#I'm gonna go back to my hovel

[m0rninglatte]

[Small lil spoiler warning 4 the Ash and Marcel lore!]

Something something Ashril and Marcel r a mix of prison duo & devious lads/wet birds.

Centross helped Icarus out of their doubts and comforts them when they need it most.

Marcel did that 4 Ash and promised to do that more for them in the future.

Ven did similar for Icarus as well as sharing work and making sure each other was okay everytime they saw eachother and after whatever they did that day.

Marcel and Ash do the same 4 eachother.

Something something...

[nicole-alt-delete]

Part 2 of Black Bandana!

Just as Robin is about to open the door  and return to the hovel she and Steve consider a job, the door bursts open in front of her and  Eddie Munson blazes past. She barely has time to process his greeting, let alone how red he looks.

"What was that about?" She questions, just briefly looking back at him as she makes her way to the counter, only to find Steve standing there looking shell shocked.

And quite possibly redder than Eddie was.

Robin might not be able to figure out what's going on in the Munson brain, but one look at Steve has her dropping their lunch on the counter in a hurry as her eyebrows shoot up and she leans in to whisper dramatically.

"Did something happen? You didn't tell him-?"

Despite still looking beyond flustered, Steve manages to snap out of it just so he can push her shoulder. "What? God, no- Rob, are you kidding- no, no.... He just uh. I.... I'm not sure what just happened, actually."

He takes a deep breath and runs his hand through that signature hair of his, and as Robin rolls her eyes and rounds the counter he's already got his hands on his hips as he enters his 'thinking mode'.

She takes a seat on another of the counters and reaches for her food, eager to find out just want transpired while she was out.

"Okay then dingus, you know the drill- from the top,"

Steve does a little head shake and starts pacing, taking a moment to go through it in his head, trying to figure out where exactly the top of the situation was. After a few moments of scrunched eyebrows and more head shaking, he finally looks around the store, making sure it's empty again.

"Okay, well... I guess... I mean I guess Eddie came out to me?"

Robin throws her hands up, the fries she was about to shove into her mouth forgotten in her excitement.

"What?! Well that's- that's perfect then right? I mean I told you so, first of all, but then. What's with all the...?" as she gestures to him, pointing out how tense and confused he looks.

Steve rolls his eyes, "No Robs, it's not perfect- it was a shitshow! It was totally an accident, it was like I forced him to say it- and he looked so terrified, I really didn't know those eyes of his could get any bigger. Someone came into the store and he ran away before I could even respond, I don't think he thinks..."

Another sigh as his voice drops a little to mumble,  "He probably thinks I'm gonna punch him or some stupid shit,"

Robin frowns. "An accident... he came out to you on accident." Nodding a little like she gets it. She immediately shakes her head and squints, definitely not getting it at all.

"How did that happen, exactly?"

Steve leans against the opposite counter, the red returning to his face as he crosses his arms. "I guess... you know that bandana he always carries?"

She nods, "The one you stole to get a reaction from him, yeah. I assume he came to get it back like you wanted- so what went wrong?"

"Well- that's just it- you know how I had it in my pocket this morning? Just like he always does? I guess when he came in he saw, and he absolutely freaked the hell out. Jumped over the counter and nearly gave me a heart attack over it,"

Robin laughs, “Over the bandana?”

“Because it was in my pocket,”

She stares at him blankly.

"Because.... it was in your pocket."

He nods.

They blink at each other in silence for a moment, before finally Robin pulls her head back and makes this confused little sneer, setting aside her lunch altogether.

"What the fuck?"

Steve throws his arms up in exasperation, "I know! He freaked out and started talking about how it was some 'symbol' or something and then when I asked what it symbolized he said- he said it means he's gay. Which, okay, cool! We knew that Robs- but now what?!"

He sighs again and slinks down the side of the counter until he hits the floor. Robin doesn't even wait until his butt lands before she's on the ground with him, cross legged and resting her head in her hands.

"Okay, well... first off, forget the bandana thing. Your local lesbian's never heard of it so it can't really be that big of a deal, right? And what, so you wore it like that too. Not technically wrong..."

He rolls his eyes, "Eddie doesn't know-"

"So tell him, dingus! Like I've been telling you to! But no, Harrington has to 'put the moves on him' instead of just using his big boy words,"

She huffs softly and punches him in the shoulder lovingly, which Steve whines about.

"Ow, Robs- okay, I get it, I get it- he's not going to want to talk to me though,"

"Doesn't matter, if you don't do it then I'm making you do the closing clean for the next week, you hear me?"

Steve groans even louder this time, putting his head in his hands before running them through his hair, the classic Steve Reset Button(tm).

He nods, "Alright I'll go. You're worse than Dustin sometimes, you know that?"

She smirks and stands up, offering him a hand and yanking him back up too. "If Dustin was the one helping you with this you would have killed him by now, so we both know that's not true,"

--

Eddie jumped back in his van and sped back home just as fast as he legally could. Actually- that was a lie, he was definitely speeding. By a lot.

He had to get as far as he possibly could from Steve Harrington, and he had to do it yesterday.

After screeching into the trailer park and turning the ignition off as fast as humanly possible, he bolted inside and ran to his room, debating just how many things he really *needed* if he were to run away on the spot.

He’s seen what happens to gay kids in Hawkins, knows it’ll only be worse for him. The last thing he needed was to be both the falsely accused murderer AND the faggot. Not to mention the heartbreak of having Steve be the start of it…

Part of Eddie knows Steve wouldn’t. He really does try to believe it. But his instincts take over.

He grabs an old duffel bag and starts scrambling to put clothes in it, not bothering to check whether they're clean or dirty, just moving on anxious, paranoid instinct.

Thoughts race through his head about what Wayne will say, and how far away he should be before he calls. His heart aches at the idea of leaving behind Hellfire and his band, but he doesn't think he could stand to let either of them see him after Steve finds him and throws the first punch, or whether the kids would even care once he inevitably told them too.

He starts a pile at the foot of his bed, debating how much he can fit in the van, planning to leave during the night, figuring he has at least enough for gas to the next major city. He gets so caught up in his silly little escape plan that he doesn't realize how long it's actually taking him to "pack".

There's a knock on the door and Eddie nearly has a heart attack,  jumping from the sound and immediately kicking his dresser,  all thoughts completely gone from his head as he curses at the pain.

"Son of a FUCKING bitch, shitting stick- mother fucker- I'll be there in a damn second!" he huffs as there's a second, more timid knock.

Without thinking about any of the things he had just a moment ago been panicking over, he limps to the door and swings it open, ready to berate whoever bothered him, only to stop dead when he sees...

Steve. Of course it's Steve. He's not even taken off his stupid work vest yet and the little bottlecap button Eddie had made him last week was staring right at him from his chest.

Steve waves shyly at Eddie and starts to say something, but Eddie can't hear it, already backing away and starting to blabber, "Listen man- I was- I was joking earlier! I wouldn't- there's nothing to- you really don't have to hurt me or anything, I swear-"

Steve stays on the porch, looking a little stunned. No, not stunned... hurt. Or- maybe worried? He looks kind of like if you kicked a puppy and then threw it in the pool, except sadder.

Not actually, probably, but as far as Eddie's concerned, the look on Steve's face hurts him about a hundred times worse than a sad puppy could.

Steve puts a hand on the back of his neck, the other held up to show he means no harm, sighing, "I'm not gonna hurt you Eds, I'd never... I just wanted to talk, I um. I thought..."

He stammers for a second, unsure what else to say, caught in between thoughts and clearly unprepared for how Eddie had reacted.

Eddie can't help but relax a little. No matter how worried he was, being around Steve always made him relax, but seeing him like this? How was he supposed to be scared anymore?

Eddie groans a little, "Just- get in here Harrington, you're killing me- if there's some mob on their way you better get your shit together before they get here,"

Eek, here it is, part 2! Sorry for making y'all wait, I am famously bad at working on things so thank you all for your patience 🙏 There WILL absolutely be a part 3, (maybe a part 4 if I want to get spicy), so I'll try to tag as many people for that one as well. And thank you all so so much for your sweet comments! I've been in such an art block lately, so writing something for a change and getting all this positive feedback is so encouraging 💜

Tag list! I tried to get everyone, but tumblr was weird with some of them, so I hope you're seeing this if you asked <3

@goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @plutoshelm @jestyzesty @bisexualdisastersworld @sofadofax @bornonthesavage @awkwardgravity1 @trikigirl271 @thegayestpersonever @precursprandthedragon@mightbeasleep

@cherixxx69 @baron-zemo-trash @ilikechocolatemilkh @justforthedead89 @alienace @4nemo1egend @lifeisnotsobadonceyoustopcaring @breealtair @shinekocreator @sleepdeprivedflower @justanothergirlwithobsessions

@bxlthazar @thegingervulcan @questionablequeeries @my2amgaythoughts @doilooklikebees @gobbledy-gluk-gluk @luthienstormblessed @joruni @drinkingforthesociallyanxious @largechaos @dangdirtydemons @faery-god

@satan-is-obsessed @vi-an-te @beckkthewreck @kori-dearest @the-s-is-silent @hellomynameismoo @commonxsenss @blues-tunes @lizard-dyk3 @the-long-gone-souls @paddington22017 @imeverycliche @tungledotfuck @inmoonywetrust @dreammetheworld08 @dazedandinked @escapingthereality

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Joshi's Top Ten Best and Worst places to jork it in Vvardenfell District

Part One here

Building on the initial post and an idea floated by @skyrim-forever (Check out theirs) and my own personal craziness. Here I introduce Joshi's Best and Worst Jorking location on Vvardenfell that he's sampled or wants to sample/ him on his soap box/ his hit list. Under a cut again for the whole NSFT thing. Remember this is all a joke.

The Best of the Worst! Vvardenfell Edition!

10. Best Suran

Oh...you're back aye? Right so why Suran? Simple, I spent most of my adolescence here. I got the fuck around since I wasn't really welcome back at the Estate unless Ilaro's out of town an let me tell you, he was rarely out of town. I used to hang out in one of the warehouses on the docks that was basically a poorly hidden hidey hole for Tong smuggling. Had to watch that warehouse a lot. I was a bored kid so yeah, I'm gonna fucking figure out that jacking off was a fun use of 5 minutes.

It just barely sneaks in because it's familiar an I don't know some fucked sense of sentimentality. Jerk it on the docks if you're feeling mildly adventurous...I think they rebuilt them...I don't think I burnt down more than the main pier?

Ah fuck me... 10. Worst That fucking boat!

It's dark, it's moist an it's covered in rats and their shit! The stench alone is a turn off. Then you got the fact that the whole thing moves, you are tied to the floor an you have zero privacy. Look if you are jerking it in the hull it's because you're desperate for a wank. It's a pitiful wank. It's an unsatisfying wank. It's something to do, sure, an we all fucking do it but like...I'd rather be doing it somewhere where I wasn't filthy and wasn't being looked at by some dumb fuck who's also over being locked up in a place where you can't stand up straight!

Like if you have to have a wank do it because eight weeks is way too long not to but it's certainly on my shit list.

9. Best Seyda Neen's Census and Excise Office

Now this one is more a fantasy of mine then anything I've actually done in the flesh (I got a husband with a brain who stops me from fucking up like that) but could you fucking imagine? I hate the Empire, I hate their taxmen and I fucking hate that old fuck who grilled me with inane questions for well over an hour when I needed a fucking piss! Every one of those fucks that work there deserve it an I don't give a fuck if that's crass! I guess this could go for Cosades' hovel in Balmora too, but that would require me actually going near any of his filthy fucking furniture! See this is why I need someone to think for me. 9. Worst Anywhere at the Erabenimsun camp.

Firstly, there is no circumstance where I'm remotely welcome here. My gahata had a bit of a power boner (fuck where do I get that from) an decided "Yeah I should just poison the Ashkhan because I think I can do a better job." An you wanna know how that turned out? The fuck split the tribe in half an got most of his clan killed. You know, I can't even set foot on the main tribe's border without getting an arrow to the face. Let alone find a spot to get my rocks off. Too busy running from the old blood price on my head to worry about blowing my load in Ulath-Pal's yurt- which I would have done if I had the chance let me tell you.

Give this place a skip if you value breathing.

8. Best The Urshilaku Camp

Specifically the yurt I'm staying in. Look, I do actually respect some things an this is one of them. Though, considering how long and how often I stay there, I'm gonna need some time to myself. I don't often have to take care of myself (what with me staying with Erra an all but keep that quiet aye?) but if I have to... It's up there with a locked suite at a corner club or like...a house? It's good coz I'm not being bothered too much. Just don't get upset about a little bit of ash getting thrown into the mix. It's a hazard of the Ashlands. 8. Worst Any an all Velothi Towers

I get it, you've been trudging through the wilderness all fucking day an you're tired. You see the ruins of some weird fucking structure in the distance. It's pretty solid looking an maybe you can set up camp in or near it. You do that, enter the ruin an after you've set up all your junk you decide to relax a bit. Think again fucker! Relace your pants an get the fuck out of there! If you're lucky, you'll escape an extremely offended Telvanni who doesn't appreciate you ruining his experiments after he's copped an eyeful. If you're unlucky, you'll find that you've offended a vampire coven an you gotta race out of there with your trousers around your ankles and a desperate need for a cure disease potion. Find literally anywhere else! 7. Best Erra's House

Erra bought a small house in Maar Gan not long after we met. We stay there whenever I need a rest an Erra wants to make a few drakes off the Redoran. It's that same "home" principle but I don't have to worry about locked doors on nothing coz the only person who's gonna catch me is just as likely to help me finish. I highly recommend...

Ah... nothing special it's just a nice, normal place to jack off if I'm bored an Erra's busy.

7. Worst Any Daedric Shine Ever

Just like the Velothi Towers. Easy trap when you're travelling and bone tired. You see these twisted towers in the distance an you're thinking "Fuck yes! A place to camp!" Maybe you've had the fortune of locating one of the ones that's by a pretty lagoon. It's so unbelievably tempting to just rub one out then take a nap. WRONG YOU DUMB FUCK! You ever been so close to cuming and then get attacked by a scamp who's angry you've intruded on it's house? No? Well don't make the same dumb mistakes I have then. 6. Best Balmora's Fighters Guild

Seemingly inconspicuous, yeah? Most members have a dormitory they share so not a lot of opportunity for privacy. This wouldn't even be on the list if I didn't have a giant bone to pick with their Master-at-Arms and her choice to basically use that whole outfit to do heavy work for Orvas Dren an the Camonna Tong. No, the reason this is so high is because I fucking relished in leaving a surprise in her desk draw. What can I say, I'm very, very petty an she's pissed me the fuck off enough times for me to get my rocks off at the thought of her angrily screaming at the mess.

6. Worst Ancestral Tombs

Firstly, I wanna know who'd go into one of these by choice? Then I'm gonna ask why the fuck they think whipping their dick out whilst in there is a good fucking idea? Like yeah I've wanked in some weird fucking places but I got standards! I do, I swear! Why you need to skip any and all ancestral tombs? Simple, try being sprung by this big fucking bastard.

You know, I was nursing a broken wrist and cracked ribs for weeks after facing one of these meat mangled monsters an I wasn't even doing anything particularly crass. Certainly wasn't jerking off or anything like that. Just had to pick up a skull...which is probably what summoned it. There is no scenario where it's safe to enter one of these places let alone whip your fucking cock out an rub one out on a whim. YOU ARE CRAZY! 5. Best Lake Amaya

I made it pretty clear that I like pretty things an fuck me is this lake pretty. If you go to the side with the wildflowers, you'll have one of the nicest places on Vvardenfell to let loose. I used to camp here a lot when I was travelling the Ascadian Isles an Erra's pretty partial to it too. Kinda honeymooned here. Anyway it's just a nice, normal place to blow off some steam. Something that can't be said for the rest of my pics so um...get used to it?

5. Worst Every Dunmeri Stronghold

I think you've probably figured out by now that no place on this Blighted fucking island is safe at this point an that goes for these ziggurats from my people's golden age.

You know these things date back to before we all turned into grey skinned nutjobs? The power trip I could get from jizzing off the side of one ordinarily would be palatable. Of course this is Morrowind an no ruin is left unoccupied. If you're not getting attacked by a stronghold full of fucking Orcs then its something much, much worse. What you ask? I'll get to it in some of the additions that are higher on the list. Just...I don't fucking know, wait until you've cleared the place before you whip your dick out, yeah?

