a thought, naruto, i—

“Do you want to get married?” Snow has started falling, casting shadows in the street lighting, and they look almost like teardrops on Naruto’s face.

The closest municipality is two hours away by truck, which Sasuke knows better than he knows the standard time to steep jasmine tea, at this point. He’s checked with town visitors, checked maps, checked online. It’s a two-hour drive and the paperwork is relatively simple. They would need their fake IDs, tucked away in a locked drawer upstairs. The municipal clerk could witness, especially if they didn’t ask any questions, like why are you sharing a name already? 

Sasuke’s thoughts run circles around themselves and begin to grow teeth, drawing blood when they get too close to one another.

“Sasuke,” Naruto says his name like a holy thing, and it’s so unbelievably romantic that the only possible option is that he’s going to say no. He’s going to say, he’s going to say— “I love you so fucking much.”

There’s a period after that sentence. It’s i love you so fucking much, not i love you so fucking much that or i love you so fucking much and. It is only itself, a statement of fact. 

god, i love you, says his own voice in his own head, a record set free from its place on a dusty shelf for special occasions, i love you so much, so much, so much. He’s either going to vomit, or—

“Holy shit, are you okay?” Naruto’s hands are on his face and his prosthetic is warmer than he expected, but then again, it was recently still being utilized as a coaster for the hottest beef broth on earth. “Are you okay?”

Or he’s going to cry.

Sasuke drops his teacup and hears it break against the frozen ground as he presses his hand over his eyes. “It’s just really fucking dry.” That’s the worst lie. That is the worst, most obvious, most feeble lie he’s ever told in his entire life, and that is including the whole thing about whims and severing bonds and whatever other shit he’s said in moments where his heart was being smothered with both his hands. “It’s dry and it’s fucking cold.”

Naruto’s hands are disgustingly gentle when he pulls Sasuke’s fingers away from his eyes. There’s no blood on his palms. “Are you okay? You’re acting like the love of your life just asked you to get married.” There’s those dimples, tucked in his cheeks. Sasuke could kiss them, if his nose wasn’t running. Gross.

“Maybe I’m acting like the love of my life didn’t give me a response?” It’s either let his nose run, or sniffle. He’s not really sure that he wants to do either.

“Oh, fuck,” and there it is. Naruto’s cheeks go scarlet, and then it’s all the way down his neck. “I mean, duh, I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you now, if you want. I—of course we can’t invite anyone, or anything, but I think that—what, you thought I wouldn’t marry you? We’re basically—I mean, I just said we’re practically married.”

“You think I’m just going to assume what your answer is?” He has to sniffle, and he does. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it makes it a little less notable. “Like just forego the whole process?”

“I just—” That complicated look that Naruto will wear sometimes comes and goes in a flash, the flicker of a lightbulb that might be on its last legs. It’s the look he gets when Sasuke asks if he’s feeling okay, like he’d just decked him right across the face. “I thought you were going to do that thing where you say, ‘oh, i have robbed you of your youth by dragging you out into the middle of fucking nowhere and forcing you to live with me in this domestic nightmare.’”

Sasuke scoffs. “It’s never sounded like that.”

Naruto’s eyebrows rise. “It started sounding like that the sixth time we fought about it.”

(“i said that when we die, we’d be able to understand each other,” the seasons remembered, the words thrown out wide, shaking limbs free of snow, and flowers, and leaves, “so let me fucking understand you!”)

Naruto holds Sasuke’s face again, drawing his thumbs underneath Sasuke’s eyes. Both of his thumbs are cold. “Let’s get married.” 

Sasuke tilts his head to press a quick kiss to Naruto’s flesh and blood palm. “I love you,” he says there, and it makes his ears feel too warm.

“I love you back,” Naruto tells him, and he doesn’t make mention of Sasuke wearing his jacket when he warms his living hand against Sasuke’s throat, pressing his little finger against the backmost line of his pulse, “Uzuha-san.”

It’s normal, then, when Sasuke rolls his eyes, huffing out a breath of not-quite-warm air through his nose. He opens his mouth to speak, to offer to go inside, to suggest that maybe he go in to get gloves to clean up the broken teacup, but Naruto stops him, casting a glance toward the second floor of the tea shop, right where their living room should be.

“Oh,” Naruto says, and there’s an epiphany happening there. “We have to tell our parents.”

“What?” Sasuke dips his hand against Naruto’s hip for warmth. “No. You talked to them already. I smelled incense. It can wait until tomorrow.”

“We have to tell them now. Can you imagine? I mean, I can’t, but like, I’m pretty sure my folks would wreck my whole week if I didn’t tell them.” Naruto’s smile is small, and earnest, and beautiful. Another one of those reminders. “Your parents might flip! We have to tell them.”

Those stupid, shining eyes. Those stupid dimples. The unfathomable length of his eyelashes. 

“Okay,” Sasuke lets it go, because there’s something sleepy pulling at his body. Authentic tiredness, maybe. He’s so unfamiliar with it that it’s hard to identify. “But after I get the teacup. I’m not leaving shards of ceramic everywhere.”

Naruto’s laugh scatters across the empty street, hitting the silence with the force of a rock through a window. Sasuke’s heart skips. His heart skips, and his arm moves out, and he pulls Naruto forward, just a little. Sasuke’s limited height difference doesn’t mean much when they’re this close, but it never really does when it comes to Naruto’s gravitational pull determines most things anyway.

They kiss, and it’s freezing.

Naruto laces their fingers together.

Sasuke can taste laughter when he opens his mouth.

(It hadn’t been the first autumn that had been aware of itself, but it had been significant nonetheless.

The trees at the topmost edge of the Valley of the End would’ve been an array of burnt colors, if they hadn’t been pulled into the chasm with the ruined statues. There had been stones upon stones stacked against one another, brought low by a cataclysmic force. The air had been electric with discharged chakra, loose leaves scattered by the updraft from the waterfall. 

Water beaded on faces, on bodies, on clothes, all obscured by fallen rock. 

“hey,” the autumn heard a whisper, carried on the waterfall’s mist up and over the lip of the Valley, “i know you can’t go back there.” It’d been akin to the sound of sand against concrete, a familiar murmur of the Land of Wind—but it’d been different: exhausted but jubilant, like it had been trying to be louder than it was currently able to be.

The waterfall whispered a response that had been indistinct. The leaves hadn’t been able to catch it either.

“how about we leave?” The same sand-and-concrete voice. The autumn had known this voice in a different shape, had felt it reverberate through this Valley before, could recognize it, maybe, if the waterfall hadn’t been so loud. 

“what, just… go?” That time, the whispered response had been clearer, had been clinging to the stem of a leaf that fell to the jagged edge where a statue had once been. “with all that… shit you still have to do?”

The waterfall had thundered on, so long that the autumn wondered if the conversation had kept going, out of its influence, out of its sight. But then the waterfall lifted up the sound again, the mist passing it amongst itself until the autumn could pull it from the moisture there: “for all anyone knows, we’re dead,” said the sand. “if we just go, who’s to say we survived in the first place?”

It might’ve been a wheeze the autumn heard, but it hadn’t been sure. It listened anyway.

“where would we go?” The electric pop before a storm. That’s what that voice had been. Static, crawling up the surface of the waterfall, dissipating against the earth above.

“wherever you want.” The rustle of clothes, lost to the roar of the Valley. The groan of battered bodies, swallowed by the stones, the uprooted trees, the season itself. “as far away as you want.” Softer, even, than the first time the voice had spoken. If the autumn hadn’t made itself brittle at the top of the Valley’s mouth, the voice would’ve been lost entirely. It was as if the words had been spoken against another’s mouth.

“it’s probably really late to say this,” the static spoke, dying before it reached the Valley’s edge. The stone had hummed with its timbre instead, “but i’m pretty sure i’m in love with you.”

Rocks had shifted against one another, screaming out a sound that lasted eons, maybe. The autumn hadn’t been sure how to measure time so incrementally. It had never needed to, before. 

By the time stones had settled, only the waterfall’s voice remained.)

[arcstral]

𝑫𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞. ( i - v )

     i.

As of late, there is his fixation with mirrors.

Wise and motherly Elice. Tragic, dead Elice. He peers at himself and some calming likeness of his older sister is reflected back. They’re distinct enough when he presses himself to remember, through the thick wet blanket of the Darksphere’s muddle that has fallen so heavily over his head. The airs of male gallantry and female chastity that even two remarkably similar sibling faces could convey apart from one another. 

Merric had fancied his sister. If Elice had been so sure a beauty to her futile suitors, to the maidens Marth must have seemed as their chimeric princes of song come to life. Not that any of it mattered now.

An unbreakable sense of justice and blinding white smile. Chivalrous ideals and warm receptions of love both given and received.

He is not that sort of prince anymore. Not really.

Elice would be disappointed.

He dare not think of the other great loss of his life that would feel the same.

     ii.

