#I wanted to draw his wings too but my laptop crashed

[dailysolidarity]

I would absolutely ascend if you drew FinFault Jimmy in your style. The way you draw Jimmy in general just brings me so much joy <3

Day 52

I love android Jimmy so much you don't even understand I'd die for him actually.

Anyways here's me sharing this AU: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE EVERYONE GO READ AND FOLLOW FINALITY'S FAULT AU IT'S SO GOOD PLEASEE PLEASE PLEASE IT'S TEAM RANCHER AND THEYRE SILLY AND JIMMY IS AN ANDROID AND TANGO'S A CYBORG AND THEYRE SO SWWET AND AND

[skzsauce01]

Angel Sent From Up Above

Anniversary Request Special

Synopsis: Hyunjin, a new guardian angel, has fallen in love with a human. His human’s girlfriend, to be precise. Angel AU, background college AU and skater AU.

Warning: violence

Word Count: 8.3k

Pairing: fem!reader x guardian angel!Hyunjin; fem!reader x human!Jeongin

“Is she healed now?” Hyunjin asks the moment Jisung flies in. He knows Jisung is probably exhausted from keeping maladies away from you, but he needs the answer now. “Is her flu gone?”

“Yeah.” Jisung’s wings are tinged gray with ruin, but he keeps them on display for all the other guardian angels to see as he walks past them. They are proof that he has been doing his duty. They’ll return to white soon enough anyway. “Your human’s her boyfriend. Why didn’t you try to check through him? He visited a few times even though she told him not to.” Jisung sighs and shakes his head. “What an idiot. He’s going to get sick himself.”

“He hasn't visited recently, so I haven’t been able to check through him. The Archangel’s forbade me going to Earth unless it was something serious. I think he’s worried I'm spending too much time with humans.”

Jisung shakes his head. “I think he’s worried that he’s going to have to Seungmin you.”

“I'm not going to get expelled.”

Jisung shrugs, and ruin falls from his wings like ash. “You better watch out. You checked up on her too much last time she got sick, so he's probably trying to make sure you won't abandon your human. He's banished people for less. Case in point: Seungmin.”

“She's important to Jeongin, so she's important to me."

Jisung sighs. “Sometimes I think you’re more protective of her than I am.”

He says it as a joke, but Hyunjin knows it’s the truth. He cares deeply about you, maybe even more than his own human, but he will never say that last part aloud.

Hyunjin used to believe that becoming a guardian angel was the best thing that ever happened to him. All of his afterlife, he had wanted to be promoted, to be granted the pure white wings and the crown of sun rays. Regular angels had wings and halos but never white wings and golden halos; silver and silver was the “regular” combination.

Watching over a human was considered the highest honor an angel could receive, and everyone clamored to gain the attention of the Archangel. Hyunjin was not immune. He worked as a messenger for years, delivering even the most inane notes between the higher ups. He endured the attacks, verbal and sometimes physical, and kept his mouth shut. Eventually, the Archangel recognized his efforts, and before dawn broke on Earth, Hyunjin was named the new guardian angel of a baby boy, Yang Jeongin.

“You will protect him. You will guide him,” the Archangel said. “He is your responsibility now and yours alone. Do you understand?”

From Heaven, Hyunjin could only look at the wet, wrinkled face of his human. His human. “I understand.”

Then the Archangel flew off, and Hyunjin flew to Earth for the first time to meet the baby. No one noticed him as he phased through the hospital walls nor as his giant wings folded back. Only Jeongin would be able to see his guardian angel.

“Hello there, little one,” he whispered to the swaddled baby. The boy was fast asleep, and Hyunjin gently stroked his face. “I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Hyunjin, your official guardian angel. I’ll always be nearby now, and I’ll always make sure you’re safe. Sometimes you won’t be able to see me, but I’ll always be watching over you. I promise.”

Jeongin stirred awake and stared back at Hyunjin. Two sets of eyes blinked at each other, one full of curiosity and one full of tenderness.

“Go back to sleep,” Hyunjin said. He drew his hand over the baby’s face, and Jeongin’s eyes fluttered shut. “Sweet dreams, little one.”

Guardian angels talked about their humans like parents, bragging about how gifted they were and sharing complaints about what unbelievable thing they did the other day. Hyunjin mostly did the latter. Jeongin was an adventurous child, which was just a nice way of saying that he liked to play with danger. Hyunjin often had to fly in to save him or to redirect the threat somewhere else. The other angels joked that Hyunjin stayed on Earth more than Heaven sometimes. He didn’t mind though. Even with his human’s shortcomings, Hyunjin adored him. He watched from above as Jeongin said his first words, attended his first day of kindergarten, and got into his first fight.

“He’s a troublemaker,” Minho observed.

Minho was a guardian angel as well, but he tended to lurk on the outer edges of the realm as the other angels avoided him for a reason Hyunjin hadn’t figured out yet. Hyunjin liked him well enough and treated him like a mentor, sometimes a friend.

“Hey, you’re not one to talk. Your human started a black market of candy at school.”

Minho shrugged. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Jeongin didn’t end up growing up into a troublemaker, to Hyunjin’s relief. The impulsive streak was still there, but he utilized his judgement more now. There were no car crashes or cases of alcohol poisoning, and when Jeongin asked out girls, it was with daisy bouquets and a suggestion to get lunch. Hyunjin slowly stopped making routine trips to Earth and chose to view Jeongin from the comfort of Heaven. It was there that Hyunjin noticed you.

“I think she’s upset with him,” Jisung abruptly says. “She cried after a video call with him, so if your human starts acting strangely, that’s why.”

The news makes Hyunjin stop mid-step, and he turns to his friend. “She cried? What? What did she cry about?”

“I don’t know. I was too busy trying to lower her temperature. Can you believe that she almost hit—”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I just got back! There is no ‘earlier!’ Besides, we aren't allowed to interfere in anything that isn't dangerous. Heartbreak, if this is even what this is, is temporary."

“Humans do drastic things for love.” The movies has seen while watching Jeongin have told him that much.

“Which we will attend to when it happens. You’re a new guardian; you’ll understand them better over time. Not everything is life-threatening, fragile as they are.”

Hyunjin turns away from Jisung and glances down at Earth. The clouds part, and all of the brick buildings of the university rush towards his eyes as he focuses on Jeongin. He’s asleep at his desk, his lamp still burning bright above him. How long has it been since the video call? Or perhaps he’s just tired from the events of his day. But he looks so small and vulnerable in his chair. Jeongin isn’t fragile — the amount of situations he has gotten out of covered in bruises and blood is astronomical — but he is mortal.

“But she loves him,” Hyunjin softly says, “and he loves her.”

“Exactly. Humans fight over small things all the time, and this is one of those times.” Jisung places a hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder to placate him. “Trust me.”

“... I trust you.”

“Good. I need to rest, but we can catch up and see what stupid things they do after.”

The moment Jisung flies off to the rest area, Hyunjin goes against the Archangel’s orders and flies to your apartment. When he peers inside your bedroom window, he spots you sitting in bed in the dark, your phone screen illuminating your face. He phases inside and sits at your desk chair, resting his forearms at the top rail. You can’t see him, but he wishes that you could.

You mindlessly scroll through messages, sniffling every few seconds. Whether it’s from your crying or your illness, he doesn’t know. He can’t hand you a tissue or tell you comforting things or hug you like Jeongin can. When you wrap your blanket tighter around your shoulders, he wraps his wings around himself as well.

Suddenly you throw your phone beside you and let out a heavy sigh. “It can’t get any worse than this,” you say to yourself.

Hyunjin waits for you to say more, but you only stare at the ceiling with blank eyes. He can’t compel you to talk; only Jisung can, but he’s not here. So instead, Hyunjin knocks over the glass of water on your bed when you shift into a more comfortable position.

“Of course it can,” you sigh again and blot as much water as you can with your tissues. You pull another one out of the box with more force than necessary and furiously dab your sheets. “First I get sick, then I miss a homework deadline that I can’t make up because my professor lost his heart thirty years ago along with his hair, then my boyfriend breaks up with me for like no reason, apparently I have an exam tomorrow, and now I’ve spilled water all over my bed, so I can’t even sleep. Thank you, universe. I really needed this.”

He immediately regrets his decision.

“Worst freaking week of my life,” you mumble as you throw away the wet tissues. Hyunjin almost reaches out for your arm when you pass by, but he retracts it just in time.

When you climb back into bed, you draw your blanket up to your chin and begin murmuring numbers. They come out calm and even at first, but they become more tense as time passes. Hyunjin half-listens as he scans the contents of your desk. A laptop, a shopping bag, an open notebook with doodles on the margins, an uncapped black pen, and a pack of gum. He presses his forefinger to the point of the pen, drawing a tiny heart by touch. Then he stamps the heart among all your misshapen stars and imaginary flowers. You might just think it’s an ink smear, but he hopes you look at it and smile.  

You hit three hundred and forty-seven before you begin to sound drowsy. Hyunjin stands at the foot of your bed, watching as you finally drift off in the middle of three hundred and ninety-three. Serenity settles across your features.

“I’m sorry for what I did earlier. Good night and sweet dreams,” he whispers. He pats the corner of your bed before flying off into the night.

He needs to see Jeongin.

It was hard not to notice you when you were on a collision course with Jeongin. You were going too fast, and Hyunjin’s wings couldn’t carry him to Earth in milliseconds. With horror, he watched as you sharply turned the building corner on your skateboard and just barely jumped off in time when you saw Jeongin about to make the same turn.

“You okay?” Jeongin asked as he hurried to stop your runaway board.

“I should be asking you that!” you exclaimed as you followed him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have veered that close to the wall. You’re not hurt or anything, right?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Good. I can’t risk getting sued again.” Unsure of how to respond, Jeongin nudged back your board to you. You neatly stopped it mid-roll with your foot. “Thanks, by the way. See you around.”

“Yeah, see you.”

You kicked off, but before you left the area, you turned around and gave him a wave. Jeongin waved back, albeit more shyly than you. After a moment’s hesitation, he yelled out, “Be careful!”

“I’ll try!”

Jeongin laughed and turned the corner, looking at the brick wall with more wistfulness than most people usually did. Before he entered the building, he peeked around the next corner, as if he expected you to come speeding by again. You didn’t.

After that, he noticed you more often, usually swerving around strangers as you cut through campus. Whenever he had the opportunity to say hello, he did so with a smile, and you returned it with a waggle of your fingers before disappearing into the crowd. Once, you nearly crashed into a railing. You laughed it off and gave him another wave along with a funny face. Hyunjin felt something inside him melt. Jeongin must have too since he headed to his next class with the most lovestruck expression Hyunjin had ever seen on him.

It was then that Jeongin began forming a plan.

Two weeks after the first meeting, Jeongin waited in the quad for you to show up. Just as he hoped, you came walking down the steps fifteen minutes later, skateboard tucked underneath your arm. It was supposed to seem like a coincidence, but Hyunjin had followed Jeongin as he scoured nearby skate spots, asking around about you. Yesterday, he had learned where you liked to practice tricks. He got up from his bench, hands hidden behind his back, and approached you with the same moves and confidence he had rehearsed in the bathroom mirror.

“Hey! How have you been?” he called up from the very bottom.

Meanwhile, Hyunjin groaned. Jisung, who Hyunjin had tracked down two days prior to this, also did so.

“You said he was a charmer,” Jisung complained. “Look at him. He can’t even charm dogs with a treat.”

“For your sake, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Just wait though. It’s going to get better.”

Jisung huffed. “It better. She deserves the best.”

Fortunately, you took it all in stride and waved hello at Jeongin. When you were finally beside him, you answered, “I’ve been good, thanks. You’re not here to sue me, right?”

“No! I was actually wondering if you could teach me how to skateboard. If you have time, that is.”

“Really? But I almost killed you that one time. I mean, I’d be happy to, but it’s kind of weird after what happened.”

“I’d rather skateboard than walk, and you seem pretty good at it.”

You shifted your weight to one foot, and Hyunjin chuckled when he saw Jeongin’s eyes wander to your jutted-out hip. Jisung made a noise of disapproval.

“Okay, what is this really about?”

“Skateboarding,” Jeongin said. Then he took a step closer and held out a bundle of daisies towards you. “And lunch, if you want.”

You broke out into a grin. “I am a little hungry right now. L/N Y/N, skateboarding extraordinaire and ramen enthusiast, at your service.”

“Yang Jeongin, also a ramen enthusiast. Nice to officially meet you.”

Jeongin is still sleeping at his desk when Hyunjin arrives. He shifts and exhales when the wind from Hyunjin’s wings create a small breeze but does not wake.

“How could you break up with her?” Hyunjin says. “She’s amazing and wonderful, and you decide that you don't want to be with her? Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in your head.”

Silence.

“If I were human, I would have never done that, but…”

Jeongin shifts again, burying himself deeper into the crumpled hoodie he’s using as a pillow. The table squeaks, and a mechanical pencil rolls off the desk. Hyunjin quietly places the pencil back to its initial place and shuts off the lamp.

“Take care of yourself, and make good choices, okay? I can’t do that for you.”

Instead of flying back to Heaven, he perches on the roof of the building across from Jeongin’s. Jeongin finally wakes up and notices that his light is off. He glances at it confusedly for a few seconds, wondering if he misremembered leaving it on. In the end, he decides it’s not worth the effort and falls into his bed. He didn’t even spare you a thought, a crime in Hyunjin’s eyes.

Then he realizes he may have a bigger problem on his hands.

Jisung.

Jisung is going to be very upset when he finds out about this.

Over the weekend, you brought Jeongin to the quad to learn the basics.

“Put both feet on the board now,” you said as you walked alongside a skateboarding Jeongin. He was borrowing yours to practice, so he treated it with more reverence than a well-used board would need. Even though he was pushing with his back foot, he was going at a snail’s pace.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to lose my balance and fall.”

Perhaps it wasn’t reverence after all.

You shook your head. “No, you won’t. You’re not going that fast anyway. You can just step off if you really feel like you are. Give it a shot.”

To his credit, Jeongin lifted his foot a few centimeters off the ground before planting it back. “I’m going to lose control.”

While you did your best to persuade Jeongin to give it another try, Jisung gave Hyunjin a dissatisfied look. “I remember you telling me he was a daredevil. What is happening?”

He didn’t exactly know either. “He’s in front of his crush; give him a break.”

“These two better not end up dating. She deserves so much better than him.”

Hyunjin gave him a dirty look, Jisung gave him a “What? It’s true” type of a shrug.

You step in front of the board. “How about this?” you said. “You stand on the board with both feet, and I’ll pull you along so you can get used to the feeling and be less of a scaredy cat.”

“Okay.”

You took both of his hands and slowly guided him backwards. At the same time, you instructed him to put more weight on one side to change directions. Jeongin was surprisingly stable, and Hyunjin watched proudly as his human suggested that you increase your speed a little.

“See? It’s not bad?” you said. “Keeping balance isn’t that hard, right?”

“Yeah. Also,” he grinned, his meek demeanor completely gone, “we’re holding hands now.”

Your eyes widened as you glanced down at your joined hands, and you let out a delighted gasp. “You sneaky little—” Much to Jeongin’s alarm, you let go and smirked. “If you go past the bench without constantly pushing, I’ll let you hold my hand when you walk me home.”

“Kind of presumptuous of you to assume that I would offer to walk you home,” he teased, resting one foot on the floor. “Or is that what you want me to do?”

“You asked me to lunch with flowers. You were going to.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Then he kicked off, skating past the bench with ease. Still going, he looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Do you want to grab doughnuts before you head home?”

“Watch the lamp!” you yelled as you ran towards him. “Jeongin, stop looking at me and turn around!”

The collision with the lamppost was unavoidable, so Hyunjin simply watched as Jeongin took a flying leap off your board and took a tumble on the concrete. While you fumbled for band aids — Jeongin’s knee was scraped and bloody — Jeongin patted his pockets to check that his phone had not fallen out.

“So doughnuts?” he sheepishly asked.

“Sure. I’ll buy.” You finally found one hidden in the bottom of your backpack along with an alcohol wipe. “Guess you get to hold my hand after all.”

“How are you so prepared?” he asked, nodding to the contents you had unceremoniously dumped out whilst rummaging. “You have tweezers and gauze?”

“My mom made me carry a first-aid kit with me when she found out that I skate to class. It comes in handy.” You ripped open the package. “This might hurt.”

“You can kiss it to feel better.”

You laughed and pressed the alcohol wipe to his knee. “You’re such a flirt, I love it. Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, hurts a lot.”

You opted to kiss the band aid instead, causing Jeongin to pout and Jisung to sigh in relief. When you stuck it onto his skin, Jeongin made a big production of being relieved from pain, which made you laugh and shove him.

“No! She’s in love with him,” Jisung groaned. His wings drooped, and Hyunjin swore his halo actually dimmed when you kept your hands in Jeongin’s after you pulled him up. “Well, Hyunjin, looks like you and I are going to be best friends.”

Hyunjin personally saw no issue with that. Like Jeongin, he had been charmed by your antics and your easygoing nature. Protecting his human’s friends, family, or lovers wasn’t part of Hyunjin’s duty, but he felt compelled to watch over you too.

Because if he were human, he would have fallen in love with you too.

In the midst of his lamenting, Jisung flies down and sits beside him on the roof. His wings are still slightly gray, and Hyunjin strangely begins to feel self-conscious of his pure white ones.

“Didn’t the Archangel forbid you from doing frivolous things?” Jisung says in lieu of a greeting. “I saw you at her apartment earlier.”

“I just wanted to check up on her. Not that I thought you lied,” he hastily adds. “I wanted to see for myself. She’s a little… distraught.”

“She got into a fight with her boyfriend. It’s normal.” When Hyunjin doesn’t reply or even make a sound, he grows concerned. “Is it something else? She’s getting sued, isn’t she? I knew it was going to happen someday. When I find that smug richie-rich, I’m going to—”

“Jeongin broke up with her.”

“What.”

Hyunjin repeats his sentence, trying to block the view of Jeongin’s bedroom with his body. Jisung looks like he’s ready to rain judgement onto him, and while Hyunjin is rather good at his job, he’s not sure if he can hold back an enraged guardian angel. Jisung takes several deep breaths before regaining the little composure he can muster.

“I knew I hated him for a reason. I knew he didn’t deserve her,” he spits out, though the venom in his voice wavers. “Why would he even break up with her? She loved him so much.”

Hyunjin shrugs. “That’s what I want to find out.”

“When you find out, let me know. I’m going to see her now.”

Hyunjin stays on the roof until sunrise. Jeongin sleeps without any trouble, and when he wakes up, he looks fresh-faced, no guilt hanging over his head. Hyunjin feels something inside him cracking apart.

You truly don’t deserve this.

“Do you think they’re going to crash and burn?” Jisung asked as he studied you and Jeongin walking through the park, practically glued to each other’s sides. “I think they’re moving too fast. It’s only been a month.”

Hyunjin really didn’t care about that. As long as you and Jeongin were happy, he was happy. “A month is a pretty long time for them. Mortal lives are short.”

“Exactly. They should be more selective about their life choices.”

Hyunjin only rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to you. You were pointing at the tiny carousel in the middle and tugging at Jeongin’s sleeve. You dragged him over and pushed a coin into the slot for the ride. The lights lit up and a carnival theme played while you struggled to wedge yourself between the saddle of an elephant and the roof of the carousel. Jeongin sat on the edge, beside the tiger, and chuckled at your flailing limbs.

Hyunjin suppressed his own laugh. You were something special. Just last week, the two of you had made it official and started dating. You had done it in the sweetest possible way.

You had taken him to a local skateboarding shop to help him pick out his first board. Once he had chosen one — the ‘one’ being a light blue deck patterned with multicolored doughnuts — the staff at the shop sent him to the back to try it out. Meanwhile, you made the age-old excuse of needing to use the restroom when you were actually getting the flowers you had hidden in the back.

Hyunjin had turned into a pile of fluff when you gave Jeongin the daisy bouquet and asked if he wanted to officially be your boyfriend. You were so earnest. Jeongin playfully pretended to think it over, a feat Hyunjin knew he wouldn’t have been able to do if he were in his position. There were no fireworks or confetti when Jeongin finally said yes, but the staff did clap and cheer. Jisung looked on with contempt. Hyunjin looked on with envy.

“You know,” Jisung abruptly said, snapping Hyunjin back to the present, “when her last boyfriend broke up with her, she had ice cream for dinner for a week.”

“Oh.”

“You see why I’m being wary of him now?”

Hyunjin did, but Jeongin was different. His previous relationships always ended well, and on one occasion, he remained friends with his ex. He sighed and decided that a change of topic was necessary so he wouldn’t have to potentially endure a tirade. “Did you hear about Minho’s human? The bank he worked at got robbed, and he got held at gunpoint.”

That caught the overprotective Jisung’s ear. “What? Is he okay?”

During Hyunjin’s recountment of Minho’s recountment, the carousel ride ended. You squeezed out of your spot, hitting your head on the roof, and Jeongin pulled you in for a forehead kiss. The world grew brighter when you smiled, he realized.

Hyunjin shadows Jeongin around all day, hoping to learn the reason for the breakup. Unfortunately, Jeongin doesn’t say anything. He does show some regret though, as he scrolls through past messages and old pictures. When he heads to classes, he opts to walk instead of skateboarding like usual and avoids the quad whenever possible.

In the evening, while Jeongin is chewing on his salad like a cow to cud, Hyunjin pays you a visit. He finds in the freezer section of the grocery store with three pints of ice cream in your basket. From the looks of it, you’re about to add another three to your haul. Peanut butter pretzel sounds equal parts delicious and confusing.

Hyunjin studies your expression, frowning at the same time you do. Your eyes are ringed with red, your jaw tight, and your eyebrows seem permanently furrowed. When he follows you back home, he half expects you to start crying on the way, but you hold fast and manage to open a pint of the salted caramel flavor before the tears finally come. There’s no wailing, just sniffling and the sound of you furiously wiping at your face with the sleeve of your hoodie. In the midst of it all, you find the strength to reorganize the freezer to make space for the other pints. Something about that makes Hyunjin’s heart drop.

By the time your roommate discovers you in the kitchen, the entire refrigerator has been reorganized and the ice cream finished. You sit in a dark room, your finger hovering above the ‘SEND’ button of a message to Jeongin. Hyunjin can see it if he flies above you: “Can you please just tell me why? You keep saying you did something wrong, but I don’t even know what it is. Please let me decide if it’s worth breaking up over.”

“Rough day?” she gently asks as she flips on the switch.

“Yeah.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I just wanna process it right now,” you hollowly say. You grab your skateboard — the same black, paint-splattered one you had last year — and unlock the front door. “I’m going out for a ride, but I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Stay safe.”

After you leave, Jisung phases through the kitchen walls and hisses at Hyunjin, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with Jeongin?”

He nearly forgot about him. Eating dinner isn’t a dangerous task anyway though. Besides, if Jeongin does get physically harmed somehow, Hyunjin will feel an echo of the pain. Hyunjin glances at the door, and Jisung shakes his head.

“I’ll take care of her. Go back to Jeongin, and make sure he’s okay. You can’t keep leaving him all the time.”

“Fine, I’ll go.”

“Good.”

Hyunjin reluctantly goes back to Jeongin, who is still eating his salad. His resolve from last night is clearly gone as evidenced by his melancholy expression as he scrolls through even more photos. The one of you in mid-air makes him clutch his phone.

“Let me get one of you when you’re really high up,” Jeongin suggested. He was comfortable gliding around on a skateboard now, but nowhere comfortable enough to try any tricks. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop you from trying to get him to learn. The “pop shove it” was your favorite, solely for the amount of height you could get.

“Okay.”

As you did over and over again for your enthusiastic boyfriend who was unfortunately not that great of a photographer, Hyunjin observed from a rooftop behind Jeongin. Sometimes you looked like you were flying. He could imagine wings protruding from your back, and if the sun hit you just right, there appeared to be a halo as well.

“I got one!” Jeongin exclaimed as he held up his device to you. “Look.”

Hyunjin couldn’t see for himself, but your mouth dropped into an ‘o’ once you took a first glance. A flustered smile made its way onto your face, and everything about you turned soft.

“This looks amazing,” you said. You sidled up to him and rested your cheek against his shoulder, turning your head towards him. “I love you.”

The words hung in the air for a few seconds as both Hyunjin and Jeongin tried to process them. This was the first time you had ever said them, and it came seemingly out of nowhere. Hyunjin recovered first.

“Say ‘I love you’ back, you moron,” Hyunjin whispered, like Jeongin would be able to hear him from this distance. “‘I love you too.’”

“I wanted to say it first,” Jeongin finally said. “Ugh, I had it all planned out too. We were supposed to get doughnuts after this, and I was going to buy you one of those heart-shaped ones.”

You kissed him on the cheek and intertwined your fingers with his. “We can still do that.”

At the doughnut shop, he said the words second, and you kissed him again, leaving a crystal of glaze on the corner of his mouth. Hyunjin licked his lips as if you had left it on him instead.

“Did you find out?” Jisung asks when Hyunjin leaves Jeongin to check up on you. You’re skating around the city, making sharp swerves and weaving in-between lampposts. Jisung is trailing behind you in the sky, but he slows when he sees Hyunjin approaching.

“No, but—”

“Then go back to him. Hyunjin,” Jisung sighs, “I know you care about her, but she’s not your human. Jeongin’s your responsibility.”

“I know but—”

“Go back. And I’m telling you this not as your friend but as your senior. You’re a guardian angel, and you need to take your responsibilities seriously. I’ll get the Archangel involved if I have to. Do you want to get Seungminned?”

The threat of the Archangel strangely doesn’t scare him anymore, however. In fact, the Archangel being involved may solve many of his current issues.

“I’ll find you again when I find out,” Hyunjin slowly says.

Jisung nods in approval before racing after you again. Hyunjin heads to Heaven, not to keep an eye over his human but to become human.

Ten months into Jeongin’s relationship with you, Hyunjin asked Minho, “Is it possible to give up your divinity?”

Minho gave Hyunjin a curious look. “Is being a guardian angel that taxing for you? You haven’t even experienced a full lifespan yet. I know, twenty year-olds are annoying, but it’s not nearly as bad as forty year-olds and their mid-life crisis.”

“I’m just curious. Or, as a last resort,” he added, hoping that Minho would stop being suspicious if he joked about it. “My human’s been making some dumb choices.”

A lie, but Minho fell for it.

“I told you he was going to be a troublemaker!” he cackled. He sympathetically patted Hyunjin’s back. “If I’m being honest, I thought about it a few times. I always get assigned to the troublemakers. Probably because the higher-ups hate me for not tolerating their BS. They’re always playing favorites. Anyway, the easiest way is to get expelled by the Archangel. It’s happened a few times before.”

“Can’t you just ask him?”

Minho smirked. “You don’t think other angels have tried that? He only expels the ones who don’t want to be. It’s supposed to be a punishment.”

“What’s the hard way then?”

“Same thing minus the Archangel getting involved: your wings getting cut off,” he matter-of-factly answered. “The halo will break once your wings are detached. It’s only been done once, by the way.”

Hyunjin absentmindedly rubbed the area where the bones of his wings met with his shoulder blades. All he needed were two clean cuts across his practically impenetrable back.

“How do you do that?”

“With the Archangel’s sword. Another angel has to cut it though; you can’t do it yourself.”

The Archangel would likely banish him to Hell for even asking about his weapon. If Hyunjin ever did manage to steal the sword away, Jisung would never agree to it. He couldn’t just ask any angel to help him.

“How do you know about all this?” Hyunjin asked.

Minho hesitated, something he rarely did. He quickly recovered, hiding his sudden apprehension with his usual devil-may-care nonchalance. “I can’t give away all of my secrets.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Friends. The word hung in the air like the sun, and Hyunjin knew that Minho would tell him because underneath all of his bluster was loneliness. Because no one liked Minho, or if they did, they still avoided him anyway.

