#I'm still sorta figuring out how to to draw them

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[beomiracles]

⌞ 𝟏𝟖𝟐𝟔 𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑 ⌝

DREAM RECALL ⸝⸝ “What?” He’s nearly shouting now. You know he doesn’t mean it, he never does, right? But it still hurts. You open your mouth to defend yourself, ready to tell him just how bad he hurt you. No words come out. — Beomgyu grows visibly frustrated, his hands balling up into fists by his sides. “Don’t fucking look at me like that!” 

“Like what, Beomgyu?” 

The use of his name makes him waver, you hadn’t said it, not once since he returned. And you can tell the gesture only angers him further. — “Like the whole fucking world owes you an apology! You left, you left without a word and you..” He hesitates, swallowing thickly as he regains his composure. “You took my son away from me.”

pairings — idol!beomgyu x fem!reader warnings — secret baby trope, miscommunication, lots of angst, verbal fighting, reader and beomgyu both hurt each other, morally grey characters?, infidelity except I'm super vague about if he did it or not (he didn't), cameo txt, oc (teddy), consumption of alcohol, reader gets intoxicated, heavy on the inner monologue. smut tags, unprotected sex, vaginal fingering, implied creampie but nothing is described, marking, nipple stimulation, lots and lots of kissing and making out, emotional sex sorta? + confessions during the sex.

WC ➤ 19k

#serene adds ✎.. hi. aurora ah thank you for being so patient with me I know this has taken QUITE some time but I'm grateful for you sticking around nonetheless :3 — like I've stated, this isn't a trope I've ever written for, and I might've gotten certain aspects wrong, I'm only human, anyway heh enjoy :3

this is sort of (not very) proofread, but I am not responsible for any spelling mistakes and or grammatical errors, take that with my lawyer in court and not me. merry christmas

The bright light tickles your eyes, causing a subtle burn to settle across them. But you don’t turn your phone off, even though you probably should. In fact, you should’ve been asleep hours ago, it was late now. — For some reason you can’t let go of the small device in your hand, even as you feel sleep threatening to overtake your exhausted body. Instead you fight to stay awake. Forcing yourself to read the words written across the screen over and over until you knew them by heart. Your gaze returns to the headline: 

“TOMORROW X TOGETHER, TOUR SETLIST” 

Some song names are familiar, others aren’t. You tried to keep up with their newest albums, tried to learn the lyrics of their latest songs. But it was nearly impossible. For your stomach still turned whenever you heard his voice. It was so easily recognizable amongst the rest, and you curse him for having the voice of an angel. Part of you wants to listen to him forever, another part of you thinks you might go insane if you do. 

Your thumb swipes across the screen, and you’re presented with pictures, pictures of them. They’re all older now, as are you. They look…mature? Like they’d grown into their features properly. Even him. He looked far from the man you’d fallen in love with back then, and perhaps he wasn’t, not anymore. — Your heart contracts at the sight of his boyish grin, it takes you right back. But it’s not enough to make you regret your decision. 

“Mommy!” 

Blinking away the tears that somehow had managed to accumulate in your eyes, you turn toward the door. The old wood is slightly ajar, and a small figure lingers by the threshold. Your hurt is immediately washed away, and you smile. “Yes, sweetheart?” — The shadow moves forward, and soon it creeps into the light casted by your phone. “Mommy, I had a nightmare..” He hiccups, tiny hands clutching the worn out shark plushie. 

“Oh Teddy”, you sigh, flicking on the bedside lamp as you push yourself into a sitting position, discarding your phone on the bed. “Was it about the shadow monster again?” You wonder as you scoop your son into your arms. He nods as he clings to you, drawing in a small sniffle as you carry him back to his room. “I-It keeps coming back!” He wails as tears stream down his round face. 

You frown, gently rocking back and forth as you glance around his room, eyes landing on the night light he always used, a blue mushroom. “How so?” — Teddy emits another sob before wiping his wet cheeks. “B-Because the l-light keeps turning o-off!” He says as he points to the very much working lamp by his bed. You hum as you set him down on the mattress, pulling the blue covers over his shark-pajama covered body. 

“But this light is still turned on”, you counter as you turn to the blue mushroom lantern. Your son furiously shakes his head. “No! It wasn’t! And that’s why the shadow monster came!” His eyes darts across the small room, as if searching for the intruder. — Your hand on his cheek shifts his attention to you and you smile. “But you know what Teddy?” You ask to which your son quietly shakes his head. “You’ve got a shadow of your own”, you point to his shadow, portrayed on the wall and his eyes follow your movement. 

“See? Your shadow is always with you, and who’s better at fighting a shadow monster than another shadow?” — Teddy doesn’t look entirely convinced as he watches his shadow mimic him as he lifts an arm. “But what if it can’t?” He wonders with a squeaky voice, and as he turns to you with wide eyes and furrowed brows, your heart drops. He looked exactly like his dad. You know that it was far from his fault, but every time you looked at him, you thought of what you had lost, of what you had sacrificed. 

But just as your heart sinks, does it begin to beat again. Teddy looks at you expectantly, like he’s waiting for you to tell him that everything is going to be alright. Because you’re his whole world. And he’s yours. — You don’t regret your decision, because Teddy is the best thing that ever happened to you. 

“Your shadow will never abandon you, and neither will I. The shadow monster won’t get you as long as we’re both here.” You lean in to press a kiss on his forehead and your son smiles. Then he turns back to his shadow on the wall, and when he waves, it waves back. — “Do you want me to get your lamp some new batteries, just in case?” you wonder and Teddy nods, “Yes please.” 

The small mushroom light had a surprisingly difficult hatch leading to its battery unit, and you struggled for a good five minutes with getting it open. And as you crouch by the side of his bed, your son continues to watch in amusement as his mom fights to get the new working batteries into his night light. — “Mommy”, he suddenly says, and you don’t look up as you answer with a soft hum. He’s quiet for a moment after that, and you think he might not have had anything to say in the first place. But then he speaks up, his voice is hushed, almost as if he was afraid of asking the question:

“Why don’t I have a daddy?” 

Your fingers slip against the hatch that suddenly pops open and you swallow. You knew that the question was bound to come sooner or later. You suppose you’d hoped for it not to be this soon. Many times you’d thought about how to bring the topic up. When he was ready, you’d told yourself.  But none of the scenarios fabricated in your mind had involved being confronted like this. 

“Well.. You see Teddy, all families are different..” You begin as you occupy yourself with shoving the new batteries into the lamp. Your son hums, his small fingers twiddling with his shark plushie. “I know!” He then exclaims and you turn to him with raised brows. Teddy smiles, exposing his uneven set of milk teeth as he does. “Ellie has two daddy’s!” He then continues, though his expression quickly morphs into a confused one, “so why does she have two but I have zero?” 

Biting the inside of your cheek, you shuffle closer, leaning onto his bed as your hand reaches for his. You open your mouth to say something, anything, but your son beats you to it. “If…If I had a daddy, he could help you with those things.” Teddy points to the mushroom light you had struggled with for the past minutes and you feel a melancholic smile tug at the corners of your lips. Your mind recalls the many instances in which Beomgyu had tried to “mend” things around your apartment, undoubtedly failing each and every time. You knew that he would hardly be of any help. 

Still, you didn’t have the heart to tell your son that. So you nod, your hand around his giving a small squeeze. “You’re right, he would.” — Teddy grins, and despite the fact that he’s missing two of his front teeth, you’re still reminded of his father. “Your daddy would be able to scare the shadow monster away for good, I reckon”, you murmur as your hand brushes through his unkempt hair. 

Your son nods to himself, clutching his plushie tightly as he yawns. “Did he scare your shadow monster away too?” He suddenly asks, and you’re taken aback, blinking as your fingers still in his hair. Your shadow monster? You don’t even know if you’d ever had one. Maybe..? — “I suppose he did”, you finally say. 

Teddy’s silent after that, and you peer over at him to see if he’s fallen asleep. He hasn’t. Instead you find him quietly observing his shadow, blinking slowly as his body grows heavy. With a final yawn, he says: 

“Then I think he’d be a good daddy to me.” 

⸝⸝

“Beomgyu, I know what I saw.” 

The air of your small apartment is thick and heavy with dread. You swallow as you try to calm your trembling hands, clenching them into fists by your sides. — Your boyfriend, Beomgyu, runs a hand through his long hair, the blonde highlights falling everywhere as he shakes his head, undoubtedly frustrated. He hasn’t even taken off his jacket nor his shoes. You’d confronted him the second he stepped foot inside. 

He sighs, brows knitting together as his eyes meet yours. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about”, he argues to which you scoff. — “I know enough.” You fold your arms across your chest, throwing a pointed look toward the Tv. Beomgyu’s gaze follows yours and you catch the subtle twitch of his jaw as his attention falls on the picture of himself. 

His band had finally headlined, but not for the right reasons. You should’ve expected it. It was a given, wasn’t it? Dating someone famous like him, someone young and attractive. Of course there would be rumors. But they’re not about you and him. This girl… Hell you didn’t even know her. — But she must’ve been pretty enough for him to fuck. 

“It’s a rumor babe!” Beomgyu exclaims as he takes a step in your direction, but you stop him. Hands raised high above your head, you shout for him to stay back. “It’s not though.” — Your voice trembles as you inhale. Your boyfriend regards you with an expression best described as perplexed, his jaw, previously tense, now slacked as he tries to make sense of your words. 

“Do you think I’m stupid?” You didn’t mean for it to sound so cold, so distant, but it did. And you can practically see his resolve crumbling as he shakes his head. “I mean…” You slowly begin, choking back the tears that threatened to spill down your cheeks. “The late nights, the non-returned calls, all my ignored texts…Don’t you think I get it?” Wiping your face with the sleeve of your shirt, you sniffle. 

Beomgyu doesn’t say anything as he bites the inside of his cheek. His silence was loud and clear. You wanted to cry. — The first time your call went to his voicemail you brushed it off, but when he didn’t call you back that night, or the one after that, you’d grown worried. You called around for him, meeting nothing but dead-ends as none of his friends could advocate for his whereabouts. You texted him, again and again. He didn’t even read them. 

Then he would turn up on your doorstep, at the most ungodly hour, begging for your forgiveness, promising to do better. You thought he might’ve been going through a rough time, so you let him inside. You let him inside your heart. You comforted him when he cried and you told him that things were going to be alright, that things were going to change. But they never did. And he never treated you better. 

When you called Taehyun to ask if he was at practice, like he said he would be, only to be perceived as an idiot when Taehyun told you that he never showed up. It was then you knew that something was really wrong. A part of you thinks you’ve known for a while. Another part thinks you were too scared to bring it up, too scared to let him go. That part of you fought for his innocence for as long as it could. 

But then he makes the headlines, and it’s not with you, but another woman. It confirmed what you had dreaded for so long. And if you didn’t act now, you were scared that you might never do. 

“Do you honestly believe this shit?” He suddenly says as he throws an aggravated hand toward the Tv. Did you believe it? No, you couldn’t say that you did. Beomgyu was many things, a cheater wasn't one of them. Still, the way he acted, so nonchalantly trying to brush even a problem like this under the rug… It told you everything you needed to know about what kind of a person he was. 

So you can only stare back at him, your eyes now empty as you slowly nod. “What else do you want me to believe?” You say, and your voice sounds monotone, almost robotic. — Beomgyu huffs as he shakes his head, his hand dragging across the side of his face as his narrowed gaze seizes you. “Well I don’t know, maybe me? Your fucking boyfriend?” 