4. Best Dwemer Ruins

Look these can go one of two ways but for me a Dwemer ruin is like my favourite thing so I'm just beside myself excited when I'm trudging through them. It can take a while to clear these places out an I'm camping out as a result. You bet I'm rubbing one out an fucking enjoying it when I'm on my downtime. Just make sure you've cleared the chamber you're in of constructs before you get started. Nothing worse than just reaching the edge only to be assaulted by a centurion spider before I can climax... Look this might just be a me thing...um...

4. Worst Ghostgate

Yes, there's a small Temple based settlement here where you can stay at an inn or whatever but like why would you want to? I'm gonna be blunt, I can't get within a hundred metres of the place without having a fucking fit an that's mortifying enough to deal with in the middle of the Ashlands. I'm not even gonna have the opportunity to jerk off here because I can't enter the fucking building. So I asked my husband his opinion an he just looked at me like I was a fucking idiot for even considering but he got to choose entry five so it's not like he's completely against this list. Anyway I don't think this is a great place to crank it. Nope, you got Temple stink for one and that's wrapped in a thick blanket of Blight an ghost wailing if Erra's description's correct. I'm guessing it is. Look if you want to jerk off near some Tribunal Temple complex then maybe look at my next entry. Oh, Erra has a few thoughts on special mentions. Do set up camp on the coast of the Grazelands and watch the - Erra that's not what the list is about! I suppose you could find a bit of solitude out there but then you're dealing with Telvanni an you don't wanna jerk of near any of their towers. Mushroom stink is not something that turns me on okay. Oh an avoid the Corpruserium if you know whats good for you. I spent a good month down there an I can assure you, there is no good nut in there. Right number three, number three... 3. Best Maar Gan Temple

Like I said, if you want to stick it to the Tribunal by jerking off in their holy places then you may as well do it at the tourist attraction of all time. See there's a rock you can sit on an a bound Daedra you can tease if you're feeling a bit ah... antagonistic. Something that always gets me hornier than a kagouti in late autumn. I broke into the temple one night after it closed an just went to town. The burn on my ass from that Daedra's retaliation was so worth it! Highly recomend if you're into that kinda thing, yeah? 3. Worst Any and all Sixth House Bases

Just...why? Like what would possess you to jerk off in any of these places? I mean I can't keep myself present when I'm here, like I'm gonna jerk off whilst I'm at it. To start you have Blight an that should be more than enough to make your dick retreat all the way back. You gotta deal with Corprus Monsters an the Ascended too. It smells of death and if you aren't consumed into the hive then you're most likely dead anyway. I don't think you're gonna have long enough to get into the mood let alone finish. I do wonder though...do the higher Ascended have working plumbing? I um... It took me a while to get back to normal an sometimes it still doesn't ah...Don't need to know about that ah... 2. Best The Ministry of Truth and the Temple Canton

Lord Nerevar's home Vehk an there's nothing you can do to stop me! Look I'm not actually Nerevar or nothing... we share a brain an stuff an he's not... Look I can feel Nerevar has a hate boner going on for all this an that kinda affects me too. So anyway I'm justifying it by the fact that I get off on defiling places of power an this place is top of my shit list. Yes, I have cum in that Library as a fuck you to all this shit an I'll fucking do it again!

Maybe all over the Patriarch's desk? I think the bastard deserves it. Fucking cunt! 2. Worst Kogoruhn

Yes. I already put strongholds on the list but this one takes every shitty thing about Sixth House bases an Strongholds an wraps it all into one fucking package of fucked! Not only is it fucking crawling with Blight creatures but the thing is a giant fucking hive of Voryn's most loyal bitches. Those fucks are motivated, let me tell you! You want to know how I got through the Ghostfence without seizing? Here it is. The place is the only other opening to Red Mountain that exists an it's deep under the earth. You are not going to have the time to jerk off here! You are getting in an getting out as quickly as your skinny legs can carry you! Jerk off all you want later you don't want to be here! No one should be here! 1. Best The Cavern of the Incarnate

This is more a fuck you to the Deadric Prince an the artifact that ruined my whole life! I employ all of you to descend on this place in one big group and crank one out for me! It's what would truely make me happy...that an having my husband not be a damn ancestral ghost trying to remove the stylus from my hand as I write this but I can't have everything I want apparently. Why this is a prime jerk off spot? Well aside from my hate boner over Azura an Nerevar fucking with me, its actually kinda pretty for a shrine to a Daedra. Just um... find a place that isn't lined with the mummified remains of my predecessors, yeah? 1. Worst Akulakhan's Chamber

An on the flip side, where the end beguins an everything ends. I'm sure I don't really need to clarify why you simply shouldn't be whipping your dick out here but incase any of you need a reminder.

Not only did I spend the whole fight down here in the rescesses of my mind but when I did finally regain control of my body from Nerevar I was definetly not feeling primed for a good wank. You shouldn't either. You are dealing with cunt number one in a long line of cunts that seek to turn you into one of them an I'm not really interested in completing the transformation, yeah? Besides, I wasn't really given a chance to savour the ah...ambience of the bowels of a fucking volcano! Have you been in a magma chamber? I've been in more than my fair share an I can assure you it is unpleasent. Like a part of me wonders if it would just evaporate as it was coming out but i'm also not interested in getting my cock within five hundred meters of a magma pit but if you want to push your luck an trial that age ol "Dunmer are heat resistant" thing then you go ahead an go for it. I'll be over there, above ground, not doing that.

Anyway I think that's it. I gotta go like purify my husband's ghost with a conduit flame. He's fucking mad at me now over my top best pick.

[thiniceofeternalyouth]

MISLEADIN' ME SERIES: CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LIEBE

⊳ Gojo Satoru x f!reader

series masterlist

Genre: angst, fluff, sci-fi, cosmology.

Words count: ~12k

⊲ previous

There was almost nothing left of that hovel, the sagging roof sprawled on the grass of the wild forest, the splinters of the flimsy walls finding their way to your heart instead of scattering around. You could see almost nothing, only pressed your mother's collapsed body closer to you under the deafening rumble. You couldn't tell or feel if she was alive - she hadn't moved since your father had slammed her head against the wall several times.

Remembering all the songs you had heard, you tried to sing them softly, but they kept running away, hiding in fear. You turned sharply when a sound came from one side or the other - new tears came to your eyes that carried anxiety and hopelessness. Why could you see nothing but a dark veil? Why couldn't you tear it away like a sheet? You desperately clenched into a ball from the realization of your own helplessness, you wanted to babble pleas for forgiveness into the top of your mother's head because you couldn't even protect yourself.

There was cursing, the floor creaked again, the floorboards flew apart, and you crawled backward, holding your mother in your arms. You almost choked on a tidal wave of panic when you heard a thump, sharp and deafening as if something heavy had fallen. "Ya out of your mind?" bellowed a familiar bass voice. "If I hadn't gone after you, what would ya have done? Kill them, huh?"

"Back off!" your father howled like a wounded animal. "Let go of me, asshole!" there was a steady, fierce resistance alongside the curses - you could hear the creaking, the heavy breathing and the muffled blows.

"Look at them!" Frank jerked your father's head up, forcing him to look at you.

There was no family in front of the man, only two mutilated monsters. One was silent and willless, hiding in the shadows, and the other was sobbing nastily, rubbing bloody snot on it's face, searching for salvation with dark eyes in the depths of the forest. That's what he did to them all. "That's... That's not my family," your father sobbed, shaking his head desperately in denial. "It's not them."

Frank gripped harder into your father's hair. "That's your wife!" he yelled, pointing his finger at the motionless body in your arms. "And that's your daughter!" he screamed even louder, moving his finger to you.

Frank pressed his knee into the man's tailbone, forcing your father to stay down. He was ready to lay down his arms and to bow his head if someone would tell him it was just a dream. A terrible nightmare that had no place in his world. "That's not my bastard."

"Yours," Frank hissed in his ear. "Whether ya want it or not. Get up!" he ordered sharply, bringing your father to his feet in one motion.

You didn't see his red eyes, or the veins protruding from his neck, or the disgust on his face, and even if you had all the eyes in the world, you wouldn't have found a shred of regret in him. When you heard another loud sound, you bowed your head sharply, obediently waiting for the blow, but even after a few moments, the back of your head didn't catch fire nor did the top of your head ache. "Let me go, you asshole!" your father howled.

"Am I keeping ya?" asked Frank indifferently. "Take ten steps back," your father didn't have time to say anything. "Silently," Frank added, and you heard mooing - unintelligible and angry as if the speaker had his mouth sewn shut.

Footsteps sounded. You felt someone's presence right in front of you, and you involuntarily pitched forward, trying to find some warmth. "Young lady," Frank whispered and gently nuzzled your cheek, and you whimpered, shackled by the sudden sense of protection. "Ya... Ya not hungry?"

"What?" you whispered through your tears. "Frank, why are ya talking about food?"

"I'm gonna check something out. Don't freak out, 'kay?" comfortingly assured Frank. You didn't hear anything. You didn't smell the blood that dripped from the man's palm, you didn't see its beautiful scarlet color, just waited helplessly for it to be over.

Frank was watching you intently. You were like a lost, blind puppy, looking around for something, but you didn't react to the food that was right in front of your nose. Unlike your mother.

Her willless body became steel, and your arms were unable to hold her. Before you could react, she immediately broke away from your grasp, and you, stunned and speechless, stopped even crying. The screaming pleas didn't come out of your lips - words didn't even look in your direction, like strangers, leaving you completely speechless.

"Obedience."

There were no sounds of struggle. There were no screams, neither heart–rending nor quiet. The clinking of teeth and scraping of claws died as quickly as they had come.

And your mom never came back into your arms again.

Frank took the woman in his arms and looked at you again. He clenched his teeth and his heart sank - according to the laws of the universe, you could be anyone, but to him you were still a child. The regret, the compassion that your father didn't have, his best friend did.

You never thought that a single word could make you tremble with fear. Even if it wasn't even said to you. "Go," Frank said quietly to your father. It wasn't an order. It wasn't an admonition.

It was something so inevitable that it left no hope behind it - it was already mangled and dead.

You felt the place empty, heard the crunch of the snow fade, and there was nothing left for you to do but run blindly, so as not to be alone. "Frank!" you shouted, hoping he would respond. The trees were thinning, giving way to the winter wind, and there was no mercy in it, whipping at the children's bare shoulders with all its might. "Frank!" you yelled, quickening your step and hugging yourself, trying to keep warm. You didn't even realize you were running through an open field, and no one was ever there. "Dad!" you whimpered desperately, looking around trying to hear anything. "Mom!"

Whether it was your weakened legs or the treacherous stone, you fell into the snow, your body cramping from the cold. "Someone," you whispered helplessly into the ground, and the snowflakes melted on your lips after a short age. "Leave me someone, please," you begged in a hoarse voice, drowning in tears, and there was no one near you to wipe them from your face.

The mind didn't obey – stubbornly trying to fall asleep, it falsely promised you sweet dreams and relief from pain. You closed your eyes obediently, and it was as if you were seeing the shack where love had first died.

Throwing a tired glance at her wristwatch, the woman sighed exhaustedly. Shoko didn't like night shifts. She wasn't attracted to cold corpses or their insides. Ieiri didn't care about the bright minds of the others or working for an idea - she worked overtime just for the money. She didn't care what she had to do, whether it was dissecting another body or filling out medical records as long as she kept her pocket heavy.

At first, working with Doc seemed organized but tense - the man liked order and expected everyone else to follow it. He frowned irritably every time he saw a single scalpel out of place, and glared at the woman over his glasses if she dared to put test tubes on the wrong shelf. Shoko thought he was a grumpy pedant until she opened the medical records drawer for the first time.

It wasn't a complete mess, but everything was piled up. Blood type and Rh factor cards, labs, outpatient surgery records, autopsy reports, chronologies of illnesses - all of it stood folder to folder, but there was no sequential or name order. Some of the medical records stood there empty.

When Shoko had first seen it, she had exulted at the opportunity to throw a well-deserved scornful glare at the doc, which she had promptly taken advantage of. To her mute surprise, there was no scandal or recrimination on his part - the man snorted embarrassedly under his breath and told her that she could eventually make her own rules here. For a fee, of course.

After she finished filling out the medical records and pasting in all the necessary medical data and tests, Shoko took the folder from the desk and went to the drawer to put it away. All the folders were already alphabetized in this section, which pleased her eyes. Humming happily, Ieiri bent the documents in the cabinet and tried to put the recently filled out folder at the very end, but something kept her from going all the way in. Trying to tamp everything down, Shoko tried to force the document through, but even that didn't work. Her satisfaction was immediately replaced by irritation, and Shoko stuck her hand into the section and tried to feel for the obstacle.

She fumbled for something that was at odds with the medical records - unlike them, which were thin enough, she held something weighty in her hands. Pulling it out, she stared at it suspiciously.

A notebook? Even if it was, the writing was clearly not from this century - the journal was all tattered, the cover weathered and gnarled in places, and the pages inside were all yellow, but what struck Jeri most was that the entries weren't made with a pen. It was ink.

Shoko opened the notebook to a random page and leaned back against the drawers. The pages were unsteady - they were always trying to turn over, so she had to hold them with her thumb.

Experiment number: #37

Biological origin of the carrier: Human

Biological origin of the inseminator: Dioreact

Condition of the carrier at the time of conception (if needed): -

Condition of the inseminator at the time of conception (if needed): Intermediate option

Gestational age: -

Current carrier's fetal number:: -

Initial fetal state: -

The term at which the carrier changed state to an intermediate option (if needed): -

Fetal condition in intermediate carrier option (if needed): -

Fetal condition when the carrier transitions from intermediate to human (if needed): -

Timing of fetal retrieval (if needed): -

Fetal weight at retrieval (if needed):

Fetal status: -

Note: Louie, we're just wasting precious time. It is time to accept the idea that conception of a fetal with an intermediate variant of inseminator simply does not happen.  

Shoko felt an electric shock as if she were holding something illegal. The noise in her head made it hard to form the letters into words, and she had to work hard to make any sense out of it. Her brain seemed to refuse to believe what was happening.

Experiment number: #59

Biological origin of the carrier: Human

Biological origin of the inseminator: Dioreact

Condition of the carrier at the time of conception (if needed): -

Condition of the inseminator at the time of conception (if needed): Human

Gestational age: 28 weeks  

Current carrier's fetal number: #2

Initial fetal state: Human

The term at which the carrier changed state to an intermediate option (if needed): -

Fetal condition in intermediate carrier option (if needed): -

Fetal condition when the carrier transitions from intermediate to human (if needed): -

Timing of fetal retrieval (if needed): 29 weeks

Fetal weight at retrieval (if needed): ~920 g

Fetal status: Dead

Note: Louie, I've had enough. We've been running around with inseminators too much, but it hasn't done us any good. In the human condition, the inseminator gives birth to a normal human being. How many have been born already? Where do we put them all? With the intermediate option of the inseminator, conception does not occur at all.  

Note: Vincent, you have to give time to those who are born. Maybe they will prove themselves in the future.

Note: We don't have that much time. We have already degenerated to the point where we retrieve the fetal before it is ready, and we lose both the fetal and the carrier. Human resources aren't infinite either. I hope you remember that I am the leader. We're switching to carriers.

Shoko slowly walked over to the table and placed the journal on it, not taking her eyes off the elegant handwriting. Her mouth was as dry as if she'd been forced to eat a handful of unripe fruit. She sat back in her chair and, overcoming the compulsive urge to close the notebook, began to read on.

Experiment number: #109

Biological origin of the carrier: Dioreact

Biological origin of the inseminator: Human

Condition of the carrier at the time of conception (if needed): Human

Condition of the inseminator at the time of conception (if needed): -

Gestational age: 23 weeks  

Current carrier's fetal number: #4

Initial fetal state: Human  

The term at which the carrier changed state to an intermediate option (if needed): 23 weeks

Fetal condition in intermediate carrier option (if needed): Dioreact

Fetal condition when the carrier transitions from intermediate to human (if needed): -

Timing of fetal retrieval (if needed): 23 weeks

Fetal weight at retrieval (if needed): <440 g

Fetal status: Dead

Note: This was the fourth fetus of this carrier. I was patient, I waited obediently for the due date, but she delivered stillborn babies. This time, however, I myself extracted the fetus almost immediately after she went intermediate. The baby was still alive, but died almost immediately after being removed from the carrier's womb. So at what point and why did the previous three die? Did we find ourselves at the threshold of discovery only to stumble over it?