“Yeah, we are,” Minho answered, smiling for a second before a strange expression crossed over his face, pride mixed with a touch of sadness. “Do you really think the Archangel would have expelled one of his favorite guardian angels that easily?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Seungmin. He asked me to cut his wings for him.”  

“I need you to cut my wings,” are Hyunjin’s first words to Minho after not speaking to him for days.

To his credit, Minho is only speechless for a few seconds. The dove in his hand pecks at him for more headpats before he recovers. “Well, do you have the sword?”

“No, but I think I can get it. When I do though, would you do it? You’re the only one I trust.”

Minho sighs and tosses the bird out of Heaven, grimacing a bit when he hears it squawk. When he faces Hyunjin, he smiles the same smile he did when he talked about Seungmin. “It’s always me, huh? I’ll do you one better. I’ll steal the sword for you. The Archangel’s been pissing me off anyway.”

For once, Hyunjin’s thoughts are not on you but his friend. He imagined that Minho would be willing, but perhaps he’s too willing. “Are you trying to get expelled as well? We can go together.”

“No, I like being immortal. I hate all of the BS I get put through sometimes, but the Archangel can’t kick me out. He swore an oath to me a long time ago before he got promoted, and it’s pretty much unbreakable. Besides, even Heaven needs a scapegoat.”

That explains why virtually no angels interact with Minho, Hyunjin being the exception. He has never heard of the Archangel being oathsworn, though it seems likely that the Archangel wants to keep that a secret.

“How are you going to get it?” Hyunjin asks. “How did Seungmin even get it? The Archangel always has it with him.”

“Seungmin was one of his favorites,” Minho reminds him. “He had easy access to him, and the Archangel trusted him enough to let him borrow it for ‘a study.’ Don’t worry about me though. Just wait for me on Earth. Somewhere where no one goes. I’ll find you, slice off your wings, and the Archangel won’t even know what happened to you.”

“That’s not possible. He always keeps it on him.”

Minho shrugs, a gleam in his eyes. “I’ve done it before. Why do you think I’m the scapegoat?”

Seungmin. For Minho and now Hyunjin, being Seungminned didn’t mean being expelled for being frivolous anymore; it meant leaving of your own accord.

“What happened to him?” Hyunjin asked. “Why didn’t the Archangel grant his divinity back? Someone should have spotted him on Earth.”

Minho’s wry grin was back. “You think the Archangel wanted everyone to find out the golden boy of Heaven no longer wanted to be an angel? Plenty of angels already saw him roaming Earth. It was easier to let everyone think that Seungmin was banished. So when they saw him on Earth, he was just a fallen angel, nothing important.” He nudged Hyunjin’s arm, and the solemn atmosphere vanished. “A troublemaking human isn’t all that bad. Like I said, the twenties are annoying, but they’re manageable. Is he one of those partying types?”

“He goes out sometimes,” Hyunjin carefully replied. Jeongin liked hanging out with his friends and you — mostly you, now that Hyunjin thought about it — but he wasn’t getting blackout drunk every night. At least, Hyunjin hoped he wasn’t. He usually watched over you if you were ever in the vicinity. “Speaking of which, I should check up on him.”

Minho said his goodbyes, and Hyunjin flew back to Earth once he saw that you weren’t with Jeongin. You were studying at your desk, rolling a pen between your fingers, reading through a document on your laptop. The desk light casted a warm glow on your face. You frowned, and your lower lip swelled outwards.

He wished he were human.

Just as Minho said, Hyunjin waits for him to arrive in a secluded part of the university campus. The building rooftop is devoid of anyone, and the area surrounding it is empty as well. The evening turns into night, then night into the early morning when the sky begins lightening. Still, Minho has not come.

He distantly wonders how Jeongin is faring and his promise to Jisung. When he’s human, he’ll ask Jeongin directly, maybe in disguise of a survey: “Why did you break up with your last partner?” Even to him, it sounds stupid. However, that’s not the real reason why he’s giving up his divinity, so it hardly matters to him. Jisung is resourceful; he’ll find out eventually.

Finally, when the sun peeks over the horizon, Minho descends from Heaven, a familiar silver sword in his hand. He lands beside Hyunjin, a triumphant smile on his face. But his usual humor has been replaced with solemnity.

“You’re sure about this?” he asks as he rests the blade on the top of Hyunjin’s wings.

He has never felt so sure of anything in his life. “Yes.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

“Then make it quick.”

Searing pain shoots through his body as the sword pierces through the thin skin and into the bone. The process is not as nearly as seamless as Hyunjin hoped it would be, and Minho breathes heavily as he pushes the blade down. Bones snap, feathers drift to the floor, and blood trickles down his back. The pain only grows greater near the end, but Hyunjin grits his teeth and keeps quiet. Dawn breaks when his wings finally fall to the floor, no longer white but splattered with red. Soon they fade into dust, and the remnants scatter into the wind. His golden halo shatters into sunlight. The world dulls as the last of his powers disappear, but everything feels much better than when he was an angel.

“Thank you,” he whispers to Minho, who he cannot even look at anymore. His eyes would be burned.

“You’re fallen, not quite mortal and not quite divine. You won’t be affected by all of an angel’s power.”

When Hyunjin cautiously glances at him, Minho waves the bloody sword at him. “See?”

“Yeah.” He wanted humanity, but this is good enough for him. He just needs you to be able to see him, hear him, touch him.

“I need to go back before Heaven becomes Hell, but find Seungmin if you can. He can help you figure things out. Last I heard, he’s living somewhere in the mountains.”

“Thank you,” he repeats. “Minho, I can’t even put it into words about how much this means to me. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Minho pats his shoulder before stripping off his clean shirt. “Clean yourself before you leave. No one wants to witness a walking crime scene this early in the morning.”

When he flies back to Heaven, the last thing Hyunjin sees are his wings, still pure white.

“Hey,” you said as you laced your fingers with Jeongin’s. He had just finished class, and you had waited for him outside the building. Hyunjin had sat on the other end of the bench, savoring the proximity. That was the closest he would ever get to you. “Are you busy tonight? The skate shop just announced — literally an hour ago, those jerks — that they were doing a midnight drop, and I kind of want a new deck.”

“Ugh, I’ve been meaning to buy new trucks, but I have to meet up with my group tonight. Send me pictures though.”

Disappointment only momentarily flooded through Hyunjin. If it was anything like the last two meetups, it would be at the library, and the library was a safe place. Jeongin would be fine there. Hyunjin would be free to shadow you as you went to the skate shop.

“I can get it for you,” you offered.

He shook his head. “It’s fine. Maybe I’ll just wait for a sale.”

“Don’t be surprised if I do get you new trucks,” you warned. You let go of his hand and held his arm. “I still owe you for last month’s dinner.”

Jeongin shook his head again, a smile making its way onto his face. “You don’t owe me anything but a kiss.”

“Flirt,” you laughed as you pressed your lips to his cheek. “Never change, Yang Jeongin.”

That night at the skate shop, Hyunjin hovered above you as you stood in line, chatting with others. There were no unscrupulous characters around, but he stayed with you, only going back to Jeongin when Jisung insisted. However, by then, Hyunjin had already seen you eyeing the shiny teal trucks through the window. Hyunjin knew nothing about skateboards even after all those months, but you seemed pleased by them.

“You’re only getting trucks for sure?” your brand new acquaintance asked. “This is, like, the biggest drop they’ve ever done.”

You shrugged. “I’m kind of on the fence about the decks I saw on the email. I don’t know. Maybe wheels too?”

Meanwhile, Jisung hissed, “Hyunjin, go before something happens. What if a fight breaks out?”

Hyunjin sincerely doubted that one would happen at the library. He lingered around, taking his time unfolding his wings and stretching them.

“Your boyfriend’s lucky,” your acquaintance sighed.

“Nah, I’m the lucky one.”

Daisies, that’s what he needs right now. Choosing the rooftop of a building was not a smart decision, but the access door is thankfully unlocked, and Hyunjin races down all of the emergency stairs. However, with no form of currency on him, Hyunjin heads to the quad, hoping that he can pull up some dandelions for you. You need to be supported, and bright yellow flowers are just the thing.

What he doesn’t expect though, is to find you doing pop shove its at your usual spot. It’s so early in the day; did you even go back to your apartment to sleep?

“Good morning,” he calls as he walks closer. He waves at you, and you can see him! You tentatively wave back and give him a halfhearted smile. “How are you today? You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, and I’m fine,” you politely reply as you take a step back away from him. “What about you?”

Hyunjin curses in his head and takes another step towards you. “I’m good. Really good, actually. I was wondering if you could teach me how to skateboard. I’m new here, and skateboarding seems like an efficient way to get around.”

You flinch at his words, and he desperately wants to take them back. How did Jeongin do it? Why do his statements come out so stiff? “You seem pretty good at it.”

“Are you not cold?” you blurt out. Hyunjin curses again as he realizes that he’s shirtless. His old one was stained, and Minho’s was as well as the result of his cleanup. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “You know, I have to get going, but it was nice meeting you.”

“Hyunjin. My name’s Hyunjin.”

“Nice meeting you, Hyunjin.”

You grab your board and immediately head off to the direction of your apartment. Hyunjin is tempted to follow, but he stays where he is. A bad first impression isn’t the end of the world. The only thing holding him back is his lack of a shirt.

He wanders through the quad, scanning the grass for some flowers. Most of them are the white, fluffy dandelions, but he needs the bright yellow version. However, he takes the white ones anyway in case he can’t find any. The wind scatters the seeds, and he—  

“Hyunjin, I told you not to come back.”

Jisung.

Hyunjin turns around, dropping his bouquet onto the ground. To his horror, not only is Jisung present but also the Archangel. His sword is strapped to his side like usual, not a blood splatter tainting it. Minho did an excellent job of cleaning up the crime scene.

“Jisung, Archangel,” Hyunjin nervously greets. The Archangel frightens him now. “How can I help you?”

“Jisung, why did you bring me here?” the Archangel asks. “I have other things to attend to.”

“He’s abandoned his human too many times, and I don’t think he’s fit to be a guardian angel anymore.”

The Archangel grasps the hilt of his sword and studies Hyunjin, up and down, back and forth. He circles him, and Hyunjin can almost feel his mortality-divinity shining through his body. Jisung hasn’t noticed yet, but there is no doubt the Archangel hasn’t.

“Normally,” the Archangel begins, “the punishment for not fulfilling your duties as a guardian angel is being expelled from Heaven. But you have already fallen.”

“What?” comes Jisung’s shocked voice.

“It was a mistake,” Hyunjin tries. Minho’s words ring in his ear: He only expels the ones who don’t want to be. “I thought I wanted humanity, but I’ve realized that being a guardian angel is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Please. Grant me my divinity back. I will never abandon my human again. I will swear an oath if I have to.”

The Archangel smiles with no teeth, and a chill runs down Hyunjin’s spine. “I’m in a forgiving mood today, so I will do just as you ask. Your divinity will be granted back, but you will no longer be a guardian angel. I’m stripping you of those powers and those duties. You will be replaced immediately. It was my mistake for tasking you with such a large responsibility when you weren’t ready yet.”

With just a snap of the Archangel’s fingers, Hyunjin’s senses sharpen, and the world comes hurtling at him. Nothing is dull anymore, but everything feels so dark and wrong. You will never be able to see him, hear him, or talk to him again. And he will never be able to either. Power surges inside of him, and new wings burst through his shoulder blades, fanning out once they reappear. A silver halo hangs over his head. There is no physical pain into becoming immortal again, yet he wishes there was something. Everything he and Minho did was erased with ease.

Hyunjin swallows the lump in his throat. “Thank you,” he chokes out.

“You’re very welcome. Come along now. Only guardian angels are allowed to be on Earth.”

Hyunjin follows the Archangel back to Heaven while Jisung goes after you. The Archangel loudly deliberates on who he should be replaced with, and Hyunjin knows that his request was not granted with kindness. The Archangel informs that he will be a messenger again. Hyunjin barely hears him as he takes one last look at Earth. Jeongin is there. Jisung is there. You are there.

Hyunjin avoids Minho’s eyes as he flies inside the realm behind the Archangel and hides among the rest of the regular angels until he is called to send a message. The higher-ups recognize him, make snide remarks about his demotion, and make pitiful faces at him. He barely registers them. There is a hollowness in him, and no matter how many memories he recalls, it isn’t enough to fill the void.

A few weeks later, Jisung approaches him, but even he stays a healthy distance away. “Hyunjin.” The disdain is clear.

“Jisung.”

“You knew about the reason all along, didn’t you? You were there when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

Realization dawns upon Jisung, and he shakes his head in disgust. “I should have known. You weren’t with him that night because you left him like you always did! You could have done something. Make him fall off his chair or something. Make the girl lose her balance. Instead, both of our humans suffered because you weren’t there.”

“What happened?”

“A girl from his group project randomly kissed him, and he thought he had been leading her on and cheating on his own girlfriend, so he broke up with her because he thought that would be the right thing to do instead of just telling her what actually happened. They’re back together now because he finally got the nerve to give her closure. It took nearly a month. They were miserable for a month. All because of you.”

It stings. “They’re okay now, right?”

“They’re fine, no thanks to you.” Just when Hyunjin thinks he’s going to leave, he takes a step forward, lips curled into sneer. “You know, angels and humans aren’t allowed to be with each other. It’s been forbidden for millenia.”

“I know,” he whispers. “But I loved her, and I had to try.”

“She would have never chosen you anyway.”

He never had a chance, did he?

~ ad.gray

Yes, you did! I remembered it and wondered if you were going to come back! Hope you enjoyed this! <3

[handy-dandy-monster-candy]

Inyez

Rating: NSFW Length: 5331 Pairing: Male Bat Creature x Male Reader (both cis)

xxx

Winter comes early up in the mountains, but I'm used to that. I like to sit by my living room windows and look down into the valley where I work, enjoying the way the city lights give the snow a warm glow. I figure myself lucky; I come from a happy family, I have a good career in a field I love, and I've managed to make a home out of the old observatory that sits like a squat little guardian at the top of a hill twenty minutes from the city.

My job gives me incredibly flexible hours, so I work whenever I'm awake and sleep whenever I want to. I've ended up with a mostly vespertine sleep schedule, which means I get to watch the sunset while I break for lunch. I'm a workaholic, though, so this "break" usually means that I step away from active work and focus on replying to emails from clients or looking up resources and reference images for my latest project as the sun goes down, and this time is no different.

I don't even notice the dark settling around me until I realise that I've been squinting at my laptop for the past half hour, and by then, the only source of light is its screen. I have outdoor lights, sure, and there's a street lamp or two on the way up the hill, but they amount to nothing unless they're on or nearby. I sigh and close my laptop to give my eyes a break, waiting for my vision to adjust properly to the lack of light around me.

I'm just contemplating making myself another cup of coffee when the window beside me explodes, and I have no qualms with admitting that despite being over six feet tall, I scream like a frightened squirrel. Instinct takes over and I find myself taking shelter behind my chair, waiting for the glass to settle before I risk peering around it. Adrenaline has made my vision sharper faster, but there's only so much I can make out in the darkness. I know I heard something heavy hit the floor after the crash, but nothing moves in the shadows, so I take the risk and scuttle over to the nearest switch plate to flick the lights on.

There's blood on what's left of the window and the scattered glass, and wide smears of it left in skid marks across the floorboards. Whatever has bled on my flooring is crumpled halfway behind my couch between me and my kitchen, cutting me off from any makeshift weapons I could use to defend myself. I creep around the other end of the couch with all the exaggerated stealth of a cartoon cat burglar, getting my first real look at the thing. It's dark and huge—about the size of a very large dog, at least—and even as my fingers grope for something to defend myself with, I don't take my eyes off of it for a second.

I approach the wounded creature with a skillet in one hand and a broom in the other, using the broom handle to prod gingerly at the thing that seems to be bleeding out on my living room floor. The first few pokes don't garner any reactions from the beast, and so I grow bolder, sending a silent prayer up to whatever gods might be listening that the thing doesn't have rabies or worse. I feel myself grimace as I lift one large, leathery wing to see more of the creature, only to snatch the broom handle back and away.

Whatever it was was awake, and it had been staring right at me with large, luminous eyes.

It takes me several seconds to work up the courage to repeat the action, and only then do I notice that those eyes are dazed and unfocused, shock settling in as blood dribbles down along its flat face. The creature murmurs when I prod it again—nothing I understand, but definitely something meant to be words—and that's when I realise that the thing on my floor is not a what, but a who. I swear and pace in my kitchen while keeping the thing well within sight at all times, but eventually my conscience wins out; I can't just let them bleed to death in front of me. Even knowing this, I know I don’t have the skills for what I need to do, so I pull an earpiece on and dial my cousin on my cell phone, grimacing when I glance at the time on my oven.

The phone rings a few times before there’s a shuffling on the other end, and then her groggy voice mumbles, “Hello?”

“Hey, Maraia,” I say, taking my first aid kit from beneath my sink and slipping a chef’s knife into my belt just in case. “I need your help.”

“Cuz? Do you know what time it is? I just got to bed an hour ago!”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s an emergency.”

I hear more shuffling, and then Maraia’s voice is much more alert. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Some sort of bat crashed through my window,” I say, hurrying over with my first aid kit and kneeling in the blood beside the lump on my floor. “It’s hurt real bad. Blood everywhere. It won’t make it to the vet if I don’t do something now.”

“You’re treating a wild animal?!”

“Maraia. It’s dying!”

“Fuck,” my cousin mutters, slipping back into her role as an ER nurse. “You owe me. Okay, tell me what you see.”

“Thank you,” I breathe, and try to turn off my anxiety as I listen to her expertise. First and foremost, I rush to apply pressure to a particularly ugly wound on the creature’s pelvis and thigh, cleaning and bandaging it up as best as I can once I’ve stopped the majority of the bleeding. This is about when I bump into the creature's, er, fiddly bits, barely hidden by a thick patch of fur. I work around them as I wrap him up in long bandages.

Per Maraia’s guidance, I check the creature's eyes and find wide, fixed pupils that indicate significant head trauma; it doesn't seem like he can see me, or even sense that I'm here. Still, I speak softly to him as I work, carefully picking glass and small twigs from open wounds and doing my best to clean and close them with a combination of butterfly closures and careful stitches. He whimpers and whines very softly when the discomfort is too great, but for the most part he hardly makes any sound at all, which Maraia and I agree is more worrying than if the creature were screeching and struggling with all his might.

Finally, after what feels like hours, I sit back on my legs with a sigh, certain that I’ve gotten to every wound that there is to be found. “I don’t think I can move it,” I say to Maraia, wiping my shaking hands clean with antibacterial wipes. “Not without popping something open.”

“You can’t keep it there with you,” she replies, using the same stern, reasonable tone that she uses on her children and patients. “Bats have rabies. What if it bites you?”

“I don’t think it can. I don’t even know if it will survive the night. For all I know, it’s haemorrhaging somewhere and this will all be for nothing.”

“All the more reason for you to take it to a vet! They can treat it there, maybe put it down if they have to. Whatever they decide will be better than what you can do at home.”

“I know,” I murmur, packing away my supplies. “Thanks, Raia. I’ll take care of it.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Maraia sighs, and I can hear her exhaustion creeping back into her voice when she says, “Alright. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“I will. Sorry for waking you.”

“Oh, bull,” Maraia scoffs. “You were scared and came to me. That’s a good thing. Love you, kiddo.”

I can’t help but smile, despite my weariness. “Love you, too,” I say, and hang up once we’ve said our goodbyes. It would be cruel to leave this poor creature on my living room floor, so I haul my inflatable mattress out of storage and set it up in my bedroom, grateful for the large amount of floor space in the converted observatory. I check on my guest several times during the time it takes the bed to inflate, and then I carry him into my bedroom, careful not to jostle him too much when I place him on the air mattress.

I watch the shallow rise and fall of the creature’s chest for a moment before I look up into his elongated face, taking in his small, black, dog-like nose and the sharp teeth that I can see peeking out from behind parted lips. Two large, velvety ears poke up from the thick fur on his head, motionless in his unconsciousness.

From what I can tell, whatever this creature is appears to be around four feet tall, with long curled toes on each slender, delicate foot and sharp claws on the tips of his hairless fingers. He's barrel-chested from the musculature needed to support both arms and wings, with a slightly narrower waist and wide hips that lead to lithe, muscular legs. The majority of his body is covered in a short, dense layer of dark russet fur over deep brown skin, perhaps a shade or two darker than mine.

Whatever he is, I've read enough books and watched enough movies to know with certainty that I can't take him anywhere—not without possibly endangering him further. The last thing I want is this creature ending up dissected in a lab somewhere, or worse. I scrub my hands over my face and get up to go clean my living room, taking one last glance at the creature in my bedroom before closing the door behind me as quietly as I can.

The first night is harrowing. Batty—as I've taken to calling my guest in my head—has his first of three seizures shortly after I finish taping garbage bags over the hole in my window. I drop the duct tape and run to him when he lets out an unearthly wail, all of the air in his lungs being forced out by seizing muscles. There's nothing I can do but make sure that he doesn't hurt himself further, sitting vigil beside him until his convulsions die down and praying that he'll still draw breath when they're over.

He's unconscious for the entirety of the next day, so thoroughly insensate that I risk calling out a repairman to replace the broken window so that the cold stops seeping in. Other than supervising the appointment, I hardly dare to leave Batty's side, taking my laptop into my bedroom to do as much work there as I possibly can. I clean him up when he messes himself in his sleep, though I worry about him dying of dehydration. To prevent this, I pulse ice cubes in my blender and carefully feed him ice chips at first, being mindful of his body temperature by keeping him thoroughly bundled in blankets.

By the third day, Batty makes as if to swallow, and I drip water into his mouth in an effort to keep him hydrated. I don't know what he eats, so I climb into my car and make the drive into the city, buying a variety of potted baby foods with what I'm sure is a wild look in my eyes that keeps the cashier from attempting any small talk with me. I make it back to the observatory in record time, and though Batty doesn't stir when I waft different foods under his nose, I still manage to coax him into swallowing mixtures of meat and vegetables.

He runs a temperature that night, and I spend most of the early morning hours before dawn wiping him down with a cool cloth and stroking my fingers along his brow when he starts to shiver and mumble in his sleep. His fever finally breaks the following afternoon, and in the fading light of sunset, his eyes crack open. He's still exhausted and disoriented, though, so he only blinks sluggishly at me when I ask him gentle questions, eventually fading back into unconsciousness again. I figure it's progress.

Batty recovers slowly. For a long time, I only hear his voice when he mumbles in his sleep or when he whimpers as I tend to his wounds. Eventually, he begins to communicate with me using little humming noises, or he summons me from other parts of the house with plaintive chirps that break my heart. I carry him into the bathroom and find that he's fascinated by the toilet after startling at the sound of the first flush, though that's nothing compared to his awe when I decide to show off the shower. He's visibly disappointed when I deny his peeping requests to be carried under its spray, but he seems to understand when I explain that we should wait for his stitches to come out.

He gets a little stronger every day. After a couple of weeks, he's able to sit up for short periods of time as long as he's propped up with pillows. He holds his water bottle by himself a few days after that. Eating still takes more coordination than he's capable of, at least when it comes to utensils, but he's happy enough to nibble at the fruits I cut up for him. I take him out to the living room with me when he’s well enough, and there I play nature documentaries for him and keep him warm as the snow falls outside. He stares at the television in reverent silence when the voice of David Attenborough warbles through my speakers, and he spends the majority of the day curled around a couch cushion in a nest of blankets.

I learn that he’s as omnivorous as I’d hoped he’d be, and so I go to the store and get him a few different meats. I cook them with little to no seasoning at first, feeding him like one would a dog, but it isn’t long before he begins showing interest in my own meals, too. This urges me to start buying healthier food for myself; I figure that if I wouldn’t feed it to Batty for fear of his health, I probably shouldn’t be eating it, either. That doesn’t stop me from indulging in the odd treat, and his face when he tastes my favourite soft drink is priceless before he spits it out in shock, smacking his lips and looking at the bottle as though it’s bitten him.

“What?” I chuckle, taking the bottle from his hands and offering him a cloth. “Don’t like the fizz?”

“‘Fizz’?” Batty echoes, and I nearly drop the bottle before I can get the cap on.

“You can talk?” I ask, and I feel my eyes widen when he nods. “All this time?”

Batty hesitantly shakes his head, claws gently scratching at the cloth on his lap. “Don’t know,” he slowly replies, brows furrowing over his big, dark eyes. “I remember some. It’s hard.”

“It’s okay,” I assure him, reaching out to stroke between his ears in a way I’ve learned soothes him. “You took a bad blow to the head. I’m sorry that I couldn’t take you to someone who could treat you better. I didn’t want someone bad getting their hands on you.”

Batty nods his understanding, sighing deeply and nosing up into my palm to guide my hand along his muzzle. “Wanted to say all this time,” he murmurs, his soft, fluting voice growing weaker. “Thank you.”

I smile; my heart warms. “I’m just glad that you’re okay. I’ll take care of you for as long as it takes. Do you have a name?”

He frowns again, briefly closing his eyes. “Inyez.”

“Inyez,” I murmur, testing the name in my mouth and finding it fitting. I introduce myself in turn.

Inyez’s face relaxes into a small, sleepy smile. He echoes my name, and doesn’t resist when I tuck him back under the covers.

“Rest,” I whisper, brushing my fingertips between Inyez’s eyes. They flutter closed and don’t open again as he lets exhaustion pull him under, and I turn down the lights to let him fall asleep to the sound of whale song.

Once I know that Inyez can speak with me, I go a little bonkers with the need to provide enrichment for my guest. It’s been a while since I’ve had the company with which to play games, so I’m at once overwhelmed and exhilarated when I stand in front of the tabletop game section of the city mall’s toy store. I grab classics like Jenga and Parcheesi, but I also pick up games like Tokaido, Wingspan, and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Inyez fawns over the beautiful illustrations and pretty trinkets needed to play each of the games, and he’s held rapt by the game mechanics and advancements.

I can’t help but mirror his delighted smiles, watching him delicately place tokens on the boards with his slender fingers. The furrow in his brow as he puts together jigsaw puzzles is incredibly endearing, and he’s quick to summon me from where I’m working to show me his accomplishments. “Come!” he cries. “Hurry, come see!” My name on his tongue is the sweetest sound to my ears, and I look forward to hearing it in that cheerful tone throughout the day.

I buy an extension for the desk in my office and give Inyez his own space while I work, though more often than not, he ends up watching my monitors at my elbow, marveling at my work and asking countless questions. At his urging, I show him my digital portfolio, where I have most of my character designs, logos, and even a few structural blueprints and landscapes.

“Where is this?” he asks, hardly daring to tap my monitor screen with a claw.

“Nowhere,” I say, enlarging the image so that he can drink in the details. “Nowhere real, anyway. It’s a fantasy world.”

Inyez frowns. “A fantasy world? But it looks so real.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Well, I specialise in realism. There’s a lot of research that goes into it.”

Inyez doesn’t look entirely mollified by this response, but he subsides for the most part, only murmuring, “You even got the horns right.”

I turn my head to look down at him where he’s resting his cheek against my arm. “The dragon’s?”

“Yes.”

I can’t hold back my surprise. “There are dragons? They’re real?”

Inyez looks up at me, and I briefly get lost in his eyes. “Of course they are. They’re rare, though. Rarer than most everything else.”

“Rarer than you?”

Inyez bares his tiny sharp teeth at me in a cheeky little grin. “No. I’m one of a kind.”

I laugh, helplessly charmed. “That you are. Maybe I’ll draw you sometime.”

Inyez’s mouth drops open, eyes growing wider until I can just about see the whites. “Would you really? Me?”

“Why not?” I pull up a new canvas on my illustration programme, sketching up a quick little scene from the memory of looking down into his upturned face. He gasps softly at my side and shifts to cling to my shirt, murmuring in his strange language and making soft little cooing noises as I add colour and detail.