“Then give me one good reason.” You say, suddenly sounding irritated again. “Give me one reason to trust that you weren't out screwing someone else while I waited for you like an idiot.” — You give him about ten seconds to defend himself, watching as he scrambles for words. But when he doesn’t speak, you grow even more agitated. “See, you can't!” 

“I had something important to do, okay?” He almost cuts you off and your brows furrow at the unreliable excuse. — “Something important? Like what? What could be more important than me? Than us?” You practically spit the question out, expecting at least a half-assed answer, but you’re met with none. 

Oh. 

Oh wow. 

Beomgyu bites his bottom lip, his eyes drifting to the floor and you feel your heart sink to the same level. A bitter feeling blooms in your chest and your throat suddenly feels dry. You realize then that there was nothing else to say. This was it. Five months of your life completely wasted on someone who couldn’t give less of a fuck about you or your feelings. 

“Out.” 

The single word slices through the tense air and Beomgyu’s head snaps up as his eyes widen. “What?” He breathes but you only shake your head. “I want you out, now.” — He tries to object, but you won’t hear him out, you’d already made that mistake one too many times. Instead you have him leave, slamming the door behind him as he goes. 

Your apartment becomes eerily silent after that, and so did the rest of your life. 

You didn’t linger. That would be painful. Instead you packed whatever you thought was worth bringing along before you returned to the only place you could think of. Home. Shielded from the rest of the world, in a small village by the seaside, a place where only one knew you. 

Your grandmother provided the love you had so desperately been craving for the past months of your life. She allowed you to settle into her home for a while. And for the first time in what felt like forever, things finally started to look up. — Only for them to come crashing down again as the heavy realization that you were not alone dawned upon you. 

⸝⸝

“Mommy! Mommy! Look! Sharks!” Teddy exclaims as he rushes toward the arts section, eyes glued on the shark stickers before him. He’s so eager that he almost trips over his own feet before making it to his desired destination. — With a subtle roll of your eyes, you give in. “Fine, put them in the cart”, you sigh. Though nothing beats seeing your son’s face light up into a wide grin as he scurries over with his finds. 

You don’t regret Teddy. 

Not in the slightest. He was the best thing that had ever happened to you. Even if it meant giving up a lot of your life in order to make room for him in it. You were young, dumb and naive. And had it not been for your grandmother, you don’t know how you would’ve made it. — You owed her big time. 

Still, you found that you enjoyed a quiet life. There was something special about raising Teddy in the very same environment you’d grown up in. From walks on the beach, collecting seashells and building sand castles.. To harvesting fresh strawberries in your grandmother’s garden during summer. Or the small marketplace in the center of town, bustling with life year around. — A quiet life. Far away from your past, hidden from its watchful and judging eyes. 

Except today, your past seemed to have found you. 

You’re almost done for the day, the ingredient list, clutched in your hand, had been nearly ticked off. But as you turn down toward the breakfast section, you’re met with what could’ve possibly been one of the most cruel pranks the world could pull. 

An icy feeling washes over your body, the wheels of your cart coming to a squeaking stop in the middle of the aisle. Your eyes glue to the figure not even 10ft from you, immediately recognizing his sharp features. Dark and perfectly styled hair and a variety of jewelry dangling from his ears.  He has yet to notice you, seemingly occupied with scanning the shelves before him. — Teddy stops too, his attention turning to the colorful packages of cereal on his left. You’re far too shocked to notice him scurrying to grab a box. And only when the high pitch of his voice breaks the thick silence do you jolt to life. 

“Look! It’s the ones with sharks on!” He exclaims, practically shoving the cereal packaging against you as he flaunts the two sharks on the cover. Your heart drops as your son’s voice manages to attract not only your attention, but his as well. — You can practically feel the surprise radiate off of him as he turns to you, and then your name slips from his lips, and you know he knows. 

You try to smile, forcing yourself to push down the dreadful feeling rising in your chest as he approaches. “Oh my god, Yeonjun?” Your words come out a short, breathless laugh and Yeonjun returns it with a small chuckle. “In the flesh”, he grins, hands now stuffed into his pockets as he studies you for a moment. “Shit, how long has it been?” He muses, a small frown etching its way to his face. 

“Five years”, you reply, almost too quickly, you hope he doesn't pick up on it. But Yeonjun merely nods, muttering a quiet “Jesus, you’re right”, under his breath. You glance around, praying that he was alone, it seemed like he was. — It was impossible to know how many details Beomgyu had given them, what he’d told them, how he’d made them perceive you. But as your eyes meet his, you find no resentment in his gaze. Yeonjun looks happy to see you. 

“You’ve been here all along?” He asks, sounding almost astonished. You nod, “My grandma owns a small house not far from here, I thought it’d be nice to stay somewhere close by.” Yeonjun hums in agreement, his lips parting, as if to say something, but he falls silent as his attention drifts to Teddy, clutching onto your leg as he demands attention. You catch the subtle raise of his brows as his gaze flickers between Teddy and you. 

Dumbfounded, you clear your throat, “O-Oh, right. This is Teddy”, you say as you hoist the five year old into your arms, huffing at how heavy he’d gotten. Teddy studies Yeonjun’s perplexed expression, a grin on his tiny face as his small hands clutch at your shirt. “Shit, you’ve got a kid?” He finally exhales. You bite the inside of your check, nodding as you motion for your son to say hi. “Come on Teddy, why don’t you say hi to Yeonjun?” 

The young boy extends his hand and Yeonjun takes it, “Nice to meet you, Teddy”, he says, the surprise slowly wearing off as he blinks a couple of times. Teddy giggles at the grown-up aspect of shaking someone's hand, and Yeonjun has to fight for your son to release his grip on him. — “Why don’t you go pick out a snack?” You tell him as you set him down once more, eager to rid yourself of him for a few minutes to talk to Yeonjun in private. 

Teddy wasn’t very hard to convince and as soon as his sneakers hit the ground he was off, darting down the aisle without as much as a care in the world. “Don’t eat it before we pay!” You call out after him, not receiving a reply. — The silence that settles over you after that is beyond stale, and you find yourself avoiding Yeonjun’s gaze as best as you could. 

“So..” He begins, the frown on his face still prominent. “I’m guessing you’ve found someone. els…” — “Oh god no!” You interrupt him before he can finish, the defensive edge to your voice palpable as you shake your head. “I um, I’m raising him alone..” You quickly add, trying to brush over who the father in question actually was. 

“Oh.” 

The conflicted expression on Yeonjun’s face seems to immediately ease up at your response. Weird. Why did he care? Has someone told him to care? Did he still care? — Now visibly relaxed, he lets his hands return to his pockets, the same careless grin on his face once more. “How old is he anyway?” 

“Four”, you say, though quickly adding, “he’s turning five in a couple of months but likes to say that he is already.” — Yeonjun chuckles, shaking his head like he’s experienced the exact same events himself. “Growing up takes a great deal of time”, he muses, throwing a glance over his shoulder toward Teddy who was rummaging through the shelves by the far end of the aisle, flimsy hands grabbing at whatever he could find as he left chaos in his wake. 

“The others would love to see you”, he then says,  “We’re in town for two weeks, a small vacation between schedules.”  The statement makes your heart skip over a beat. They want to see you? They weren’t mad at you? They didn’t hate you for walking out on their friend? — Your jaw was likely scraping the floor by that point because Yeonjun cleared his throat awkwardly as he hastily continued. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I totally get if you’re busy.” He scratches the back of his head, a nervous habit of his, “We’re going out for dinner and drinks tonight, you’re free to join us whenever, we would all appreciate your company.” 

You swallow, processing the weight of his words. You hadn’t seen them, any of them, for five whole years. Would it be weird to just show up like that? And would he… “Will he be there?” The question slips out before you can stop it. But judging by the apologetic look on Yeonjun’s face, you’d guess you were correct. “He is part of the group”, he murmurs, slightly sheepish as he fiddles with the silver hoop in his ear. 

“It’s fine”, you shake your head, “it was a long time ago.” Yeonjun nods, his expression unreadable as he takes a small breath. “Does he… Does he know? He didn’t tell me about.. Well you know..” — You shake your head, chewing on your bottom lip as you push your hair back. “He doesn’t know, and I’d appreciate it if he didn’t either, at least not for now”, you practically plead, sending him a hopeful look. 

He blinks but then slowly nods, uttering a quiet, “Yeah, no of course. It’d just be weird right?” You quickly nod, “Right. It would.” There’s an awkward and anticlimactic silence that follows, the two of you glancing around, not knowing where to avert your gaze. Your mind scrambles for something to help fill the agonizing gap of your conversation. But Yeonjun manages to beat you to it. 

“He’s changed, you know. He’s not the same guy he was five years ago.” You glance up at him, meeting his hopeful eyes as Yeonjun tries to salvage the ruins of the relationship you and his friend once had. “I don’t know what happened between you two, Beomgyu refuses to tell me anything but I.. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” 

You can’t help but feel bad, feel bad for Yeonjun, and for the others, left confused as you took off all those years ago. Perhaps it was guilt that steered your decision. — Dinner and drinks, it couldn’t be all bad? It was harmless, and you did miss the others. So you nod, “I’d love to join you.” 

⸝⸝

“Couple of drinks? With him?” 

The air inside the small kitchen suddenly felt thick, the sweet aroma of freshly baked cookies no longer lingered and the once familiar light pink walls were slowly closing in on you. With a heavy sigh you bring the porcelain cup to your lips, sipping on the warm home-brewed tea. Your grandma sits in front of you, the rounded table you’d had so many dinners by, now felt miles long, putting you and her on different sides of the world as she glares you down. 

Despite the wrinkles lining her face, and the way her eyes had slowly sunken, her keen gaze was as sharp as ever. You felt yourself go rigid under it. “Well”, you set your cup down, “He was right in front of me, it wasn’t like I could just say no.” The meek excuse does little to ease the older lady’s already fragile nerves and your grandma shakes her head, her lips drawn into a thin line. 

Hopelessly, you sigh. “Nana, it’s been five years. And besides, I’m going to see all of them, not just him.” 

Call her sidekick, but your grandma had always had a thing for trusting her gut. Whether it had been blatantly ignoring medical advice given to her by doctors, insisting on drinking her own concoction of chamomile and honey. Or leaving the house without an umbrella even when the forecast promised rain, just because she “felt” that it was bound to be a sunny day. — So to change her mind on a matter like this, would be damn near impossible. 

“You’re going to end up right back where you started”, she mutters, her old and wrinkly fingers gripping the edges of her own cup. “Oh come on nana, you don’t know that..” — “I do!” She insists, her voice rising three octaves as she slams the teacup down onto the wooden table. Holding your tongue, you glance toward the window, shielded by the checkered curtains as they flutter in the wind, you could make out the glimpse of your son as he played out in the garden. 

Teddy had always made do with just himself, the absence of both a father and siblings had never seemed to bother him. Yet you couldn’t help but wish for something more for him. Something that you were unable to give. The feeling ate away at your heart, slowly but surely. — “Think you can have him, just for tonight? I’ll come pick him up in the morning���, you say, nail scraping against the handpainted flowers of your cup. 

