#I wanted to try to do something that would more or less align with what might could actually happen lol

[pursued-by-the-squid]

iii. location drop

pairing: eventual gi-hun x gn!reader x in-ho

word count: 7.1k

ao3 | masterlist

Young-il is so… interesting. In many ways he reminds you of yourself – he’s always studying the world around him, always listening, he can be remarkably serious and endearingly lighthearted in the same conversation, and he’s wickedly sharp. Much smarter than you are, that’s for sure, but you like that. It’s nice to speak to someone with so much life already lived and hear the way they view the world, even if it doesn’t always align with your own ideals. He challenges you, too. In ways you never would have imagined. That’s what makes him so intriguing.

His smile catches the light when you see him. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he says as he starts shrugging off his coat. His cheeks are flushed from the cold, his hair pushed away from his face in an elegant swoop.

You hum lightly into your cup. “Business stuff?”

Young-il nods. “Of a sort.” He eyes the extra cup of coffee on the table as he moves to sit across from you. “Trying something new?”

“It’s yours,” you correct. “Black Americano, right?”

Surprise tints his features and you feel a stab of pride for managing to catch him so off guard. “You remembered.”

His reaction shouldn’t sit as warm and cozy as it does in your chest, but you don’t fight it. Still, you try to play it off with a shrug. “I remember all kinds of things.”

A hand slips into his trouser pocket and it doesn’t occur to you until he’s pulling out his wallet that he wants to repay you. Before he can utter a single suggestion, you stop him. “Oh, no, that’s alright. I don’t mind,” you reply with a politely dismissive wave. “You can cover me next time, if you want.”

Truthfully, you’re still adjusting to the idea of purchasing whatever you want when you want it. You can’t (and won’t) go out and buy a brand-new sports car or anything, but even something as mundane as a coffee feels like a splurge with how strict you’ve been in the past. Gi-hun wants you to be happy, though, to have all your needs met, and if that’s what he wants…

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” you say after a moment. That wasn’t exactly what you had intended to say; you were trying to find something to say that wasn’t the same boring topics he always hears from you, but your mind had wandered and gotten lost somewhere between point A and point B.

Young-il’s still a bit taken aback, but you can see him smiling when he takes a sip of his coffee. “You would have missed me that much?”

He’s very clearly teasing you, but the fact of the matter is that yes, you would have missed him if he hadn’t shown. You don’t have many friends apart from him and Gi-hun who is, more often than not, busy doing whatever it is that he does. It’s not exactly a normal friendship, no matter how hard you strive to make it so, no matter how much you’ve come to care for him. Young-il, on the other hand, is less closed off, more engaging. He’s a normal businessman who does normal things like drink coffee and do guest lectures for some of the business students. You haven’t been able to see any of his talks yet, but you have a feeling they’re good.

You hide your own smile behind your cup when you go to take a sip, hoping that he doesn’t see just how tickled you are. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The conversation flows loosely from there. Young-il has recently taken over his business from the previous owner and as a result, his time is limited. Too many meetings, too much paperwork, and a lot of strategizing. You, on the other hand, have several short papers due this week that you’ve been putting off, not to mention the final project looming in the back of your mind as each week ticks by.

“There’s an extra credit module I was thinking of completing,” you say casually, as if your heart isn’t about to beat right out of your chest. “We have to visit the art gallery here on campus and write a reflection about our experience.”

You’ve been thinking of asking him to go with you. It makes sense considering he’s always on campus. You might almost think him a student if you didn’t know any better. But the difference between thinking about asking and actually asking is great – you don’t even know if he likes art, if he cares enough about your casual little friendship to meet you outside of weekly coffee meetings and words exchanged in passing on your way to the bus stop. Maybe you’re asking for too much. What if he thinks you’re weird?

So it takes you by surprise when Young-il leans forward slightly, his curiosity piqued. “I wasn’t aware there was an art gallery.”

You wipe a bit of liquid from the corner of your mouth. Could it really be this easy? “Yeah! They have a rotation of displays and visiting artists. The one we have currently is focused on surrealism. They’re displaying copies of some famous pieces, as well as art from several of our students.” Your eyes dart nervously over Young-il’s frame, trying to determine how open he is to the idea. He seems interested enough. “I haven’t been to a gallery in a little while and the extra credit would help raise my grade a bit.”

He nods thoughtfully. “It seems like you’ve already decided to go.”

“I think so, yes.” Your lungs constrict painfully below the canopy of your ribcage. If you don’t ask now, you’ll never find the courage to try again. “Would you like to go with me?”

A moment ticks by uneventfully. Then another.

Searching Young-il’s eyes tells you nothing. You can’t determine what he’s thinking, no matter how hard you look. The only insight his silence offers you is the weight of his gaze as he studies you, as if you were the art piece and he the seasoned purveyor.

His head tilts ever so slightly to one side. “You want me to join you?” He doesn’t sound disinterested in the idea, but neither does he sound fully invested.

You swallow nervously. “Yes. If you want.”

“Why me? Surely you have other friends you could go with, some of the students in your class, perhaps?”

Ah. So he’s not interested. You can feel your face heat up with the embarrassment of his rejection. You suddenly find the shapeless stain of a former coffee spill on the table inexplicably fascinating.

“I guess I probably should have asked one of them first.” You try to wrap the tail end of your response in a light chuckle, but it’s forced and uncomfortable. You end up grimacing more than anything else. “I’m sure you’re busy, what with your business and everything.”

What you want to say is that you wouldn’t go with any of your classmates even if you were paid to do it. What you want to say is that you’ve come to greatly enjoy his company and the little breaks in your otherwise monotonous routine that his presence provides. But of course, you can’t say any of that.

You reach for your drink, hoping to fill the awkward space with a couple sips of something tasty, but you’ve already drained the cup. There’s nothing left except for a few spare drops.

Young-il shifts in his seat, drawing your attention as he adjusts his sleeves. He’s rolling them up to his elbow, exposing all that previously unseen skin and the muscles of his forearms, and… Oh. Maybe this means more to you than you’d previously thought. Maybe you’ve developed a bit of a crush. That’s embarrassing.

“Next Tuesday,” he says, his attention still focused on the task at hand. “I have a break in my schedule around noon.”

For a few scattered inhalations, you’re left feeling lost. You were so sure he was uninterested based on the, well, everything about him, but now he’s saying exactly the opposite.

“I… Huh?”

The corner of his mouth twitches and for the briefest of micro-minutes, you think you see something soft hidden in his eyes. “If you’re free then?”

Right. Next Tuesday. Noon. Your brain putters around for a bit as it tries to play catch up to the conversation, but eventually the fog clears. You have an opening in your schedule around that time, too, funnily enough. The date is set – not that it’s that kind of date – and the conversation fades back into normalcy, but the entire time your heart is racing because Young-il has agreed to go with you and you feel an abnormal amount of excitement pooling in your stomach because of it.

The thing is, Gi-hun has told you before that you ought to make more friends. He knows that he is essentially the only person you spend time with on a regular basis and he’s not sure if he should feel guilty or honored by that fact. He should be happy for you that you’ve finally found a friend, that you’re getting out of your apartment and socializing. It’s just that when he had pictured a friend, Gi-hun had imagined someone around your own age, not… this.

The unknown man looks closer to Gi-hun’s age than yours. Not that that’s a bad thing. He’s your friend too, isn’t he? He simply finds it worrying. Older men and younger college students are something of a suspicious combination, no matter how refined and put together they seem. Like your new friend.

Still, there’s nothing harmless about meeting a friend for coffee. An older friend. Who doesn’t seem to do much apart from loitering around the business building and talking to you.

You’re fine, he tells himself, even as he pulls the brim of his cap down over his eyes and sips at his own drink. You can take care of yourself. But it doesn’t hurt that he’s here to watch over you, just in case. The last person in a suit to approach you had turned out to be a recruiter and it would be foolish of him to assume that you’re safe simply because you’ve thrown the card away and started heeding his advice.

Jeong-rae and his men are busy scouting the subways with a few more sets of eyes than usual to make up for Gi-hun’s absence. He has a pistol on him in case things go badly or your mysterious new friend turns out to be something he’s not, but he thinks (he hopes) that won’t be necessary.

Your coffee meet-up ends within the hour. Gi-hun has already finished his own drink long before, but he keeps sipping at his cup to sell the illusion that he belongs here, tucked into the corner of the campus coffee shop and watching you. He tries not to feel like he’s doing something wrong. Because he isn’t. He’s keeping you safe. If you’d had family or friends in the Games when he was there, he would have sworn to look after you and that’s all he’s doing now.

You head for the bus stop, your friend heads for the nearest parking lot. Gi-hun follows. He watches your friend settle into a very normal looking car – not obnoxiously flashy, but not a rundown heap of scrap metal either – and drive off, and he follows closely in his own vehicle. And if he gets a bit of a rush from tracking this man down and vetting him, then that’s his own business.

The man drives to a corner store and disappears inside for several minutes. When he comes out again, he drops a bag into the passenger seat and leans against the door while he smokes. Gi-hun suddenly pretends to find his mobile very interesting. He double, triple, and quadruple checks his incoming messages – no sign of the recruiter so far – and eventually finds himself pulling out his own stack of cigarettes and lighting one up.

By the end of the night, Gi-hun’s mission leads him to a hotel in one of the quieter pockets of the city. Your friend is entirely unthreatening and uninteresting. He feels a little foolish for letting himself get so caught up in his own paranoia – taking a gun with him? Really? Whoever he is, this man hardly looks like the same unhinged species of psychotic as the recruiter that had sealed his fate so long ago.

You can handle yourself, he reminds himself, perhaps for the fiftieth time today. And he knows it’s true. You’re smart and very capable, even if you are a bit trusting. You’re not the problem – it’s the rest of the world that worries him, the recruiters and game runners of society who could snuff out your light without blinking an eye. He won’t allow it, not even if it aggravates his paranoia and leaves him sleepless in the early hours of the morning.

Gi-hun will just need to keep a closer eye on you. To keep you safe. It’s a small sacrifice to make in return for your life.

In-ho carefully studies his reflection, smoothing a hand over his hair and straightening the collar of his shirt. He doesn’t usually wear a suit when he meets with you like he does when conducting Game business, opting instead for dark, soft things like turtlenecks and knit sweaters. Spring is finally here, but the chill of winter still lingers, so he suspects you’ll be neatly bundled as you were when he met you in the autumn. He’s mirroring you, trying things that subconsciously lure you into a false sense of security, and you’re falling for it every step of the way. It’s no wonder Gi-hun managed to worm his way into your life.

Gi-hun.

His mouth curls into a self-satisfied smirk. 456 had been a bit of a surprise, admittedly, a wrench in his otherwise perfectly executed plans. But In-ho has the training of a decorated police officer; 456 is gutter filth. And gutter filth, no matter how cunning, how desperate, or how rich, cannot overcome decades of rigorous training with the best police force in the country. He spotted Gi-hun the moment he pulled out of the campus parking lot – the rest had simply been a game that he was willing to play.

Today is a game of another sort. In his youth, In-ho had never been much of a flirt. Charming, perhaps, even suave if he was in the mood, but a flirt? It just wasn’t his style. But there is something to the Young-il persona that prompts him to try. Perhaps it’s the anonymity. Maybe it’s the low stakes and high reward – you’re not a genuine romantic prospect, you’re a target, and that means that it’s not his ego being bruised by your potential rejection but his predatory prowess.

Except you haven’t rejected him. You have, quite surprisingly, invited him further into your life. You have carved out a space for him in the otherwise uneventful and meaningless scope of your existence, and In-ho is painfully curious to discover how far he can push you before you fall completely.

He arrives at the gallery nearly an hour early, content to peruse the art nearest to the entrance and sufficiently prepare himself. It’s been several years since he has studied art in any meaningful way. He was more prone to it in the years before Oh Il-nam and Gi-hun’s Game, but he was more prone to many things back then – holiday phone calls to his brother, flowers at his wife’s grave. He doesn’t have time for such things anymore. Still, he finds the familiarity of the art, the artist, and the solemnity of viewership a comforting thing.

When you appear several minutes before noon, short of breath and clearly frazzled, In-ho finds it difficult to suppress his smile. You make your intentions so clearly known without ever realizing how transparent you are. Eagerness is written across your face so plainly, it may as well be a brand. Your eyes light up when you spot him, like a child encountering their favorite toy. Only – no, that’s a poor comparison. As young and foolish as you may be, you aren’t a child. A pet, perhaps. Clever enough with the capabilities you’ve been born with, but ultimately submissive to the hand of the master that feeds it.

“Hi,” you greet him with a flash of a smile. You’re already pulling off your coat only to grip it in your mouth while you start rummaging through your backpack, all before he can get more than a simple ‘hello’ out in response. Hardly a minute later, you’re settled with a notebook and pencil in hand, and your coat shoved haphazardly into your backpack. “Okay. Ready.”

He allows himself a moment of genuine amusement. “You seem eager.”

“Always eager to learn, Young-il-nim,” you answer with a little tap of your pencil against your forehead.

He takes the initiative to open the gallery door for you, reveling in the small victory of your poorly hidden surprise. “I take it you haven’t studied much Surrealism before, then?”

You shake your head. In-ho is keen to observe your expressions, but already you’ve tilted your face away to analyze the first painting, a popular Dalí piece that makes a clear impact on you. You murmur your way through the informative sign plastered beside the canvas with furrowed brows and inquiring, contemplative eyes.

“That’s so sad.”

He scans over the sign, confirming the information he already knows – a commentary on the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s, made by an apolitical artist who chose to side neither with the fascists nor the Republic that rose up to fight it. What is it about political neutrality that is so heartbreaking to you? Or are you, perhaps, more drawn to the hollow grief portrayed in the painting itself?

Before he can find the words to ask, you’ve already taken the initiative to expand upon your remark. “His sister was killed by one side and his friend by the other. But he still didn’t take a side.” The hand holding your pencil is hovering lightly over the sign, fingers almost but not quite touching the words – as if you were afraid to touch it and mar its tragedy with your own simplistic worldview. “I can’t even imagine that.”

Something akin to sympathy flares up inside him before quickly turning to the flush of displeasure. Not anger, not yet. “Imagine what?” he prompts.

At last, you turn your face and allow him the chance to swallow every minute, flickering micro expression. “Any of it. Losing your family to the people who are meant to help you and then losing your friend to the people who want to hurt you.” The knot in your throat bobs when you swallow. How curious that you seem to be so deeply affected by something you have no true understanding of. “I guess I wouldn’t know which side to choose either, but I can’t say that I’d want to side with the fascists.”

In-ho nods, unsurprised. No, he can’t imagine that you would either. He tries not to think too hard on the implications – of the painting, of your sudden swell of emotions, or of the memories already pressing hard against the interior of his skull.

Your head tips down as you scribble a few notes in your book, followed by the click of your phone camera. He glances over your handwriting, a mix of Korean and your native tongue, before you eventually step away, turning to the next piece. He stays, only for a heartbeat or two, eyes lingering on the canvas before finally deciding to trail after you.

Most of the pieces in the gallery are somewhat familiar to him, though he doesn’t care for all of them. Some are too fantastical for his tastes, some are too nonsensical. Others leave him feeling perplexed, as they once did when he was younger, more bereaved and less inclined to the logic that rules his life now. And then – then there are the pieces that remind him of the Games. Chess pieces in vast, unending landscapes. Peering eyes devoid of faces, studying the audience the way the VIPs study the players. Staircases that lead to nowhere and doors that open to nothing, tangling together like the labyrinthine maze of pastel walls he has come to call both his home and his work.

Your reaction to each of them is as predictable as ever. “‘We often believe we're being led to a higher place when perhaps we're not going anywhere,’” you read. Your pencil taps against the corner of your mouth. “Well, that’s a bit grim.”

He suppresses the urge to roll his eyes – barely. “Is it?” Surely you can see the logic in such an argument, even if you don’t agree with it? Or must he spell everything out for you?

The gears in your head begin to turn, slow and steady. “It sounds more like depression to me than an actually viable outlook on life. Maybe you aren’t going anywhere because you’re holding yourself back, you know? You’ve closed all the doors that you can escape through and now you’re ramming your head into the wall, wondering why nothing’s happening.”

In-ho’s exhalation is heavier than it usually is, the tone of it caught somewhere between amusement, contemplation, and disbelief.

“Not that I’m judging him for feeling that way, Mister…” You lean in to check the name of the artist. “M.C. Escher.”

“I suppose you find it hard to relate to – feeling hopeless?” It’s not entirely fair of him to say and he is more than aware, but he wants to see that spark in your eyes. He wants to hear you explain yourself. Prove to him how miserable the world is, that your vision is flawed.

But where In-ho had expected anger, he instead finds something more subdued. The subtle tilt of your head, betraying the indignation you feel at his assumption. The flexing of the muscle in your jaw. The deep inhalation that makes your ribs expand. You make a sound in the back of your throat, a quiet hum overflowing with enough emotions that he can’t possibly translate them all. “I didn’t say that,” you murmur. “I just… prefer to be optimistic instead. When I can be.”

You don’t seem to like the labyrinthine staircases leading nowhere and he wonders, not for the first time and far from the last, how you would fare in the Games. Optimism is beloved by the naïve – it won’t get you very far. How would you have fared in his Game? In Seong Gi-hun’s? How quickly would your optimism have killed you?

He takes another opportunity to study you as you shoulder past him, still clearly upset by his remark. You are such a sensitive thing. How do you manage to survive in the world burdened by the weight of your own sympathies? Is it Gi-hun’s money that eases your heart, makes it easier to ignore the death and corruption all around you? Is it your own ignorance that makes life bearable?

His hands twitch with the sudden desire to pull you apart and discover exactly what it is that makes you tick. What mechanisms lie beneath your skin? Would you cry if he pulled them out one by one? Would you rage?

“I’m sorry,” he says, coming up behind you as you move to the next collection of works. “I’ve upset you.”

“No,” you reply, too quickly for it to be anything other than a lie. “I just wanted to look at the others, that’s all.”

You’re a terrible liar, at least when you’re agitated. In-ho rests his hand on your shoulder, his tongue already sharpened with the blade of a few clever words, when he happens to look up and catch a glimpse of the painting you’ve chosen to study. It hits him all at once – the empty nights, the cheap bourbon and even cheaper whiskey, the agonizing pit in his stomach, the hospital bills – and suddenly, In-ho finds that he can do little more than stand there, his mouth agape, and sway against the current that threatens to sweep him off his feet.

René Magritte. L’Empire des lumières. He would know it anywhere.

He’s distantly aware of you turning to look at him, your shoulder twisting under his hand, your voice curling around the shape of a stranger’s name, but it’s little more than a vague, hazy noise in the back of his mind.

A brightly illuminated sky dotted with pearlescent clouds. (He thinks of the arenas, splattered with blood.) A darkened street. Trees silhouetted against the clouds. A house, lonely and empty, its reflection in the water below unfocused. (He thinks of the apartment he’d had with his wife, how empty it was when he returned home from the Games.) A single lamppost illuminates the darkness of the house. One. Alone. Sturdy and strong, blazing against the emptiness.

“What is it? Young-il-nim?”

“My wife...” The words croak out of him, unbidden, unwanted. He shakes his head to try and clear his thoughts, but he can’t shake the memories.

Your hands drop – wherever they had been on his person previously, he doesn’t know, nor does he care. All he sees, all he knows is the apartment he had holed himself up in after she died. Some small, cramped shoebox that offered less personality, less freedom, than the rooms he offered to his own soldiers. The two little fish on his desk, long dead by now. The books he left behind. The card from his first Game – the only thing left of her. The paintings.

The paintings.

He can still remember the first time he saw them. Drunk on grief and so violently angry at the world, he had stumbled his way through Seoul, reliving the old haunts from the happier days of his marriage. The theatre, the mall, the academy he had graduated from, the gallery where they met… He remembers his face being wet with spit and tears. He remembers peering in through the darkened windows, searching for something that no longer existed. He remembers the paintings, the isolated lamppost standing tall in a sea of hopelessness. He remembers thinking he may as well be that lamppost, trying desperately to illumine an abandoned house haunted by the Games that had stolen his hope, his humanity, his last moments with the only person in the entire world who could have saved him.

In-ho pries desperately at the air around him, trying to relearn how to breathe even as he’s swept below the current. He’s only vaguely aware that he’s left you behind, that his surroundings have shifted. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

He should have known better. Magritte is one of the most popular artists in the genre. He should have expected to see his works, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He was so focused on his game, on luring you further into his trap and wielding the victory over Seong Gi-hun’s head. He was so busy playing the Front Man that he had forgotten Hwang In-ho.

“I need to apologize.” It’s the first thing he says when he sees you again, almost two weeks later.

You wave him off very politely, but he can tell that you’ve already started to close yourself off to him and that simply won’t do. After everything he has suffered and endured to lure you and 456 into his trap, he will not allow his plans to crumble over a past he cannot change.

“It’s alright, Young-il-nim. I could tell you were upset. I’m just glad you’re okay.” Your eyes are sad for the first time since he’s met you. “I was worried.”

For a moment – the briefest, most fleeting of seconds – he allows himself the indulgence of your compassion. He may not need it, but it is a balm on the freshly torn open scar of his grief all the same. He covers your hand with both of his in thanks. The words don’t come for a very long time.

“My wife died eight years ago.” And he can still see her face even now, even after everything he’s done. “We met in a gallery, like the one here. She loved art, loved the theatre and music. She was… bright.” Like a streetlamp illuminating the darkened eaves of his heart. “After she died, that painting was the first thing I saw and it–.”

He’s struck by the onslaught of tears poking at his waterline. He shouldn’t be telling you any of this. Yet some ancient corner of his heart that had shriveled up the night he held her death certificate in his hands is crying out, desperate to be heard, and for once, In-ho doesn’t have the strength or will to fight himself.

“It reminded me of what she was to me – a light in an unforgiving world.” He swallows hard as the world swims all around him. He can feel your gaze on his cheek, your fingers curled around his. “I hadn’t expected to see it again and I reacted poorly.”

The swiftness of your reply nearly guts him. You press your body closer to his, from your shoulder down to your knees as you lean in, voice soft and eyes misty. “You didn’t… you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.” You rub your thumb over the back of his hand and all In-ho can do is stare. “I’m sorry you had to relive that. That’s… I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

It isn’t worth much, but the apology is kind and he appreciates it for what it is.

“What was her name? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“Min-jung.” Her face flashes across his memory again – the wide eyes and bright smile he had fallen for so instantaneously, the laughter, the joy. “Kang Min-jung.”

You repeat the name to yourself with a reverence he doesn’t expect, but then, he hadn’t expected any of this. For all the control he tries so desperately to cling to, In-ho is wildly out of his depth. He feels unmoored and listless.

“It’s a beautiful name. I’m sorry you lost her.”

He nods. “As am I.” It’s the truest thing he’s said in years.

“Is there…” Your mouth tilts into a frown as you search for the right words. “Is there anything I can do for you?” The inclination of his head and the exaggerated lifting of his brows encourages you to explain further. “I just feel bad. You wouldn’t have reacted like that if I hadn’t invited you with me.”

There, he realizes. It’s an opening, a crack for him to slip his fingers into and apply some pressure. A glimpse at control. After two weeks of drowning in memories and grief, In-ho relishes the thought.

“You have nothing to apologize for, [___]. But I would like to make it up to you, if I can.”

“You don’t have to–”

He raises his hand with a smile. “I would like to.” And because you are the naïve, optimistic thing that you are, you will say yes. “Allow me to drive you home today.”

The first time he enters your apartment is a bit surreal. It had been a hired hand to install the camera that he studies you through and he’s learned quite a bit that way – your practically non-existent breakfast routine, the things you watch on your TV (you’ve rewatched the same show at least five times in the last month and a half, surely there’s something more fascinating you could be doing with your time?), and sometimes he can even catch a conversation or two between you and Gi-hun. Those occurrences are always so interesting. But actually stepping into your living space provides In-ho with even more context to the knowledge he’s already gathered.

You have a very specific taste in candles, not wholly unpleasant but perhaps a bit of an acquired taste. There is an entire wall of your living room that has been unviewable until now, mostly wall décor of the variety people your age tend to obsess over like pop groups and Western franchises, but there are other things too. A photo album of your time spent in Seoul. A crisp, dried-up plant that might once have been green. Little trinkets you’ve clearly purchased at some hole-in-the-wall tourist trap. And the amount of books you own is surprising. Old textbooks from classes long since passed, well-worn Korean workbooks, even romance novels that would make any sensible person flush with shame.

“It’s just down there,” you say, pointing vaguely to your right as you shrug off your backpack. “The door doesn’t always close fully, so you have to push it a little hard.”

He nods his thanks and starts down the hall. There are two doors: one to your bedroom and one to the toilet, though there’s only one that he actually finds interesting. He manages to sneak a glance into your room as he passes, but the shades are drawn and the door is only slightly cracked, so there isn’t much to see. In-ho thinks that one of his cufflinks may eventually find its way inside.

The bathroom is as uninteresting as he had suspected it would be, though small things still catch his eye. He cannot truly recall the last time he was so thoroughly surrounded by the presence of another person. Your scent lingers in the hair products, body wash, and body spray, your personality sparkling in the bits of jewelry scattered on the counter. Your favorite color is made apparent in the towel, toothbrush cup, and floor rug, and even your underwear preference jumps out at him. You must have left them on the floor after you showered this morning.

In-ho feels a surge of memories flaring at the base of his skull, begging to be released, but he pushes them back. This isn’t domestic. This is business, plain and simple. The comparison is superficial at best and he will not entertain it.

He flushes the toilet to keep up appearances, washes his hands, then quickly undoes one of his cufflinks. It rolls quietly down the edge of the door until it finally stops somewhere inside your room, and he smiles to himself, just for a moment, to revel in his success.

You flash him a smile of your own when he re-enters the sitting room. “All better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

You’ve curled up on the sofa in his absence, scrolling absently through your phone as he meanders toward the front door. “Oh, are you- are you leaving already?” And don’t you sound so distraught at the idea?

“Unfortunately, yes. I have a business meeting in a few hours,” which is a blatant lie, “and I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” He goes to adjust his jacket sleeves one at a time, waiting patiently, patiently for you to rise from your seat and bid him farewell.

“Aw. Well, good luck with your meeting, I guess.” You reach past him to open the door. “Don’t work too hard, now. You might hurt yourself.”

In-ho chuckles. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He fixes his other sleeve, fingers fumbling with the empty space where there ought to be cool metal, and he halts mid-step.