“Do I really look like that?” he breathes, looking from my face to the screen and back.

“Mhm.” I zoom in on the eyes, adding depth and highlights before moving to adjust the shape and fullness of the lips. Inyez goes very quiet for a few minutes as he watches the portrait come to life, only stirring to place his hand at the crook of my elbow to call my attention back to him. “What is it?”

“Do you really think I am so lovely?” asks Inyez, voice very soft and gaze shy.

I’m grateful for my dark skin as I feel warmth creep up into my face. “I do. You’re very beautiful.”

Inyez scoffs, but I can tell that he’s flustered. “You’ve only met one of us. Who are you to say that?”

“Sometimes one is enough,” I murmur, gently stroking Inyez’s small chin with a crooked finger. He makes an odd little twittering noise and hides behind his wings, and I feel my heart flutter wildly in my chest. I'm falling for this creature, I realise, and I can't bring myself to care; as far as I'm concerned, Inyez is the best thing to happen to me in a long time.

“Where do you go when you get into that terrible thing?” Inyez murmurs some nights later when we’re cuddled on the couch, his head on a pillow in my lap and my fingers gently stroking his head.

“In the car? To the city, mostly. To get food and toilet paper and other supplies.”

Inyez shifts to look up at me, confused. “You get food in that noisy place?”

I nod, brushing my hand along his cheek. “Everything we’ve eaten here, I’ve bought there.”

“But it doesn’t smell.”

“Smell?”

“The city. It smells, but the food doesn’t.”

I feel myself frown in thought. “Probably because a lot of it is washed and kept in clean places, or in airtight packaging.”

“I smell,” Inyez mumbles unhappily, tucking himself up in his wings. “When may I wash?”

I hum thoughtfully, rubbing one of his velvety ears between my fingers in a way that he likes. “Probably tonight, if we’re careful. If you really feel that bad.”

“I do.” Big, dark eyes look up from my lap, beseeching. “I don’t want to smell anymore. I want to be clean.”

“Alright,” I say, shifting to gather him up in my arms and carry him to the bathroom. “As long as we don’t scrub too hard or get your wounds too wet. I’ll still need to clean and redress them after we’re done.”

“You’ll wash me?” asks Inyez, a note of excitement in his voice. “Like lovers do! Could we be lovers?”

I can’t help but laugh, startled at the sudden change in conversation; I distract myself by fiddling with the shower controls. “We could be,” I reasonably reply, “if we both felt the same about one another.”

“Then we can,” says Inyez as he slips under the spray, cooing softly at the water’s warmth. “You think I’m lovely, and I think you’re lovely, too. It’s really that simple.”

“Is it?” I ask, dubious, even as I pull my clothing off and over my head to join him.

“Why does it have to be complicated? Is it more for humans? Is it not enough to feel safe and happy and goodness when I look at you? It’s like my heart has bitten a big, juicy apricot—it’s full of sweetness and the juice is overflowing!”

“A heart-apricot?” I chuckle, shaking my head at the silliness of the comparison. “Well, I’ll try to find you an apricot next time I’m in town.”

“Would you?” asks Inyez, burrowing against my chest and sighing. “I’d like that. I like you. Can that be enough?”

I run my hands carefully between his wings, earning myself a sleepy little burble. “I think it can.” I curb my enthusiastic reaction to this new turn of events and focus on gently cleaning Inyez’s fur to his satisfaction, and then I blow dry him until he’s warm and redress his wounds. By the time I carry him to bed—my bed, our bed—he’s limp as a noodle and snoring softly in his exhaustion, and I take great pleasure in tucking him in so that he’s safe and sound.

The next morning, I am kissed awake. That night, we kiss until we drift to sleep. Kisses and affection make up the bulk of my ‘duties’ as Inyez’s lover, and I take to the task of keeping him satisfied with relish. For his part, Inyez is content to groom me seemingly at random, running his small, clawed fingers delicately through my hair and humming to himself as he does so. I get a little less work done, but I don’t mind it if it’s to see Inyez so pleased with himself when he’s decided I’m primped to perfection.

It’s another couple of days before I give Inyez the all-clear to fly after his injuries have healed for a couple of months. We have to wait until nightfall until he takes to the air, but then he’s a dark blur against a darkening sky until I cannot see him at all. It makes me breathless when I realise that he’s lost to the night—what if, I think, he decides right then that he prefers the night and its freedoms to me? What if he misses his family, his friends, his former life. When he lands in front of me, panting and exhilarated and beautiful, I wrap him into my arms and crush him to my chest, burying my face against the side of his neck.

“What’s happened?” he asks, petting fretfully at my face and hair. “What’s wrong? Did you think I’d not come back?”

“Yes,” I say, and the word chokes me, making me realise that I’m crying.

“Oh, sweet one,” Inyez coos, wrapping me in his wings as best as he can. “I would never. Why would I? I am fed and loved and pampered, and you are a very good snuggler. You don’t even have fur, but you are very warm! Why would I leave, mm? Tell me.”

“I don’t know.” I laugh damply. “Missing your family. Your friends.”

“I’ll visit my family when my body is stronger,” Inyez tells me, tutting softly and nosing at my ear. “They deserve to know where I am, and they can come and visit us when the spring comes. They’ll be jealous of my roost and my mate.”

“Am I that?” I ask, sniffling and pulling away to look down into Inyez’s eyes. Inyez turns his face away, however, and I recognise that he is shy.

“You could be,” he murmurs, “but it’s not official yet. To do that, we have to—well, have sex. Hopefully more than once.”

“Do you want to?” I ask him, stroking between his wings so that they relax and rustle softly.

“Oh, I thought you’d never ask,” Inyez says all in a gust, looking up at me plaintively. “I’ve been wanting to have sex with you for days. Weeks, maybe.”

I can’t help but laugh again. “You could have asked.”

“I could have.” Inyez pouts. “You would have said no, because of my wounds. You treat me like I’m fragile.”

“You are fragile, in comparison. But you’re right, I would have denied you. Now I won’t. So, ask.”

Big eyes blink up at me from that small, furry face, hopeful to their core. “Really? You’ll be my mate?”

I can feel myself grinning. “I’ll be your mate.”

Inyez wriggles against me, clutching at my clothing with a sudden fervour. “Mine?”

“Yours,” I assure him, drawing him against me and carrying him back up into the observatory. The next few minutes are a blur as we leave my clothing strewn across the apartment in a trail that leads to the bed, and I manage to find a bottle of lube I haven’t touched in months but mercifully has enough for at least a round or two.

Preparation happens before all else. Normally, this is the part where I would begin to lose interest because my previous partners have treated it like a means to an end, but Inyez is so sensitive and receptive that every little touch I give him sends him into a fluttering little tizzy on the bed. His prick is slick and red when it hardens out of its sheath, tapered at the end and thicker at the base. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I play with it with a careful touch that seems to frustrate and overwhelm the small creature beneath me in equal measure.

I drink Inyez in as he squeaks and squirms with my fingers inside him, watching his claws tear tiny little holes in the sheets as he grips them in his hands and trembles like a taut bowstring. When I finally push into him, he makes a noise like an exultation, and I fight to keep myself from coming right there and then when he wraps his legs around my hips and digs his feet into my ass to drive me in deeper. He wants more of me and I give until there’s nothing left to give, letting him adjust for a moment before I take up a rhythm that rocks the bed against the wall.

I need him, too, and I tell him so as I fuck him down into the mattress, listening to him mew and moan and say my name in a way more beautiful than any I’ve heard yet. He clings to the headboard when I roll him over onto his stomach, breathless and gasping raggedly, wings trembling like they’re weathering a storm.

“There!” he cries when I angle my hips a certain way, one of his hands diving between himself and the sheets to pump away at his hard, leaking cock. “Oh, please, there! There!”

“You want it?” I ask, and I hardly recognise my own voice, so low and guttural it is.

“Yes, gods, I want it,” Inyez mewns, almost sobbing with his need. “I’m close. I’m gonna—I’m—Please—“

“Tell me you’ll stay.”

“I’ll stay!” Inyez squeaks, not a hint of hesitation in his desperate tones. “I’ll stay, I’ll stay, I’ll never leave this roost! I swear!”

“Yes,” I growl, pushing my chest down against his back and reaching a crescendo that makes the headboard hammer against the wall. I come so hard and so suddenly that it feels like I get pulled inside out from the toes on up, and my vision whites out to the sound of Inyez wailing beneath me. When I come around, we’re tangled together in the sheets and I have him on top of me, both of us panting heavily and both of my hands buried into the soft, downy fur at the small of Inyez’s back.

“Christ,” says Inyez, and I choke on a laugh, turning my head to cough.

“That’s not an expletive.”

Inyez grunts. “You use it like one.”

I laugh. “That’s fair.”

Inyez takes a long moment to gather his thoughts, stroking the skin of my torso with careful fingers. “Would you be willing to meet my family?”

I blink up at the ceiling. “Of course. How many of them are there?”

“I have six brothers and eight sisters. I’m fifth down in the birthing line.”

My eyes bulge. “How old is the youngest?”

“Tiisa? She’s six months old. The oldest is in her forties.” I can feel Inyez smother a smile against my chest. “Mother says she’s done for now. We don’t quite believe her.”

I laugh, shaking my head up at the ceiling. “I would offer them shelter for the winter, but I don’t think they’d all fit in here.”

“Oh, Mother would hate it here,” Inyez chuckles. “It would be much too quiet for her liking. She likes life with the roost. I’ve always preferred quiet. This roost is perfect for us.”

Us. The word makes my heart swell, and I bury a smile against the top of Inyez’s head. “We’ll figure something out for their visit.”

“Mm,” hums Inyez, sighing softly before he sits up and smiles impishly down at me in the darkness.

“What?”

“Again.”

“Again?” I laugh, wrapping my hands around Inyez’s hips as they begin to rock and wriggle on my lap. “I’ve created a monster.”

“Your monster,” Inyez smugly coos, kissing my chest right over my heart.

[neovisioned]

♡ꜜ 0 miles away﹫jeno lee

pairing : jeno x reader (f)

genre : smut with some plot, fluff if you squint, established relationship.

warnings : mainly smut, dom!jeno gets tied, uses of a sex toy, edging, oral (f receiving), choking, manhandling. 

word count : +4k

synopsis : where you finally see your boyfriend after months away due to quarantine and things get heated. you quickly find Jeno got a little toy to take care of himself and forgot to inform you beforehand. 

a/n : here's to 1 000 followers ! thank you so so much to my og followers for sticking around even when i was inactive and thank you to every new follower and welcome ♡

There’s a slight touch on your naked arm, one you know very well by now, even in your highly concentrated state. Lukewarm fingertip drawing random shapes on your skin, you hum as your boyfriend takes his eyes away from the screen, though you suspect he never really payed that much attention.

“Are you really watching ?”, the black-haired asks, nose dipping into your hair and oh, you know him too well. You know this very pattern too well, the one where you’re doing something, focused and yet, Jeno thinks you can not feel his hard on against your backside. This very behavior where he tried his best to stay calm and yet, the slight alteration in his breathing doesn’t go unnoticed, the way he shifts while cuddling you doesn’t either.

You have to say, you’re quite surprised it didn’t happen earlier. See, after months away from each other, only having your phones to communicate, you finally, finally reunited with your boyfriend.

You remember joking about being shy around him now that you spend weeks without his presence beside you but you almost think he got shy after so long, it’s funny.

A simple date was set up in his apartment, a movie and some things to eat and Jeno didn’t make a move until now, a third into the second movie.

“Yeah. Are you not ?”, you ask, voice slightly teasing.

“I don't even know what the fuck this movie is about.”, and there it is, the deep in his voice. It sends shivers down your spine, almost inaudible sigh escaping your lips when his ghost over the skin of your nape.

Your boyfriend peppers kisses on your skin and oh, how you missed it. You missed his mouth exploring every parcel of your body, you missed his firm grip, the same he uses to turn your body around.

“I was watching.”, you whine and yet, your body follows his hand, chest to chest, movie long forgotten behind you.

Jeno can not be fooled, small smile tugs at his lips, right hand cupping your jaw.

“You were ?”, he asks but barely lets you answer before his lips crash against yours, thumb lovingly stroking your cheek.

It's not like your boyfriend did not kiss you the moment you stepped into his apartment, but you still melt against his mouth like you want to get back all the months away from him.

When the first kiss he gave you when you entered his place was soft, this one is a lot more eager. Slow, sensual, bruising, no matter how long went by without seeing each other, Jeno still knows your body like the back of his hand.

Fingers lay behind your head, tilting it like he pleases, fingernails lightly scratching your skin.

A grown gets muffled against your mouth when you lightly bite down on his bottom lip, slightly tugging at it.

“I missed you.”, your boyfriend breathes, and you can only breathlessly return the sentence when his strong arms sneak around your waist to push you under him.

The golden necklace you gave him for your anniversary slips out of the black shirt he's wearing, dangling between your bodies. Such a simple thing but it has the power to grow butterflies in your stomach, flapping their wings when it moves left and right. Fingers wrap around the small charm and you use the light grip to tug him closer, closer, closer.

Lips crash for a second time. Sloppy, wet, hungry. Jeno cages you between his arms, using his forearms on each side of your head for leverage while you cling onto him, legs wrapping around his hips.

“Missed you so fucking much—. Ah, fuck.”, you're about to tell him your fingers weren't enough for the long time period, right after painting an innocent kiss on his cheek but your boyfriend decides this very moment is the best to roll his hips against your core, hard and slow, lips diving into your neck.

The moan that tumbles from your lips seems to do it for Jeno, poor boy is already hard as a rock against his jeans and you wonder how long he's been like that. Desperate, cold ring-clapped hands grip at your waist under your shirt and you get the hint, legs tightening around him, arms wrapping behind his neck.

“I can't believe we managed to go so long without seeing each other.”, the tallest giggles against your throat, hands shamelessly gripping at the flesh of your ass as he lifts you up, away from the sofa.

“Yeah ? We made it work, though.”

“Phone sex is great once in a while.”, in another situation, you'd laugh at how desperate he's being. Can you really make fun of him when you're in the exact same situation ? Fingers slide between his dark locks, you notice how long they've grew these past mouths but, you don't complain at all.

Jeno is quick to walk to his bedroom. His back pushed the door open before he kicks it close with the back of his heel, as if anyone could walk in. But after all, Jeno is a possessive boyfriend, you’re his and he’s yours.

It happened countless times, the walls and pictures hanging in your boyfriend’s room a blur as he easily moves you around, mind and body hyper-focusing on the black haired. It’s something Jeno seems to love, the way you still gasp when he throws you on his bed, back hitting the soft mattress.

“Fuck, missed having you like this.”, he has always been a passionate man, but it seems tonight, he is even more. The tallest crawls on his bed right after taking his shirt off and, you have to say, the hunger in his eyes makes a wave of heat crash against your body. You really missed it, the anticipation, not knowing his next move, slowly going putty in his hands, melting under his touch.

Pearly teeth bite down on your lower lip, you unconsciously crawl back until your hands touch his soft pillows. Nowhere to run and yet, you smile back at Jeno’s carnal smile when he gets closer and closer until he follows your head slowly resting on his pillow. Or rather, the one he bought for the nights you stay at his place.

You’re about to rest your head on the soft-.

“What’s-.”, when you think the back of your head is going to hit the fluffy pillow, the top hits something hard, a shape you can’t make on the spot but the object hits the bed’s headboard and it doesn’t sound shallow.

Oh, to be Jeno in this very moment. Confusion takes over his pretty features and vanish away in a millisecond, it’s funny how the mechanism in his brain seems to work full speed when he understands.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. He thinks at this very moment, he’s an idiot.

“Y/N-”, he starts but, it’s too late. Your curious hand taps away on his mattress, quickly lifting his pillow up to see what exactly knocked the back of your head.

It’s not like nothing ever came between you and Jeno, you expect to see his laptop, even if the shape doesn’t correspond, his PlayStation’s controller maybe, even. But this, this you did not expect.

The same confusion twist your features, it’s funny how easily you take other people’s habits when you stay with them for so long. But, your confusion turns into shock in a few seconds. Finger wrap around the black, circular object. You even think it’s a flashlight at first, silly you. Lo and behold, you’re wrong by a letter.

Slightly wider to a side, skin like color on a rubber material and instead of dropping the thing you quickly understand is a fleshlight and not, a flashlight, you tighten your grip on it.

Your grip tightens as Jeno’s hand flies to grab the object, body slightly dropping against yours. He desperately tried to put his hand on the toy he now see as shameful, even if he used it without a second thought for some time now.

“Y/N, I-.”, he tries to grab it a second time, but your boyfriend has to lean back when you sit up on his bed. Are you angry ? Disappointed ? Disgusted even, maybe ?

After dating for a year and a half, Jeno can read your eyes, but not right now.

“What it this ?”, you ask him, even if you know. There’s a need to hear him say it. See, toys were never a no in your relationship with the black haired but, you thought it was a silent agreement to inform each other maybe. Jeno knows you have some, most he uses on you, but the thought of your boyfriend having to use one when you’re not around lightens something in the deepest of your core.

Jeno’s lips part for a second, a single syllable coming out.

“A- Ahm…A fleshlight ?”, he says, tone unsure. Pearly teeth bite down on his bottom lip, bruising until iron coats his tongue.

“You never told me you had one.”, you say, curious eyes detailing the object and fuck, maybe if your mind wouldn’t picture the men on top of you using the very toy you’re holding, you wouldn’t be so turned on.

“I-, I just got it a month into quarantine. Let’s just-.”, forget about it, put it aside, there’s so much Jeno could’ve said at this very moment but it seems you’re a lot faster than he is.

See, Jeno losing his words is something you rarely see. Your boyfriend’s a confident men, he knew what to say when he asked you out, he never hesitated to whisper the dirtiest things in your ear. Seeing him almost shy, breaking eye contact every now and then, almost submissive makes something else grow in your eyes.

“Does it feel better than me ?”, you ask, voice sultry. It drops, it’s quieter and visibly, it takes Jeno back. You didn’t seem upset and…he knows this long in your eyes, the one you have when you tease him in public, the one you have when he just discovered the new lingerie you bought.

It’s comical, how his eyes grow wide for a second, right before letting out a sigh as he understands.

“No, no she doe- It doesn’t mean anything !”, your boyfriend starts, voice slightly panicked but, your hand mimicking his previous move and cups his cheek.

“Oh, shit.”, the touch turn teasing in second when you drop your hand to his crotch, the fabric of his jeans tense around his hard on.

“Yeah ? Sure ?”, you continue, setting the object to the side. If Jeno lets his guard down for a moment, you sure will take advantage of it. Plus, the idea of using a toy on your boyfriend is way too appealing to let go.

“Baby, yes. So much better, I swear.”, finally, the black haired seems to find his words again. Your hands find his belt, leather fabric and you tug at until it is out of his belt loops, “Lets find out, yeah ?”

Jeno decides he loves this side of you when you crash your lips against his, it’s heated, rushed, his hand grip your hips before you stop him.

“Give me your hands.”, you breathe out against his lips. He obliges before even understanding the meaning.

“Oh…Oh, tying your man up, hm ?”, the slight pride in his chest makes you smile up at him when you use his own belt to tie his hands together, leather fabric tightening around his wrists.

“Hm hm, lay back for him.”

Four words he gets hypnotized by, laying back on his bed when you use your leg against his hip.

“Shit, you’re so fucking hot.”, your boyfriend moans out the moment you sit on his lap to work on the buttons of his jeans. Quickly, you get rid of the piece of clothing until it stops mid-way around his thighs. Grey boxers you know very well, the dark, wet spot on the fabric adds to the outline of his hard cock.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”, you hum, a hand teasingly caressing his member before sliding your fingers under the thin fabric.

“I didn’t know how to. Bab- shit.”, Jeno’s sensitive, so fucking sensitive. Your thumb runs over his head – you don’t even need to see it to know how red it is – and your boyfriend moans. A broken moan ringing in your ears, you free his shaft from the last piece of clothing.

“Maybe just, hey babe, I bought something today !”, you let out sarcastically, right hand grabbing onto the object in the center of it all. The black haired sighed, or maybe he groans but he doesn’t answer, you don’t let him either.

Curious eyes detail the fleshlight a second time, a small smile creeping on your lips.

“Come on, let me see how use it.”

Jeno thinks he might come right then and there. His lips part, heavy eyes traveling from yours to the said toy. The very toy you bring to his wet, angry tip.

Your boyfriend felt this too many times during the quarantine and yet, it feels different when you do it.

“Y/N, oh, fuck.”, it's hypnotising, how sensitive he is. You twist your wrist just the right way so his head enters the toy and, his hips raise from his bed.

“Feels good ?”, you hum and, you don't let him answer. In a swift motion, you bring the fleshlight to his base and the moan has rips from his mouth sounds oh so beautiful.

The black haired's hands tighten around the leather fabric of his belt and it is at this very moment that he understands how you feel when he ties you up.

“Not as good as you.”, he rasps out, fucking up into his toy before you even need to say it. You move it, slowly, up and down regardless.

Your boyfriend looks breath-taking at this very moment, chest red, irregularly raising up and down. A thin sheet of sweat under his hairline, knuckles white. You ask him to tell you more, you want to hear him, hear his voice crack under your touch.

A hand pressed on his hip, enough for him to understand not to move but he does it anyways, your hand isn't that strong.

“It's not as tight.”, a snap of his hips.

“Not as wet.”, another. His voice cracks, he struggles around his restraints.

“Not as hot.”, it's your turn to start moving the toy faster, find the right angle.

The sigh is herotic, he gets lost in pleasure, his hips lose rhythm. You probably will have to excuse yourself to his neighbors, his moans get louder, louder, louder. He doesn't even try to hide his sounds, and you think you never heard so many moans coming from your boyfriend.

“God, I'm gonna come.”, he warns and, when you abruptly stop, you think you might cum at the long groan he lets out.

Your panties are ruined, you're sure of it, any mouvement makes the the fabric stick to your body and you decide there's no way you're staying any longer like this.

“Fuck, baby, why did you ?”, poor boy struggles around his ties again, and thankfully for you, it isn't moving a bit for now. The look he gives you when you set the toy aside almost makes you laugh. His cock rests hard and angry against his stomach, you don't doubt your poor boyfriend may now more than ever understand the struggle he puts you through whenever he edges you.

You don't answer, you'd rather show him. You quickly get rid of your jeans and you're thankful that they aren't as tight as your boyfriend, letting your shirt fall somewhere alongside.

“Fuck, you're so fucking wet. Can see it from here.”

Just like you thought, you soaked your panties. A hand dips into the piece of clothing, index and pointer gathering your wetness.

“Open up.”

Ah, if your boyfriend was like this everyday. Such a good boy, he opens his mouth on cue, lips wrapping around your digits. He hums, so gratefully like someone finally giving him his meal. His tongue swirls around your fingers, getting every last drop of your wetness.

“Sit on my face.”, he growls, teeth playfully biting down on your fingers.

The proposition takes a moan out of you, and you don't hesitate. God, you sure love your boyfriend's fingers, you also fucking love his tongue.

Your panties are thrown beside his bed, and it's not long before you plant your knees on each side of his head.

“Untie me.”, your boyfriend might be good at sweet talking, he doesn't get through your head this time.

“Nu-uh.”, big puppy eyes look up at you when you shake your head left to right, lowering yourself.

Your hear him mumble something about getting back at you before his tongue laps at your core, eagerly gathering any wetness pooling on his tongue. He's sloppy, noisy, eating you out line a starved men.

He makes up for the lack of fingers by moving his face, left to right. You have to support yourself on his headboard, forehead against the cold wood.

Your moans flow freely, there's no need to hide them, you don't even think about doing so when his lips wrap around your bud of nerves and he sucks.

He does again, again and again, groans sending vibrations up your spine until you have to stop him, shaky hand planting itself in his locks when you feel your stomach tightening.

“Wanna come around you.”

“Fuck, please.”, and he whines, a whine you'll probably keep in head for a while. Lips, wet and red shine when you crawl backgrounds, seating on his lap again.

It is torture at this point, for the both of you, when you roll your hips against his, bare core against his cock.

A whispered “please”, tumbles from his lips and you oblige, how can you say no when he looks like the most the most sinful angel, pretty face wet by your essence. Or maybe he looks like the most angelic demon, hungry stare in his puppy eyes.

Finally, after months, you sink down on Jeno's member, ever so slowly. The stretch is familiar and yet, you need some time to get used to it again. How good it feels to be complete again, feel every ridge and every vein, every pulse and every snap.

Hands plant itself on his lower torso when you reach the base, head lolling forward as you breath in. It's overwhelming, how the craving finally gets filled.

Your ears buzz, it's hot, too much and not enough at the same time. In the background, you hear Jeno breathing deeply, the slight noise of metal hitting metal.

And, before you understand, cold ring clapped hands grip your hips.

Your eyes snap open, head looking up and as you do so, your boyfriend flips you over, hovering over you in seconds.

Your mouth falls open like a fish out of water, you need seconds to understand what just happened. Somehow, he got out of his ties, and didn't hesitate to reverse roles.

Apparently, the black haired finds it very funny, smirk tugging one side of his lips as his dark locks fall in front of his eyes, anything puppy like long gone for the wolf like stars you know so well.

Abruptly, his right hand wraps around your throat, your head lolling back against a cushion.

“Told you I'd make you pay.”, you can only moan at that, Jeno quickly finds the right position between your legs and his hips start snapping against yours.

Barely any time to adjust to the rhythm he imposes, you twist under his body, a sigh your boyfriend loves.

He love how your body reacts, how it turns and archs but, with a hand, he can stop it all. Just like you did, his right hand falls to your hips to push them down.

“Definitely. So much better.”, the growl again, his lips find your neck again but long gone are the sweet kisses, he bites down on the skin just to mark you, leave purple bruises for everyone to see.

There's a snap, harsh, deep, punishing, one that rips a moan of his name and Jeno breathlessly laughs at that, sadisticly copying the same mouvement.

“Look at you. Weren't you all fierce moments ago ? Where did my girl go ?”, he asks, hand grabs your jaw to force you to look at him, his thumb sneaks between your lips when you try and muffle your moans.

“There she is, my good little girl.”

Somewhere, in the middle of his mumbled words, you breath out how close you are and, thankfully, it seems your boyfriend isn't taking full revenge on you tonight.

The golden necklace drags against your skin and your grab onto it a second time when your walls tighten, knot grows so he can kiss you again.

It's all tongue and teeth, messy and broken, but you moan out against his lips when he hits this one spot just like you love and he makes you see stars under your eyelids.

That's also all the black haired needs, left hand leaves croissant shapes on the skin of your hip when his shutter and come to a stop, long stained groan coming out of his lips. Jeno come inside of you in drawn out pauses until his hips slow down, gently fucking you through your orgasm.

“Holy fuck.”, the black haired concludes once he pulls out, wrapping his sheet around the both of you. It's crazy how his features change so easily, you notice again in your slightly distant state.

An arm wraps around while the other massaged the skin of your hip he knows he bruised, a single kiss is placed on your head.

“If I knew you'd react like this.”, he giggles out and your only response at the moment is to hit his shoulder has you curl up against his chest, meaning to enjoy the silence and dusk falling outside.

But apparently, Jeno doesn't have the same in mind. Blue light of his phone annoyingly flashes on your face and you have to whine. The screen's hidden, but your boyfriend's checking the uber eats order you two placed and completely forgot about, order that has been left in front of his door for so long now the food is probably ice cold.

“What are you doing ?”, you groan out, desperately trying to take his phone but, Jeno quickly stretches his arm away.

“Ordering new toys I can buy and hide for you to find, duh ?”

© NEOVISIONED l NO REPOSTING OR TRANSLATIONS ALLOWED.

[darkhymns-fic]

The Stars Pull Us Together

Having recently transferred to Luin Academy, Colette prepares to start on one of her first assignments - which she needs to use the school's own observatory for.