The widower king, the people have now taken to calling him. The Hero-King who went mad for grief. Where they speak fearfully of Dark Emperor Hardin’s brutality, they whisper instead of Marth’s tragedy. The pity that has become his once shimmering existence. Where Hardin had fashioned the globe into his bloody plaything of conquest and vengeance, Marth wanted little to do with it and simply cared no longer for the things he once did.

Tax reports and revenue projections, restoration projects, bandit plagues, and official government memorandum that had once topped the list of the diligent monarch’s priorities now hung freely at the bottom. As few truly important documents were signed off with a whimsy hand, many more were delegated to the waste-fires.

His is an illusion of productivity and the world suffers for his indolence, even if his Altean vassals in particular do not believe it at first.

‘His Majesty is suffering, he will return to his senses after his grief has abated.’

‘It is the weight of Archanea upon his shoulders that has turned him to this.’

‘Have pity. He is an overworked candle that has melted on both his ends.’

They do not know the full truth of it.

Marth merely does as he pleases, as he has never done before. 

     ???.

His recent decrees have flooded his rooms of authority with a new wave of silence. The tensity in the council room is broken only by the occasional ugly hacks emitted by Arran who tries without success to stifle his sounds. Each one shatters the very air like a crystal glass lopped against the floor. 

As this unstoppable effusion of water in sorry old Arran’s lungs, there is a sickness breeding within the young king as well. He trades his brooding for a flurry of many radical new statutes. Criminal offenses of all nature and all possible standing are deemed punishable by death. Manaketes and convicts seen treading within a few miles’ radius of the Pales capital will be shot down. Families who cannot pay the entire extent of their taxations are made to do so with their lives. So on.

Where the prince he was had advocated justice and equality, the king he is was a gravely twisted version of those ideals.

He rolls around the Darksphere in the palm of his hand, feeling for its sweet seductions. Like Hardin, Marth alone indulges the impression that he has never changed.

     iii.

Eventually, Marth commands the tombstone silence of his halls as well.

His knights have tasted his sweet light and now they fear the difference of his shadows. Jagen. Cain. Frey. Draug. Gordin. Ryan. Rody. Cecil. Astram. Midia. Defectors attempt to leave his court in droves until they learn he will not allow it done. Former friends become plague rats that he burns out to the loyal, unquestioning torch of Merric’s Bolganone or an Archaean firing squad.

They are traitors in the vein of Gra who have betrayed his kindness and his trust. Their deaths hold as little value to Marth as their lives in that regard, but replenishing his depleted ranks qualifies as both a nuisance and sizable difficulty.

He seeks out the conscription of old faces. Knights are more reliable in proportion to their training, but hired swords will care less for the muck of his deeds and more for the shine of his imperial gold. Radd accepts him on this useful ideal, then Caesar. Of Navarre, he curiously receives no word, and of Ogma there are a few, albeit the kind that leaves the fallen Hero-King with much to be desired.

“It is said that Sir Ogma was not the same after Princess Caeda’s passing, Your Majesty. Upon one night of disorderly drinking, he was tossed out of a Knorda tavern where he landed upon his face in a wet patch of bog beside the cesspits. There, he fell fast asleep, and–”

“I understand,” Marth finishes for the messenger suddenly, disturbed.

     iv.

The crown chamber is exceptionally quiet, as it usually is with King Marth and the mysterious weight of his thoughts. The overhanging fear of his retribution that choked his few remaining followers upon their bold and progressive proposals for His Majesty to pray reconsider his seat upon the throne. For once in a long time, it echoes with the soft admission of his pain.

“If it was not the Darksphere that claimed my life, it would be the devil’s drink that bewitched Captain Ogma until his lungs could not tell mud from air. He and I are not truly so filled with differences.”

“Even so, the few differences to be had are not regrettable, my liege. Your Majesty is still alive.”

Marth looks to his shadow after a long moment. A fragile distance to his voice that marked the difference between the Darksphere’s diamond barrier and the glass man who stood behind it.

“Don’t be silly, Kris. He is with her and I am still here.”

Like a kernel of honesty buried within the rotting fruit, his words illuminate the grander scheme to his motives. His longing for the death that has so generously evaded him by God’s will only to take his sister and lover instead. 

But with his face as a tortured statue, his most loyal knight offers no response.

No solution. No release.

Not yet.

     v.

An unexpected visit from Julian brings news that has already taken the rest of the continent by storm. Princess Minerva is raising an army in response to his crimes. The diplomat she has sent is not so much a proponent of politics or any particular nationality as he is of significant attachment to abbess Lena, a Macedonian. The fact means that he can navigate enemy territory with more delicacy than Minerva’s pegasus knights. She has indeed chosen well. 

Marth has already drawn his notions for the visit and so he allows the man to speak for the enemy. Another traitor for another traitor—

“Before she raises the Archanean League’s standard.. She wishes to extend her offer of peaceful surrender to both His Highness and his loyalists. I believe there is still a fond remembrance by the princess of your meaningful friendships.”

Archanean League. Loyalists. His army is Archanea and he is its heart. The choice of semantics is insulting.

“I will think on Minerva’s offer,” Marth says at last to his former friend, an involuntary twitch of his dominant hand. Beside him, Merric stirs as if acutely aware of his moods. Kris stares with solid interest at a painted mosaic across the ground. 

“You must be exhausted by your trip from Macedon.”

Just as any flower grateful for the sunlight, Julian blooms before he ever wilts. “I am, Your Majesty—”

“Good,” Marth interjects. “You will not need to make the journey home. I will send clear instruction to sister Lena so that she might collect your body within the fortnight.”

He will give Minerva her answer and he will use Julian to do it, for all the goddess of wisdom in her name and god of war in his. In spite of this hammer of injustice, Julian willfully does not scream as he’s dragged away. Split open by the headsman’s axe and carted off in twos to the castle gates before the morning brume has settled. 

Sister Lena does. 

Just as Marth expects, the Macedonian declaration of war follows mere days later.

[liliability]

Day Two: In the hands of the enemy

(Eh, kinda. This piece is a nod to the prompt I wrote back in September, set in the same universe of Day One: Let’s Hang Out Sometimes)

CW: lady whump, pet whump, dehumanizing language, collar, caged whumpee, captivity, blood mention.

Timeline: Late 90's, 20 years before Max abduction

Every year, Emma attends Trevor Harding’s luxurious ball uninvited. A nice excuse, she thinks, to wear a tailored suit and flirt with absorbed ladies all night without bringing attention to herself. 

An even better annual excuse to keep her eyes on Harding’s closest friends, the infamous elite of magic timekeepers that hold all the cards in this part of the city.

Trevor had reacted with mild annoyance at the first, but quickly took up the challenge to surprise his most intriguing guest every year with his latest purchases. Usually, the acquisitions are older than the immortal host himself.

This year, unlike the last few decades, Harding’s precious asset isn’t on display in the main hall, and that’s enough to make Emma a little wary of the nature of his acquisition.

 ------------------------------

“Well, it’s not exactly a new acquisition, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it took me years to get improve my project. I wouldn’t settle with an unfinished piece of work.”

The loud Vivaldi that entertain the guests in the ball room is slowly replaced by a faint ringing in her ears as Harding leads Emma to the biggest cellar she had ever seen. The place looks more like a warehouse from a horror movie, or even an old-fashioned dungeon, than the underground of a sumptuous castle. She wonders if anyone can hear her if she screams.

The answer is probably no, or else Harding wouldn’t lock any living creature down there. Emma knows they’re walking towards a living thing, because the ringing is replaced for a low groaning as they run down the cellar.

“Don’t get too close to the cage. My girl has quite strong teeth.”

Emma notices the big cage hidden by the shadows in one corner of the cellar. The reinforced bars hold whatever pet Harding got his hands on this time, and it mustn’t be very well-trained, but this isn’t Emma’s biggest worry.

The cage is too big for a dog.

The dark Harding whistles to bring the attention of the creature. 

Emma hears a rattling of chains, followed by a loud growl, before the pet draws closer to bare it’s teeth at them and thrash violently at the bars of the cage.

The woman nearly falls back when the pet snarls at her, and in the darkness of the cellar it takes her a while to notice that the figure locked in the cage is not an it, but a bruised young woman, bound on her hands and knees, that thrashes back and forth against her restraints like a startled animal.

The sounds she made doesn’t sound human at all. Distressed and strangled whimpers come out from a throat that is as restrained as her limbs.

She’s wearing a fucking dog collar.

“What...What the fuck, Harding? This is a- fuck- how long do you have a person in your cellar?”

Trevor puts himself between Emma and the cage, doing quiet shush motions. Behind him, the woman stares at them with wide icy eyes and bared teeth. There’s a thin layer of sweat covering her face but no flush reddening her hollow cheeks. No freckles, no blush, despite the paleness of her skin. The only color in her face are the dark circle under her eyes and the dried blood spattered on her cheeks.