Your eyes drift to the open part of his shirt sleeve where his wrist is exposed. “You okay?”

He schools his face into something more serious. “My cufflink is missing. I… I could’ve sworn I still had it in the car.” As if he actually cares about something so trivial.

Much to his delight, your entire expression crumples. “Oh no! D’you think you lost it somewhere in here, or…?”

You accept the lie so easily, it’s no wonder that 456 was able to approach you. Are you truly so gullible that you cannot see through even the simplest of manipulations?

“I’m not sure,” he hums.

“Can I see?”

True confusion wrinkles in his brow when he looks at you. “What?”

One of your hands lifts to point at his right arm. “The other one. Can I see what it looks like?”

In-ho nods and offers his hand without hesitation, twisting his wrist to allow you a better view, but he finds himself stilling as you draw nearer. Your expressions are always genuine, but often some level of restrained or distanced. You like him, but you try not to show it. Yet now, as you had only an hour before, all that hesitation seems to dissipate in the wake of this small inconvenience.

And then you touch him. It is a brief and unassuming thing, merely the press of your fingertips on his forearm as you tilt his wrist toward you, but for In-ho, you may as well have shot him point blank. Some strange uncertainty passes over him, accompanied by a tightening in his chest and a hesitation in his lungs.

“I’ll take a look around in here,” you say, as casual as you ever are and entirely blind to his current state. “Maybe it fell off when you came inside.”

The collar of his shirt feels too tight when he swallows. “I’ll check the bathroom.”

You aren’t afraid of him. The realization is akin to the detonation of a bomb. Here, in this moment, he is not Oh Young-il. Young-il is a vulnerable dream wrapped in just enough mystery to keep you coming back to him time and time again. In this moment, he is the Front Man, he is a man with decades of police training and cunning drilled into his skull. And you aren’t afraid of him.

He wanders into the bathroom with unseeing eyes, his forearm tingling in the same spot where you’d touched him. Your toothbrush stares back at him, unblinking and undisturbed by the intensity of his glare. How many years has it been since someone looked at him and was visibly unafraid? How long since he has felt the touch of anything beyond the clinical sting of forceps and his brother’s bullet in his flesh?

Hyung…

He squeezes his eyes shut against the sound of Jun-ho’s voice, the frayed nerves around the edges of his bullet wound suddenly twisting in agony.

“I’m going to check outside!” you call from the sitting room. “Be right back!”

This is ridiculous. Even as he shoulders his way from the bathroom to your bedroom, he can feel himself growing more and more agitated. The overhead light flickers on as he swoops down to grab his cufflink. You’re nothing more than a pawn in the grander game. You have no clue how incredibly unremarkable and minuscule you are. His gaze flits over framed photos of your friends and family, the unmade bed, the hamper of folded laundry and the lazy pile of dirtied clothes just beside it. You’re nothing, no one. He could squeeze the life out of you right now and no one but 456 would even miss you.

The tendons in his hands constrict, suddenly curling his fingers into fists. He could do it. You would fall apart so easily in his hands.

He looks to the small, cluttered table beside your bed. A clock, a bodhisattva figurine (likely from any number of the temples across Seoul), a phone charger, a book. You are so painfully mundane. Killing you would be a favor, to himself and anyone unfortunate enough to know you, and it would shatter Seong Gi-hun. That much he can be sure of. So –

In-ho pauses mid-step. His pulse ticks just below his ear. He turns.

The book on your table is brand new, he can still see the price sticker along the spine and the receipt you’ve manufactured into a bookmark, but that isn’t what draws his eye. It’s the painting on the cover, the name of the artist that makes him feel as if he’s just been dragged to the lowest depths of the ocean.

René Magritte – L’Empire des lumières.

He would know it anywhere. He spent five whole years staring at the damn thing from inside the four cramped walls of his shithole apartment. The first painting he saw after…

He rushes for the exit as fast as his legs will carry him.

“Did you find-? Are you okay?” You’re standing just inside the front door, your phone in hand and the flashlight still turned on, peering curiously at him.

He very nearly drops his car keys when he tries to snag them from the table. “I have to go.”

“Is everything alright?”

He doesn’t reply, can’t reply. There aren’t words. But your voice lingers long after you’re gone. Other things linger too, other pieces of the past that haunt him no matter the time or distance spent trying to disconnect himself. He feels flayed apart and exposed. He feels raw. He feels… angry.

He buys himself a bottle of whiskey on his way back to the hotel, the cheapest, shittiest brand with the most bitter taste. He drowns himself in it. He spends the entire night locked inside his hotel room, his insides pulling at his outsides, fingers itching to pull the trigger on a loaded gun. You, Gi-hun, himself, he doesn’t care who dies, so long as the influx of memories and regret and utter fucking loneliness dissipate and he is allowed a moment of peace.

But for a man like Hwang In-ho, for the Frontman, he knows there is no such thing. Peace is a luxury only afforded to a few, usually the rich fucks who fly themselves to the island to bet on lives and bloodlust.

You likely think you have that same peace, bloated as you are with Gi-hun’s money. You hadn’t been so different from him before 456 came into your life – a student with a dream, low on funds but high in hopes – except you had found favor where In-ho had not. There was no rich, pathetic billionaire with a guilty conscience to spare him several hundred thousand won when his wife and child were dying. There was no mercy to be found in the cruel and selfish loan sharks, doctors, or police chiefs. There had only been the Games and their unfaltering equality.

His lip curls into a snarl as he downs the last of the whiskey. Equality. 456 had shattered that illusion, but In-ho knows exactly what to do to piece it back together. After all, there’s only one place in the world where true equality exists.

[hugs-and-stabbies]

[ part 6 : end ]

[link to previous part]

and we're done!! I made yall some lil epilogue type of doodles for sticking by me through this tiny little comic! they're under the cut ^^

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: The Fawn Instinct.

Pairing: Yandere!BatFam x Reader (DC).

Word Count: 5.0k.

TW: Implied Non/Con, Implied Dub/Con, Kidnapping, Prolonged Captivity, Social Isolation, Stalking, Obsessive Behavior, and No Actual Incest, But Boy If Those Freaks Aren't Trying. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

If it’d only been Bruce, you might’ve been able to live with it.

You didn’t love him, but you could imagine a world where you tried to. Most of it was circumstance; as upset as you were about the whole kidnapping thing, it wasn’t exactly a Herculean feat to endear yourself to the idea of being a handsome vigilante millionaire’s stay-at-home captive-spouse. You had no room in your heart for the stoic, reclusive, untouchable Bruce Wayne, but you could remember the adoration you’d once held for your masked hometown hero, the pride that’d once given you the force of will to all-but carry a half-conscious man in a torn cowl and a familiar suit into your apartment and lie to the cops when they came knocking. If the conditions had been different, if he’d spent a little more time as something more intimate than a stranger and a little less damning than a captor, then maybe, you could convince yourself to love him. Or, convince yourself to try, at least.

But, the conditions weren’t different, and you’d never quite had the time you would’ve needed to align Bruce Wayne with his more heroic alter ego. It’d been doomed from the start – Icarus jumping from his tower, already knowing his wings were destined to fall apart.

That aside, though, there was the more glaring issue: all his fucking kids.

Calling them kids might’ve been too generous, actually. Only Damian and Duke were younger than eighteen, and as far as you were concerned, they were your saving graces – Duke for meeting the bare minimum requirements for human decency and Damian for adamantly denying you were anything but an unwanted burden on his father. The rest were more-or-less adults, as little as you wanted to acknowledge the nonexistent age-gap between you and your gaggle of stepchildren. They were grown. They should’ve known better.

Tim, for example. He had to be… what? Nineteen? It wasn’t the pinnacle of maturity, sure, but he should’ve known you’d be able to hear your own sheets rustling through the bedroom door, should’ve assumed that you’d know he’d know Bruce would be out on patrol until sunrise. He should’ve known to wait until you were in another wing of the sprawling Wayne estate, somewhere far away from the master bedroom, or better yet, skipped rummaging through your things entirely. You knew better than to dream, though.

The door was still shut, but what was happening behind it and who was responsible were both foregone conclusions.  It was Tim, because of course it was Tim, and he going through your meager possessions, because what else would he wait until Bruce was gone to do? Cringing, you rested your shoulder against the steady wood and knocked gingerly. “…Drake? Are you in there?”

Immediately, the rustling stopped. You went on. “I think Bruce is out, if you need him. Is there something you’re trying to find?”

It was a good out. An easy out. Thankfully, he was smart enough to take the bait. A few seconds later, the door cracked, a disheveled Tim emerging with a dark blush spread over his pale cheeks and his hands shoved conspicuously deep into the pockets of his hoodie. It was a struggle not to roll your eyes. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d come out with his dick still in his hand.

Your cheeks ached as you put on your dozenth unstrained, unworried, everything’s-fine-because-why-wouldn’t-it-be smile of the day and moved aside to let him out. “I’ll let him know you were looking for him when he gets home,” you assured, like you couldn’t see the way his bright eyes were fixed to the carpeting. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help. You all are just so heroic – it’s still a little hard to believe I’m a part of this at all.”

“You’re perfect,” he muttered, and you pretended not to hear him, cocking your head to the side. When he corrected himself, his voice was a bit louder, a bit clearer. “Don’t worry, I… I found what I was looking for. You don’t have to bother Bruce.”

“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He’s so proud of you and your siblings, after all – it’s practically all he talks about.” A lie, but a fair one to tell. There was no reason Tim should have to know Bruce spent the majority of your time alone with his teeth buried somewhere in your neck, muttering paranoid fantasies about how many different ways you could be killed, mutilated, or otherwise indisposed by the members of his rouges gallery. “Honestly, sometimes, it’s hard not to feel like I’ve been here for years, rather than just a couple of months.”

You only realized your mistake when those bright eyes shot to you, suddenly wide and blown out with desperation. A hand darted towards you, and you stumbled out of the way, but not quickly enough to avoid Tim’s vice-grip on your forearm, to spare yourself the feeling of something cold and wet sinking into your sleeve. “You’re leaving?” The words seemed to slur together, spilling out too quickly to be restrained or refined. “You can’t leave. Bruce won’t be able to handle it, and Steph, she’ll—I mean, security-wise, we won’t be able to make sure you’re—”

Internally, you were keeping up a steady mantra of ‘Thisissogrossthisissogrossthisissogross.’

Externally, by some miracle, your smile never wavered, only growing sweeter as you cut him off with a chirping laugh. “I’m not going anywhere,” you promised, and then, after a slight lapse, “Would you mind letting go of me? It’s—uh, it’s kind of starting to hurt.”

As if on a switch, he let go of you entirely, pulling away as abruptly as he lashed out. There was a mumbled ‘I’m sorry’, and he made a swift retreat, disappearing around the next corner before you could so much as think about bringing up Bruce, again. You watched him go, only letting your expression fall once you were sure he was out of sight.

Without further caution, you slipped into your bedroom, glazing over the mess of pulled-out drawers, overturned clothes and scattered dirty laundry in favor of falling into bed, rolling onto your chest, and screaming into your pillow as loudly and for as long as your lungs would allow.

~

You tried your best never to be alone. It was a little draining, to be honest – having to keep a running chart in the back of your mind of who you could trust and who you couldn’t, constantly trying to guess whether it’d be safer to be alone with someone or if you were better off taking your chances on your own – but you’d learned your lesson the first time you’d fallen asleep in the Wayne’s at-home movie theater and woken up to Cassandra spread over you like a human weighted blanket, staring unblinkingly at your face and playing half-consciously with your hair. You tried not to leave yourself unguarded, after that.

Alfred was your first choice, Barbra your second, with Bruce as a distant third. Sometimes, you could get away with loitering near Damian (something you hated nearly as much as he did – you could only stand to be addressed as his father’s “jezebel lover” so many times), but Bruce was at one of Damian’s school events, leaving them both conveniently unavailable, and Alfred would be locked inside of his underground shooting range for another hour and a half, an activity you knew better than to interrupt. Meaning, you were on your own.

Meaning, you’d picked a very bad time to need something to drink.

The kitchen was deathly quiet, but you still made an effort to keep your head on a swivel as you made your way carefully to a corner cabinet, like stepping on the wrong tile would trigger a pit trap, or a flurry of arrows, or one of another million terrible things you hadn’t thought were possible before Bruce dedicated himself so entirely to proving you wrong. Mentally, you reviewed your haphazardly assembled schedule as you fumbled with the wood paneling and reached for a mug from the highest shelf. Tim was definitely out, touring local colleges on Bruce’s behest, Step was supposed to be in class, and Dick—

Your fingertips made contact with cool ceramic half a second before another, larger palm wrapped around yours, a broad chest pressing into your back as your mug was stolen out of your hand. You didn’t have to look to know who it was.

And Dick was on bed rest with three broken ribs. Right. Of course.

You really shouldn’t have bothered leaving your room at all. Suddenly, dehydration didn’t sound like such a bad way to go.

“Let me get that, baby bird.” You cringed at the petname, but nodded, letting Dick confiscate your mug and with it, your ability to make a swift exit from a conversation you’d rather not have. “Green tea, right? I know it’s your favorite.”

“On the mark as always, Dick.” There was just enough enthusiasm in your voice to overshadow the despair. You waited until you heard the muted click of an electric kettle before turning around and settling against the counter. “I wish you wouldn’t dote on me, though. I already feel useless enough as it is.”

“Don’t sweat it, I’ve been going stir-crazy all week.” He flashed you a quick smile – tooth and beaming – before pulling open the silverware drawer and rummaging through it, like Alfred would keep his teabags with his cutlery. He was topless, wearing the same pair of black sweatpants he must’ve slept in. He didn’t plan to go out, clearly, and it wasn’t like you had much of an alternative. “This is just the basics, too. For a while there, I had your breakfast, lunch, and midnight snack preferences memorized.”

You forced yourself to smile, albeit, not as brightly as him. “…did you, now?”

“Mhm. B had us running in-person surveillance before he finally bit the bullet and brought you home, and—” He cut himself off with a sudden laugh, shaking his head. “And, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that part. Oops.”

Mercifully, the kettle whistled before you could start to consider the implications, and you reached behind you, fishing two bags out of a teacup-shaped jar. It was easy enough to edge him out of the way, but not having to worry about pretending he’d ever made himself a cup of tea meant he could devote more of his energy to talking, so you still managed to lose, in the end. “He’s stingier with the surveillance footage, now. I’ve never seen him so jealous.”

“He can definitely be a little overprotective.”

You tried to keep your tone even, polite, but Dick was like his siblings – quick to action and slow to take a hint. A hand curled around the counter next to you, and you dumped an extra spoonful of sugar into the darkening water. “It’s just us in the manor, right?”

Another spoonful, just to be safe. “I think Alfred is—”

“Out for the day. Wayne Enterprise emergency – I let him know as soon as he finished down in the range.” In your peripheral, you watched his other hand come to rest on your opposite side, caging you in. “I wouldn’t mind the company, if you were starting to get lonely.”

Another spoonful. It’d be too sweet to drink, but anything not to have to look at him. “I’m afraid wouldn’t be a lot of fun, Grayson. Honestly, I was just planning on getting a little sle—”

“That’s perfect,” he cut in, too eager to wait his turn. “I’m a great cuddler.”

You curled your hand around your mug, hoping the warmth would be enough to ground you. Instead, it only burnt your palm, and for a second, you could imagine a world where your teeth weren’t buried in the plush of your cheek, where you didn’t have to remind yourself that turning around and splashing boiling-hot water on an all-but superhero’s face wasn’t a good idea. For a second, you genuinely considered it.

And then, a sound not totally dissimilar to thunder filled the kitchen; loud enough to leave your ears ringing and your adrenaline spiked. You flinched into yourself, but it only took a moment for fear to shift to relief as you noticed the bullet lodged into the wood less than an inch from your head. Your expression lit up just as Dick’s fell.

Without waiting for him to let you go, you slipped away – sprinting across the kitchen and throwing yourself into Jason’s – brave, bold, beautiful Jason – chest. He caught you one hand and finished re-holstering his handgun with the other, laughing as you hugged him as tightly as you could manage. Dick huffed, playful offense failing to mask real agitation, and you felt Jason brace against you. “Jerk off and shut the fuck up, Oedipus.”

Dick’s smile turned uneasy. “It’s good to see you too, man.”

“I didn’t come here for you,” he snapped, as short-tempered with his siblings as you wished you could be. He looked down, holding you that much tighter. “How’s my best girl holding up?”

“I’m just fine, Jason. I do think we have to have a talk about how you treat your brother, though.” You glanced over your shoulder to Dick. “A little privacy? You really ought to be staying off your feet, too.”

Reluctantly, Dick slinked out of the kitchen, hesitant to go but eager to nurse his wounds. You only went on once you were sure he was gone.

“It’s been awful. I found another hidden camera in my bedroom, and I think Tim’s tapping my—”

“I’ll do a sweep.”

He let you go, but you caught his arm. “Please, I know it’s important, but—” You cut yourself off, swallowing. It was irrational – the way you let your guard down so quickly around Jason. The mask never slipped around anyone else, whether you were afraid of them or they were one of your rare, precious exceptions. Jason existed outside of the Wayne family, though, outside of Bruce’s corrupting influence. He wasn’t going to hurt you. More importantly, he wasn’t going to let anyone else hurt you, either.

“But I really don’t want to think about that, right now,” you finished. “Just… just for a little while, alright? I don’t want to constantly feel like I’m walking on eggshells, at least not while you’re here.”

Jason stood strong for all of three seconds. With the fourth, he sighed, buckled, and shook his head, his exasperation brimming with affection. “How long until Bruce gets home?”

“Six more hours. He’s not due to check-in for another three.”

“I’ve got my bike out front. How do you think he’d feel about a joy ride?”

And just like that, you lit up. “It’d give him a heart attack.”

Jason pulled you close, kissing the top of your head.

“Perfect.”

~

Unfortunately, Jason’s visits were few and far between. You had to find ways of fending for yourself, in the downtime.

“I miss the city.”

Bruce glanced over his shoulder, gaze flickering over you before returning to the buttons of his dress-shirt. You sunk that much deeper into the mess of sheets and pillows, taking some small amount of solace in the way the cool silk felt against your warm skin.

(Sex wasn’t something Bruce came to you for often, but when he did, you gave it to him willingly, albeit with no more enthusiasm than was absolutely necessary. You rarely enjoyed it and always regretted everything you did or said during the act, but it was better than the alternative. Part of you trusted him, trusted Batman, enough to believe that he’d take your refusal for what it was, that you wouldn’t have to say anything more than ‘no’. The remaining overwhelming majority was able to look around you, to remember the way he’d held you down as he forced a needle stocked with medical-grade sedatives into your throat, and recognize that your opinion probably didn’t mean very much to him. Still, you couldn’t let things get that bad. Even if you had to surrender every other facet of your being, you couldn’t let things get that bad.)

“You hated the city. You said your landlord was a tyrant and that even the criminals were living paycheck-to-paycheck.” And then, after a second of thought, “And that there were more rats in Gotham than people.”

“Well, he was, they are, and you know I love animals.” You pushed yourself up, keeping a sheet bunched against your chest as you slumped against the headboard. “I was tired and overworked – you could see that. But, things would be different if I was staying with, say, my wealthy trillionaire boyfriend in one of the penthouse apartments that I know he has because his youngest son got in trouble for bragging about them in school last week?”

Bringing up his kids was a dirty tactic – the fastest way to get Bruce’s undivided attention. This time, when his eyes shifted in your direction, they stayed there, and he made his way back to your side of the bed. He collapsed next to you and, with no resistance on your end, pulled you into his lap. He didn’t seem to care whether or not his immaculately tailored, freshly pressed suit was creased in the process, but you did your best not to squirm. “You want to leave the manor?”

The first half of a frown tugged at the corner of your lips. “That’s not what I—”

“Elevated pulse, avoidant eye-contact,” he muttered. “Something’s bothering you.”

It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t wrong, either, but still. You would’ve preferred to be asked.

“…it’s your family,” you admitted, feigning guilt. “They’re all—” Horny, depressed, creepy little orphans. “—great kids, but it’s just been so much so quickly, and I think it… I think it might’ve been too much too quickly. For them and for me.”

“They adore you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Dick was close to moving back in when I decided it was too dangerous to leave you to your own devices.”

You melted into his chest, sighing. Reflexively, he curled around you – a good thing, if a bit claustrophobic. Bruce liked feeling like a shield between you and harm, between you and the world he couldn’t control. Hopefully, eventually, he’d realize he had more to shield you from than greedy landlords and villains who always seemed to be just out of sight. “It’s not that easy. It’s just been such a rocky adjustment period, and…” You curled your hand around his wrist and squeezed, hoping the force would be enough to communicate what you couldn’t put a word to. “I’m really afraid something bad might happen, Bruce.”

For a moment, he seemed to consider it. There was a kiss to your shoulder, solemn and lingering, then another to your cheek, more fleeting. “I’ll talk to them. They’ll give you space, if they’re told to.”

If he told them to. You doubted you held much authority, here. “And the apartment in the city? On the highest floor, tall enough to see from Gotham to New York?”

Bruce smiled, and your heart soared.

Then, he started talking, and it crashed back down, dying upon impact. “Once I know it’s safe for you, sweetheart.”

There was another kiss, this one to the nape of your neck, then another, lower down on your spine. A calloused hand slipped underneath the sheet still hugged against your chest, and you allowed it to.

Honestly, it would’ve been kinder if he’d cut you into pieces and fed you to the wolves himself.

~

You made a run for it as soon as the arguing started.

Arguing, not yelling – the distinction was minor, but significant. Yelling would’ve meant an injury, or a mission gone wrong, or something else that signaled a sudden complication that couldn’t be smoothed over with sugar-sweet sentimentality or orders issues with an ice-cold strictness. Yelling would’ve meant Bruce didn’t mind letting you overhear, which usually meant you didn’t need to be involved. Arguing, all hushed whispers and hissed explanations and vague warnings, was different. Arguing meant, more often than not, that they were arguing about you.

It was Tim’s fault, as far as you could tell. Barbara had been the one to find the conspicuously encrypted file on one of Dick’s civilian devices, the one to mention it to Stephanie as a point of concern who went to Tim within the hour, but it was still his fault. He’d gotten Bruce involved, let his need for approval tip the tenuously balanced scales that kept his family whole and you safe. He’d talked them all into waiting until Dick was close enough to confront in-person, stopping by for his weekly equipment pick-up and check-in. He was the reason you’d gotten close enough to hear something about ‘pictures’ and ‘inappropriate use of reconnaissance material’ before fleeing to the mansion’s foyer – the only part of the house you could be sure wasn’t occupied. If you were lucky, you’d only be there for half an hour or so, enough time for them to compromise on some non-solution and return to your carefully maintained status quo. If you weren’t, you’d spend the early hours of the morning—

Something small but forceful hit the nearest window, shortly followed by another projectile, then another. The glass was too thick and the world outside too dark to make anything out, but you didn’t need to see anything to know who’d come to your rescue.

Jason.

You rushed to the door, then hesitated. Jason would only get a slap on the wrist for luring you out of the estate, and Bruce could never bring himself to be that strict with you, but now might’ve been a bad time. Tensions were already running high. Your little disappearing act wouldn’t—

A sudden rush of footsteps clattering through the ceiling from the floor above you, hushed voices raised just to the point of audibility. None of it was entirely coherent, but Dick’s came the closest. You managed to make out a half-choked “If you’d just let me—” before someone cut him off.

With your better judgement reduced to buzzing static, you pried open the closer of a pair of huge, mahogany doors and slipped out of the estate entirely.

Of course, Jason was waiting outside, a small stock of pebbles still in his left hand and, of course, you threw yourself at him, letting him catch and spin you twice before setting you back onto your feet with an airy laugh. A pitch-black sports car was waiting at the end of the driveway, the engine purring loudly enough to drown the rest of the world out. “Rough night?”

“You have no fucking idea,” you muttered, breathless. “I don’t care where we go, just get me out of here.”

There was a reason Jason was your favorite. There was no argument, no prying, just his arm around your waist as he herded you into the passenger seat. Fifteen minutes and a little over fifty miles later, the mansion was little more than a dull glow on the horizon, and you could pretend you’d stopped thinking about Bruce entirely.

There was no effort to make conversation, as bad as you felt about pulling Jason into your prolonged tryst with self-pity. Instead, you sunk into the leather of his seat and fixed your gaze on the passing landscape, clinging to any detail you were able to latch onto as it flew by. It was possible, between the subways and boarded-over windows and perpetually overcast skies, to go days without seeing the sun in Gotham. Still, your life had felt brighter there than it ever did in Bruce’s estate.

Jason turned down a road you didn’t recognize, and you managed to find your voice. “Are we going into the city?”

“Even better.” He flashed you a smile, the engine purring as he accelerated. “You’ll like it, I promise. Just sit tight.”

As if you had much of a choice.

Road gave way to forest, forest to empty plains, and empty plains to the dilapidated remains of what you could only label as a long-abandoned amusement park – like Disney World if there’d been some terrible, possibly nuclear accident followed by twenty or so years of absolute neglect. Jason’s car glided past the rusted remains of an iron gate, past the corpses of rides buckled under their own weight, and came to a stop in front of a paint-stripped merry-go-round almost entirely sheeted be vines and weeds and overgrowth. You let out a low whistle as he threw the gear shift into park and, for the first time in any vehicle you’d ever shared with him, pulled his keys out of the ignition. He’d always left the engine running while visiting the mansion, but then again, you’d always been pretty eager to make a hasty escape, too.

“I love it, Jason. I’ve always wanted to get tetanus from a broken down carnival.”

“A fair, actually,” he corrected, slipping his keys into his jacket pocket. Like he expected you to try and steal them while his back was turned, or something. “My parents used to take me here, before I met B. There weren’t a lot of Ferris wheels after that.”

There was a short lapse, the sound of lips moving against teeth. You made the mistake of humming, of glancing over to him, of leaving yourself open for another question, and Jason, as nice as he was, was more than happy to take advantage of you. “So, when did you and B start…”

He trailed off, drumming his fingers against the wheel. You filled in the rest with a breathy chuckle. “When did I start sleeping with your dad?”

He jabbed an elbow into your side. “First of all, you can admit you’re fucking him or call him my dad, but you’ve gotta pick one.” You opened your mouth, already ready to spit out some dumb joke about what Bruce would’ve preferred to be called, but Jason cut in, sniping your stupid joke out of the air. “Secondly, answer the question. I get enough of your diversions back at home.”