She didn't expect to literally run into Lloyd on the way.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters/Pairing: Lloyd Irving/Colette Brunel Rating: G Mirror Link: AO3 Notes: For Colloyd Week, Day 4: Stargazing! Because I need to write at least one modern au fic of them.

--

It was still early evening when Colette arrived at the observatory, the sun just teetering at the edge of the horizon, painting the sky in shades of pink. There were only two of the dome structures, a bit smaller than she expected, just off to the side of the campus grounds and overlooking the undulating hills that made up the Asgard terrain. The autumn season made the air brisk, the wind slightly strong as it tugged at her hair. She had to hug her books close, hunch her shoulders just to withstand the sudden cold.

I just need to get inside, she told herself, feet crunching against the gravel. A hand reached out to the door handle of the first observatory, pulled on it and… found it stuck? Oh…

It took Colette a good minute to realize that this was the wrong observatory anyway, once she saw the construction sign to the left of her, half-hidden in the shadows. Slightly embarrassed, but at least relieved that no one was around to see her blunder, she then walked to the second observatory.

She sensed there was something different here, until she noticed the rows of potted plants that lined the steps and small ledge that circled around the building, from small ficuses to even a charming aloe vera. It was a pleasant spot of greenery over the stark whiteness of the observatory’s walls. There were no construction signs here – unless you counted the little greeting by the small steps (with a small cactus plant placed next to it) that said, ‘Welcome to the Luin observatory! Please watch your step!!!’ The letters looked to be handwritten, and Colette couldn’t help but draw her attention to it, marveling a bit at the multiple exclamation marks…

And by looking at it, she didn’t watch her step at all.

Colette flailed, and by doing so, she had let go of her books to fall to the ground. She was about to crash headfirst into the door until it suddenly opened inward, along with a shout of, “Whoa what-!?”

So she wasn’t the only one at the observatory tonight. 

Papers falling around them like lost wings, a groan beneath her chin, and Colette was ready to faint from the shame of not only falling down, but bringing another person down with her… “Ah… I’m so sorry…” she voiced, blinking open her eyes to find herself inside the observatory now. It was mostly bare except for a few laptops on a nearby desk, a coffee maker to the side, and of course, the great telescope that was in the middle, its end pointing upwards to a currently shuttered roof.

Another groan. “S’okay… I kinda walked into that one anyway.”

The voice was familiar to her. Colette looked to see a guy half-seated, one hand planted against the floor. His plaid jacket caught her eyes on the rich redness of the fabric, reminding her suddenly of winter flurries that would freeze her cheeks, and summer storms that always came by so fast, and how he would try to shield her with a broken umbrella… “Wait, Lloyd?”

He blinked, looking so confused for a moment that she wondered if she was mistaken. But the tousle of brown hair on his head, going off in different directions, told her otherwise. “Hold on a sec… Colette! It’s you!”

“Y-yeah!” When he smiled, she was brought back to the boy with the scuffed sneakers, whose home she’d visit that was off the road, overrun by bramble on the way. “I haven’t seen you since we graduated.”

“Right, like that was what, three years ago?” Lloyd mused on that as he tried to shift upwards, and then couldn’t with Colette still half on him. “Um.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” She giggled as she hurriedly got to her feet, trying very hard to not slip and fall again. She inwardly winced at her laugh, that nervous tic that she could never get rid of, even now. “Guess I’m still a klutz.”

“Don’t worry about it… It’s good, because I’m still catching you!” He laughed too, and the sound brought back even more memories out on the grass, with the sky stretching overhead that, for a brief moment, she was lost in it.

Lloyd looked older, now that she got a better look at him when she wasn’t at a tilt anymore. There was only the hint of a stubble at his chin, but his hair had grown out more, even as it made the same waves that she remembered back from childhood. He wore similar clothes from high school still, with his plaid jackets, his frayed jeans, and his work boots. It was so familiar, that she wondered if maybe they had never separated at all.

“…Colette, you alright?” Lloyd asked her, in a tone that felt comforting all at once. “You didn’t really hit your head, did you…?”

“Ah, no no, don’t worry! I’m still just… surprised to see you!” Her hands clasped each other as she looked up at him, noticing the few inches he had gained in height now. “Does this mean you go to Luin Academy too?”

“Oh, well… about that…” Lloyd’s gaze shifted to the side, and she thought she caught something pass in his expression – that is, until a flying piece of paper smacked him right in the face. “Ack!”

“Oh no, I forgot!”

After a hectic dash of Lloyd and Colette trying to grasp the sheets that had escaped her textbooks, some of them flying far back outside to the second observatory, eventually they’d gotten them all. Or, Colette hoped they did. But at the end, she was shivering and felt a little winded from chasing about various articles that her professor had given her all over the grounds.

“It’s seriously cold out. You don’t have a jacket with you?” Lloyd had latched shut the metal door, leaving them both in the observatory that was basically one mid-sized room with a giant telescope in the middle. Colette noted the metal staircase on the side, leading to the curved ceiling and any other mechanisms that she missed. There was even more of an assortment of plants here, some set nearer the ceiling while others were at the table she sat at. There was the soft hum of a laptop next to her, which she carefully placed her books near. Lloyd was already brewing up coffee, the scent quickly filling the air.

“I didn’t think I’d need it.” Colette shivered in her blouse. Though long-sleeved, the material was still light. She gratefully took the warm mug he handed to her, heating up her palms. “It gets even colder out here than back at home.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Lloyd took a seat next to her easily. “I can give you one of mine if you want.”

“I’m sure I still have the last one you gave me!” She laughed, making sure to swallow her sip of coffee before doing so. Not too hot, not too bitter. In fact, it had a sweetness to it – of vanilla creamer – and she was surprised he still remembered.

“That old thing?” Lloyd asked with such curiosity in his eyes that it made her smile even more. “It’s fine if you wanted to throw it away! Does it even still fit?”

“Yup! It fits me like a blanket still!” And it was true, that old spare jacket that Lloyd had once given her as a joke gift, but she had treasured it all the same. It wasn’t uncommon for her to wear it often when they went to school together, getting stares from other students, but neither caring at all.

She clutched the now half-full mug, looking at Lloyd with a bit of awe. He was holding his, its surface a bit more scratched, but fitting him oddly well. “You know, I thought you went to that other college?” he asked, scrunching his forehead as he tried to remember the name. “The…Spirit…something?”

“The Spiritua University,” Colette corrected kindly. “But, I was having trouble adjusting, so I transferred to Luin instead. Sorry, I think I forgot to tell you that in my last email.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Lloyd rushed a hand through his hair, grinning. “I kinda…forgot the password to that email anyway… Genis was supposed to make me another one but he’s been busy over at Palmacosta.”

“I haven’t talked to him much either.” It had been so many months without seeing her old friends – yet here was Lloyd before her, as if walking straight out of her memories.

Maybe she had been staring for too long – a nervous chuckle from Lloyd, the exact same tone that she remembered from years back. “It’s probably weird to just find me here, huh?”

Colette shook her head. “I don’t think that’s weird. I think it’s lucky that we’re able to find each other again.”

Lloyd visibly relaxed his shoulders. “Heh, you know, I think so too.”

She took her time studying him even more, from his more grown-out (but still messy) hair, to the way he sat on the plastic chair. The lights inside of the observatory were dim, just bright enough for reading, but not too much light pollution to make using the telescope difficult. It felt relaxing being in here, with him.

She remembered his words from earlier, then gently asked, “How come you are here though?”

It only took a moment longer before Lloyd explained himself. “Well… I did actually try to get into Luin. Did the application and everything. I think I wrote the longest essay of my life too. But… my grades really held me back anyway, I guess.”

Lloyd had still been undecided when she left for school back then. He would travel instead, he told her, or he’d take over Dirk’s specialty workshop. She’d never asked him if he’d wanted something else entirely. “I’m sorry.”

“You dork, you’re still apologizing for nothing after all this time?”

“I can’t help it!”

Another laugh, feeling as warm as the dim lights around them. “I don’t think I’m a good fit for it anyway.” Lloyd shrugged, but she saw the grin still on his face, boots tapping the floor in barely concealed excitement. “But you know? One of the teachers read my essay and contacted me! He…kinda kept talking about all the spelling mistakes and junk, until he told me about a side job I could do here. I wouldn’t have to be in classes but he said he’d teach me anyway.”

Even Colette was stunned at this random act of kindness from a stranger. “Really?

“Yeah! And, it definitely seemed a little weird that he just offered, but then I thought, why not? So that’s why I’m here!”

Curious on the story, and having her suspicions, she asked. “Who was the teacher that spoke to you?”

“Oh, it was…” Lloyd scrunched his forehead, but then his eyes lit up, remembering. “Kratos Aurion, I think. Maybe you know him? He really liked what I wrote.”

“He’s my astrophysics professor! I’m actually doing an assignment for his class.” Colette was slowly figuring out what he must have written. She gauged it from where they sat at, from the past nights they’d both lay on the grass of his backyard, matching patterns in the black as much as they could go. “You did always like the stars, didn’t you?”

The same smile she would sometimes think about before she slept beamed at her just then. “So do you. That’s why you’re here, right?”

She nodded, feeling more excited than before – or maybe it was just the caffeine in her system taking over. “And now you work at the Luin observatory. That’s great, Lloyd!”

“Yeah! But uh… I didn’t realize that you basically needed to know math to be an actual astronomer… So I just clean up things here and make sure stuff is working alright. It’s good enough!”

Colette giggled, looking around at the small room, neatly tidied up, just how much coffee he drank in here. “You even got some of your plants here too!”

“Hehe, well at least the ones that at least don’t need much sunlight. So no flowers or anything..”

So natural had they fallen into the rhythm of talking aimlessly like they used to, that Colette nearly forgot why she was here. It took the beeping of her phone alarm – to warn her of the small time window that she had – to jog her memory, as well as Lloyd’s.

“Oh shoot, sorry! You came here to use this thing, didn’t you?” Lloyd quickly got to his feet, downing the cup of coffee in one go, surprising Colette that he could do so while it was still fairly hot. “I may not be smart, but I’ve been learning how to operate these machines. It’s not too hard once you get the hang of it.”

“Ah, well, maybe then…” Colette went to grasp the papers, at the numbers she had written out hastily over the gridlines. “Professor Aurion gave me some coordinates to look up, can you use these?”

She suspected Lloyd wasn’t as bad at math as he claimed. Because when it came to something he really liked, he always did try his best. He looked at where she pointed, then gave her a thumbs up. “You got it.”

Luin’s observatory was a first for her, but she had used such things before. She gathered her notebook in her lap, looking over at the telescope that was bigger than most. It swiveled gently as she moved it to the right, checked over the viewing piece. It was well-maintained, which she had expected.

“Ready?” Lloyd called from the side, hands hovering near a panel.

“Ready!” she called back. Her hands turned the dial of the telescope, and then adjusted the contraption just a bit on its tripod so that it hit the exact angle for her. It was a tall piece of equipment, so she had to perch on a metal seat just underneath to view it properly.

Once the lights dimmed even lower, the ceiling of the dome shifted. She could see it rotate to the coordinates she had told Lloyd of. Another small shake, and then the middle shutter of the dome slowly panned open, revealing the now clear night sky, the blanket of stars up above.

Sometimes it was a gamble when the skies would be good for observing, especially during the cold seasons – but the cold season was also the best time to stargaze too. That was one thing that she remembered from back then.

And looking at the stars had always calmed her.

“Can you see through it okay?”

“Um, just a bit…” She tried to get more comfortable in her seat, but the metal of it was prodding her leg, and soon she knew she had edged out too far to nearly stumble off.

By then, she already felt hands on her shoulders, Lloyd quickly climbing up to join her in the observing seat. “Do you need me to be your seatbelt?”

Colette hoped her happiness didn’t show off too obviously, but his hands felt even stronger too now. “Hehe, maybe for a little while if you don’t mind it.”

She leaned back to the telescope and near the eyepiece, hands gently placed on the handles while she felt Lloyd nearby, keeping her steady.

The night was clear, and the coordinates Lloyd had set the observatory had been right. She didn’t have to get used to any haziness, or peer through a cloudy sky. The stars were so numerous, painted against greyscale, or an old film reel. But she found the cluster she had been looking for, and already set to write down her findings.

“Lloyd, you should see this too!”

“You sure? I’ve looked through it plenty of times this week.”

Colette shook her head, bringing Lloyd’s hands from her shoulders to the telescope. “I think you’ll like it.” She winked at him. “Besides, have you seen it from this spot?”

“Ya got me there.” And like an excited kid, which she had already suspected had never left him, he looked through it too, hands handling the telescope with care and precision. Colette craned her head to look past the instrument to the sky above. While specific nebulae and clusters were hidden from her, the stars to the naked eye were still spread out, like a trail through the dark.

“That’s awesome! That’s the Hercule something, right?”

“The Hercules cluster, yeah!”

It was and yet wasn’t like stargazing out in the fields, with just the crickets and the gentle breeze for ambience. A metal room instead of outdoors, (though the plants helped) and the sky partially blocked from the roof, but she still saw the same light in Lloyd’s eyes – always whenever he would look up at the starry skies.

“So, what did Kratos wanted you to do for this?”

She tilted her head. “You know, it was kind of strange but… he just said I should count the stars here.”

Lloyd turned to her in disbelief. “Huh? Wait… all of these stars? There’s too many! And just plain impossible!”

“He said that too! That an average human lifespan isn’t enough to count every single one…not to mention new ones appear while others fade away.” She tapped her pen against the paper, feeling a smile curve her lips. “But he said we should try anyway.”

“Man… this guy’s weird.”

“Hehe. But he’s very kind. Don’t you think?” Colette took Lloyd’s hand, held it like it was second-nature. “I told him about Iselia. I wonder if he figured out that we knew each other.”

“Huh.” Lloyd gripped her hand back, still half perched on the side of the observing seat, not at all mindful to the height. “He could’ve just asked one of us.”

Colette, feeling more confident then she had in years, scooted a bit from her seat and gestured for Lloyd to come near. “There’s room for both of us here! Maybe if we counted together, we could get it all.”

Lloyd barely hesitated, sitting next to her in only a somewhat tight fit. But she didn’t mind the feel of his jeans pressed against her leg, the scent of him comforting in its familiarity. “I bet I could count more! Though, can we even share the telescope between us?”

“Hmm…we can take turns!” And even as they did at first, giggling as both tried to take their stay at the eyepiece for longer, they eventually leaned back to watch the stars through the open shutter, clear from light pollution and misty clouds.

She had always liked the stars too, she thought, with Lloyd leaning against her shoulder, eyes bright as the night continued, way past the closing hours for the observatory. But now, she knew the exact reason why.

[440mxs-wife]

A Game of Cards

Imagine: A late-night card game plus beer and tequila turns interesting. Then there's the aftermath the next day.

One night, you were up late playing cards with Sam and Dean. Played a little poker, some blackjack. If the pile of chips you had in front of you represented any real money, you would've taken the boys for about $400.00. Around midnight, Sam decided he'd had enough and went to bed. "Goodnight, you two," he called.

You began to absently shuffle the cards. You didn't want to go to bed quite yet, but you didn't want to stay up alone. "So, whatcha wanna do?" Dean asked.

"I dunno. I'm not tired, but don't feel like you have to stay up on my account," you answered.

Dean cast a sideways glance your way. "How about a game of....Truth or Dare Go-Fish?" he asked as he waggled his eyebrows.

"I've never heard of that version before," you laughed. "How do you play?"

"Well, standard Go-Fish rules, you know, make matches with what's in your hand. If you draw from the pile and get a match, you decide 'Truth or Dare'. If you get a match from drawing from your opponent, it's your opponent who decides 'Truth or Dare'," Dean finished.

"Hmm. Sounds interesting....and dangerous...." you mused.

"Could be, depending on how you look at it. Are you in?" Dean challenged. "Yes...." you said.

First couple of games were pretty tame. Lots of silly truth questions, but they helped you and Dean to find out even more about each other.

By the fourth game, you had broken out the beer and tequila and you two started getting a little silly. "Do you have any....4's?" you asked. "Here you go," Dean said as he handed over the card.

"Okay, Dean. Truth or Dare?" you asked. Dean paused. "Dare," he said with a gleam in his eye.

You leaned back in your chair, your arm slung over the back. "Well, now. I think things just got interesting," you said. "What do you suggest?" you asked.

"I dare you....to kiss me," he said with a satisfying smirk on his face.

You slowly rose from your chair and walked over to him. You knelt in front of him and stared straight into his flashing green eyes. You put your arms around his neck and pulled him closer until your lips were almost touching. "You ready?" you asked breathlessly. Dean nodded slowly. At the last second, you pulled back a little, stood up and kissed his forehead. You started walking to your room and with a backwards glance said, "Goodnight, Dean."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute," Dean called out as he caught your hand.

"What?" you said innocently. "You dared me to kiss you, and I did. You never said where the kiss had to be," you teased as he reluctantly released your hand. "Goodnight, Dean. Sweet dreams," you said with a wink. Dean put his head in his hands and let out an exasperated and frustrated groan.

Back in your room, it was all you could do to calm your hammering heart. You took several deep breaths, trying to get back under control. He dared you to kiss him! Whoa, girl, you said to yourself. Had to be the beer and tequila. Yeah, that's it. No way he would've asked you to do that if he'd been sober. Stupid little card game. Never mind the fact that you wanted to see what it would feel like to have his lips on yours....Could he have wanted you to kiss him as much as you wanted him to kiss you? He did seem a little frustrated that you just kissed him on the forehead....You yawned. Sleep now, more thinking tomorrow.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sam joined Dean at the breakfast table, where he was munching on some peanut butter toast. "So, how late did you two stay up last night?" Sam asked.

"Not too late, maybe another couple of hours after you crashed," Dean answered.

"What'd you do?" asked Sam.

"Oh, played a new card game," he said. "We played Truth or Dare Go-Fish," and he explained the rules. "It got a little more interesting when we got out the beer and tequila..." Dean said.

"Really...." Sam grinned. "Do tell."

"Well, for starters, I dared her to kiss me," Dean explained. "And she did....on my forehead."

"Wow. Hot," Sam teased.

"Shut up, Sam," he retorted.

"Whatever made you give her that kind of a dare?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged, "I don't know, seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, we were drinking. I can't be held responsible for what happens while I'm drinking."

Dean looked up just in time to see you enter the room. "Good morning," he said, cringing.

"Good morning, Dean," you mumbled, heading to the kitchen for some coffee.

"Way to go, bro," Sam mumbled.

Crap, Dean said to himself. He followed you to the kitchen and placed a hand on your shoulder.

"Yes, Dean?" you answered.

"About last night..." he started.

You held up your hand to stop him. "No need to explain, it was just a silly game. No harm, no foul," you explained. "If you'll excuse me, I need to shower before I do anything today," you said as you turned to leave.

Dean caught your hand and tried to draw you closer, but you resisted. "Please, Dean, let's not complicate things. You saw a chance, and you took it. Besides, we were drinking and shouldn't be held responsible for what happens." You pulled your hand free and headed to the shower.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Once in the shower, you let the water wash away the hot tears of frustration. Well, scratch that off the list. Now you knew for sure that he didn't mean anything by daring you to kiss him. Dean just wanted to see whether you would follow through or not.

You stepped out of the shower and wrapped one towel around your head and one around your body. After you dried off, you pulled on your favorite pair of faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt and your red flannel shirt. You ran some gel through your hair, grabbed a pair of work boots and you were good to go.

In the library, you fired up your laptop and started searching for a case. You had to get your mind off of what happened last night and this morning. If you were ever going to stay alive as a hunter, you had to concentrate.

"Find anything interesting?" Sam asked as he set down a glass of iced tea for you.

"Nothing yet," you answered, eyes still on your laptop.

"So, about Dean..." Sam started.

You held up your hand. "Sam, please don't. I've made my peace with it and moved on. News flash: Dean doesn't feel 'that way' about me. Don't know what would ever make me think otherwise," you muttered as you rose from your chair. "I'm headed to town to pick up a few things for lunch, maybe some sandwiches. Do you need anything?" you asked.

"Nah, but I'll go with you if you want," offered Sam.

You shook your head. "I think the drive will do me some good, clear out the cobwebs," you said, hoping you were convincing enough for him.

Sam was skeptical. "Okay, see you later," he called out as you headed for the garage.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You drove down the highway in your '68 Ruby Red Dodge Charger, blasting out some Aerosmith tunes. This is what I needed, you thought. Something to clear my head while I make sense of what's happened in the past 24 hours with Dean. Guess I'll have to accept the fact that he doesn't feel the same. At least I got out before my heart got too broken. We still have a job to do, saving people and hunting things. I can do this, just focus on the job and not on Dean. Yeah. Right, you thought as your vision started to get blurry with unshed tears.

Up ahead, you saw a truck barreling down the road in your lane. You slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve, but it was too late to avoid the impact. Your head slammed into the steering wheel and you could feel the car spinning around. You tried to keep your eyes open, but it was getting more difficult with each passing moment. Soon, the darkness won out and you fell unconscious.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Dean came into the library and asked Sam if he'd seen you lately. Sam asked Dean why he was looking for you. "I need to talk to her about something, and I haven't seen her since she left the table to take her shower. Not that I'm her favorite person right now," he muttered.

"Since when are you concerned with--wait a minute," Sam started. "You like her, don't you??" he asked.

Dean thought for a minute before answering, but found that all he could do is nod his head.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally," he remarked mostly to himself. "She said she was going to town for a few things and would bring back some sandwiches for lunch," Sam paused and checked his watch. "I would've thought she'd be back by now, though."

Dean was getting ready to call you, while Sam went back to plunking away on his laptop. Suddenly they heard a whoosh of wings and Castiel appeared and asked where you were.

"All I know is that she took a drive into town for some stuff, said she needed to clear her head. Wait, why?" Sam asked, looking at Dean.

"I just had a vision that she's been in a terrible accident. A truck was coming towards her in the same lane and hit her car nearly head on," Cas replied.

Dean grabbed his keys and bolted up the stairs to the garage, with Sam close behind. "Cas, you gotta go to her, man," he pleaded. "Stay with her, heal her as best as you can. I-I can't lose her, man. Not before I've had a chance to tell her how I feel about her," his voice broke. Cas put a hand on Dean's shoulder and gave him a reassuring nod, then he was gone. "We'll meet her at the hospital, Sammy," Dean said as he jumped into the Impala.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Dean broke the speed limit the entire way to the hospital. Sam had seen him concerned about losing someone due to injury, having witnessed it firsthand when he was the injured one. This was different. You were different and Dean was scared of losing you. "Dean, she's going to be okay. She's strong, she's a fighter. She'll make it through this," Sam tried to assure him.

"This is my fault. If I had just told her....But, no, I had to do what I've always done--put up my walls and deny everything. Make it impossible for anyone as wonderful as her to get anywhere close to me. Now it could be too late, Sammy," said Dean.

"Listen, Dean. Cas is with her, he'll meet us at the hospital and we'll go from there. Let's just take it one step at a time, okay? She's tough, she's not going to give up," Sam replied. Dean pressed down harder on the accelerator in response.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sam, Cas and Dean waited for what seemed like hours in those crappy chairs, drinking rotten coffee and leafing through outdated magazines. They wished that the doctor would come out and tell them something about how you were doing. Anything was better than nothing.

Dean wanted you to wake up, so he could tell you that he takes it all back about that night. It wasn't just the beer and tequila talking. He dared you to kiss him because he wanted to kiss you to find out what it felt like, but was too scared to admit it.

About three hours after they arrived at the hospital, the doctor came out to update them on your condition. The doctor said they could go back to your room and see you, but they were warned that you were still unconscious and likely could be for the next day or so.

Nothing could've prepared them for what they saw when they walked into your room. You went from being their tough little hunter capable of just about anything, to looking so frail and helpless. Your head was bandaged and there were cuts all over your arm, probably from the shattered window glass in the accident. It seemed like you had tubes were coming out of everywhere imaginable. Seeing you hurt like this only tore at Dean's heart even more.

Dean grabbed a chair and dragged it over to your bedside. He took your hand in his and held it to his cheek as a single tear slid down. "I'm so sorry, honey," he whispered, looking up to the ceiling.

"Sweetheart....if you can hear me....I have a confession to make, about that night we played Truth or Dare Go-Fish. It wasn't just the beer and tequila doing the talking. I'm so sorry, baby. I never meant to hurt you by saying that. I dared you to kiss me because....I wanted to kiss you to find out what it felt like. That, and....I'm in love with you."

He pressed his lips to your forehead, all the while keeping hold of your hand. Dean leaned on the edge of the bed with his left arm and rested his head on it. He traced circles on the back of your hand with his thumb as he closed his eyes and drifted off for some much-needed sleep.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Beep....Beep....Beep....was the only thing you could hear, so you tried to open your eyes to figure out where the hell you were. When you first attempted to open your eyes, you were met with a blinding white light for your troubles. You tried again, more slowly this time, and you became vaguely aware of someone holding your hand. You looked down and saw Dean, fast asleep. You gently squeezed his hand and whispered, "Dean? Dean, please wake up," you croaked.

"Hey, sweetheart, you're awake! Sammy, wake up! She's awake!" Dean said as he launched a pillow at Sam.

"Whoa, what the hell, Dean?" Sam woke up but almost fell out of his chair in the process. He looked over and saw that you were awake. "Hey! Good to see you!" he exclaimed, scooting his chair closer to the bed.

At that moment, the doctor came in to check on your progress. "Ah, so nice to see you awake. My name is Dr. Carson. You gave us all quite a scare for a while. These two haven't really left your room for much of anything since you got in here," he remarked.

"Yeah, doc, they're pretty stubborn, but I wouldn't have them any other way," you replied, smiling, still holding Dean's hand.

"Well, you should be able to get discharged in a couple of days or so. With that concussion, we can't take any chances," he warned.

"I understand. Thank you, Dr. Carson," you said as he left the room.

"Well, I'm going to see what the cafeteria has to offer," Sam declared, stretching in his chair. He pressed his lips to your forehead before leaving and closing the door behind him.

"Dean, you should know that I heard the things you said while I was out. It wasn't your fault, the accident, I mean. Cas told me it was a demon possessing the truck driver. As to the other stuff you said...." you trailed off.

"Yes, sweetheart?" Dean prompted.

"I am in love with you, too," you answered shyly. In one swift move, he stood and cupped your face in his hands, pulling you closer to him for one long, passionate kiss. "That's just for starters. Wait till I get you home," he whispered in your ear. You shivered at the mere suggestion of more and couldn't wait to get out of here.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the content. Some of this chapter contains partial excerpts from my first Wattpad offering, Small Town Hunter. If you want to see more, check out my page at wattpad.com/user/SPNHawkeye.

[what-big-teeth]

Slumber (Male Sandman, pt. 2)

Female Reader (POV) x Male Monster [Part 1]

tw: body horror, mentions of death

“Order for Robin!” 

You bend and flex your stiff fingers, hearing a few satisfying pops over the bustle of the bakery. After all the countless memes, sand sculpture photos, and elaborate costumes that have graced your laptop screen, you’re more than ready for a break.

Robin takes their seat and doles out your respective treats and drinks. Pain au chocolat with a cup of English breakfast tea for them. For you, the bakery’s famed turnover and a cup of your favorite fruit tea sweetened with honey. Your teeth sink into the warm pastry with a soft crunch. You hum as the buttery layers melt on your tongue, mingling with the fruit filling. Robin chuckles at you, but you’re too enraptured in baked good heaven to care.

“Find anything?” they ask, pointing at your laptop.

“Nothing useful,” you say around another bite. “Just the usual stuff that comes with a weirdly worded Internet search.”

Then again, it was too hopeful to expect much from the search term “man with sand and feathers”.

Robin angles the laptop to better see the screen. Their eyes scan the image results as they sip at their steaming cup.