Your grandma sighs, the realization that you were about to go against her wishes dawning upon her. “I remember how you looked, that night you showed up on my doorsteps five years ago.” She begins, her voice a low drawl and you can already tell where this is going. “Nana…” But she only hushes you, pointing an accusing finger in your direction. “You were heartbroken, dear.” The statement hits you like a sharp slap in the face, leaving you speechless as you watch your grandmother fiddle with her nearly full teacup. 

“I do not want you to make the same mistake again”, she sighs, and she doesn’t sound angry anymore, only sad, as if the news of your death had already been delivered. You reach out, hand grasping hers, she felt fragile in your palm, and you’re overcome with an intense need to reassure her. 

“Then it’s my mistake to make.” 

⸝⸝

The clacking of heels hitting the cold pavement fills the night air and you bring your arms around yourself, shivering in the cool breeze. Despite it being mid August, the biting cold seemed to know no bounds. With your heart hammering in your chest, you near the small bar, chatter echoing out onto the cobbled road. 

You hadn’t known what to wear, and it wasn’t like you had anyone to ask. Your social life had severely decreased after moving out here and having Teddy. But you think the crimson dress was sophisticated enough, its simplicity toning the deep color down a tad. A coat, you should’ve brought a coat. Spoiled rotten by the warmth of July, the thought of bringing anything besides what you already wore. 

It doesn’t matter now, you thought. Heaving a small sigh, you climb the three steps leading to the crowded pub. It’s warm here, thank god. Your eyes scan the rounded tables, all occupied by larger parties. Their conversations flow past you, buzzing in your ears, it’s loud, yet you can’t seem to make out a single word they’re saying. 

It’s not until Yeonjun’s voice pierces through the air as he calls for you, that your searching gaze finally lands on a pair of familiar faces. Seated by one of the large windows, they all turn to you as you approach, all but one. — Kai is the first to get up, enveloping you in a tight hug before you even get a word out. You’re taken aback by the muscular feel of his arms, the tight grip he had on you represented little of the young boy you’d once known. But when he pulls back, the same boyish grin cracks across his lips. 

“I’ve missed you!” He pouts, going in for yet another hug, this one just as tight as the first. You can’t help but smile, your heart fluttering in a strange manner at the fact that your absence had actually meant something to them. “I’ve missed you too, Kai.” 

From there, the sounds of chairs scraping against the floor fills the bar as they all get up to take turns hugging you. Taehyun had also grown quite a lot since you’d last seen him, and Soobin wore glasses now. Yeonjun settled for a handshake as the two of you had met previously that day, thanking you once more for coming. — But when he pulls back, you catch a glimpse of the man you’d been dreading to see. 

Beomgyu sits on Yeonjun’s right, his gaze intently fixated on the beer in his hand, watching as the yellow liquid swirls in the glass. The blond hair on his head immediately caught your attention as it fell evenly in front of his eyes. He doesn’t make a move to stand up, or as much as acknowledge you, and an awkward and anticipating silence falls over your small group. 

Taehyun is the first to act as he grabs a chair from a nearby table, making room for you between Yeonjun and himself. You thank him, taking a seat as you busy yourself with straightening out your dress. From the corner of your eye, you catch Yeonjun’s knee nudging against Beomgyu’s as the older signals for his bandmate to say hi. Only then does he look up. — You don’t have time to avert your gaze, and your eyes lock with his. 

The once warm brown now looked stale, cold and distant. He looks a lot paler than last you’d seen him, though that was five years ago. Beomgyu gives you a small, almost unnoticeable nod, you do the same before quickly diverting your attention elsewhere. 

It doesn’t take long for the others to warm up, your conversations ranging from light-hearted small talk to deep and almost philosophical questions. “Have you been here all along?” Kai wonders as he shoves a piece of meat into his mouth. You nod, explaining how your grandma lived close by, mentioning the beautiful scenery and the market downtown. You avoided the topic of Teddy, though you would send Yeonjun a small glance every now and again, thankful that he didn’t bring it up either. 

You can’t remember how many drinks you’d had, perhaps a few too many. But you were willing to do anything to ease the tension Beomgyu’s mere presence caused. He didn’t say much, in fact you think he might’ve not said anything at all. The others tried their best to engage him in whatever topic was being discussed, but he never gave more than a short sentence for answer. 

Part of you feels guilty. Should you not have come? Were you making things awkward? But Taehyun’s reassuring hand on top of yours immediately washes any worries away as he sends you a warm smile. “Let’s order another round!” He says, immediately calling the waiter over. — Though he’s barely managed to lift a finger when Beomgyu’s hand suddenly clasps around his wrists. “I think we’ve had enough”, he says, breaking his nearly eternal silence. 

Taehyun looks surprised as he shrugs his friend’s hand off, watching as Beomgyu settles back into his seat, an indifferent expression on his face. “Come on now, don’t be such a buzzkill”, Kai argues as he, too, makes a move to call the waiter over. — “Do you want to get her drunk?” Beomgyu suddenly snaps, his once distant gaze becoming sharp. It was the first time he’d as much as addressed your presence that night, apart from your brief greeting. 

With a perplexed expression you turn to him, only to find him already watching you. “What are you on about-” Soobin begins but is quickly cut short by his friend. “You’re a lightweight”, he comments, stating it as if it were written on your forehead. Part of you had forgotten just how much he knew about you, how much he still seemed to know about you. It made your chest twist uncomfortably as your face morphed into a frown. 

“I think I’ll be fine”, you huff, ignoring the question glances you received from the others. Without waiting for him to object, you call the waiter over yourself, ordering all of you another round of shots. — Beomgyu’s heavy gaze remained on you the whole night after that, all of him radiating with a feeling you couldn’t quite place. 

You would rather die than admit that he was right. But after your fifth shot, the room started moving. With great effort, you grip the edge of the table, leaning forward as you let your eyes fall shut. “Hey, are you okay?” Taehyun’s voice carries a resemblance of worry as he wraps an arm around your shoulders. Slowly nodding, you mutter out a quiet, “Yeah.. Just need some air.” — “I’ll help you out”, Yeonjun offers, but you politely decline him. 

“It’s fine, stay, I’ll only be five minutes.” With the help of Taehyun you manage to stand up on wobbly knees. Yeonjun looks more than concerned as he reaches out for you. “Are you sure?” He asks, brows knitting together as he watches you. “Yes, thank you”, you huff, maneuvering past the crowded tables as you head for the door, eager to get away from their prying eyes. 

The cool night air is comforting as it washes over your scorching hot body. Your disoriented eyes search for a place to slump down, eventually settling on the side of the pavement. The cobbled stone is ice cold against your bare legs, a stark contrast to the alcohol simmering beneath the surface of your skin. Inhaling, you tilt your head back, letting your eyes close as you drink in the fresh oxygen. 

It takes you about a minute to realize that you’d forgotten your bag, containing your phone. There was no way for you to keep track of time now, much less contact anyone. But you can’t find it in you to care, the buzz of liquor far too strong for you to focus on much else. 

You don’t know how much time has passed when the sounds of approaching footsteps intrude on your silence. Not bothering to acknowledge who it might be, you stay where you are, leaning back on your hands as you let the cool breeze caress your face. — Not until the stranger takes a seat next to you, does your brain register that something might be up. 

Cracking an eye open, you nearly lose your balance as you’re met with Beomgyu’s indifferent expression. He’s clutching your bag in his hands, slowly reaching out as he hands it to you. “You forgot this”, he mutters, the words barely audible. — Embarrassed you thank him, trying your hardest to ignore the way your fingers brush against one another as you take it from him. 

You busy yourself with checking its contents, trying your hardest not to think about the person sitting next to you. Beomgyu on the other hand, remains quiet as he gazes ahead, his arms resting atop his knees as he bites the inside of his cheek. You come to realize that this is the first time you’d actually gotten a proper look at him all night. And you take this moment to study the contour of his face, the sharp bridge of his nose, his high cheekbones, his jaw, much more defined now than it was five years ago.

Beomgyu looked different. He looked like a man. 

He wasn’t the only one who’d changed of course. You had too, in more ways than you’d ever thought possible. So perhaps, just maybe, this wasn’t the Beomgyu you’d known back then. Would you ever get an answer to that question? It was hard to tell. — But even with light and blond hair, Beomgyu looked exactly like his son. They were too similar, almost a replica of one another. And the sight before you, made your chest churn. 

“I should… Probably go home”, your words come out slightly slurred, your speech becoming lazy and slow. But all you could think about was him. Beomgyu hums, rolling his thumbs over one another as he keeps his eyes ahead. “You’re drunk”, he states and you almost want to scoff at the obvious remark. — “So are you”, you retort, not oblivious to the three beers he’d chugged as he avoided conversation. 

He shakes his head, “I’m not.” — “Not nearly enough at least”, he then sighs. You wonder what he meant by that, but you never get the chance to ask. “I’ll get you a cab”, he mutters, already rising to his feet. 

It happens before you can even register it, the way your hand reaches out. 

And when your fingers wrap around his wrist, he freezes, his jaw clenching as he turns to look at you for what would’ve been the third time that evening. You don’t know why you stopped him, why you felt the need to prolong the already awkward moment between the two of you. But you couldn’t let him go, not yet, not when you’d just found him after five whole years. Because a small part of you, a part of you that held no resentment for him, a part of you that you kept hidden, a part of you that had missed him. It made you cling to him, as pathetic as it may look. 

“Wait”, your short breath makes him tense even further, his brows pulling together as he slumps back against the pavement. “I…” You trail off, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as you try to navigate your foggy mind. There was nothing you could say to make things better, nothing you could say to change the past. — But Beomgyu wasn’t mad at you, right? He wouldn’t have come out here if he was. 

Your eyes flicker over to meet his, the same dark and alluring ones that had drawn you in all those years ago. Maybe, a small part of him had missed you too. — His gaze drops to your lips first, the way it had so many times before, tongue darting out to subconsciously wet his own. 

“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”  

Your quiet whisper seems to echo down the empty street and you swallow. But the statement isn’t a lie. More than anything you craved the warmth of another body against your own, you’d craved it for five years. 

Beomgyu expression morphs into one you couldn’t quite place, one you didn’t know how to read. His jaw relaxes, eyebrows returning to their normal position as he emits a soft sigh, his warm breath fanning across your already hot face. “You’re drunk”, he says, but he’s already got an arm around your waist, pulling you closer. The nostalgic scent of his cologne fills your senses, easily overpowering the buzz of the alcohol. 

“So are you”, you mumble, the palm of your hand caressing his cheek. Beomgyu lets his eyes flutter closed, relishing in the feeling of your skin against his. And when he opens them again, they immediately find yours. — “Yeah”, he exhales, “I am.” 

Five years you had gone without kissing him. But as he pressed his lips against yours, time seemed to cease. His arm around your body keeps you close, the other one finding its way to the back of your hair. You cradle his face between your hands, scared to let him go even when it gets hard to breathe. — Tasting the alcohol on his tongue as he slips it inside your mouth. It’s a bitter taste, reminding you of anger you’d wasted on him. The useless pain and the useless suffering. 

“We shouldn’t do this”, Beomgyu exhales, separating only an inch from you as he rests his forehead against yours. You shake your head, ignoring the way your chest contracted at the simple statement. Instead you force your lips back on his, fingers twisting in his hair as you bring him impossibly close. 