“Being a buzzkill must run in family,” you sighed, but gave in quickly enough. “It happened once before the whole kidnapping thing, when he was staying at my apartment and sleeping off a broken leg. I hadn’t even seen him without his mask on at that point, but I figured it was a sign – destiny, or something.” You did your best to smile, slumping against the door. “It was dumb. He gave me a couple weeks after bringing me to the estate, mostly because of the crying and stuff, but things started up again pretty quickly.”

“Do you… like it?”

“Do you like asking about your dad’s sex life?” He flinched back, and laughing, you went on. “I guess I don’t care. There’s not a lot else to do.” You swallowed. “Would it matter if I didn’t?”

For someone with so many questions, he didn’t leave a lot of time for yours, the hypocrite. Moving on swiftly, he asked, “And the others, have they…?”

“No.” And then, after a beat, “Not yet.”

He seemed to relax, at that. His back was still straight, his shoulders still squared, but his grip on the wheel loosened, his jaw unclenching ever so slightly. You tried the handle – locked. Obviously. As if you’d ever get that lucky.

His voice was soft, sweet. The kind of tone you’d use on a child, or an animal, or a doll. “This would probably be easier in the backseat, right?”

“Let me out.”

“So you can go where,baby? It’s just us out here.” He laughed, resting a hand on your thigh. You slammed your shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge. “Hey, hey, this doesn’t need to get rough. I’m not going to be like Dick. The others – they’ll do it wrong, treat you like a cut of meat they have to get to before anybody else. I just need to make sure you get out of this in one piece.”

Nails embedded in leather, body crammed as far from him as you could force it be. You weren’t hyperventilating, but only because you’d stopped breathing entirely. “Let me out, Jason.”

“I love the way you say my name. It’s pretty, and delicate – just like you.” He sighed, shook his head. “I know you don’t get it, but I’m just trying to take care of you, like you’ve been taking care of me for the past few—”

“Stop acting like I’m your mom.” A sob fractured the final syllable, another bubbling up from deep in your chest a moment later. Your body was beyond the point of rationality, but the soft, preservational part of your mind wasn’t so beyond the point of seeking refuge. There was a way out of this, as ghoulish as it seemed. You couldn’t stop it from happening, but you could make it better. You’d regret it in an hour, when it came time to explain yourself to Bruce, but what happened in an hour didn’t matter, not if you couldn’t survive the next few minutes.

You might’ve done it, too – or, you might’ve tried, at least. You wanted to. You planned to. And yet, when you opened your mouth, there was only one thing you could seem to say. “I don’t want to do this, Jason.”

His nails bit into your thigh, his smile easing at the corners. For a second, you almost thought he’d pull away. For a second, you almost thought he’d sigh, straighten back up, and admit this was all part of some cruel, unfunny joke that the two of you would remember fondly, later on.

Then, he laughed and leaned forward, lips brushing against the top of your head. You felt him speak before you heard his voice, but the cloying reverberation alone was enough to tell you that you would’ve been better off never saying anything at all.

“Welcome to the family, sweetheart.”

[huellitaa]

𓏲˳˚⊹ 🧸 become obsessed with yourself.

you are stupid. i said it. there. you are stupid.

let me get this straight. you are out here listening to these people who make you insecure. you are listening and actually giving a shit about people who put you down, make you feel unworthy, inferior, less of the absolute goddess that you are. you people please, you go above and beyond to help people & change yourself for people who would never do the same and for what. for people to like you? honey nobodys gonna like you. you dont even like yourself.

listen ml you need to get your priorities straight. sit down for a sec. like. just sit and genuinely ask yourself "what do i get out of this? how does this serve me?". go on, ask yourself. all these people who constantly think theyre better than you, that they can walk all over you, the ones that dont care a bit for you with their actions even if their words say otherwise, all these habits that only make you feel more low, more insecure, and dont align with where you wanna go in any way, shape or form. honey how in the hell does any of this serve you ???😭😭

i am sick to death of seeing the word selfish everywhere the moment somebody steps up and is brave enough to try and better themselves. the amount of times ive gotten "youre so selfish" or "youve changed" or "you werent like this before" jst because i got out of the most severe depression of my life where i came close to being unalive so many times is riDICULOUS and just shows how normalised insecurity and people pleasing is nowadays.

you see, people are always trying to follow the trend, follow the leader, follow everyone else nowadays. nobody actually honours what they want & that is a reflection of their own insecurity and traumas and emotions they are too scared to face. do you really want that for yourself? youve got such big dreams, such big potential, but what on earth do you do to fulfill them?

i dont think you realise just how limitless you actually are. you can do anything. we are all born the same. its only those with the courage to get up and try who will reach what they want and achieve greater things.

GET OBSESSED WITH YOURSELF. i am so DRAINED and TIRED of caring about what people think. i like something? im gonna do it. i dont care. fuck people pleasing. what are they gonna do when youre rich and famous and successful and thriving? YOU ARE THE ONLY VALIDATION YOU NEED. life is so much easier when you genuinely could not care less, like you just dont give a single shit. you are the only person who knows you inside out and will be there with you 24/7 365. it infuriates me how self hatred is so normalised nowadays. like what the actual fuck, why would you wanna spend your entire life hating the only person whos gonna be with you every second without fail, when you are perfectly capable of reversing that???? its ridiculous.

get up. get obsessed with yourself. the only validation you should be chasing is your own. pull yourself together girl. this is ridiculous. you are so much more than this. start acting like it. be ur own biggest fan. be ur own bestest friend. everything you need is already within you. u got this. 💕

all my love 💓✨💗💘🎀💖

[notstnana]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒈𝒐| Jayce Talis x Reader

ミ★ ngl, im writting this entire thing out of a c.ai bot from @/lesttkarr(so if ur reading this and you want me to deleat it you can lmk), so big part of the start is from they´re bot (is not my first language)

ミ★Jayce Talis x Reader, fem!reader, angst, assistant!reader, mentions of sex, infidelity.

Ever since you started to work as Jayce's assistant you both had a pretty good relationship, working partners just like he would call his relationship with Viktor, he did not look at you like a simple assistant, you were his friend a close friend after all.

Time passed and your relationship with Jayce turned into something else, something more exciting, friends with benefits, where it felt natural, like it was meant to be, you both learned how to balance your connection with your shared ambition, and everything was perfectly aligned, or you thought so, everything changed when Mel Medarda entered the picture.

Mel, who was already a council member, had the influence that Jayce needed to elevate his work, with her mind she helped Jayce to take hextech to the next level, eventually her efforts paid off and Jayce earned his seat at the council, now Mel and Jayce where fellow council members, and certainly they had grown closer than ever, not just professionally but personally, like that the connection you once shared so passionately faded, being replaced by a public and powerful bond between Miss Mel medarda and him.

One normal and calm afternoon like the usual now, Mel arrived at Jayce´s studio while he was sorting through paperwork, they had a soft conversation, filled with shared ambition and laughter, it was like the ones that existed between you and Jayce.

From you, you felt and knew that things had changed after all Jayce was a counselor now, you couldn't lie you were happy about Jayce´s progress, you were happy with him being a part of the council, but missed his presence and the close relationship that existed before even thou you two where only friends with benefits, now you where back to be just his assistant, slowly starting to go more and more unnoticed, Jayce paid less and less attention to you, you understood he was a counselor now after all, more work and leed free time. You walked through the hallways of the academy on your way to jayce´s´studio to deliver some papers he had asked for a few days ago, the hallways were empty and all that you could hear was your own shoes, just like you were used to doing, you opened the door without knocking, facing the papers.

"Jayce, I got you the research you requ-" You found yourself at a loss for words when you raised your sight to the picture of Jayce´s head between Mel´s legs to what looked to be the beginning of their night, you did not really understand why you felt so affecter, the grip on the papers tightened. First reaction being closing the door quickly

Jayce's mind was fixated on the matter at hand, engrossed in a conversation with Mel, when your voice unexpectedly broke through. The sound of your footsteps and the creaking of the door captured his attention. He looked up from Mel, his gaze meeting yours. For a brief moment, he didn't realize the effect the sight would have on you.

A flash of realization crossed Jayce’s face as he watched you quickly close the door. He knew that you have seen something that didn't belong to you.

He exchanged a glance with Mel, silently communicating their concern.

You walked fast to your own little studio/room and slammed the door behind you, feeling your heart racing and trying to calm yourself down, "what the hell is wrong with you? Why does it affect you so much?" you asked yourself, after all, Jayce is not yours, not yours to feel that way, you are only his assistant now, no?.. His assistant… Jayce had seen every part of her body, caressed, kissed, and touched, the one he had held at night.

Mel of course had no idea about the "friends with benefits" relationship that jayce and you used to share not so long ago, judging from your reaction Mel only thought that it was normal, you know? you almost found a couple fucking.

Jayce had mixed feelings about the situation. There was a hint of guilt, knowing that you had seen something intimate that he never intended for you to see. But there was also a nagging curiosity. He wondered if you had been more affected by the scene than he thought. He excused himself from Mel, his mind still wrapped around the brief look he had seen on your face.

A few moments later, Jayce knocked on the door to your studio.

You felt a shiver down your spine when you heard the knocking on your door, answering as nonchalantly and calmly as you could.

"come in" you murmured turning your back to the door, writing on your notebook to clear your mind from the intrusive thoughts,Jayce entered the studio, his expression unreadable,He shut the door behind him quietly, his footsteps barely making a sound as he walked closer to you,He didn't miss the way you focused intently on the sketchbook, avoiding his gaze.

Jayce leaned against one of the desks nearby, his hands casually stuffed in the pockets of his black trousers,The room was filled with a tense silence for a moment until he spoke up.

"I need to talk to you about what you saw back there." He murmured trying not to disturb you more than he already had, you felt your beating stop for a few seconds, not stopping you from sketching, clearing your throat.

"no need to worry… I´ll act like I didn´t see anything, don´t worry"

You could feed a lump in your throat trying to stop the words from coming out of your mouth, but a big part of you knew that feeling bad would not fix anything, that answer was like avoiding the subject, trying to make it seem like nothing was crossing your mind.

Jayce raised an eyebrow at your feigned nonchalance,He noticed how you avoided eye contact and continued sketching in your notebook, trying to pretend like nothing had happened.

He didn't buy it, of course he did not, He knew you well enough to recognize when something was bothering you, whether you wanted to admit it or not. He took a few steps closer and leaned against the desk next to you.

"Is that really what you want to do? Just pretend like nothing happened?" His voice was soft but firm, trying to get you to look at him.

You looked at him out of the corner of your eyes just for a few seconds. "it is the right thing to do Jayce, isn't it?"

You murmured now looking at him, your eyes meeting his, you wished you could either erase the past or go back to it. "it is the right thing to do, what an assistant like me should do, act as if nothing happened so I can protect Miss Medarda´s honor"

The lump on your throat was still there, and even though it was difficult for you to talk, it sounded firm.

Jayce's eyes narrowed at your words,He could hear the of bitterness and resignation in your voice, even though you were trying to sound casual.

He moved closer, now standing right next to you, his hip gently leaning against your desk. He reached out to touch your hand, stopping you from sketching any further.

"And what about your feelings? I don't believe for a second that you're okay with acting like nothing happened, and you are not just and assistant"

Jayce is always so caring and sweet, you wish he weren't like that, so so…charming, you were mad at him, for being so sweet you could not hate him.

"Well, that is my title, no? Counselor Talis assistant, my job is to help you and any way i can and not to get in volver on you´re personal bussined unless you require me to do so"

Jayce's grip on your hand tightened slightly at your words. Your neutral tone and detached demeanor were painful to hear. He knew that there was truth in what you said, but it hit him how far apart you both had grown.

He pushed the glasses on his face up a bit before sighing and speaking again, his voice filled with a hint of frustration.

"Yes, you're my assistant. I know that. But you're not just that, You're-"

He paused, letting the words hang in the air,Finding the right words was so difficult for him.

You placed your hand on top of Jaycees hand, trying to calm him down, even tho the one having a really hard time was you. "Assistant" you completed his phrase looking into his eyes, his puppy soft confused eyes, "I´m your assistant Jayce".

The sight of your hand, laying gently on top of his own, only added to the pain he felt. His eyes locked with yours, and he could see the effort you were putting into distancing yourself from him. He knew that the more you repeated the word 'assistant,' the further you were pushing yourself from him.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath. The frustration in his tone was clear as he continued."You're more than just an assistant, you know it and I know it. Why are you acting like you're just some mindless employee?"

"because that's what I have to be now! That´s my plaice now and I need to accept it"

Jayce understood, but a part of him didn't want to accept the truth, that he wasn't yours anymore and you were not his."you are dating Councilor Medarda, im nothing more than an assistant and I have to start behaving like one, and you know it damn well"

You ran your fingers over Jayce's knuckles, missing the touch, the much-personal touch, the room was silent, it felt cold compared with the other memories you both had in your studio.

"you are so happy with Miss Medarda, you are spillovers golden boy, and i can not take that from you, you are the man of progress, own it"

Jayce listened intently to your words, your touch on his knuckles igniting a mix of emotions in him. Your resignation, your acceptance of the changed dynamics between you two, was evident, and it pained him to hear.

He couldn't deny the truth in your words, though. He was with Mel now, and you had always understood that someday his ambitions would take him to higher places, away from where you both began.

He took a deep breath, his voice softer now.

"I am happy, yes. But… what about us?"

Your finger brushed his knuckles for the last time and murmured. "the is no such thing as us anymore…it ended the day she walked into your life and you decided that she was the one, not we are just…work partners"

Gently pull your hand away from his hand, feeling the cold air hitting the part of your hand that was being warmed by his.

The coldness in your tone, the detachment in your words, felt like a dagger to his heart. Jayce felt a sharp pang of guilt washing over him, realizing the truth in what you were saying.

He watched as you withdrew your hand, his heart sinking with the realization that this was the new reality between you both. He swallowed hard, trying to find the right words.

"I… I never wanted things to end…I never wanted us to be 'just work partners'.."

You pressed your lips together on a line, and then muttered almost in a whisper." I know…but Loked knocked on your door and you opened it, and believe it or not I'm happy you found love" he felt stubborn and couldn't help but want to insist, why, why could just be his...friend?

e's heart ached as he heard your words, the resignation in your voice. He felt a pang of guilt and regret, knowing that he had caused this distance between you both. Yet, he couldn't deny the love he felt for Mel either.

He let out a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair, trying to find the words to express what he was feeling.

"But can't we at least be friends? Just because I'm with Mel now, doesn't mean we have to forget what we had."

"I can´t be friends with the man who held me up at night, the one who knows every path of my body," You said in almost a thread of voice, you did not want to continue the conversation it was only making it worse.

Jayce's heart clenched at your words, the memory of their past together lingering like a ghost in the room. The weight of what they once had hung heavily between them.

He wanted to push, to fight, to keep you in his life as more than just an assistant. But he couldn't force his will on you either. He sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

"I… I understand."

His voice was quiet, his eyes searching yours for any hint of the old connection between you both.

You stayed silent, returning to your notes, trying to sink into your thoughts, leaving Jayce standing there, who was beginning to remember everything they went through together, the feeling of your soft, breasts in his hands, soft skin, whimpers, and those non-sexual but intimate moments, you lying next to him after a night of lovemaking, the little conversations you both had, looking into his eyes and stroking his hair softly, tangling your fingers in his hair combing it, holding his head on her chest in her arms pampering him, he loved that and you knew it, it was just one more memory that would live in his mind.

He had never experienced those moments with Mel, and Mel never seemed so interested in asking about what he liked, and he knew deep down that a part of him missed them. It was in those intimate moments that they had been closest, and now they were gone, replaced by a strange distance.

Jayce stood there, lost in his own thoughts, consumed by the memories of holding you in his arms. The silence in the room echoed his own internal struggle. A part of him longed for those moments to come back, when the world around them seemed to fade away, and it was just the two of them.

He wanted to say something, anything, but the words stuck in his throat. He cleared his throat gently, breaking the silence between you both.

"…please look at me."

As if it were an instant reaction you turned your eyes meeting Jayce's, looking at each other, you felt Jayce's hand rest on your chin, taking it, It felt so tense, so intimate, just what they should avoid, but it was so difficult, Jayce's hand gently lifted your chin, making you look directly into his eyes. The tension in the room grew thick. It's almost as if an invisible force was pulling them closer to each other despite their efforts to maintain their distance.

His thumb grazed gently across your bottom lip, feeling its softness. He could see the vulnerability in your eyes, the sweetness that was always there. He could feel his heart racing, the longing growing stronger, a shaky sigh left your lips, eyes never leaving him, you were at his mercy, and even tho you wanted to act like you wanted to avoid everything, Jayce couldn't help but stare into your eyes, captivated by their innocence and sweetness. The way you looked at him, so vulnerable and at his mercy, stirred something deep within him.

He slowly inched closer, his hand on your chin pulling you slightly towards him. His eyes flicked from your eyes to your lips, admiring the plumpness and softness of them.

He whispered, his voice rough with desire. "Please, don't look at me like that."

Rich coming from him, the one that told you to look at him. "like what?"

You felt your breath mixed with Jayce's, both were too lost to think deeply about what they were doing, looking into Jayce's eyes waiting for an answer Or maybe deep down you didn't want an answer, maybe you were just teasing, Jayce finally snapped and his mouth collided with yours on a deep kiss, full of desire, it kinda felt like an apology…The kiss was long, both of your tongues not knowing if they were dancing or fighting, saliva mixing, and soft whimpers of desperation.

When you finally broke apart, you looked into Jayce's eyes with your mouth slightly open, panting and out of breath, a thread of saliva connecting you with him, it was a visible reminder of what you had done, the evidence of their transgressions, shaky labored breathing, you both were so wrong for doing that, Jayce's eyes were filled with guilt and desire, his gaze flickering between lips and your eyes. "This is wrong," he whispered, his voice hoarse.

eyes never left Jayce's, you felt lust, excitement, fear, but still felt used, and you placed your hand on Jayce's hand that was holding your chin and whispered."You should go…"

Jayce felt the touch of your hand on his, and your words hit him like a bucket of ice-cold water, snapping him out of the moment of passion, He nodded slowly, guilt and shame washing over him. "You're right," he murmured, slowly letting go of your chin and taking a step back.

He looked at you one last time, his eyes filled with a mixture of desire and regret, before turning and heading towards the door, everything was so silent, Jayce left, and you wish you could read his mind, to know what was he thinking, and this feeling of emptiness of losing him again was like a thousand daggers on your heart, you wanted to cry, as if before everything that happened he had been yours

If there is any sort of mistake please lmk, hope you guys liked it! :3

[fieldsofwriting]

And so, the stars aligned pt. 4

Azriel x Archeron!Sister reader

Summary: After realizing you are his mate. Azriel races back downstairs to tell the rest of the Inner Circle. Spoiler alert- they already knew.

Warnings: Mentions of past trauma, a very small bit of violence. Let me know if theres anything I missed! a/n: This is unedited, so we aren't talking about it.

Ageless and MDNI

Part One, Part Two, Part Three

Masterlist Requests are open!!

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

As the door to your room closed, Azriel found himself frozen in place. His heart was still racing. He can feel his soul reaching out to yours, calling for you to return. The one thing that he always wanted, more than anything in the whole world, was just beyond that door. Someone to call his. Someone to be his. To be someone’s. To have a place to belong. But that door was still in the way. And he could tear it off the hinges for its audacity to stand between you and him. He could rip the door open, watching as you looked at him with those big doe eyes of yours. Stammering as you'd try to hide the shock and ask him what's wrong. Only for him to cross the room. Pull you in and kiss you like his very life depended on it. As if you were air, and he was gasping for it. Your love was the tide that pulled him under, all-consuming. But he didn't feel like he was drowning, no. Never. You were his light, his dark, his everything. His salvation. You were perfect. He felt the bond and knew there was someone at the other end of it. Someone who would feel it with time.

And that thought seemed to pull Azriel out of his less-than-sober state. Whatever the mating bond had done to his head had consumed him. Made him unable to think straight, unable to use any common sense- or any sense at all. He needed to step away, needed to stop smelling your scent. His shadows pull him back, gently urging him to give you space. Part of it makes him smile, that they were so eager to protect you. Part of him looks at the shadows and glares. "Traitors." He mumbles, before going down the stairs. His heart heavy as he takes every step. You were so unaware of his feelings. You always had been, you pushed away any feelings for him in favor of Elain. He watched you do it, heard you talking in hushed whispers to Feyre and Nesta about her wellbeing. You used to join them, but then you just…stopped. That's when Elain started flirting more. It broke his heart to see you back down so easily. Azriel knew you didn’t have any friends outside the Inner Circle…and he felt you watch from the windows. How he wanted to reach his hand out to you, share his time with you the way you shared it with your sister…

His footsteps for once are not muffled, nor does he want them to be. It didn't matter who saw him now, he'd let them know he was there to protect you. So, he allows himself to walk naturally, feeling the weight of everything finally. His footsteps heavier with each step. As Azriel enters the room he notices how the party has slowly stopped talking as he enters. His brothers looked the most concerned, slowly they both stood. Az notes the way their gaze moves about his body, checking for injury. Their shoulders are tense as well as if they’re on edge about something. What he didn’t know, so he raises an eyebrow at them. "Azriel?" Rhys's voice is soft, and gentle, as if he is trying to tame a beast.

"Is everything okay?" Cassian asks next. His voice doesn't share the same gentleness that Rhys's did. But for Cassian, that was gentle. Azriel looks at him, Cassian's hazel eyes shining with concern as he steps forward with Rhys.

Azriel doesn't know where the sudden concern is coming from. He tries his hardest to will his face into one of neutrality. "Yes? Everything is fine." He assures them before trying to sidestep them. Rhys and Cassian grab onto his arms to hold him in place. Azriel is just confused. He looks back at Rhys and Cassian. "What?" His voice laced with that very confusion.

"You’re shaking," Rhys answers. "Your hands are clenched. You look ready to snap." He steps back, Cassian doing the same. Azriel looks down, slowly unclenching his hands, realizing that his siphons are swirling with power as well. Looking back up the stairs to see his shadows swirling outside your door, keeping watch for him to ensure your safety. He looks back to Rhys blinking and suddenly- he gets it. He gets why Rhys fell into Mor's arms screaming and crying that Feyre was his mate—understanding all the decisions Rhys made just to ensure her safety. Seeing why Rhys believed in her under that mountain. Understanding why Cassian fought so hard to try and save Nesta from the Cauldron. He understood how the view of the world changed in just a matter of seconds, and…how it felt knowing that they both figured it out before their mates did. How did they do it? How did they deal with the crippling fear that they might reject them? How did keep smiling? How did they keep it from consuming him? Rhys looks back at Cassian, both of them taking another tentative step toward their brother.

"Az?" Cassian's smooth voice, calming voice- he talked to hurt soldiers like that. Azriel knew that voice. Was that what he was now? A soldier on the battlefield again? Did they see him as the scrawny little kid that showed up at camp? At that thought suddenly he broke.

The tears fall quickly, and blindly Azriel reaches out to grab Rhys's shoulder. He hadn't realized the pain he'd been keeping in his heart. He claws at his shirt; wishing that he didn't have one, to begin with. Rhys pulls him in, holding him tightly. “Woah…” Rhys whispers squeezing him tighter. “Woah, we’ve got you Az. You’re okay. We’ve got you…” Cassian rubs his back- and Azriel knows that they're exchanging glances behind his back. But he doesn't care. But what he doesn't expect to hear is Mor.

"Azriel?" Her voice is soft, full of concern. And he looks up from Rhys's shoulder. Looking at Mor with a tear-stained face, his eyes growing puffier by the second as more tears rolled down. She held her arms up for him. Azriel pushed Rhys away, all but running into Mor. Falling into her arms as he cries harder. Mor's embrace is warm, her skin is soft. She was always so warm, like a sunny spring day. She smelt like vanilla and whiskey. Threading her fingers through his hair, brushing out the curls gently as she started to rock him. "Shh, shh, we’ve got you. What happened? Can you tell us what's wrong?" Her voice is so gentle, soft, and caring in a way that only Mor could manage for him. Azriel realized she was being motherly. He reached for a comfort he'd barely known. A mother's embrace, or in Mor's case; a sister's embrace. Pulling away, Mor wipes his eyes. Nodding she looked up at him with her warm, chocolatey eyes.

"She's my mate." He croaks. It felt so good to get out. It felt good to tell someone, pride surging through him. To declare that you were his. He was yours. You were one. Mor's eyes widened, looking back at Amren, Feyre, and Nesta. "She's my mate, Mor. An-and she didn't feel it, now suddenly I feel like I can't breathe. I feel like I'm drowning. I keep reaching for her but she’s not there. I-I’m panicking about her even though I knew she was right upstairs. Everything is racing. I'm in a free fall, my wings won't open and the ground is getting closer. Everything feels so-"

Nesta grabs Azriel's chin. Tilting his head up to look at her, and he expected to see an icy glare. Instead, he's met with an intense understanding. "You are not dying. You are okay. And you need to take a deep breath." She illustrates what she wants him to do by taking a deep breath herself. Azriel finds himself mimicking her actions, suddenly realizing what he had done. He wasn’t supposed to be weak. His tears were pointless, his pain didn’t matter. He stands straighter, clearing his throat. Looking down at the ground to avoid everyone else's gazes. Nesta continues, "You fucking Illyrian's love too hard." She scoffs, her tone laced with a playful amusement. Though there's also so much truth behind it. "Y/n will accept you as her mate soon enough. But you have to give her the space and opportunity to do so. But, for the record. I am very happy that she is your mate. And you better be good to her or I’ll make you suffer.”

“Nesta!” Feyre hisses, elbowing her sister as she scowls at her. But Azriel laughs, it’s short and quiet but it’s a genuine laugh. Everyone looks at him before he pulls both of them into hugs. Feyre squeaks, but holds onto him. Nesta stiffens but pats his back.

“Thank you…” He whispers, pulling away. Azriel shakes his head and sits on the armchair with a sigh. “I…don’t know what came over me.”

Rhys sits on one of the arms, clapping his brother in the back. “Love does strange things to people.”

“Especially in this family.” Amren rolls her eyes as she scans Azriel for any more signs of an emotional outburst. “But, I also know you haven’t cried in a long, long, time Azriel.” She gives the shadowsinger a pointed look.

Cassian sighs and plops next to Azriel’s other side. Ruffling his hair. “You had us worried there for a second. I thought she insulted you or something.” Cassian laughs, Azriel can’t help but smile.

“No…nothing like that.” He whispers.