P.S. Louie, we're running low on black orchid. Put in a request to the superiors, or I'll be bleeding out of my ears from all this screaming.

Doc raised his voice at Shoko every time she dared to smoke in his office. He'd get mad, snatch the pack out of her hands, say something about respect for others, but Ieiri never listened to him. It was only recently that a crystal ashtray, which the woman had never bought, had appeared on their shared desk. Taking a drag, Ieiri exhaled the smoke convulsively.

She was at ease with both cold corpses and the feel of slippery, still wet organs in her hands. She could spend hours exploring the insides, she wasn't sickened by the sight of blood, she wasn't hurt by cries of pain or pleas to stop. So why was it now that she could literally feel her scalp against her skull?  Why was she now prickling with what she could feel her muscles contracting? And did the bones inside her body always feel so wet?

Experiment number: #201

Biological origin of the carrier: Dioreact

Biological origin of the inseminator: Human

Condition of the carrier at the time of conception (if needed): Human

Condition of the inseminator at the time of conception (if needed): -

Gestational age: 30 weeks

Current carrier's fetal number: #3

Initial fetal state: Human

The term at which the carrier changed state to an intermediate option (if needed): 30 weeks

Fetal condition in intermediate carrier option (if needed): Dioreact

Fetal condition when the carrier transitions from intermediate to human (if needed): -

Timing of fetal retrieval (if needed): 30 weeks

Fetal weight at retrieval (if needed): ~1210 g

Fetal status: Dead

Note: After so many attempts, my hunch has finally been confirmed. The fetal responds perfectly to the carrier's transition from human to intermediate, and indeed, transitions with it. The problem is that the fetal dies when the carrier tries to transition back. Every single time... Why? Why can't any of them transition back with the mother? Don't they want to live?

Oh, Louie, I think you and I were born too soon... We are limited by what we can do in this world, and how much could we do if we had some kind of machine... I don't know, that would allow us to determine the fetal' condition without removing it from the mother? I know, I know, I'm daydreaming again, but I'm just desperate.  

Experiment number: #343

Biological origin of the carrier: Dioreact

Biological origin of the inseminator: Human

Condition of the carrier at the time of conception (if needed): Human

Condition of the inseminator at the time of conception (if needed): -

Gestational age: 28 weeks

Current carrier's fetal number: #4

Initial fetal state: Human

The term at which the carrier changed state to an intermediate option (if needed): 28 weeks

Fetal condition in intermediate carrier option (if needed): Dioreact

Fetal condition when the carrier transitions from intermediate to human (if needed):: -

Timing of fetal retrieval (if needed): 28 weeks

Fetal weight at retrieval (if needed): ~870 g

Fetal status: Dead

Note: Louie, I'm ready to give up. I'm already running around with the carriers like a chicken and egg just to make sure nothing hurts them and they don't go intermediate before they should. But today 343 got mad about a dropped spoon! Can you believe it?! A spoon!!! She started crying like crazy, and when she turned, I almost cried with her.

I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe we've created too "artificial" environment for the carriers? Maybe we should put them in a normal environment and just observe them from a distance. Maybe even make it so the carrier doesn't even know about it.

God, the hopelessness of it was starting to make me completely delusional. Don't mind me, Louie.

Note: Vincent, don't give up. I believe we're about to find out what's wrong.

Ieiri flipped through pages, completely oblivious to the holes in the paper or the ink smudged by time and someone's clumsy hands, she looked through the records, and seeing the same information, the same line, she quickly turned the page.

Experiment number: #541

Fetal status: Dead

Shoko wanted to close that notebook and never open it again, to pretend she'd never seen anything, but she was stopped by the possibility of stumbling across a line that could relieve her of the feeling of nausea.

Experiment number: #895

Fetal status: Dead

She had already stopped reading, all the notes had merged together, and only one word kept hitting her temples.

Fetal status: Dead

Nothing was changing. Fear struck her tired gaze, and the eternally indifferent face contorted in horror. Words turned into entities, and each chittered somewhere close by as if haunting the woman. Dead.

The sensation of being watched made her look around the room warily. There were no distortions in the dim light, no silhouettes in her imagination, but all Ieiri wanted to do was clamp her ears as hard as she could and stop the endless pounding of the mace.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Ieiri jerked fearfully as a new pile of papers fell in front of her. Those awful lines of the old journal were dragging her down like a swamp, and drowning in her reading, she didn't hear Doc enter the office. Expecting the worst, Shoko looked up at him. To her surprise, there wasn't a shred of irritation on the man's face, and what stressed her the most - he looked completely indifferent. As if he hadn't noticed anything.

She realized she'd been pressing the notebook too hard against the table with the palm of her hand as if she was afraid it would be taken away. Shoko expected a heated argument, accusations of sticking her nose where it didn't belong, but more importantly - she was hoping for some clarification. "Nothing to say?" she asked indifferently, slamming the journal shut and sliding it over to the doc, who was already up to his ears in paperwork.

Doc glanced at the notebook, not a muscle flinching in his face. "What exactly do you want to hear?" he muttered, massaging his throbbing temples - so much work had piled up in recent weeks that even his replicas weren't helping anymore. He was still falling off his feet.

"What is it?"

"The records of my predecessors," he answered without concealment or regret. "I had nothing to do with them."

Shoko pulled a pack of cigarettes from the table, and Doc, instead of terrorizing her about her inhibitions, silently stood up, opened the window, and sat back down. "Then where did you get this?" she asked and put the filter of the cigarette to her lips - Shoko didn't realize herself that the puff came out too long as if she was trying to fill the void that had been created by so many words about death with smoke.

"What do you think?" asked Doc sarcastically. "The same place we get everything ancient or forbidden. Or both."

"Then...," Ieiri, feeling the growing scratch in her throat, coughed quietly. "Where did she get that from?"

"From the superiors' archives," Doc replied, filling out the medical records. "All this neutrality by a thread wouldn't last long," the more the man spoke, the more worried Shoko became. His nonchalant words bred not only understanding, but anxiety as well. "Our higher-ups care greatly for their reputation. Not only did their predecessors sponsor this horror, but also they were the instigators of it, and there is no proof that they are no longer doing such things, and the presumption of innocence will not work. Vigilante justice is cruel and merciless." 

"I see," Shoko said indifferently. She glanced at the Doc, who kept his eyes on the medical records, then at the notebook, which looked like it was begging to be opened and plunged into those depths again, and the woman could hardly contain the sudden impulse. Something more was troubling her. "I never saw in the records that the chil… uh, that any of the experiments were successfully completed," the man froze as suddenly as if time in the office had stopped for a second, unable to even take a breath. Shoko was sure she'd hit the right spot, all that was left was to get the question right, but being the straightforward person she was, she blurted out what had been swirling around in her head all along. "Did anyone survive?"

Doc stared at his colleague, and there was no answer in his eyes - Shoko didn't know if he was trying to test her or searching for ulterior motives. To her disappointment, he returned to his work with a discreet hum. "I have no idea." 

You stood in front of the window, barely touching the glass with the tip of your nose. In a slow and stealthy chase, you found yourself at a coffee shop you didn't know, and judging by the way people were darting around, it was very close to the center of town. Inside the coffee shop, a gentle veil of warm light enveloped the interior. Cozy sack chairs decorated in the style of various animals beckoned with their softness. Some plush faces looked at each other, others - at the visitors who stood in line. You were looking, too.

Nathaniel looked like all the other people. He wasn't wearing his usual wide-sleeved robe; he was dressed in plain jeans and a black turtleneck. His long golden hair was gathered into a high ponytail revealing the attractiveness of his face - though there were wrinkles and creases here and there, his face looked refined, almost feminine. He was standing in line, shaking off invisible dust from his pointed shoulders. There was nothing about him that suggested that he belonged to a world closed off from ordinary people.

You stared blankly as Nathaniel spoke to the barista. He gesticulated gracefully, indicating something on the menu card. His hands felt like they were underwater. Not one sudden movement. You couldn't even wait for the girl with the green snake earrings to walk past you.

"Isolation."

It stretches. It writhes. It shrinks and loosens, trying to move forward or dissolve. It is drowning and all-consuming, unaware of emotions, words or surroundings. It wanders through the eternal void, searching and finding, and if it doesn't find it, it tries again.

It's like chasing a tangle of eternal thread. The thread unravels and is immediately lost in the darkness, and it stubbornly grasps at it as if it were a lifeline, but only hurts the nonexistent hand more. It wants to move and doesn't know if it's moving - there's nothing around, not even darkness or gloom. It wants to hear confirmation that someone else is here, but it can't hear as if it were in a vacuum.

One must follow the thread, regardless of the tangled knots it leaves behind. Can't stumble over them, can't look at them, and that's what they're trying to do - to throw the one present off the path, to make them stay here as long as possible.

If the void does not consume, it will certainly want to kill what is here. That which comes out of this abyss, that which should not be here. It must be kept in check, it must be obeyed, or it will take dark roots and swallow up the uninvited guest. If there is one.

The tangle keeps going, and it's like a cat chasing a mouse. The cat has no eyes, no ears, no nose, no paws, but it's definitely here, but is there a mouse?

It trembles as if with joy. It distorts as if dissolving itself, wanting to get rid of everything around it. It feels that it is coming. There is a guest here, unwelcome and unknown, and it has already sensed his consciousness.

When you came out of isolation, you sighed, your side-eye catching the girl with the green earrings as she walked past you. When you looked out the window of the coffee shop again, you saw Nathaniel, bent over and leaning against the counter, pressing his palm to his face. You couldn't see if his nose or eyes were bleeding or if they were bleeding at all, but the barista fidgeted, fumbling for more napkins. Some customers jumped out of their seats, some were already dialing a phone number in a hurry. When a woman came up to Nathaniel and held him, trying to get him to sit up, you were out of sight.

The farther you got from the coffee shop, the more you slowed down and relaxed - breathing evened out, the tension in your muscles dissipated, and the only thing that reminded you of what you'd done was the black lines that sprawled across your fingertips, cozying up to them as if they were at home. With a scornful glare, you decided to clear your head before you went home.

You had long lost sight of the girl with the snake earrings, and what's more, there were fewer and fewer people. The noisy public places had been replaced by quiet apartment complexes, and it was getting dark - everyone seemed to be asleep. The idyll was disturbed by your restless mind, which refused to calm down, asking you hundreds of questions. Why couldn't you go home right now? Was Rachel still mad at you? What about Frank and the black orchid? And him? How did he really feel? And why did you feel so anxious remembering Christian? "Hey!" an indignant panting voice called out behind you. "Slow down!"

You stopped, and Nathaniel caught up with you. Trying to suppress both surprise and laughter, you made a puzzled face, tucking your hands in your pockets. "What ya doing here?" you asked, nodding at him.

He gave you a judgmental look and wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. "If you don't trust me, then have the nerve to tell me to my face instead of sneaking around!" he hissed, and you raised your eyebrows in amazement as if it were the first time you'd ever seen him. The man seemed ready to explode with indignation as you continued to act like you didn't understand. "I know you did it," he added in a grumpy tone, pointing to the blood on his arm.

"Do you have proof?" you chirped, tilting your head sideways, which caused another wave of anger. Nathaniel jerked one of your hands out of your pocket and brought it up to his face. He looked at you reproachfully, examining your palm almost closely and noticing the dark lines on it. You shivered and resigned yourself to the idea that the plan had failed, but the shattered trust meant nothing. You knew for sure now that Nathaniel was human.

When he let go of your hand, it fell limply, hanging along your body. Tucking it into your pocket and biting your lip, trying not to get into another confrontation, you decided the best solution was to admit your own guilt. "Come on, Nael. It's not like anyone died."

"That's what you call an apology?" the man said quietly, crossing his arms over his chest. "We've been through so much, and now you do something like this?" you didn't want to admit it, but you could clearly hear the hurt in his words, which made you look away and bore into the pavement with one toe.

"We just pulled your charred ass out of the void, it's not that big a deal," you muttered, pouting your lips. Nathaniel restlessly brushed the disheveled strands out of his hair as if he remembered what he used to look like. "Honestly, when I saw your burnt head, I was sure it wouldn't even grow weeds, but look at your hair," even biting your lip didn't help - sometimes you just couldn't tell when to shut up. "Is it expensive to get a transplant these days?" you asked, glancing at the man. He was still tousling his golden curls anxiously as if his scalp itched.

"And I, when I saw your demon face, thought you'd come for my soul," he parried, wanting to jab you as much as you did him. "Did you kill a lot of people then?"

"One-one," you shrugged indifferently, and with your back against the nearest wall, you ducked your gaze to the ground.

May Nathaniel was pleased with the result of his words, but it didn't last long - guilt and responsibility mixed inside as well as the realization that he shouldn't have provoked you. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have acted like that. Neither should you, by the way," you nodded your head, barely listening to his words. Noticing your detached state, he hesitated and placed a hand on your shoulder, and he did it gingerly as if he expected either an explosion or a slit throat. But you didn't move. "I only found out later that it happens to you... Because of the emotions," he hesitated a moment before continuing because unlike him, your silence remained adamant. "Look, it wasn't your fault. You raided the place thinking there were no people left."

"They're gone now," you chuckled wistfully. "We did our best," you added quietly.

"I know that I only survived because you happened to stumble upon me," the man spoke as if he was still pinned to the ground by those smoldering beams. "And since I was one of those people, I can take it upon myself to say that they don't blame you for anything," Nathaniel, through a grayed voice, tried to get through to you. "Because I don't."

"All right," you said, pulling yourself out of your thoughts. "Ya've already told me off, ya've picked at my wounds, and that's enough. I'm done," you said in a cheerful voice, pulling yourself away from the wall and getting ready to leave.

"Wait," the man stopped you, grabbing your wrist. "There's something else I'd like to talk about," he added conspiratorially quietly.

"What is it?" you ask, frowning your eyebrows.

"Christian," he'd only said one name, and you were already almost choking up. "He started doing his job carelessly a long time ago, and lately he's stopped showing up altogether," the man continued to say carefully, warningly. "You feel it too, don't you?" he asked, looking into your eyes. "Just remember how he acted when you came back from the void. He was always an asshole, of course, but he never broke protocols."

You tried not to show it, but you were literally turned inside out - even a fleeting and gentle gust of wind made your skin itch and ache. "Do ya know his address?" you asked.

"I've been there more than once," he sighed doomfully. "No one's ever opened it."

"Nael, are ya on a binge?" you were struck to the core by the superior's simple-mindedness. "It's strange that ya came there without an invitation at all."

You looked at your phone as if you were waiting for something. You went up to the second floor too often, and when you came back, you frowned even more. You scratched the back of your head more frequently, and Gojo had already figured out and memorized that you only did that when you were confused or distracted. And what he really couldn't get over was the way you waved away food, saying over and over again that you weren't hungry. All the while, you acted as usual, ignoring any questions about how you were feeling, even if it was veiled

You didn't have to say anything at all - he could still feel you, and he was angry that he couldn't do anything about it, standing on the doorstep of the always-closed door to your innermost being. He could have, but looking at his own hands, Gojo realized that he could gut your feelings with his sudden movements and sloppy words, and worst of all, he wouldn't even know it. 

A different hand was needed here, a hand more gentle and less clingy. It needed someone with some manners and tact. That's why the sorcerer was standing at the door to Doc and Ieiri's office now, praying inwardly that, if you ever found out about this, you'd forgive him for this liberty.

When Gojo opened the door, he breathed a sigh of relief when he found no Doc, only Shoko sitting at a table, staring at a book, not paying any attention to him. The place already smelled like cigarette smoke, and he grumbled unhappily.

"Hey!" at the sound, Shoko jumped up on the spot and slammed the notebook with force. Seeing the familiar face of her savior, she instantly relaxed. There wasn't even a shadow of the previous fluttering terror on her, only an indifferent tired expression. "Interrupted?"

"Yeah," Shoko said, rolling her eyes.

"You're welcome," Gojo grinned contentedly. "What do you have here?" he asked, moving closer to the table and tilting his head sideways as if trying to read what was on the cover.

"Nasty reading matter," she brushed it off, immediately tucking the notebook away in her desk drawer. "What did you want?"

"Can't I just visit a friend?" he resented, frowning his white eyebrows and taking a seat across from Shoko. She, however, pursed her lips and continued to stare at Gojo without blinking. He felt so uncomfortable as if the perceptiveness had developed a scope. "Okay, you're right. I really need your help," he whimpered, clasping his hands together in front of him in supplication. 

Out of interest, Jeri began to twirl her auburn curl around her finger. "Speak."