His hands slide down your body, tracing your figure with a sense of recognition, like he’d just stumbled across something he thought he’d forgotten. He settles on your hips, gently pushing you back as he breaks the longing kiss. — “You should go home..” He murmurs, his sharp nose sliding along the side of your neck as he trails kisses over your warm skin. Beomgyu’s words often contradicted his actions. You knew that. But it didn’t help your situation in the slightest. 

“Come with me.” 

It’s not a request but a demand, desperate as you cling to him, your eyes pleading with his. Pulling away from your neck, he bites the inside of his cheek. “I can’t”, he says, and the words hurt more than they should. You had expected him to deny you, why wouldn’t he? Five years without as much as a message. Five years of not knowing where you were, if you were okay. Five years of living in the dark. 

Perhaps you deserved it. 

But you weren’t the only one in the wrong. He hurt you. He hurt you so bad that you saw no other option than to run. Run as far as you could possibly get. Until your legs trembled and ached, until the pain in your body overpowered the pain in your heart. — You shouldn’t crave his presence, you don’t know why you did. But if you left him now, you knew that you would never be okay again. 

Tears coat your lashes, threatening to spill at any moment. You can see the guilt in his eyes as you glance up. Silently you plead, drawing in a shaky breath only for it to come back out as a small sigh. — “Can you please just take me home then?” 

⸝⸝

Beomgyu holds your hand during the whole cab ride home. He doesn't say anything, and neither do you. It’s a heavy silence. You steal a few glances his way, the vehicle is dark but under the light of the bright moon, you can make out the details of his face. He looks lost in thought, weighed down by the reality of your situation. His thumb strokes the top of your hand absentmindedly. You stay perfectly still, not wanting him to stop. 

But as the car pulls into the small and narrow street, and your quaint house comes into vision, your stomach drops. You don’t want the night to end. Not like this. Would he even want to see you again? Did you take it too far when you kissed? Was he upset? — The screeching sound of tires against concrete has you emitting a breath you didn’t even know you were holding. 

You glance over at Beomgyu, he’s watching you with an almost melancholy expression and you have to remind yourself why you walked out on him all those years ago. It was better this way, wasn’t it? — Your hand turns cold as soon as you let go of his. “Thank you for tonight”, it’s polite, too polite, too formal. But you say it nonetheless. He nods, his eyes never leaving you as you climb out of the car. 

Only when the door slams shut do you feel a sense of relief. You don’t wait for it to drive off, that would just hurt even more. Instead you turn on your heel, walking up the scattered stone path that leads to your door. Your hand digs through your small bag in search of your keys. The metal glints under the moonlight, and the jiggling noise fills the quiet night air. 

You’re glad Teddy was at your grandma’s, you don’t think you could bear facing him in this state, nor in the morning for that matter. It wasn’t his fault that he looked like him. Your son had done nothing to warrant this life. So why did it hurt so much to look at him? — Those thoughts… Sometimes it made you question if you really were a good mother. Because what kind of mother was unable to look her own child in the eyes, just because they represented something she’d lost. 

Teddy was your whole world now. So why can’t you forget him? 

You’re lost in a storm of self-pitying thoughts, fumbling with the charms on the keychain as you curse yourself for drinking so much. — Too caught up in unlocking your front door, you miss the rushed sets of footsteps behind you. Not until a familiar hand wraps around your wrist. His familiar cologne invades your already drunk senses, and you barely have time to turn around before Beomgyu’s lips crash against yours. 

This time he kisses you without hesitating, like he knows the road ahead, and like he’s not afraid of it. You let him, because you don’t think you could ever bring yourself to deny him. And you don’t want to. 

He blindly reaches for the keys, twisting the lock before pushing your door open. You stumble inside your dark hallway, shoes flying everywhere as you kick them off. The framed drawings, made by no less than your son, rattle against the walls when Beomgyu pushes you up against it. His hands waste no time roaming your body, now without stopping as they reach the hem of your crimson dress. He slides the material up your thighs, and you instinctively wrap your legs around his waist as you pull him close. 

Your soft moan echoes down the hall as he bites down on your bottom lip, his fingers digging into the skin over your hips as he presses you so far against the wall that you think you might make a dent in it. — It’s as if he's trying to communicate a thousand words with one single kiss. The sentences come out incoherent and messy, in no particular order and without making any sense. Still, you kiss him like it was your last. For all you know it might be. 

“Where’s your bedroom?” He groans into your mouth. Your mind goes blank at the question, and you blink before quickly pointing down the dark hallway. “Last door on the right”, you say and Beomgyu doesn't need to hear anything else as he hoists you into his arms, moving through the quiet house with impatient steps. — When passing Teddy’s room you make sure to pull him in for yet another kiss, diverting his attention from anything that might get his mind elsewhere, places you didn’t need nor want it to be. 

Your bedroom is sparsely decorated, all your efforts spent on making sure your son had everything he needed. But Beomgyu doesn’t seem to care in the slightest as he settles you against the mattress, quickly climbing on top of you. Your legs tangle in a mess of limbs as he places open-mouthed kisses along your jaw, moving down your neck and collarbone. His teeth nipping at your sensitive skin makes you forget about the seriousness of your situation, about the consequences and the day that would follow. 

His hands yank at your dress, “Get this off”, he grunts, frustrated when it won’t budge. Your back arches off the bed, arms wrapping around his neck as you kiss along his jawline. “There’s a zipper on the back”, you murmur and Beomgyu’s fingers immediately slither behind your waist, reaching up only to tug the zip down. — It takes him about five seconds to pull your dress along your body, leaving you in the black lace set you’d picked out for the occasion. Back then, all those years ago, he would’ve made a sly comment about the suggestive underwear, but not now, not today. 

Today he can only stare, in awe of the woman before him. His silence makes you squirm, even more so when he leans down to press a kiss to your still clothed nipple. “You’ve always been so gorgeous”, he murmurs, fingers sliding between your thighs as he pushes both middle and ring finger against your cunt, rubbing you through the dark lace. You whine, nails digging into his shoulders as you wordlessly beg for more. 

Beomgyu groans against your chest when he feels your knee slide between his legs, your fingers fiddling with the buckle of his belt. “We shouldn’t”, he sighs, repeating the words as if they were a prayer. “You’re drunk and..” He kisses between your breasts, one of his hands reaching for the clasp behind your back. “And I’m…Fuck.” Beomgyu leans back as he rips your bra from your body, immediately caressing your perfect tits with his hand, leaning down to wrap his mouth around one of your hardened nipples. 

“I don’t care”, you nearly sob, undoing his belt before pulling it through the loops and discarding it on the floor. “You should.” Beomgyu whispers against your flaming hot skin, the hand between your legs pushing your damp panties aside as he slides two fingers between your folds, letting your arousal pool onto his hand. 

Your moans bounce off the bedroom walls, repeating themselves like a broken record when Beomgyu slides a finger inside your pleading cunt, his thumb pressed firmly against your throbbing clit. — “Tell me to stop”, he says, and it sounds almost like he’s begging. You shake your head, jaw slacking as your thighs quiver, hips threatening to buck up against the heel of his hand. 

His kisses travel from your abused tits and up your neck once more. He’s so close that you feel every short exhale against the shell of your ear. Every small hitch of his breath and every groan he tries to conceal. You feel everything. The vibrations of his voice when he says: “Tell me to stop. I can’t stop unless you tell me to.” 

With your hands either side of his face, you bring his lips to yours. His dark eyes are wide and filled to the brim with emotion, emotions so strong that no words could ever come close to describing them. “I don’t want you to stop.” You couldn’t bear it if he did, you would never forgive yourself if you let this moment slip between your fingers. 

Beomgyu swallows, and your gaze follows the bob of his adams apple, trailing down his chest, landing on the shirt he wore, halfway unbuttoned. “Never stop”, you say, reaching for the buttons as you pop them open one by one. He lets you, watching with half lidded as you push the shirt from his shoulders, letting your hands wander across his naked skin. Beomgyu shudders, the fingers against your cunt completely losing sense of direction as he inhales sharply. 

He sighs against your lips when you pull him down for another kiss, letting you slip your tongue inside his mouth without protest. “S’a bad idea”, he murmurs, his speech slurred. You ignore his half-assed warnings, pulling his zipper open as you push his jeans down. — “You’re not thinking straight and- fuck.” His sentence is cut short when your hand wraps around his throbbing cock, thumb pressing against his flushed tip with urgency. 

It’s like a switch is flipped within him, his body jolting to life as he kisses you back with a need that is near overwhelming. You whimper when he adds a second finger inside your fluttering cunt, spreading your thighs as far as he can, his eyes steadily focused on the way your body so willingly accepted him in. 

“Please”, your request slices through the hot air, “I can’t wait any longer.” 

You really couldn’t. Five years you had waited for him. Five years your body had longed for his touch. Even five minutes could feel like an eternity when your future was uncertain. But this, this you were certain of. — And you’d be damned if you didn’t get your way. 

Beomgyu quickly obliges, his fingers withdrawing from your core, though quickly replaced by the head of his cock as he pushes past your puffy folds. You whine as he jerks against your aching clit, thighs twitching in pleasure. You reach down between your bodies, firmly pressed together, trembling fingers wrapping around his thick shaft as you guide him inside of you. 

The groan he lets out easily drowns out your whimper as his forehead comes to rest atop your own. You help him slide in slowly, making sure to memorize the way he stretched your pulsating cunt out, your clit nearly spasming when his thumb swipes across it. Once fully sheathed inside of you, Beomgyu sighs. 

“Fuck, I’ve missed you.” 

His eyes linger on yours, and though you’d had sex with him more than once, this time somehow felt more intimate. Because this time it wasn’t just sex. It was an escape, an escape from the reality that awaited outside your bedroom walls, the reality that would rise just as the sun would the next morning. This short moment was all you had. You both knew that. The knowing somehow made it even more special. It connected you. 

Quickly trying to shake the uncomfortable thoughts away, your hands reach for his hair, fingers tangling in the blonde mess of locks as you urged him to move, to do something, anything. — The bed squeaks as Beomgyu snaps his hips against yours, thick cock sliding in and out of your warm cunt, your bodies joined together in one, for the first time in five years. 

And perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps you’d wake up filled with dread and regret. Perhaps you’d wake up to find him gone, vanished from your life, just like you had vanished from his. And perhaps this was a cruel thing to do, not only to him but to yourself. — Letting your desires win as you give in to the greed of longing, of wanting, wanting something you already know you won’t like in the end. But right now, this is everything you need. And for the first time in five years, you put yourself first. 

Beomgyu was usually one to talk when you were intimate, whether it was insults or praise, he would always be sure to talk you through it. But not tonight. Tonight his mind is occupied with everything that is you. Far too busy with tracing your every curve, kissing as much of you as he could, lips moving down your chest, across your collarbone, over your arms. Almost like he’s scared to blink and find you gone. He needs to remember you exactly as you are. Because if anything you need to live on, at least in his mind. 

You wrap your legs around his waist, allowing him to sink even deeper inside of you, pulling a strained groan from him as he shudders. His kisses are centered to your neck now, and he murmurs something incoherent against your skin. You want to ask him what he said, but you don’t have to, for he repeats himself, this time louder. — “I haven’t…” His lips slide down your neck, teeth scraping across its juncture and you squirm. 

“Haven’t thought about anyone else.” — “Only you.” 

His confession makes your breath hitch, your fingers in his hair going lax as you peer down at him. What did he mean by that? — Seemingly reading your thoughts, Beomgyu’s pace slows down, if just barely, his head lifting from your neck as his eyes lock onto yours. “I’ve tried”, he mumbles, hands trailing along your chest, stopping by your waist. “I can’t”, he inhales, “I only see you.” 