“Was there anything else you saw this morning? Besides the sand and feather, I mean.” 

You pop one of the golden-brown corners of your turnover into your mouth and shake your head.

“That was it. And I doubt knowing what his voice sounds like will help us any.”

They prop their chin in the palm of their hand and grin mischievously.

“Mind telling me how his voice sounded again?”

Your mind easily recalls the soothing, deep cadence of your late-night visitor’s voice. The memory easily sends a rush of heat flooding your cheeks. You grumble into your mug and take a large gulp, almost scalding the inside of your mouth.

“Anyway,” you begin, “do you have any other ideas?”

They brush the pad of their thumb across their fingertips, dusting away a few crumbs and bits of chocolate.

“It’s true you didn’t see anything,” they say, “but you felt him touch your cheek and heard him approaching. Was there something different about those instances?”

Your hands slowly curl against the warm ceramic of your mug. Now that you think about it, the sound of flowing sand pelting against your bedroom floor did take some time to reach your bedside. And the amount of sand left in your visitor’s wake was enough to fill a dustpan. If he wanted to be in and out of your room in a hurry, why leave so much evidence? Or any at all?

“Penny for your thoughts?” Robin asks.

Your lips sink into a small frown.

“When he first appeared, I heard the rush of falling sand. And it kept falling steadily as he came closer to my bed. But his approach was so really slow. Almost as if something was holding him back...”

You think back to the black, brittle feather. To its ragged appearance and how it disintegrated with a light touch. It may be a stretch, but you have a hunch about last night.

“Maybe,” you say, “We don’t have to do anything drastic.”

Robin places their mug onto their small, crumb-riddled plate.

“What do you mean?”

You take one last sip from your mug and place it on the table.

“We should wait,” you say, “and let him come to us.”

————————————————

Yours and Robin’s plan is simple enough. If your guess is correct, then you’ll both come face to face with your mysterious visitor from last night. At least, you hope you will. But nightfall is still hours away; and even then, your odd guest didn’t appear until you were at your wits end.

Waiting for the time to pass by isn’t difficult, not with Robin by your side. After returning home, you both tackle the clutter and dust that’s gathered in your room since your insomnia began. Once that’s handled, Robin decides to reward you both with a quick, homemade lunch. Your favorite, in fact.

As you eat in the living room while watching re-runs of The Golden Girls, a part of you can’t help but marvel. With just a few hours of sleep, you feel refreshed and calm. Like a brand-new person, or rather, the old you. You feel a sense of normalcy, just like you wanted. And it’s all thanks to your visitor.

So when your cheeks fill with a pleasant warmth this time around, you welcome it wholeheartedly and smile. You swear to thank him for his help once everything is over.

The show’s laugh track pulls you from your thoughts and you enjoy the rest of the marathon beside Robin.

Night falls, and after cooking dinner to thank Robin for their help, it’s time to implement your plan. You complete your bedtime ritual as Robin sets up their foldable cot in the darkest corner of your room. Without a brilliant light source, they won’t be seen. And you have a strong inkling your visitor won’t have one on hand.

“Ready?” you ask.

Dressed in their pajamas, Robin sits on their cot, folding their legs and leaning back against the wall.

“Ready.”

You climb into bed and tuck yourself under the covers in the same manner as last night. Like before, the drowsiness of sleep doesn’t claim you. In fact, no matter how patiently you wait, it doesn’t come. You shift in bed, turning towards your door. The roadway noise from outside your bedroom window serves as a makeshift clock. But as the sound begins to die down, almost vanishing entirely, doubt begins to creep into your mind.

What if your visitor didn’t come back? What if you misheard the relief in his voice? Was the mistake a byproduct of your own exhaustion?

You bite your bottom lip to the point of pain as pinpricks of heat gather behind your eyes. This isn’t fair to Robin, not when they have their art exhibit to prepare for. You shift your head against your pillow to tell them the plan’s off.

The sound of flowing sand pelting against the floor stops you. It’s what you and Robin expected. The pained, ragged breathing, however, is not.

You scramble into a seated position and yank off your bedsheets. Light floods your room courtesy of Robin flipping the switch and you get a clear look at your hooded visitor. Your stomach drops.

The face you hoped to see is moon-pale with a hooked nose and riddled with cracks. The majority of them are concentrated around the skin near his eyes, which are covered with a thin, tattered blindfold. Even worse, one of his black feathered hands, human-like in appearance and tipped with sharp talons, clutches his side. You almost miss the dark stain steadily spreading across his black, tattered robes. His legs, bird-like and ending with sharp talons, tremble under his own weight and that of his shredded, broken wings. Wings that shed their feathers and fall to the floor as black sand.

You barely catch him as his legs give out and take the brunt of his fall, your back hitting the floor. Robin yells your name and, in a few moments, your visitor’s limp, heavy weight shifts to the side. Just enough so you can slip out from under him and kneel by his side. With Robin’s help, you heft him into a seated position so he leans against the side of your bed. His chest barely rises as he draws in air and you feel panic squeezing at your chest like a vice. But a strong grip on your shoulder lessens it.

“Stay here with him,” Robin says calmly but firmly. “I’ll grab the first aid kit from the kitchen.”

You nod, then listen as Robin’s rushed footsteps grow softer with the growing distance. Your nighttime visitor’s face twists with pain and the cracks in his face deepen.

He’s getting worse, you realize. You reach out your hand, hoping to adjust his position so you can alleviate some of his immense discomfort. He shifts before you can touch him, and something gleams in near his uninjured hip. It’s a sharpened dagger with a silver hilt, engraved with strange lettering you can’t understand. The words are soon covered by his trembling hand; it squeezes the hilt.

“F-forgive me…” he breathes.

Before you can ask him what he means, you hear a scream from the kitchen.

“The bogle…followed me to this realm,” he says, failing to unsheathe the weapon. “Take this…before it can kill—”

A violent crash slams against your ears. Taking the dagger, you swallow down your fear and race toward the kitchen. Robin slides across the tiled floor and stops at your feet, teeth gritted in a wince. Your eyes flit around the room and find the source of the chaos.

A shadowy, bipedal beast rips its clawed hands away from the splintered dining room table. Wisps of darkness rise from its body as its head swivels back and forth. It turns towards you, but its blood-red eyes and erect ears focused on Robin. You immediately step in front of them as they scramble back towards the hallway and brandish the dagger.

“O-over here!”

The beast’s eyes zero in on you and it unleashes an ear-splitting roar. But you stand firm as it charges towards you. In between a single breath, it hurls itself at you. Your eyes screw shut as it collides with your body and sends you flying. But before the impact, you hear a strangled cry.

The air in your lungs rushes out in a strong gust, leaving you winded and your back stinging. You immediately draw in a fresh breath and almost choke on the inhale. A sweat-drenched grip hauls you to your feet mid-breath. Thankfully, you’re able to breathe normally as Robin frantically pats their hands against your arms, neck, and sides.

“Are you hurt? Anything broken?”

You shake your head, just as surprised as they are.

“What about you?” you ask.

“It didn’t touch me,” they say. “I just landed weird while dodging it.”

You pull Robin into a tight hug, one that they readily return. Once their racing pulse calms into a steady rhythm, you pull away and inch into the kitchen. The reason for your unharmed state is soon made clear.

The beast lays on the kitchen floor, the dagger piercing its middle. In its haste to attack you, it fell onto the blade and sealed its own fate. Amazingly, the beast’s body starts to evaporate. The shadowy wisps of its form rise into the air and vanish into nothing. And after a few tense moments, the only thing left is the dagger that saved your life.

You pick up the weapon while Robin grabs the first aid kit. They hurry back to your room and you follow, careful of the sharp blade you carry.

Your visitor’s cracked lips stretch into a small smile when you both enter.

“I’m glad…you both are unharmed.”

Robin settles down by his injured side while you sit on the opposite side. They put on a pair of medical gloves and reach out to pull away his robes.

“Don’t,” he says. “While I…appreciate your aid, it won’t work. We Sandmen…can only heal in our realm.”

And just like that, everything clicks into place. The sand; his one word to you last night; why he touched your eyelids. But his revelation still leaves you with more questions.

Robin breathes through their nose and purses their lips, but they withdraw their hands. They remove their gloves and set aside the first aid kit.

“I assume you…have questions,” your Sandman says. His body tenses and he grits his sharp teeth. “Allow me to answer them. As recompense…for putting you in danger.”

Robin looks at you with an uncertain gaze. You both know his condition is worsening and he may not last much longer. But who are you to deny what may be his final wish? So you steel yourself and ask your questions.

“Who are you? And what happened to you?”

“To understand that,” he says softly, “I must tell you…how we Sandmen came to be.”

Your Sandman, who has no name, speaks of the first of his kind: the Elder. Just as all Sandmen are born from human dreams, so was she. From the first dream, in fact. But just as there are dreams, there are nightmares. And from the first nightmare came the Mother Bogle, the creature who birthed the beast you slew. Just as there are many nightmares, that one bogle was one of many.

To battle the Mother Bogle and her growing number of spawn, the Elder enters newer human dreams, where she helps birth new Sandmen. The Elder cares for and trains them, then assigns them as guardians to humans when they’re ready. All to protect the sleep and dreams of humans, lest the bogles conquer the Dream Realm and find a way into the Human Realm.

The bogle that you defeated ambushed your Sandman nearly a month ago, when his guard was down. It gouged out his eyes and left him for dead, which is why he couldn’t find his way to you. It took time and a great deal of concentration, but he managed to track you down using your deep desire to fall asleep. He explains the past sensation as a sharp, painful tug on his heart. One that’s now dulled due to being near you.

“It’s an honor for any Sandman…to die in the line of duty,” he says. “My death will not be in vain. And you…will gain a more competent guardian.”

Your lips thin out to the point of pain and your fingers dig into the palms of your hand.

“Is that what you really want?” you ask, your voice laced with frustration. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

Your Sandman’s brows suddenly lift up, but he doesn’t reply.

“If you wanted to die, you would’ve given up after being attacked. But you got up and found me, even after losing your sight. Then you tried to come back, despite the state you’re in now.”

You reach out and gently coax your Sandman to turn his face towards you with a soft touch.

“You found me again just as I was losing hope. So now, I’ll do the same for you. Please be honest with me. Do you really want to give in?”

He reaches up and holds your hand in his. The feathers covering his palm tickle  your skin.

“No,” he breathes. “If I did…then I wouldn’t be able to guard your beautiful dreams.”

You smile against the growing fluttering in your stomach and ignore the urge to look down. Your bedroom floor creaks as Robin stands to their feet.

“So then,” they begin, “what do we need to do?”

Your Sandman gives your hand a gentle squeeze before letting go.

“We stay vigilant and wait. We…will soon have a visitor. One I will call for.”

So you all do. Robin takes up their old post on their cot while you sit by your Sandman’s side. As the night grows longer, your hand and his find one another again. His fingers lace with yours, the tips of his claws skimming your skin. The sensation sends a pleasant shiver down your spine. And you swear, just for a moment, that your Sandman smiles, as if knowing the effect he has on you.

The calm between the three of you doesn’t last. A soft gust of wind blow through your bedroom, raising goosebumps along your arms. You realize the impossibility of it as your window is closed and locked tight. You blink once and see a new, winged figure standing in the middle of your room. Their face, obscured by their own black hood, turns towards your Sandman.

“Well I’ll be damned.” The new Sandman’s voice is feminine but loud and clear. “You’re still alive!”

“Just barely,” your Sandman says. “It’s all thanks to my charge and her friend. She was the one to land the final blow on the bogle.”

You aren’t sure if its pride you hear in his tone, but the sound makes your heart race all the same. He squeezes your hand in his once more and you return the gesture. Then, you let go and stand up, ignoring the tingling in your stiff legs.

“Please,” you say approaching her, “can you help him?”

A bright grin stretches the female Sandman’s pale lips. “Gladly! He’ll have to claim your kill so the Elder will allow him to return home to heal. That won’t be an issue, will it?”

Beating back your disgust at the Elder, you shake your head. Robin hops off their cot and joins you, bumping their shoulder against yours with a happy gleam in their eyes. It’s contagious enough that you can’t help but smile. The female Sandman nears your Sandman and squats down beside him. Just like him, her legs are also bird-like and end with sharp talons.

“Mind helping me?” she asks, glancing up at Robin. “My brother’s ass hasn’t gotten any lighter in recent years.”

“I see you haven’t lost your way with words and human euphemisms, dear sister,” your Sandman grouses.

“Of course not, dear brother. If I did, how else would I have fun?”

“By tormenting me, no doubt.”

“Correct~!”

With Robin’s help, your Sandman is supported upright by his sister, his arm around her shoulders and his uninjured side pressed against hers. He grunts in pain as she carefully adjusts her grip, then mutters something to her under his breath. She glances your way and you finally see her eyes. They’re vast and deep, utterly black but dotted with slowly shifting pinpoints of lights that look like stars. You wonder if your Sandman’s eyes looked similar, before he was attacked.

“Mind coming over here for a moment?” she asks.

You shake your head and do so.

“I’ll trade you that dagger for something that’ll tide you over until my brother recovers fully.”

You give her the weapon and in turn, she places a black pouch with drawstrings in your open palm.

“It’s sleeping sand,” your Sandman says. “Use your fingertips to anoint your eyes so you can fall asleep.”

You thought your heart was already full from what happened so far, but another rush of warmth overtakes your cheeks.

“Thank you,” you tell him softly. “In return, I’ll have something for you when you get back.”

Your Sandman looks at you quizzically, almost as if he can guess what your gift will be by staring at you. You just shake your head with a chuckle.

“That’s for me to know and for you to find out, alright?”

“Ohhh, I like her,” the female Sandman says. “Try and keep her around, will you?”

Your Sandman sputters in reply as his sister grins.

“Thanks for your help,” she says, looking at both you and Robin. “My brother will be back before you know it.”

“We look forward to it,” you say.

She smiles. When you blink, she and your Sandman have vanished. The only traces of them are a soft rush of wind and the mess of black sand on your bedroom floor.

————————————————

Soon enough, things start to return to normal.

With your sleep cycle partially restored, your visit to the doctor’s office confirms the end of your insomnia. You return to your job with a medical note explaining your past situation, one that your boss is more than willing to accept. The next day, your coworkers throw you a small, surprise celebration with treats from your favorite bakery.

Even Robin’s art exhibit goes off without a hitch. A handful of clients offer them their cards to hire them at a later date, which is the start your best friend always wanted. They even mention that they already have the theme for their next collection in mind, thanks to your shared adventure.

You’re grateful for the calm and the much needed sleep that’s returned to your life. But there’s still one thing missing.

Having wished Robin a good night, you sit on your bed with your bedside lamp turned on, looking up at the night sky and the bright full moon. You close your eyes and send up a wish for your Sandman’s full recovery. Even if it takes months, you promise to be patient. If he was able to endure during his ordeal, then you can handle some time away from him.

“I hope you’re doing well,” you whisper.

A soft sensation brushes against your cheek.

“More than, I would say.”

You gasp and turn away from your window. There, in the middle of your bedroom, stands your Sandman. His black robes are no longer stained, but look new and regal. His wings, once horribly tattered and broken, are healed and as dark as the night. And his face, still moon-pale, is now whole, revealing his handsome features. His eyes are still blindfolded, but the black cloth obscuring them is newer, thicker, and of better quality.

He pulls down his hood and cards a hand through the black feathers that make up his short hair with a smile.

“I hope I didn’t keep you—!”

You press your face against his chest and embrace him, nuzzling against his warmth. He returns your hug and buries his nose into your hair, inhaling your scent.

“It’s strange,” he says. “At first, I found you through your desperate need for sleep. But this time was different.”

“How so?”

“Even though I am without my sight, a sweet sound like a clear bell guided my way here. It’s one I hope to keep hearing. That is, if you wish it?”

The backs of his claws skim the curve of your cheek, pulling a shiver from you. He chuckles as your fingers clench at his robes.

“Of course I do. You’re my Sandman, after all.”

He hums, pressing his nose against your hair once more. You wonder if this will become a habit of his; but it’s one you wouldn’t mind at all.

“If I remember correctly, there was something you wished to give me?”

You nod against him and pull back slightly. Your hands reach up and cup his face, your thumbs gently rubbing against his high cheekbones. He leans down towards you, but stops just a short distance away from your lips. His warm breath hits your skin and you bite your bottom lip.

“Two things, actually. The first is a name, if you want it.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Nocturne,” you say.

Your heart pounds as his smile softens.

“I’ll treasure it,” he says. “And what about the second?”

You slowly close the distance between the two of you. And as your lips meet his, you wonder what other sweet things the nights to come will have in store.

[moderndayshinigami]

Here's chapter 2

So. All Might," She smiled over the top of her coffee cup. They were perched atop a building, watching the traffic below them. He glanced over, taking a sip as she collected her thoughts.

"Hhmm. I'm trying to think of things I can ask you that I can't just google... Umm... Favorite color?"

"Yellow. You?" He smiled.

"Mm, blue. How does your hair stay up like that?" She queried

"I lather rinse and repeat every time," he joked. She punched him in the shoulder.

"Why are you such a freeaboo?"

"A what?"

"What's with the American antics?"

He took another sip of tea and shrugged, "i grew up with a American hero movies. Thought it would be great."

"And?" She prompted.

"And?" He asked.

"Is it great? Being a hero?"

"...The best," he beamed. They sat in silence for a few moments, enjoying the sunshine and street noise. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and plugged in headphones.

"Am I being boring? Is she gonna leave? Oh shit, I blew it." All Might thought, panicking.

"Here," she offered a tiny earbud to him, scooting closer. All Might blinked and accepted it, confused.

"I love music, can't go a day without it," she sighed, scrolling through miles of playlists. She found one she liked and hit play, an unfamiliar American song played gently in the background as they returned to people watching. It added a touch of romance to the scene, All Might thought, leaning closer. She smiled and kicked her feet as they dangled over the edge.

"I used to be afraid of heights," she said suddenly, peaking down between her feet, "well, of falling from those heights, I guess."

All Might looked down too, all he saw were people and cars, nothing to be afraid of. He did spot a purse snatcher though. He gently handed her the earbud, "I'll be right back, don't move," he said, settling his drink next to her. He dropped to the street and apprehended the hooligan with little effort. Handing him off to an officer on the next block, he jogged back to their perch. He looked up. Her feet bounced in a rhythm while she listened to her music and sipped her drink. He jumped up to retake his place. She handed him his drink and shuffled closer than before, so he leaned back on his hand, casually placed just behind her far side. She offered him the earbud again and he accepted.

"Shit," she spat a few moments later, jerking out of the calm they had created, "what time is it?"

"Umm, 3:30?" All Might asked, checking his phone. She stood, earbud falling from his ear as she gathered them both together.

"I gotta go. I'm supposed to do this panel for new creators. Um. Hang on, here" she offered him her phone, "put your number in, we can chat." He hesitated.

"I'm not supposed to give out my number... Fans and all that..." He mumbled, smile fading. She looked away and replaced her phone in her pocket.

"Oh. Sorry. Misread... The... Um situation," she cleared her throat, "anyway. I guess then I'll see you later. Some time. You can look up my channel, Valkyrie Cosplays. I usually read the comments so... Maybe we can... Yeah. Anyway. It was really nice to meet you, All Might," she babbled, shaking his hand before turning and running for the far edge of the building, leaping out into the air. A few seconds later, All Might saw her rise far above the buildings and shoot off into the distance.

"Good going, Toshinori. Can't give out your number? What an idiot," he mentally kicked himself for blowing it, "the first girl you talk to in months and you blow her off because of some silly rule." He shook his head and lept of toward the agency to file his reports for the day. He thought about music the rest of the night.

The next morning All Might turned on the radio during his morning workout. The trainer gave him a look, but said nothing as All Might added weights to the bar.

"Goooood mooorning, ladies and gents! I'm your morning host, Present Mic. And heeree we go, kicking off another ten songs in a row to get you through that early morning commute. But first, let's take a caller! Hey, you're on with the Mic! What's your name?"

"Hey. Can I request a song? Can we do this again by NightOwl? Going out to a certain big hero I worked with yesterday. If he's listening, I left you something where we had coffee. Thanks!" The caller said, hanging up.

"Well, looks like some hero's got a secret admirer! Good luck to him and to you, caller! Hey hero! Don't let that one get away! Here's Can we do this again by Night Owl kicking off our ten in a row and maybe somebody's love story," Mic said as the music began. All Might smiled as he lifted to the bouncy pop song. Maybe he hadn't completely blown it yesterday. He'd just have to go find out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Ok, if he doesn't show up by 9, he didn't hear it and isn't coming," Valkyrie whispered to herself from her perch across the street. She was watching the building they had sat on the day previous hoping to catch a glimpse of the big blonde hero again. She had called the local radio station at 6, hoping to catch him working out.

"A guy like that had to workout, right?" She scowled. "Maybe not; maybe his quirk was just that good."

She sat on the roof, back against an air conditioning unit, waiting, headphones in her ears. At five to nine, she stood, dusting herself off, frowning.

"Damn. Guess he didn't hear it," she grumbled, stretching her arms above her head and packing away her music, "should I take it with me?.... No, just in case." She thought, turning back briefly.

She turned away, taking off from the to roof with a great flap of her wings. All Might watched her soar out of sight and smiled. He stood from his own hiding place down the block and lept over to their spot. He found a flash drive sitting on the wall, "For AM" written on the edge.

He flipped it over, finding a phone number written on it. He smiled, tucking the drive carefully into a pocket.

When he returned home that night he grabbed his laptop and crashed on his couch. He skimmed his official message boards and agency email before turning to yo_tube finding his new favorite channel.

" Hey, Feathered Friends! I'm still here in beautiful Tokyo for the Tokyo Blast fundraiser! I met sooo many cool creators here! Lots of new cosplay ideas too, so new videos should be rolling out when I get back home. I also met someone my Japanese fans probably know, All Might!" She held up a tabloid magazine featuring a photo of the two.

"He was super cool and awesomely nice! Maybe I'll do a fem-cosplay for next year's Blast. It would be awesome to represent such a cool hero. Leave your thoughts in the comments! Any other heros to meet or cosplay?" She looked at the magazine. "I have no idea what this says. Someone translate for me? Thanks so much! Here is the video of the Create and Craft for Noobs panel I was on today! Lots of great tips for beginners! Also, today's tweet along song, Can we do this again by NightOwl, check it out in the description below. I hope a certain hero is watching. He should totally message me on my social media. Byebye! Catch you on the fly!" She winked and gave a peace sign again before the video went to her panel video. He backed up and paused on her face, studying it. He pulled out the little flash drive looking it over again before plugging into his computer. He navigated into the drive's contents, finding a group of mp3s and a video file. He clicked the video.

"Um... Hey! I guess my plan worked, you found the flash drive! I couldn't stop thinking about you, so," she cleared her throat, looking away and blushing, "I made you a playlist." She was sitting in a hotel room, cross legged on the bed, dressed in shorts and a tank top, hair a little messy, like she had been asleep just before. He studied her face as she gathered her thoughts before speaking again, still looking away from the camera.

"All Might? It would be.... Um... Do you think we could.... I want to see you again. Maybe we could take some time to... I dunno, see the sights? Maybe just get another coffee and chat? You're easy to talk to. It's been awhile since I felt like I had someone to talk to like that..." She looked at the lens, giving a small smile. He felt a small flutter in his chest as she ran a hand over her hair, swinging her legs off the bed to take the camera over to the window of her room. She turned the lens to view the Tokyo sky line, just as the sun began to rise. He had watched that same sunrise on his morning run.

"It really is beautiful here. This city is amazing. I wish I could see more of it," she sighed off camera, her profile barely visible in the reflection on the window.

"I... Sorry, I'm rambling. Anyway, there is my cell phone number, so text me. If you want. I'll be here... waiting. I hope to hear from you. Um, bye? I guess for now." She turned the camera back toward her face, smiling before the video cut off. He replayed the video again, watching her closely. She seemed... Sad? No... Lonely. That was it. He played through a couple of songs. He recognized the one they'd listened to the day before, and the song from the radio, and a few more popular songs from the States. He pulled out his phone as he listened, pulling up the contact he had made for her earlier in the day. He opened his messaging app, pausing to think of something to write.

It's fine now, why? Because I am texting you!

He hit send before he could rethink the message. He stared at the phone, waiting. Nothing happened. He pulled out the flash drive and checked the number again. It was correct. He refreshed his messaging app. Still nothing. He laid his phone down on his leg and went back to yo_tube.

"Hey, feathered friends! Tokyo Blast is drawing to a close! Just one more day! I almost don't want to come home, I love this city! The food is soooo amazing, and you all know how I feel about seafood"

She made a sour face and laughed. "I might have to extend my trip by a day or two to see some sights! Would you guys mind too terribly? I promise lots of pictures and cool videos? If this video gets 10000 likes, I'll even eat one of those live octopuses" she shuddered and made another face.

He clicked the like button while she continued on

"So, I got someone to translate the magazine headlines for me. Apparently, All Might and I are secretly dating. To be honest with you guys, I would not mind that," she winked, "you know my type."

A few images of her pointing at muscular blonde men photoshopped onto the screen flashed by, obviously cropped from previous videos.

"But unfortunately, we are not an item. Even if it would be great, I have to come home to you all and make more videos! If we were dating, what would All Might and my ship name be? Anyway, my plan is to take a couple extra days after Tokyo Blast finishes up to sightsee and then I'll be flying home, so videos should be going up in a week or so with new props as well as a gift opening vid when everything ships home. I'll also live stream a couple sights as well as the octopus if you guys are feeling mean! Leave your thoughts in the comments! Here is a quick video of some of the awesome people I met today! Today's tweet along song is Zero to Hero from Hercules. Check it out in the description below. Byebye! Catch you on the fly!" She said, with the wink and peace sign. He sat back as her video from the convention played. He had seen the magazines during the day, but no press had bothered him about it. He scrolled down to the comments.

Take all the time you need! We love you!

Show us ur b00bz

Winged Victory!

Val Might

Eat the octopus, valkyrie! >:}

Vallmight

Wingd vic0ry

God leave All Might out of this your just lookign for subs

You 2 wuld b so cut 2gether! Val Might 4eva

He snorted at a couple, frowning at the more rude comments. All Might shifted checking his phone again. Still no response. Maybe he should just text her again with a 'hey, it's me'?

His phone buzzed with an incoming text. His hands spasmed and he flung it onto the chair across from the couch. He took a deep breath, gathering his wits before setting his laptop aside and grabbing his phone. He unlocked the screen.

Hey, AM! U up for a nite out? New club opening 2nite downtown

~Mic

He sighed harshly. It wasn't even her. He left the message unanswered and went back to his laptop. He clicked through her page, looking for popular uploads. He watched a couple of videos before he worked up the courage to search the name he wanted. He pulled up a new tab, typing in "Val Might" to the search bar. Several links popped up. Mostly news shots of them together after the robbery. There was one still frame of them sitting together on top of the building. They were dangerously close together, closer than he had remembered. He felt the flutter in his chest again. He went to images, most were the news shots, the dangerous picture featured prominently too. What he didn't expect was the fan art. The fan art made him blush. He closed the tab and went back to his fan site message boards, answering a couple questions and listening to his new playlist.

"Maybe she can make me a workout playlist," he mused out loud, bobbing his head to the rhythm. He closed his laptop, standing and stretching. He changed into workout clothes and went for his nightly run. He returned and showered, trying not to think of her sleep shorts and tank top as he did. Failing that, he cranked the water to cold half way through the shower. He toweled off, falling into bed with his phone, scrolling through her videos again. He found her liked videos, most of them being music. The most recent liked video was an old video, the face in the thumbnail all too familiar. He clicked it

I can't believe it! It's only been 10 minutes! He's already saved 100 people!

HAHAHA!

There he is!

It's fine now! Why? Because I am here!