"Agree first!" he begged, holding her gaze and trying to look as sincere as possible.

"That's not how it works," she said, rolling her eyes. "I've got tons of work to do already, so either talk or get the hell out of here." 

Gojo snorted resentfully, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair, but remembering why he had come here, the sorcerer moved forward again and stared at Shoko pleadingly. They switched roles - now the woman was uncomfortable. "Here's the thing... Anyway, I can see that the mochi isn't feeling very well. No, I don't mean she's in pain or anything," he rambled, gesturing vigorously. "It's just that she's...I don't know, she's walking around depressed, even though she says she's fine. But I can see everything!" he exclaimed, pointing to his eyes. "Six eyes, after all."

"What does this have to do with me?" asked Ieiri, wrinkling her nose discontentedly.

"Talk to her!" whined Gojo demandingly, grabbing her hands. "And make up with her and Rachel. Have those girlies of yours, get some wine, food, have a pillow fight, or whatever it is you usually do?" 

Shoko immediately pulled her hands out of his grip. "Can't you do it yourself?"

"I can't!" he slammed his hands on the table with indignation. "How do you envision it? I'm sure they'd be uncomfortable in my presence, but with you..."

"Why me?" surrendered Shoko, feeling a migraine coming on.

"Because you're a woman!" he persisted, feeling like she was about to give up.

The sorcerer immediately flinched under her gaze full of reproach. "And you're sexist." 

"You know that's not what I meant," he muttered apologetically, embarrassedly tracing circles on the wooden surface of the table with his finger. "It needs a woman's hand, or whatever it's called... I think she'd be much more comfortable talking about what's bothering her in girl company. And it might be easier for you to get her and Rachel back together. I don't think mochi is quite used to me yet," Gojo added more quietly, resting his head on the table, hiding from his friend's eyes. 

Shoko, sighing heavily, accepted defeat. "Fine," she agreed, realizing she'd never seen him like this before. He never begged, and certainly never wanted to get close to anyone - all those human problems didn't bother him. And if Jeri had no sympathy now, she was at least curious to see what would come of it.

"Really?" perked Gojo. "You know you're the best friend in the world, right?" he grinned slyly, reaching out to her again – Ieiri leaned away from the sorcerer like a leper, and her chair, creaking dangerously and coming off the floor, was left standing on two legs. "Come on, you'll like her," he paid no attention to her attempts to distance herself, still grinning playfully. "Can't you see that even someone like me is better around her?" there was a quiet crack at first, followed a second later by another, much louder and clearer, and it happened so fast that Shoko didn't even have time to round her eyes in shock. The chair leg snapped, and the woman immediately collapsed to the floor. "Shit, did you fall down?" chuckled Gojo, flipping across the table and looking at his friend, who was spitting irritatedly at the hair that had fallen into her mouth.  

"As much of a narcissist and asshole as you were," she hissed, standing up and kicking the broken chair away. "Whether you were sixteen or thirty."

"Hmmm," he drawled thoughtfully. "Can we really call it narcissism if I'm really the best?"

You tried to ignore the endless phone flashes.

It was true that Christian loved order - old, new, or created by him. This applied to his interactions with people as well as his adherence to protocols. He cut all ties with anyone who was even a minute late for a prearranged meeting, and he dismissed anyone who didn't act according to the prescribed guidelines.

This behavior was reflected in his home. There was too much open space here - probably because of the minimalist interior design. No junk, no extra decorative elements. If it was the kitchen, it was just a kitchen unit, stove, refrigerator, table and chairs - all in a monochromatic, aged style. If it was a living room, it was a couch, a TV across from it, a coffee table, and no carpet, no indoor plants - plastic or live. There were no pens or books on the coffee table. There was nothing on the shelves - no vases, no photos, not even empty frames. The place was uncomfortable. It was as if this house had never belonged to anyone.

What stood out from the furnishings was a layer of dust. You ran your finger across the table, and it left a clean, distinctive streak. Other than that, there wasn't much to catch your eye: there was only cutlery in the kitchen cabinets, rotting food in the refrigerator, almost all the drawers were empty, only a lonely bunch of keys lying in the hallway.

Your phone once again blasted with notifications. With a heavy sigh, you headed for the second floor.

Overcoming the path, you opened every possible door - to the right was the bathroom, tiled in white with not a single spot on it, a little farther down the hall was the bedroom, and back to the stairs, you opened the door directly across from it. The office.

You were surprised when you noticed the books on the shelves. There wasn't a single one that stood unevenly - they were all pressed together, cover to cover. There was nothing on the office desk but a stack of papers that lay right on the very corner. Slowly you walked around the desk and sat down in the office chair.

Tapping your fingers against the armrests, you pitched forward - there was some kind of stain on the table, but the stain was too neat to be random. It was a rectangular layer of dust, something that was much thinner than what covered every other surface in the house. Something clicked in your head. There was a laptop here.

And it was stolen long after this house was empty.

You sighed disappointedly and leaned back in your chair, looking around the office. What was he doing here? Was he writing reports? Filling out forms for the dead and missing? Doing the financials? Did he do it all on the missing laptop or did he do it by hand? And if he did it in writing, where did he get a pen?

You reached for the right-hand drawer of the desk, but when you opened it, you saw nothing. You tried the left one, but it wouldn't open. You jerked the handle a few times, thinking it might be jammed, but it remained closed and unyielding. There was no keyhole on the drawer either.

As soon as the dagger was in your hand, it seemed to lead your palm to the right place - when it was in the gap between the table and the drawer, it made a barely perceptible vibration, and without thinking, you pressed down on the top of the hilt. There was a crack.

Opening the drawer, you saw a small dump. There were pens here, but with them were various wrappers, crumpled papers, empty boxes of painkillers, and, suddenly, a corkscrew. You only realized it when it jabbed your palm for trying to dig around. You sucked in air through clenched teeth in surprise and put a finger to your lips, licking away the blood, but you didn't stop and kept digging. There was nothing of interest here but an empty clear baggie. There really wasn't anything in it. Except for the remnants of a white powder at the bottom.

You slumped back in the chair and twirled the bag in your fingers. You hadn't even had a chance to smell it before your thoughts led you back to that nightclub. Now you were racked with guilt for leaving there too soon. Maybe Gojo was right and you shouldn't have left. Maybe you two just needed to kick the asses of everyone there and then figure out who was human and who wasn't. But you wanted to do it neatly, as carefully as possible, leaving a way out for yourself. You grimaced, pulling yourself out of the boiling cauldron of intrusive thoughts and ideas. 

Your phone vibrated once again, and you pulled it out of your pocket, irritated, and quickly flipped through the notification panel. There was something else that made your heart skip a beat besides a bunch of messages from Gojo and app alerts.

[07:43pm] Shoko Ieiri: We need to talk.

You weren't even staring at the words - you were staring at the dot at the end of a short sentence. Why did it look exactly like a nail hammered into a coffin lid?

You were indecently late. You called Shoko and arranged to meet her on the cliff near the house at eight in the evening. She transparently hinted to you that nothing serious had happened and that it would be better to buy something strong. Once at the first store you could remember, you picked up a couple bottles of wine, inwardly worrying - does she drink that stuff? Or should you have gotten something stronger? That's why there was a bottle of tequila in the bag with the wine.

When you looked at your phone, you were horrified. It was exactly eight, and you hadn't even showered. After quickly texting Shoko that you'd be late, you found yourself here, in your bathroom, full of excitement and up to your ears in foam, washing your hair with one hand and your body with the other.

Walking into the workroom and immediately removing his blindfold, Gojo heard muffled chaos. Something frantic was going on in the bathroom - he could hear something clicking, falling, water running - it seemed to be on in both the shower and the sink. He picked up the disorderly stomping of wet feet, the sound of drawers opening, and even the way clothes flew to the floor from those drawers. Putting it all together, the sorcerer couldn't figure out what exactly was happening on the other side of the door.  

When you flew out of the bathroom, you crashed right into Gojo. You were in clean but wet clothes, water dripping from your mussed hair onto the floor, and you looked so dazed that you reminded him of a mischievous kitten. "Hey there, troublemaker," he grinned, hugging you to him with one hand. 

You stared in amazement at the bouquet of pink peonies he held in his other hand. "Wow," you exhaled dumbfoundedly, staring at the petals. "Did someone give ya a present?" you raised your head and stared into his eyes, and Gojo, mesmerized and completely lost, didn't immediately find something to say - just enough to make you remember that you were late.

"Actually, it's for y-"

"Do ya happen to know what Shoko wants to talk to me about?" you asked anxiously, running over to a drawer and pulling out a hair dryer. You weren't the only one panicking now. "She told me it was nothing serious, but ya're her friend, maybe she mentioned something?"

"What?" Gojo asked curtly, and, to prevent you from saying anything else, immediately rained questions on you in response, despite his heart pounding madly. "We? We might not even talk for months, what makes you think she tells me anything?" the best defense is offense, he knew that firsthand. The sorcerer, having put the bouquet on the table, plopped down on the bed - right in the uniform he'd just walked down the street in, which made you cringe unhappily. "And anyway, I've been texting you all day, why haven't you answered?" 

"Satoru, sometimes I get busy and can't always respond to your messages instantly," you waved it off, turning on your hair dryer.

Because of the noise you didn't hear him grumble, but you felt the pillow that flew into your back. "I live with an abuser."

With your hair only half dried, you tied it into a ponytail. "Would you deign to change?" you asked politely, glancing at his work uniform. Taking your phone in your hands, you plugged it into the charger, and after looking sourly at the three percent charge, you placed it on the table. "Were ya on a mission or something?"

"Yeah," you felt uncomfortable with how embarrassed Gojo sounded. Quickly replaying the dialog in your head, you tried to think of the words that might have sounded rude or ambiguous, but you didn't catch anything. "Or rather, the little ones were on a mission, I was just observing." 

"How caring ya are," you drawled teasingly, the more you drove him into the arms of worry.

Gojo got out of bed and walked over to the table - closer to the mess you were making around you. "So where are you gonna go? Bar?" he asked, trying to suppress the growing shyness in him. "Should I give you a card?" 

You laughed, confused at the suggestion at first. "No, we'll be right here," you nodded toward the window – there was the cliff with the fire pit where you used to gather. "The weather's warm, so we decided not to go anywhere." 

As you hastily pulled on your shoes, Gojo realized you were about to leave like that. Even though the weather was warm, the sea waves were always embraced by a cool breeze. The sorcerer nonchalantly slipped the jacket off, leaving himself in the black T-shirt, ready to defend himself against your denials and outrage that you had your own clothes. But you only laughed, saying it looked like a cloak-tent on you. "That's it, I gotta go!" you exclaimed happily, and kissed him on the cheek. It was not until you were on the other side of the door that, though you walked forward, you saw nothing in front of you. When you came out of your usual and happy days, you cursed under your breath, feeling your heart whimper again. What did you just do? 

Gojo could have sworn on anything - from his six-eye technique to his own life - that he felt your lips through the mask. He was ready to suffocate at the feel of that gentle flame on his cheek, and, even more embarrassingly, he was ready not to wash that tiny spot on his body. At least until you're oblivious again to the point of repeating such a thing. He had so many victories under his belt that sometimes the sorcerer couldn't remember a single one, but this moment, so small and intimate, burned so brightly and reverently in his soul, and he was no longer able to compare it to a triumph - the word was too earthy and vulgar.

It was his treasure. 

After changing into his home clothes and making himself a sweet tea, Gojo paced around the workroom. When you left, the excitement, confusion, embarrassment pressed down on him even harder. What if Shoko told you it was his idea after all? How would you react to his unceremonious intrusion into your life? 

He went to the window, trying to see you, and then bounced away in horror, remembering that you could see him. What did you three talk about? How did you react to Rachel coming over? Did you drink alcohol? And if you did, when will you get to the point where you're putting boys under a microscope? What if they weren't boys at all? Gojo clasped his hand around his head - he'd never thought of that. 

Your phone rang, and the sorcerer, looking lazily at the unknown number, silenced the sound - the gadget pitifully, but already silently continued to project the number of the caller.

The tea in the mug had long since cooled, but he hadn't taken a sip. He leaned back against the table and stared up at the ceiling - it seemed Gojo could even hear the ticking of a clock that never existed in the workroom. Will everything go well? Will you come back here happy, or will your strained smile break his heart again? 

Somebody kept calling you repeatedly, but the number was the same. Who was it? Who had so much nerve? Unable to stand it, the sorcerer answered and leaned the phone to his ear. Silently. 

"Hello?" came a quiet, frightened female voice. Gojo didn't say a word. "I... I was given this number...," the girl babbled uncertainly and muffled. "Uh, a girl. A private detective. In the picture of the missing..." 

"Oh," it dawned on him, and he relaxed. The creepy, clammy feeling that made him want to smash everything around him immediately receded. "It's good to hear from you," he chirped, smiling.

"And you... You're her husband, right?"

"That's right," he smiled even harder. "Anything wrong?"

"I... I-I need to tell you something," he could hear her voice quivering. "I mean, I work at that club and with the paperwork, too, so... But I, uh... I-I don't want to tell you about it over the phone," she whispered, swallowing.

"Okay," Gojo simply agreed, hoping that would at least calm the hostess down a little.

"Then...,"

"Be quiet," he interrupted her sharply, hoping that if she had said anything at all, his voice had drowned out the girl's words. "I'll find you myself. I'll see you soon."

He stared at the faded screen and hesitated. Wouldn't it be presumptuous of him to take over some of your work?

This time the sorcerer came to the window already without fear of being seen. He looked at you - no one seemed to be arguing, no one seemed to be fighting, and you even drank a glass of wine in one gulp, which caused him to marvel along with admiration and laughter. Wasn't it wonderful that you could let go of the moment and relax for once? "Meg," Gojo said quietly, watching as you wrapped yourself more tightly in his jacket. "Can you help?" 

"Sure," replied the mechanical voice.

He used to feel like a guest. He'd felt welcome, but still capricious and sometimes terribly unbearable. Now that even the artificial intelligence approved of him, he felt like a full-fledged master of this house. "First, delete all recent incoming calls from her phone."

A ruby sunset was burning on the horizon, and in its rays two silhouettes could be seen sitting by the campfire. You were walking toward the fire like a moth, but you had no wings, no lightness, only anxiety and a sense of catch that made it hard to move. You realized who was sitting next to Ieiri, and you had no energy to prepare yourself for what was coming. You couldn't imagine any other outcome, only the worst.

As you approached them, you waved awkwardly. Shoko, who was shoving a flaming piece of paper into the fire, nodded back. Rachel didn't look at you, just kept picking at the grass with her finger.

The crackling of the fire, the chirping of cicadas and crickets, the hum of the waves crashing against the rocks - although it was too quiet. You hesitated a little and awkwardly shifted from one foot to the other, then sat down opposite your sister – Shoko remained sitting next to you, like a judge.

You held out what you'd bought to Ieiri. She looked at the bottles, then at you two, and set the wine aside and opened the tequila. Realizing that she had brought nothing but glasses with her, Shoko hummed indifferently and filled them a quarter full, then set the glasses in front of you. "Drink," she sternly commanded in an icy tone. "In a gulp."

"Ya're really suggesting drinking to recovering addict and a person who's never had a drink at all?" hissed Rachel wryly. "Great fucking plan."

You swallowed, not listening to their bickering, realizing that you needed something to dilute the viscosity of the evening. Without thinking about anything, emptying your head and freeing your thoughts, you abruptly took the glass and drank it all under your sister's stunned gaze.

"Who drinks like that anyway?" asked Ieiri indignantly, watching you cough. The heat that burned your lungs made you blush. Shoko held out a slice of lime to you. "Eat. With the zest," as you ate the citrus, the acid immediately eroded the bitterness, and you were able to breathe.

You were silent again. Rachel, still not drinking hers, tentatively ran her finger along the rim of her glass. Ieiri turned her head as if she didn't want to look at the awkward spectacle before her. She stared at the horizon, but neither the sunset nor the shifting waves gave her an answer - how could she make you two up? What made Gojo think she could handle it? She had never been a soft person, and there was hardly more tact in her than in him. She was a doctor for treating people for physical injuries or dissecting cold corpses, but she'd never patched up mental wounds. "Well," Ieiri lazily clucked her tongue. "Start talking."

"About what?" muttered Rachel irritably, without raising her eyes.

"Anything that pisses you off," she shrugged.