Your lips part, at loss for words. Only you? Had he tried to move on but…failed? Your brows pull together, a perplexed frown. “For…For how long?” You ask, your voice barely above a whisper. — “Five years.” He says, holding your gaze as he lets out the breath he’d been holding. Five years. You’d expected him to have forgotten about you, to have written you off as a bad experience and moved on with his life. But he…couldn’t? 

“Do you get it now?” He murmurs, lips hovering above your own. “Do you understand why we shouldn’t be doing this?” He sounds near desperate, yet his hips continue to rock against yours, his finger circling your throbbing clit as he elicits a soft moan from you. — You don’t reply, you wouldn’t even know what to say. Overcome by the desire of having him as close as possible, in every single way you could think of. 

Your arms wrap around his neck, pulling his lips to yours. He lets his eyes flutter closed, his long and soft lashes caressing your cheeks as your noses press together. Every slow and deliberate thrust of his makes you writhe in pleasure, wishing for the moment to last forever. — The five years of pain and the longing meant little when he was this close to you. And your orgasm washes over you when he presses the pad of his thumb against your clit one final time. 

Beomgyu groans when he feels you clench around his cock, the soft noises spilling from your lips were angelic in his ears as he kisses you through your climax. — Only when the aftershocks have simmered down and your body begins to feel heavy, do you open your eyes again. And this time you know what to say. 

“I only see you too.” 

And perhaps it was a mistake. 

But right now, this is everything you need.

⸝⸝

It wasn’t long until the sun rose again, basking your bedroom in a warm light. The first intruding rays of sunshine hits your face, making your eyes press together as you try to close the day out. You don’t move, afraid that everything would become real if you did. Perhaps you could just lay here forever, frozen in time, unable to think and unable to speak. It was an almost pleasant thought. 

But you soon sit up, pulling your tired body into a slumped position as you grab ahold of your pounding head. Fuck, just how much did you drink? — It’s with great effort that you crack an eye open, scanning your lonesome bedroom with hazy vision. Your gaze falls on him. Sprawled out across the mattress, blanket thrown over his hips, barely concealing his naked body from your view, Beomgyu sleeps soundly. 

So it did actually happen. It hadn’t been just a slip of thought, a pleasant dream. 

Taking the moment to study his sleeping form, your fingers itch to reach out and touch him. You find yourself envious of his peacefulness. Envious of his relaxed muscles, envious of his unbothered expression. You envy the soft breaths he emits as his mind remains shielded by the figments of his dreams. You wished you could dream too. — Anything, you would give anything to not be conscious right now, to not have to deal with the consequences of last night. 

In the morning light, everything looked different. — You’re not so sure that’s a good thing. 

Somewhere on the floor, amongst the mess of discarded clothes, your phone vibrates. The blaring sound slices your ears like knives, and with a small groan, you pull yourself from the bed. — The call runs out, but it’s not long before it starts again. Following its source, you rummage through the garments, finally grasping the device in your hand. But as your unfocused eyes finally settle on the screen, you suddenly turn stone cold sober. 

11am. 

Fuck. You were supposed to pick Teddy up an hour ago. Your grandma's name flashes across the screen, phone buzzing in your hand as you stare at the call, dumbfounded. — A quiet grunt behind you snaps your attention back to Beomgyu who was shifting on the mattress. He mumbles a string of incoherent nonsense, quickly making you power off your phone as you rush to his side. 

“Fuck, shit- You need to wake up!” 

His whole body writhes as you shake him by his shoulders, making his head fall back as he groans. “Wake up!” You practically yell, forcing the sleep from his system as you try and tug him into a sitting position. — Beomgyu huffs, propping himself up on his elbows as he squints up at you through tired eyes. 

“What…What’s going on..?” He murmurs, running a disoriented hand through his blond hair, spreading it in all directions. Had it not been for the fact that you were late to pick up your son, and that the realization that last night had been a mistake, a grave one, you probably would’ve found the sight of him rather cute. 

But you can’t fathom any other words beside, “You need to leave. Now.” Without waiting or a response you turn back to the floor, gathering his clothes before shoving them in his arms. Beomgyu, who's still half asleep, rubs his groggy eyes as he gingerly takes his jeans from you. — “Is somethin’ wrong?” He asks, his voice laced thick and raspy as he tugs the pants up his thighs, searching for his belt. 

You nearly jump at his words, exhaling a short breath as you turn to look at him. “Everything is wrong”, you say, arms wrapping around your torso, hugging the old t-shirt you’d thrown on tight. — Beomgyu frowns, fastening his belt as he reaches for his shirt. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He wonders as he tugs the fabric over his head,  “Thought we were good, no?” 

Good? 

Good?

Swallowing a scoff, you instead bite the inside of your cheek. “I…”, your nails dig into your upper arms, “It’s complicated..” Your words were empty, he knew that too. You know he did. 

Beomgyu huffs, running a hand through his hair one final time as he glances you up and down. “I can see that”, he mutters, quickly averting his gaze, causing you to do the same. The floorboards in which your eyes landed seemed very interesting at that moment. You follow the soft trails of wood, the sharp corner where one plank met the other, the slight gradient in their ever so warm and brown tone. — It’s not long until you can feel his attention on you again. 

“You should probably leave..”

You don’t want him to leave. Or maybe you did. — You wanted the regret to go away, you wanted the guilt to stop eating away at your chest, slowly taking over your body and your soul. It would never go away if he didn’t go away, at least so you thought. Your arms have started to hurt, and you would surely draw blood if you didn’t ease the grip in which your hands dug into your skin. 

“You think it was a mistake.” It’s not a question but a statement, and he says it like it was written in the stars. Yes. This had all been a mistake and you should’ve never let him kiss you, you should’ve never taken him home and you should’ve never let him in your bed. — You should’ve never opened your heart for him again. 

Your following silence weighs heavy. And mere moments later, he’s moving, dodging you, as if afraid that you’d explode if he came too close. He pushes the bedroom door open, and you’re quick to follow, quietly trailing behind. — With your head pounding and blood rushing beneath the surface of your skin, you pray he doesn’t see anything he’s not supposed to. Kicking away the shark plushie discarded in the hallway before he even notices it. And when he steps into his shoes, you make sure to stand before the wall containing all Teddy’s drawings. 

Neither of you say anything. And you’re certain that he won’t. But when the sun hits his face as he steps outside, he suddenly stops, slowly turning around as he looks at you. Under the bright light of day, his eyes looked warm once more, not the cold and distant look they'd held back at the restaurant, nor the lustful one from last night. — Right now he only looked like Beomgyu. 

His gaze flickers from your eyes to your lips, but he doesn’t move to kiss you. — “I didn’t think it was a mistake.” Is all he says, and he lets the words linger, even though it’s clear he isn’t expecting a response. And when the moment passes, he turns back as he walks down the stoney pathway leading out onto the street. 

You can’t pull yourself from the doorway, watching helplessly as he disappears in the horizon. It was obvious now that he had missed you just as much as you had missed him. Perhaps even more. — The thought scared you. 

⸝⸝

Two weeks. 

They would be in town for two more weeks, then they would be gone. Two weeks. You could do that. All you had to do was not slip up, to not look his way, to not allow yourself the pleasure of feeling anything but hatred for him. You had to forget that anything ever happened between the two of you, and you had to obliterate the fact that you’d enjoyed it. 

But it was hard. Nearly impossible even. 

Yeonjun thought it’d be a good idea to spend time together. You didn’t think so. Because suddenly you’re forced to come face to face with the person you were longing to forget. Every single one of your mistakes, all stored in one man, and that was him. The mistakes you were running from and the mistakes you were ashamed of. Now they were being played on repeat before your very eyes. 

Beomgyu seemed to be everywhere. 

He holds the door for you, and your gaze locks with his. A fluttery feeling surges within your chest. You remind yourself that he forgot your 6 month anniversary.

He gives you the last strawberry on your picnic, ignoring the glances he receives from the others. You take it, your fingers brushing against one another, a jolt of electricity rushing between the two of you. You remind yourself that he always made you eat dinner alone. 

He asks you how your day was. Trying his hardest to strike a conversation with you. You remind yourself that he forgot to reply for three days. 

He compliments your hair. You remind yourself that you hate him. 

But no matter how hard you tried, no matter how many bad and hurtful memories you forced yourself to relive, it didn’t help. — Your heart still beats uncontrollably around him, your palms feel sweaty whenever he’s near and suddenly, you’re at a loss for words. 

A week and a half passes. It draws by agonizingly slow, but at the same time, it all seems to go by too fast. You don’t know if you want it to end or not. Part of you is relieved to have him gone in a matter of three days, another part of you is near heartbroken. Did he feel the same? You wanted to ask him, you wanted to tell him what’s on your mind and you wanted him to understand. But Beomgyu had never been understanding. 

Teddy had been spending the majority of his days with his great grandma. And while he had plenty of fun, you missed your son. — It was why you canceled on Yeonjun last minute when he asked if you were joining them by the beach. Instead you spent your afternoon with Teddy, out in your small yard as you lay in the grass, taking turns painting a great white shark, Teddy’s favorite. 

“Don’t you think it needs a bigger fin?” You ask, pointing toward the half-painted shark. Your son purses his lips, gripping the brush between his small hands tightly. “He needs bigger teeth too”, he states, blatantly ignoring your request for a larger fin as he instead draws sharp fangs in its mouth. 

It didn’t matter what you did, you lived for every second with Teddy. He eased your worries without even knowing it. — Brushing your fingers through his unkempt hair, you’re suddenly reminded of Beomgyu. They both had the same, thick and untame hair, standing in all directions when they woke up, and an easy target for the wind. Teddy also had dimples when he smiled, and his eyes were the same warm and brown shade as his dad’s. 

Sometimes you feel guilty. Guilty for keeping someone as precious as his son from Beomgyu. And perhaps it made you a bad person, a selfish and an evil one. Someone who only thought about herself, fleeing when things got hard and refusing to acknowledge her own feelings. — Or maybe you were just scared. Heartbroken, alone and terrified. You often made excuses like that for yourself, justifying your own wrongdoings by pointing out the faults of others. 

That was your biggest flaw. 

Not only were you being unfair toward Beomgyu, but Teddy. Robbing him of a childhood spent in the presence of his father. Were you really going to put your own suffering above the needs of your child? It wasn’t what good mothers did, was it? 

Your silence seems to have rubbed him the wrong way, because it’s only a moment later when Teddy turns his head to look at you. “What’s wrong mommy?” He asks, and the genuine concern vowed into his words makes your chest churn. — “Nothing baby, mommy’s just thinking.” You smile, ruffling the mess of hair atop his head as your attention returns to the painting. The shark had gotten both bigger and sharper teeth as well as the bigger fin you’d requested. 

“You shouldn’t think too much”, he hums, swiping the brush absentmindedly across the canvas, “Ellie says that makes her head hurt.” — The simple statement causes you to huff, a grin tugging across your lips. “I think I’ll have to follow her advice then”, you drawl, picking up a brush of your own as you twirl it between your fingers. 

Teddy nods, tapping the end of his brush thoughtfully against his chin as he studies the painting. “Something missing, Picasso?” You wonder as you follow his line of sight. Your son bites the inside of his cheek before exhaling a heavy breath. “It needs blood!” — Your eyes widen at the exclamation. “Blood? Why on earth would it need something so violent as blood?” 