He rolled on his side, stopping the video and staring into space. She went searching for him online the same way he had been. She found THAT video too. Why that one? He started to doze off, thinking about saving her from some faceless evil. The way she would look at him as he swept her up in his arms and kissed her. Her arms wrapping around his neck. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he pressed her against the wall and he--

Jerked himself awake from the dream, taking a deep inhale and releasing a shaky exhale. He looked at the time on his phone, 1 am. He also had a message.

[outroshooky]

Swim In Your Divine

⇢ genre: drabble (hogwarts!au, slytherinjimin!au, gryffindorreader!au) (fluff)

⇢ pairing: park jimin x reader

⇢ word count: 1.7k

⇢ warnings: this is tooth-rottingly fluffy with a touch of angst; there’s brief swearing

⇢  a/n: i’ve wanted to write slytherin jimin for months now, but inspiration is a fickle bitch. i stared at my laptop for maybe an hour tonight, and all of a sudden  words came pouring out. to anyone right now who is on the verge of something unknown, who is doubting themselves and their abilities and feeling as though the world may very well come crashing down at any moment- this is for you. i hope, from my heart to yours, that it brings you comfort, even if only just for a moment.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Breath soft on your temple, steady in its beat, paced.

It’s dark in the round room, a single window allowing a block of moonlight to cut across stone tile, fractured in its age. It’s a cloudless night and the sister planet sings her silvery praises across the mountains that arch over the foundations of the castle, keeping her snug and warm in their embrace. Lately, however, it is as if they do not cradle but cage, for better or worse, from the outside world.

For war, war is coming.

It beats in the very thrum of your blood, in the keenness of your senses.

Something is about to happen.

Something that has the potential to be catastrophic, to tip the hourglass that has so carefully held the sands of destiny, slipping by grain by grain into place, exactly where they’re meant to be. The glass walls were shattered on the night that the wizarding world was changed forever, tilted on its axis by the boy with fate incarnate cut in a bolt scar across the breadth of his forehead. They were put back together with the passage of time, tension draining out of the world’s own shoulders as she too adjusted to change.

Change. A force that, on its own, has the power to shift tides. She waxes and wanes, pushes and pulls with her own mind, and it can feel as though we are completely alone, forced to rock back and forth at the mercy of an unseen higher power. We grab at the walls of our measly little dinghy and we are reminded of our place in the universe. How, in the grand scheme of time and the flow of the cosmos, the predicament that occupies our waking hours and haunts the landscape of our dreams is merely a ripple in the flood. A stone may skip across the water, even fall face-first and sink to the bottom, but with a second or two, the undulations slow, taking pause until the next rock finds itself skimmed along the great river. It is like this that we are borne along the current of life, sometimes in control of the pace, sometimes clutching for the sides of the boat with every ounce of power in us.

Your head rises and falls with the rhythm of his breathing, your ear resting comfortably above the constant, never failing drumbeat that is the pattern of life. One of his hands is loosely interlocked with yours, the other occupied with gentle caresses of your hip, your side- touches he needs not open his eyes for, because he knows your curves and your edges as well as he knows the flecked wood of his own wand.

Sometimes, our boat is spun in circles on the great tides. The water rushes and roars in our ears and below our pathetic little craft, threatening to spit and choke and overwhelm the sides. Like leaves we are caught in the eddies, but like leaves, we slip over the top of one current, spill into another, and then we are borne along our way just as if nothing had ever happened in the first place. It’s okay to go in circles, even if you need to rest for a while. It will not consume you forever.

Your frame is warm against his, the only blanket he needs. He’s in casual wear, the low cut of his shirt exposing honey-gold skin, and it’s here that you bury your face, nose the column of his neck. You could connect constellations with the freckles that dot his chest, run your knuckle along his throat to marvel at the radiance of him in simplistic, unadulterated adoration. He is beautiful, so beautiful that it hurts to think, to move, to breathe, to do anything other than savor this moment with him, the moonlight kissing the toes of your socked feet. You nuzzle into the crook of his shoulder, breathe deep the delicate notes of his body wash, but even with a faintly musky distraction, your mind still wanders. It lingers near the entrance to a shadowed labyrinth, trees of shade spearing a sickening inky-black twilight, and it is as if he can feel your internal trepidation through the way you shift against him. He hums, gritty and thick with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Late,” you murmur, fingers sliding up his wrist to trace his forearm. “If we’re caught up here, Snape will string me up on his dungeon wall, right next to the newts we’re supposed to be skinning on Tuesday.”

Jimin chuckles softly, brushing your forehead with lips as delicate as falling petals. “Well, you’re lucky that you’re up here with me. He likes me too much to actually bother with giving me detention.”

“Speak for yourself, mister Slytherin prefect.” You curl into Jimin, legs slung across his thigh. “He’s just itching to give any other prefect, much less a Gryffindor, an ass-whooping.”

His arms tighten around you. “Ah, but you have McGonagall on your side. I still don’t think she’s forgiven me for failing her final last year.”

“She’s forgiven you, love. I don’t think you’ve forgiven yourself,” you tease, tapping his nose with one digit. 

Jimin whines lowly and buries his face in the top of your head; the butterfly’s wings in your heart unfold to beat with a renewed passion. However, with a glance out the intricately carved windowsill at the hills and valleys, lingering with promises of threats to come, the beautiful creations crumple.

“Jimin…”

The glow of night frames your face, a visage more stunning to him than any charm or hex. His entire life he’s been enchanted by the mystery of magic, the secret beauty it holds in the palm of his hand. Yet, for all of his passion towards the craft he aims to perfect, it pales in comparison to the candle wick that burns bright with his affections towards you. You, a star set so deeply into the wonderful framework of the universe that he fears a world in which he ever has to live without the unfailing steadiness of you. Jimin knows exactly what thoughts coil around themselves in your brain like a pile of seething snakes, his emotional intuition that nearly had him sorted into Hufflepuff reading you like an open book.

He cradles the back of your neck with one hand; the butterfly curls into its protector. “I know.”

“You can feel it too?”

He nods slowly, then all at once. “Something is different with the world out there. The mountains don’t smile like they used to. They hunch, like they’re hunkering down.”

“But for what?” Your question rings into the open air, an owl winging its way into the night-time. “What if we have war again, Jimin?”

“War?” He raises an eyebrow.

“That’s what happened the last time the world shifted like this. I don’t know-” You cradle yourself in his arms, rubbing furiously. “I don’t know, but god, I’m fucking terrified.”

He pauses one beat, two. “It’s okay to be terrified.” His hands rub over yours, doing a better job to warm you up than you ever could. “I’m terrified too.” Jimin’s confession, as quiet as it is in the dead of the Astronomy Tower, rings as loud as the clapper of a tower bell in the small room. “But if it is war again, then we’ll be prepared for it. We have to be, and we will be.”

“But how?” You beg, turning to face him. “How, when nothing is certain and everything is thrumming with this hint of danger and fuck, I just-” You ramble on.

Jimin presses a single finger to your lips, hand sliding to cup your jaw. His eyes meet yours, onyx embers glowing bright with feeling. “You beautiful, silly girl.”

You draw back. “What?”

“My dear, you are the most capable person that I have ever met. You are courageous and determined and god forbid anything stand in your way, because you will crush those who speak out against you to dust. You have a soul that sings a song of fire, but that doesn’t mean you are consumed by it.” His thumb traces the apple of your cheek. “You are wonderful in your own way; you’re so genuinely good and I truly have no idea how I ended up in your boat as first-years on the way to the castle for the first time, but I am so glad that I did. It was the best choice I have ever made.” He emphasizes these things with a tenderness known to you, you alone, and with that the winged thing in your chest breaks free, the shackles on her wings shed in a flurry of movement.

“In a thousand universes, I will find you,” Jimin promises, the rawness of his words building brick after brick of reassurance. “In ten thousand stories, I will trip and fall into your timeline and stay by your side before I’m undoubtedly killed off in some majestic, knightly way. Change, war, whatever you want to call it- it will not tear you apart even if it tears us apart. The world does not deserve a soul like yours, breadcrumb, and she will be reluctant to let you slip the bonds of earth. She knows you’re a fighter; she sees that in you-” he wipes a tear from your cheek, spilling wet and hot. “-and she will not give up on you, even if you give up on yourself.”

“Jimin,” you choke, hands cupping his face. You say his name once, twice, over and over till it fades to a whisper on your lips. He’s crying too, you think, with the sheer honesty of it all; the threads of change are woven indeterminably, unchangingly, and there is nothing you can do to unravel the ethereal blanket. 

Change, war, whatever you want to call it, is coming.

But things will be okay.

You pull him closer, arms linked around the back of his neck, and he pulls you onto his lap, a girl with a soul that sings of fire and a heart that burns with the warmth of coals. 

Inhale.

Exhale.

A barn owl, perched atop the roof of the tower, hoots a low cry, and it echoes through the dark, ringing atop hill and treetop to settle on Hogwarts’ Great Lake, where a single leaf swirls atop a slow-moving current, the stem rippling the surface of the water.

[ash-axxa]

Summoned

(So, this is basically a prompt I’ve been thinking about for a long while. Don’t know if I want to make it in a full series or not... Or I might just keep these small prompts and one shots about these characters!)

(And yes, Immortal’s Flower will be updated shortly. I’m waiting till I get my laptop fixed, I like writing longer things on my laptop instead of my phone)

Witch.Ciri, Familiar.Wolf.Namjoon, Familiar.Fox.Jin, Familiar.Panther.Yoongi, Familiar.Shiba.Inu.Hoseok, Familiar.Tiger.Jimin, Familiar.Crow.Taehyung, Familiar.Wolf.Jungkook.

“Ciri, come on. It’s time to get up.” I lowered my hands, looking back at the door. The text book dropped, crashing into the floor and hurried footsteps ran up the stairs.

“Ciri! Are you alright? I heard a bang!” I looked back at the frantic woman- the woman who I call my mother- and nodded. “Yeah, just knocked over my text book.”

I rubbed my arm and she nodded, taking a breath of relief. “Good. I was thinking that something bad happened. I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast.”

A nod came from me and I watched her walk downstairs before sighing, falling back on the bed. I’m a witch, servant of the devil is what most people call me. I can’t say I disagree with them, our magic comes from him. But I’m living in a Christian household.

Isn’t that ironic?

I’ll be 18 soon, which means I’ll have to summon a familiar to travel with me. I don’t know how I’ll explain that process to them. Maybe I’ll end up with a cat, dog, or bird. They’re the most common and it’ll be easy for me to explain to them.

They adopted me when I was just a child. All my accidents that’s happened to me because of my magic, they’ve blamed something else. They’ve kept their blind eye to it, I won’t expose them now.

I picked up my text book, putting it on my backpack and shouldering it on. Before I left, I looked in the mirror to make sure that I didn’t forget anything.

I was wearing a red tee, jeans, and some tennis shoes. My hands grabbed my jacket on the way out, running a hand through my blonde hair. “Perfect.”

I rushed downstairs, sliding into the seat with grabbing the table before I fell over. My brother giving me a look. He’s always suspicious of me. Which is really troublesome.

I stuck my tongue out at him, giving a smile to my mother as I saw my plate. “Looks delicious.”

She’s an amazing cook. Father sighed as he looked at the weather. “Storm’s are coming in tonight.”

Damn it... That’s my fault. It’s because of the ritual I’ll have to do. Damn it Satan.

“Mom, can I go hang out with my friends tonight? They’ve invited me to spend the night, to homework. We want to get a group project done and over with this weekend.” I gave her a smile. She nodded with a smile as my brother narrowed his eyes.

Once my food was done, I put up my plate and left the house. He was on my tail. “You don’t have friends.”

“Well that’s rude.” I commented back, adjusting my straps on my backpack. He knows it all, which makes covering up what I do very difficult. “What are you actually doing Ciri?”

“Really, it’s a group project.”

“Right... And I can do magic.” He said sarcastically while I narrowed my eyes at him. He’s such a bastard sometimes, I swear it. “Mother hates it when you lie to her.”

“I’m not lying Jason.” I argued back before storming off, not wanting to deal with him anymore. I’m too close, I’ll lose control and everything could go to hell in that house.

—

“Satan, why are you so difficult?” I exclaimed in the night, after being slapped by another branch because of the wind that the storm brought. It was almost if I could feel him laughing at me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.

“Aha! There you are.” I spoke to myself, cheering a bit. There was an abandoned warehouse; people stay clear of it because of the dark aura I’ve brought to it. It’s not really my fault.

I sighed, sitting down in the middle of the floor and placing down the lamp. It was hard to see in the warehouse. This place was always shady.

“Let’s get this over with.” I grabbed the chalk, drawing the summoning circle. The open book was set besides the lamp as I made sure each symbol was correct.

Different ingredients were placed in the middle of the circle, all collecting in a bowl. I sighed, reaching back and grabbing the knife. My hand spun it before letting out a sharp breath.

I’ve always hated to do this.

I sliced my hand open, watching the drops of my blood drop into the bowl. While the blood was dropping, I recited the phrase while opening my presence; my soul for a familiar to find me.

The ingredients burned to ash and I wrapped the spare cloth around my hand. I watched the flames rise before dying out completely, leaving me only with the light of the lamp. My hand grabbed the lamp and I raised it, turning it off with a small click.

Leaving me alone in the darkness. Till morning to come and my familiar will be with me.

—

Throughout the night, there were sounds I could not hear. Whispers, claws, fluttering, growls, everything jumbled into distance and fuzziness.

But I felt warmth, hands. But I couldn’t wake up. I was stuck under the haze of sleepiness. Fingers on my collarbone, my wrist, my thigh, where my heart was, my rib, my hip, and my bicep.

But I didn’t feel alone anymore.

—

I opened my eyes, sitting up and stretching painfully. It was uncomfortable sleeping on the warehouse floor, but it had to be done because I needed to stay in the same spot I summoned at and my parents thought I was staying with a friend.

I rubbed my eyes, hearing a voice whisper something in a language I could not understand. My head lifted as I blinked, seeing a boy in front of me.

My familiar!

I smiled at him, getting a bunny smile in return. Then he spoke, words I could not understand and my smile faltered. His smile faltered at my own and he asked again, words I could not understand.

A different voice spoke, catching me off guard and making me stand up quickly. Wait a second! Why is there another?

That’s when I noticed all seven boys standing around me. What the...? How is this possible?? One of the boys had feathered wings on his back, making me look between them. “How...?”

“My name is Namjoon, this is Seokjin, Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook.” The one with light brown hair introduced himself and every other one. “How is this possible?”

“We share the same soul. You summoned us.” I couldn’t understand this. This... Is something unheard of. “We’re your familiars, mistress.”

(Honestly, I’m kinda liking the familiar boys. If you guys have anything you want to ask these boys, please send it questions. Kinda like... Talks! Yeah, that sounds about right. Inbox is open and these boys are waiting.)

(If this goes well, I might do more talks for the different characters of the other stories as well. Like the immortal boys or mafia Taehyung, or the future boys to come as well. But let’s start with the trail, the familiar boys)

[master-sass-blast]

Found Family, Part One --Wade.

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE. I HAVE BEEN PLANNING THIS PIECES FOR M O N T H S.

Summary: A brief look at yours and Wade’s siblingship, and all that it entails.

Rating: T for adult language, mentions of abuse/mental health issues/suicide, and mild angst.

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader and Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson.

@marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie

Some say that the two of you together are a disaster. A cruel joke by the universe unfairly cast upon the rest of society. A recipe for total destruction.

You know better than to buy into what any of the bystanders and onlookers say. The two of you, while admittedly destructive, are like air to each other; without one another, neither of you would be able to survive.

Wade Wilson is your –adoptive—brother, you’re his –adoptive—sister, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

The technical beginning of your wonderful sibling-ship with Wade Wilson starts when you help him prank Scott Summers in the dead of night, but that’s not where things really started. At least, not in your view of things.

No, they start the next day, when Wade knocks on your door half an hour before noon. He’s dressed in the most outrageous, neon pink and green Hawaiian shirt, orange camo jeggings, and bright, ‘fuck you’ blue Crocs.

“You eat lunch yet?” he asks, seemingly oblivious to the way your eyes are blinking their protest at the amalgamation of colors he’s wearing.

“Uh… no?”

“Great!” He loops an arm around your shoulders and steers you down the hall. “Let’s go get some! I’m buying.”

Dopinder, as it turns out, is a sweet and gentle soul –despite his weird thirst for vengeance. He drives the two of you to a downtown diner –and takes Wade’s weirdness with considerable grace and stride, which isn’t something you’ve witnessed from anyone else yet—and drops you off with the promise to wait until the two of you are done eating.

“I’m pretty sure you’re shafting his ability to earn a livable income,” you say as a waitress seats you and Wade at a booth adjacent to a window.

Wade snorts. “As if. One, I tip him in chicken nuggets, which is more than anyone else ever does. B, I’m helping him get into the mercenary industry, which pays way better than driving a fucking taxi ever will. And four, he doesn’t mind.”

You open your menu, start scanning the options, then freeze.

There’s so many choices –fuck, you’ve never even eaten out at a proper restaurant before. Your parents were too focused on ‘keeping you safe’ to let you have a proper childhood, dammit.

“Don’t know what to do?” The corner of Wade’s mouth turns up when you give him a ‘deer in headlights’ look. “I figured you probably didn’t have much experience with this. Russell didn’t either. Consider today your crash course in ‘how the world works.’”

“…Thanks.” You look down at the menu quickly to hide the tears that are already blurring your vision. “Uh, what do I get?”

“Whatever you want! They do all day breakfast here, and –in my opinion—there’s no bad time to eat a pancake.”

You smile. Pancakes do sound good. You peruse the menu for a moment longer, and the waitress is back to take your orders.

Wade orders a mountain of food. If he notices the way the waitress’s eyes bug out while he rattles off his insanely long order, he doesn’t let it stop him. He just keeps going, and her pen keeps flying across the page of her little book.

When he finishes, she turns to you, looking somewhat shell-shocked. “And for you, sweetheart?”

You copy Wade’s method of ordering –but not the length of his order. “Pancakes, bacon on the side, extra maple syrup, please.”

The look of relief on her face is almost comical as she jots that down. She promises to have everything out “as quick as possible,” then takes your menus and walks away.

Wade grins at you. “Look at you. You’re a natural!”

You can’t help but grin back.

You spend the rest of the day with Wade –and Dopinder, since he has to drive the two of you around. Wade takes you to various stores, having you buy yourself something –a book, a movie, a scarf—at each place so you can get used to interacting with people and handling monetary transactions.

You’re touched in a way that you can’t begin to describe. Sure, Professor Xavier and his team of mutants can help you get your mutation-related abilities under control, but no one’s offered to help you integrate into the real world yet. It’s like Wade’s thrown you a life-line you didn’t realize you needed.

When Dopinder drops the two of you off at the mansion, Colossus is waiting for you on the front step, arms crossed over his massive chest and a disapproving frown set on his face. “Taking young ones of property without permission is not allowed, Wade. You know this.”

“Okay, first of all, she’s not a ‘young one;’ she’s over eighteen, which means she’s allowed to come and go as she pleases. Even I know enough law stuff to know that. Secondly—”

“We’ll try to give you a head’s up next time, Colossus,” you interject before things can too far out of hand. “Sorry for making you worry.”

His expression softens considerable as his gaze switches over to you. “That is reasonable. Did you have nice day out?”

You smile and nod. “Yeah. Wade showed me around New York. It was cool.”

“See? I’m cool. Relax, Chrome Dome. I know what I’m doing.”

Colossus shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. “We will make X-Man of you yet, Wade.”

Wade’s full attention turns to you as the metal giant turns and heads back inside. “You were all smiles with him, huh?”

You narrow your eyes at Wade. “So what? Smiling is a normal human thing!”

“Sure,” Wade says, drawing out the ‘u.’ “You like him, don’t you?”

“Only as much as you like Cable!”

It’s Wade’s turn to narrow his eyes. “I do not like Cable. I merely have a ‘healthy fascination’ with him and his metal arm. And his awesome gun.”

You smile sweetly at Wade and step inside. “Glad we’ve got that all settled, then.”

Wade pretty well takes you under his wing after that. The two of you have the same penchant for wild mischief –and fucking with Scott Summers—so it’s no surprise that you get along like ducks and water.

But what no one else notices –which, admittedly, is probably because they’re so used to cleaning up after yours and Wade’s hijinks—is that Wade does more than just rope you into his nonsense.

The two of you need to run to a store to pick up supplies for your latest prankster endeavor? He has you make a list, estimate how much it’ll cost, keep track of the route on Dopinder’s GPS, and puts you in charge of navigating the store while you track down everything you need.

He gets bored of being cooped up in the mansion? He takes you out for an adventure, teaches you how to navigate streets and pick out safe places to duck into if you run into trouble.

He buys you your first laptop and cellphone, shows you how to customize everything for “maximum fun.” (And, when his knowledge runs out, he just sets you down in front of Ellie and has her teach you how to be safe on the Internet and how to avoid getting ten thousand viruses on your computer.)

The man makes sure you get a proper sex-ed course. Not one where he just cracks inappropriate jokes –though there are a lot of those going around—but a real one. The ins and outs of consent, how to avoid getting STDs, basic anatomy, how to spot cancer on both sets of genitals.

And it’s all of this that leaves you convinced that Wade Wilson is one of the smartest persons you’ve ever met.

It’s not hard to learn how to read Wade Wilson. Once you get past all the shock value of the jokes, vulgar language, and weird habits, he’s an open book that has its heart on its cover.

He’s lonely. Not the creepy, ‘I’m forty years old and I’m lonely so I spend a lot of time with people half my age’ lonely, mind you. He’s just… lonely. Sad, even.

He hates his skin. That much is obvious from all the long sleeves and layers he wears, even in the dead of summer. And while you don’t see anything wrong with the way he looks, he does, and that’s the only opinion that matters in his book.

Wade Wilson is also a man that wrestles with a lot of demons. His healing factor didn’t cure him of his cancer, so he faces excruciating pain on a daily basis. The loss of his girlfriend –who stuck with him after he got fucked over by Francis and turned into ‘an avocado that got fucked by an older avocado’—is a gaping hole in his chest that he doesn’t know how to plug. His self-loathing is a constant presence in his mind, and the amount of skin he covers is a decent giveaway for just how much he’s hating himself at a given moment.

He kills himself because he “can’t really die.”

And it’s when you watch Colossus and a few other X-Men deal with the aftermath of one of Wade’s “visits to Vanessa” that you decide that this crazy man might need you as much as you need him.

You happen to catch a glimpse of him in the hall a few days later, decked out in his Deadpool suit.

There’s only two reasons Wade wears that suit: he’s getting ready for a fight, or he’s in the pits of self-hatred (or both). But he doesn’t have his swords on him, which means he’s not gearing up for a fight—

You dart down the hall and latch onto one of his arms. “Hey, dude! I just had this great idea that we have to try.”

“Well, don’t keep me waiting, Aang!” Wade chirps back –but his voice is heavily strained, and, yep, you were right about his mental state. “What do we just have to try?”

You don’t actually have an idea on hand, so you just blurt the first thing that pops into your head. “Dessert burritos.”

Wade cocks his head back and considers the idea for a moment. “Dessert… burritos. Holy shit, you’re a genius.”

You grin –his tone’s brighter, lighter, which means you’ve managed to pull him out of his funk a little.

He grabs your hand and starts skipping down the hallway. “To the kitchen!”

Operation “Dessert Burritos” ends in nothing short of a disaster. You and Wade try to make pancakes to act as tortillas, and since neither of you can cook anything other than instant noodles, you wind up burning every attempt at you make. Three flaming skillets get chucked out the back door and two more are doused under the kitchen sink faucet before the two of you decide to call it quits on the ‘pancake’ alley.

So, then, the next logical step seems to be ice cream sundaes –except that Wade is still stuck on the ‘burrito’ concept, so he tries to wrap ice cream in a regular tortilla, which winds up tasting terrible for obvious reason, so Wade spits it out in the trashcan, except he misses part of his target and winds up spraying the front of the can with half his mouthful of ice cream and tortilla.

And then the two of you wind up unpacking the fridge and most of the pantry to find “sundae appropriate toppings” because Colossus is a health nut who keeps the kitchen stocked with healthy things—

And then Wade wants to try microwaving Gushers because why not, and you’ve never been one to say no to an opportunity to do something you’ve never done before—

And thus is all the chaos Colossus walks in on when he pops his head into the kitchen to see what the two of you are up to.

You’re eating fudge ripple ice cream straight out of the carton with a serving spoon, perched on the kitchen. You wave at him with the spoon as his face goes slack with shock. “Hey, dude! What’s up?”

Wade’s swearing up a storm while he tries to get molten Gusher remains off his face –he’d opted to take his mask off while he ate, and you’re suspecting that he’s regretting that decision now.

Colossus covers his face with both his hands and groans. “Wade—”

“Hey, man,” you interject before he can lambaste your honorary sibling too badly. “This was one hundred percent my idea. Don’t worry, we’ll get it all cleaned up. It’ll be like it never happened, I promise.” You pause, then add “Well, the gushers in the microwave was Wade’s idea. He’s on his own for that.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“Hey, I told you not to stick your face into the microwave, but no, Pikachu knows everything!”

Colossus just sighs and shakes his head. “You two are destructive.”

“Hey, at least we didn’t short circuit the microwave this time!” You offer him an impish smile. “We’re doing better than we usually do.”

He puts his hands on his hips, looking every bit the stern father –but the corner of his mouth turns up as he shakes his head again. “I suppose you are correct.”

“Yupp. Like I said, don’t worry. We’ll totally handle the clean up and everything.”

He casts a concerned, appraising look around the kitchen, but still favors you with a small smile when his gaze finally settles on you again. “Well, I suppose I leave you both to it, then.”

The two of you have to spend the rest of the day cleaning and scrubbing to get the kitchen back in order. Wade’s none too happy about it, but you do your best to make it bearable for him –music, banter, the works.

And, bonus, cleaning with him means he has to stay with you, which means he can’t wallow in self-loathing. He’s not his bright, bubbly self, but he’s not falling apart either, which is a win in your book.

It’s dark out by the time the two of you finish getting everything put away. Normally, you’d just call it a day, but it’s not hard to see the darkness swimming behind Wade’s eyes—

“Hey, man, you wanna have a sleepover in the rec room tonight?”

Wade gasps, and his eyes genuinely light up. “Sleepovers are my favorite!”

You grin. “They’re my favorite, too! Come on, go get changed and I’ll meet you there. You still need to catch me up on all the reality TV stuff.”

The two of you are getting the rec room set up for the night when you hear Colossus’s heavy footsteps in the hall.

You pat Wade’s shoulder before hopping over the couch. “I’ll deal with him. Pick out something for us to watch. I’ll be back in five, ten minutes max.”

The metal giant himself is in the kitchen, checking up on everything before he goes to bed, it would seem.

You watch him for a couple moments –you don’t miss the surprised expression on his face at the orderly state of the kitchen, either—before making your presence known. “Making sure we held up our end of things?”

The expression on his face is guilty when he looks over his shoulder at you.

“It’s fine,” you chuckle as you step into the kitchen, holding up your hands in a disarming gesture. “I would if I were you, too.”

He ducks his head a little, but he’s smiling. “I do not wish to seem judgmental.” He looks past you –or, rather, over you—and frowns at the glow of the TV. “You two are still up?”

You glance over your shoulder, then step closer to the man of metal and lower your voice. “Wade’s had a rough day today. I just… I don’t want to leave him alone, you know?”

Understanding settles on Colossus’s steel features; he nods. “Da.”

“We’re just gonna hang out for the night, have a sleepover,” you add. “No more kitchen adventures –speaking of which, one of the skillets was not salvageable.”

Colossus huffs out a gentle laugh, crosses his arms over his massive chest, and shakes his head. “Somehow, I am not surprised.”

“You gotta admit, it’s better than our usual levels of collateral damage.”