Nesta goes to Cassian’s side. Immediately sliding under his arm and putting a hand on his chest as she leans into her mate's warmth. “How did it happen?” Nesta asks, her voice full of curiosity. Remembering her love of romance novels- it didn’t shock Azriel that she wanted to hear the details.

Feyre also made her way closer, sitting on the couch closer to Rhys. Tucking her legs under her as she nods excitedly. “Yes! Tell us all the details, it was my personal favorite, hearing Rhys confess.” She looks over at him and winks.

Azriel chuckles and shakes his head. “She seemed…sad.” He starts slowly, closing his eyes to recount. Picturing the way your eyes slowly faded into a blank stare. “So after she announced she was going to bed. I followed her, but I thought she knew. I ended up scaring her, and I felt this…this nagging part of my brain light up. Telling me to apologize over and over again. As if it didn’t like making that look appear on her face. So, I apologized. But, then she just started…laughing. It felt…different than all the other times. I saw this golden glow around her as if the sun had decided to come back up and only shine on her. And she put her hand on my arm-“ He smiles faintly as his fingers gently trace over the spot yours had been. “It felt…like I was seeing the sun for the first time.” His voice is softer than ever. “And she joked about her intentions with me and her laugh. It was…it was like I couldn’t breathe. She leaned into me, laughing so hard she was snorting, touching me and- and just being…happy. Being her. That was the moment. Looking down at her I knew. I wanted to hear that laugh for the rest of my days. I wanted to be the reason for that laugh. I wanted to pick her up, spin her around, and kiss her like a fish needs water…” He smiles to himself as he pictures you again.

“I’ve loved her for so long. But, but that was the moment I knew. I was going to be there for her no matter what. Her laugh is something I’d fight wars over.”

Nesta is grinning, tears brimming her eyes. “I haven’t heard her laugh like that since she met you.” And Azriel’s heart swells with pride again.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The next morning as you enter for breakfast everyone’s eyes fall onto you. Blinking at them all you raise your hand to give a shy little wave. “Uh, good morning?”

“Good morning, did you sleep well?” Feyre smiles, Nyx perched on her lap as she offers him a slice of banana. You simply nod at her as you go to take your seat.

Nyx pushes away Feyre’s hand and exclaims, “Titi! Titi!” His little warms going upwards as he bounces in his mother’s lap. You, Nesta, and Elain all exchange glances. Looking at each other in a standoff of who can get to Nyx first. You move first, quickly running around the side of the table that Nesta wasn’t on. But Nesta, the Valkyrie, is quicker. Vaulting over the table- much to Rhys’s chagrin.

“Nesta!” He huffs looking at his plate of food with her handprint in it. Elain sprints around the other side, holding her arms out.

In a split second, darkness enveloped the room. Once it dissipates Azriel stands in the corner holding Nyx up. High above his head as the toddler giggles with glee.“Hello Nyx.” He grins with a triumphant smile. Your legs suddenly feel weak as you look at him. Only Nyx got him to smile like that. You look over at your sisters who are all as gobsmacked as you.

Nesta moves in first, on a mission to get her nephew. “You are not a Titi. So I will take him, please.” She gives an overly sweet smile as she holds her arms out.

Azriel considers for a second, but Nyx is happily playing with one of his siphons on his shoulders. Gently tapping it and watching the magic flow through it. “No, I think he’s content.”

Nesta goes to argue, but Elain steps forward. “Azriel…” She bats her pretty long lashes up at him. “Can I please see him?” She also holds out her hands as she smiles at her nephew.

Nyx again doesn’t respond to her voice. Now trying to munch on the Siphon. “It seems he’s still content.” Azriel shrugs, taking a slice of banana off of Feyre’s plate to give him instead.

It was your turn now and you were determined to win. “Azzy…” Your voice makes him pause. Good, you think. You hold out your arms and bat your eyes at him too. Trying to be as pretty as Elain was. “Let me see my favorite nephew?”

Nesta scoffs, “He’s your only nephew.” You shoot her a glare and look back up at the spymaster.

“Pretty please Az?” You pout, using the little sister privilege you honed. An impenetrable puppy dog face. And much to your delight- and your sister’s annoyance- Azriel crumbles. Earning snickers from around the table, all of which he glares at. Delicately handing Nyx to you and quickly moving as far- far away from you as he can.

Nyx looks up at you and grins. “Titi!” Your eyes shine with brightness and you giggle as you kiss his cheek.

"That's right, Nyx. Titi, the best Titi of all time." You coo, wrinkling your nose at Nesta and Elain. Nesta flips you off as she sits next to Cassian with a huff. And you chuckle as he wraps a wing around her, petting her hair as he offers her a bite of toast. Which she grumpily takes. You smile and sit with Nyx, settling him on your lap as Feyre passes you his plate.

Polite, and not-so-polite conversation takes place. Laughter fills the room and you for once, feel peaceful. Looking around this room filled with so much love. It was- almost too much to bear. But it all comes crashing down as Rhys gets handed a golden envelope. Golden waves were etched into it, along with golden flowers. It caused the conversations to die down as Rhys opened it. You follow his eyes, scanning the page. Watching his eyebrow raise in amusement as he passes the paper to Feyre. "What is it?" Mor asks looking or trying to look over Rhys's shoulder. Cassian stretches as well to try and see what is going on. Feyre holds it closer to her chest as she glares lightly at him. You hold back a snicker as Azriel's shadows loom behind Feyre- also trying to peak.

"It's an invitation," Feyre says simply, nodding as she looks it over again. Suddenly you watch Azriel stiffen.

"From. Who?" He grits out. Your eyebrows knit together in concern. But he doesn't look at you, his golden gaze still focused on Feyre. You could swear that from across the room you saw his eyes get greener. Feyre looks over at him and sighs heavily.

"Tarquin and Tamlin. They're hosting a ball to try and find a wife- or their mate." Feyre explains handing the letter over to Cassian. He greedily takes it, and Nesta pulls it down so she can read it too. Their eyes widened.

"It says they're requesting all unmated females." Cassian looks up at Azriel- almost like they were having a secret conversation. You snatch the letter from Nesta so you can scan it over.

Gasping and biting your lip, you look over at Rhys and Feyre. "Does that mean I can go?" You ask giddily, barely able to keep your excitement in.

Rhys spares a glance at Azriel and then looks back at you. "Would you want too?" His voice is tight. The room falls silent as it waits for your response. But you nod quickly.

"Yes!" You nod quickly, "It's like the fairytales we've read!" She looks over at Azriel, who refuses to look at you. His plate is the only thing that has his interest. But his indifference doesn't sway you. Letting your attention turn back to Rhys and Feyre, "It would be good! Like a show of good faith to send a member of the Night Court! Besides that, I wouldn't go for Tamlin. Not after what he did to you-" You look at Feyre with a gentle smile. Rhys takes hold of her hand, his thumb gently running over her knuckles. "But, I could find my mate there! Or hell I'd even settle for a boyfriend." You try to joke to clear the awkward tension. But all it did was cause Azriel to stand abruptly and walk out. Standing back up you go to follow him, but Nesta takes your hand, shaking her head. Sitting back down as you look at the letter.

"…It would be fun," Feyre says quietly. "We could bring the whole Inner Circle. It gives Amren a reason to see Varian. And we can show Nyx to everyone. You have the shields Hellion taught you, so you can protect us. It would be fun, we should go." She nods determinedly as she looks at her husband. Their eyes glaze over as they speak to one another but you look back at the door Azriel just walked out of. His shadows lingered around as if reporting what Rhys said. He sighed heavily.

"I'll respond with all that are attending." You squeal and rush over to hug him, kissing his cheek.

"You're the best Rhys! Thank you!" And warmth comes back to the room as your sisters smile at you. Immediately bringing up how they plan to doll you up.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Rhys's study door swings open as Azriel storms in. His siphons churning with power and the only thing that gives him pause is Feyre sitting on the desk in front of a chair. Rhys flanked her left, Cassian on her right. Amren and Mor are on Rhys's side. Nesta on Cassian's. Azriel glares at Rhys, "What is this."

Feyre points to the chair. "Sit." Azriel crosses his arms in a silent refusal. Feyre raises an eyebrow.

"Azriel we are not your enemy right now." She says gingerly. Trying a gentler approach, as if he would start crying again. His fists clench as he grinds his teeth.

"You are." He says simply. "You're letting her go."

"Azriel you know damn well that we give choices in this court." Rhys snaps, Feyre putting a hand on his chest. "I don't know why you suddenly think you can control her-"

"I know I can't control her." Azriel snaps at Rhysand. Their eyes meet and Azriel grits out, "But she is a mated female. And it is a slap in my face that you consider my mating bond so unimportant that what? Get another fucking Alliance? Like how you were gonna marry Nesta off to Eris."

"Azriel." Cassian snaps, standing to his full height. "You don't get to bring up my mate just because you're pissy." Nesta pulls him back. Her blue/grey eyes meet his as she steps forward. Cassian watched her like a hawk. But Nesta didn't balk.

"I was going to marry Eris because I didn't feel worthy of the love that Cassian was giving me. And the reason Rhysand wants us to go is so that y/n can be happy. Isn't that something you want for her Azriel? You know how we grew up, but did you know that y/n used to lay in our bed and ask me to tell her stories? She'd ask me about balls, what princes were like. She's dreamed of this. Finding her true love over there. So-" Nesta jabs Azriel's chest. "Suck it up."

Azriel's jaw tightened. And then, Rhysand spoke. "You won't be going." The room fell silent.

"What."

"Lucien got the same letter, he's requested that we not bring Elain. Elain is okay with that, they want to take this as an opportunity to get to know each other. You will be here to keep them safe and chaperone for Elain's comfort. You are silent, you are friends with Elain and it will give you time to sort out whatever is going on with your attitude." Rhysand tries to keep his voice even, and clear, end all be all. Azriel waited for the hypocrisy of the moment to hit him, but when it didn't.

"No," Azriel says simply. "No make someone else do it. I am not going to sit here while you cart her around. Pick someone else."

"That's not happening. She hasn't felt the bond yet Azriel. And trust me, I know how hard it is. But I let Feyre go-"

"She's not Feyre. She can't fight. She isn't your mate, she's mine and I have her best interest-"

"You have a possessive interest." Rhys snaps. "She is allowed to make choices."

Azriel looks at Rhysand with disdain. His nose wrinkles in anger and his shadows swirl around him. Siphons flicker as his temper grows. "I didn't say she wasn't." He tries to speak calmly. He was better than this. Azriel didn't need to lose his temper, he didn't even know where this was coming from. No doubt the mating bond, everything involving you made every inch of his skin feel too tight. Like he needed your touch to cool the boiling beneath it. He had normally kept his cool in the face of adversity, he didn't question Rhysand. But when you were in the fold? He couldn't stop it. The images of you coming home with your arms linked with Tarquin or- oh god- Tamlin? The images of how thin Feyre had been when she first arrived flashed in his mind. And then- you. You being that thin, in a gaudy and ugly wedding dress. Big, puffy sleeves and begging him down the bond to save you. "But I want to go with her."

Rhys looks at everyone and sighs. "Azriel. We all decided-"

"You decided? Decided that I wasn't allowed near her?" He growls.

"You all decided what to do with me." Nesta chimes in. Azriel turns to her with a fire in his eyes.

"We decided that because we didn't want to watch you drink yourself into your immortal grave. We wanted you to heal and the only way to get you to do anything, Nesta Archeron, is through spite. Telling you that you have to do something or you must. But even still we didn't separate you from Cassian." Azriel fumed. He had never been like this with anyone. So raw, so angry. Showing his baseline of emotions. He couldn't stop it, everything felt like it was about to boil over. So he looks back to Feyre. "Please. I am begging you, to let me go."

Feyre looks over at Rhys. Rhysand shakes his head. "No. Azriel it will look bad for you to claim her-"

It was a blur. Everything happened so fast. Azriel moved before he knew what he was doing. Everything in him screamed out, at the people whom he called family locking him away once again from something he wanted so badly. And he saw his Father and stepmother. Overseeing his visits with his Mother. Not letting him stay with her no matter how hard he begged. Keeping his wings bound to his back despite the need to fly. All he felt was that red-hot anger. His blood felt like it was scalding under the surface. His skin was simmering and he wasn't sure if he was actually smoking or if it was his shadows that curled around his forearms. His voice felt like there was a vice grip around it. Why?! Why was no one listening to him! Why didn't they understand? He didn't want to control you or tell you that you couldn't do something. He just wanted to be there. All he wanted to do was make sure that you were happy. He didn't want to play babysitter again to another set of mates. He just wanted to watch you shine.

He comes back into his own body to realize that he'd punched Rhysand. His black eye starting to form. Two strong hands were on his elbows as he was forced to sit. Cassian. They were Cassian's hands. Azriel calmed and eased into the chair. Rhys puts a hand to face blinking in shock. Looking at Azriel with one good eye. The room was silent. They could have heard a pin drop miles away. Azriel tried to open his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He hangs his head in shame, waiting for Rhysand to tell him to leave.

"Cauldron boil me." Rhysand laughs and kneels in front of Azriel. "You really think that?" He whispers looking at his brother with sincerity. "That all you are is a babysitter?" Azriel blinks and looks at him with wide eyes. "You said it all. Screamed it right into my head. Made me feel it." He gives him a gentle smile. "Az, that's not what I was trying to say." Rhys sighs heavily and shakes his head. "I didn't think you could handle it. That rage? I understand it. I felt it every day Under the Mountain, and every day when Feyre was with Tamlin. I don't want you to think I don't trust you. But I know it's hard to contain. Case in point-" He points to the black eye.

Azriel swallows thickly, still unable to voice his apology. ' I'm sorry Rhysand. I understand. I don't like it, feeling so angry. The bond just- amplified all of my emotions.' Rhys nods along to what Azriel speaks into his mind.

"It gets easier. For now," He sighs and shakes his head. "It might just be the better idea to bring you along. Being near her should help."

Azriel nods. Still looking down at the ground, and then he feels gentle arms wind around him. Nesta. "Thank you for being my friend." She whispers. Another set of arms wind around him. Feyre.

"Thank you for being our eyes and ears."

Another set of arms. Mor. "Thank you for always protecting me."

More arms. Cassian. "We are your family. And we never want you to feel like you don't matter."

Two more. Rhys. "I am the biggest hypocrite."

"Really." Amren's voice cuts through. But then there is a little scuffle as someone, most likely Mor, pulls Amren into the group hug. He hears her sigh. "…Thank you for punching Rhysand." The group laughs warmly. Maybe everything was going to be alright.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Your arms squeeze Elain tightly. "I'm very excited for you!" You say warmly. "I think you'll be a happier woman when we come back." You wink at her. Elain scuffs and rolls her eyes, but her cheeks redden at the idea.

"Well, I hope you come back with so many stories that I would be jealous." She teases you as she pulls you back and makes you sit on a pink stool. Looking at your reflection in the mirror, she brushes your hair out and helps you put it half up, half down. Something pretty and yet elegant. Finishing she looks at you in the mirror. "You look beautiful."

You grin, shrugging. "Thanks, Elain." Not knowing how to respond. "Let us know how it's going?" You hold up a pinky to her, Elain rolls her eyes and links your pinkies.

"I will write the most boring and mundane letters just to shock you with the truth when you get back." She teases. You feigned hurt before you heard Rhysand call for you. You and your sister share a giddy smile and you rush down the stairs.

The whole Inner Circle stands there with various bags, the 'ball' would be taking place over a week. With dances each night, not all of which were deemed mandatory- only the first and last night were. But you were going to be staying in a newly rebuilt Spring Court. Feyre had been nervous at first, but Lucien helped ease her nerves. Assuring her that they wouldn't be near the Manor and that Tamlin had completely rebuilt. It was almost unrecognizable. But none of that mattered, you were going to be going to every ball you could, dancing the nights away, sleeping in, wearing all the beautiful dresses you could. You were ready to take this ball by storm.

Lucien looked up at Elain, bowing his head. Your sister halted, and you gave her a subtle push toward him. "You look well," Elain whispers.

"As do you." He smiles.

Leaving the two to talk. You look over at Azriel, you haven't talked to Azriel since that morning. And he wasn't at breakfast the next day. So you took this opportunity to cross the room to his side. He looks down at you, giving a small smile in greeting. You smile back, "Azriel." You speak softly, suddenly feeling bashful. You hadn't known why he suddenly stopped coming around you, but you knew that you wanted to remedy it. You wanted him closer to you, you wanted your friend back. "Are you excited?"

Azriel looks at you with a raised eyebrow, his eyes have a glint of amusement in them. "You do realize that you're asking the biggest introvert here if he's excited to go to a ball."

You pout, glaring at him. "…you can lie to me."

That gets a chuckle out of Azriel as he extends a hand to you. "Then I am thrilled to go spend this week somewhere I'm not comfortable." You elbow him as you take his hand.

"Is there anything I can do to help you feel more comfortable?" You ask, tilting your head to the side as you step outside. Azriel lets his wings expand, quickly scooping you up into his arms. The others would Winnow to the house, but Cassian, Rhys, and Azriel wanted to fly. And so, Amren uncomfortably held Nyx. The toddler playing with her necklace as Mor got ready to Winnow. Rhysand scooped up Feyre, Cassian held Nesta, and… Azriel held you. Quickly shooting up into the air, a sound between a gasp and a squeal sounded from you. Holding onto Azriel tighter, you feel him hold you tighter before he leans into your ears.

"Just stay close by in case I need you." He answers. You blink up at him before smiling and nodding.

"I'll be right by your side." You promise. ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── a/n: I personally hc that the mating bond can be really intense and amplify every emotion- even if it has nothing to do with your mate. So Azriel being so on edge, is just because that man needs a fucking hug. Anyways!! I hope y'all enjoyed!!

tag list: @sidthedollface2 @cat-or-kitten @impossibelle @brunette-barbie1220 @scatteredstardustt @sammanna @cherry-cin @tele86 @judig92 @lana08 @stained-glass-eyes0708 @oucereeng @persephonesalvatore @fightmedraco @juniperberriesaries @whatdoyxumean @harrystyke21 @tenshis-cake @5onedirection5 @bubybubsters @its-sam-allgood @natashachelsea @brieflyclassymortal l @thecraziestcrayon @cherryinsalemverse @sourapplex @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @waggel36 @bunnyred-blog1 @kookie4life @mybestfriendmademe @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @mp-littlebit @caticorn61

[yourlocalsmutwriter]

This year, I want to be a wetter, I mean better person - Mark Webber x reader

cws: age gaps (reader is in her 20s, Mark is in his 40s), perv! Mark, semi-public, squirting, dirty talk, author loves dilfs and hopes that one day dilfs will love her too

Whichever spirit possessed your parents to decide to move to the middle of nowhere, England was a hidden blessing. It may not have seemed that way when you had to endure their company for the 4 hour drive from the airport or when you knew that there was no one fuckable for miles. Not that you could get down and dirty under a family roof, whether it was somebody else's or your own. Nothing more haunting than staring down at the lone poster of Fernando Alonso from his Renaut era on your hideously painted walls while cumming. Or, more accurately faking an orgasm. So you spent a nice, festive Christmas Eve and Christmas in your new family home. Catalogued everything that went wrong in your life to land you in this position from the 26th onwards. Actually explored the town and found that at least 1 bar (as if it would have more than that not on the main street) was open on New Years.

Your parents were not party people. By 8, they had tucked in on the couch and were yawning through a holiday concert of some Dutch guy. You shimmied into the one presentable dress they had seemed to pack from your childhood home. "Conveniently," your cute clothes were in storage, and the owner was somewhere in Dubai at the moment. So you have to make do with this black piece. It's not your first choice. But at least the fact that you had grown some tits since being 18 a few years ago was comforting. You pass your parents by with a promise to not be long now. Being met with a sleepy "Don't worry, sweetheart." you know that they're going to sleep through the fireworks anyway.

To nobody's surprise, the bar isn't crowded. The raging bull is in a pathetic state. Some top 40 hits radio station is playing. The floor is sticky. The bartender looks like he's your parents' age, and it doesn't seem like he knows just what goes into your favorite Long Island iced tea. You sit down and ask him to keep pouring you rum and cokes until either he runs out or your wallet is empty. You sip his very boozy concoction slowly, as you're texting your friends. Complimenting their party fits. Asking details about potential hookups. Looking at pictures of their pets in ugly sweaters. As midnight draws near, someone else actually gets inside the bar. You look up and see a pair of green eyes and holy shit, it's a holiday miracle. It's Mark Webber. 9 time GP winner. Manager of your current favorite driver on the grid. Ultimate celebrity crush, Mark Webber. With the grace of a newborn giraffe, you slide out of your chair. You don't want him to see you, but at the same time, you need it to survive. There goes your cover of not knowing who he is. Now, the bar name makes sense. It all aligns like a jigsaw puzzle. The car themed coasters. The signed cocktail napkin framed on the wall. The only “fancy” drink on the menu being named the Aussie grit.

After you not so subtly go to the bathroom to reapply your lipstick and try to work wonders with a mascara wand, you go back to your place at the bar. Only Mark is next to you, bendy black straw into his namesake cocktail.

"Look, I don't know how much they paid you to tail me here, but I can double it." he says, and you're confused.

"You're some kind of journalist or something.” You shake your head, still too stunned that he's here, talking to you.

“Don't tell me you're just some big city girl whose boyfriend brought her to meet the parents, and now you're single because you found him groping his cousin. Because, believe me, that romcom's more of a staple than you think." He continues.

"Wow, how bad is this town that a young woman in a bar on NYE is news. My parents moved here in April. I'm visiting them for the first time. And so far, I haven't encountered any guys, much less the ones that think the best part of waking up is Folgers in their cup." You explain.

"Are your folks the couple who hate each other but are always bragging about their daughter's graduation in March?" Mark guesses, and you are once again stunned by just much this small town gets to people. Not only does a man that's starred into many of your wet dreams know your parents. No, that's not enough, he also knows they're not the perfect relationship role models. You can't help but wonder if it's hereditary and also the reason you haven't brought home a partner. Pushing that to the side, you reply to him with

"Just the ones.”

"You know your dad thinks we're best friends, and your mom keeps asking if I can hire you at Porsche or McLaren." He says and suddenly all the facetimes with your parents come back to you. The man with a very nice house who they invite over for tea sometimes. The one that's been a little under the weather lately. The one who drives a sports car to the center.

"You're motorsport Mark? Of course you are. Be grateful that you don't have any kids my age because I'd practically be your daughter in law too." You speak before you think, momentarily forgetting about the man's wife and kid. Then you wonder why he's out here with you and not back at home. You're inching to ask, but there is no way to say “are you divorced, and if yes, can I ride you into next year, please?"”. Especially after he hits you with a reminder of why that's a bad idea.

"You should be happy that your parents are proud of you, sweetheart. And that they want you to stick around with them here." He says.

"If I was, wouldn't I be about to watch the fireworks with them?" You ask.

"Still some time until that, isn't it? Wanna make it count?" He replies to your question with a question.

You agree, and there's two more Aussie Grits on the bar. The bar tender also places two laminated sheets of paper and two markers in front of you. The comic sans text on top says "New Years Resolutions" and the neat little lines give you 5 rows to write in.

"Sick of hearing us talk, aren't you?" Mark asks the other man, and the latter just grunts.

"Bet I can write mine before you finish your drink." The former driver says, clearly still a speed fiend. You shake on it, and you start chugging the strong drink. Meanwhile, he's adding chicken scratch sentences to the A4.

He beats you, and to his credit, all his resolutions are thought out and personal. You're happy to see that he's put "do more for Oscar" in there and giggle at the "post more on Instagram?". While you're still reading, he's busy gloating, making fun of you for not learning the most important thing in college - how to hold your liquor.

"What, like you could do any better. Mark, I'm surprised you're standing after the drinks you already had. I bet that I'll have to see you get locked in here till the morning for your own sake." You say, both posing a challenge and remembering the "beauty" of some more traditional British pubs. You hope that the one booth you see is at least comfortable. He doesn't back down, and you're on the clock, writing down what you want to accomplish in 2025. But your brain is buzzing from the drinks, from the way liquid is dripping down Mark's chin and onto his pants, by the fact that you're a horny drunk and the unavailable dilf next to you is too delicious to pass on. You lose, unsurprisingly. Handing over the list, you absent mindedly say

"You know I wouldn't mind your help with the last one, I'm sure you can make it happen, wink wink, nudge nudge.". You're referring to the item "attend my first grand prix," a dream of yours since getting into the sport. But apparently, in the rush, you had added a more nsfw goal under it. Because the item on your list that ended it prematurely was, in fact, "squirt for the first time.".

"You wanna double-check your work before saying things, sweetheart. " he asks, and you're mortified when you do. You start apologizing and gathering your things to leave. Mark places a strong hand on your bare thigh to stop you.

"I never said I wasn't going to do it. I'd be glad to. I'm just making sure that here and now is the place you want to bring this up." He says. Your jaw drops, and you're like a fish out of water.

"Aren't you married?" You ask. It's not the first that you thought would come out of your mouth. Yet, you have to hear him say it.

"Divorced. Technically, in the process of, but no ring. Empty house, and a cold bed. Only my left hand for relief." He says and you're picturing Mark pumping his cock in his fist. You cross your legs and clench your thighs slightly, which doesn't go unnoticed by the older man. He moves his hand and spreads them.

"And you, sweetheart? Do you have some secret boy toy to make your switch into adulthood more fun? Or a nice pretty girl like yourself that you've been shaking up with since your dorm days?" He asks.

"No. Same as you, but I use my right hand. My clit's too sensitive if I switch up my technique." You say, hellbent on making that man go crazy for you.

Mark looks around and tips a crisp 50-pound note from his wallet. You can't help but notice the little blue wrapper peeking out of the Italian leather. He calls over the bartender and asks for "2 coffees when we come back." You think the Aussie's going to take you to his car. Have you ruin his custom leather seats and make you lick up your mess as punishment? You guess he might even take you to his house, not that you have any idea where it is exactly. Ask you to hold on tight as the headboard to his once marital bed slams against the wall. Makes sure your sensitive little clit humps against the pillow as he's fucking you from behind.

But Mark drags you to the men's room instead. Spreads your legs and makes you grab the sink.

"You know I'm a man of few words. And as much as I'd love to start you off with a hands-on approach, I think you haven't earned it yet. So let's show you some videos first, huh?". He pulls out his phone and opens his Google drive. He's got a folder titled xxx and in it is maliciously organized subfolders by years.