She looks sick. Damn, if she wasn’t panting so much, Emma would think she was fucking dead.

“I know, I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain. Do you see the runes in her arms?”

Emma lowers her gaze, looking at the elaborate knife-made marks in her arms. She had heard about the forbidden runes, made by greedy mortal beings who want immortality- or perhaps corrupt timekeepers who lost their powers. At the end, their craving is the same, but these years of life are not simply granted. They are stolen, and that’s the purpose of the runes.

The lines are neat and straight, the work was clearly slow and deliberate. The woman must have stayed still- or unconscious- but if the point Harding is trying to make is true, she did these runes of her own volition.

“So, the rumors are true. Are you sheltering strays now, Trevor? I thought mortals like her had their own gang, or something like that”.

“Well, what could I do? She asked me for help, and I turned her myself.”

The woman snarls at them again, pulling at her restraints with smudged red fingers and shouting something that sounds quite like “Go away!” Emma would guess she’s in her twenties, but there’s no way to know with the runes-

One awful question pops in her mind.

“How long... for how long do you have her?”

Harding grins at the question.

“Now, that’s a nice question! I found her at ‘91, so let’s say... seven years?”

Emma’s going to throw up. There’s no way the poor thing in the cage had known the fate reserved for her, there’s no way she would agree with this.

“This...this is wrong, how can immortality be worth all this?”

“Oh no, she didn’t trade herself for immortality, that was only a collateral. Do you see how the pattern in her arms is different from the standard rune?”

There’s a mark in her arms that resembles a chain, the rune used to bound a mortal’s life to a Timekeeper’s powers. No matter who this woman was, she gave herself to Harding to be able to extend someone’s life. 

Emma is paler than usual. “What could she possibly use these powers for?”

“About that...”

Harding leads her back to the crowded ballroom. The caged woman doesn’t seem to relax even when they got more distant. Instead, Emma can see her growl to a shadow and rub her face in the bars, removing the matted hair that gets in front of her eyes.

 Dozens of servants move around the room with plates full of champagne glasses. One of them is visibly younger than the others, and particularly nice looking. His icy blue eyes and messy dark hair caught her attention immediately, but she can’t stop thinking how similar he is with the feral prisoner downstairs.

He walks with his head cast down, a tired frown in his face, but despite his careless expression his uniform is flawless, except for the wrinkled fabric in his arms were the sleeves are rolled up to expose the runes. 

Anyone could see the carved marks at meters of distance, and Harding’s closest guests would certainly know about its meaning. A sign of danger and unnatural in any other place out of a timekeeper’s territory, but here? In Harding’s own ball, serving guests and cleaning tables? The rune is a sign of ownership. A brand marked with no iron.

“Is that a...?”

“A bound mark, exactly. The siblings made a deal with me, some years ago. His darling sister dropped dead in my door some years ago, and he came for me to trade his life for hers.”

“I won’t say he looks very alive, but he’s clearly not dead, at least.”

“I got a little turn in my arrangements. His sister wasn’t very pleased when she woke up. She begged me for a deal, and I granted her new powers to keep her brother alive, as long as she can buy him more time.”

Trevor doesn’t say the rest of the sentence. From someone, buy him more time from someone, harming innocent mortals to extend her own life- or someone else’s, in this case. 

“But she’s not one of us, she can’t steal without killing her targets.”

Harding’s smile widens. “I’m very aware of this” The trail of blood is no inconvenience for him.

This is absolutely sick. She knew some timekeepers could be corrupt, but Harding is in a whole new level...

“What would you get in return, huh? Betraying your own people, using forbidden magic? Brennan lost his powers for much less.”

“I beg to differ, as I was the one who removed his powers, in the first place. With your connivance, if you don’t remember.” Harding shrugs, following the dark-haired servant with his eyes. “But what did I get in return? As you could see, I got myself a gorgeous brand-new toy, and the best hunt dog I could hope for.”

Emma doesn’t think about all the laws Harding had broken behind her back. She doesn’t think about the inappropriate comments the half-dead man gets from the guests and their even less appropriate touches that only stop when the guests see the runes.

But mostly, she tries not to think about the bared teeth pointed at her, and kicks herself whenever she wonders about what Harding would consider a hunt.

[mayhembunnywrites]

Eskimo Kisses and Starsent Wishes

Pairing: Nafla x Reader

Summary: Falling into your future.

Nicholas Choi typically doesn’t get angry, but in this moment he can’t help but be a little pissed off. He had been in a public park after finishing up the photoshoot for unu, just trying to relax a little bit, when some woman had knocked into him. Oh, she had apologized, but it was half assed and he could tell! So he chased after her, and now he has finally caught up to her.

“Excuse me,” he says somewhat impatiently, noticing the toddler in front of you but not really paying attention to the little girl. Distantly, he does know that what happened next was very, very creepy by normal standards but, in his own defense, he couldn’t help himself. 

The moment you turned around to face him, clearly suspicious of this random man who you had never met, his world had stopped in its tracks. You were drop-dead gorgeous in his opinion, and he was dumbfounded as he stared at you.

“Uhh, dude,” you say hesitantly, nervous as this stranger, no matter how handsome, stares at you without words. “Sorry for running into you earlier, are you alright?” The minutes drag on as he stares at you, jaw dropped open. You hide your daughter behind your back as warning bells ring preemptively in your head, worried about this man who creeps you out to no end.

“Well then,” you say as you begin backing up, “I’d say it was nice to meet you but I would be lying, and I don’t want to do that in front of my daughter...Bye.” You turn around and pick up your three year old with a practiced ease, diaper bag hanging across your body as you nearly run away from him.

Nicholas shakes out of his stupor, reaching a hand out as if to stop you in your tracks as he watches you walk away. “No, stop,” he says quietly, the words feeling as if they were spoken through a megaphone to him, and he watches in horror as you leave his sight. He shuffles his feet sheepishly, turning around and moving to leave the park.

He ends up back at his apartment, staring up at his ceiling as he laments over his actions, redoing the scenario and imagining how it could have ended differently.

One month has passed before Nicholas next sees you at a party being thrown by Kid Milli, the small and friendly event being thrown for Giriboy’s birthday. He was shocked to see you there, interacting with these normally rough men and melting them to the core as you simply talk, not even noticing what you were doing to your good friends. 

As it was the first time he had met you, Nicholas was dumbfounded as he looked at you, the black and white t-shirt dress hanging off your form in a way that wasn’t sloppy in the least, and he can’t help but be amazed by the way you had dressed, even your shoes are black and white, and it appears as if you match the birthday boy in color scheme.

You flush as you notice the familiar man staring at you, and the smile falls from your face as you shift, moving yourself behind Giriboy and seeming to become part of his shadow. Your gaze drops to the floor, your hand lifting and gently hanging onto the back of Giriboy’s oversized and yet fashionable t-shirt. You accidentally tug on it as you casually attempt to move to a more secure position, only to freeze under Siyoung’s questioning gaze. Your eyes dart nervously from Siyoung to Nicholas, and Siyoung follows your gaze to notice Nicholas staring at you from across the room. 

Siyoung raises an eyebrow at the other man, drawing Wonjae’s attention to the situation and causing him to scowl slightly. 

Siyoung gently loosens your grip, a smile brushing his lips as he listens to your whispered protests. He squeezes your hands before approaching Nicholas, finally causing him to break from his stupor as he realizes that he appears to be in a lotoftroubleohshit. Nicholas feels as if the world is in slow motion as he watches the normally calm man approach him, noticing as Siyoung’s fists clench. Nicholas swallows air in his nervous state, unable to rip his gaze from Siyoung as he finally stops in front of Nicholas.

“Hey Nafla,” Giriboy says with an easy-going smile on his face, contradicting his tense body language, “How’s it going?”

Nafla feels as if he is under the gaze of a wolf on the hunt, and he can feel himself growing smaller under the other man’s assessing gaze. “It’s going well,” Nicholas manages to force the words out before he feels Siyoung wrap an arm around his shoulder.

“That’s good,” Siyoung says cheerfully as he starts leading Nicholas to the guest room in his home, knowing that Kid Milli is distracting you easily after so many years of friendship. Your little trio of friends was truly as tight-knit as could be, having been through so much shit together. The most prominent event that you had all been through together was definitely your little miracle, the result of a one-night-stand. 

You had contacted the man, but he had no interest in being a father, and you felt no need to push him into the position. Siyoung and Wonjae had been unsure whether to be happy or upset on your behalf at the news of your pregnancy, but they settled for holding you while you cried as you told them. They had only hugged you more tightly, and sometimes it feels like they never let you out of their embrace.

You had moved into Siyoung’s home for the duration of your pregnancy, staying in the guest bedroom as he gladly renovated the basement. The once large and unfinished basement had been turned into a series of sizable rooms, two bedrooms and one bathroom being added and customized to your liking as the months fly by, your stomach growing more heavy and your due date rapidly approaching. 