Let it be decided here and now. You didn't want to be in limbo anymore, not knowing if you still had a sister - if she didn't want to be one, let her tell you so to your face. "Well," you began, grabbing the tequila bottle and refilling your glass a quarter full again. "It pisses me off terribly that ya can't keep your temper sometimes," you popped a lime slice into your mouth and sipped from your glass afterward - Shoko pursed her lips condescendingly. You may have learned what to do, but you hadn't thought about the order of things at all. "It pisses me off that ya take it out on me if ya have a problem," you gulped down the rest of your drink, dumbfounded at your own audacity. "Also, it pisses me off that ya always blame me for everything."

You weren't angry at yourself for spitting out the words. You weren't glad you could finally say it out loud. You didn't care, and it would have been better if you'd stayed that way while you were alive.

You could see Rachel chewing the inside of her cheeks with anger and resentment. She drained her glass and tossed it aside as it rolled across the grass and fell straight down the cliff. "Look at ya talking," she said, laughing hysterically. "Ya mean ya weren't the one who kept leaving me alone whenever there was any trouble?" she eyed you testily, expecting any objections, only to cut them off at the root. "And aren't ya the one hiding from your own emotions all the time? Or is it that ya just don't have any?"

"I never-"

"Don't ya dare!" she shouted in a trembling voice. "Gosh, adoptee," the girl sobbed, and you both failed to notice as Ieiri quietly poured wine into her glass under the noise and hysteria that had been created. "I just wanna know that ya feel anything."

You wrapped yourself tighter in his jacket as if seeking safety and support. "Ya know why I can't, don't ya?"

"Bullshit!" she bellowed as if she didn't want to believe it herself. "There's nothing stopping ya from being human. Just yourself," she said quietly as Shoko sipped her wine carefully, shifting her gaze from Rachel to you and back again. "Ieiri, ya can try it too," she offered playfully through her tears. "Ya can wipe your feet on her, say anything behind her back or to her face, she won't say anything to ya at all," she pitched forward dangerously, and there was something predatory, unbridled in every demeanor. "Do ya know what the joke is?" you looked fearfully at your sister and shook your head quietly, though you knew she couldn't see it through that glassy veil in her eyes. "She's a half-demon."

In the silence all that was heard was Shoko's coughing and a quiet swearing. "Holy shit," she muttered, wiping the wine off her chin and staring at you.

"That's what I mean," Rachel said, but she didn't realize that it wasn't who you were that shocked Ieiri. The woman mentally traveled back in time, diving back into that notebook. She had never had a hangover. Alcohol had never made her nauseous, but now she felt like all the wine she'd drunk would end up back in her glass. "Her dad was a hunter and her mother was a demon," she persisted. "And when he found out, he nearly nailed them both," while she savored the details, you stared into your empty glass. Why didn't the drink make you dizzy? Why weren't you getting drunk? Because now you wouldn't even be able to pretend it was just a nightmare. "But my father intervened and took her parents to trial," she clicked her tongue contentedly as if that was her feat. "See?" she turned to Shoko and pointed her thumb at you, which did not look up at them. "She doesn't give a fuck."

You felt as if you were about to be torn to pieces as if it had broken free and wanted to swallow everything around it - except instead of a vast emptiness, there was a whole world here, and it was happy about it, so happy that it was willing to draw its swords through your body as many times as it needed to until you obeyed. "All I wanted was to just be left alone," you said surreptitiously. "I was doing just fine, wasn't I?" when you looked up at them, you thought for a second that Shoko recoiled a little, but maybe that was just a play of your imagination. "Until now," you stood up and shook off your feet. "I'm gonna go. Ya two have fun."

"Adoptee," Rachel weakly called out to you, and if you hadn't been in so much pain, you would have heard the size of regret that lurked in her voice.

They stared after you, and your sister didn't dare stop you - she had a lot of dirty and disgusting words for you, and none of them comforting. "Fuck," she whimpered, covering her mouth with her hand, trying to stop the sobs that were coming.

"Yeah," Shoko said detachedly, taking a drag. "Your mouth isn't a mouth, it's a dump," she continued to stab and pummel Rachel with words, thinking absolutely nothing of it. "If I were in her shoes, I would wish you to burn in hell. Or killed you. I'm surprised she puts up with you at all," Rachel flopped down on the grass and covered her face with her hands, her palms were getting wet, though she didn't make a sound. So this was patience all along? "Stop whining already," Shoko kicked the girl in the thigh, and Rachel jerked her hands away from her face - she was all swollen and red, and probably just looked pathetic in her friend's eyes. But Ieiri didn't comment on her appearance in any way. "You said your father took them both to trial?"

Astonishment at the sudden question stopped a new flood of tears. "Well... Kinda, yeah."

"Uh," Shoko pondered, and then pointed a finger up into the sky, twirling it around a bit. "Aren't dioreacts the only ones being judged up there?"

"Nah," Rachel waved it away, wiping her wet cheeks with her sweater. "For judges, everyone equal before the law. They're also ... Um, racists? Nationalists? Xenophobes? Xenolists? Fuck knows," she mumbled tiredly. "They just don't accept the connection between human and dioreact, it's happened a bunch of times before."  

"I see," Shoko replied indifferently, but there was a feeling brewing inside. No, not even a feeling - a desire that she hadn't had before, and that the man didn't need.

She wanted to protect her best friend.

As he coming the stairs of the apartment building, Gojo kept picking up faint flashes of cursed energy, low-level curses that posed no danger to the residents, much less to him. Still, everything felt strange, plastic, the sounds and voices of the residents from behind the doors seemed unreal, airy, as if he were walking through a looking glass. 

Once on the right floor, the sorcerer stopped at the door that Megan had dictated to him. A door like a door, there were no chips or scratches on it, though it looked faded - the light wood had almost turned white.

Gojo tapped his knuckle and listened, but there were no footsteps on the other side, no music playing, no television blaring. He tried again, for there was a chance that the girl had fallen into a deep sleep. Again no answer. Maybe the hostess hadn't called him from home at all. 

Taking out his phone, he dialed the number he had transcribed. He couldn't shake off the feeling of clinging hands - he knew it when someone or something didn't have the courage to face him, which was why it watched from the corners, from the shadows.

Covering his eyes, the sorcerer obediently waited for the first buzzer to go off. The second one came, but he still heard nothing. Grasping the doorknob, Gojo concentrated hard, and a few moments later, he opened his eyes. The phone was vibrating faintly, almost subtly, on the other side of the door. 

Without thinking, he kicked the door open and burst into the apartment. It was hot, insanely stuffy as if someone had left the oven on. His body was instantly sweaty, his clothes clinging unpleasantly to his body, making Gojo cringe. It was so quiet that he could hear the local waterworks humming.

The sorcerer didn't drop the call - the girl's phone kept vibrating, luring him in. He walked slowly toward the sound and stopped at the very threshold of the closed door to the room. Something kept him from bursting in here the way he'd burst into the apartment.

Swallowing cautiously, he opened the door, and the hot apartment turned into an icy hell. At that moment Gojo realized that he was glad that his soul had been hardened by dozens of deaths of colleagues and comrades, otherwise it would not have survived. In front of him, on the wall, hung the very same hostess. He couldn't figure out what was wrong - he thought she was just nailed down, but as he got closer, he saw screws in her wrists. Some creature had deliberately screwed them into the girl's skin, and was she still alive or not?

Gojo looked at her face, her head hanging limply, blood dripping from her mouth, her eyes open, unable to see anything in front of her. He coughed involuntarily as he looked at her stomach, which was ripped and torn, the skin hanging in shreds along with her insides, which seemed about to fall to the floor. 

Suppressing his inner protests and the stubborn squeamishness that the sorcerer sometimes hated, he touched her wrist, intending to remove the dead body from the wall, and realized with horror that she was still warm. No, not even that. She was too warm.

Behind him, the closet doors swung open, and someone lunged for the door. "Going somewhere?" Gojo snapped quietly, stretching forward his hand with the middle finger and thumb joined as the killers's limbs twisted, his bones snapping and crunching, and he fell to the ground. Walking over to him and grabbing his head, the sorcerer turned him over and stared into his face. "You don't look like someone who would pull something like this off of his own free will," the sorcerer grinned madly, holding the man by the chin - he looked frail and puny, and seemed to shiver when he saw the insanity in Gojo's eyes. "You're too weak," he laid the man's head against the floor with force - the man whimpered and began to be covered in dark lines and his eyes turned black. "Come on, tell me who told you to, huh?" Gojo cooed obsessively, moving closer and closer to the alien's face. That name that had been swirling around in the back of Gojo's mind hadn't had the nerve to crawl to the forefront before - but now, with a mad laughter, it burst from the abysses and caused Gojo to become furious, insane, reckless, jealous, and all wracked with the desire to protect. "That was Rei, wasn't it?" the demon squeaked pitifully before the sorcerer squeezed his chin with such force that he broke the man's jaw altogether. Chuckling softly to himself, he didn't immediately notice how the creature's body went limp, how heavy its head grew, and how its dark eyes turned glassy.  

Realizing that the creature had cowardly fled from him, that it had surrendered without a fight, Gojo could no longer rid himself of the feeling of disgust. Standing up and stepping over its corpse as if forgetting that this body had once been human too, he walked over to the girl and began to monotonously remove the screws from her limbs. When her body was free, he didn't let her fall - picking her up in his arms, he carried the dead hostess to the bed and laid her down. He bit his tongue, painfully and hard, when he thought that she was actually supposed to sleep here tonight. "I'm sorry," Gojo whispered, closing her glassy eyes. He hadn't accomplished anything today, but he realized that the girl had been brutalized for a reason. If someone wanted to cover their tracks, they had done it too carelessly and sloppily, leaving a wider path behind them. He mentally revisited that nightclub again. "And... Thank you."   

Gojo didn't even need to ask how it had gone, and underneath your 'it was okay' he could only see the jacket of his uniform - though it had been dark before, now it looked as if someone had cut a piece of cloth in space. What pleased him was that you didn't refuse to eat, and the sorcerer even seemed to be able to see your stuffed cheeks through the mask. Suppressing a chuckle and erasing the picture of you looking exactly like a hamster in his head, he wondered how to more gently hint to you that you should go back to that club. 

Gojo did not pay attention to the movie that he had chosen long and carefully, only scrolling through the variants of events and their outcomes in his head, distracted only by the peonies, carefully placed in a beautiful vase, each time smiling obliviously. 

The height difference was good - not only could he use you as an armrest, but now he was free to rest his chin on  top of your head and press your back closer to his chest. This strange sense of domestic comfort had at first horrified him by its obscurity, and now he was only just abusing the opportunity. At times like this, he remembered that his life had not always gone hand in hand with unhappiness.

When the notification came to your phone, Gojo immediately looked up at the ceiling. He held on when you looked. He held it when you stared longer than usual. But now he was ready to explode with impatience and willfulness. 'Get a grip,' he scolded himself, leaving holes in the ceiling with even more zeal. 

The sorcerer didn't even realize how cold you were inside. When he squeezed your waist once more, you hoped it was only your soul that was trembling, and that he wasn't feeling you so much that he could feel those jagged vibrations.

You stared at your phone for so long that the light from the screen started to burn your eyes.

[02:01am] Unknown: I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

You expected this to happen at some point, your collision was inevitable, but why now did you hope that this message wasn't from him?

[02:01am] Unknown: liebe.

Gojo's patient broke when you scratched the back of your head. "Mochi, what's wrong?" he asked affectionately, and was about to bury his nose in the top of your head, but he didn't have time. You jumped up from the bed.

"Nothing, it's just...," you began confusedly, looking around the room as if it were your first time here. The sorcerer hated it when you looked cornered - he immediately wanted to tear down every wall around you. "Looks like I have a date tomorrow, and I... I don't even have a dress."

You didn't see the blue eyes darken because of your own anxiety, didn't see the hands that held you gently  clenched in fists, didn't hear his heart and breathing stop for a moment. Gojo tried to breathe evenly and measuredly as if ordering the anger to flow evenly through his body, to keep it from breaking free, but the rage was sometimes too wild and unbridled to be controlled. "What did you just fucking say?"   

next ⊳

[optiwashere]

WIP Wednesday

Holy shit, it's actually on a Wednesday this time?

I really wanted to do one of these this week since I've gone a bit rabid on a few WIPs.

I'll post a little bit about each of those WIPs later, some snippets and a blurb about why I'm so excited. But first! Folks to tag! Since I'm so excited for these, I'm gonna tag a lot this time.

If you have anything you want to share WIP writing-wise, please do... @quitefair @bottombatch @siyurikspakvariisis @causticcontemplation @jasminethetransvampire @underworldobsessed @assarivanguard @amorficzna @funwithnix @askweisswolf @linka-from-captain-planet @tief4tief

If you don't want to do this, or have nothing you want to share, feel free to ignore. If anyone else wants to do this, please feel free to consider yourself tagged. Now, onto my obsessions.

WIP 1: New chapter of Nightsongs

After spending some chapters in a kind of angst zone after the relatively light (relatively) first 4-5 chapters, this next chapter is going to be a kind of upswing. There's lots left to do with the AU, so I'm expecting to chug along and write more and more as time permits.

This AU is a lot for me to handle, especially after having so many chapters ready to post and then... falling way behind on writing the chapters afterwards. But it's fanfiction, and we're having fun here. So, who cares? The game's fandom heyday is already over, so at this point I'm just writing whatever feels best to me.

This chapter is mostly done, I think. I'm giving it a few days/a week to sit before I go back to edit it with fresher eyes. Also, we return to Ash's POV!

Lae’zel walked into Ash’s back office without a word on the seventh day and Ash nodded her way without looking up. Papers sat in strewn piles all over the desk, a handful of old incident reports and assessments that still needed working for Wulbren’s accountants. The absolute worst part of the job remained for the year – paperwork – and Ash intended to get them caught up in the hours that remained of her day. It was a useful, meaningful task. It gave her something else to think about. Anything other than green eyes. “We should talk,” Lae’zel said, sitting down without being offered one of the folding chairs in front of the desk. “Aren’t we doing that?” Ash scanned the paper in front of her and quickly jotted down her signature. [...] “You begin working on a van,” Lae’zel said matter-of-factly, counting off on her fingers as she spoke. “You talk to a pretty girl. You suddenly work more often on that van. Then, you disappear inside yourself and act bitter all day because suddenly the girl no longer shows up. There is more to it than you say.” “I think this might be the first time you’ve spoken more than five words to me, you know that?” Ash chuckled. “Am I that obvious?”

WIP 2: New chapter of Blades in the Night

The need to write more plot for this has been burrowing in my skull for a long time. I initially stopped myself from writing too much of it because I wanted to do Nightsongs first in its entirety before getting to this, but I think I'm just too impatient for that.

I also love the fact that this fic turned from a simple PWP one-shot into this much more expansive, plotty story that's now pretty important for what I want to do with my babies post-canon. Something about that makes me smile.

Plus, you know how I've been lamenting my inability to write happy endings for certain characters?

Either way, this isn't really complete, but the hardest part is complete and now I just have to start connecting the dots and filling in the blanks. I'd say it's about a third done?

The room filled with the same aura of a distant gaze leveled their way that Shadowheart had felt back in the cloister. Asheera had made an oath to protect Shadowheart then, and the flooding of a dense, real presence had nearly swallowed her whole in the cloister's barracks. A weight of importance sunk down on her shoulders there in Hobb's Hovel as well. A smell like molten metal cooling lilted in the air with a lingering, acrid tang. It tasted of blood in Shadowheart's mouth, as if the forging was tainted with some other foul presence in the mixture. [...] Little could have compared better to that feeling of a weight lifted from her shoulders. Worry disappeared and gave way to earnest joy in Shadowheart, and she thrived on it. She hadn't felt such keen happiness since she'd been so readily accepted into Asheera's family by her parents.

WIP 3: Gauntlet of Shar fic

Wow, I know! I've been talking about writing this fic for so long that it's almost become a sort of mythical never-to-be-slain beast for me. I'm not normally someone that talks about my ideas too often, I just write them before they can flee me.

I tend to also get in my own head about what I "should" be writing in the first place. Frankly, I'm getting kinda tired of writing so many ships, though fear not - I'll still have ideas that can only work with ships that aren't Shadowheart/Asheera. It's just that, for a while, I want to focus back on my loves.

This fic is one of those that I've wanted to finish for months. I know that at this point in the fandom's life cycle, I'm pretty much writing just for the dedicated, lovely folks that still read my stuff and I'm extremely happy to have y'all around! Maybe this will make Light Casts a Shadow ring a little more true for some, maybe it will be just another fic that I post, who knows.