"I can click any of them? And I'll see you making a woman squirt?" You say, impressed.

"Never met a girl whose pussy I couldn't make gush. Although I'd stick to the pre-retirement years." He says and you settle on a 2012 video. You know the later ones probably feature his ex. But this one stars a faceless blonde, all curves and moans. You squirm when Mark smacks her ass, watching it jiggle. You keep your eyes on how his tongue slides between her folds. You try to ignore how he's rolled up your dress and is just staring at your underwear. Watching it get wetter and wetter. You're too preoccupied with younger him to ask for his touch now.

The next video is a brunette, with pierced nipples and a possible disdain for Mark. That's gone when he slides into her, fingers pinching her clit. He makes her come too, and the next one and the one after that. You've seen enough. You turn and find him eye level with your cunt, long legs bent into a squat. He may be more than a decade older than in the video, but an old dog doesn't stop learning new tricks.

"Mark, I need you, please." You beg, beyond ready to be treated like one of his "little starlets" from the spank bank. You wonder if he'd film you too. Have your pussy soaking his cock in your juices as a memento of your time together.

"How do you want me, sweetheart?" He asks.

"Need you to fuck me, want to feel your cock inside of me, please." You moan out. And he's a perfect gentleman, because he promises he'll give it to you.

But first he slides his fingers to the front of your underwear and two of them are on your clit, rubbing. Maybe it's because of his height, that the length has spread even to his limbs. Maybe it's the dexterity, the sheer speed of his movements. Usually you'd prefer it starting slow, and building up. But with Mark, it was all climbing, starting at a 100 and moving towards 200 and above. Your hips are bucking against him, searching more. He slows just for a second in order to thrust two fingers inside of you.

"Look at you, already a mess. Did I get you so rilled up, sweetheart. Does this old man do it so much for you?" He asks and smiles as you can only groan and beg for more. He's not someone who draws out things, so he tells you to keep it up for him as he opens the condom package. He watches you whine that your fingers don't feel as good, that they aren't enough.

"Oh sweetheart, just you wait. You're going to be ruined." Mark says as he feeds you just the tip. He makes you take your hands off, replacing them with his. He thrusts up, matching his movements on your clit.

"It's too big, please." You say. Were you asking him for more or to stop? Your body seemed to favour the latter , because you were practically dripping on the bathroom floor. Mark uses his other hand to bring you closer to himself, his shallow thrusts pumping deeper and deeper. He's hitting that spot in your body, the one which you didn't even know existed.

"Be good and cum for me, will you, sweetheart? I don't have all night. So unless you want me to drag you out like this and fuck you on the town square under the fireworks, you better let go." Mark says. He does miss how tight you get around him when he talks like this. He continues, telling you how good you make him feel and how he can't wait to see your pretty orgasm face.That's what tips you over the edge. They're tears coming out of your eyes, you're pretty sure you're drooling and Mark's cock is indeed soaked with your juices. You can hear the obnoxious squelching of his last few thrusts, before he also comes.

He's still inside you when your alarm rings, the sound coming from your purse, long forgotten on the floor. You scramble to turn it off.

"One minute to midnight. Well, it's more like 20 seconds now." You announce. Mark takes your face in his hands (still slick with you) and kisses you gently. He doesn't have the heart to tell you that this is the first kiss he's had all year. You don't have the heart to tell him the same. All you know is that your return flight might be rebooked to a later date. You finally found something interesting to do in your parent's new town.

[skydaemon]

Okay I’m awake again and something that really stood out to me with TSC was how different jean and neil are as protagonists. I expected they would be, but the thing I really noticed was how distinct their reactions were.

So, these books are HEAVY. There are many many traumatic events and the characters spend a lot of time in high-stress situations. Even when they’re not being attacked or threatened or XYZ, they’re often in a state of heightened physiological arousal (their sympathetic nervous system is going haywire). As a psychologist, the thing I find really interesting is that we see very different reactions that are all aligned with different adrenal responses, and I wanted to talk about it.

As a baseline, when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you typically experience what some psychologists call the four Fs. Fight, flight, freeze, and/or fawn (some people use another word here but I don’t like it and think it’s less accurate to the situation). These can occur simultaneously or alone. And of the four characters who are most showing this response are the ones who are consistently in the highest stress situations, but who are also traumatised in such a way that even when they’re not actively in danger their sympathetic nervous system is overreactive and heightened.

So first off, we have Neil. He’s pretty clearly shown to have two responses: flight and fight. For his entire childhood, he’s been fleeing from danger and in the earlier parts of AFTG, we see this response - he tries to run as far as he can possibly get from anything that might be a risk. As a side point, this is pretty clearly a learned response from his mother. As Neil begins to feel more secure and his flight response is impeded (he can’t run away) we see the emergence of his other primary adrenal response - fight. I don’t feel like I need to explain this one, tbh, we’ve all seen how he runs his mouth. Fight is also typically shown when you believe you can defeat whatever’s threatening you, so I love what this says about how his confidence develops across the trilogy.

Then you have Andrew. He’s not a POV protagonist but I feel like his response might be the most obvious. His primary responses are fight and freeze (Andrew Minyard runs from/fawns for no man). Fight is pretty obvious - he’s a very violent person - but I feel like the most clear example of this is stopping Riko from attacking Neil. Andrew is obviously wired and his instinctive response is to protect. I love that for him. His other primary response, unfortunately, is freeze. Based on the most obvious time we see it (during Drake's attack), this is probably a response he developed as a child, before he felt strong/safe enough to fight back. God, these books make me sad sometimes.

Next is Kevin. He has a slightly more varied response - i can see the argument for him freezing, although i wouldnt say it's a primary response - but his main two responses are fight and fawn. Fight isn't necessarily literal, btw - the most obvious example is covering his tattoo. His fawn response is slightly more expanded on in TSC (mild spoilers if you haven't read that yet) when we see him responding to Riko's attack by begging first Riko and then Jean to intercede and stop the violence. he's trying to appeal to their affection for him, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Kevin i love you.

And finally, we have Jean, whose primary responses are only really made clear in TSC, although they are backed up by his appearances in the trilogy - freeze and fawn. We see freezing in Jean's response to sympathetic nervous system arousal, often from hearing about or recalling upsetting events/information. He closes in on himself and becomes unresponsive. Fawn is slightly more complicated, as we see it somewhat throughout AFTG. when he's loyal to riko and doing things he thinks riko will like in hopes of reducing any potential pain/threat he will experience, i'd call that fawning. an example at usc is him getting on his knees and handing coach rhemann his racket - he's not just submitting to punishment, he's trying to be helpful and well-behaved in hopes of lessening it. it's honestly a really strong response from him and it absolutely breaks my heart. jean in tsc is really struggling and i hope the last book brings him some peace. i also find it really painful that he's the only one of these boys without a fight response - he's never felt capable of winning against his abusers. i really hope the trojans and bee are able to help change that.

[https-capri]

dan heng smut

content: fem aligned reader, pwp, multiple orgasms, face sitting, LOTS of kissing, masturbation, aphrodisiacs, no established rls but very romantic still, cream pie, not rlly proofread, also kinda long... lmk if i missed any cws

__________________________________________

the three of you stumble into the hotel that hosted your trio in belebog. the three of you being dan heng, march and you.

exhausted, you languidly throw yourself down in one of the booths and rest your head on the table, letting out a groan.

march and dan heng are talking as they follow in your steps shortly after, only slightly more awake as they sit in front of you.

you feel march's hand gently touch your back as her cheery voice rings in your ears.

"everything okay?" she asks, opting to sit next to you as you sluggishly turn to her, moving only your head.

you nod, not having the energy to form a verbal response. you blink quickly a couple times, trying to seize the tiredness from your eyes as you sit up, offering march a weak smile.

"let's eat, i'm starved~" march says excitedly, eyes pacing over the menu a few feet away hung above the counter some feet away.

"yes, march. that's why we sat down at a booth and didn't go to our rooms." dan heng says calmly, pestering march already.

you cut in, not wanting to hear them bicker this late. "is this a bar?" you ask obviously as your eyes scan the alcoholic beverages splayed out on the menu hung above the counter.

"duh." march deadpans, sighing as she bites her lip, taking her time choosing her dinner.

your eyes lock on a sparkling drink that has a star by its name on the menu. you don't see a key on the board to explain what it represented, but it looked tasteful regardless.

the drink has a metallic essence and was an ombré of light to dark blue with a fruit on the rim, you evidently shrug and figure an alcoholic drink would be fine to wind down after a tiring mission anyways and don't plan on getting tipsy from one drink.

dan heng and march watch as you excuse yourself from the booth and sit at a stool at the counter, talking to the bartender too quietly for them to eavesdrop.

you order the drink and rest your head on your hand, turning slightly to see march leave to a salad bar and feast on plenty of the food present on the nicely decorated table.

you notice you've dozed off for a bit when your drink is presented in front of you, quickly giving the bartender a sincere thank you before admiring the drink and taking it back to your seat.

"you're not going to eat anything?" dan heng asks as he eyes your drink.

"not really hungry." you reply, swirling your tongue around the thin black straw in your drink.

"i still think you should, food is fuel and you never know when we're going to be on our feet again." he comments with a straight face, but his voice held concern.

"i like to think that we're going to be able to rest after a mission like that." you say optimistically, sighing at the idea of having to do more work than you've already done as you sip your drink slowly.

march comes back with a plate full of food for her and dan heng, looking at your drink with confusion as you scoot to make room for her on your side of the booth.

"i thought you were ordering something to eat?" march asks, stuffing her face with food.

"she said she wasn't hungry." dan heng says, budding into her question.

"she can speak, you know." she says with her mouth full, looking at you with a smile as crumbs lay evidently on her cheeks.

you finish your drink, quickly realizing it was mostly ice and surely was only pricey because of its aesthetics. you sigh and twirl the straw around the glass with boredom.

the three of your chat about your mission as you feel yourself slowly begin to participate actively in the conversation less and less.

you turn your gaze out of the window and look at the sky as the stars make themselves more apparent by flickering brightly.

you look down at your clothes and roll up your sleeves, feeling yourself grow warmer quite suddenly as you try brushing it off.

it becomes increasingly harder to push to the back of your mind as a fuzzy feeling makes itself noticeable in your stomach, excusing yourself to the bathroom in case you got sick.

you glance at yourself in the mirror and you notice the glistening of your skin, bringing your hand up to your forehead and undoubtedly soaking your fingertips with sweat.

you grimace as you look down at your hand, washing them off as you grab a paper towel and wipe off your face, going back to the group briefly before explaining to them that you didn't feel well.

"aww are you sure? you didn't even eat anything!" march says, grabbing onto your arms as she looks at your with a slightly worried look.

dan heng only nods in your direction, not failing to notice the glow of your skin from sweat and ill appearing state.

as soon as you get into your room you strip yourself of your clothes and shower. you assume both the stress and possibly the drink were factors as to why you suddenly felt off. you scrub yourself clean of any sweat and get out of the shower.

after slipping on your nightwear, you climb into bed and find that sleeping it off will most likely be best for you, especially because the astral express would be leaving soon anyways.

you fidget in your bed as the sweat beads up on your skin once more, throwing your hands down against your sides in defeat, you toss the blankets off of you and wonder why you're so hot and why you can't seem to stay still... and why there's a undeniable wetness in your panties.

your face feels hotter than before as you come to the realization, clenching your thighs together as you lay on your side.

three gentle knocks rung from your door as you frantically wipe the sweat from your face, reminding yourself that you need to change your panties after you answer the door, quickly grabbing a new pair as you hear a voice from outside.

"yn, it's dan heng. are you alright?" his sultry voice asks, the door muffling it as he gently knocks once more.

you scurry to the door as you throw your new panties onto the bed, cracking it slightly as you peek through, smiling nervously.

"yes? why?" you ask, failing to sound confident as you lean against the doorframe.

dan heng scans your face as he picks up on your repetitive sweating, he reaches his hand to your forehead as he checks your temperature, offering you a subtle look of concern.

"you feel hot. stay here, i'll grab some things." he says quickly before walking away, you watch him leave in his pajamas as you let out a sigh.

you gasp quietly as you rush to your bed, quickly putting your panties away and searching for anything to put on your lower half so you're decent when he comes into your hotel room.

your bent over in one of the drawers when he enters, not being able to see you clearly in the darkness as he inches closer to you, announcing his presence before setting a water bottle on your nightstand.

you whip your head around, quickly standing up and rushing into your bed as you hide your exposed half under the covers as dan heng lights a candle, coming over to you and giving you a pill.

"what's wrong? are you hot because you don't feel well? is it a headache? did this just happen?" he asks, bombarding you with questions as he sits on the bed next to you.

your breath gets caught in your throat as you drink in the sight of him. your lips part as you admire how the little light of the flame and the moon capture his essence perfectly. his t shirt hangs loosely on his body, exposing his collarbone to you and his pants that hung dangerously low on his waist.

"i'm fine, dan heng. i think it was just the drink." you say quietly, shifting away from him in the bed as you go to lay back down.

dan heng nods with a hum, glancing at you as you make yourself comfortable in the hotel bed once more.

"i'll be right back, again. don't fall asleep yet." he says sternly, excusing himself from your room and closing your door just enough for him to slip back in when he returns.

he steps downstairs back to the bar where he looks at the drink you ordered, making eye contact with the bar tender as he walks closer in his slippers.

his eyebrows raise slightly, not knowing the hotels bar was a 24 hour one.

"hi, may i ask what the star next to the alcoholic drinks represent?" he asks, looking at the drinks ingredients briefly summarized under it as the bartender turns their attention to him.

"oh, of course. it just means their an aphrodisiac, and has a higher concentration of alcohol." they reply honestly, sparing dan heng a glance as they continue washing the dirtied glasses in the sink.

"got it, thank you." he says before quickly bidding them a goodbye and making his way back to your room.

you're alone for a brief amount of time as you wait for dan heng to come back. as much as you wanted to sleep it off, knowing that the feeling your body was emitting was arousal made it much harder.

you creep your hand down to your tank top, slipping a hand inside and massaging your breasts as you let your eyes flutter shut, letting out a relaxed sigh.

dan heng comes back into your room again, this time with nothing as he sits beside you on the bed.

"yn? you're still awake right?" he says, whispering as he nears himself dangerously close to your face, studying your features in the dark to see if you were conscious.

"uh-huh! i'm up." you reply quickly, taken aback by how close he was as he sits up once he sees you're awake.

"good. the drink you had was laced, it was an aphrodisiac so... i'm glad that's all it was." he says, voice growing quieter as he picks his next words carefully.

you tilt your head innocently, unsure of what an aphrodisiac was as you listen to his words intently.

"i can.. stay with you if you'd like if you still feel odd, or i can leave you be to.. take care of yourself." he mutters, coughing into his hand and turning his back to you, unable to face you from embarrassment even if he couldn't see you.

"no.. no i need you to stay." you reply, unsure of what you were even talking about. all you knew was that you were turned on but wanted to sleep, and couldn't when you were alone.

dan heng turns his attention to you in surprise, his eyebrows raised attentively as he fully expected you to excuse him.

"a-are you sure?" he asks, looking at you attentively.

"yes, i wanted to just sleep it off, but once i figured out why i was feeling weird i couldn't..." you admit shyly, pulling him down closer to you so he's laying next to you in bed.

"don't you think you'd sleep better if you just took care of it?" he asked, feeling his own face grow hot as he asked the question, embarrassed about asking something so personal.

"i- i don't know, but now that you're here with me i'm not worried about 'taking care of it'" you say, using his term for a lack of better words, feeling like a child again as this new shyness overtook your ability to speak freely as you turn to dan heng.

"if you insist.. just- let me know at any time if you'd like me to leave." he says in a soft voice, whispering since you two were so close. feeling his warmth on you drove you mad. you slide yourself into his body as you feel him stiffen up.

"just relax, if you're natural about it i'm sure it'll go away." you say softly, already feeling hazy as you let his body heat help you fall asleep.

you don't look at the time when you know he's asleep, feeling him breath rhythmically as he pulls you closer to him, resting his chin on your head in a subconscious state.

now it was your turn to heat up in shock, this whole time you haven't been able to sleep because your body was horny and he's peacefully sleeping as if he'd done this plenty of times before!

you bite your lip and squeeze your eyes shut, begging your body desperately for this feeling to go away, knowing that if you were to cum to get over this feeling that it was too late now.

you shift slightly, seeing if he'd wake up from the movement, to which he doesn't; this was your green light.

you skip your hands down your panties slowly as your other hand reaches to your nipple, rubbing them gently as you try to stay quiet.

you rut your hips against your hand, humping it desperately as your fingertips firmly press against your clit. you bite back a moan.

daringly, you grab a pillow from your side of the bed and insert it between your legs. you wince, knowing that the only way it'd serve to pleasure you would be if you stripped your lower half completely.

so, there you were, half nude under the same covers as dan heng grinding softly against a pillow you were supposed to be sleeping on, soaking it with your juices as you aimlessly attempt to reach your high.

you reach a hand down to your wet cunt and gently rub your clit, feeling the pleasure add up as a whine escapes your lips.

quickly, your hand flys up to your mouth where you cover it quickly, stilling your movements in case dan heng woke up.

your guilt lingered in the back of your mind, but it wasn't enough to stop you from going back for more.

after enough time spent rubbing slow circles over your clit, you turn on your back and slide two fingers inside yourself.

you squeeze your eyes shut, feeling overstimulated by the pleasure as you pump and curl your fingers inside yourself, feeling your slick drench your thighs and the sheets beneath you.

just as you're about to reach your high, you fail to acknowledge the movement beside you that should've alerted you that dan heng was no longer asleep.

in a deep, groggy voice dan heng reaches out to you, confused. "yn? are you alright?" he asks languidly, brain not processing the scene before him as he yawns and squints his eyes.

"mhm~" you try to answer genuinely, only for it to come out as a muffled whimper, to which dan heng sits up and squints in your direction.

you quickly slow your movements down, biting on your lip hard and hoping be wouldn't realize the sin you were committing and would go back to sleep.

unfortunately, he sits up further, causing the blankets to move and reveal your hand deep inside yourself as dan heng undeniably got a full view of the sight.

"ah! i'm sorry- i didn't realize you were busy-" dan heng says quickly, turning away as he covers his face with his hands, mumbling apologies as he tries to cover you back up without looking.

"mm.. can you help?" you ask quietly, still rubbing yourself slowly as to not lose the feeling of your high approaching as he whips his head around to you.

"are you serious?" he asks, turned to you as his face remains hard to read in the dark, though the look of surprise is still evident by his voice.

"yes.. i'm close." you admit, panting softly as you sit up slightly, pleading him silently with your eyes as you reach your free hand out to his and place it on top.

"are you sure that's okay?" dan heng questions, relaxing his body as he finally is able to take in the state your in.

"yes. i am, now please, dan heng. i need you." you whine, pulling him closer to you as your fingers thrust in and out of yourself once more, circling your clit with your thumb as the distinct feeling of your orgasm builds in your stomach again.

dan heng feels his face grow hot at the way you whimper his name, feeling him grow nearer to you as he takes a deep breath, slowly leaning into your neck as he kisses it slowly.

"is this okay?" he asks lowly, whispering in your ear as his breath fans your neck.

you nod and give a weak sound of approval as you feel him put his arm on the other side of you, caging you in with his arms as he sucks love bites on your neck gently.

you roll your head to the opposite side, submitting to him and letting him have more space on your neck, falling in love with the way his teeth graze your most sensitive spots.

impatiently, you take his hand in yours and place it dangerously low on your abdomen, to which you hear his breath hitch, as he takes a moment to process where his hand now is.

you feel him smile against your neck as he moves his hand down, purposefully neglecting your womanhood and rubbing gentle circles on your inner thigh.

his kisses move down your neck and to your collarbone, where he takes his sweet time loving every part of you, leaving gentle kisses on each part of you his mouth hovers over until he gets to your chest.

"come here.. god you have no idea how long i've wanted to do this with you." dan heng murmurs, pulling you by the waist onto his lap, feeling the tent in his pants against your dripping cunt.

you whimper at the friction as you press your face into the crook of his neck. , feeing him wrap his arms around you gently as you get off on his aching dick.

you hear him quietly groan in your ear as he grips your thighs desperately, pulling back from you as he brings a hand up to your face to cup your cheek.

"i want to try something new, sweetheart." he speaks slowly, laying down beneath you as you straddle his lap.

his hard-on throbs in the restraints of his pants as he ushers you to lift your hips as he cups the back of your thighs, massaging them gently.

"sit on my face, angel." he whispers breathlessly, pulling you closer to his eager mouth that's curved into a small smile.

"what? no, i'll crush you-" you try to reason as your words get caught in your throat.

"and i'll love every second of it." he assures, pulling you forcefully over his lips.

hesitantly, you lower yourself onto his face as he grips your thighs, letting out a muffled groan. his tongue slides through your throbbing slit.

you throw your head back and bring a hand up to your face quickly to cover your mouth as you carefully grind down.

beneath you dan heng is moaning and working his tongue in circles around your puffy clit, using his hands and gripping your thighs as you grab at the headboard tightly, trying not to suffocate the man under you.

you gasp and bite your lip as you feel him slip two fingers in your cunt, continuing to lap at your pussy.

"if i can fit my hand under you you're not sitting all the way down." he mutters, pulling you down completely as you feel his nose collide with your clit.

you whine as the pleasure builds up quickly, letting him take control to avoid being too rough with him.

"i want you to ride my face, baby. come in my mouth." he says sincerely, looking up at you with his blue fucked out eyes. his pupils are dilated entirely as his eyebrows furrow together, focused solely on pleasuring you.

you feel your face heat up at the comment, letting out a small whimper as you feel his tongue slip inside you, prodding at your tight walls. he coos about how good you feel in his sultry voice, bringing you closer to your orgasm.

you whisper quietly to him, letting him know you were close as you intertwine your fingers with his and grasp a handful of his hair with your other hand.

"don't stop.. please~" you groan, panting as you feel his thumb rubbing slow circles on your hand as he continues flicking his tongue over your sensitive clit repeatedly.

"gonna cum for me, princess?" he asks teasingly as he observes you patiently with his puppy eyes.

"uh huh! yes.." you say breathlessly, grinding down on his face one last time as you feel your climax wash over you.

your body jolts as a loud moan escapes your lips. your juices that spill into dan hengs mouth cause him to let out a moan of his own. he closes his eyes and relishes in your divine flavor as his hand on your thigh tightens, also holding onto your hand firmly.

you quickly lift your hips from his face, looking down at him lovingly as you cup his face, wiping your essence from his lips as he gently smiles at you.

"did i meet your expectations?" he asks, panting as he licks his lips.

"surpassed them." you retort quickly, rolling over on the bed as you turn to him on your side, leaning in to kiss him as your hand trails all over his body.

he whines into the kiss as your hand creeps lower on his body, you slowly unbutton his pants as you snake your hand inside.

he quickly moves his hand to the back of your head to deepen the kiss, turning his head as he opens his legs, giving you access to pull his dripping cock out of his pants, glancing down at it as it hits his stomach.

you smile into the kiss as you pull away, leaning down as you take his dick in your hand, using your thumb and spreading his pre cum around his shaft.

he lets out a sigh and sits up, making quick work of his pants and kicking them off, leaning back as he turns to kiss you deeply with his girthy cock in your hand.

you move and sit behind him, wrapping your legs around him as you rest you head on his shoulder, languidly pumping his cock in your hand.

he bucks into your hand and whimpers at every move you make, poor boy is so sensitive!

you look down at his deep pink tip, and veins prodding out from his girth as his slit bubbles with pre cum.

"please... keep going." he whines as you patiently stroke his dick, admiring how pretty it looked in your hand.

you slip your hand under his shirt and run your fingers slightly over his chest, rubbing circles over his nipple as you pinch it lightly.

he lets out a groan and leans his head back into your shoulder, you take this to your advantage and latch your lips onto his neck, biting it slightly and sucking hickies of all different colors along his throat.

you feel him shudder in your touch, picking up speed as your hand grips his cockhead tighter, feeling it throb as he mumbled something about being close.

"doing so good, princess.. 'm so close."

you use both hands to pleasure him as one hand jerks his shaft up and down and the other is open rubbing circles on his tip with your palm.

he bites his lip and lets out a low groan before rutting his hips into your hand one final time. his tip spurts streaks of white cream onto your hand.

his chest heaves as he chases his breath, letting out a final sigh before laying down on your shared bed and putting his hand on his chest.

"do you feel better?" he asks, still slightly out of breath.

"much.. but i think i know something that would feel far better than your mouth.." you whisper in his ear seductively, turning to face him as his arms wrap around your waist gently.

"yeah? and what would that be?" he asks, playfully going along with your innocent flirting.

"this~" you say, teasingly dragging your finger up the shaft of his spent cock.

"oh, darling i think it's going to take a bit more than some dirty talk to get me going again." dan heng replies, shocking himself with the words he used as his suggestive response spills from his lips.

you shove your face into the crook of his neck, hungrily kissing it as you work your way down his abdomen.

you leave careful kisses down his body, nipping at his chest as your tongue swirls around his delicate nipples.

he groans, arching his back slightly as he bites his lip, caressing your head as you work your tongue along his body.

you reach a hand down and gently drag your fingers up the shaft of his cock, watching it bounce as it hardens slowly again.

he pulls you into him, desperately bringing his lips to your neck as he bites down softly.

you wrap one leg over him and straddle his hardening dick, grinding yourself on it.

"shit-" he utters airily, gasping as he feels your dripping essence coat his shaft.

you let out a small giggle, tucking your head into the crook of his neck and biting on his ear, whispering to him how good he feels, and how pretty he looks like this, all sprawled out before you.

sitting up, you slide your hand down his chest. you lift your hips up, reaching a hand down to his cockhead, aligning it to your slit as you look at him for assurance.

"please.." he begs breathlessly, watching you intently as a pink blush evidently covers his cheeks.

you lower yourself down on him, moaning in unison as you feel him throb inside you.

you lean back down, connecting your lips to his as you whimper into his lips. you bite and tug on his bottom lip, using it to quiet your sounds of pleasure as you slowly move up and down on his erection.

he's groaning and can't keep his hands off of you when he reaches his hands up to your breasts that beautifully bounce in his line of vision.

the moment is very intimate and passion fulfilled as he looks at you lovingly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as he brings you in for a lust filled kiss.

you intertwine tongues, sliding up and down against the girth of his tip as you drag your hips forward, stimulating your clit against toned stomach.

you feel his finger glide over your nipple, ushering a moan from your lips as he quiets you with another kiss.