Siyoung or Wonjae accompany you pretty much everywhere when it gets close to your delivery date, assigning their friends or colleagues to the task if they can’t be there. From Reddy to Yun B, your friends had assigned suspiciously single rappers to guard you in their stead. Much to Wonjae and Siyoung’s mutual disappointment, you had befriended everyone you met, but that was as far as you all ended up getting. 

Wonjae and Siyoung had been on stand-by in the last month of your pregnancy, and you had never been more grateful for their presence than when they were by your side in the delivery room. They had both been glued to you during labor, planting kisses on your forehead and comforting you better than a parent ever could. It had been a long 20 hours of labor before your baby girl was delivered, So Min’s angelic features captivated both men and caused all three of you to coo over her.

The past year of her life had flown by in a flurry of smiles and giggles, crying and restless nights for both of you. Siyoung and Wonjae had begun to take So Min to the studio whenever you needed a break, both men taking to their roles as uncles with glee. Most of the time you were fine with it, but occasionally you would find bags upon bags of designer baby clothes and toys, accessories galore. Everything from a diamond-encrusted hair-clip to a Gucci diaper bag, if they felt you needed it then they would buy it for her.

You had been absolutely shocked to come home to your closet stocked with designer maternity clothes, the small amount of maternity clothing being replaced with soft dresses and shirts, maternity jeans and soft pajamas, even soft pairs of slippers to wear around the house. Yourself and Siyoung had gone furniture shopping when your rooms had been completed, and you had been shocked at the prices of the furniture. 

Siyoung had ended up with your permission to buy whatever he wanted for you so long as you didn’t see a receipt, and he happily agreed to your conditions. You had come home only a day later to find your room and the nursery full of the necessary furniture, all of it truly the best quality money could buy.

As the year had passed, more and more baby clothing had seemed to appear out of thin air, all of it beautiful and fully intact. All in all, living with Siyoung had been great since the beginning, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Setting up parties for any of you was now a whole lot easier than before, the location automatically settled to Siyoung’s house. You had dropped So Min off at Siyoung’s parents house earlier, the older couple gladly acting as grandparents for a night.

Nicholas was currently walking with Siyoung towards the nearby balcony, Siyoung’s arm slung casually around Nicholas’ shoulder, the empty balcony a welcome reprieve from the noise of the party. 

“You know,” Siyoung begins as he lowers himself into the comfortable armchair, “she’s single. I’ve been trying to get her to date for ages now, but she might scare you away.”

Nicholas blinks in shock, having expected to be told off for staring at Siyoung’s girlfriend but instead being encouraged to ask you out. “Y-you mean, you’re not dating her?” he says in disbelief, having thought that you were after you had hid from his gaze.

Siyoung lets out a laugh, smiling brightly as he thinks of you. "No, I could never date Y/N, we have too much history. Besides, she's too much of a sister to me. Let me introduce you to her." Nicholas gets a friendly pat on the back as he trails behind Siyoung in a dazed state. He is shaken out of his daze as he stops in front of you, noticing your questioning glance at Siyoung as he stops with a wide smile on his face.

“Hey Y/N,” Siyoung says without a hint of the nervous feelings that Nicholas is hiding fairly well, “I would like you to meet Choi Nicholas, otherwise known as Nafla. Nafla, meet Y/N. She’s one of my favorite people, so take care of her. Now then,” he nods at Wonjae with a smirk, “we’ve gotta go check on the rest of the guests, you two have fun!” Suddenly you’re both standing together, and you fidget in place and flush as you notice Nicholas’ handsome features.

The two of you stand together, taking in each other's features with shy glances and both of you shifting nervously before you clear your throat, taking a deep breath. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Y/N, I think we ran into each other in the park that one time.”

“Ah, yeah,” Nicholas says with a slight blush, “Sorry about that, I must have looked like such a creep.” You move to protest before a shake of his head stops you in your tracks, “I just--you were so beautiful and I couldn’t do anything.” Nicholas stops talking, feeling as humiliation at his word-vomiting washes over him. His gaze falls to the floor and he doesn’t notice as your jaw relaxes into a smile, his words cute and making you flush.

“It’s okay,” you laugh, smiling fondly as his head snaps up and a relieved smile settles onto his handsome face, “I think I quite like you, as well, if that’s what you were getting at.” Nicholas gulps nervously, a smile still on his face as he mentally prepares for the next move.

“Well then, would you be interested in going out for a coffee with me?” he asks you, and your eyes widen as you bounce in place, the unexpected words taking you by surprise. Normally the men that try to flirt with you are much less blunt, but his straightforwardness is refreshing to you.

“I’d like that a lot,” you say, giggling nervously, “we can do it tomorrow for lunch, if you want.” You twirl your hair casually around your fingers, gently tugging on it as an outlet for your nervous state.

You let out a breath that you had been holding without your knowledge as Nafla, Choi Nicholas, nods. “That sounds amazing, should we go ahead and exchange numbers as well?” As both of you pull out your phones, you both feel giddy with delight. You don’t notice the eyes of your friends, your brothers, on you as you allow yourself to enjoy the night with Nicholas. 

The night passes as if it was a dream, and later that night you strip down and lay in your bed, reminiscing over your bold actions earlier. You are torn between joy and agony, the day running through your mind as you’re dragged into unconsciousness. The last thing you see as you fall asleep is Nicholas’ smiling face, and he is in your dreams that night.

A/N: This is part one of two parts, with maybe some drabbles later! I worked hard to get this much out and will probably revise it in the future, but it’s at five pages in the Google Doc with no sign of stopping so far. 

[stars-in-my-damn-eyes]

For a Jaskier prompt.... Getting revenge on a certain Valdo Marx maybe?

Excellent idea :D

Also Jaskier is immortal in this because I thought it would be Cool

•••

Perhaps the utter disdain and hatred that had festered away in the back of Jaskier’s mind for so long was the tiniest bit disproportionate when brought into comparison to his target’s actual offences, but if Jaskier started going around acting the forgiving sort, puffing up his chest and being the better man, the world might as well fall off its damn axis.

He liked to think himself a patient man, forthcoming with second chances and magnanimous with what kinds of slights he was willing to take in his stride, but when a line was crossed, a line was crossed, and that, too, was something he could hardly ignore.

Jaskier was a patient man, generally, and he was more than willing to wait for opportunities, too, to present themselves - in matters of revenge, after all, he forwent his general over-the-top flamboyance in favour of calculated expediency. He’d long since found it to be more efficient than letting his feelings get the better of him. Too, there was a lesser chance of conviction.

But, enough with the introspection. There was a point here, a reason for such a dissection of Jaskier’s own psyche.

Really, it had all come to a head when they reached Oxenfurt.

They’d arrived at the bustling city as dusk was creeping over the horizon, Ciri on Roach, Geralt and Jaskier walking alongside. It was a welcome sight, after so long spent trudging through muddy undergrowth, especially in the autumn rains - Jaskier was fairly certain he couldn’t quite pinpoint the last time he’d been completely dry.

The quiet, alluring promise of a warm, dry bed and a proper bath that Oxenfurt offered had been immediately tempered when Jaskier caught sight of him.

Valdo Marx, the troubadour of Cedaris - why wasn’t he in fucking Cedaris, then? - was hurrying through the quiet drizzle, bejewelled in the garments and jewellery of a wealthy man, muttering under his breath something about lazy apprentices and unstrung instruments.

Such a disappointing sight.

Still, Jaskier took a small amount of satisfaction in realising just how much better he wore his years compared to his old rival. He was greying and balding, once-luscious black locks giving way to thinning grey, and wrinkles creased what little of his face Jaskier had been able to see under his thick spectacles. Hah. Jaskier himself could still pass for a sprightly twenty-five.

“Jaskier,” Geralt’s low voice rumbled, breaking through his thoughts.

“Oh! Oh, Geralt, yes. Uhh…” Jaskier blinked at the man, distracted. “Look, why don’t you and Ciri go to the inn - the Queen’s Herald Inn, the one with the red sign, that’s a good one - I have something I need to do.”

If Geralt was curious, he didn’t show it. He simply nodded and turned, no doubt to stable Roach before getting their lodgings.

Jaskier, then, had something to do, and he did rather have to do it soon enough - even given that Marx had not yet been struck down by apoplexy, he doubted the man had long left to live, given that he had begun to resemble, in Jaskier’s humble opinion, a large, sun-dried snail in a frock moreso than a human being.

Originally, he had planned to do the man some manner of physical harm, but Jaskier wasn’t heartless - he wasn’t about to wail on an old man, he had standards. No, Jaskier decided to go for something more… subtle. And perhaps even more wounding to his rival and most despised colleague.

So, he set about following Marx, to find his window of opportunity.

Perhaps his current little act was something of a crime, yes, but he had to get his information somehow, didn’t he? He’d worry about the ethics when he suddenly acquired the cumbersome affliction of giving a damn.