Also, one thing I'm planning on experimenting with for this fic is alternate endings for Fun. This is a fic where the ending hinges on choices that Shadowheart makes in the game, so it's only fitting that I explore what would happen if she made those other choices.

But anywho, enough blabbing. Excerpt time!

Those touches and more, Asheera cherished. She watched in silence as Shadowheart turned her devotions to each of those tasks. Perhaps it was the nature of clerics to give themselves entirely to seemingly mundane tasks much the same Asheera felt compelled to consider her oaths in nearly every conversation, battle, or even moments like Shadowheart carefully buckling a cuisse to her leg with straps of leather at the backs of Asheera's knees. Fingertips trailed against her clothed skin, and Shadowheart stood up once more. "There," she said, "all's taken care of, then. Tell me, how's my handiwork? Be honest. I can handle the criticism." Asheera brought her balled fist to her chest in an arm curl. She flexed the elbow out and tested her shoulders, knees, ankles, and hips for motion. None of the plates caught on one another, and none of the straps across her hands, arms, knees, or chest restricted her. "Perfect," Asheera said at last. "Marvelous work." Shadowheart offered a quick smile. "I'll take a Gondian's compliment on such things any day." "Can't say I would've done a better job." "Ah, there's the honesty I was waiting for. Truly, where would you be without me?"

[dundunny]

Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI completed, and wow, I think it's my favorite Final Fantasy since IX, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it (focusing on VIIR2?). It's not a perfect game and has some glaring flaws, but I haven't had this much fun playing a Final Fantasy in a long time.

I'll start with the issues, and I think number one is the items, which affects the game twofold. First is there's a completely fucked up weapon upgrade system. Literally after I get a shiny new sword, barely an hour later I've gotten another one. It's like Square didn't track when a player should get trying out something new. The second is the rewards for exploration or epic battles don't matter. There are maybe a dozen different upgrade materials in the whole game, most of which you get pretty early on. So I'm literally running around the final area and finding fucking sharp fangs, which I started collecting way back in the beginning when Clive was like fifteen. Yeah, (some) bounties have good drops, but I literally defeated Bahamut and got forty bloody hides, of which I already owned hundreds. None of the accessories felt like game changers either, so opening up treasure chests felt like meh. You need a sort of nice reward for effort. If I'm gonna walk across the map for some distant treasure, it better not be five of what I already have hundreds of. It's annoying because they put so much effort into everything else, so literally hiring one dude whose sole job is this I feel shouldn't've been hard.

Then there are regular battles. Let me say this first: boss battles were amazing and I was completely satisfied with them. But XVI suffered from the same issue as Hogwarts Legacy: too little variation in enemies and you're way overleveled early on. There's no incentive to fight regular enemies on the map because you're not getting much EXP since you're already way over, their drops are pointless like every other item, so they're more or less just an annoyance you avoid. I didn't put any effort in trying basic encounters, and I beat the game one level below max. So what's the point. Given how much effort Square put into the battle system, it's a shame they didn't let me flex my muscles with it more often.

This is a personal preference but I think others would agree: I'm a big environments fiend, and you don't get to explore any of the major cities. Hell, you never see the Iron Kingdom's capital even in a cutscene. The cities are just dungeons, so you're basically there as a continuous fight so you don’t have time to appreciate the surroundings, and when you do everything is in the process of being destroyed or already is. You don’t even get to visit what should be a moderately sized town, Port Isolde, and even Northreach felt like a minor checkpoint before the capital moved. All that's left are small towns or even just hovels. I wonder if they were trying to save resources on environments; Oriflamme looks amazing from the outside, I can't imagine having the render all of that.

That being said, dungeons are following the trend of a linear path with perhaps a quick diversion for treasure. There's no puzzles, no thought (although a good portion of the time the dungeons are mid-battle of a large attack so there isn't time). XVI isn't alone in this; I've noticed most RPGs in recent years don't do the puzzle route as much anymore.

Another minor complaint is at times they would shove the point down the player's throat until it became fantastical. Yes, slavery is bad and people abuse slaves. However, I cannot imagine even in the cotton-picking South some person would purposefully have other people's slaves be killed by a giant wolf. That is someone else's property. Slaves to that extent are safe from others besides the master. Some dude is not going to go out and start murdering slaves randomly because even the law protects the master's possessions. It just doesn't make any sense.

Now onto the good things: pretty much everything else. The plot is solid and feels like Final Fantasy returning to form. Big crystals that need to be destroyed, kingdoms falling, a higher power controlling things behind the scenes... One thing I appreciate, and I think many recent games have lost this, is XVI had many sidequests that had us check in on friends we've met along the way and continue with their subplots. You never really forget these people and it shows how a network of connections and bonds is maintained. Even Eastpool, which was massacred fairly early on, rises up again much later on.

Another factor that I think is important is I just like Clive a lot. He's also my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist since IX. Don't get me wrong; I did like Lightning but if I ever had to work toward a common goal with her in real life, I probably would punch her in the face. I have no idea how she was ever in the military because she has zero sense of teamwork, and she acts like an asshole to even people who are actively trying to help her. Clive in contrast is very mature, has strong leadership abilities, not overly angry or obnoxious or lonerlike, and is just trying to do good in the world. He does make mistakes, but they're reasonable ones that happen because he didn't have all the information or there were circumstances he couldn't've foreseen, unlike other protagonists who do things you know are wrong and stupid but they do it anyway for the sake of plot. He makes the effort to play with the kids even though he isn't great at it, and they admire him for that. Even when he's angry in the beginning of the game, he's still respectful toward Cid and says, "Thanks for saving me, I have nothing against you or your group, I just have my own path I need to take." He recognizes his own weaknesses, and in such situations seeks assistence or delegates to others. He feels like an actual, filled-out human being, and kudos to whoever wrote him.

The other members of the cast are great too. Jill is very badass but a bit quiet and subdued, but given her time in the Iron Kingdom that's understandable. I thought Joshua would just be a plot point, but he really grew into his own. Cid was fun to be with, and I was sad when he was gone. Gav as always was cool. The enemies were great too. Benedikta died early on, but they threw in a great backstory with the little time they had. Kupka was an idiot and not deep, but you could feel his love and pain. Dion's path was surprising and I never knew what his next step was.

The battle system is definitely the best in the series. It was cool to experiment with each of the summons, and really it can be tailored easily to your style. No one I've asked equipped the same three summons. It feels like they were trying to reach a God of War level of combat, but simultaneously they fumbled on the actual fights. Again, bosses were amazing, but regular fights were just meh. I guess that's why they threw in so many boss fights so frequently.

In terms of music XV was definitely better, but I wouldn't stick my nose up to this. As with many aspects of the game, there were a lot of throwbacks. Prelude and the Final Fantasy Theme came up repeatedly, but also On the Shoulders of Giants had the traditional Final Fantasy regular battle opening. And also randomly for one of the times you fight Ultima, it's the FFI world map theme. I've definitely heard better, but I could listen to this OST on its own. The lyrics however are stupid. From what I'm understanding, they tasked the English translator to provide them, and considering this is the dude that wrote out "such foul attaint may not be sublimed through gainstanding," you can tell where this is going. I'll give a few examples:

A sickle forged of adamant To server the man from his hooded past No more a slave to sorrow's gloom In onychine eyes burn chthonic doom An evil hidng from the sun Blinding, he screameth eschaton immanent Now in its wake yawned lightless abyss Yon gaping maw his circumfix

I feel like this written by a high schooler who believes using as much SAT vocabulary they just learned makes them sound more intelligent. I don't know why anyone would compose this.

Visually it's all right. XV had a prettier environment, but this wasn't bad, especially when you're walking around Rosaria. I touched on how you never explore epic architecture, but the nature is beautiful. Unfortunately in the second half of the game when everything goes to shit, the world gets this haze over it and nothing is appealing to look at (which isn't unusual; other Final Fantasies, especially VI had catastrophic situations in the second half of the game). I guess that's kinda the point; the Blight is wiping out everything and actually Clive's efforts could ultimately be for naught and it's too late.

Which is how I'm going to end: It's a very depressing game. There's a lot of death, a lot of tragedy, a lot of loss. Clive lives a totally fucked up life, and he's not alone. The fact I still enjoyed this never-ending sadness demonstrates how well it was done. Totally recommend, play it as soon as you can.

Also... can we address that whole Barnabas and his mom thing? They had literally one scene with that and never mentioned it again. What the fuck was with that?

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

My little sisters and I all live in the same apartment complex, but I've never been over to their unit because they've never invited me inside and whenever I had to pick them up or drop them off they'd tell me to meet them in the parking lot. This morning, I had to go over and help them deal with an overflowing toilet because maintenance is closed on the weekends (god forbid you have an emergency on 2½ out of 7 days). I got it fixed no problem, but I noticed something fundamentally different between the three of us.

Their apartment is the exact same model as mine, same layout, same 4 bedrooms, same kitchen, everything is the same, but theirs actually looks like a home. They and their roommates have decorated everything for Christmas. There's a tree and lights and stockings, and the kitchen counter is full of appliances and a knife block and a drying rack. They've rearranged the furniture and hung up paintings and have little knick knacks everywhere, it looks lived in and welcoming.

Mine is a cesspit hovel.

My building had a terrible roach infestation all year, so my roommate and I can't leave any dishes or appliances out in the open. The fridge is safe, but the cabinets and drawers were crawling with the bastards, so I had to keep all my food in baggies inside sealed tubs in my bedroom.

The living room is as barren as the day I moved in; it looks like an empty model apartment they'd show off to prospective renters. It's cold and gray (well, actually landlord beige), and I didn't realize why I hated it so much until just now.

Ever since college, I've lived out of boxes because I've been afraid to get situated anywhere; save for the few years I lived in my childhood bedroom at my parents' place, I've lived in a different place every year since 2014. I didn't bother unpacking because I knew I'd have to repack it all up at the end of the year anyway and move somewhere else, so I've never been able to make a space my own. My sisters move apartments every year, and they just deal with it; they don't mind packing and unpacking, that's just one of the things they gotta do, and their apartments are always so much cozier for it.

I've sprayed Raid all over the kitchen and swept out behind the fridge and stove and called pest control two or three times since I moved in in September, and come to think of it, I haven't seen any roaches in weeks. I think the infestation might have been dealt with, this afternoon my roommate has started moving his utensils into the kitchen, so I think I'm gonna unpack for real. I'm hesitant about food, but after a personal inspection I feel confident enougn to put all my pots and pans and plates in the cabinets.

If I'm wrong and the roaches come back with a vengeance, I'll clean everything and repack it back in my room, but for now I think I can finally start to relax. I'm gonna hang some posters in the living room, maybe put out some coffee table books, move the couch and chairs away from the wall. Once I get some money, I'll buy a bookshelf and put all my tapes and DVDs out there for easy access.

This is going to be nice. 2023 has been unrelentingly horrible from start to finish, but 2024 will be better.

[silver-wield]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Review Chapter 6 & 7

Okay, this collection of posts will be filled with spoilers, including clips and screenshots, so if you don't wanna see things, then don't look. Some of the things I'm gonna highlight will include references to Remake and other sources to link with the overarching plot. This is a straight path playthrough with no sidequests or extra content.

Time to hit the beach!

But first we run into some friends. Johnny's been scammed into running a hovel of a hotel but he gives us rooms for free.

The whole Johnny bit was kinda much, but it could've been worse.

Literally can't go to the beach unless it's in the right clothes, so Cloud does a few fun activities to earn tickets and then joins sailor Barret. Boi gets in his feels over soldiers degrading and then it's time for a pov change.

As fun as all the other possible scenes are, I think this is the most plot relevant. Aerith and Red talk about the white materia, the whispers and what was stolen from her.

And then it's right back to the fun doing stuff to earn swimwear! Tifa gets to play her theme in a concert at one of the hotels and we hear how the original person ran off with their lover. You can find them both at the Cosmo Canyon hotel.

After everyone's changed, Cloud indirectly calls Tifa hot and there's some mild flustered flirting.

And then Hojo shows up. Honestly this still seems so freaking random having him lie on a lounger while girls fawn over his wrinkled skanky ass.

Eventually we hit a boss fight, and weirdly enough it's Yuffie and Johnny to the rescue!

After that comes some conversation where Tifa speaks the line in her profile.

After a night's sleep we meet Yuffie again and you can choose how to answer her a bit like her OG recruitment, but no matter what she's coming with.

And it's a trek up the mountain. Literally.

Aerith is the slowest. Literally.

The party splits into two. Yuffie, Barret and Tifa go first. Yuffie leaves drawings on the cliffs to direct us and tell us a lil story.

Yuffie winds up Barret, who yells at her and makes her cry. Tifa tells Barret off and makes him cry. They all make up and become good friends.

Anyway, while we're climbing we get a moment with Rufus, who tells off the board for letting Midgar get ruined and not stopping his crazy father from dropping the plate. The weapons are talked about briefly, but overall, Rufus has different priorities than his dad.

Then we get another interlude with Zack. Elmyra comes to take Aerith home, and Zack comes along with Cloud.

Then it's back to Mt Corel and Yuffie explains the interim government in Wutai and we see more hints about Glenn and his team.

They find a weapon in the reactor, then head to the bridge, which needs lowering. Cloud has a funny turn so it's left up to Yuffie, Tifa and Barret to do the thing.

Yuffie's level is mostly swinging and throwing her star at stuff, and culminates in a boss battle to protect three baby chocobos. There's a super cute part after where Tifa says the baby bird looks like Cloud but cute 🤭

We take a trip on a minecart with more throwing star and shooting things and reunite with the group at the bridge.

And in Corel, Barret finds a less than warm welcome.

Cloud has another funny turn. Sephiroth can't have Cloud feeling confident about Tifa having a scar, so distracts him when Tifa finds doc Sherain, who saved her life after Sephiroth's attack. He says someone from Shinra helped too, so maybe we'll find out in part three.

Barret gives us a brief history of Corel and the reactor and his part in it. We're heading into the start of one of the most emotional character arcs of the game.

If you don't cry over Barret's story you have no soul!

Honestly, Costa del Sol has always been filler material. And I seem to be saying that about a lot of chapters so far. Tbf Corel and the prison give us true meaty storytelling and Barret's arc has always been one of my faves and remains one of my faves. John nailed every line ❤️😭

[mister-tom-a-dildo-lover]

Are you still homeless?

We temporarily weren't(after 20 months of homelessness), but step-dad didn't read the lease so he didn't see it was only 5 months long. Landlady messaged us days before Christmas to tell us she wants us out when the lease is up cuz she's planning to move in. And we found out it was Feb 15th. We don't have the means to move again, and we don't really have a clear place to go since whoever my step-dad made a deal with keeps changing his mind on stuff. So, we might not actually have anything in the coming days.

Also, landlady isn't moving in. She's got her ex-husband and his friends working on the electric cuz she's having an electric door placed on the garage and they were talking. She didn't add the garage to the lease initially as it wasn't finished, but now she wants to add it and plans to charge another $1K+ to the rent for it. She also seems to have plans to add a fence judging by all the fence stuff she keeps having dropped off in the backyard.

Finally, she's claiming she'll give back the last month's rent if the house is spotless when we leave, and it is. Nothing is broken or stained or torn or whatever. BUT she called us threateningly yesterday because apparently she's got the placed being watched and one of the guys she had dumping shit off in the backyard, drove through the front yard instead of on the driveway and left ugly grooves in the grass with his truck tires. She's blaming us for that and claiming we won't get that money back if it isn't fixed by next Thursday. Step-dad isn't here all day. Not only does he work from 7-3 but he then spends extra hours at the place we're supposedly moving to, trying to patch it up enough for it to not be a hovel(no heat, no electric, and no walls in certain places + he had to fix the roof in one room already). We can't afford everything necessary to have it livable in time either.

When he pointed out how the landlady is the one sending strange men over here constantly to work outside and how he's never home and we only have a rundown van to our name, she got pissy with him and told his boss to come down on him harder.

I'm probably gonna be away for a while as we'll have no internet or electricity and will probably just end up in our van, so sorry about the lack of future content.

You can find out more info HERE if it matters that much. I'll try to keep up somehow.