"are you close, angel?" he asks sweetly, speaking softly and keeping his lips close to yours.

"'m tired-" you sheepishly admit, pressing yourself against him lazily, letting out a whine.

"let me do the work then." is all he says before urging you off of his lap and onto your back, sliding his hand between your legs as he spreads them once more.

"so beautiful." he coos calmly, kissing in between your breasts as he slides himself inside you slowly, taking one of your nipples inside the cavern of his mouth.

"feels so good.." you sigh, wrapping your legs around him as he begins pumping himself in and out of you passionately.

his thrusts grow increasingly sporadic, hips occasionally stuttering as he tries to prioritize your orgasm before his own.

he knows he's found your sweet spot when your whining his name over and over again, wriggling under him and scratching marks into his back as he abuses that sensitive spot in your cunt repeatedly.

"dan heng- 'm gonna cum.." you babble, wrapping your hands around his neck as your thighs tighten around his waist as you feel your orgasm approaching.

his hips meet yours with one final thrust to the base of your cervix that has you squirting, feeling your legs shake as you cover your mouth with your hand and bite down on it hard; silencing yourself.

your juices soak his abdomen as he helps you come down from your high, taking your cheek in his hand as he holds himself up with one arm as he takes the other and wastes no time taking his cock in his hand and pumping it to his own climax.

"inside me baby, put it back in.." you whisper, panting and breathing heavy as your legs find themselves wrapped around his waist once more.

he looks at you with wide eyes, trying to make sure he heard you correctly, letting you pull him back in with your legs.

"are you sure?" he asks again hesitantly.

"positive. 'want you to feel good too.." you mutter, sliding his tip inside you slowly

he nods slowly, falling in love with the way your wet pussy sucks him in and wraps around him so perfectly.

he thrusts into your sopping pussy desperately until he cums. shooting his gooey seed deep in your cunt, only pulling out to watch it seep out of your slit.

"did so good, darling." you whisper, pulling him into another kiss, wrapping your arms around him.

he wishes he could spend the rest of forever with you, but breaks the kiss to grab a towel from the bathroom and clean the both of you up, collapsing next to you soon after.

"did you enjoy yourself, pretty?" you ask quietly, cupping his cheek, taking in how beautiful he was in such a lustful state.

"with you, absolutely." he mutters, already feeling his eyelids getting heavy as he pulls you in close, the position you two had just been in earlier.

with a yawn, you decided that it was best for you to sleep now as well.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

okay i have THOUGHTS about this line

he didn’t have to say that to make his plan work. i mean yeah, being nice to the player definitely earns their favor and future assistance, but he could have just as easily gone the route of gaslighting them into feeling bad and like they caused the problem, eliciting a more shame-based and desperate and less uplifting and righteous kind of reliance. like if volo really hated the player, and was truly cruel, that’s what he would have done. the player would have still gotten the chain and felt indebted to him for the plate hunt, but they also would be miserable and feel lonely and hurt and confused. but volo doesn’t do that, he grounds the player and validates their feelings, which were hurt by the cruel townspeople more than the event volo caused to prompt that cruelty. like truly, it’s only volo’s fault that the player gets banished through the most like simple calculated logic—yes, if he hadn’t caused the rift, they wouldn’t have been banished, or brought here at all. but kamado CHOSE to banish them based on his own paranoia and disdain for outsiders, and the others enabled it by choice. volo didn’t make that happen, just how he didn’t make or even want arceus to get the player involved in the first place.

i don’t think volo hates the player, personally, at all. or at least, i think that he hates them and cares for them just as much as he hates and cares for himself. i know this isn’t groundbreaking volo theorizing material, but he’s absolutely projecting his disdain for society based on his vague past experiences here. he dislikes the outsider because his plan demands it, but he dislikes everyone else because he personally thinks they’re terrible. it’s kinda neat how he “fake” compliments the player’s loyalty to him as a merchant so often, bc i think loyalty is something he actually takes very seriously. and he probably saw how loyal the player was to the galaxy team, and then the way they kicked them out, and was genuinely pissed and hurt on the player’s behalf.

the things he says at the end of the game are said in extreme distress and defeat, and while they are not NOT reflective of his character and motives, i’m shocked by how many pokemon fans regard volo like he’s a nihilistic and amoral sociopath. passion and compassion are behind nearly everything volo does, for better or for worse. they’re behind moments like this, and moments like his ranting at spear pillar. he is a person who constantly grapples to align his personal moral code and lofty ideals, which live in this weird space between the manmade and divine, with the flawed reality of existence. his entire mentality is full of contradictions, because he is a man who thinks he should be god, but in reality could never be a good god, because he is still very much a man. it’s the emotion, idealism, and intellectual curiosity of humanity that drive him, not the impartiality, absolutism, and complacency of an omnipotent all-knowing deity.

so like, with this line. he specifically mentions that the galaxy team has treated the player poorly. not that the galaxy team’s choice was illogical, not that the player just needs to try harder to get them to accept him. he is emphatically rejecting the premise that the player did anything to deserve blame, even though he has no intention to actually explain why this really happened or volunteer himself to take the blame. because ultimately, volo is not the person to blame for the galaxy team’s cruelty, and he knows it. and he also knows that it’s the cruelty that has hurt the player, more than the sky problem itself, because he has been treated like an outsider too. and he can’t DO anything about that. even if he told the truth, the damage has already been done. the player knows how their supposed allies would react in this situation, regardless of the logic or truth. and volo can’t fix that. he does not believe he can make people kinder or the world a better place, which is exactly why he wants so badly to remake it. for himself, bc clearly he’s been through some shit too, for people like the outsider, and for anyone else whose loyalty and dedication have been met with rejection and apathy. which is so deeply tragic and ironic, because by being the only person to care for the player in this moment, he is making the world a better place for them.

volo is, at his core, a hypocrite. he’s like if you put the ingredients for a hero into a blender, but accidentally used the “tragic hypocrite” setting so he came out a janky villain instead. to volo, concepts like loyalty and self-righteousness are driving forces, much moreso than simple black and white morality or consequentialism. this makes him a hypocrite because he believes a perfect world is possible as long as his moral code is strictly followed, and his evil plan is to prove it. but in his efforts to do so, he proves over and over again that a perfect world isn’t possible, and certainly would not be possible under his control.

like, okay—if someone suggested that the means of pain and suffering in the world justified the ends (the world), volo would disagree and claim that arceus is responsible for the pain and suffering, and therefore does not deserve the power to create/rule worlds. but then, following that very same logic, if volo needed to get a random person banished and betrayed in order to create his better world, then those means wouldn’t justify his ends either. which is WHY we see him subconsciously draw a line here, between the things he’s not responsible for (other people being cruel, arceus transporting the player) and the things he is directly responsible for (the way he treats the player in these circumstances, either with derision or support). and wouldn’t you know, in this instance where it truly is up to him what the means are to his ends, he chooses kindness where he could have been cruel. because while arceus sending the hero and the town banishing them weren’t really Volo’s means to Volo’s ends, this conversation sure as hell could be. And he doesn’t want his better world built on a foundation of suffering and pain.

by saying this one line and treating the player as he does here, i think volo accidentally exposes something deeply true and good about himself. this man could say “i’m a villain and i don’t care about the player” and fully believe it, but at the same time demonstrably possess the morals and compassion of a hero, which he uses to actively care for the player. he is a delusional hypocrite, but he’s definitely not heartless. and i just think that’s neat.

alternatively, volo is completely heartless, knows that people are endeared to people who want to protect them, and methodically uses that knowledge here for his convenience. that very well could have been the intention, and it makes sense too—but i personally enjoy entertaining the notion of depth where i see potential for it. so yeah.

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck’s wife and family - Facts, theories and headcanons

I want to keep this as a sort of masterpost on Chil’s family situation if I can, but if we get a lot of information on it (in the additional content that Kui is gonna make) that renders this more or less useless I probably won’t update this anymore. If you find other crumbs of information or I've said anything factually incorrect please do tell me! I'm planning to edit this as we go since I want to compile most if not all of the information and pages we get about this topic on here, and if I just wait to post it perfection paralysis will nip this in the bud. It focuses a lot on Chilchuck and Chilchuck's wife relationships, but the daughters and Chilchuck's own parents and siblings are talked about as well.

CW/disclaimer: This post talks about messy family dynamics and such, there’s no outright abuse I’m implying anywhere, but alcoholism and neglect are mentioned and discussed. I’m not here to demonize anyone! I love every character involved and I just want to theorize about the topic as a layered issue that involves complex characters. Also, I try to use very transparent language as to when I’m citing or analyzing canon information and when I’m giving a personal interpretation or headcanoning.

Abbreviated table of content:

Timeline and circumstances

Possible strains on the marriage

The hair question. Confirmation on what his wife looks like?

Other family dynamic & post-canon theories & headcanons

Parenting style + misc in a reblog addition (new)

Let’s start with the facts, shall we?

Timeline and circumstances

So, we see that Chilchuck and his wife are childhood friends, and they married at 13 years old and had two children in that same year. Since half-foots reach the age of maturity at 14, they seem to be what we'd call teen parents. It's a bit debatable though, since Laios says the age of maturity for tallmen (humans) is 16 instead of 18 or even 21, so what's considered to be the age of maturity is a cultural thing and isn't fully reliable when we want to compare to our irl understanding and what developmental stage it perfectly aligns with. Also, during the succubus chapter Chichuck says that his daughters were all now of age to be independent, and Chilchuck's wife leaves to live with Flertom, which would mean that Puckpatti was independent at age 10 and lived away from home as well (since she's the third/last daughter). Ah yes another interesting thing to note is that we don’t know the pregnancy periods for the races, since Meijack and Flertom were born the same year. It could be tight timing or it could be something else, but I don’t think they’re twins, they keep talking about them being the oldest and the middle child, them being twins is definitely the sort of thing that would get mentioned.

Him starting working on the island notably happens just one year before his wife leaves him. I don't remember the other instances of him mentioning it though I feel like it happened, but since he started working at the Island's dungeon, working as a dungeon diver and then forming the half-foot guild, that probably means he started being away for longer periods of time and having a less reliable schedule on when he'd be coming back home. It is said that he went back home somewhat regularly iirc, though he usually ends up sleeping at the half-foot guild quarters. I'm not sure if Kahka Brud is also where he lived with his family, or just since he rented someplace new after she left him. He and his timeline state that he was born in a small village "northeast of the island", which he left at 14 one year after being married, but it isn’t stated where they go after so it’s unsure how far his home was from the island if it wasn’t in Kahka Brud. We don’t know when his father died so if that factors in to him leaving his village we have no clue.

Chil also says that he hasn’t seen or spoken with his wife nor daughters since the incident, which would mean he's gone 4 years without contact with his family during the events of canon. I don't remember if Chilchuck is said to exchange letters with his daughters, beyond the initial one from Flertom saying her mother was with her, so I've been assuming he hasn't.

He also says "For about ten years I’ve been travelling to dungeons in various areas and doing work" which considering he’s turning 29 that year would mean he started around 19 years old? The panel also gives details what sort of work he’s been doing. Either way it’s confirmed that Chilchuck travels for his work a lot.

In addition, since Chilchuck has the seal of approval of the bicorn + says so himself, he has always stayed faithful to his wife. So that means that unless he's had previous adventures before he was 14 and got married, he's never dated anyone else in his life, nor had romantic or sexual encounters/experiences with others in his 16 years of marriage right up to canon (year 514). I feel it’s safe to say that it’s implied that during all these years starting from when they were married, Chilchuck's wife was a housewife whose main job was taking care of the kids and the house.

Marcille's take on what happened is unreliable, as Kui even takes the time to directly say so in the Adventurer's Bible, so I don't want to use it as a baseline even if it offers some insight on what could have happened (her feeling out of place, leaving to test his love, etc etc).

What Chilchuck says seems to be accurate though since it pertains to his perspective of the events! Unlike how Marcille's theory flows, Chilchuck was aware that something was off before she left since she "suddenly fell into a bad mood".

Piecing everything together, my theory: Chilchuck and his wife were childhood friends and have always always sort of danced around of each other, the classic movie love story with childhood sweethearts, until they ultimately confessed and got together. While dating, Chilchuck's wife becomes pregnant and they're both unequiped to deal with the situation but decide to marry, either a bit forced in order to cover it up or hopeful to make the best of it. They make it work as they can and Chilchuck works to provide for the family while she takes care of the home and the kids, which means that even though he's not a deadbeat father (he cares, he was at least a bit involved in their lives and raising them since for example he knows how to braid hair after all) he ends up being rather absent from home. It only gets worse over the years, especially when Chilchuck starts working further and further away from home and coming home less often, and since Puckpatti left home Chilchuck's wife is alone at home most of the time, never knowing when Chilchuck would be coming and if to prepare the table for two instead of one, or even if he'd be coming back at all since his work is dangerous. The humdrum and lifestyle would get to her, they've grown into different people in these 10 years of marriage and she doesn't feel the spark or feels valued & seen anymore, so she leaves. He feels confused and betrayed which turns into anger so he doesn’t try to reach out and mend things, and with the way he says they’re estranged and he moves away I think he’s avoiding his family somewhat.

Possible strains on the marriage

Tfw all your daughters are independent and your husband is gone to work almost all the time and he barely even tells you that he loves you, is there even a reason to stay together anymore? Every day it’s just you and an empty house and chores to do, wondering if you have to cook for one or for two today.

Alright it’s analysis and theorizing time! Although there are more facts down in this post if you care about Chilchuck's wife's appearajce, Chilchuck's parents & siblings or the kids, the essential facts so to speak were all in the first part.

We don't see Chilchuck showing any discontent with his wife through the manga so I'm assuming that he was content in his marriage, happy with his wife, and with how he stayed faithful to her even in the 4 years after she left (and never stopped calling her his wife. Which also shows a weird stubborn attitude since he wasn’t planning on reaching out to her and mend things but I’ll put aside the possible entitlement/coping mechanism for another time) I think he truly loved her and still does. Since she left him and not the reverse, I'm putting a lot of emphasis on his wife's side of things. Especially since we do see how Chilchuck is at work quite a bit but never see how he is at home. I’ll be sounding harsh towards Chil on this but he’s pretty much the only party we can criticize since we don’t know her, I still side with Chil on the leaving issue though, he’s justifiably pissed if she left without a word what the hell even.

Alcoholism and health

Chilchuck’s favorite food as listed in the Adventurer’s Bible is beer, and it’s shown that he’s prone to drinking until drunk whenever he gets the opportunity to. A cheerful drunk is still a drunk. (Extra reading: if interested here's a oneshot FMA fanfic by a friend that goes in depth about this very topic that really illustrates what sort of family dynamic that can bring about. It’s not dunmeshi but it’s a good read.) Chilchuck is also canonically underweight, starving himself for a strict weight management diet (Extra reading: you can look at a short compilation post about that here). Did you know under eating makes one irritable? And this is on top of Chilchuck sometimes/regularly coming back home with "horrible injuries", since Marcille guesses it and he acts like she’s dead right on everything that far.

It’s rough seeing someone you love mistreat themselves, not being able to shake them out of that and having to stay to see them wasting away. It’s rough seeing them put their work above their own health. Putting their work even above their family. Putting alcohol over family time. It's not that simple, but there's always that element when asking someone you love to tone it down with things like alcohol or such, that if they refuse, then it feels like they value that thing more than they value your feelings or opinions. That they love alcohol more than they love you.

You know how there’s often this thing of "Well I’m providing everything for this family, so whatever else that I do you don’t get to complain." I do think that it’s something they’d have argued over a little bit, not that he’d say it that way, but the essence of it. "Chilchuck, you’re drinking a lot of alcohol often, I’m worried maybe you should ease up on it." "This is what I want to do in my free time, give me a break.", "Dear, your mood gets worse when you’re hungry, I really think you should stop dieting-" "Would you rather I die in a trap because I was too heavy?", "Honey I don’t like when you work so far away from home for so long" "Well what else can I do, do you have any better idea?". That sort of thing. Even if not being passive agressive or snappy, or even spoken upon, these situations can cause tension, or a feeling of powerlessness or imbalance in the relationship. Although I personally feel like they were both rather passive in their relationship (thus having little arguments), which itself can be a problem since yes they let each other live but they grew more distant and less communicative as a result, more on that later. Content and tolerating, rather than happy and fulfilled.

Workaholism and long distance

Spending a lot (or even a majority?) of time away from home for years and years obviously can strain relationships in many ways. Besides becoming more distant, both with his wife and his daughters, there's just that side that maybe you grow apart or you end up not knowing them all that well. Like the fictional dialogue excerpts I wrote just above, the way Chilchuck puts work above most things can by itself be the source of a lot of unhealthy habits and strains that could not only hurt himself but his relationships too. Devoted doesn’t mean attentive, even if Chilchuck 100% devotes himself to only her romantically and works in the goal to support her that doesn’t transfer into being there for her, even when he physically is.

An absent father isn't necessarily a deadbeat father, but an absent father is absent. And alright, we don’t know what his schedule was like exactly, but he was busy and traveled around, I think it’s fair to assume that if we were to make comparisons it’d be like parents irl who are often on work trips. We don't know what Chilchuck's wife's social circle is like, but regardless of how big or small or supportive it is it would be easy to get lonely I think. Besides raising the kids undoubtedly falling more onto her shoulders as well. Managing a household can be very hard and tiring even when not alone, I can imagine she felt like she missed the support of Chilchuck either as help or comfort oftentimes. We know very little about her, but I don't get the impression that she'd build up resentment over it except maybe her ‘falling into a bad mood’, but exhaustion? Absolutely.

It’s also implied imo, even beyond Chil not often being at home, that they rarely go out together. And that could very well be part of why she was mad after the outing. In Marcille’s theory she says that her wife felt out of place amongst all the cool adventurer coworkers, and if it’s a rare time that they go out together and it was supposed to be about her meeting his coworkers… I feel like what could have happened was that she felt out of place yes, and even moreso if she ended up not participating in conversations much because of it and no one really seemed to care, and the evening was all Chilchuck and his coworkers chatting it up as always and she was an outsider, if she sort of just faded into the background, if it felt like nothing would have changed wether she was there or not... If she felt like her presence didn’t matter on this special outing that rarely happened, it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for her to want to leave, definitely. He finally comes back after a long work travel and they finally go out and this is what their quality time is like? The outing that was supposed to be about her & them both ended up being all about him, and once more she was supposed to just orbit around him and his life without complaint or her own selfish wants like a devoted wife. With how Chil said that she got mad "all of a sudden" on the way home and he didn’t know why, plus that he was probably drunk (which may very well have made the whole thing worse), I feel like it supports that he didn’t pay her much attention during the evening, not that I’m assigning him ill intent at all, I’m sure that for him, it was a casual and fun night out and he didn’t think it'd been unpleasant or alienating for her.

That night

And all of this speculation in order to try and figure… What happened? Why did she leave? I've already gone into it a fair bit, but this is where I discuss it fully in depth.

We can’t rely on Marcille’s theory. Neither in the why she felt so out of place enough to want to leave, nor if her intention when leaving was to "test" him. I definitely agree that the reason why she left is layered and that the night/outing was the straw that broke the camel’s back more than the cause perse, but besides that it’s hard to say how much of it was impulsive and how much was because nothing else had worked to fix their relationship, or how long she'd been thinking of maybe leaving him.

Personally my favorite interpretation isn't that she found herself to be boring surrounded with Chilchuck's adventurer coworkers, or her reason for leaving is super centered around insecurity and if Chilchuck even loves her anymore, but that she sees how rich and eventful Chilchuck's life is and at the same time realizes how stagnant her own life has been. Chilchuck has adventurers for coworkers and they go out to bars and spend evenings together chatting it up, while she always does the same house chores every day and waits, and wonders, uncertain about when her huband would come back, and waits some more. She has a sort of passive role in her own life that gets pulled in one way or another by the people around her at their whims and needs, which is also a recurring theme in the manga: having a passive role in your own life, or a role that's devoted to others. Like with Falin who's always following her parents' directives or following Laios around, being the party's healer and eventually sacrificing herself for Laios and Marcille (she also doesn't seem to think much of marriage, as seen with Shuro proposing to her and her not having answered yet, which fits with how she was supposed to have an arranged marriage in her hometown too; a loveless marriage isn't something alarming to her). Izutsumi too, whose whole arc is about her gaining freedom and figuring out how to use this empowerment for herself and what she wants.

So she'd sit there, not knowing anyone except Chilchuck and not being able to follow their conversations about dungeons, and think about how this is a world she's totally apart from. How she knows so little of the world compared to him. She'd realize that while she's always waiting for Chilchuck to come home, dedicated to him and their family, Chilchuck's world doesn't stop and end at where and when he sees her, that while she's waiting he's living and experiencing things and being self-fulfilled. She's so passive and devoted and her tasks seem almost senseless now that the house is empty except for her, and in that time he's formed half-foot unions and she understands so little of what his life has become outside of her sight. This isn't a diss on Chilchuck or his attitude, I just think that it'd make her ponder about happiness and lifestyles, what's worth it and if she's content with her life. I think she'd find that her and Chilchuck aren't on the same page anymore, and probably they don't communicate much or even that they don't know how to communicate with each other anymore.

Other factors

They really do seem to be on different pages and not know how to communicate with each other well, since for example Chilchuck thinks that on the way back home she "suddenly" fell into a bad mood and seemingly left it alone, or otherwise they didn't talk until he knew what was wrong. Or like how she left and Chilchuck never reached out to her to talk or mend things, just like she never reached out either. According to Marcille it could be that she wanted to "test his love" and see if he'd even care if she was gone, but Chilchuck just got angry that she left like that and never reached out to her, so if that's true they definitely have incompatible expectations or ways to deal with things like that. Maybe she thought of leaving as something he should react to by trying to win her back, but Chilchuck did nothing and let her do her thing, and tbh if that were me I'd also have waited on her to reach out because I figure out that if someone leaves me they want space from me idk. He seems to be rather passive when it comes to interpersonal relationships and how they can mess up, made an analysis post here that talks about it, so the way he reacted by not reacting doesn't feel surprising, maybe she didn't know/remember that part of him, or wanted to shake him out of that tendency. He has no clue why she left, and there are just so many misunderstandings here that it's impossible to know what happened and how she felt and what she wanted for the future.

Also, we’re shown that younger Chilchuck, when he started dungeon crawling, is much more "innocent" and optimistic, less closed off on himself and bitter, and maybe he hasn't even developed his famous "sarcastic retorts" and "abusive remarks" yet as is plastered on all his character introductions and stats. Chilchuck has definitely changed a lot over the years, and some would argue not for the better. Staying with someone for so long has implications that they'll change and be different of course, but signing up for marriage with someone can still leave you questioning that choice decades down the line when they're so different

We get to see his freckles fade in sync with his corruption arc /j

Tfw when you can’t recognize the man you fell in love with.

The hair question

Edit 1/13/2024 leak!!!! Things aren’t officially confirmed but this is a safe bet. You can still read this section to see my reasoning to thinking she had black hair prior to this tho haha

It's not all that important rationally, but the community's been split on the topic: is Chilchuck's wife blonde or not?

Kui highlights Chilchuck being attracted to blondes a grand total of three times, and many assume that his wife is blonde due to this. However, the only vision we see of Chilchuck's wife is Marcille imagining herself as a halfling, so it's up for debate! Flertom has black hair, and that's mostly been the key clue that has people arguing.

I'm not an expert in genetics but black hair is a dominant gene, but it also doesn't mean a black haired parent can't have a brown haired kid, or that two brown haired parents can't have a kid with black hair. As long as one of the parents have it in their genetic code from somewhere in their family tree, it's possible, if not maybe unlikely.

People have been taking Flertom having black hair as evidence that Chilchuck's wife has black hair, but it could be Chilchuck that has the gene and could pass it on. Although...

That seems unlikely. We don't know what Chilchuck's elder brother's hair color was, and his elder sister does have a darker brown hair color, but in the case their parents had black hair or the gene for it, it seems highly unlikely if not impossible for the dominant black hair gene to miss this many amount of time in the gene russian roulette game.

And so I shall now call a witness to the stand, and you reader shall be the judge… Dandan.

You know, this guy? He makes appearances throughout the whole manga, but only has one spoken line in an easy to brush over flashback iirc. He's most often seen hanging out around Chilchuck and other half-foots, but it's unsure how far back he and Chilchuck go.

Now. Remember how Chilchuck and his wife are childhood friends? What if, and hear me out, what if Dandan is related to her. A cousin, or a sibling. Or maybe he's Chilchuck's cousin, even, if we go the reverse route.

The chapter cover

Look at the chapter cover below! We see each member of the main party at a table that's meaningful to them and their history, mostly showing themes of family, community and routine. Laios and Falin sharing a meal by themselves, Marcille at a meal in the cafeteria at the magic academy, Senshi by himself cooking in the dungeon, Izutsumi with Inutade at the Nakamoto household, and... Chilchuck, surrounded by much more mysterious and unknown characters and surroundings.

The only face we see besides the infant is a young one on the left which strikes me as looking a ton like Chilchuck! I doubt it's Meijack or Puckpatti, or someone else, especially since Chilchuck left his hometown pretty early which must make family gatherings harder (and routine is implied with the others’ panels). If it were Meijack I think Kui would have drawn it to more closely match her too, and have her usual freckles. I also don't think it's just Chilchuck and his own family, since if that's Chilchuck the only sibling with black hair he could have is his elder brother and the infant in the middle is clearly, well an infant.

My thoughts are that the table is shared with family friends, or at least members of the community. The elderly person implies that either there's extended family or it’s a gathering, especially if Chilchuck's grandparents don't live with them. Community is implied to be very important with half-foots imo, and if Chilchuck is from a small hometown like he says that would surprise me even less. Childhood friends are often brought together as friends because of circumstances, such as proximity or their families being friends! Doesn't that kid almost off-panel on the right, with a Flertom-like hairstyle and black hair, look to be the same age as the Chilchuck on the left? 👀

Also… Notice the dragon plush she’s holding?

Passed down from mom to daughter? The "most likely belonged to his daughters" is interesting too

If he is related, Dandan could be the infant. I suppose he doesn't end up mattering all that much in the end if you theorize that the Flertom-like kid is his wife on its own though haha. But wether or not you think that this is convincing enough, it's all we have on the topic for now.