Valdo Marx had become, to the surprise of absolutely no one, a professor. Jaskier had been a professor for a year after he’d graduated - he’d found it so unbearably dry and dull that he’d all but ran from his position as soon as he could. Of course Marx would feel drawn to the job - it provided him with ample opportunity to preen in front of a crowd who couldn’t actually avoid him, given that they were paying for an education. Besides, the job was so boring, that Marx probably felt drawn to it on instinct, the utterly unoriginal peacock that he was.

Or had been, at any rate. To Jaskier’s eyes, he was less peacock, now, more plucked chicken.

It took surprisingly little time to set up his little ploy. He simply followed Marx, sticking silently to the shadows with stealth even he didn’t know he possessed, and learnt a little about him as he tailed him. What classes he taught, when he taught them… after that, it had been a matter of running up to the admissions office and pulling his best, desperate act of a boy passionate for the arts who had but one day passing through the town to use as an opportunity to learn, and please, please, please could they let him sit in on a certain lecture tomorrow? He had coin…

It wasn’t an act Jaskier had been expecting to be able to pull off at an age closer to fifty than anything else, but precious little in his life had actually gone as Jaskier had expected, for better or for worse.

He slipped back to the inn, back to Geralt and Ciri, not even bothering to hide his self-satisfied smirk.

“Something went well,” Geralt rumbled, regarding the smug bard as he ordered his own ale.

“Very much so, my dear friend! My preparations have been perfectly made for tomorrow.”

Ciri regarded him, curious. “Preparations for what?”

“Just… paying an old friend their due,” Jaskier grinned, raising his tankard.

Geralt’s brow furrowed, but neither he nor Ciri enquired further.

The night was passed pleasantly enough, indulging in warm baths with scented soaps and revelling at the soft, dry beds which were a far cry from damp bedrolls on the forest floor, and Jaskier rose early, eager to intrude on Valdo Marx’s lecture and send it, with a magnificent flourish, to shit.

Really, it made sense, Jaskier thought, that Marx would end up lecturing on the history of oral tradition. It was a topic as interesting as the man himself, what with his complete lack of originality and his copiously over-embellished ballads.

He arrived a good hour or so before the lecture, and slid into the theatre before Marx himself did, taking a seat right at the back, in the corner - the least conspicuous place he could manage, and, consequently, the most dramatic from which he could emerge.

Students began filing in one by one a while after Jaskier had taken his seat, filling the theatre with quiet chatter. The atmosphere was overwhelmingly familiar, and no one spared Jaskier a second glance, dressed as he was in a less eye-catching shade of blue so as not to prematurely draw unwanted attention.

Marx arrived after his students, of course he did - and whilst Jaskier knew a thing or two about being fashionably late, being ten minutes late to one’s own lecture smacked of a complete lack of respect for both the students and the job. In other words, it was typical Valdo behaviour.

“Alright, alright, quiet now,” Marx ground out, voice vaguely more quavery than Jaskier remembered it. “Let us begin to discuss, once more, the impact of folk songs on our recording and perception of our history.”

And then it was begun. As Marx droned on and on, all Jaskier had to do was look for a suitable opening.

“…And, whilst the ballad itself is, somewhat dry and unskilfully written, it does provide us with useful-”

“You’d know all about dry, unskilfully written ballads, though, Marx, wouldn’t you?”

A flicker of recognition flashed across Marx’s wrinkled face, though it was quickly replaced by seething frustration. “You would interrupt my lecture?”

“I would,” Jaskier grinned, knowing that Marx would hear it even if he did not see him. “But it was boring anyways, so it hardly matters.”

A tittering had broken out amongst the students, to which Marx responded by smacking his desk with a fist. “Silence! We shall continue the lecture, and you will hold your tongue, boy!”

Oh, if Marx would realise who he’d just called a boy! Jaskier was not that much his junior.

“Nonsense,” Jaskier said. “A little discussion is healthy, conductive to learning, even. At the very least it’ll capture the attention of one more of your students than the usual zero, given that it is quite impossible to have a discussion with oneself.”

“I said silence!”

The frustration on Marx’s face only served to warm Jaskier’s heart. Who’d have thought that all it took to get under his skin was ceaseless disrespect, that he could not, himself, shut down? Standing up and taking a step forward from his hidden seat, Jaskier schooled his grin to look more predatory than outright smug.

“No, no, dear Valdo, please. Indulge me. Let’s have a class discussion. Look, I’ll even make it about the lesson! Tell me, since you seem to value meaning and skill in art, how does it make you feel to know that your pieces possess neither?”

At this, some of the students outright chuckled, and Marx seethed. “I will not-”

But Jaskier did not give two licks of a shit what Marx would not do. “No, no, come on. I’m sure at least one of your students could name a bard of our times that has actually managed to create something worthwhile. Any takers?”

“The bard Jaskier!” called a voice, and Jaskier almost choked. To think that one of Marx’s own students would- it was beautiful. “I doubt there’s a soul on the continent who couldn’t sing Toss a Coin if asked.”

“The bard Jaskier,” Marx spat, “is a fool and a wastrel who wastes his life away skipping up and down the continent. Trust me, I had the displeasure of knowing him. One song does not a legend make!”

It was somewhat amusing, that the topic had turned to him before anyone had caught on to his identity.

“Still, better one good song than no good songs, eh, Valdo?” Then, as an afterthought: “Not like you’d know, though.”

“I will not tolerate such disrespect in my classroom! Sit down, boy, or remove yourself!”

“You won’t tolerate disrespect? Odd, what with the quality of your work, I thought you’d at least be used to it.”

Really, Marx had become so cantankerous and crotchety in his old age.

“Cease your prattle! You are but a student with ideas above your station, and I will not suffer this idiocy any longer!”

Jaskier hummed. “Perhaps you’re right-” and really, he wasn’t right at all- “but at least I have the capacity to create a song that’s more simply than a string of unrelated metaphors sung to the chords that you deemed the hardest to switch to at the time.”

The laughter was becoming more confident, and Jaskier took another few strides forwards. His aim here was not to hurt Valdo Marx’s pride - it was to utterly destroy it.

“Someone back me up,” he continued. “We can’t have the arrogant man believing that I hold the minority opinion.”

A thunderous cheer tore through the auditorium, and, whilst Jaskier had no idea if his willing audience was so receptive because they, too, hated Marx and his pretentious drivel as Jaskier did, or if they were just bored and hungover and eager for a laugh, but he didn’t particularly care, as long as Valdo Marx of Cedaris came out of it thoroughly humiliated.

“Really, it’s a wonder they let you teach at all, given that your work has so consistently been almost impressively substandard.”

Jaskier was moving forwards, almost at the front of the theatre, where Marx stood. He kept talking, too, continuously, determined to to give Marx the opportunity to engage with him in verbal battle and thus win back a little respect. This was to be an evisceration, not a fight.

“Still, perhaps I understand the logic. Why waste a good professor on such a boring subject when you can palm it off on a hack such as yourself? It’s a pity, I thought that, throughout the years, you’d be able to at least make something of yourself. Alas, it seems that some men are just pretentious pretenders, fated to languish in obscurity.”

He was paraphrasing what Valdo had said to him, back when they were still students, but he got the gist of it across. As he approached the podium, Valdo finally, finally recognised him.

“Julian?” he croaked. “Impossible. You’re-”

“Have fun with the gossip after this, my dear little friend,” Jaskier smiled, and exited the lecture theatre, leaving behind a pack of raucous students and a most thoroughly humiliated Valdo Marx.

[inevitableenquere]

Mademoiselle Mari

Insp. by a comment on the Maribat Discord:

Buckle up, biches.

We’re gonna pull deep into DC canon for the French codename for female superheroes, Mademoiselle Marie, in use since the 18th century through the World Wars and probably beyond. Alfred Pennyworth worked closely with “Mademoiselle Marie” in the past.

In this universe, its expanded into a French government-sponsored training program, training little girls in espionage and assassinry since the Cold War. These program heads aren’t monsters; the girls still live with their families, still go to civilian school, they just occasionally “take trips to see distant relatives”.

Their parents are aware that their daughters are doing government work, and there’s a benefit package unlike any other available within the country. Salary is set aside in trust for “Marie” until she hits adulthood (precaution in case of shitty parents) and a stipend besides for her and her parents to use as they see fit. These girls get a full-ride “scholarship” to any accredited global university of their choice. Only the best of the best risk their lives for wet-work necessary for the good of France. These girls become unsung heroes of France, and they receive glowing recommendations when they decide to move on from the program.

Still, it’s not something the Dupein-Cheng family had thought of for their daughter, it’s not a well-known program after all. The handlers don’t have an eye on her until new mayor of Paris, freshly divorced, André Bourgeois brings the girl “bullying his little princess” to their attention. And that is how six-year-old Marinette Dupein-Cheng is brought into the program.