You’ve barely gotten the words out before he’s turning your way, a frown etched deep on to his forehead. “It’s not violent”, he counters, “all sharks get blood on their teeth after they eat, that doesn’t make them violent.” — Dumbfounded by the way he argued for his sake, you blink. “I…Sure, but is it really necessary? Why ruin such a perfect painting?” You try to steer him away from the possibility of splashing red paint all over, but once Teddy had made up his mind there was no returning, Beomgyu was similar in that way. 

“I’m not ruining it”, he whines, flicking the brush feathers against his palm in a frustrated manner. Realizing that there was no way for you to win this, you prepared to give in when he suddenly spoke again. — “Blood isn’t a bad thing… People always think it is, but that’s because they don’t know any better. You shouldn’t judge something you don’t understand.” Teddy lets the brush drop back onto the canvas, “And my teacher says blood is important for the body, so it can’t be violent right?” 

Half the time you brushed his words off, dismissing them as nothing but a child's imaginative mind. But as you listen to your son speak, with such understanding for the world around him, you feel as though you don’t know him at all. — “No, your teacher’s right, and so are you my love.” Leaning in to kiss the top of his head, your eyes drift over to the shark he’d painted, lingering by the uneven lines and the slightly mismatched colors as they bleed into one another. 

“Forgive your mom for not thinking before she speaks”, you murmur against his soft hair, letting the scent of vanilla shampoo cloud your senses. Teddy hums, his tiny fingers splayed across the canvas as he taps the sharp teeth of the shark. “It’s okay, but you really should look at the shark and not the blood”, he says as he gingerly rises to his feet, “But not yet, because I haven't added the blood!” 

Without waiting for a response he dashes back inside in search of the red paint. You don’t bother hiding the giggle that surfaces as you watch him go. Your son never failed to surprise you, and sometimes you wondered if he knew how bright he was. — Letting your gaze drop back to the painting, you turn the brush between your fingers, letting its feathers glide against the canvas, all the while you grin to yourself. 

Teddy’s words linger in your mind, and you find yourself lost in thoughts as you go over their meaning. His intentions had been nothing but pure, yet you find yourself envisioning something completely different than sharks. —  You shouldn’t judge something you don’t understand. No matter how hard you tried to shake the words off you just couldn’t. They played on loop in your head, each time louder and louder, and all you saw was…

“Somethin’ funny?” 

Beomgyu. 

His rough voice pulls you from the depths of your thoughts, making your head jerk up as you come face to face with the biggest mistake of your life. Beomgyu looms over you, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his gray jeans as he peers down at you through the bright sun. — You had been so caught up in your previous conversation with Teddy that you hadn’t even heard the squeaky fence gate opening, nor had you realized that you’d been grinning like a psychopath this whole time. 

What the fuck was he doing here? He shouldn’t be here, couldn’t. Teddy was bound to come back any moment now. You open your mouth to say something, awkwardly rising to your feet as you brush the grass from your legs. “What are you..” — “You didn’t join us today”, he says, swiftly cutting you off as he takes a step closer. Instinctively taking one back, you glance around your backyard, searching for the others, but Beomgyu shakes his head, “I came alone. I’m the only one who knows where you live, remember?” He says, a faint smirk ghosting over his lips. 

You swallow, fingers nervously cramping up by your sides as you resist the urge to clench your hands into fists. “I…Well something came up”, you lie, feigning oblivion as you avert your gaze. Beomgyu hums, his eyes scanning the small house you resided in, as if getting his first proper look. “I see”, he hums, clearly not convinced but choosing not to pry further. “I just..” He begins, though quickly falling silent as he holds his tongue. 

He bites the inside of his cheek, running an anxious hand through his blonde hair as his gaze avoids yours. “It’s just, we’re leaving in three days, and um”, he clears his throat, “It would be nice to see you before that.” 

Your stomach might as well just have dropped seven floors, plummeting against rock hard concrete. Your heart felt heavy and your mind scattered. Had you led him on? Given him the wrong idea?  It had been a mistake, but he knew that, because he’d been very open about that a week and a half ago. 

“I didn’t think it was a mistake.”

Of course he didn’t. He didn’t know the shit he put you through. He didn’t know anything. You had to tell him now, you had to make it clear that what happened a week ago was never happening again and that he was an idiot for believing otherwise. But no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t find it in you to treat him like that, not again. You couldn’t bear the look on his face when you’d told him to get out last time, and you wouldn’t now either. 

“Listen, this isn’t…” Your words are cut short by the sound of a third voice, a much more high pitched and whiny one, one belonging to a child. 

“Mommy! I can’t find the red paint I’ve looked everywhere!” Teddy’s sob breaks the tension out in the backyard as he comes running toward you. Tears stream down his round face, his eyes screwing shut as he clings to your leg. You swallow, your heart hammering in your chest as you disregard Beomgyu and turn toward your son. — “Shh, I’m sure it’s there somewhere, I’ll help you look in a minute okay, love?” 

Your soft spoken words are met by an even louder sob as Teddy shakes his head. “I want the paint now!” He hiccups, sniveling against your thigh as he latches on to you. — “Hey, hey, I know”, you say, prying him from your leg as you crouch down opposite him. “And I’ll find it for you. So why don’t you wipe your tears, and say hello to my friend okay?” 

Teddy slowly nods as he lets you pat his cheeks dry. Only now does he seem to register Beomgyu’s presence as he turns to him teary eyes. — Dreading the look on his face, you slowly stand back up as you turn toward him once more. But Beomgyu looks…just like himself, the same playful grin he usually wore, stuck to his face, almost practiced. If it wasn’t for the way his jaw clenched, and the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, you would’ve thought nothing to be wrong. 

But if he was upset, he didn’t express it. Instead he leans down, extending his hand for Teddy to shake, to which your son eagerly responds with a small squeal. “Hi Mr, my name is Teddy”, he says, flashing a smile that showcases his missing teeth. Beomgyu returns to gestures, introducing himself just like he would anyone else. 

“Are you one of mommy’s friends?” Teddy then asks, completely disregarding your warning glare as he grins. Beomgyu’s eyes flicker between you and your son, a questioning glimmer behind his warm irises. — “I am”, he says before pressing his lips in a thin line, give Teddy a tight smile. Teddy himself, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to ask something else when you hurry to interrupt him. 

“Why don’t you wait for me inside so that we can look for the red paint together?” You say, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. Given a few moments of consideration, Teddy finally nods. “Okay”, he hums, turning to Beomgyu one final time, “ Goodbye Mr. Beomgyu!” — You watch his retreating frame, hoping to make whatever conversation was about to happen next short. 

Once Teddy is completely out of sight, you turn back toward Beomgyu, a sense of dread washing over you. He looks… Unlike anything you’d ever witnessed. There isn’t a single fragment of emotion on his face, not one. You wait for him to say something, to break the surrounding you. Part of you wants him to yell, to shout. Another part wishes for him to not even mention it at all. 

A whole minute passes and you slowly realize that he isn’t going to say anything. You swallow, thinking of ways to dodge the subject at hand, to send him off without ever having to discuss the topic that so obviously laid between the two of you. — “It’s not…I mean I can explain it but..” 

“Do you think I’m stupid?” 

His cold and sharp tone slices through the warm air. Like a dark and rainy cloud on a sunny day. And if anything, it only adds to the growing tension around you. “What?” You felt as though you were melting under the hot sun, sweat dripping down your forehead as your throat dried up. — “I mean, I get that you had shit going on, but this?” His voice grows agitated, and Beomgyu pushes his hair back, a flicker of disbelief crossing his features. 

“I…I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re talking ab-” 

“My son. I’m talking about my fucking son”, he snaps, his gaze turning from cold to fury, “My son that I didn’t even know I had up until five minutes ago.” — Your mouth falls open, all air getting knocked from your lungs as you blink slowly. 

“Oh come on, don’t give me that look”, Beomgyu jeers, “He looks exactly like me, how long did you plan on dragging this out? Were you going to let me go back to Seoul without as much as a word about him? When were you planning on telling me? When he graduates fucking college?” He’s shouting now, just like he had so many times before. You cringe at the uncomfortable feeling in your chest. 

“I was going to tell you!” You cut him off, your eyes silently pleading for empathy as your hands balled up into fists. “I just…I needed time”, you say, biting the inside of your cheek as Beomgyu scoffs. He lets out a short, breathy laugh, even though there was little to be laughed about right now. “Time?” — “You needed…time? Fucking hell you’re hilarious.” 

He continues to laugh through the irony of it all, pacing back and forth on the freshly cut grass as he runs his hands through his hair. “I mean, this whole time, I’ve been thinking, wondering, how you were doing”, he mutters as he shakes his head to himself. — “I’ve been worried”, he adds, throwing you a short glance before he resumes his pacing. “But it seems you’ve gotten on just fine with our kid.” 

“It’s not what happened, if you please just hear me out I can-” “How old is he?” Beomgyu cuts you off once again, stopping mid-step as he turns to you with a small frown. “I…He’s turning 5 in November..” You awkwardly admit, your nails digging into the heel of your hand as you swallow. Beomgyu snorts, and for a second you think he’s about to yell at you again. “Five fucking years”, he mutters, silently counting the dates in his head. It only clarified what he already knew. That Teddy was his son. 

“Well isn’t this wonderful? And you were about to make me miss his fifth birthday as well I presume.” It’s not a question, but you reply anyway. “I was going to tell you..” Your words have little effect, you knew that too. But it wasn’t like there was much else you could say. — You could bring up the fact that he hurt you, you could bring up the nights you spent alone, the canceled dates and the ignorant ways he treated you. They all seemed minimal compared to this. You knew that you were in the wrong, and there was nothing you could do to save yourself. You can only watch as you slowly burn, turning into nothing but ash and dust at the hands of fire. 

You should’ve told him five years ago. 

“I’m sorry.” The whisper barely makes it past your quivering lips, and had it not been for the ever thick silence laying between you, Beomgyu wouldn’t have caught it. But he does, his expression twisting into an annoyed grimace. — “Yeah, because sorry solves everything”, he bites, his continuous pacing coming to a sudden stop as he turns to face you completely. “But that’s the problem with you.” He points an accusing finger your way: 

“You never think about anyone but yourself, and you never have.” 

That’s a lie. You tell yourself that he’s lying, pushing back the tears building in your eyes and instead forcing yourself to become angry. Your shaky exhale feels shallow as you glance down at the green grass. “I think you should go”, you refuse to look at him, “my son’s waiting for me.” 

He doesn't say anything, in fact you can barely make out his uneven and ragged breathing, nor the steps as he retreats. The only confirmation of his departure was the squeaky fence gate, and this time you heard it as it echoed through your garden. 

⸝⸝

When the first pregnancy test showed positive, you went and bought another one. And when it turned up with the same results you bought a third. Then a fourth and a fifth. You never bought a sixth, you called your grandma instead. The phone nearly slipped from your sweaty fingers as you with a trembling hand brought it to your ear, the other one clutching the sink tightly. 

“Nana?” 

You nearly sobbed at the sound of her voice. The soft rasp of her tongue, still groggy from her sleep, confused as to why you’d woken her at such a later hour. — “I’m scared”, your whisper is barely picked up by the poor connection, but you can hear your grandma shuffling about, a light being turned on somewhere in the distance. 