Ah yes! Lastly, I've seen the sentiment around that his wife should be blonde, that Chilchuck's taste for blondes, if not the thing that brought them together, should be an acquired taste from loving his wife. That if that's not the case, then Chilchuck's type being blondes is either out of place or insuting or unromantic, etc etc. I can't help but disagree! I think, especially with how Chilchuck and his wife are domestic and all about knowing each from a young age, familiarity etc etc, that it would be so sweet if she wasn't his type! Loving someone so deeply, even if they aren't an idealized type... Which is a common theme/story & character beat in Dungeon Meshi.

Family dynamic theories

Meijack is the most capable, takes after her father the most, seems to have her own business as a locksmith but has a stable steady life. Flertom is the most social, she works at a tavern which seems stable and is ambitious with marriage plans, she has a caring side to her since she sent her dad a handmade gift. Puckpatti is the most upbeat, though she has the most unstable lifestyle, seemingly doing odd jobs.

His daughters do seem well adjusted, which encourages me in that their family seems amicable on the whole and (at the very least) decently functional. We don’t hear what they think of Chilchuck but presumably none of them are on bad terms with him or each other. Flertom does say that "half-foot men are stingy" which, gee, I wonder what half-foot man would have made taught her that- though it does also seem to be a racial stereotype in general, with how for example Namari also says to "steer clear from stores with half-foot clerks".

Flertom seems to be the only one who reached out after their mother left (the only one who's mentioned to have done so at least), and it's because she was the one who took in her mother. It’s not implied that they exchange letters regularly too iirc, it possibly was the only letter they've exchanged since then. I wonder if the daughters even know the full story, if their mother told them all about it or very little. Maybe some are pretty out of the loop, or more distant.

It strikes me that they don't seem to be very close. We're not shown anything that leads us to believe they don't like their father, but I think they're so used to him being absent for work that such distance is normal for them and they don't really long for a deeper relationship or to see him often. They were already out of the house and it seems like they didn't see each other much at that time either so for them it would be just a bit less than the regular amount of Dad time. It's been 4 years Chilchuck what are you doing... But yeah! From what we see they seem mostly unaffected, almost indifferent, not that we can truly tell. I imagine Flertom is the one most attached to Chilchuck with how she sent him a handmade cowl, and I think he rubbed off the most on Meijack teachings wise (besides her attitude, she’s also the one who still wears braids, and we see that Chilchuck braids hair). It makes sense, since they're oldest, and on the contrary I think Puckpatti is the one that knows her father the least. It'd fit the timeline with him working away more while she grew up imo.

Wouldn't it be interesting then that she's the one that Chilchuck says is carefree, in the official translation "doesn't treat life real seriously"? That she's the most optimistic, the most go-with-the-flow, out of the bunch? To me that sounds like a result from her being the youngest and Chil being the most often at work, thus her getting raised by her mother without as much involvement from Chil. Far be it from me to say Chilchuck would raise his daughters to be unhappy btw, not at all, we just all know what down-to-earth values he wants others to have so he doesn't have to worry about them.

Although… Puckpatti spotted?? Seems like he wants to stop her from buying something? His heart meter for her is full <3 (Note: I’ve seen it be argued that this could be his wife. I disagree, since the "stop them" and way that the long haired one is off-center compared to everyone else gives the sense that it’s many of his daughters, and the fact that it’s styled after a dating sim doesn’t mean it’s romantic love as we see with the others. Otherwise imagine being her wife and he tells you not to buy stuff when you go shopping together rip)

Headcanons time:

When naming the daughters, together they choose a pool of names they’d like but only one has the final say, and they alternate between who that is. Chilchuck sticks around more near the end of her pregnancies, and he hasn’t missed any of their births. I don’t have any opinions on who named who right now, but there could be some interesting stuff to theorize with Puckpatti, like them taking extra care picking the name together because they settled on her being their last daughter for fluff, or it was supposed to be Chilchuck but he was so busy that he ended up not picking in time and she was the one to name her for angst.

Actually scratch that I have a new theory : What if it’s actually customary for each parent to pick one half of their half-foot kid’s name? So then each would have chosen half of each girl’s name… And this could be why Chil calls Puckpatti Patti instead of Puck which is her first name, because he’s stubborn since Patti was his pick lmaoooo. Pattipuck doesn’t have the same ring to it alas, his wife was so right

Chilchuck liked to do activities with the girls when they were young. He's not opposed to relaxing at home with them perse, but he likes to do workshops with stuff like arts & crafts to develop their agility some. I don't think they'd do much outings to places like restaurants or theatres for money reason, and I don't think Chilchuck is much of an outdoors type, but he could accompany them to nice fields to play in, or in winter places to play in snow and sled, and organize some activities at home. He's not home very often so when he is he likes to take it easy as a break from work and values the time he gets with his family.

Chilchuck would sometimes work from home as a locksmith, say, unlocking a chest for a customer. In those times, Meijack would take interest and watch him work, even handing him the tools he needs as he goes. In this way, Chilchuck taught her a lot about the work of a locksmith over time. He's also the one that would oil door hinges or do renovation around the house- when he's available.

Like the plushies under his table in his home that we see in illustrations, Chilchuck has a lot of mementos from his daughter (and his wife) he keeps around. Sometimes they take a bothersome amount of place, but throwing anything out isn't something he's seriously willing to consider. Flertom's the most artistic and she used to help with sewing clothes back together, so he has a cheap ceramic mug painted by her when she was really young and small embroideries around.

Imo Meijack would be the most distant in the present. Flertom makes efforts for her parents and is pretty involved, and Puckpatti's distance is more out of being a bit airheaded and being busy + not having a great grasp on time or what's a normal amount of family contact, but Meijack's the one who knowingly and intentionally keeps some distance. I think she’d be the least optimistic about their family situation, and although she’d be hopeful when Chilchuck reached out to them again she’d be a but hesitant. I think Meijack would hold some grudges, being the one most critical of their parenting, both grateful to her dad for working so hard for them and saddened that he wasn't in their life more. Since Flertom was born in the same year I think it’s possible that Meijack was pushed aside a bit to take care of the younger baby more, out of necessity rather than lack of love. Her mom probably needed a lot of help around the house too. Flertom wasn’t blind either, and she cared about & noticed her mom’s emotional states, but she’s on the whole more hopeful and forgiving.

This is my most far fetched one but it is a hc after all, but I think it'd be interesting if one of them had food hoarding tendencies/stress. I like to think it's Flertom, because she's the middle child and would get told that her older sister and younger sister are "growing and need the food" so she wouldn't be allowed to take as much refill or such, add that to them not having much money to frivolously spend on food and that makes a kid who's worried about not eating to her hunger and tends to be possessive over food (I'm projecting). Differential treatment is inevitable in families with many siblings, and it can manifest in small or big ways, maybe they realize it maybe they don't. Working in a tavern has helped eased that tendency of her though, and while she does diet a bit she always leaves a meal feeling satisfied.

When they were younger, Flertom was a real firecracker, loud and spirited with some troublemaking tendencies! She was the daughter that got in trouble & got scolded the most. You can still see slivers of it now that she’s an adult, but she’s much more poised and diligent. She has much more acquaintances than friends, but she has a couple of best friends and usually gets along well with most people. Puckpatti was always a bit head in the cloud, very kind if not gullible, and tended to make friends somewhat easily but didn’t keep them for long, preferring to keep meeting new people and not keeping in touch well. She isn’t super talkative but tends to ramble when she does. Meijack is very introverted, she has more trouble making friends, she has a good handful though they don’t meet up often, her friendships tend to last and she’s close to them. She’s grown more confident over the years, less repressed and more quiet. Meijack as the big sister tended to be the listener for her younger sisters who had more social mishaps. Flertom has dated once before and it only cemented to her that she was going to have very high standards from then on.

Meijack wears thigh-high boots because she hates when sand, dirt or snow gets in her shoes. She wears practical clothing but avoids anything frilly or flashy. Puckpatti also dresses practically, but she does enjoy pretty clothes, it’s more out of necessity and due to not having enough money to indulge. Flertom has a social stable job and she loves prettying herself up (especially as she’s in search of a husband) so she’s the one who gets the most and nicest fashionable clothes and accessories.

Chilchuck is hinted to have had a rather dysfunctional family himself (alcoholic father, distant siblings, etc). So he doesn’t really have the best model on how to raise someone and such. I imagine it was a sort of neglectful home situation, where the kids are encouraged to be independent. If they didn’t have to work or help around much, then free range parenting sort of thing. We do see how the family has full and warm feasts, where someone cleans his mouth with a rag, so it’s not like he didn’t have a caring circle or a tragic childhood though! I don’t remember if it’s explicitely stated, but he’s heavily implied to having grown up poor, as most half-foots, and I just think it's the hardened hardworking family type of childhood where just like he does with others they instill somewhat harsh life lessons in him, which in turn encourages him to indulge in the simple pleasures of life like alcohol and sex, or at least women’s beauty and crass jokes. We do see he seems more optimistic when he's younger in flashbacks, so a bunch of his harsh view on the world is still likely learned and earned rather than taught. I still think he inherited many flawed views from how his father acted, like his attitude about excessive drinking not being a big deal and worth it. That work hard play hard, enjoy life die young mentality he has, shown mostly in the "alcohol" section of his Adventurer's Bible profile, could very well be partly a result of the general poverty half-foot communities are that he grew in as well, like how he doesn't hope for things to be as best as they could be and contends with good enough. As far as I remember, his mother is never mentioned, but I doubt it implies she was out of the picture. She was probably a regular sort of mother that took care of the home as well and was still around when his father died. It looks like there’s a good age gap between one sibling to the next, that could be interesting to dig into too.

A part of Chilchuck’s character is that he takes responsibility for safety and actions of people around him and is very often looking out for them to not do faux-pas wether socially or literally with stepping onto traps. The way he says "I’ve got three people to think of here" makes me think that’s also how he’d think about having to provide for his family, and that could be a source of stress and insecurity for him. Caring for others is a pretty integral part of his character and we see time and time again that his family is very important to him, in any case.

Post-canon

This pic has so much to say!! It’s the ‘thank you for reading’ double page spread where they’re going to a big dining table at the castle with Laios and the main gang. First family gathering in 4 years perhaps?! I’ll say, not feeling very hopeful that his wife isn’t in this, not even implied to be just off-panel with a hand or anything… I imagine before this he still talked to them at least a bit and figured their family situation out, but I think this is still in the early stages of reconnecting. Haha imagine being one of them and receiving a letter saying "Hi it’s been a while… I want to introduce you to my ex-coworker the king and his friends, you up for that?" I don’t want to reconsider all my hcs for this yet, but this pic does seemingly show an eagerness from all the daughters to reunite and reconnect! Meijack’s could be seen as more hesitant, but I think it’s just awkwardness from meeting so many new people, of high status no less. Chilchuck does seem awkward and somewhat self-conscious though, and while that could be just from say Marcille and the others meeting his daughters and him not knowing how to act, I think that also shows that Chilchuck is unsure how to act around his daughters too. Can’t blame him, I’d be stressed too. Anyways, the daughters are all dressed up! Puckpatti even brought flowers! And I doubt it’s just for Senshi, or just to be in with the king. Oh also also, Puckpatti chides Meijack here, seemingly on manners?, so that implies new/different family dynamics there~

We know with the succubus chapter that he does plan on reaching out to his wife again and shooting his shot, and when Marcille was dungeon lord he told her she could help think of a plan to make up with her together at which point Marcille showered him in gifts and flowers intended for her and his daughters. So we do know that whatever happens and however it happens, Chilchuck definitely will at least reach out to her to win her back or worse case scenario get closure on the situation.

-

These are his plans before it’s revealed that the Island is… Well, not an island but the golden kingdom, so the news that Laios is king and that might have changed them a bit, but I think he’s still gonna stick around to help with the half-foot guild for a while.

My personal ideal post-canon Chilchuck life is that after around a year or two of helping around in the golden kingdom, especially regarding half-foot working rights, he gets his shop and finally settles down. He prioritized the whole half-foot guild because there are changes to attend to and people to help, but also used that to procrastinate a bit on getting in touch with his wife again. He does send a letter though, and when she replies they then meet face to face. They explain how it was like on their end, their grievances and their feelings, and they do reconcile. But… It’s been 4 years and his wife has frankly moved on. She’d rather they stay as friends, and Chilchuck has mixed feelings on it but is ultimately fine with it. He was halfway resigned to not reconciling with his wife in canon after all. But no longer do they have cut contact! They get together with the girls for the holidays and the ambiance is nice! He starts exchanging letters more regularly. He also gets a second family of clingy asses with Izutsumi and the main gang and so though he lives alone in his shop he’s well surrounded and well loved, and his daughters visit to check up on him every so often.

I really like the… Maturity of Chilchuck’s plotline, if that makes sense? To me the ending that fits the most is him and his wife reconciling, but not getting back together. I like that they could still be adults about it and at least amicable even after divorce, and that that wouldn’t be treated as a tragic ending. In the end, they were childhood friends and teenage parents, they rushed things a bit and I genuinely think they’re just not that compatible. If not then, at least having it be a gradual process, getting back together and making it work until they’re truly comforatble with each other. Destroy the relationship to better build it again stronger!

Although, his arc in the manga is to allow himself to form connections and be optimistic, which would fit well with him and his wife getting back together. I def think Chil would get healthier post-canon which could fix the issues they had in their relationship though. Like for one he starts eating more, which improves mood & irritability & health, and also after the whole half-foot guild he plans to settle down with a shop so it wouldn’t be long distance or unstable anymore which would definitely give his wife some peace of mind. If they still do some long distance at first while he gets the half-foot guild stable, it’d be really cute if he sent pressed flowers with his letters to her… That could make a nice fic concept, like over time all the pressed flowers and exchanged letters hehe (oh shit that’s a nice title)

My post-canon timeline is Chilchuck lives a nice life living alone in his house except his friends all visit him and care and even tho he likes living alone it’s also bittersweet and every corner of his life is haunted by mementos of the ones he loves and the moments he had with them. But then it’s also like the shared duty of everyone to pass by his shop when they can and keep the old man company and sometimes that means many people come at the same time like if both Meijack and Marcille came the same day~ Cozy life, no regrets except a lil regrets still. That’s it that’s all I want.

Misc

I didn’t know where to put this, so new category time! Family truly is a central theme of Chilchuck’s character. His reaction to learning more about how life gets made is so awed by the wonder of the world. Life indeed…

The implication of this page is that Chil didn’t know about the science side of how procreation works, though of course he did know about the practical side of it. This is speculation, and we have no clue how widespread the information of how reproduction scientifically works lol, but I think it’s fair to think that half-foots’ education especially in smaller communities is handled by the parent, school of life style, or if there are schools then the education is very general and it probably ends early. I think this is supported by how for example half-foots’ jobs we’ve seen are based on experience rather than knowledge, like being a locksmith. Of course any job has its fair share of specialized knowledge to learn, but jobs you learn on the fly pretty well. This sort of dynamic contrasts a lot against elves many tallmen communities, like with the magic academy, where education and knowledge are valued almost above experience, this is what the mandrake chapter was all about after all. Poorer communities tend to have poorer education systems as well irl, it’s a whole issue.

So I already said my piece about his wife not being blonde and it being nice and romantic because literally you don’t need someone to be a beauty ideal to love them and that’s fine and normal and even more romantic imo. But!! I do have an headcanon, now that his wife’s appearance is all but explicitly confirmed. While their hair is blonde, yes their hair is wavy and the ‘main’ one has deep-set eyes, not unlike his wife! Now this is a ‘which came first the egg or the chicken’ question, but while most people seem to be assuming that he got with his wife because she was his type, since they’re childhood friends I feel like it’s his love for his wife that shaped his preferences in that deparment. Like ok he loves golden hair and hers is black, but isn’t it so much more romantic that he has so much love and devotion for his wife and has stared lovingly at it so much over the years, that it’d become his ideal? He loves her eyes <3

Conclusion

Reminder that I’ve got more observations and tidbits compiled in a reblog addition now.

More stuff I should workshop for the masterpost:

Compile more info on Chilchuck's father and his other family. Edit: I compiled all I had pretty neatly here in a speculation post, but there’s no other concrete piece of info other than what I’ve covered here sadly. Same with stuff like Chilchuck’s past work schedule and exchanged letters, there seems to be no other bits of evidence, except…

On the chapter cover and extra where he’s in his basement room we can see one letter and a few papers across his desk. Maybe family letters? Wether his daughters or relatives. Seems too few to me, could just as well be job descriptions, but truly who knows, it’s hopeful.

Excellent analysis on half-foot culture here by a friend that I should read and incorporate the good info into my own meta~

And thus I leave you with a lil web weaving I made about Chil & his wife’s relationship~ And this is where I’d put panels of Chilchuck’s wife… IF THERE WERE ANY

Should we even call Chilchuck's wife Mrs. Tims... We don't know dunmeshi marrital traditions though, and half-foot already have somewhat complex naming conventions... I hate that we don't really know if the daughters' last names are Chils or Chilz. Although that seems to be a japanese to english translation issue, since japanese used the suffix zu and not su, likely to imitate the english S sound at the end of a word. Oh yeah the last names change each generation, that’s odd right? But in english it sounds like saying Chil’s, like, [father]’s, so I think this also supports how half-foots communities tend to be tightly knit and live in the present, for them to be like "Ooh so you’re [father]’s little one eh? I know who that is and this is insightful as to who your family is to me!". Iceland’s a place where last names are like this, though I don’t know about pros and cons of it in that context. It’s called a patronymic.

Ah and I have a bittersweet spotify playlist about her and Chil too, here if ya want. That’s it the post is over

[pressureplus]

Hey!!

Love you writing, and say your ask box was open!

Was wondering if you could do headcannons for Seb with a partner(who’s also an experiment) who’s extremely scared of physical contact, basically helping them recover and learn to find comfort with each other?

Just thought it was a cute idea and would love to see some headcannons for it!!

keep up the awesome work!!

Hi! Thank you, we have a lot of fun writing things for you all, and we adore this fish as much as everyone here💕 I LOVE these kind of Headcannons, comfort is one of my personal favorite kinds of things to write for! Hope you like it! 💕💕💕

(Also, I didn't know if you wanted romantic or not, so I pinpointed where the platonic stuff stops and the romance begins for y'all)

Sebastian Solace x Experiment Reader Headcannons

Warnings: Mentions of abuse, Mentions of Violence, Injury, Blood, Trauma, and Touch Related Issues

◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟

• You only really met because you needed his help

• Had you not found yourself wounded, hungry, and on the brink of death, you'd never have trusted any creature that could take Pandemonium in a fight

• But, as you may have guessed, the stars aligned in your favor and you gained a friend

• The things that had made you the thing you are today gave you a less than ideal relationship with the idea of being touched

• Your old cell, a less so opinion of being in confined, cornering spaces

• Sebastian had been pissed when you writhed and shrieked and fought him when he was trying to tend your wounds

• Almost gave up on you immediately and turned you out, grabbing you by the shoulders and nearly heaving you back into the vent you'd drug yourself through in the first place

• It was the fear in your eyes that changed his mind, something that was familiar to him in a way that ran deep

• it was his own looking back at him

• You had to tend all your own injuries, but he did make a point to slide you the med kits instead of wrestling you or throwing them

• Was surprised when you pulled through, honestly, and even more surprised when you returned that night after your first outing in weeks to sleep in the space he'd give you to recover in

• By this point, he'd grown fond of having the company, finding his own comfort in the familiarity and shared experiences you two had

• The Expendables don't understand what it's like to be in this place the way it was, they don't understand getting experimented on like this, being conditioned a certain unnatural way, being mistreated and seen like monsters

• The researchers and scientists and actually valued UrbanShade Personnel could never understand either, finding some sort of honor or privelege in getting to aid such a massive, self-justified name like the one this god forsaken company holds over its own head

• Not even the other creatures here could relate to him, unable to speak, many of them truly mindless and animalistic- if not those things than things people were afraid to disrespect for fear it would lash out, a luxury that Sebastian and Yourself never got to know on account of the fact they all knew you to be prisoners and knew you to be weak to one thing or another

• Painter was close, but never human. The only one willing to speak to him like a person... Still yet unable to connect with for not knowing what it is to have been human and to have it taken

• But you understand him.

• You two were treated alike, coming from similar backgrounds, coming from places that would never prepare you for this

• You both need that connection, and he knows that when you pull yourself into his shop. The same way you know this when he slides your food forward for you to have in the evenings

• Touch isn't natural to you anymore, nor is it to him, so no matter how much you both want it, you stay distant

• Your voice suffices for a long while, finding the bond you grow to share in old stories from the world that was taken from you and in time spent helping him run his shop and in dreams to feel the sunlight on your new scales

• This new skin has never known sunlight, but it is starting to know kindness, isn't it?

• "Would it be too far for me to hold your hand? Would it be strange?"

• The first hurdle you have to jump on your recovery is still at distance, hesitantly and awkwardly pushing your hand against his own, sitting stiffly on opposite ends of a desk and refusing to look at one another

• It's not comfortable, but it gets the job done, right? A good step in the right direction!

• God the road to recovery is long =_=

• The first time it happens on its own seems to surprise you both, it's a hand on your back when he leans around you to grab for some of the data on the table in front of you for sorting

• Both of you were a little stiff about it, but it was quick and had a purpose, so it wasn't torture

• A neutral experience, but not bad!

• After this, it eases into being natural

• Brushing hands, correcting a strand of hair for him, patting you on the shoulder- even playful little hip bumps when you two get comfortable enough

• Like ice, the wall between you melts away as you fall into rhythm with your shared life

• It starts to feel nice when he gives you attention like that

• Those big clawed hands stop being scary, and you can no longer imagine why you were very frightened when he reaches forward to boop your nose and call you a stupid little idiot for dropping something

• Is never going to be completely nice to you, did you forget the man you decided to marry harass is mean?

• If you don't feel anything for him further than things that are platonic this is where your life together mellows and settles, into a comfortable spot where you two take care of each other and support one another, everything one another has

• If you feel more?

• It's laughing and joking, and all at once you break through the surface tension in ways you never thought you were ever going to have again

• You share a kiss.

• It's hard to tell who leaned in first, but before you can even think about it, your lips are warm and your mind is buzzing

• It's slow and steady and light, hands coming up to cup your face so softly and gently

• Any place your hands rest on him, he leans into, purring and kissing at you as long as he can get away with

• His fins? Fluttering. His tail? Wagging. . . His heart is damn near stopped with how many skips it's taking

• Heart may as well be playing hopscotch, you better pull away before he hits the ground

• After this, you get to enjoy time cuddling and kissing and basking in what it feels like to be loved again

• He could never be more content than he is to be pressed against you

• Even in the bodies you're stuck in now, he could never be happier than this ❤️

[juniperdugong]

Let's leave a message...

Pairing: Nanami x GN!reader Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst CW: post death Nanami, mentions of death WC: 800

Day 5 of To Halloween with Love Event

A/N: Am I sorry that the first Nanami fic I make is angst? Nahhhh

You were shaking - so absolutely terrified of any result that would come out of your little endeavor tonight. If it didn't work then you'd just be left feeling as empty if not more so than before. If it did work then... well you didn't know what would happen but any way that this went you'd probably be left crying.

---

The last time you and Nanami spoke was over text. You waited outside the bakery that you both had wanted to go to since its opening. It's been months since the actual opening date but your schedules never aligned perfectly for anything more than a date-night-in since then.

Shifting in your clothes you leaned up against the wall. Neither of you minded if the other was ever late, things happen and at least you both would be able to spend time together no matter how small. Your phone vibrates in your pocket, must be a text from Kento letting you know he'll be there soon.

[6:48pm] Sorry, my love. Got called in. Looks like I'll be working overtime, don't wait up for me. Just get yourself something sweet on my card.

You can't deny that you felt a tinge of disappointment but more so than that you felt sad. This was one of the only nights you had off for a while and you'd both talked about how important it was to make time for each other amidst the chaos of work.

Dragging yourself back to the subway station after grabbing whatever pastry caught your eye, you try to hide the small tears that dare will themselves out of you. It really shouldn't surprise you - Nanami's job was important, you didn't understand just how important... but important enough to forgive him when it came to moments like this.

Another dinging vibration comes from your pocket,

[6:59pm] I love you so much, y/n.

And your heart pangs with hurt - a sinking feeling that overwhelms you as you step onto the crowded train car.

"Announcement: All lines bound for Shibuya station have been suspended. Please make the necessary transfers to get to your intended destination. For help please visit..."

---

And you would've said it back had you known what would happen that night. The unforgivable pain that that night and the days after would bring you. The memory of having to identify a half-burnt body lying on a metal table in front of people you know have a hand in making him go to Shibuya that night. Those colleagues and supervisors who, above all, kept a straight face as you wailed and failed to comfort you by telling you off stories about their history with Nanami that you could care less about after the death of your fiance.

But now there was a chance, however slim, of redemption. A board in front of you as you held a planchette to your heart in silent prayer that you hoped the man you'd once dreamed of calling husband could hear.

You made sure everything was perfect, even going as far as getting professional opinion on the session from a psychic - Of course ignoring the bit about never attempting to contact someone you once knew or doing the session alone. This was important enough that such a warning meant nothing in your mind.

Gathering your courage you finally placed the planchette on the board, "Nanami Kento... if you are here with me- God, I hope you are- If you are here please move the piece towards 'YES' on the board"

And you waited. Repeating yourself after 4 minutes. And then again at 3 minutes later. And once more after a full 10 minutes had passed. By now your confidence had dwindled enough to think this was a completely stupid thing to try. About to take your hands off the board the clock struck 7pm.

Your hands begin to move and for a second you think it's your subconscious trying to make up for all the sadness in your heart so that you won't fall deeper into despair and depression. "YES", it led you.

"Who is this?"

K-E-N

You couldn't handle it. Tears overcome you as your body quivers from the emotions flooding your system and you hope to whoever was on the other side of this board that this wasn't a sick game.

"Hey, K- Ken..." You sobbed between speaking, "How have you been?" And you smile weakly - In the moment forgetting procedure and letting your hands fall from the board to wipe your tears.

O-K M-Y L-O-V-E

Your eyes bulge out of your skull as the planchette moves on its own instinctively backing away speechless you gasp as you hit something behind you. A cold chill enrapturing your body.

"Lovely, I hate seeing you cry..."

A/N: Oh to be haunted by ghost Nanami... wouldn't be afraid of those peeping eyes for sureeee, this took longer for me to write because of how I wanted to approach it. Honestly could be a fic.

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JJK Taglist (OPEN): @iluvmattyb

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Just like how kalim embodies scarabia's mindfulness in his own way, how do you think other boys embodies their respective dorms spirit?