[astarab1aze]

🩵 [ Loux and Maeve <3 ]

muse relationship headcanon game

who curses more?

lol loux. every other word out of his mouth is 'fuck' or shit'. he's got maeve beat on this one 100%, he's so vulgar. how she can deal with it is beyond me

who is more patient?

i'm going to say maeve. loux has a lot of patience, but she has even more if she can tolerate him. he's such an ass (who does horrible, horrible things), gets into trouble, mouths off and sounds like an idiot half the time- and yet. gotta be maeve.

who does the driving?

iirc maeve doesn't drive? it's all public transportation and walking, things like that, and loux is the exact same except he's also got his mirror. so between the two of them, no one's doing any driving, but how about maybe they take turns paying for public fair--

who is louder? who is quieter?

definitely loux, as the louder one. but i do imagine maeve getting giddy and excited about all the things and loux being on the quieter side on some occasions, since he sometimes plays an observer when on outings or dates just to get a feel for whether she's enjoying herself. hmmm. i'm gonna say 50/50 actually. all contextual.

who is more physically affectionate?

loux 100%. i don't know that i need to elaborate on this point, cos you already know he's a bit of a menace. he loves to touch, feel, kiss, and...well, hold hands, grope, dance, etcetc so he's probably always going to be touching maeve in some way. very handsy, and not always in a horny way.

who is more likely to tease the other?

maeve pulls one over on him all the time, i bet you. she's got a playful, mischievous streak in her. not to the same degree as loux, but it's there. and she gets him back for all his tricks

who is better with time management?

i'm going to say loux but only because he got lucky and has magic at his disposal. his days are always packed with all the things he's gotta do for 'work' right, but he always always makes time, schedules properly, the whole nine, and can make it work because of his little mirror and magic.

who wins the arm wrestling matches?

i'm gonna say 50/50 here. he wins some, she wins some, they both lose sometimes. loux's not a strength-oriented guy, shines best when it comes to magic and sleight of hand. arcane trickster type.

who controls the music in the car ride?

they walk everywhere or take ye olde pocket mirror, and i imagine they talk basically the whole time. at home? different story. but there's no car to play music in.

who covers dinner when they order in?

loux and he'll hear nothing about it.

who is more outgoing? who is more shy?

i think they're both pretty outgoing? or at the very least, maybe not very outwardly shy. shy in ways, but that's only a little part of it. they're both friendly and talkitive? final answer: they're both outgoing, social. maybe bashful? at times. but not retreat into the safety of my hovel shy. having a hard time articulating what i mean sksksk

who has the more outlandish fashion sense?

loux, 10000%, and i've got his wardrobe right here--

who starts the tickle fights? who ends them?

i feel like both of them would start them, but maybe loux would end them. as he does. with sloppy gross kisses like a puppy, which he kind of his now that i think about it...

who has the darker/more "edgy" sense of humor?

loux by an entire 30 miles. he's a total edgelord 99% of the time, just thinking about it makes me want to throttle him. nuke him from orbit. he's gotta tone himself down a bit cos edgy humor is OUT--

who is more competitive when it comes to games?

they're both at least somewhat competitive, so i can totally see them going ham, no holds barred, in carnival games, interactive street...events in salem's crossing or belle's hollow, at least until one of them wins the whole thing. they get to take home double prizes sometimes, i bet. in terms of video games, loux will just end up breaking the controller, not out of frustration but like. because he's genuinely that bad with technology.

who has the bigger appetite? the bigger sweet tooth?

i have no doubts they can both put away a lot of food, but loux's gonna have to take the cake here i think. he's a walking garbage disposal and will put just about anything in his mouth. relatively low appetite, but when he eats, he eats. a lot. burns through a lot of calories existing, just sitting there. sweets? i thiiiink...loux, still. the guy can put away 60 cupcakes in one sitting and will.

who is more likely to get in a confrontation in public?

loux. oh loux 100000%. if it isn't sorciers, it's some asshat who disrespected him or maeve in some way, and he is not afraid to speak his mind in any way, shape, or form. he can talk the talk and walk the walk, and there may be an occasion or two in which he proves that. he won't apologize either, it's an honor/principle thing for him.

who hosts the parties/hangouts? who organizes them?

i think they take turns setting things up but in the beginning, it's definitely loux, trying like hell to spend as much time with her as he can, and they sort of bounce ideas off of each other. like when they went out for coffee and then their trip to salem's crossing after. mhmm. it's like a game of pong and the ball they bounce between each other is date ideas sjdfksd

who is better at cooking? do they ever cook for each other?

they can both cook, but i'm going to say loux because of how nuts he is about it. homie's like, gordon ramsey the second he sets foot in a kitchen. a complete perfectionist, maybe not about methodology but certainly about the final product, so i imagine him doing a lot of cooking. but also enjoying when maeve does the same for him. 50/50 on who cooks and when, but it's definitely a both situation.

who is more likely to engage in dangerous and/or illegal behavior?

:I LOL loux.

who is more likely to notice when something is wrong with the other?

it depends, but i think they'd both be able to spot something amiss with each other relatively quickly. loux isn't as quick to solve anything that isn't physical, but he does try. i maintain that maeve is probably better at dealing with it all than he is.

who does the talking in public settings (i.e. to the waiter at a restaurant)?

50/50 on this one. i think it depends on the context. if they're in salem's crossing, or any of the nightfolk locations, then until she's sort of used to them, loux'll probably do most of the talking, for a few reasons. not to limit her or anything, but as a precautionary measure. everywhere else? i don't think it matters. they both talk and for themselves when ordering food, checking out, whatever.

who is more likely to extend a helping hand & provide emotional support?

gonna say maeve on this one. loux has his ways and yes, sometimes he does help other people with emotional things, but he's no good with his words, so it's much easier for him to physically fix a problem. maeve, on the other hand, is more sensitive to the emotional needs of others, more attuned to that in general. i think loux would be there for her 100%, but i think maeve would know best how to identify and navigate it. and be better at it.

who is the bigger prankster? do they get the last laugh or do they suffer for it?

maeve pulls one over on him all the time, i bet you. she's got a playful, mischievous streak in her. not to the same degree as loux, but it's there. and she gets him back for all his tricks. it's gotta be something of a vicious cycle between the two of them, but lots of good fun too. they get some laughs out of it, no suffering omg. unless suffering can be taken to mean something else, in which case yes maybe lots of that to everyone's chagrin--

[kittynomsdeplume]

OC Tag Game

Oooh, thanks for the tag @cleverblackcat. I'm not sure what's gonna shake out here, as I don't really plan my OC's out very well. They sort of slowly emerge as their story grows, so all of them are very much works in progress still. A few of them have started to show distinct personalities though. I'm going to focus mostly on Dragon Age OC's, since they are the ones I'm writing pretty exclusively these days.

Tagging: @knuttydraws | @raflesia65 | @inquisitoracorn | @retrowondergirl | @thedastrash | @charlatron | @charmcity-jess | @amarmeme | @inky-does-art | @spooky-daggers

Favorite OC: This is basically akin to asking me who my favourite LI is and I really don't know how to choose! I like them all for different reasons. I think I do have a soft spot of Evelyn Trevelyan though, or a strong desire to keep her safe. Out of all my OC's, she's the only one that was not even remotely prepared to be a hero/leader/figurehead. Yes she was born into a noble family, but she was never going to be the head of it. She was shipped off in disgrace to the Circle at the age of 13 -- completely ruining her parents carefully orchestrated plans to marry her off for their own benefit. All my other OC's have spent a good majority of their lives already having to lead/protect/be responsible for others, but poor Evelyn's just so out of her depth. They're all pretty badass too - they can easily go toe to toe with an archdemon, or the arishok, or any adversary you throw at them. Evelyn would just get squished.

Newest OC: Hmm, I think that's probably Maxwell Trevelyan, who began really as just a generic name drop of an Inquisitor for Under Her Mask. He's grown though and I'm honestly a bit in love with the shithead 😆 Because he's brash and aggravating, but he's staunchly loyal to his friends and Blackwall's revelation broke his heart. I don't know if he will emotionally survive Solas' betrayal, not that I plan to write it, but you never know. I do enjoy writing him being cheeky with Cassandra. He might just continue to pop up in the further adventures of Solona and Cullen, so we'll see.

Oldest OC: Oh haha, hmmm that would be going back many, many years now. I think the first story I wrote that was a genuine foray into fan-fiction, was about Garthik the Meek. He was an orc that lived peacefully in his little hovel, deep in the forests of Yew, in the land of Britannia. He spent his days tending to his garden and frolicking with the forest animals that were his dear friends. Unfortunately however, one day he was set upon by a band of glory seeking adventurers, and his humble little life was tragically cut short 😞

Meanest OC: Oh, Enastarin without a doubt. He was tolerable to his companions when he was merely a spirit of Vanity, unable to help his shallow nature. Something dark emerged in him however when he left the Fade -- a jealous, competitive obsession with Solas. Despite his complete lack of empathy for others, Rin sees the true nature of everyone -- can reflect it with uncanny accuracy, which is why he is the most talented shape-shifter in Elvhenan. So he sees all the faults, doubts and weaknesses that Solas hides from others. He hates that everyone always looked to Solas over him. That Solas was always considered more competent, more powerful and wiser than him, and that Mythal openly favoured Solas above all others. It's a resentment that has festered in him, like a sour wound, for millennia. Naturally, in his immense pride, Solas doesn't take Rin seriously as a threat, and that's a blind spot Rin is more than happy to exploit.

Softest OC: Again, all my OC's have been pretty hardened by their life experience. They're all soft in their own ways, in the right circumstances, with the right people. Like, Solona is pathetically soft for Cullen, but don't ask her about Alistair 😬 Though, even that is complicated.

Sulahnean essentially cannot say no to Dorian. She tries to be firm, but if he gives her puppy eyes, she's done for. Which is not the sort of friendship she ever imagined she could have with a Tevinter nobleman of all things.

I don't know that Hawke is soft so much as brittle inside, though she's very good at putting up a tough exterior and ignoring her own feelings. Evelyn probably wins the soft category again, although Blackwall certainly caused her to harden her heart a little bit, but she's probably still the most forgiving.

Most Aloof/Standoffish OC: Probably Sulahnean Lavellan. Though its actually against her natural character and mostly due to circumstances. She was quite warm and gregarious amongst her Clan, but being surrounded by so many strange and hostile humans in Haven, and under their intense scrutiny, had her feeling very out of place and she drew inside herself as a defence mechanism. Then she was held up as this religious icon, an Andrastrian icon, and she was terrified to even be herself. Because how long was it going to be before she slipped up and acted too Dalish, or too outspoken for mage freedom, and got herself burned at the stake as a heretic? Slowly though, she began to forge bonds with others in the Inquisition, but after everything that happened with Cole and Solas, it damaged her ability to trust people at all. She's trying to work through it, to not close herself off entirely from others, but it's a struggle. Logically, she knows that most people have good intentions, but when the pain of betrayal is still so fresh, it's hard to not react instinctively with fear and doubt.

Dumbest (Affectionate) OC: Ok, well probably Marian Hawke. Not that she's truly stupid obviously, but she tends to act without thinking. And sure, she thrives in the havoc that ensues, and in some ways being so erratic puts her enemies on the backfoot, giving her the advantage then in being decisive, adaptable and quick-witted. So maybe she's actually a chaotic genius in the end! To the outside observer though, it just looks like sheer pandemonium, and without a doubt, she's shaved about ten years off the life of all her friends from the stress of being in her orbit. Though at least they've all learned to expect the unexpected and the more insane the plan seems, the more likely it is to actually turn out ok. Realistically though, Hawke just doesn't quit. Ever. Overcoming all obstacles through sheer stubbornness.

Smartest OC: Probably Sileahilan. Overall, she's very well rounded, possessing not just book smarts, but good social and emotional intelligence. She knows herself very well too, and has the good sense to know when she's wrong, or needs help. She also has a seemingly rare quality among other ancient elves, in that she learns from her mistakes 😂

OC I’d Be Friends With: Probably not Hawke and Max. I think they would exhaust me in a matter of minutes. And definitely not Enastarin, for very obvious reasons. But I think I could chill just fine with most of the others.

[apoptoses]

Daniel/Louis

I see them as the best and chillest of buddies. If your boyfriend is gonna have another boyfriend who's your live-in roommate then I think this is the ideal situation.

They're both disaster slobs (Louis is happy to live in a cluttered, dusty hovel and in my mind Daniel never learned how to pick up after himself), they're literature nerds, they can quietly share the same space and work on separate things. Armand brings Daniel's energy up but I think Louis brings it back down and when Daniel needs a chill night in he knows where to go.

Someone also headcanon'd Louis as a sports nerd and said Daniel would go to games with him and I totally see that. Or like they'd go see some art house films Lestat won't tolerate, and Armand tags along sometimes but usually it's just the two of them. Or if Daniel needs to go shopping and wants a buddy who won't criticize his choices or get wildly off track obsessing over something in the body wash section, Louis is his guy.

(Sometimes they do have heated debates. Louis is hellbent on winning arguments, Daniel never knows when to back down, Armand has put them in time out before)

Romantically? Idk if I see it but like anything, it only takes one really good fic and I'm in.

[shivunin]

Hii! 💛 for the wholesome oc ask meme: 3, 11 and 18 for Arianwen because I like her vibes like, a lot. Bonus: 4 for an OC of your choice ✨

Thanks!! I like her vibes, too. She's my murder elf c:

(Here's the ask meme link in case)

3: What is something they really like about themselves and what is something you really like about them?

You know, Arianwen has a deep love of her own body. It's strong, it moves the way she wants it to, she finds herself physically attractive, and she likes to learn new knife tricks. With everything going on, she knows her limits and she always knows that she can count on herself (even if that's the only thing she can count on).

I love so much about her that it's hard to pick one thing. She is so self-confident (to...probably a bad extent) and she is really trying hard to stay hinged when the urge to just kill everyone who pisses her off is just lurking right beneath the surface. Of all my OCs, ironically Arianwen is the one who finds it easiest to just get shit done. With no self-doubt in her way and very little introspection, she's really uniquely suited to the role of Warden. She will slash, slaughter, and snark her way through any obstacle.

11:What is an item of clothing/an accessory that completes them/makes them feel safe?

Hmm I'm gonna do one pre- and post -romance.

At the beginning of her travels, she really clung to her mother's shoes. In a sense, having them with her made it like her mom was still seeing Ferelden with her. Her mother taught her everything she knew and the two of them spent a lot of time throwing knives at targets in their hovel and practicing lockpicking at the general store (with the proprietor's permission---the alienage elves take care of their own as much as possible), so she really missed her mom a lot more than anything else from her old life. Every night, she'd spent more time cleaning and repairing them than she would fixing up her armor or sharpening her blades.

Later, after her very strange courtship with Zevran (I like to imagine them like two birds dancing around each other and flashing their pretty feathers for attention) his earring became very precious to her. She didn't have pierced ears before, so she very loudly asked Shale if she was willing to pierce them until Wynne overheard and offered to "do it the right way." After that, Arianwen would run her fingers over it before making a difficult decision. When he was away after they ended the Blight, the earring was a way to feel connected to him while he was gone.

(She still has her mother's boots tucked away safe in a trunk in Amaranthine, of course, and woe to anyone who disturbs them.)

18: What is their favourite hobby? Would they share it with someone they love?

It might not seem like a hobby, but she actually really enjoys fletching arrows. There's something about cutting the feathers just right, making sure they're placed just so, and knowing that if she has to take out the bow that every piece of her gear is made with care. She would never deign to buy regular arrows and only buys the specialty ones because they're in a hurry. She also likes to pick up exceptionally pretty ones they find on the road, and a good gift for her (I pretend the companions also give the Warden gifts) would be special or rare feathers.

She would (and has!) shared it with her loved ones. Fletching was actually one of the first things she and Alistair finally bonded over because it was one of those things the Chantry mothers made misbehaving little boys do as punishment(she despised him at first and then sort of adopted him as a brother; when he became king she very lovingly assassinated everyone who threatened him, much to his chagrin). Sometimes, noises get to her; when that happens, she stuffs a bundle of feathers into Zevran's hands and they retreat to her tent to work in silence for a while.

(here's Arianwen, since I don't think I ever posted her picrew back when I posted all the other ones:)

And

4 (Salshira): What is the thing they like the most about their friends and what is the thing their friends like the most about them? (I'm slapping a read more under this one because this ran a bit long)

Cassandra: She loves that Cassandra has a purity of purpose and faith. Salshira wears a lot of faces, so the idea of just being who she is is a little frightening. She admires that Cassandra is always completely Cassandra.

Dorian: She and Dorian have very similar senses of humor, but drastically different approaches to magic. This is interesting to her because she also favors fire, so she likes swapping strategies and methods with him on long walks.