“Dear, you are being blessed with the gift of life, it’s not something to fear.” Her soft spoken words make your heart clench, and you wipe the tears from your eyes. “It doesn’t feel like a blessing..” It felt like a curse. A cruel and mean vengeance casted upon you to make you pay for leaving him like that, a reminder of what you’d lost and a reminder of what had hurt you the most. 

Your grandmother sighs on the other line. “My love, this is your chance to make things right, it’s your chance to start anew.” — “Do not blame this miracle for the sorrows of your past, but treasure it for the joys of your future.” Her tone is slightly hushed, laced with sleep but still as powerful as you’d always remembered it. 

With a final sob, you straighten your back, inhaling a deep breath before slowly letting it go. “But nana, what if I’m not good at it?” A rush of anxiety washes over you, the realization that you were actually about to do this, alone, becoming crystal clear. — Your grandmother huffs, and you could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Then you will learn”, she simply states, a sense of finalization in her voice, as if she was closing the discussion for further questions. 

Biting the inside of your cheek, you regard your expression in the mirror. From your bloodshot eyes to your puffy cheeks, dried up tear streaks laying flat across them, your swollen and bitten lips and the mess that was your hair. You looked just like you had any other night when Beomgyu had stood you up. The thought makes you scoff, how pathetic of you to cry over such a matter, when situations like these existed. 

“Okay nana”, you exhale, nodding to yourself, “I will.” 

That night you vowed to never cry over Choi Beomgyu again. 

⸝⸝

It took you five years to break that vow. But as you put Teddy to bed that night, finally alone in the comforts of your own bedroom, you allow yourself to break down. Muffling your loud sobs against the pillow, your wet tears staining the soft cotton. It almost hurts, the way your fingers dig into the fabric, so hard that your knuckles have since long turned white. You don’t care, all you could think about was the way Beomgyu had looked at you, with so much anger that you thought you might just dissolve before his very eyes. 

“You never think about anyone but yourself.” 

Was that really how he felt? Was that really who you were? A selfish and uncaring person who hurt whoever she could just to preserve her own tears? And maybe you deserved it. You had waited for his anger, you had waited for five years. But when he kissed you that night, out on the pavement. When he kissed you  rather than lashing out, when he chose to forget the past and try his luck with you once more, you only ended up hurting him further. — So maybe you did deserve it. 

Far too engrossed in your own self loathing thoughts, you fail to catch the soft squeak of your bedroom door as it glides open. The soft padding of feet against the wooden floorboards as a much smaller and lighter person approaches. — Only when the mattress dips, and tiny arms wrap around your chest, do you peer up from your pillow. 

Teddy isn’t looking at you, his face buried against your side as he hugs you tightly. Quickly drawing in a sharp breath and wiping your tears, you turn around to face him. “Hi baby..” Your voice is hoarse, “Did you have another nightmare?” You ask, brushing his hair back. — Teddy looks up, his big brown eyes wide as he shakes his head. “I forgot Sharptooth in here”, he says as he points to the discarded shark plushie on your bed. 

A quiet “oh” is all you can muster, swallowing thickly as you reach for the stuffed animal. “Here you go sweetie”, you give him a small smile, “Want me to tuck you in again?” — Your son shakes his head once more, gripping the shark tightly between his tiny hands. “Why are you crying mom?” He wonders with a small frown, lips stuck out into a pout. 

You shrug, trying to brush the topic off just as quickly as it had surfaced. “Mommy’s just had a long day”, you explain, your hand coming to rest on top of his shoulder. “Was it that man from before?” Teddy asks, and you want to curse yourself for raising such a smart child. — “No honey, he didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just…thinking I suppose.” 

Teddy lets his head fall to the side, studying you closely, as if trying to detect any lies. When he doesn’t find any, he straightens back up. You’re slightly taken aback when he places his shark plushie in your arms, your son was not on to share his priced shark possessions, so the gesture could only mean he was trying his best to make you feel better. “I told you you shouldn’t think so much mommy”, he comments, an almost accusing edge to his voice. 

“Thinking makes you sad, and it makes your head hurt”, he states as a matter-of-factly. You nod, hugging the stuffed animal against your chest as you mindlessly play with its fins. “You’re right, from now on I’ll only think about the good things.” — “Like you”, your arm snakes around his shoulders, pulling him to your side as you place a kiss to the top of his head. Teddy squeals but doesn’t attempt to pull away from you, instead snuggling closer as he lets out a content sigh. 

“Can I sleep in here tonight?” He asks after a brief moment of silence, peering up at you through hooded eyes. The smile that spreads across your lips makes him grin, “You can.” Teddy immediately reaches for the covers as he tugs them over the two of you, making sure to tuck his mom in well before plopping down beside you. “Good”, he exhales, “I don’t think you should sleep alone today.” 

Your heart flutters at the subtle comment and you wonder what you could’ve done to deserve such a kind son. — Perhaps your nana had been right all those years ago. Teddy was indeed the joys of both your present and future. 

⸝⸝

Three days pass. Three days without as much as a single word from him. And today, they would be leaving. 

After dropping Teddy off at your grandma’s, you find yourself back at the restaurant you’d all gathered at nearly two weeks ago. In the bright light of the sun, it looked far different than it had that evening. Now you could clearly see the cracks in the wall, running down the sides of the building, slowly tearing it apart. The chipped paint on the windows, the dirty glass and the worn out tables on the patio. 

You stop in front of it, your feet leading you to that very same spot on the pavement. The grime and the dirt is clear now, white spots of splattered gum stuck to the asphalt and the small strands of grass that slowly crept their way through the cracks where the road met the sidewalk. — You sigh, anxiously chipping away at the polish on your nails as you hopelessly glance around. 

To a stranger, it might’ve looked as though you were waiting for someone. But that someone would never come, and you knew that. It was just past noon, and they were to leave by late afternoon. — Beomgyu was nowhere to be found. You couldn’t quite place the feeling bubbling in your stomach. But the mere thought of him made it painfully twist. 

Yet you find yourself desperate. Desperate to reach out, to see him once more, even if you know it was going to hurt the both of you. You were selfish, impossibly so. And without a second thought, you fish your phone up from your pocket, swiftly unlocking it as you search for Yeonjun in your contacts. He’d given you his number that day in the grocery store, insisting that the two of you stayed in touch. You were thankful he did. 

The wait seems eternal as you listen to the beeping tone, buzzing against your ear. Perhaps he was busy packing, or perhaps he was mad at you, maybe Beomgyu had told him everything. And perhaps this time, he hadn’t held back. — Just as you were about to give up and return home, the call goes through and Yeonjun’s voice echoes from the other line. “Hey, there you are, I've been trying to get a hold of you for days!” He exclaims, sounding worried. 

Surprised, you blink, not realizing how distant you’d been these past three days. Your mind had been so clouded with the thought of Beomgyu that you hadn't allowed room for anyone else but Teddy. — “I…I’m sorry I haven’t…” You bite your tongue, unsure of how much you were willing to tell. You shake your head, swallowing a deep breath before starting over. “Can I… Can I ask you something?” 

Yeonjun doesn’t hesitate, “Anything.” You smile, even though he can’t see it. Your eyes trace the cobbled road, following the lines between the stones as you spoke. “Have you… Talked to Beomgyu?” Nearly terrified of uttering his name in this situation, your question comes out a mere whisper. 

It’s silent on the other line, and you can only listen to the soft breaths as you await his response. Finally, he answers, a short “No.” 

The confirmation makes you feel… Indifferent? You didn’t know whether to feel relieved or to cry, and the confusion between those emotions left you feeling…nothing. “Oh… I see.” It’s hard to sound unbothered, and Yeonjun can tell by the way your voice trembles, you’re certain of that. — “He’s been out all day, I’m not sure where he is, did you want to see him before we left?” He wonders, and you can’t seem to pick up any kind of anger in his voice. Perhaps Beomgyu hadn’t told him after all. 

Did you want to see him? Yes. More than anything. 

“No, it’s fine… I just..” You hesitate, “It’s nothing.” If Beomgyu hadn’t told him anything, then you wouldn’t either. It would just complicate things, right? It would make things even worse. And the thought of losing not only Beomgyu, but the others as well, was unthinkable. — Yeonjun, on the other hand, doesn’t sound entirely convinced as he hums, taking his time before speaking once more. “Are you sure you’re alright?” He asks, not trying to mask the concern he radiates. 

“I am.” You lied, because lying was the only semblance of power you still held. 

⸝⸝

You preferred white wine over red. But as you sat on your porch that evening, the half empty bottle clutched tightly in one hand, red tinting your lips, it suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore. — Thankful that you planned for Teddy to stay the night at your grandmas, you can take solace in the liquor as you watch the sun set over the horizon. You don’t even realize how late it’s gotten until the patio’s automatic light is flicked on, the warm yellow basking you in new light. 

Perched on the very edge of your porch, your legs swing back and forth with little direction, your movements slow and slightly clumsy. You purse your lips, a small grimace flashing across your face as you peer down at the bottle in your hand, watching as the dark liquid swishes inside the glass under your guidance. 

It was self pity that had brought you out here. It was self pity that had made you down half the cheap bottle of a wine you didn't even like. And it was tears of self pity that had dried down on your cheeks. But you had stopped crying now, and you’d stopped drinking too, now you merely existed, just another breathing living organism. Under the stars, you felt small, insignificant, like your problems were nothing against the big world outside and beyond. Perhaps they were. 

You wonder how long it would take for you to get over him this time. — Would it be over in a day? Or would it hurt for years? Finally you understand how he felt when you just walked out on him that night all those years ago. When you yelled for him to leave, when you locked him out of your life and left. And fuck it hurt. 

No, you needed another sip. Just one more, you tell yourself. Bringing the bottle to your lips, you suddenly halt. The squeaking sound of your fence gate makes you freeze. Had it been the wind? Hardly. That gate was both old, rusty and not to mention heavy. A sudden lump in your throat forms, and you’re unable to down a single drop of wine, so you set the bottle down. You don’t even dare look, afraid of what you might see, of who you might see. 

But in the end, you do. The sounds of approaching footsteps fill the silent nightair, and you watch as a tall shadow makes its way up the stoned path to your house, with heavy and slow steps. Finally emerging from the shadows and into the faint glow of the patio lights, you see his face clearly. 

Beomgyu looks like he hasn’t slept in days. The bags under his eyes are prominent and his usually styled blonde hair is everywhere. He doesn’t say anything, hands stuffed into his pockets. His gaze is back to the same cold and indifferent one he’d held at the restaurant when you first met. His tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek before he says, “You shouldn’t be drinking.” 

Following his gaze toward the wine bottle, you scoff. But Beomgyu is persistent. “You can’t hold your liquor, and I don’t want you around my kid drunk.” He puts emphasis on the words, dragging them out, shoving them in your face. Your brows pull together in an angered frown. “You’re here to poke and prod at me over that?” You say, your tone accusing as you get up on wobbly legs, your bare feet now touching the cold glass.

Beomgyu sneers, grabbing ahold of your shoulders as you take a clumsy step forward. “Of course I’m here to nag you about my fucking son, my son that you kept from me.” He spits the sentence out and it becomes clear that he had only come to pick a fight. — His grip on you tightens, fingers digging into your shoulder blades. “And I come here to see you drinking your problems away, running from them like you always fucking have!” 