Now, Marinette, tiny little bi-racial girl, is competitive, and this program is something she enjoys, learning from adults and “older sisters” on how to tumble, dance, act, create, and make new friends– both in person with the other girls, and through letters to former agents and outside contacts. They craft a network based on previously established agency contacts and expand upon them as they move out in the world.

Marinette quickly becomes a star student, moving on to weapons training, and eventually becomes one of the first to graduate in her batch and she travels the world as pre-teen superspy “Mademoiselle Marie”. (Whose last name changes by assignment.)

This is how she meets Damian Al Ghul, prince of the League of Assassins for the first time, though he’s introduced to her as “independent contractor” Caracal. He clocks her as trained, and a threat right away, and takes his standard precautionary measure. He attempts to murder her.

Attempts, because Mari is just as trained as he is, if not as lethally inclined. He quickly finds himself pinned under her knee, knife to his throat. (Later, he insists that he was having an off day, helplessly grateful that he hadn’t succeeded.) But in the moment they agree to a truce and go their own way, Marie Simon to her “parents”, Caracal to the shadows from whence he came.

Naturally, the next time they meet they are “distant cousins” on a collaborative wetworks mission in Thessaly, against an uppity German drug lord, and his mad-scientist wife. The mission goes a bit sideways, took more luck than either will admit to pull it off, and they emerge from the aftermath, a grudging respect on both sides. Even if she’s too soft and he’s an arrogant andouille.

Through happenstance and circumstances, they run into each other enough, work together enough, to become friends. Friends, in this case, meaning “person I won't stab on sight and/or who owes me a favor”. A rarity for Damian.

Marinette thinks otherwise; with friendships among those in her organization, and tentative friendships with some of the boys in école, she considers Caracal an Ally. A lonely sad boy, sure, but more a feral street cat then a friend. It takes more than a few meetings for Marinette to consider him a Ride-or-Die Friend.

Through the years, these two baby assassins grow into a friendship that withstands facing each other as enemies to reunite with no hard feelings at the next meeting between them. After all it’s Just Business, and they both know that well.

And then Hawkmoth.

Marinette can’t be Ladybug, “defender of Paris” when “Mademoiselle Marie” travels across the globe networking for her government and taking down European threats. Marinette reluctantly resigns from her position, and she takes up a red-spotted mantle.

Now the Mlle. Marie Organization aren’t idiots. Marinette Dupein-Cheng retires with accolades, offered a permanent place whenever she finishes her “hiatus”. And if the Parisian Police are instructed from on high to look the other way for Ladybug? Well, it’s best to leave superhero business to superheroes.

People in the organization are Carefully Not Thinking About It.

Completely coincidentally, therapy and healthy coping mechanisms are now mandatory for all operatives working within Paris and the surrounding areas.

That said, she still has to tell her assassin that she’s retiring.

Damian does not take it well.

Not like murder not well.

Like communication blackout and regime change in Peru not well.

Damian gives her the silent treatment. After all, she’s Out. (She abandoned him.)

Little does he know, his mother is working to get him out as well.

Marinette, meanwhile is Not Happy that Mothman Barbie decided to take out his issues on her home turf. The Mlle. Marie project is supposed to be foreign support, and last line of defense. So I mean it's in her wheelhouse. She just enjoyed her job as a globetrotting pre-teen superspy.

She doesn’t want to be chained down to the homefront, not when there's so much inspiration out there! Putting all that on hold for Mothman Barbie in Paris, eating into her free time, sleep, and drastically cutting into her social life? Bitch.

Civilian life makes her itch now, stuck in one place with confusing, mandatory, rules. Fictional barriers and preteen posturing, and only one hidden knife? Being Marinette is Suffering™. New friend Alya and pretty-boy Adrien can only relieve it so much.

Yes she has a bit of a crush. He's pretty and a model. Shut up.

Tikki is pleased she's got another loyal warrior, a second coming of Jeanne d'Arc, though she wishes Marinette was kinder. That's something she learns while dealing with Mothman Barbie. Not just how to act kind, to prevent akumas. But how to genuinely be kind. How to unlock the empathy she'd learned to tune out years ago, and how to act altruistically.

During her collège years Marinette juggles the life of a teen superhero, making friends with her class sincerely for the first time in years, something she didn’t get the chance to do with her frequent trips. Beyond Nino and Kim that is.

When Lila comes she deems her as annoying, but not worth her time. Until she’s the one turning her friends into akumas, with broken promises and lies that damage reputations. Marinette has a set future, as long as she keeps to the laws of this land and doesn’t slaughter a bitch. Lila can’t do anything to her. But if she hurts any of her friends, Lila is getting a horse head in her bed, American cliché or not.

Thankfully her crush on Adrien dies a silent death during this time. She can’t see herself with someone who won’t stand up for himself, nor with someone who enables a pathological liar that is one move away from harming the rest of her friends. She’s unspeakably grateful for that when Mothman Barbie is revealed to be his absentee father and Mayura to be the closest thing he has to a living mother. She’s able to focus her attention on his mental state and not how stupidly pretty he is.

Adrien is cemented as her best friend and platonic life partner in a catsuit. Adrien, once he got over his crush on the "idol" Ladybug, is happy to treat her the same. He’s just glad that his Lady won’t leave him for what his family had done.

Despite Mari’s wishes, Ladybug can’t retire just yet. People come out of the woodwork to fill in the vacuum left behind from the fashion-blind terrorist that held Paris in fear for three years. Ladybug is a celebrity, and Paris would be left uneasy if the city’s heroes left them undefended. She trains to be a guardian with Master Fu, to find more permanent Miraculous holders to take up the defense of Paris, and later the world. She finally has the free time to devote to her fashion commissions and to pick up the occasional job with her old organization.

It’s mid-way through lycée that Jagged invites her as his plus one to a charity gala in the United States. As his designer, and as an inconspicuous bodyguard that has combat training (far more than he knows), Marinette is the best choice when Penny is on leave. It gives his favorite niece the chance to network with American big shots, and get her brand noticed by more than just a few fashion moguls in Paris.

Which leads us to today. Marinette Dupein-Cheng– agent on leave, teenage superhero, aspiring designer, and temporary bodyguard of her surrogate uncle– spots a very familiar profile across the room.

Her assassin, dressed to kill, possibly literally. And she resigns herself to once more being on the opposite side of the boy who cut her out of his life, and any attempts to get in touch with him.

She’s dressed in a MDC original (with more hidden knives on her person than people would think), as she goes through the familiar song-and-dance and slips into the mindset of Mademoiselle Marie.

Stolen glances across the room. How have they been? Will they talk to me again even if I left/left her in silence?

Both are on edge. They are professionals and an unexpected meeting won't prevent them from keeping their loved ones charges safe.

It's like they never left the business, the two of them. They don't know each other. I've never seen them before. They can't have been the murderer because I saw them head to the bathroom. Just don't. touch. what's. Mine.

They're Friends after all.

Thankfully nothing happens at the party.

Damian Wayne saw her. How could he have ignored her, magnetic as she ever was. His eyes periodically drawn to her, partly assessment, partly admiration. When nothing happens at the gala, he figures that she’s changed as much as he has. And Damian has changed. He's softer and he knows it. He's been Out almost as long as she has, and in trying to hold to his father’s standards, he doesn’t think he could slip into the mindset of the ruthless prince of assassins so easily any more.

The silence and loss of his first friend on the other hand, was a wound that lingered even as he learned of civilian friendships and built connections with other superheroes around his age. This was a chance to introduce himself to his oldest friend. Without business between them this time.

It's Damian that does the signal.

Mari trips and giggles at the end of the night over to her assassin. It's easy after years of "Clumsy Marinette can't possibly be Ladybug!" She plays up the petite harmless French girl.

"Mon Caracal!" She calls from 3 feet away, stumbling into his arms.

She hugs him, compartmentalizing the muscled form that holds her safely, knowing he can kill her if she plays this wrong.Not without a fight though.

She hugs him more surely, kissing both his cheeks the way neither of them would be allowed outside of acting. "It's been far too long!"

She pulls away to see him gazing down at her, and wow someone has given him acting lessons because he smiles soft, fond, and far more real than he ever had Before.

"Marie."

She boops him on the nose. "Marinette." She teases coyly. She can't tell him her last name. For the safety of her parents, but also to keep cover as close friends.

"Marinette." He nods, crooked smile on his face, and away from prying eyes there's the signal that he'll keep his mouth shut about her name.

Speaking of prying eyes... "Marinette!" Uncle Jagged calls, making his way over to the pair of them. Her assassin is surprised, though few would be able to tell, at the world-famous rockstar approaching them.

"Uncle Jagged!" She answers, facing him but keeping a hand on the muscled arm of her friend to keep him from attacking, just in case.

She plays up the accent. Just a rockstar with his very French™ niece and her boy toy, nothing to see here!