“I suppose.” He smiles softly at you for a moment before clearing his throat and looking away. “Well, I leave you both to it.”

“Thanks. Goodnight, Colossus.”

“Rest well, Y/N.”

You watch him go for a minute –watch the way the muscles in his back and shoulders ripple as he walks—before you shake yourself out of the daze Colossus never fails to put you in and head back to Wade. “All taken care of. We’re free to poison our brains with reality TV drama all we want!”

Wade doesn’t look up at you when you walk in. He’s seated on the middle of the couch, jaw tight and lips pursed as he stares ahead at the TV screen. “I don’t need your fucking pity.”

You blink, shocked by the sudden outburst and his surly mood. It doesn’t take much to put together that he probably heard your conversation in the kitchen –Colossus’s voice always carries—but even if he didn’t it’s not too far out of Wade’s “normal” for him to assume that he’s only getting the scraps of what decent treatment he deserves.

Either way, you’re not having this argument. Not now, not ever.

You put your hands on your hips and fix him with a stern look. “Good, because I’m not giving you any.”

Your sharp tone makes his eyes widen, and he actually looks away from the glowing screen to stare at you.

“I don’t know if you noticed, dumbass,” you continue, tossing in a mild insult to help him figure out you’re serious, “but I care about you. You’re the one person in this mansion that made sure I’d be able to function in the real world if I had to, and I’ll be damned if I’m just gonna let you flounder when you’re feeling down. And that’s not pity, jackass. It’s called being a decent fucking human being. Got it?”

“Pretty sure it’s pity when the person isn’t obligated to care about you,” Wade throws back, smiling bitterly.

And you understand where he’s coming from. After Vanessa died, all the help he’s been getting has come from the X-Men, and how can it not look like a pity handout when the people helping you have their lives and themselves so extraordinarily put together?

You’ve felt the same way about it on more than one sleepless night.

You let out an irritated huff and cross your arms over your chest. “Fine. I’m hereby adopting you as my brother. Now, as your new sister, I’m obligated to care about you. Are we doing this sleepover or what?”

Wade blinks at you, then grins. It’s tired, and it’s worn down, but it’s not bitter.

You’ll take it.

“Hell yeah we are.” He scoots over so you can sit next to him. “These are reruns of ‘Say Yes to the Dress.’ This one’s the ‘Bridezilla’ edition.”

“Sweet.” You plop down on the couch just in time to see a particularly distraught bride-to-be throw a fascinator at her mother. “Holy shit.”

“Just wait,” Wade says, all too gleeful. “It gets better.”

You wake up in the gray pre-dawn of the next day and nearly smack your head into Wade’s.

The two of you had taken half the couch each, with heads in the middle so you could hear each other talk and avoid kicking each other in the middle of the night.

Wade’s still asleep, one hand holding onto one of yours.

The sight makes you smile, makes you feel a little less despair over the state of the world.

You squeeze his hand, then nudge his head when he doesn’t stir. “Wake up, idiot.”

Wade groans. “Too early.”

“Yeah, which is why I’m putting you back to bed.” You tug him off the couch and walk him towards the main staircase. “Come on. Your ancient back needs a proper mattress.”

“Not ancient.”

“Yes, you are, you geriatric motherfucker.”

You manage to get him up the stairs and to his room without incident. He drops into his bed with a grunt, and you tuck a blanket around him and wait for him to start snoring again.

And then you get to work.

It takes a couple minutes, but you manage to find all the guns and knives Wade keeps on him while at the Institute. You tuck the numerous weapons into your arms, then pad out of his room.

Colossus is in the hall –already dressed for the day, the morning bird. He frowns, concerned, when he sees your armload of weaponry. “What—”

“Don’t worry,” you toss over your shoulder as you walk precisely one door to the left. “I’m not using them.” You kick the door a couple times with your foot, then step back and wait.

Nathan Summers, alias Cable, opens the door a few seconds later. He takes one good look at the guns and knives in your arms, then raises an eyebrow at you as if to say ‘what the fuck do you want me to do with those?’

“Wade’s been in a mood,” you say, as if that explains everything –which, technically, it does. “And you actually know how to store these properly.”

He sighs, but doesn’t look too put-out about it, and opens the door more. “Bring them in.”

You dump the arsenal on his bed when he motions for you to do so, watch as he puts gunlocks on the various firearms and tucks the knives and other bladed weapons into the top drawer of his nightstand.

Colossus watches from the hall, hovering nervously in a way that should not be possible for someone of his side.

“If you’re cool with it, I’m gonna leave a note for Wade to let him know to see you if he wants his shit back,” you say as Nathan tucks Wade’s guns into a duffel bag. “He probably won’t be up before noon.”

Nathan sighs, but nods anyway. “Not like I’m going anywhere else.”

“Thanks,” you say, and you mean it. “I wouldn’t have known what to do with all this.”

“Anytime, kid.”

Colossus watches you carefully as you walk back into the hall and close Nathan’s door behind you. “You… care a great deal for Wade.”

It’s not hard to hear the unspoken question, mostly because it’s easy to see how someone might confuse the easy camaraderie you and Wade have always had for something else. Something… less platonic.

You shrug and tell the truth. “He’s my brother.”

Finding out that Colossus –Piotr, his name is Piotr, and you think you could spend the rest of your life saying his name without ever getting tired of how it feels on your lips—likes you is a world-changing revelation.

You know by the looks Wade keeps sending you throughout lunch, the afternoon, and dinner that he’s going to want a full report on everything that’s happened with Piotr.

You can’t wait to give him one.

You also can’t help but notice the way that the door to Wade’s room is cracked open and the lights are on as Piotr walks you back to your room –ostensibly so you know he’s ‘in’ and will pop in to give him the full rundown, but probably also so he can eavesdrop, the little shit.

But you can’t find it in yourself to care all that much because Piotr’s hand is holding yours and you can’t imagine ever feeling anything better than what you’re feeling right now.

He walks you to your door, smiles fondly down at you. “I have work tonight. I doubt I will see you before morning.”

“So you’re ‘saying goodnight just in case?’” You ask, smiling back as giddy excitement coils in your stomach.

“Something like that, da.” And then he dips his head and presses his lips against yours.

You can’t help but gasp, just a little, and lift your hand to his shoulder to steady yourself.

The kiss ends all to soon –for your liking and Piotr’s, if the look he gives you is anything to go by.

He presses his forehead against yours before stepping back. “Goodnight, myshka.”

“Goodnight, Piotr.” You let your fingers slip from his as he walks away and watch him as he retreats down the hall.

He looks over his shoulder before he turns the corner to head downstairs. He smiles when he sees you watching, and blows you a kiss before disappearing from view—

And then, right on cue, Wade opens his door and grins at you.

You just cover your face with your hands and let out an excited squeal. You’re too excited to be annoyed with Wade, dammit.

He tugs you in his room. “I have snacks. Now, tell me everything.”

The two of you talk for hours, demolishing several bags of fun-sized candies and two packages of Keebler Fudgestripes.

“No fucking way!” Wade brays. “He was pet-naming you for the better part of a year? What a dork!”

“Well, he’s my dork now, so mind your mouth.” You grin stupidly, then squeal as you fall over onto Wade’s bed.

“Oh my gosh, you’re so cute I could die.”

There’s a knock on the doorframe, and Piotr –still out of defense mode, which is gonna take some serious getting used to—pokes his head into Wade’s room. “You are still up?” He frowns when he sees the numerous wrappers covering Wade’s bed. “Did you eat all that?”

You giggle at your boyfriend. “Kinda. We got carried away.”

He shakes his head in an all-too-familiar disapproving gesture, but an amused smile plays at his lips. “Is not good to consume so much sugar this late, myshka. You will be up half of night.”

“Unless I find a way to burn it off.” You grin at him. “Mind accompanying me on a late night stroll?”

He smiles softly at you. “Konechno –of course.”

“God, you two are so barf-worthy,” Wade gushes as you hop off his bed. “I love it.”

You catch Nathan in the hall as Piotr escorts you towards the stairs.

He smirks at the two of you, presumably having gotten an update from Wade and Ellie. “Going somewhere?”

“Just for a walk.” You jerk your head back towards Wade’s room, where light is still spilling into the hallway from his open door. “I bet he could use some company right now.”

Nathan shakes his head and mutters something that sounds like ‘clingy’ under his breath, but he stills strides over to Wade’s room anyway. He pauses at the doorway, frowning. “Did you eat all of that?”

“Yes, he did!” you shout. “You should have seen it; it was horrifying!”

“Lies!” Wade shouts back from his room. “Lies, lies, all fucking lies and slander!”

Piotr chuckles and tugs on your hand. “Come, myshka. Before you get into more trouble.”

You grin as you follow him down the stairs. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Watching Nate finally –finally—kiss Wade is like getting to the end of a good slow-burn book. You’ve loved watching the build-up, loved placing bets with everyone else on when those two would finally get their heads out of their asses and realize they were basically dating already, but God it’s such a relief to see them actually do something other than flirt with each other.

And one good turn deserves another, which is why you dig a box of maple sugar candies that you’d been saving for Wade’s birthday out of your dresser drawer and head over to Wade’s room.

Nathan’s already in there, holding Wade in his arms as they snuggle on Wade’s bed.

You can’t help but grin. “God, you two are so barf worthy. I love it.”

Wade sticks his tongue out at you. “We’re gonna give you and Metallica a run for your ‘hashtag goals’ money. Just you watch.”

“Good fucking luck.” You gesture at him with the box. “Wanna give me the ‘full rundown? I brought snacks.”

“I never say no to snacks.” He makes grabby hands for the box, then gasps softly when he sees the label. “Where’d you get these?”

“Vermont. The school took the kids on a field trip to a maple syrup farm. They’re the real deal.”

Wade tears the box open with all the delicacy of a rabid badger. “You do love me.”

“Always have, bro.”

Nathan frowns down at the little candies shaped like maple leaves. “The fuck are those?”

“Only the best thing on the face of the damn planet.” Wade holds one up to his boyfriend’s mouth. “Open up, sweetcheeks.”

Nate bites off part of the candy. His eyes widen immediately, and he spits the lump of melting sugar out onto a tissue. “Fuck. Too sweet.”

Wade gasps. “I’ll have you know that, as a Canadian, you’ve just committed a heresy. I’m sorry, we’re gonna have to see other people.”

Nathan snorts as he chucks his tissue into a nearby wastebasket. “Can’t get rid of me that easy, gorgeous.”

You can’t help but smile as Wade nuzzles Nate’s shoulder affectionately. “I just wanna say: I fucking told you so.”

“Shut up,” Wade shoots back. “You did not.”

“Wade, how long did I tell you that he liked you? How fucking long?”

“Yeah, well how long did I tell you that our resident steel boyscout liked you?” Wade rolls his eyes, then raises the pitch of his voice. “No, he doesn’t, we’re just friends, he doesn’t feel the same way!”

“I do not sound like that!”

“Uh, yeah you do! That’s why I made my voice sound like that.”

“Listen, asshole—”

“Language, myshka.” Piotr leans against the doorframe, smiling fondly at you. “Be nice.”

You point imperiously at Wade. “He started it!”

“Yeah, and I finished it! No performance anxiety here!”

Nate rolls his eyes. “You’re both insane.”

“Yeah? So?” You pluck two maple sugar candies out of the box –ignoring Wade’s squawks of protest as you do—then nab a tissue from the dresser before turning to Piotr. “Here. Try this.”

He eyes the candy, then the tissue, with admittedly fair suspicion. “What is this?”

“Candy.”

He gestures with the tissue. “And this?”

“Call it a safe bet.”

He sighs, then takes a delicate bite of the candy –and, sure enough, promptly spits it out into the tissue. “Bozhe moi, much too sweet.”

“Saw that coming.” You pop your entire candy into your mouth and let out a moan of contentment. “So good.”

“I know,” Wade says as he pops another bite of sugar molded into the shape of a leaf in his mouth. He makes a noise that in any other context would’ve been downright obscene and flops against Nathan’s chest.

“You’re both sugar fiends,” Nathan grumbles, putting an arm around Wade’s shoulders.

“I like to think of it as ‘well-adjusted.’” You grin teasingly at your own boyfriend. “What’s the matter, babe? Can’t handle a little sugar?”

He latches onto your hand and draws you into his arms. “Perhaps, you are just only sweet thing I need in life,” he says as he drops a kiss against the top of your head.

“Ew,” Wade mock-whines. “Get your PDA out of here!”

You roll your eyes at him. “Says the guy who’s literally sitting in his boyfriend’s lap.”

Despite the banter, you’re legitimately happy. You’ve got your happy ending, and Wade’s got his.

Look at us, bro, you think as the four of you share laughs. Champions of overcoming the shittiest obstacles. Go us.

[aka-willow]

Dreams and Schemes

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Words: 1264

Characters: Willow Wren, Marty Fields, Ned Leeds, Kate Gray, Kilgrave

Prompt/Tag: “I’m going to ask you something and you have to answer me honestly.” x / @anti-solidcoffee

Summary: Willow goes out for the night and encounters a sinister figure

Song: Hot in the City – Billy Idol

—————————————————————————–

It was a chaotic Saturday night at Kate’s apartment as we lounged around her bedroom, tossing pretzel sticks at each other and passing around the bag of wine that Kate had stolen from her older brother. I sat crossed legged on the floor, scrolling through my phone and trying to find a game for us to play while squishing a ball of putty that I found on Kate’s desk.

“Kings,” I ask. “Anyone want to play that?”

“We don’t have any beer cans,” said Kate. “What’s the point? Unless you want to use Sprite.”

“You guys want to watch a movie or something?” Ned suggested. “Oo—like maybe a really bad one.”

“I could do that,” I said. “When’s Peter supposed to get here?”

Ned shrugged and checked his phone. “I don’t know. He told me he got tied up with something.”

“Should we wait?” Marty asked, with his usual zero-tolerance for tardiness. “I mean, I don’t want to wait all night for him to show up and have him bail on us again.”

“I’m cool starting now,” said Kate. “I don’t want to wait either.”

“What’s taking him so long?” I asked Ned. “Dude’s literally always late.”

“Probably the subway,” said Ned. “It’s been a nightmare this week.”

While Kate opened up her laptop and pulled up Netflix, I shut my eyes and listened to the city beyond her apartment, blocks away, trying to identify every voice that I’m suddenly zero’ed in on and every beep, hum, and crash. It was like a finger on the pulse of the pavement, a background static that I could tune into when ready.

I was almost ready to snap back into reality when I heard a cry, and it cut through the rest of the fuzzy wall of sound. Close. Could have been a few blocks away at most. You don’t have to do anything. You have no obligation to move off this floor. But didn’t I?

“I gotta grab some air,” I said quickly, standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

“What?” said Ned. “We’re about to start the movie.”

“Start without me,” I said. “I want to buy us snacks.”

I rushed out the apartment door, clattered down the steep staircase to the street, and found myself standing on a crowded sidewalk, as New Yorkers flowed like a river around me, many of them in line for the club next door. Focus. Where did that sound come from?

I took a few steps in one direction and then I heard the cry again. It was more defined now. Close. Close. I started running, pushing past other pedestrians, the crowd thinning out, and before I knew it, I was alone. Raised voices echoed off the buildings, and I followed them to an alley, where a haggard-looking woman was pushing back against a man making a grab for her backpack. Next to the woman sat a cardboard mat and several plastic milk crates. Everything of value she had was in that backpack.

“Hey,” I called down into the alley. “What’s going on?”

The man made a final pull for the backpack and stumbled back with it when I spoke.

“He trying to take my stuff!” said the woman, gesturing wildly. “I told him I didn’t have anything.”

“Dude,” I said. “Give her the backpack back.”

In a split-second decision, the man slung the bag over his shoulder and started running down the alley towards me in an attempt to flee.

The adrenaline hit like a wall when I realized how much bigger this guy was than me, but he was gaining on me and left me with few choices. My coat fell to the ground. The wings came out, and their shadow engulphed the dark alley.

“I said, give her the backpack back.”

Now the man cried out and fell back. “Fuck, who the fuck are you? Jesus, God fuck—”

“Easy nelly,” I said.

He fumbled for something in his coat, and as I moved to grab the backpack, out came the gun.

Aw fuck. Nice one, Willow. Really nice.

I lunged for the gun, just as he raised it. Shot fired. Miss. I clawed at his face and kicked upward, as hard as I could. I was so focused on that though, I missed the punch coming for my face and it hit my mouth straight on, splitting my lip wide open.

I may have enhanced skills, but I don’t have any enhanced resistance to pain.

“Fuck,” I yelled, and then screamed a war cry. Motherfucker was going down now.

I spun and the wings clapped him, hard, throwing him against the wall, the gun and the bag falling free. “You freak,” he said. “I’m calling the… police!” The woman scrambled to pick the bag up and I kicked the gun away.

“Get out of here,” I said to him. “And stop harassing homeless people you hoggish asshole.”

He got up and ran. I turned towards the woman, and she still had a look of horror on her face. The wings. I folded them back a little, but it was too late, it was too weird for her. Backpack fastened around her torso, she mumbled something and also took off running.

Whatever, I thought. You’re welcome. I retracted the wings and sighed, popping my headphones in for my walk back to Kate’s.

I shouldn’t have even left. It was stupid. Stupid. I’m not cut out for this stuff. I just get hurt and it sucks.

My phone buzzed and I stopped to open the text.

>Ned: Where did you go lol we’re still waiting

As I texted Ned back, I suddenly became aware of a figure stopped in front of me, from behind me on the sidewalk. I looked up from my phone and a man was standing there. He motioned for me to take off my headphones. Oh great. Please don’t be a missionary.

I graciously pulled out a single earbud. “What?”

“You should turn down that music. It’s bad for your ears.”

“Okay,” I said, and turned down the volume on Billy Idol.

“I was calling after you,” he said. “I saw what you did back there. It was tremendous. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

He was charismatic, over-the-top, and his voice gave me a prickly feeling on the back of my neck. But I stayed. Right there on the sidewalk. Listening. Get out of here, Willow. Get out, get out, get out.

“What’s your name?”

“Willow. Wren.”

Jesus, Willow, move now! Go, run!

“I’m going to ask you something and you have to answer me honestly,” he said, grinning. “I saw the wings, what else do you do?”

“I’m a fast healer,” I answered. “I can fight. I can hear really well.”

“Superhearing,” he mused, drawing it out like it was a song. “I bet that comes in handy.”

“Yeah.” Willow, you don’t EVEN tell someone about your powers! What are you doing?

“Give me your phone number.”

I gave it to him.

“When I call you, you’ll pick up, right?”

“Right. Yeah.”

“With wings like that, you must be a flier.”

“I am.”

“Good,” he handed me an envelope. “Deliver this for me. Address is here. She’s a bit difficult to get to. Shouldn’t be hard for you though.”

I think I did it, but I’m not sure. I couldn’t remember the rest of that night.

[ssilverstreak]

Phoenix

So, after way too long of being unable to write, what’s the first thing I return with?

A Godzilla: King of the Monsters fic.  Yeah.  I don’t know either.

Spoilers for the movie.

They had only been back on the Argo for fifteen minutes before Madison became distressed.

“We have to go back,” she mumbled into her father’s shirt.

“What was that, Maddie?” Mark asked.  The adrenaline crash after the last few days; and few hours in particular; had finally hit and he was slumped against the closest wall, not having been able to move further after they had walked off the transport.  He hadn’t let go of Madison in all that time, though.  He wasn’t sure if he could ever let her go again. Bubble wrap was starting to look tempting.

“We have to go back, Dad. We have to check on Mothra.  I didn’t see her at the end with the others.”

Mark swallowed hard. Of course, Maddie had been too occupied with getting the hell out of there to see what happened.  “She’s gone, Maddie.  She… Ghidorah got her good, and her and Godzilla were down, and then she did… I’m not sure what she did, but all the light from her wings went into Godzilla and then she just…”

It wasn’t right, seeing something that big and majestic curled up on the ground like a moth that had flown into a bugzapper, half fried and not moving.

Mark hated the titans, but he couldn’t bring himself to hate Mothra, not the only titan that had given Godzilla a fighting chance against Ghidorah.

“She’s gone, Maddie.”

“No!” Madison struggled against him, and he was too weak from the crash to fight it as she pushed at his chest until she could sit up and glare at him.  Her dirty cheeks were streaked with tears, fear and loss having taken their toll, but apparently one of them had regained their second wind.

Not bad for someone that had a house crushed on top of them.

“She’s not dead, Dad! We have to go back!”

“Maddie, I-“

“Dad!  Don’t ask me how I know, I just… I just know that she isn’t dead!  We need to check on her!”

Mark groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes.  When he dropped it, he didn’t even have the energy to jump when he discovered Sam and Dr. Chin standing over them.

Sam fidgeted a bit with the cuffs of his sleeves, then spoke.  “I mean, well… it probably would be best to confirm one way or the other, right? It’s not like anyone could get close during the fight.”

Mark shook his head and turned to Dr. Chin.  “Dr. Chin, please talk sense into these two.”

The woman hummed thoughtfully as she tapped a few keys on the laptop in her left arm.  “It may not be as far-fetched as you think.  You know of the legend of the phoenix, yes?”

“The fire-bird that never dies?”

“Not quite, it dies, but is reborn again from the ashes.  For some time, I thought that the legend was a reference to Rodan, and people misunderstanding his ability to handle extreme temperatures.  The fire aspect certainly fits.  But I have been researching the images taken of carvings from Godzilla’s home, and I’ve come to another conclusion.”

Not caring about possible dirt, Dr. Chin sat down on one side of Mark and Maddie, arranging the laptop on her knees and angling it so they could see.

“You see these?” She let the question hang in the air.  The carvings needed no explanation.

A moth, with shining wings. The same, crumpled on the ground. An egg.  A larva hatching.  A cocoon. And finally, the same moth again.

“Perhaps, along the way, the myth of the firebird and the myth of the flying creature that could be reborn got entangled.  After all, it has been a very long time since the Titans were active around humanity. There’s bound to be some confusion along the way.”

Mark snorted.  “Or maybe it just means that there are eggs inside of Mothra, and they’ll only hatch after she dies.”

“In which case, we need to go and check, Dr. Russell,” Dr. Chin admonished him.  “Besides, would you rather have one Mothra, or multiple ones?”

Mark shuddered.  He never thought that the option of a giant bug rising from the dead would be the better option, but here he was.

“Fine.  Have the titans left Boston yet?” Or what remained of Boston, anyways.

“No, but with Godzilla still there I do not think they will give us any trouble.”

Mark raised a brow, but Dr. Chin laughed at him.  “If Godzilla wished us harm, he could have easily done so after waking him up.”

He grimaced.  Oh, yeah, that was another thing that was going to feature in his nightmares later, wasn’t it?  That massive titan leaning down with a face that shouldn’t be that expressive on something so reptilian.  Godzilla couldn’t speak, not in any way humans could understand, but his message had been loud and clear.

‘While I appreciate that, if you ever set off a nuke in my face again, I won’t react so well next time.’

“Dad, please.  I just want to check on her.  I think she’s the only Titan that actually likes humans.”

Mark sighed.  He hated being outnumbered, especially against good arguments.  “Fine. But right afterwards you are going to get some food in you and a full medical exam and some sleep, young lady.”

“Deal.”

***

Even if they were reasonably sure the Titans weren’t going to attack, they still gave them a wide berth on the way back.  When the transport landed and they stepped out, Mark shivered a little at finding Rodan eying them with a hungry look.  A low rumble from Godzilla made the giant flyer flinch and lower his head, not meeting the Alpha’s eyes.

Godzilla, though, was watching them.

Madison paid it no mind, rushing forward as quickly as her aching body could to the giant creature curled up on the ground.  In the light of day, with those massive wings spread in tatters across the rubble, Mark couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity.

“Ewww…” Madison had reached out a hand, only to pull it back covered in a thin slime.  Dr. Chin immediately took the girl’s wrist and wiped it off with a cloth, then placed the cloth in a baggie and stowed it away in her coat. Mark could relate to that, at least. A sample was a sample.  “Why is she gooey?”

“That… that’s a really good question, Maddie.  She’s only been down for an hour or so.”

“Well, one way to find out if she’s dead or not,” Sam said, almost cheerful as he pushed past carrying a massive piece of equipment in his arms.  He set it down beside Dr. Chin, and it didn’t take long between the two of them to have it fired up and scanning the giant moth.

A faint, soft thrum. Several long moments went by. Then another.

Dr. Chin grinned.  “Well, maybe she’s not as dead as we thought.  Her heartbeat is very slow, but it’s there.”

“Or she could just be on the verge of death,” Mark argued, though he was distracted by Maddie splatting herself against the giant moth’s face with a delighted squeal.

“Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Look at her wings.”

Mark blinked, then took a closer look.  It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing, but…

“Are they… smaller? And getting shorter?”

“Looks like it,” Sam said. “She may be drawing them in to use as fuel reserves for regenerating.  It’s got to be energy intensive, even for a Titan.”

Mark took the time to help free Madison from the sticky goo on the giant bug’s face (she was getting all the showers after this) while watching the huge wings slowly get drawn into Mothra’s body.  Meanwhile, the goo all over thickened, and when the wings grew short enough, they slowly began to wrap around the giant bug.

“She’s forming a new egg,” Dr. Chin whispered.  “I think she’s going to be alright, given time, Madison.”

A rumble and a shake of the ground startled them all, followed by another.  The ground shaking became more constant, with ebbs and flows, and Mark looked up to find that the other titans were leaving.  Rodan gave them another look, but took off in the opposite direction with another warning growl from Godzilla.

Hopefully he would be able to convince the hungry bird that humans weren’t on the menu.

Godzilla, though, was coming right for them.

Feeling very much like a mouse going up against a heavyweight wrestler, Mark tugged Maddie a little closer protectively as the Alpha Titan loomed over them.

It was only when he leaned down that they realized he wasn’t looking at them, but instead the steadily forming egg.

Maddie wrenched free and ran up to it, then turned around and spread her arms wide, giving the Monster King a defiant glare.

“Maddie!” This was it. This was how Dr. Mark Russell died. A heart attack from watching his only remaining family sass the most dangerous creature on Earth.

Godzilla snorted, his brows quirking in a way that on a human would indicate amusement.  With shocking gentleness for something so huge, he leaned down further, bracing his front paws… hands? Mark wasn’t sure… on the rubble to keep from falling over.

With the utmost delicacy, he allowed Madison to reach a cautious hand out and place it on the pebbled hide at the end of his snout.

Mark would never understand Madison’s insane need to pet any creature she came across, no matter how huge or dangerous.

After a moment, he pulled his head away, then loomed further over them all.  Madison breathed out a sigh of relief.  “I… think he’s helping.”

Dr. Chin looked like the holidays had come early as Godzilla opened his massive jaws and breathed out a blue mist, which slowly settled down over Mothra’s giant egg and then sank into the newly formed shell.  “Does Mothra also eat radiation?  Is that what she did during the fight, give some to Godzilla to keep him going?”

“Whatever it is, looks like he’s giving it back.”

Seemingly satisfied, Godzilla slowly heaved himself back up.  He gave the egg and the humans one last, unreadable look, then turned and lumbered in the direction of the ocean.

The entire group let out a long exhale.

On the way back to the transport, Madison chewed a little at her bottom lip, grimaced at the lingering taste of Mothra-goo, then looked up at Mark.  “Dad?  I want to be here when she hatches again.  I want her to have a better life this next time around.”

“Maddie, she could be an egg for hundreds of years.”

“Then I want to be here as long as I can.  We owe it to her, to keep her egg safe.  She helped save, well… everyone.”

Dr. Chin shot him a knowing look.  “Maddie is the only one left from the original group studying Mothra.”

Mark sighed.  “Fine.  But I expect you to keep your grades up.”

***

Fifteen Years Later

For the past month, the egg had been showing signs of activity, but the sensors today were showing readings off the known charts.