Vivienne: Salshira and Vivienne are sort of two sides of a coin; both of them are hiding who they really are, but Vivienne wears a mask of composure and Salshira one of charisma and a sort of happy-go-lucky charm. They both know that some of it is an act, acknowledge the necessity of the act, and get on swimmingly. So in short, what Salshira likes most about Vivienne is that she gets the benefit and cost of having to put on a face for other people. Also, Vivienne makes a great cup of tea.

Bull: Spending time with Bull is just easy and she doesn't really have to perform for him. Both of them find other people interesting and humorous, so when they're out they play a lot of games that are essentially just people-watching with more steps. (In another world, she and Bull and Josie are having a great time being a throuple---but that's a whole other story)

Varric: She admires his ability to look at a mass of events and turn it into a narrative with a theme, moral, and end. Especially in the midst of the mess they're living through, she thinks this is a really admirable skill.

Josie: She admires Josephine's skill at maneuvering people into doing what she wants and walking away more or less unscathed. Again, she and Josie are both really good at reading people, but Josie has such a kind and good heart that Salshira can't help but love spending time around her even if they spend all of it talking about serious Inquisition business. Every time she walks away from a meeting with Josie, she can't help but feel refreshed.

In general, her friends appreciate that Salshira is a great listener. Honestly, she would rather talk about anything but herself, so she genuinely likes asking other people about how they are, what they're doing, and so on. But she has a talent for only offering a solution or help when her friends actually want it, and giving them a shoulder to cry on if they need to vent instead.

Salshira also has a kind of mental list of what each of them likes, so after a hard day they're likely to find an extra favorite treat left on their dinner plate, or that their armor has already been cleaned and put away. For example, after the assassination attempt by the House of Repose, she arranged for a whole set of Antivan treats and very fine calligraphy tools to be delivered to Josie's office so she'd have a reason to be excited to be in her own space again.

Thank you so much for asking and for writing all those questions! <3

[gravegroves]

It's not that Billy isn't grateful that the bastard sprung him out of the secret government lab he'd woken up in and subsequently spent weeks or maybe months being poked and prodded.

But out of all the closeted queers in Indiana that could have taken Billy under their wing, Murray goddamn Bauman is probably the last one that should legally be allowed to care for another human being. On the flip side, he may have single-handedly convinced Billy that heaven must be real, if only because Murray has most certainly dragged Billy to some version of hell. A better hell than he'd come from, but hell all the same.

Billy's starting to really hate classical music.

The fact that he's still bedbound doesn't help the situation any. If he could walk he'd smash that damn sound system with his bare hands or just fucking leave. But walking isn't an option while his body tries to heal, so if Murray doesn't soon turn off the 9th repeat of that Bach-Rachmaninov-Mozart bullshit he's blasting throughout the bunker-like structure Billy has been forced to call home for the past two weeks, he's going to strangle himself to death with the IV tube still lodged in his arm. Hopefully he'll shit himself after the fact and Murray will be forced to clean that up too.

"Turn that crap off or take me back to Hawkins you balding piece of shit! At least my dad only beat me!" Billy roars at the water stained concrete ceiling and grits his teeth against the pain when the move pulls on what feels like all the stitches in his body.

Murray glides into his field of vision like an unwashed spectre and throws himself onto the couch opposite the one Billy's lying on, still dressed in that same ratty bathrobe that probably hasn't been on the laundry pile in years, smiling that maniacal smile that Billy is less and less convinced is put-on by the day.

"Self degrading humor to mask the pain. You'll fit in here just fine." Murray sing-songs before getting back up and scuttling his way out of the room like the cockroach he is and into what Billy thinks might be the kitchen. Doesn't exactly know the layout of the hovel they're in, being bed-bound and all that.

The music cuts out and all the muscles in Billy's body slowly unwind as he breathes a sigh of relief.

Murray comes back with a flask of something foreign and pours a generous glass before handing it off to him, either unaware that Billy probably shouldn't be mixing alcohol with the cocktail of drugs he's still on or, more likely, doesn't give a shit. Billy downs it before the man can even open his mouth, too quick to really appreciate how it goes down smoother than water.

"You fucking philistine. That's good Stolichnaya." Murray grins before downing his own helping straight from the bottle.

"You a commie?" Billy asks, such a carbon copy of Neil he can almost feel the man's hand up his ass directing his words like a fucking puppet and he bites his tongue hard enough to hurt. Not that Billy's a big fan of the commies or the government or Neil or anyone really, but he's fairly sure they're the worse guys if this whole situation were a contest.

"Nice ideology, poor execution. No, but I'm gonna teach you how to speak like one Billy-boy!" Murray says, snatching away Billy's empty glass and filling it for him once again. "No one learns Russian well when they're sober though, so drink your heart out. It's gonna be a long year."

Billy stares.

"The fuck am I learning Russian for?"

Murray grins.

"Gotta go save a bigger Bastard than you or I."

"And why the fuck would I do that?"

Murray throws his hands out wide, "For the greater good, Billy. And maybe Steve Harrington will touch your dick about it, who knows."

Drugs really have a way of loosening Billy's tongue as it turns out, and it had taken a good day and a half for the worst of the effects to wear off after Murray had gotten him out. The Bastard hadn't let the opportunity to pry slip by him though, that's for fucking sure.

Billy scowls.

Besides, Steve Harrington doesn't even know that Billy's still alive. No one does. And even if he did… well.

The greater good will have to be enough, he supposes.

[starlitangels]

uh hi yeah so this is kinda for me but also kinda to give you a break from all the long asks while still keeping you in a creative headspace:

pick 3-5 boys and have them discover their listener can sing? or maybe some other art form? (Or, for shits and giggles, that they were a cheerleader in high school and have them still fit in their uniform and everything and do a cheer for their boy/mate)

answer whenever you need a break!

I mean, I don't mind the long asks. I'm honestly delighted to get any asks. Bear in mind I've been on Tumblr since 2014 and I've gotten more unprompted asks since I started this blog than I ever got on any other blog combined, probably. I love the engagement!

That said, I do appreciate the reprieve XD

I know nothing about being a cheerleader. I was a band geek in high school and continue to be pretty unathletic. So we're gonna go with singing because that is something I do know a lot about XD

Okay! I figured for this one I'd do some of the "not main" boys, I guess? (Like, I do a lot with the Shaw pack, so I'm trying to branch out. That said, I can't stop and won't stop writing for Sam and Avior even though they're two of my main boys XD)

Avior

Avior first hears Starlight sing in their first stint in the Meridian. Before he realized he'd fallen in love with them, but after he was definitely in love with them

Starlight was just singing softly to pass the time and entertain their brain, doodling in the dust to try and think of a way to get out of the trap

Avior froze

Completely halted what he was doing

He was just around the corner, trying to reshape the walls to start making the hovel

His magic just... sputtered out

He can't believe that in the middle of something so insane as their situation, anyone could find it in them to sing

But Starlight's voice absolutely captivated him

It wasn't like Starlight was putting on a performance of Bohemian Rhapsody or anything

They were just singing a lullaby to themselves

And Avior couldn't unfreeze his muscles until they stopped

He wanted to be able to hear every. single. damn. note

He starts encouraging Starlight to sing more often

After he confesses that he’s in love with them, he asks them to sing for him when he’s getting stressed

The silence after Starlight left the Meridian for the first time was maddening. He missed their voice filling the idle quiet, drowning out the flames and the winds and the screams

When he dragged them back in, he waited to hear them sing for days, silently begging them to give that back to him, even if he couldn’t have them back yet the way he desperately wanted them

Geordi

Cutie and Geordi had gone on all of three dates when they ended up in one of those private-room karaoke places

It was Cutie’s idea

Geordi started all awkward and, “Nooo, you go ahead and go first... I don’t know what I want to sing... I’ll look while you go ahead.”

Cutie got up and selected a song, and then blew Geordi away within seconds.

Cutie was reading Geordi’s thoughts as they sang, and all he was thinking was, “wow they sound incredible—amazing voice—never heard anyone like it—” and other variations

It almost made Cutie falter in their song. He sounded so awed that it was flattering and embarrassing

Now that they’ve been together a while, Cutie sings while doing chores a lot, and Geordi looks wowed every single time

Sometimes Cutie will stop singing for months on end when their mental health isn’t quite as good as other times, and Geordi misses it every time

Cutie always hears his thoughts when they start back up again and he’s always so relieved and happy to hear his partner is singing again—because it means they’re feeling better

And they sound so nice that he feels really happy

Elliott

Elliott and Sunshine have been friends for years—like, high school friends

Elliott discovers Sunshine can sing when they both ended up auditioning for the school musical

Elliott lost a bet with one of their other friends and had to audition

Sunshine wanted to

Elliott was outside the audition room—he and Sunshine signed up right after each other—when Sunshine did their song

He was so amazed that he forgot his monologue and the first couple bars of his audition for a few seconds when he was reviewing them out in the hall

He literally just froze and listened

Their friends, who he was with, started to laugh and tease him—and he shushed them so he wouldn’t miss a second of the music

Elliott didn’t end up getting cast for the musical—not that he expected to, anyway—but Sunshine did

He went to every performance he could just so he could hear them sing as much as possible

He brought them a bouquet of roses both opening and closing night. Both of them with cards full of compliments to their singing, acting, and dancing skills

Sam

Ya wanna talk about bamboozled?

Let’s talk about bamboozled.

The last thing Sam ever expected of Darlin’ was for them to be an incredibly skilled singer

But they are

A new baby was born to the pack and Darlin’ managed to drag Sam along to the little “Meet the Baby” gathering at the parents’ house (“As my mate, you’re legally obligated to come with me to pack social events. If I have to endure this, so do you, cowboy” *Sam chuckles and shakes his head as he follows after Darlin’*)

The poor little infant got a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pack members present and fawning over them and started to cry

Darlin’ just so happened to be holding the infant at the time

The baby’s parents offered to take the child back, but Darlin’ just shook their head and retreated to another room in the house. Sam stayed with the rest of the pack, but his vampire hearing easily singled out Darlin’ gently singing a lullaby

The baby stopped crying quickly, but Darlin’ stayed in the other room for a bit, still singing to keep the baby soothed

Sam had to keep his expression cool around the rest of the pack but in his mind his jaw was hanging open

He doesn’t bring it up until they’re driving home after meeting the baby—and even then all he does is compliment their voice and leave it at that

Darlin’ starts slowly singing more around Sam. Not often and never anything complicated, but he’s amazed every time

Vincent

It takes Vincent and while to hear Lovely sing, after everything that happened with them

But when he does, it’s when he’s playing piano

From the other room, he heard Lovely singing the lyrics to the old song he was playing, clear as day and like they were standing right beside him

He was so stunned he almost stopped playing

Muscle memory was the only reason he kept going

Once the song was over, he zipped into the other room, mouth hanging open and eyes wide

“That... was beautiful,” was all he could say. Breathlessly.

Lovely gets all embarrassed and tries to brush it off

But Vincent won’t let them

It becomes a little evening activity for them. Vincent plays while Lovely sings.

They build up quite a little repertoire

After Lovely’s turning, it becomes one of the ways Vincent helps ground them back in reality, even if it takes months for their singing to be as full-bodied as it was before, rather than hollow and half-hearted

The only members of the clan who know are William and Sam, who have both been invited to “band practice” with Vincent and Lovely before

—

Bonus Bois, because Why the Heck Not!

D.A.M.N. Crew

The entire crew found out Freelancer could sing (barring Caelum, who’s known for years) at the same time

Group karaoke night!

At one of those private room places, again, because Lasko wouldn’t do karaoke otherwise and neither would Damien but his was out of grumpiness, not nerves

Huxley and Freelancer drew the short straws and had to go first

They picked Don’t Stop Believin’ with Freelancer singing the first stanza, Hux the second, and then swapping off from there to join in together for the chorus

So Freelancer got up with the first mic, standing in the middle and belted out the first stanza

Cue flabbergasted faces—Gavin’s most of all

“I’ve been living with them for ages—how have I never heard pipes like that on them before?”

Huxley was so amazed he completely missed the first two lines of his stanza

Even though they were supposed to be doing a duet, for half of the time when it was supposed to be them together, he’d just stand there and listen in amazement, letting Freelancer hit the long power notes on their own

Needless to say, Freelancer was the star of the night, and ended up doing duets with every single one of the boys at least once

[that-guy-sleepy-miles]

A small description of the start of my Stolen Son AU!! Inspoed by @purble-turble's Demon King Red! The Stolen Son AU has Wukong decide MK is ready to be the new Monkey King! But... the limitless power... messes him up.

Wukong was an idiot for thinking this kid was ready to be the new king, but... he had so much hope. DBK heard about how MK has become the new Monkey King and was sent into a rage. He got his family together to make a battle plan, and they showed up decked out in all their gear and cars, ready to cause some ruckus. But this time, the fight doesn't seem as... casual? They don't know how to explain it other than MK lost his shit on them. Without his powers being limited or anyone around to tell him to stop, he just beat the fuck out of them, seemingly intent on killing them.

And he's reveling in it good ol' pre-Journey Wùkōng style, laughing the whole fight and swinging the staff with joy. It doesn't take him long to beat DBK and his wife down to their knees, to have their lives in his hands- he finds it so funny for some reason! He's in the middle of a victorious cackle when his eyes catch brilliant red ducking behind some of the rubble of the destructive fight. He stifles his giggles and activates his golden sight, and oh, what greets him is wonderful. The ever prideful Red Son, shaking like a leaf as he looks at his crushed parents, the scent of his fear high in the air. MK's known he's had a crush on one particular fire demon... and seeing Red Son, terrified for his life- It causes the newly awakened powers in MK to roar like an inferno, telling him to claim what's his. He's the Monkie King, damnit! He can have WHATEVER he wants! He turns back to the beat-up DBK and his wife, and raises the staff, "I have an offer." DBK looks up from where he's sheltering his beaten love, "What?" "Give this to me, and I'll let your family go." "Oh- Anything- Please, my wife-" "Anything?" MK smirks. "Anything! Our riches-our titles- just don't-" "I want your son." The world goes silent aside from the raging fires around them. Red Son, who is terrified out of his mind, scrambles to escape at first. Clearly, Mother and Father wouldn't give him to this beast that was once the Monkie Kid! Surely they'd just go home after this- mourn another defeat and- He doesn't get far until Xiǎotiān is using his speed to scoop him up. Red Son is struggling against him, looking over to his parents- Help him! Save him- Why aren't his mother and father saving him?! DBK struggles to sit up, covering his wife with a strong hand, "You can't have our boy!" "Well, why not?" MK rolls his eyes, "Are you going to come get him? Do you want to try that? Look at yourself, DBK. I'm not going to let you torment this city any longer, sure, but I could let you survive. Do you want to survive?" "He's- He's just a boy-" DBK coughs, reaching his large hand out to grab Red Son. MK knocks DBK's hand back with the staff using more force than necessary, "No. He's mine." And then MK is walking away. Away from Mother and Father, away from safety- He pays no attention to Red Son's struggles, to his SCREAMS- ... Red Son finds himself frozen on his way back to wherever MK is taking him. He can't even focus, all he can think about is how MK is squeezing him too tight and he can't breathe and they just let him get stolen. When they get there, he's thrown onto... the Noodle Boy's bed? Was- Was this really happening? Had he been kidnapped and taken to this DIRTY HOVEL of an apartment?! He decides to not dwell on that, starting to try and run the second there aren't strong arms squeezing him like a toy. MK panics, "Woah!" He grabs Red Son's ankle before he can fully leave the bed, causing the demon's face to smack into the floor. MK scoops him up and looks at his face, frowning at his now busted lip, "Now look what you've done." "What I've done-?! Noodle boy, I dema-" Slap. "Loud." MK groans to himself, "We're gonna have to fix that." "F-fix that?" Red Son shrinks in on himself and looks up at MK, eyes full of fear. Now that he knew MK was fully willing to hurt him, this was even more terrifying- MK licked his lips, "Well, yeah. You're not exactly... Monkie Queen material yet, y'know." "Q-queen?" "You really like repeating what I say." MK chuckles, shuffling Red Son in his lap. He hugs Red, humming happily, "Anyway, yeah! You're my queen now. When I became the Monkey King, I realized it was... lonely, waiting for the monkeys to finish rebuilding the old Monkey King's estate. And so I thought about you. I like how you are now, but you're going to scare them with how loud you are... So, we've got to fix you." Red Son felt his heart drop. This was real.