"Jagged," she says again looking up at her uncle, "this is my good friend–"

"Damian" her assassin, starstruck or not, can follow his cue.

Between them is the subtle flash of information-true-hidden as she speaks over it to distract Jagged. "–Damian, my caracal."

Jagged bristles a little, baring his teeth in what those who don't know him would call a toothy grin, rather than a threat.

"And is Damian rock-and-roll enough for my favorite designer, M?"

"He's very kind," she confides with a Marinette-sweet smile. In his own way. she finishes the thought ruefully. A small part of her brain is cackling hysterically.

Jagged relaxes, and drags the both of them forward, holding a polaroid out to snap a picture of the three of them. ("Very Rock-and-Roll!" Jagged had said three months earlier.) He shakes the picture to development, and autographs it with a flourish, before stuffing it into Damian's hands.

"Well any friend of Marinette's is a friend of mine! And M? Car leaves in 10." He smiles, patting them both on the shoulder before sauntering off.

"I." Damian tries. He sighs.

"Jagged Stone? Jagged? Really Marie?" Damian asks, slipping once more into the familiar nickname. Marinette decided to let it slide, Jagged had that effect on a lot of people.

Marinette shrugs helplessly, before fishing a pen and spare notepad for her to jot down her contact information. It had only been a night but that familiar rush and heady friendship was something that Mari didn't want to lose if she could help it. She placed the paper with the photograph, putting the lethal pen back in her clutch, and cupping his face in both hands.

"Keep in touch this time? Please mon caracal?" If her begging was a little more heartfelt, well she’d learned a few things too. She kissed his cheek one final time and stepped away.

A hand caught her wrist.

"It hasn't been the same without you, Marinette." Damian said, hand slipping into hers, thumb gently brushing the back of it. He lifted her hand and kissed the air above her knuckles, before stepping away and towards the exit.

I must not swoon. I must not swoon. I must not swoon. Marinette chanted internally as she left to find Jagged, already looking forward to turning a Friendship into something more honest. More real.

-Meanwhile, In The Lobby-

"What was that, baby bird?" Dick asked his youngest brother.

"An old friend." Damian answered tersely, pointedly ignoring the curious stare from his Father and the more obnoxious kissy noises from Todd.

"Hell of an old friend." Tim commented, sounding almost put out, probably because of the unexpected personal introduction to Jagged Stone and autograph Damien had received. "You let her get close."

Damian raised an eyebrow at Tim.

Tim rolled his eyes, "PDA close!" he expounded like that explained anything.

Dick must have sensed his confusion, " You attempted to judo-flip Kor'i when you first met her. And you let this tiny girl hug you and kiss your cheeks."

Damian scowled, "I'm not that bad!"

"You bit me last week when I went to ruffle your hair!" Jason said, tugging his suit sleeve back to reveal light scarring.

"And?" Damian said, very done with the conversation already.

"We just wanted to know how long you've been pining for her, baby bird." Dick teased.

Damian felt a betraying heat creep up the back of his neck, to his ears and cheeks. "It's not like that!" He hissed.

"I-" he paused, wondering how he could explain the beautiful, cunning girl who knew of his past, was honestly the best part of it, and how she had watched his back, kept him safe and sane, had killed people on his tail even, without making them regard her as a threat.

His grandfather would have made her an example. Vivisected, drawn and quartered for daring to get close to his perfect weapon.

"I've known her for years. We're Friends, and that means I'll allow her more than I would you, Todd."

He stalked forward, as his father called behind him, "You should introduce us when you feel comfortable, Damian."

He stopped, listening but not daring to turn around.

"After all," Damian could hear the grin in his father's voice, "It'll be nice to meet my future daughter-in-law!"

Screw the Joker, Batman ends right here, right now.

[athirdofgosh]

ShikaTema Short (ft. Shikadai) - Operation Troublesome

I originally uploaded this 3/4 years ago but I delete my old account. I’m back now to finish what I started.  

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

It was quite late in the evening at the leaf village, and the two Nara boys needed a favour, and by the looks of it, it was a BIG one. Inojin, expecting it to be his father, opens the door.

“Oh. Hey Shikadai, hey Shikadai’s dad.”

“Hey Inojin. Are your parents in?”

“Right now, just my mom.”

“Great, that’s exactly who I need to talk to.” said Shikamaru with a hint of relief in his voice. The two enter into the house, Shikamaru walking quicker to the living room than usual.

“What’s up with your dad?” Inojin asked Shikadai.

“I’ll tell you in a bit” he nervously replied, awkwardly smiling as he scratched the back of his neck. The Shika-Ino kids headed to the bedroom to talk.

“So…” Inojin said wondering why the two came, “…what makes you and your pops come over? Isn’t it kinda late, It’s like 10:30.”

“Well..” He gave off a nervous chuckle before beginning his troublesome story, “Funny story really…”

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“…and make sure everything is spotless before both of you go to sleep.” exclaimed Temari, loudly slamming her bedroom door shut. She clearly wasn’t happy, but why? Reason: Shikamaru and Shikadai had forgotten to clean up the kitchen…again. Now don’t get the wrong impression, Temari is a very loving mother and an extremely loving wife, but for someone of her calibre to be subjected to washing pots, pans, plates and cutlery all the time - is a no no. So, when she came home to meet a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, it made her tick. In this household everyone has to do their part. And if you don’t? It’s confiscation time.

The Shika duo continued their sluggish efforts to clean, Shikamaru washing the dishes, Shikadai drying them with a cloth.

Shikadai, head faced flat on the kitchen table, was first to clear the tension in the air with one mighty relevant question,  

“I’m not getting my Gameboy back aren’t I?”

“Nope” answered his father as he scrubbed burn marks off a pot.

“And you’re not getting your phone back either.”

“Nope” Shikamaru sighed.

The two groaned simultaneously, “What a drag.”

“Why does mom have to be so grumpy all the time? We didn’t even notice the sink was full until she got back.” Shikadai moaned.

“I dunno, but it is what it is.”

*Mini ‘maru looked up to his older “Hey Dad, what do you see in mom?”

Shikamaru put down his sponge and turned in nostalgic joy. The time had finally come for him to tell his son the same thing his dad did.  

“Well son, sometimes she….” He paused and thought, “Wait, he doesn’t need to know this yet. I mean, yeah, he’s around about the same age I was when my pops told me, but do I really want him to have girls on his mind right now”.

Shikadai, interrupting his moment of thought, “Sometimes she….?”

“…I’ll tell you later.” And he went back to washing up.

“Ahh daaad! Pleaseee talk to mum!” He couldn’t hold in his upset anymore; he was on the verge of completing the most popular videogame in the village which no one had even come close to finishing. The kid was known for being the ‘Game Completion-ist’ and that title couldn’t be lost to anybody.

“There’s no point. What makes you think she’ll listen to me? We’re both in trouble.” Shikamaru really wanted his phone back too, he’d been on a winning streak on the Shoji app he downloaded a few days before. However, the game he was in before his phone was confiscated by the annoyed blonde was tough. So tough that if he had to range it from Genin level difficulty to Jonin level difficulty…it would probably fly off the scale and land on Jinchuuriki level.

“Can’t you just take it?”

“She’ll stop me.”

“Then use Shadow Possession to stop her!”

“Your mom hates Shadow Possession Jutsu being used on her, and with a passion. Last time that happened she (*SPOILER* *SPOILER* *SPOILER*) …then we (*SPOILER**SPOILER**SPOILER*) ….which led to (*spoilers from the ShikaTema series*)…until (*SPOILER**yes I am shamefully advertising my story in this one shot**SPOILER*)…resulting in (*SPOILER* *sorry* *SPOILER*)”

“…oh…well I guess that’s a no then.”

The two continued their wash-dry duet until Shikadai had a eureka moment.

“Dad! I’ve got an idea!” He eagerly said and tip-toed to his ear to reveal his mastermind plan. Shikamaru’s face began lighting up as the steps to the plan were revealed, it was calculated, it was strategic, it was…. a plan worthy of a Nara.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“What was the plan???” Inojin asked keenly, rocking back and forth on his bed in anticipation. Shikadai smirked. “The plan was simple, retrieve the Gameboy and the phone”

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Shikamaru and Shikadai creeped up behind the bedroom door, cautiously avoiding all the wooden tiles that where known to creek when stepped on.

“Did you get the spare duvet from the closet?” Shikamaru whispered.

“Yeah, it’s on the sofa.” Shikadai whispered back.

“Good. Now remember, she keeps the confiscated things in the bottom drawer, so ONLY go for that one.” He made that instruction very clear.

“Ok. I’ll go in first, you come in when you hear me groan.”

“Right.”

Shikadai opened the bedroom door and entered to meet Temari sitting upright in the middle of the king-sized bed, legs stretched across the duvet, looking over paperwork. He lazily strolled to the bed as if he was out of energy and flunked himself right next to his mother.  