This time, there were no taser guns or anything like that awaiting Mothra as she broke through the shell.

Instead, just a woman, with familiar kind eyes, who reached out a hand to place it on the new larva’s smooth, warm carapace.

“Hey girl…” Dr. Madison Russell murmured.  “Things will be different this time.  I promise.”

And then she smiled as Mothra delicately nibbled at her hair.  All was right with the world.

The phoenix had risen once more.

[shady-glasses]

(31) Question For Your OTP - SeroKami

Is it SeroKami? KamiSero? Idk man. @tenseii told me to post this so they could read it so here you are!

Original Post

1. Who in your OTP is the serial butt-slapper and who is constantly getting their beautiful butt slapped?

You would think it's Kaminari? But it's actually Sero. A good slap on the butt after a good training session amongst bro's that leaves Kaminari flustered and red faced mayhaps?

2. Who wants to be immortal and who wants to die before they’re old?

Kaminari is ready to go okay, but Sero is like “death? Nah.. not, yknow, feeling that..”

3. Who smokes and who pulls the cigarette from between their lips every time they try to light one?

Kaminari tried to smoke once in high school to look cool, and Sero would put up a big fuss, which Kaminari actually appreciated because it gave him a perfect excuse to stop and, thank god, he actually hates smoking.

4. Who always has cold hands and who is always warming them up for them?

Sero is a skinny tol boi with zero circulation who always has freezing hands. Kami 'warms them up' (i.e Sero puts them up his shirt and uses his lower back for warmth while smiling as Kaminari shrieks)

5. Who plays candy crush in important meetings and who elbows them in the ribs to make them pay attention?

I'd say Kami, except for instead of candy crush, it's the minecraft pocket edition.

6. Who can fall asleep anywhere (and does) and who has to put them to bed?

I empathize with this cuz?? thats me af?? but I'd say Sero during exams. He probably stays up all night and crashes right after so Kaminari piggy back carries him back to the dorms, but not before drawing on his face.

7. Who is the genius procrastinator who wings every test but still comes away with straight As, and who takes preparation and conscientious work very seriously?

They both kinda stupid lol. But Kaminari is by far the one who tries to 'wing it' the most.

8. Who takes their coffee black and who likes it with milk and two sugars, getting called a pussy by Person A?

Sero doesn't even really like coffee, however, when he has it he takes it b l a c k because unlike SOME people,, hes not a pussy

9. Who initially seems shady but turns out to be a cinnamon bun, and who initially seems like a cinnamon bun but turns out to be shady?

Everyone in 1a thinks Sero is soooooo soft and sooooo friendly, and they almost don't believe the  “one time he filled my shoes with whip cream at a sleep over” stories. And then Kaminari is just trying his best over here, drinking his respecting women juice, staying in his lane (most of the time).

10. Who moans and talks with their mouth full whenever they eat good food, and who tells them to stfu but can’t help laughing?

Kaminari is loud at everything he does and just doing that teenage boy thing where they moan and Sero is like “dude stop” and they make a bunch of over-exaggerated sex moans with a mouthful of cheeseburger and Sero is laughing and trying to cover his mouth like “OHMYGOODNESS, DUDE, STOP WE'RE IN PUBLIC!”

11. Who gives the bear hugs and who is always sidling up to them and snaking their arms around their waist?

Kaminari just like.. hugs.. okay.. like, he and Kirishima are chronic platonic cuddlers, but that doesn't mean he's had his fill of boyfriend hug time so

12. Who still buys juice boxes and fruit snacks to put in their lunch?

Kaminari FOR SURE. He may be a 22 year old pro hero with a real job, but fuck you fruit-by-the-foot still go just as fucking hard as they did when he was five so yes he's still going to eat them

13. Who packs the other’s lunch and who repays them in sexual favours?

You know Sero does the shopping, so that is def where the fruit snacks in Kami's lunch come from so, y'know, Kami has gotta show his appreciation somehow? ;) ;) ;)

14. Who leaves notes in the other’s lunch and who tells them they’re dumb (but secretly has a collection of every note Person A has ever written them)?

They both do! But not just in lunches, also on laptop screens, on the bathroom mirror, on the microwave, etc. Being pro heroes mean it's hard to find time to see each other even when they live together, so little notes get left out to show they were still thinking of the other.

15. Who unconsciously holds their breath the first time they kiss, and who pulls back and says, “Breathe…”?

Ohhhh def Kami, cuz lets be real, its 100% his first kiss, and he's really scared of fucking it up.

But it's short and goes fine, and is so much more perfect than he imagined, and he thought all first kisses were supposed to be awkward but? It wasnt? And all the emotions build in his chest and he's not quite ready to open his eyes yet because it's kind of a lot right now. And he can feel Sero's breath ghost over his lips as he run's a hand through the buzzed blonde hair at the back of his neck and tells him to, “Breath” with a little laugh.

16. Who gets arrested for a petty crime they committed by accident and who bails them out?

They heroes so probably no criminal records BUT Kami did get detained y police after a drunken fist fight with Mina in a denny's parking lot (long story, but she won).

17. Who grabs the other’s hand just as they’re getting out of bed and pulls them back under for cuddles?

Sero is def the “5 more minutes” kind of guy, and his boyfriend has, yknow, actually fat on his body, so hes w a r m, and so knew apartment law is he can't leave right now its officially illegal because Sero would freeze to death and that'd be murder

18. Who gets mad about something unrelated to Person B and punches the wall, and who patches it up and kisses it better?

Neither cuz thats a unhealthy habit yo, but have they taken blow's for each as pro heroes? Yes they have! Sero is probably more likely to take a hit, and shrug off any injury though.

19. Who has the plain black phone case and who ordered one with cat ears off ebay?

Kaminari thought the sleek black would be cool and edgy, but hes also clumsy, and has almost dropped it a LOT. So Sero buys it for him and Kami uses it just to spite him.

20. Who likes to drive with the music blaring and who is too shy to sing along?

They both blast their music, and when alone will sing along with each other (power ballad duets?) but with others Sero will usually only hum along as he's not the most confident in his voice.  

21. Who’s the fantastic kisser and who has the beautiful eyes?

Sero is probably the better kisser, but they both think the other person has the prettier eyes. And yes, they have fought about it.

22. Who has the sunshine smile and who has the seductive gaze?

Sero has that smil, you know the one okay. And Kaminari “sex eyes” Denki doesn't have the most perfect teeth, but he has a whole lot of libido to make up for it lol.

23. Who gets offended by the intensity of the other’s crush on a celebrity?

Sero logically shouldn't be jealous of Briteny Spears but like.. how can he compete with that? It's Briteny Spears, she is far superior than him, he wouldn't stand a chance! So yeah he's a little bitter about it, and kinda wishes his boyfriend would pick a less pretty celebrity to crush on.

24. Who is embarrassed that they have to wear glasses sometimes and who wants them to wear them in bed?

Kaminari is that kind of guy who's mark's go up like, 20% after he gets glasses because “Wait, the write the notes on the board too?” or some shit. But glasses are kinda lame in his books, so he wears contacts, and tells literally no one about it at first. Sero likes them though! He thinks they’re cute.

25. Who cheats on the other then immediately begs for their forgiveness?

Sero: I dont want to hear it

Kami: BABE IT WAS JUST ONE NIGHT! I PROMISE!

Sero: Go cry to Briteny, cuz i honestly dont care

Kami: It was one concert! How could I pass up Britney Spears LIVE in concert?

26. Who is the jealous one and asks why the other was being so flirty all night, and who is oblivious to their own charms?

Sero is just nice okay? How was he supposed to know that girl at the side bar was flirting with him, he just thought SHE was being nice? He legitimately doesn't notice anything is wrong until he has a possessive hand around his waist and a lapful of his boyfriend to help him clue in.

27. Who orders a milkshake with their food and who orders a soda?

Tbh they broke, so they go splits and get a rootbeer float, because compromise

28. Who runs their battery down to 1% and who feels the need to charge theirs at 80%?

Kaminari is a walking power outlet so he is fearless when it comes to phone battery like “yeah I can make a phone call with 3% it's fine” and Sero over-charges his phone so know the battery drains super fast now. 

29. Who has the excellent singing voice and is always singing around the house (and for Person B), but has no interest in going professional?

Kaminari actually has an amazing singing voice, probably because he has been singing for as long as he can remember. The pro hero life has always been the life for him though, so he'll stick to small 1 person concerts for his boyfriend while making eggs.

30. Who would rather be barefoot if the setting is appropriate, and who has the huge and spectacular shoe collection (possibly also socks)?

Kaminari may be a fashionably challenged preteen but he glows up okay? So he has WAY to many shoes than he needs, and Sero does not care for it. Sero has like, 5 pairs of shoes tops, and ofc he doesn't wear shoes in the apartment because he's not an animal.

31. Who takes their liquor on the rocks and who likes it neat?

I feel like after the 'fighting mina in a denny's parking lot' thing Kaminari isn't much one for hard liquors anymore anyways. So Sero is way more the kind of high class scotch guy.

[sonderlivra]

Eruri Valentine’s Weekend 2k18 Collab with the lovely @autiacorart !!!

A late submission, but hopefully worth the wait! :) It was a blast working with such a talented artist! <3

Blackout Café - A Modern Eruri AU

Summary: Levi is a grumpy dork. Erwin is a sappy dork. Basically they’re both dorks. And they meet at a coffeeshop.

Warning: Swearing ahead, oops.

“Fucking shit,” Levi swears, hurrying down the street. A power cut. Who the fuck expects a power cut in this day and age?

He is still grumbling when he bursts into the coffeeshop, looking around a little wildly for the electric socket.

“Fuck,” he swears again. He had forgotten that this was one of the smaller, less pretentious coffeeshops. It was why he liked the place, but right now, he wishes he was somewhere else, anywhere else that has better aids for his dying laptop.

But there is just one table next to a socket and that happens to be occupied, and he doesn't know if he can make it to another coffeeshop in time. Fuming, he stomps over to the counter.

“I need to charge my laptop.”

“Oh we can charge it here for you sir-”

“I need to work.”

The employee pales. “Um, I'm sorry sir, but that table is the only one-”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he snaps. He considers stepping on the other side of the counter where he could work next to the socket. It sounds unappealing and embarrassing and Levi glances back at the table. The man sitting there is casually reading something, the electric socket empty.

Bastard isn't even using it.

Squaring himself, Levi approaches the table, his mouth filling up with several gruff phrases that have worked for him before. When he reaches the table, the blond man, who has his head bent down over an unmarked bound book, looks up -and Levi freezes.

Holy shit. Levi is suddenly at a loss for words. This guy is hot.

His bright blue eyes are wide with curiosity and he smiles a polite smile as he says, “Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Levi manages to rasp and gestures at the electric socket next to the table. “I need that.”

The man glances at the wall and turns back to Levi, his smile widening. “Oh, by all means. Please, have a seat.”

Levi's brain short circuits again. What he meant was to ask the man to take another table, since there were quite a few empty ones around. But no. Mr. Handsome-Lawyer-Guy had to go and assume Levi wanted to share this table. Which he didn't, whether or not this man looked like an artist's rendition of fucking Apollo.

But his laptop​ beeps another “low battery” warning and Levi decides he doesn't care either way. With a grunt of gratitude, he plugs in his charger and slips into the chair opposite the man, resolutely keeping his eyes trained on the laptop screen.

With a deep breath and a mental command to fucking get a grip of himself, Levi pulls up the chat conversation and pings his client.

Sorry for the delay, Karl. I'm back.

The exchange goes on for longer than expected, with Levi having to upload and send a few of his drafts over the coffeeshop's slow WiFi. When he finally closes the conversation and leans back with a sigh, a low voice startles him by saying, “Busy day?”

Levi opens his eyes and blinks at the blond man: there is no mistaking that it was indeed him that spoke. His astonishingly blue eyes are still widened with interest, his firm mouth still has that polite, easygoing smile that -shit, the man has actual dimples. How the fuck is he even real?

“Uh, yeah.” Levi says, remembering that he was asked a question.

The man throws up a magnificent eyebrow. “Even on a Saturday?”

“Especially on a Saturday. Field day for freelancers.”

“Oh. I see.” He nods so understandingly Levi wonders if his earlier estimation was wrong, whether this man is not a lawyer but a shrink of some sort. Ew.

Again, the man's smile widens unexpectedly. “I'm Erwin,” he says, and offers Levi his hand. Levi takes it almost suspiciously. “Levi,” he mutters.

“An uncommon name,” the man says, eyes gleaming.

“As is yours,” Levi points out.

The man -Erwin -grins at that, showing a flash of neat, white teeth. “True.” He pauses, then continues, “By the way, are you staying? I'm going to go get myself another coffee.”

Levi hesitates. He really has no other plans, except for going back to the drawing board for Karl for the tiresome client. But he can spare a half hour, at the very least. Erwin is intriguing, and he would not mind getting to know him more. And maybe even get his phone number…

No. Levi is shocked at himself. He has never been this interested, this forward, to use Kenny's antiquated term, with anyone. His romantic track record is littered with casual flings and half-hearted attempts, and after Farlan, his record has been conspicuously empty for a long time. Is he really, finally getting out of that slump?

“Levi?” Erwin says softly, and he is brought crashing back to the present.

“Sorry.” He blinks and shakes his head. “I was trying to figure out my schedule. Yeah, I can stay for a bit.”

“Excellent.” The man beams at him and Levi feels another burst of indignance at his attractiveness. “What's your poison?”

Levi snorts. “I can get my own order.”

Erwin shakes his head. “I'm getting up anyway.”

Levi shrugs. “Oolong tea.”

Erwin’s smile falters.

“What?”

“You're ordering tea. At a coffeeshop.”

Levi raises his eyebrow. “So?”

Erwin recovers admirably and shakes his head. “Nothing. I should remember not to make assumptions too fast.”

“Meaning?”

Erwin laughs and Levi can't help but notice he looks a little flustered. “I was trying to guess what sort of coffee you'd drink,” he admits. “Sorry, it was presumptuous of me.”

Levi waves away the apology, interested. “So what do you think I drink?”

“Black.”

Levi snorts. “I drink it black when I do drink coffee so you're not half wrong.”

“Good to know. Well, I'll be back in a minute,” Erwin nods cheerfully and walks over to the counter. Levi quickly takes the opportunity to check out his appearance in the laptop screen, making sure his hair isn't too ruffled or that there isn't anything stuck between his teeth. When he is done with that, he sneaks glances at the counter over the top of his laptop. Erwin is massive: tall and powerfully built, he looks like he spends his free time pressing weights at the gym.

Damn.

Levi quickly switches to his phone and pretends to be browsing it when Erwin returns to the table. He places Levi's drink down with unnecessary grace before taking his earlier seat.

“Thanks,” Levi grunts, to which Erwin responds with another smile. “My pleasure.”

Ugh. Does he ever not smile?

They take a few sips of their drinks in silence, before Erwin thankfully breaks it. “So what sort of freelancing do you do, Levi?”

“I'm an architect.”

“Really?” Erwin looks inordinately interested. “Sounds glamorous.”

Levi can't help it, he lets out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, right. It basically involves drawing lines all day.”

“I'm sure there's more to it,” Erwin insists, leaning forward. “As far as I'm concerned, it's art.”

The statement endears Erwin to him, but he shakes his head. “There are some of us who would take offense at that. The drawing process is very precise and even scientific.”

Erwin waves his hand. “Of course, I understand that. But would calling it an art undermine its value?”

“In my eyes, no.” Levi admits. “But I draw for a hobby and maybe that makes me biased.”

“Did you draw that?” Erwin asks, his eyes gleaming. Levi looks down at his left arm, where most of his tattoo is peeking below the sleeve of his t-shirt. When Levi nods, Erwin hesitates and asks, “May I…?”

Levi can't help but feel a little self-conscious as he tugs up the sleeve. He's been asked this a dozen times before, so the request isn't exactly new. However, this is Erwin he's showing it to. Erwin, the real-life model, the hunk, the first man he has been genuinely interested in for years now. He remembers that this intense, insane pressure is why he hated dating to begin with.

Erwin’s eyes trace the rose curling down his arm, its vines twisting around a plain, sharp sword. It is filled with simple colours, the lines are basic, and the personal sentiment is evident only to him. He wonders what Erwin thinks of it.

“Stunning,” Erwin murmurs, and Levi hurriedly sips some tea to hide the heat in his cheeks.

“Thanks,” he mutters when he feels it is safe to show his face again. “It's my early work, though.”

“It's… absolutely perfect,” Erwin says, his voice still low.

That seems to break the spell, and Levi snorts. “What, really? ‘Perfection’ is a myth.”

“Perfection is subjective,” Erwin corrects him, that curious gleam still in his eyes. “Much like art.”

To that he has nothing to say. Meanwhile Erwin digs in his pockets and pulls out a surprisingly worn leather wallet. He plucks out a card and says, “Maybe this will substantiate my words. I'm an editor at a publishing house.” Levi takes the card, his heart thudding. “Maybe you've heard of us?”

Wings of Freedom Press. Levi has heard of them: an old company, going back decades, but not one of the big names. The title under the neat “Erwin Smith” simply says 'Editor’.

“I've heard of you,” Levi confirms. His chest is feeling more and more hollow with every passing second and the reason makes itself known with Erwin's next words.

“When I say 'perfect’ I mean it's exactly what I've had in mind for our next publication. We've been looking for an illustrator, and, at the risk of repeating myself, your art would be perfect for the book.”

A business proposition was all Erwin had in mind, nothing more. Levi feels like he could kick himself in the ass all the way home, the physical impossibility of it be damned.

“You just saw my tattoo. That's enough for you to make a decision?” He asks, stalling. Though the attraction is clearly one-sided, Levi feels resentful and badly wants to decline the offer. He only hesitates because this offer could be lucrative in the long run.

Just that, of course. No other reason.

“Art styles change over the years but remain, in essence, the same. I -let’s just say I have a good feeling about this.” Erwin says smoothly. “I can only say so much, but I urge you to consider it. I think you'll like what we can offer to you, and we would be thrilled to have you as a part of the team.”

“I already have a client.”

“Of course. If it doesn't take more than two months of your time to finish your contract with your current client, the offer is still open.”

Karl and his problematic specifications would be gone in two weeks at the most. That left him with little to no excuses for refusing Erwin.

“I understand that this is unconventional,” Erwin goes on, seemingly unaware of Levi's growing antipathy. “You can, of course, email me a portfolio of a few select works. We should be able to draw up a formal offer soon enough.”

Levi grits his teeth, still fingering the card. He wants to ask if he would have to work closely with Erwin but can't bring himself to say it. He doesn't know what he wants the answer to be, in any case.

“I'll think about it,” he manages finally. He doesn't want to make a choice now, when his emotions are all in a fucking mess, and regret it later.

Erwin suddenly seems to realise that he is sitting with a stranger in a coffeeshop. “Fair enough.” He swigs down the rest of his coffee and says, a little nervously, “I'm sorry if I came on too strong. I just -am very impressed by your skills and wouldn't want to pass up the opportunity to work with you.”

Stop. Just fucking stop. Levi wants to scream at the man, but he knows it is immature and unfair of him. Erwin wasn't flirting with him in the slightest, he sees that now. On the other hand, Erwin does seem genuinely impressed, and how can Levi blame him if he sees a business opportunity in that?

“Right.” Levi finds his teacup empty, and stands up. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Oh. You're welcome.” Surprised, Erwin stands up, too.

Levi hesitates, then offers him his hand. “Nice talking to you.”

Erwin’s face is almost unrecognisable, a stiff, polite mask. “And you.”

With a small, final nod, Levi gathers up his laptop and charger, and marches away. When he steps into the street, he stops for a moment, trying to remember if he's run out of cigarettes at home.

“Levi!” The coffeeshop's doors swing open behind him and Erwin strides out. “I forgot -is there any way I can contact you?”

Too surprised by Erwin's sudden reappearance, Levi nods. “Uh, yeah. Hang on.” He gropes in his pocket and finds his card case. Plucking one out, he hands it to Erwin, who squints at it as though it holds very important instructions. “And… this is your personal phone?”

Levi raises an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“Then, would it be alright if I contacted you on this number? Outside of work?”

Levi stares at him for the full moment it takes him to realise what Erwin is implying. “Are you asking me out?” He asks him point-blank.

A now-familiar smile spreads on Erwin's face. “Yes, I am.”

Levi's heart is thudding erratically again, the hollowness from before replaced by so much warmth he feels like he could melt right there on Erwin's dress shoes. (And who the fuck wears dress shoes on a Saturday?)

“Wow,” he comments. “You hire people better than you ask them out.”

Erwin chuckles and Levi notices the slightly pink hue of his cheeks. Is Erwin Smith, the real-life model, the hunk, blushing? Well, damn.

“I'm a little rusty,” Erwin admits. “And a lot more used to hiring people.”

“Clearly.”

“So, is that a yes?”

Levi gives him a contemplative look, taking in the deep blue eyes, and the strong shoulders, and the trim waist. “It's a maybe,” he begins, and does not miss the disappointed flash in his eyes before finishing his sentence, “for the illustration gig. You can definitely buy me another drink.”

Erwin’s face lights up so quickly Levi nearly laughs. The man is like a fucking Labrador. “I'll text you, then.”

“Perfect.” Levi throws him a last smirk before walking away, fighting the urge to skip like a demented child, the expression on Erwin's face bringing an unnaturally sunny smile on his own.

Power cuts, Levi decides, are really fucking underrated.

A/N: My knowledge of architects and their work is very, very basic. Hopefully I haven’t misrepresented you guys!

Thanks again @autiacorart for so beautifully capturing the essence of my story in your art! And thank you all for reading!

[mi6015handeldalegonzales]

Production Analysis

I have always loved movies, believing that stories on screen that take us back to the future and over the rainbow speak a language that is universal. They may not be real, but through this medium, they manage to influence our outlook on the world. This is what I think films are all about: a combination of technical and creative aspects that work in harmony to share the director’s perspective on life, and invoke specific emotions from the audience. My ultimate desire to be a filmmaker and share that perspective with my own audience is what drove me during my final project.

 I had many options in tackling this animation, be it showing off my skills, explicitly targeting the film industry, or just having fun with it. While any would have sufficed, I wanted to have full creative freedom to produce something that felt both powerful, and uniquely meaningful to me. Hence, I decided to make a personal short following a character that had undergone similar trials as I had in my life.

 Despite that, I believe that the project I ended up giving myself was too ambitious, which was corroborated by Goodfellow. This was due to having to condense the development of a whole storyline and an entire character into a two-minute animation, which meant a lot of scenes, and subsequently, numerous set designs to pack in all the information needed to convey the story. To cut this down, I had to change the story and replace the crash with a scene where the daughter falls and loses her ‘drawing competition award,’ in a bid to avoid creating an entire character arc for the animation. In this scene, the mum was supposed to arrive in her car to save the day, taking out her pen and drawing 3D wings for the daughter (the wings from the award). The story would have ended as the daughter takes flight, with a dedication fading into the sky that said, “To my mum and sister, who have always been the wind under my wings.”

 Despite how I pivoted, however, I still could not finish my changes in time due to my perfectionism. Instead of moving on to the next part of the animation, I kept finding small, negligible mistakes that I would take time out of my day trying to fix. Even as I submit my work now, there is still a lot that I want to change and improve upon. I ended up having to cut down the animation by half, including only the montage section of the initial concept, and ending it with, ‘to be continued’ for the animation to make sense.

 3D modelling was my favourite part of the whole process since I love seeing my sketches take shape in a 3-dimensional space. The process was not too hard, as I had modelled characters before, and I only needed to follow the same procedure, even managing to improve my method based on prior problems. In my previous projects, the clothes were all separate objects, causing too many tears in the model when animating. This time, I made the outfit part of the main body. The jacket was the only exception, but I still made sure to keep the vertices underneath far out from the ones for the main body, to prevent the different meshes from overlapping with each other. What I was not used to, and found more difficult, was giving the model high, defined cheekbones as it did not adhere to the basic round face I would normally create. Fortunately, with a few tweaks and experimentation, I managed to overcome this obstacle.

I’ve always found creating rigs a significant challenge, so I am thankful and fortunate that I was able to use the Advanced Skeleton, which cut my work down by weeks, compared to if I had done it manually from scratch. Even then, setting up the rig and weight painting drained me so much that my productivity levels plummeted in this section of the production process. This was because, having always preferred creative aspects over technical ones, I struggled with the lack of creative leeway in this part of the process. A challenge I encountered was the difficulty in animating natural eye blinks. When modelling, I gave the eyeballs an outer layer to create refraction from the light, making it more realistic. This layer was invisible, so I did not think it would matter that it protruded further than the eyelids. It turned out, however, that when rigging and making the eyes close, this did in fact cause problems. I did not have the time to fix these issues, and thus errors can be seen in the final animation. Still, lessons were learned; something to keep in mind for future projects.

 Ideally, I wanted a soundtrack that would elevate my project and help carry the weight of emotion I hoped would be conveyed by the short. However, it was tricky to find the right accompaniment due to copyright problems. Most free music online gave the animation the feel of a cheap advert, or made it seem like it was an amateur YouTube vlog. Even non-copyrighted lo-fi songs (which were my usual go-to) could not match the atmosphere I wanted. I even asked my housemate if he could produce a sample for me, as he is a DJ that creates some of his own tunes. Alas, that did not pan out as I kept changing the idea of my final piece and did not have the time to oversee the music production with him. Nevertheless, this may have been a blessing in disguise as I ended up finding a beautiful, free-to-use, fantasy-themed piano instrumental which yielded the right mystical and emotional ambience I desired. If given more time, I probably would have added several muffled, diegetic sounds to make the result even more atmospheric.

 The most excruciating part of the entire animation production was the creation of the 2D assets. This was because I did not have any drawing pads for digital art, and I also lacked a phone to take any photos of sketches, thus leaving my laptop mouse as my only option to draw with. Even the simplest assets were immensely tedious to make, which was the main reason why it took so long to make such a short video. I could not afford to get a drawing tablet at that time, so I just had to push through.

 Another, lesser difficulty was the colouring aspect. In one of the final project meetings with Goodfellow, he told me that he liked the colour scheme and aesthetic from the animation I submitted for the Professional Creative Production (MI6011) module and that I should try to incorporate that again into my final work. Of course, I took this as a challenge, not only to live up to expectations and previous standards, but to go above and beyond.

 It turned out to be an ambitious undertaking since colouring is not my forte. Most of my casual artwork consisted of sketches, and I was therefore not very acquainted with colour theory and design. To offset this, I took inspiration from themes of beautiful video games and movies that I liked, but had difficulty in combining everything into a uniform colour scheme throughout the whole work. I needed to make the entire piece coherent, and not like a patchwork painting reminiscent of Picasso’s more surreal works. Make it look like it is all part of the same cartoon and not a total mess of idea vomit dump. This was made even more taxing because I already had the inconsistency between the 3D and 2D characters. I eventually overcame this barrier by finding a reference point, and using hue tool to make everything match.

 In my opinion, the post production process was the most effortless part of working on this project, as I was experienced in After Effects from even before university. Neither did I find the merging of 3D and 2D that difficult, as I used an artificial greenscreen in Maya when rendering.

There were many fundamental obstacles I had to overcome during this project, but the main issue was timing and execution. Nonetheless, I am immensely proud of what I was able to produce, which showcases the tremendous amount I learned in this course, for which I am so very grateful. However, I am in some ways disappointed and unsatisfied with what I am submitting, compared to the scope of ambition in my head when I initially pictured my final film. I had a lot I wanted to give, but much of it was just not practical in the final delivery. Even then, from failure comes lessons, and I believe that despite not achieving everything I had hoped to, I have discovered a lot just from the production process. I have emerged not only more knowledgeable in both the creative and technical aspects of different areas of the pipeline, but I’ve also developed my work ethic, and myself as a person. The project has left me with so many takeaways, and I’m determined to continuously improve from here on out.