For the sake of ease and consistency, I will be using the official TWST localization's terms for each dorm's core value.

Please note: these are my personal interpretations; even the definitions of each dorm’s “spirit” is not explicitly defined within official TWST materials, so I’ll be running with my own definitions before covering each NRC student. Additionally, since I’ll be covering 22 characters in this post I may not have time to get into painstaking detail for each one.

***Main story spoilers (including late book 7) below the cut!!***

The Queen of Hearts' Spirit of Strictness

Literally speaking, strictness refers to following rules or beliefs exactly. There is rigid enforcement of these rules or beliefs, and very few, if any, exceptions or mercy granted.

Right off the bat, it’s easy to see how Riddle aligns with the spirit of strictness. He is the embodiment the law in Heartslabyul, serving as both judge and executioner to his students. Riddle insists that the rules—no matter how nonsensical—be followed, and he does not hesitate to unleash his wrath and collar those who step out of line. He is strictness itself. Beyond book 1, we do see Riddle trying to be more patient and flexible—however, the fact remains that he upholds rules and continues to have trouble with circumstances where he has to think independently or without a set of instructions to refer to.

Trey is known for frequently indulging others and behaving in a manner which some may call kind. The twist here is that Trey’s strictness is present in the “big brother” role he adopts when dealing with his peers. He’s generally more lenient than Riddle, but Trey often alludes to the fact that he shouldn’t be underestimated or thought of as a nice guy. There are moments when Trey gives others their comeuppance for misbehaving (such as in his dorm uniform vignettes, where he deprives first years of cake for complaining about his same-y baked goods). The thing is, most don’t see it coming because he’s typically so… nice. When he wants to be stern and put his foot down, he certainly can—it just isn’t something that happens a lot, since he’s more mild-mannered than his classmates.

Cater is strict with his public image, specifically how his peers view him. This is most obviously seen in his obsession with social media. He's constantly taking pictures and posting, being heavily involved on Magicam—a space where he can control the narrative about the type of person he is and the life he has. Cater keeps up this front in real life as well, acting cheery and sociable with his classmates while masking a far less motivated and sad side to his character. (This is implied in his Lab Wear vignettes, where a mandrake he infuses with his own magic becomes gloomy and huddles into itself.) There are occasions when Cater expresses that he is lonely or that he wishes he had more friends growing up, but he never fully opens up about his true nature. He strictly keeps that part of himself locked up tight and is seemingly afraid of what others would think of that persona.

Like Cater, Deuce is strict with himself. In Deuce's case, this arises from a past of delinquency and the desire to reform and to be an honors student that his mom can be proud of. Because of these goals, Deuce tries very hard to excel in class (but often falls short) and to behave in a way that he believes honors students would. This means changing the way he looks (he let his natural hair color come back in; it used to be bleached blonde), the way he speaks (not using foul language), the way he dresses, and, most importantly, the way he acts. Of course, his temper gets the best of him at times and his delinquent self bubbles back up (like in book 1 when the eggs were ruined), and Deuce is currently working on better repressing that.

Ace is probably the most carefree and the least stereotypically "strict" of the Heartslabyul group. Instead of having a focus on enforcing rules, Ace is usually the one breaking or defying them. How, then, does he embody the Queen of Hearts' spirit of strictness? I believe it comes through in some of Ace's most iconic scenes: the ones where he is calling others out on their bull crap. Time and time again, it's Ace that is bluntly telling others what they're doing or saying is hypocritical or wrong, or that they haven't truly taken accountability. He does this no matter who he is facing, be that his own dorm leader (book 1), an undead bride (Ghost Marriage), or Malleus Draconia himself (Endless Halloween Night). Ace has his own set of morals and beliefs, and he speaks them loud and clear without imposing as harshly as Riddle does.

The King of Beasts' Spirit of Persistence

Persistence is when one continues their course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. In other words, there is an obstacle in the way of achieving a goal, and one persists in the face of that obstacle.

Leona is a somewhat strange case to make for persistence because initially he comes off as a very lazy character. We quickly learn that though he appears unmotivated, he’s comfortable scheming and thinking multiple steps ahead to cut out difficult or unnecessary work. There’s no doubt that Leona has had a challenging childhood, feeling like he was always being compared to his brother and never recognized for his own talents. We feel the effects of Leona losing this hope as late as book 6, when Leona says that Jamil is capable of change, unlike himself. Some fans even speculate that Leona’s dialogue implies he has fallen into depression as a result of frequently being dismissed and put down in spite of his efforts to be seen. Even when Leona is dealing with such trauma, he cooks up a plot to return his dorm to glory and to support its future. He, the lowly second born prince, wants to prove himself and his team of misfits, as being worthy of respect and admiration. When the plans fall through, Leona is quick to give up (which seems to go against the idea of Savanaclaw’s persistence). However, I would say this is part of his character growth in book 2. Later in the main story, Leona also throws in the towel quickly—but it doesn’t contradict his development; he knows when to strategically retreat in book 6.

Ruggie comes from an extremely impoverished background. He has had perhaps the least “cushy” life out of the entire NRC cast. Even so, Ruggie was able to study and work hard enough to earn decent grades, get multiple part-time jobs, and pick up many useful survival skills. He’s street smart and knows that what he lacks in strength he can make up for by sticking to someone who is strong (Leona). (Their relationship is mutually beneficial!!) Ruggie knows that just having money isn’t sustainable in the long run, so he’s hauling ass now to make something of not only himself, but also for all the people in the slums.

Jack embodies persistence through the events of book 2. At first, Jack tries to get Leona to see reason by letting him know that he genuinely is a figure Jack admires. He’s put in a moral dilemma when Leona argues that even if they play dirty, he has good intentions. If Jack interferes, he is messing with the future job prospects of his dorm members. Jack wrestles with the question before ultimately coming to the conclusion that he has to tell others about it—and, what’s more, put his own pride as a lone wolf aside to confront Leona and stop to his machinations.

The Sea Witch's Spirit of Benevolence

Benevolence may refer to meaning well or general kindness and compassion. It involves a willingness to help others and caring for them.

Azul, being at the head of the operations at Octavinelle, passes himself off as a benevolent man who will listen to your woes and grant your wishes. In fact, he does—but at a price. The shady ring he’s running is NOT wholly benevolent; the deals can definitely come across as malevolent in book 3 (when Azul wrote the contracts in such a way that the loopholes could fuck clients over). The deals themselves (assuming no foul play), however, are neutral since both parties agree to the terms. Contracts are written with the idea that they will benefit the clients. And Azul is, of course, also seeking out benefits for himself, as that is the nature of business dealings.

Jade represents a kind of benevolence associated with acts of service. He’s Azul’s right-hand man and information broker—furthermore, much of how Jade presents himself alludes to being a butler or some other supportive role. Jade just generally behaves in a way which benefits others. He acts demure and servile, then uses the trust he has gained through service to ply what he wants out of others. Jade does it so sweetly and so expertly that his prey don’t usually notice, or willfully overlook it, being far too impressed by his abilities to fixate on his ulterior motives. This strategy works even on notoriously stern individuals such as Vil (Jade Dorm Uniform vignettes).

Floyd gives “free hugs” :) is… well, ironically, the “kindest” of the trio in a weird way. While this is highly dependent on his mood, the fact of the matter is that Floyd is the easiest to read in terms of “telegraphing” his actions. If he’s in a bad mood, he usually will not hide it. You know what you’re signing up for as soon as you see him. He also typically doesn’t put forth an effort to manipulate or to scheme like Azul or Jade would; Floyd would prefer to be direct and get it over with already. That, in a sense, is the mercy that he offers: something swift and plain to see.

The Sorcerer of the Sands' Spirit of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a state of being aware of oneself and the present moment. A mindful individual can aknowledge and accept one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness may also extend to being aware of others and perceiving their own states of being.

Kalim is not viewed as the most intelligent or crafty of leaders, but where he shines is in his ability to welcome and to bond with his dorm mates. His emotional intelligence is extremely high, which proves itself to be a useful skill in getting to know others and to earn their trust. Kalim has made a name for himself in Scarabia because he is always there to listen and lend a helping hand to his dormmates. He is unabashedly open about his own emotions too, crying when he is sad and trying hard when he is frustrated or dissatisfied. He often asks to know what is wrong when he senses upset within his classmates and wants to do what he can to rectify those situations. This is peak mindfulness--not only is Kalim acutely aware of his own emotional state, but he's also pretty consistent with sensing those in others (the one big exception here, of course, is Jamil). Sometimes Kalim can be blindsided by his own blind faith in others or his overeagerness causing him to blurt things out unintentionally. He's definitely not perfect in this regard--however, there's plenty of room and willingness to grow and to learn (something which Kalim has expressed both in book 5 and in birthday vignettes).

Jamil more readily fits in with a less savory interpretation of mindfulness. He thinks ahead and uses what he knows of others to manipulate them or put himself in an advantageous position. This notably occurs in book 4 (when Jamil plans to use the feedback of Yuu and the Scarabia members to dethrone Kalim), as well as in events (like Beans Day, where he plans to entrap Kalim when Kalim cooks a fragrant lunch that Jamil purposefully packed for him). He uses what he notices or knows about others (Azul’s shadiness, rumors about Lilia being a bad cook) to avoid interactions which could be less than beneficial to him. Jamil’s main fault is that he fails to recognize people’s strengths (something which Leona calls him out for in book 6), and instead focuses mainly on their weaknesses, shortcomings, and how those could be exploited (mostly because he’s in a position where he cannot outright act in certain ways without suffering some consequences). Jamil is aware of these potential consequences and finds or plans workarounds for them. However, he is also mindful in a more conventional sense too. He’s usually the competent one in Scarabia’s leadership and fulfills the organizational tasks that Kalim doesn’t. The duo is like sun and moon; they balance each other out.

The Beautiful Queen's Spirit of Tenacity

Simply put, tenacity is determination and endurance. One is persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired. Each of the members of Pomefiore knows what they want, and they are stubborn in their pursuit of it.

Vil makes it clear in book 5 that he wants to win VDC/SDC, thereby proving to himself and to the world that he is capable of more than playing the part of a “villain”. He already had high standards for himself prior to book 5 (exercising, doing skincare, maintaining a healthy diet, etc.), but you can see how single minded Vil is toward this one goal. He drives his team members hard and even cancels a major job offer from his manager so he can dedicate all his time and energy into seizing the win. And how many times has Vil lost in the past??? Countless, I bet. Yet here he is, trying again and again, even when he knows that happy endings aren’t guaranteed and his efforts may not bear fruit after all.

Rook pursues any and all things beautiful!! He used to just be content admiring beauty, but with Vil’s prompting, Rook soon also found value in beautifying himself. It means Rook can also put beauty out into the world, and helps him better appreciate other works of art. This man is infamous around campus for his… admittedly creepy and unnerving habits. He follows people around, documents them in photographs, memorizes their personal details, etc. His keen eye has also earned him praise though—Vil can comfortably rely on him for honest feedback, and Neige recognizes him as a dedicated member of his fan club. Rook is nothing if not determined and dedicated to his craft.

Epel is tenacious too, but in a way that Vil would not approve of in all circumstances. Epel is stubborn in his thinking and refuses to let go of his hometown roots. He’s very proud of where he comes from, so he puts up a fight with Vil when Vil demands that Epel address his upperclassmen more politely. Epel sees the command as a threat to himself, and a challenge to the hometown he loves. Additionally, it takes Epel a while to reevaluate his deeply ingrained views on gender norms. He’s all-around very strong-headed!

The King of the Underworld's Spirit of Diligence

Diligence is when one is involved in careful and persistent work or effort. This principle generally governs all of STYX, the blot research organization operated by the Shroud family. Their job is a thankless one—they do such important work, yet it isn’t recognized by the general public due to STYX’s secretive nature.

Idia, as the temporary acting director of STYX in book 6, gets involved in their research. There’s many Phantoms kept in the STYX facility, so there are many safety precautions in place and care taken to ensure no one is harmed. (Ironically, it was Idia’s lack of diligence that led to Ortho’s passing.) Outside of book 6, one can say that Idia has a diligent personality, at least when it comes to his hyperfixations. He becomes dedicated to media that captures his interests to the point where it actually incentivizes him to leave his room (Ghost Marriage) and overcome his meek stutter to speak confidently and lecture people (first Halloween event, his Dorm Uniform vignettes, etc.).

I believe Ortho is diligent in being Idia’s emotional support both before and after Ortho is officially recognized as a separate student. He cheers Idia on and encourages him to touch grass socialize, wishing nothing but the best for his big brother! Ortho wasn’t always like this either; he used to be quite stiff and monotone, and had to learn how to emulate emotions by carefully observing and absorbing media. His motivation in book 6 is also fueled by diligence—Ortho worries about what he can do to support Idia’s wishes, and this is ultimately what drives him to taking over STYX and unleashing the Phantoms. Then, in Fairy Gala: What If, Ortho stubbornly tries to come up with his own ideas regarding the theme of evolution rather than rely on others for answers. He works hard to developing his own concept and is able to put on a show-stopping performance with it!

The Thorn Fairy's Spirit of Nobility

To be noble can refer to strength of character, mind, and/or literal position, birth, rank, or social status. No matter which definition you go with, I think they could all apply to the members of Diasomnia.

Regarding noble status, Malleus and Silver are both princes. Lilia and Sebek may not be nobles themselves, but they (in addition to Silver) serve royalty and have close personal connections to people in high places, be it via friends or via family. Diasomnia is very well-connected.

Beyond superficial nobility, one can say that those in Diasomnia are noble in character as well. To begin with, Lilia has sacrificed himself for his country on multiple occasions. This isn’t limited to going to battle, but also ferrying his princess’s egg to safety, traveling the world for knowledge on dragon eggs, and going so far as to give up his own life force to hatch Malleus. And what does Lilia get for all of this? Banished from the capital, screamed at, shunned—all because he is a nobody, a bat of no status. Despite this, Lilia does not become bitter nor hateful, he instead opens his heart and mind to the world and seeks to instill others with the same wisdom. Through all the tragedies he suffered, Lilia rose stronger than ever rather than sinking to the same levels as the narrow minded senators that rebuked him.

Silver is, perhaps, the most overtly noble in character. He extols the virtues of listening and getting along with others, often serving as the peacemaker between parties (typically between Sebek and their peers, but we’ve also seen Silver smoothing things out between all of NRC and diurnal fae). He also assumes the best of others and is ready to leap into action to protect them at a moment’s notice. His kind and gentle nature attracts many forest animals to him, who can likely sense the purity of Silver’s heart.

Sebek’s brand of nobility isn’t geared at others in general but rather is pinpointed on one person (that being Malleus). He is noble in the sense that he dedicates himself to his prince. It’s no secret that practically everything Sebek does is to “live up” to perceived standards so as to not shame Malleus or the Draconia royal family—from doing well academically to dressing neatly and throwing himself into training… Sebek’s passion and eagerness is what makes him stand out. It could also be said that he fiercely defends his friends and those who have earned his respect (albeit maybe not worded in the most tactful ways). That, too, in a sense, is honorable.

Finally, we have Malleus. What can be said about him that hasn’t already been said? He is the prince of a nation, so there are many people looking to him for leadership. As such, Malleus must always conduct himself in a manner that puts his country’s best face forward and expects the same of others. Indeed, he reprimands Sebek for behaving in poor taste and instructs him to apologize to Leona, the prince of another nation. However, what is most telling about Malleus is his impetus for Overblotting. He deludes himself into thinking “this is what is best for everyone”. In his mind, he frames forcing everyone into dream states so they can stay forever and have their happily ever afters as the “good” and “noble” thing to do. He’s definitely not doing this for himself, he argues, it’s a gift for everyone. And throughout book 7, Malleus tries to gaslight others into this belief too 💀 when bro’s already convinced himself of this and refuses to see otherwise—

[sciencegothic]

curious abt ur interpretation, but why do u think zeus turned on athena so suddenly after she completed the games?? a lot of people say it’s just because he’s a sore loser, but i think there’s more to it!! :0

hi, hello !! i do have some feelings about this !!

for me, i think it’s sort of, like, less about the fact that she won, and more what she stood for in winning? so, like, the fact that she managed to convince five other gods to set free a mortal man, the fact that she won for the sake of a mortal man - that’s what zeus can’t reason with

so, zeus does say:

No one beats me, no one wins my game!

which gives the impression that he is, just, a sore loser. that he cannot handle being beat. and, okay, i think there is like some truth to that. he is the god king, he does not lose at things. i think he expected that this would be a lot harder for her, that the other gods would care a lot more than they probably do. it’s the shock more than anything, then, that gets him. he didn’t expect to lose

but, also, before this line he says:

You dare to defy me? To make me feel shame?

and i think this part is important to consider. let’s look at it line by line. he use the word “defy”, which seems odd, because athena did exactly what he laid out for her to do. but i think in this case it’s more, that she’s defying him by aligning herself with a mortal. it really doesn’t help that the specific man in question is one that zeus himself punished personally. in his eyes, odysseus is weak and pathetic, he isn’t worth the mercy of the gods. athena had abandoned him at one point, and i think that shows her father’s will being reflected in her. if she - someone who has befriended odysseus, taken him under her win - was willing to turn her back on him, then the likes of zeus would have no sympathy for such a man, and thus it is a defiance that athena would suddenly turn back to helping him

she defies his will by getting this far in the game for the sake of odysseus. actually, i think zeus had hoped the game would change her mind, show her the “godly” perspective. the fact she still holds her ground after it, then, is defiance

okay, and then zeus talks of “shame”, athena making him “feel shame”. again, this ties a lot back into what we just covered - zeus is ashamed that his own daughter would fight this hard for a mortal whom he hates. that she would face five gods who try to sway her opinion and still come out standing by odysseus. athena is zeus’ favourite daughter, after all. he would surely then expect that she would always align herself with him or his morals, so to see her stand before him after playing his games, games designed to force her hand, and for her still want his help - that is a cause for great shame for the father

now, looking at the wider context of the musical, we see that zeus is “fair” (at least by his own standards). he gives odysseus two choices across the course of the musical, in regards to the baby and in regards to his men. in both cases, he doesn’t force odysseus either way to choose, and when he does make his choice, zeus doesn’t interfere any further. at the start of god games, he gave athena a choice. to face the other gods OR face him. by his own standard set before, when athena chooses to face the gods and wins, zeus should stand by that. it is fair.

but he doesn’t. and for me that’s what shows that this is so much more than just a sore loser. this is a god who is going against his agenda in order to punish his daughter - that’s something that runs a lot deeper than “aw, i lost”. he didn’t expect athena to win, no, but that’s because he always expected her to come back to her senses (his reason) before the game was up. she didn’t. that is a great defiance of his will, and that is a great shame on him as her father

zeus is all about pride, we see that most clearly in thunder bringer. his daughter - his favourite, perfect daughter - has essentially just embarrassed him in front of all these other gods by beating his game for the sake of someone he has previously sought to punish. she has, in front of all these other gods, shown that his faith in her was misplaced, because she is willing to defy his will. this is a god king who could not bring someone around to see his reason. this is a father who has realised in that moment that his daughter is not who he thought

so, okay, yeah, this is very long and ramble-ly (i just woke up, so i do apologise) but TLDR, it’s about pride and shame and zeus’ sheer fury that the game he designed for athena to lose - or to, at least, bring her back to his reason - did not work. she still stands against him for the sake of one, mortal man, and that is a defiance he cannot have

[starcurtain]

hihi sorry to rant in your inbox but i hate when people use aven's line about jade that says her kindness comes with a price to make their relationship seem worse than it is. while the ipc is. well. the ipc i dont thinl it would benefit her to harm him like theyre both stonehearts AND hes her subordinate. personally i think the price he mentions is like, testing him like she did in her social media post with the ores. it certainly would be less incongruous with her want to guide those that come after her..

I think that people really struggle with Jade. They took one look at her dommy mommy appearance and her status as one of the top three in the Stonehearts and they just want her to be unrepentant evil soooo bad.

Don't get me wrong, she is definitely a master manipulator and she definitely has a specific personal goal she's working toward using the IPC as her vehicle to do so. Her overall idea of creating an endless vortex of desires that can't ever be sufficiently met is very Voracity-coded and not really the kind of idea a very well-adjusted person would be espousing. We have no idea how loyal she really is to the IPC's goal of aiding Preservation against Destruction in the War of the Aeons.

But she's also, over and over again, been painted as having "True Neutral" moral alignment in-game. She's literally xxxHolic's Ichihara Yuuko with a bad case of capitalism: She always demands a price, but never asks more than is fair.

It's literally Fullmetal Alchemist's first law of alchemy: Human kind can not gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.

All of Jade's exchanges are equivalent and none of her customers enter into a bargain without understanding the price they are paying. In fact, she won't even let Firefly try to make a deal at all without doing her research in advance to truly realize the extent of what she is asking for. Jade is inherently an honest businesswoman.

The issue is that greed is all-encompassing. The ability to have any wish granted is a temptation that virtually no one can escape in the end.

Therefore, I think the best way to understand Jade is as the Honkai Star Rail equivalent of Mephistopheles. In the legend of Faust, the eponymous Dr. Faust longs for more in his life--he is endlessly pursuing knowledge and power, but has hit the limits of his own ability. He meets the devil, Mephistopheles, who agrees to enter into a pact with him: Mephistopheles will fulfill all Faust's wishes while Faust is still alive, but then Faust's soul will belong to the devil when he dies. The deal is fairly presented. The terms are not unclear: If Faust agrees to the bargain, he knows what will happen to his soul in the end.

Mephistopheles doesn't trick him or force his hand when it comes to this bargain. Faust could say no. He could resist. But he doesn't. He agrees, because human greed and pride are simply that overpowering. He thinks he's smarter than the devil; unlike the thousands of others who have come before and suffered damnation for their deals with the devil, Faust thinks he is different, better than others, more deserving... The actual temptation doesn't come from the devil. It comes from human hubris.

Like Mephistopheles, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Jade merely presents the choice--it's humanity's endless desire that leads to the downfall.

It's a snake and an apple and a contract for a reasonnnnnn, Jade haters.

So, I don't think that Jade represents any danger to anyone who can resist temptation. Firefly walks away from Jade's exchange entirely unscathed. Trailblazer isn't pressed into surrender.

But Aventurine?

To be honest, I think his relationship with her is a bit more complicated.

Aventurine likes Jade. She did him a solid when he was at his lowest in life. His character stories make it clear that he views her as, essentially, someone "safe" in the IPC, unlike other Stonehearts.

But... I do agree that Aventurine approaches Jade more cautiously than he approaches others. And I think that probably stems from a couple of different factors:

Jade has positioned herself as Aventurine's "pseudo-mother," and Aventurine responds to her as if she, indeed, a mother figure he has to obey. He is more respectful of her than anyone else we see him interact with in the game--Diamond and Opal get called by name, but Jade is always "Ma'am." Which is very close to "Mama;" this is not an accidentttttt. When Jade disrupts his banter with Topaz, Aventurine immediately does as he is told, hands over his room card, and simmers down. Even in joking social media posts, when Jade asks Aventurine to do something (judge the uncut jade stones she sent him), he does it even when she rejects his high demand for profit sharing.

But:

2. Jade actually failed Aventurine's moral litmus test. From the beginning of his adulthood flashbacks, we see Aventurine explicitly troubled by the fact that his human dignity was denied and that a market value was assigned to his existence. And not even a high value. He was sold for pennies. It's the ultimate mortification, and we can tell it is still bothering him to this day because even "future" Aventurine brings up the sting of that bone-deep insult during Aventurine's long walk through Penacony. In response to the indignity, Kakavasha gave his original master a moral test: Kakavasha says that he'll go willingly into the hellscape of the death maze if his master will give him 30 copper Tanba, just half his market value. His master refuses, demonstrating that he does not view Kakavasha as a human being, worthy of any respect. By refusing this tiny, insignificant request, the master exhibits his utter moral depravity, from which there is no return. In response, Kakavasha ultimately kills him and takes the 30 copper coins he asked for (nothing more, nothing less) from his corpse.

When Kakavasha meets Jade, he then makes the exact same demand: He wants 30 copper coins and exactly 30 copper coins. At this point, it is very clear that--to Kakavasha--the coins are emblematic of his value as a human being. (I promise you, somewhere in his apartment right now are the 30 bloody coins he took from his master's cold corpse.) His freedom, his dignity, his worth... All of these things hinge on being able to acquire the original 60 Tanba coins. Thus, those who refuse his requests for the coins also symbolically refuse his request for basic respect, his request to be seen as an equal human being who deserves to not be reduced to mere pennies on a bill of sale.

And Jade refuses this request. She treats the demand for Tanbas like a paltry sum and instead ignores the specificity of the request to give a general "We'll give you riches beyond your imagine, more than you could have ever thought to want." But that isn't what he asked for. She stepped over the request he actually made in order to supplant her ideas, on her terms. Kakavasha made the tiniest, most easily completed request in the world, and in failing to actually just respect what he personally wished for, Jade demonstrated that she ultimately will not really respect him.

Just like his slave master, Aventurine represents a value on a page to Jade. For this reason, even if she extends pseudo-maternal behavior to Aventurine and he laps it up like a starved kitten drinks up milk, we see that he remains more cautious toward her than he does to any other female character in the game. Aventurine comes across as more comfortable talking to Acheron than he sounds when he talks to Jade... Because in failing the most basic and seemingly meaningless test, Jade revealed exactly to what extent Kakavasha can--and cannot--trust her.

Does Jade actually mean Aventurine any harm? No, I really don't think so, and you're right, those who claim that she does are really over-exaggerating Jade's negative traits, mostly because they've almost universally got a strong anti-IPC agenda and hate everything from the IPC except Aventurine on principle. Everything in Jade's character stories points to her honestly wanting to develop the hidden talents of others, to "polish" rough cut stones into true gems, and to see her fledglings thrive. Kakavasha is someone she picked up out of the dirt and dusted off. If he excels, that means her faith was well-placed, her judgment was correct, and her team as a whole excels.

It's exactly like a business owner who takes great pride in producing a fantastic product. Only when the product succeeds can the business itself succeed.

But business owners see their products as objects, not equals.

Jade is a fairly neutral figure and I think she wants to see Aventurine grow and achieve greatness. But at the end of the day, their relationship is very predicated on the notion of investment (Jade puts up the original capital to make Aventurine great, and he repays her faith in him by generating wealth for the IPC). It is clear she just can't be trusted to value Aventurine as a person above a means of profit--and Aventurine knows (and accepts) that too.