She peeked over and questioned him, “Is the kitchen tidy?”

“Yes mom.”  

“Don’t lie.” she said sternly.

“Mom, the kitchen is spotless. You can even go and see for yourself.” Temari’s eyes returned to her paperwork.

“…..can I have my Gameboy back now?”

“No.” She answered firmly, her eyes still glued the sheets in her hand. Shikadai groaned, loud and clear, an indication for Shikamaru to come in, which he did.

Shikamaru entered the room in the same fashion his son did, lazily and with a lack of energy. Temari still not convinced that the kitchen was tidy to her standards asked her husband;

“Shikamaru, is the kitchen tidy?”

“Yes Tema.” He replied in his ever so monotone voice.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“….so, I covered myself in the duvet, faced outwards and waited for my dad to do his part.” Shikadai was getting more and more into it as he told the story.

“What was your dad’s part?” Inojin asked.

“To take his hairband off. My mum can’t help touching his hair when it’s all out.” And he was right…

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Shikamaru pulled his hairband swiftly off his ponytail and slid under the duvet on the other side of his wife, intentionally flicking his hair next to her arm. She, almost off instinct alone, reached her hand out and rifling her fingers through his silky black hair. Temari loved the feeling of his hair, she had no idea why, she just did.

“Are you not going to go to sleep?” he asked.

“Not yet, I’ve still got a couple of pages to read over.”

“Hmm. How….”

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“…and I waited for the key phrase.”

“That being?"  

……………………………………………………………………………………………

”…troublesome"

In a flash, Shikadai grabbed the pillow from under his head and swung it at Temari, smacking the sheets out of her hands. Before she could react BOOF, another one, this time from Shikamaru. It was a tag team assault from the duo. Temari tried to jump out of the bed but the pillow hits kept coming.

“Ah-! Oi-! You-pffft!” pillow feathers accidentally fell into her mouth.

……………………………………………………………………………………………“What!” shouted Inojin in disbelief.

“WHAT!!!” shrieked Ino from the living room. The two looked over at the door.

“….I think your dad’s at the same part of the story as us.”

“….there’s more by the way….”

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Temari, bracing all the pillow hits, lays out her arm in reach of Shikamaru, a move that Shikadai predicted. In that instant he flipped the duvet over her, covering her body, Shikamaru followed suit and held down his duvet wrapped wife on the bed.  

“Ah! I swear- Grr! Get off-!”

“Shikadai! Now!”

Shikadai hoped over the two and slid off the other side of the bed to the drawer. He frantically pulled open the drawers, accidentally pulling open the top drawer first. What items he saw in that drawer shocked him.

“…oh…oh wow…damm….” The drawer was filled with square packets that had rubbery circle things in it, some of the packets read ‘pineapple flavour’. He looked back at his parents who both, gobsmacked, froze in their positions.  

“…THE BOTTOM DRAWER!” screamed Shikamaru.

Shikadai pulled the bottom drawer and grabbed the phone and Gameboy.

“Go, Go, Go!” he shouted as be began leaping off Temari. The Shika duo ran for the bedroom door while Temari in utter rage tried to free herself from the duvet. Shika seeing that she was almost free runs back to the bed, tilts the mattress causing her to tumble off the edge, and sprints out, closing the door after him. The guys regroup downstairs in the living room.

“Yesss! We did it!” cheered Shikadai as he went to high-five his old man.

“Mission accomplished.” and the two excitedly high-fived each other.

“….mom’s not that pissed, right?”  

“Right now, yeah she is. But tomorrow morning she should be fiiine. I’ll tell her it was payback for that prank she pulled on me with your uncle, she’ll get over it by the end of the day” answered Shikamaru as he snugged into the duvet on the sofa. He knew there was noooo way he could go back up there. Before he could enjoy the great feeling of lying on the sofa and playing shoji on his phone, he heard a quiet rattling sound.

“…errm, Shikadai. Did you lock the bedroom door...after you left?”

“Lock it? You never said-”

“WHERE’S MY BLOODY TESSEN!”

“Crap! RUN SHIKADAI! RUN OUTSIDE!”

Temari grabbed her Tessen from the closet and jumped downstairs to see the boys already dashing far off into the distance.

“YOU TWO COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!!! I SWEAR I’M GOING TO BREAK YOU BOTH!”

The pineapple-head boys stopped where they were, noticing that they were too far for her to attack them with her Tessen without destroying the Nara compound.

“Hey Temari!” shouted Shikamaru, “........you alright?!”

“AM I ALRIGHT!” the blonde haired kunoichi was livid. “DO I LOOK ALRIGHT!”

A light flashed on from a neighbouring villagers window.

“Excuse me! Some of us are trying to slee-”

“SHUT UP!” Temari roared.

“….sorry.” The neighbour turned off his light and wept himself to sleep, learning to never interrupt an argument ever again. :)

“….I..I love you hun-?”

“COME AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE!!” Shikamaru tried to save himself using the ‘I love you’ phrase, but he failed. Epically.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“…aaand after that we came here, hoping that your mom could talk to her for us.”

Inojin couldn’t believe what he heard. Did pineapple head and pineapple head junior really decide to mess with the princess of Suna? Temari of the Sand?

“Well, urm. Good luck with that.”

Shikadai pulled out his Gameboy and turned it on, his face lit up when he realised the game had managed to autosave. He was still on the last level.

“Yes! I still have a chance to beat this game!”

*KNOCK KNOCK*

“Shikadai!” Shikamaru’s voice from behind the bedroom door, “Let’s go, now.”

“One second dad!” he replied. “Looks like aunty Ino agreed to help us out.”

Relieved, in his usual laid-back manner, he walked to the bedroom door and opened it… to find his dad awkwardly kneeling on the floor with his ears twisted by a very, VERY - VERY furious woman. Shikadai’s face turned pale, like his soul had been kicked out of his body by this woman’s devilish stare.

“…..h-h-h-hey mom-”

“SHIKADAIIII!!!!!…”

Shikadai never got to complete that final level…ever.

R.I.P. Shikadai’s Gameboy. Gone but never forgotten

LOL. This would probably never happen….like ever, but we all need some ShikaTema humour in our lives. If you enjoyed this short please like and reblog to show that you do. BONUS SCENE!

[Outside in the middle of the street]

TEMARI:ヽ(`▭´)ﾉ Don’t you dare even think about running off this time!

SHIKAMARU: \(╥ₒ╥)/ L-Look Temari, we can talk this out-

TEMARI: (🔥益🔥) SHUT IT! And if you use ANY shadow techniques to save yourself, I swear - I WILL summon Kamatari!

SHIKAMARU:  Com'on hun! What about Shikadai?! Wasn’t he apart of this too?!

TEMARI: Shikadai - A KID, will be punishment once I get to him! However, since you, a GROWN MAN, want to be childish and play games you’ll be punished like one!

SAI: ⊙_⊙ (Is this how she punishes Shikadai? No wonder why he always comes over to play.)

TEMARI: And to think my intellectual genius of a husband with an IQ of over 200 couldn’t stop and think “Wait, maybe messing with my wife when she’s clearly working hard at night isn’t such a good idea” BUT NO. Ooh ho ho! You are going to regret it!  

SHIKAMARU: But TemTem! It was a harmless prank, that’s all-

TEMARI: \(🔥益🔥)ﾉ HARMLESS PRANK??? I fell off the bed! My work papers are a mess! MY SHIKADAI EVEN SAW OUR PRIVATE DRAWER!!!!!!

INO & SAI: ooooooh.... (Ino & Sai suggested that private drawer them)

SHIKAMARU: (WORRILY GROANS & SHIVERS IN FEAR) Ino! thought you were going to help me out! Do something!

INO: I did! She was going to blow you away with 3 moons, now it’s down to 2. See that? That’s friendship.

SHIKAMARU: WHAT! How is that-

INO: Ready Temari?

TEMARI: (≖.≖) Ready.

SHIKAMARU: O-Oi! Wait! Please!

(Temari swings her fan, hurling Shikamaru high and far into the night sky)

SHIKAMARU: AAAAAaaaaaahh…….

INO: (o_O) ouch, right into the Nara clan forest…

TEMARI: (-.-) (WATCHES HIM DESCEND INTO THE FOREST)  

INO: (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞  So…lunch tomorrow?

TEMARI: ☜(ˆ▿ˆ☜) Lunch tomorrow.

(meanwhile, Shikamaru hits a tree and begins falling, hitting every branch on his way down)

SHIKAMARU: Ah! Ow! Ee! Oo! Argh! *THUD*…aaahh!

(a deer walks up to him on the ground and looks down)

SHIKAMARU: (╥︣﹏᷅╥) …Sup.

DEER: (•ᴥ•) (DEEP MALE VOICE)….Sup.

HIDAN: (MUFFLED VOICE FROM UNDERGROUND) Sup….bitch.