“Shut up..” Your attempt at telling him off comes out slurred, almost inaudible. And Beomgyu continues. “You’re a fucking coward”, he seethes. “Shut up”, your voice grows higher. “And do you know who has to pay for it?” He huffs out a short laugh, ��Me. Me and everyone else around you.” — “Shut up”, you’re almost pleading with him now. Beomgyu hears none of it. 

“I thought about it”, he says, the already harsh grip around your shoulders only increasing and you wince. “I’ve thought about it for three whole days..” He swallows, his dark eyes searching yours. “And I’ve realized that you’re nothing but a liar who uses people as she pleases-” 

“Shut the fuck up!” 

It takes all of your strength to push him back, to pry his hands from your body as you free yourself of his vice-like grip. You tumble backwards, the back of your knees hitting the porch as you almost fall over, luckily catching yourself just in time. — Beomgyu on the other hand, is watching you with an expression best described as disbelieving and outraged. His hands balling up into fists by his sides, his jaw clenched so hard it looked like it might hurt. 

You don’t let him get another word out, your loud voice slicing through the air. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t lay awake each night, guilt eating away at every single fucking part of me!” The exhale you emit is shaky, your heart palpitating as you gather yourself before continuing. “Do you know how scared I’ve been? Do you have any idea of what it’s like to have a baby all on your own, with no one to help?” 

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you hold his cold gaze. “Have you ever had to book an ultrasound and go all on your own? Have you ever had to stay up until three in the morning, coddling a baby you never asked for, telling him that everything was going to be okay when I didn't know what okay even  felt like!” — Quickly blinking away the fresh tears that threaten to spill down your already stained cheeks, you avert your gaze. “You don’t know anything. You weren’t there.” 

Beomgyu remains silent when you finish. The only thing still confirming his presents was his jagged breathing. You don’t look at him, you don’t think you could, even if you wanted to. 

“I don’t regret what I did.” Your voice is softer now, almost whispering. But you know he’s listening. “I was young, and I was scared.” You shake your head, “I’m not saying I did the right thing but I do not regret it and you cannot make me change my mind. 

Your last statement makes him scoff, his jaw twitching as his eyebrows furrow. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” — “Fine, you wanted to run off, but why didn’t you tell me. Five fucking years why didn’t you tell me?” His voice grows in intensity with each word. You hold your tongue, looking him in the eyes though unable to form a response. “What?” He huffs, his gaze narrowing down on you. When you remain silent he takes a step forward. 

“What?” He’s nearly shouting now. You know he doesn’t mean it, he never does, right? But it still hurts. You open your mouth to defend yourself, ready to tell him just how bad he hurt you. No words come out. — Beomgyu grows visibly frustrated, his hands balling up into fists by his sides. “Don’t fucking look at me like that!” 

“Like what, Beomgyu?” 

The use of his name makes him waver, you hadn’t said it, not once since he returned. And you can tell the gesture only angers him further. — “Like the whole fucking world owes you an apology! You left, you left without a word and you..” He hesitates, swallowing thickly as he regains his composure. “You took my son away from me.” 

“I took your son away from you because you took my life away from me, and I was scared you were going to take his as well!” You’re crying now, unable to stop the tears from flowing down your eyes as you scream at him, hopelessly trying to overpower his sharp words. 

Out of all the things you’d said to him, this was the one that finally seemed to go through as Beomgyu falters backward, his face dropping as his frown deepens. — “What?” This time the word comes out a quiet, uncertain whisper. He looks almost confused. 

“You’re not the only one who got hurt.” Not thinking about how you worded yourself or what you were even saying, you continue, afraid that if you didn’t grasp this opportunity, it would never reappear again. — “You hurt people. And you don’t even realize it. You hurt me.” He opens his mouth as if to speak, you already know what he’s about to say, and you beat him to it. 

“You can’t seriously believe I left you only because of that scandal? Seeing you with another woman on the news hurt sure, but it didn’t hurt as much as the missed calls, the unreplied text messages, the dates you canceled, the anniversaries you forgot and the days you could go without speaking to me.” 

You inhale. 

“You made me feel like a shadow in my own relationship. And I was terrified that you’d do the same to Teddy.” 

You exhale. 

Beomgyu looks as if he’s fighting an inner battle, his gaze flickering between yours and somewhere far off in the distance. “That’s the problem with you”, you say, letting your arms drop to your sides, “I run from my flaws, but you, you don’t even see them.” — “And nothing is ever your fault, is it Beomgyu?” 

The silence that falls over the two of you after that weighed heavier than any you’d ever experienced before. The sky could come crashing down at any moment and it still wouldn’t be able to overpower the ringing sounds of nothing. Under the yellow gleam of the patio lights Beomgyu looks lifeless, his skin had turned a sickly pale and the dark bags under his eyes even more prominent. 

He’s the first to break the quiet. 

“I just..” He begins but quickly tails off, chewing on the inside of his cheek as his gaze drifts toward the grass. “I don’t want you to disappear again.” He looks up at you, his dark eyes suddenly gaining a new emotion, one you hadn’t seen on him ever, a pleading one. — When you don’t reply he lets out a frustrated breath, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “The thought of you disappearing again scares me”, he admits. 

You feel your jaw slacking as your mouth falls open. “It…It does?” You ask, not believing his words. But Beomgyu nods as he takes a step forward, slowly closing the distance between the two of you. “Of course it fucking does”, he exhales, his fingers clenching into fists before unclenching again, as if holding himself back from reaching out. — “Why do you think I kissed you that night? Why the fuck do you think I got out of that cab and followed you to bed?” 

He shakes his head, swallowing thickly, adam’s apple bobbing as he does. You catch the glossy layer of tears in his eyes just as he blinks them away. “It scares me so bad that I…” He hesitates, but only for a moment. “It scares me so bad that I would rather end up hurt in your arms than never seeing you again.” 

“I thought I told you, that night, didn’t I?” He says, biting the inside of his cheek as he searches your face. “Haven’t thought about anyone else.” — “Only you.” You thought it was a drunken confession, something he said in the heat of the moment, you never expected him to… To fully mean it. 

Try as you might but no words come out, no matter how hard you will yourself to say something, anything. Beomgyu doesn’t wait for an answer, instead he reaches for the discarded wine bottle, bringing it to his lips as he takes a large swig. You watch as he swallows, not hesitating for even a second as he downs another gulp, then another. Only when you pry the bottle from his hands does his attention revert back to you. 

“Did you mean it?” You ask, clutching the bottle tightly in one hand as your eyes narrow on his. Beomgyu nods, licking the remaining liquor from his lips. “Every single word of it”, he says. — “Okay”, you sigh. Following his lead as you, too, bring the wine to your lips, letting the red liquid flow down your throat for a brief moment. 

When lowering the bottle once more, you don’t wait before acting, not daring to think your next move through even once, terrified that you would back out if you did. Instead you take a final step forward, closing the small distance between you completely before flinging your arms around his neck, pulling his lips down on yours. 

Beomgyu responds by immediately wrapping his arms around your waist, his hands settling on your hips as he pulls you flush against his chest. The bittersweet aftertaste of wine lingers on his tongue and you’re certain it does on your own. — No words are exchanged, they’re not needed, not when his body is so close to yours. 

He sighs into the kiss, his breath warm in contrast to the cool night air. It doesn’t feel like that night, two weeks ago. There was no lust now, no desire, and no rush. Only the soft sounds of your hearts beating against one another, in tune and perfectly harmonized. It’s the kind of kiss that could go on forever without you even realizing it. The kind of kiss that would make your head spin and your lungs ache as you neglected the need for air. 

You thought you knew everything there was to know about him. But right now, he feels like a completely different person, a person you could really love. Maybe he’d always been like that. Maybe you’d just refused to acknowledge the good, far too focused on the bad. 

You shouldn’t judge something you don’t understand 

It was then it hit you. You didn’t understand Beomgyu at all, and neither did he understand you. The lack of communication is what has led you to where you are right now. All because you were so fixated on the idea of love that you completely forgot what it is actually all about. Understanding. 

Your hand caresses his cheek when you pull back, the gesture is soft, a silent apology. Beomgyu turns his head, placing a gentle kiss on your palm, a silent apology. — “Help me understand”, you whisper as you glance up at him, relieved to find his eyes back to their warm brown. He looks confused, but lets you place your free hand on top of his chest, just above the steady beating of his heart. “In here”, you say, “Let me understand what goes on in here.” 

He smiles, a genuine smile before leaning in to kiss you once more. One of his hands rests on top of yours, and you feel the slight flutter of his chest under the tips of your fingers when you return his kiss. — When he pulls back, he does the same, the hand not clutching yours, reaching up to rest above your heart. Beomgyu remains quiet for another moment, silently listening to the soft pattern of your heartbeat. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they find yours without hesitation. 

“Only if you let me understand yours.” You nod, a timid smile splayed across your lips. — You stay like that for a while, listening to the sounds of each other's heart beats. Knowing that they both beat for the very same reason.  The knowing somehow made it even more special.

It connected you.

READ THE EPILOGUE HERE

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[morose-melodies]

the nameless stowaway | yandere! capitano x reader

summary: while on a ship trying to get to natlan, the captain found a way to pass time; watching you, a stowaway.

content warning: the captain killed someone and that's about it!! (tell me if I missed anything)

for two days and three long nights had the captain been on this ship as it aimlessly navigated the sea.

it started on the second day when the ship went slightly off course. the captain of the ship could not figure out how to get back on course and now, the captain was forced to remain on the ship and slowly get sick of it and everyone on the ship.

besides him, eight other people occupied the ship, not including the captain of the ship... oh, and you were also there.

you were a sneaky stowaway and he only ever caught glances of you at night - watching as you snagged snacks from people's bags and ran back to wherever you had come from.

he didn't mind, nor did he care enough to stop you, that was, as long as you didn't try it on him.

but, tonight was a bit different - instead of stealing from people's bags, you snuck into the galley and shut the door behind yourself. the captain chuckled, you would have a feast tonight.

most of the passengers had felt too sick to eat that morning, so most of the food had been left untouched.

you had eaten all that you could, hoping it would keep you full enough for the next two days before creeping out of the galley. you knew that the captain knew, and considering all you had heard about him, you were afraid that one day he could come and behead you for stealing people's food.

but he hadn't, not yet at least.

you went back to your hiding place, behind a large pile of luggage, and snuggled up in your thin, sort of damp blanket and rested - soon enough, you'd be in natlan.

...

when a storm came, and the waves got violet and rocked the ship - you could not rest behind the luggage, let alone outside. you got up from where you rested, blanket over your shoulder as the cold rain pelted down on your skin.

no one was out; all of them rested in the berth, and you could not enter it since you had snuck onto the ship.

at this point, you were shivering, tumbling, and drenched in rain - seeing no point in your blanket anymore, you tossed it away, as you did, you saw the captain, standing at the door of the berth... exiting it?

you stilled, this was the perfect time for him to kill you, right? he would toss you overboard and no one would notice or even know that he had killed you, maybe, or maybe he would draw his sword and chop you up into little piec-

"I'm sure you must be regretting your decision to sneak onto this ship now, right?" it was an idle conversation or perhaps a threat, was he threatening to tell everyone?

"oh? sorta... but, it'll be fine once we get to natlan."

"I doubt we'll make it to natlan. it seems more likely that we end up back in snezhaya," the captain sighed afterward - he would have to report to the tsaritsa and blame the captain of the ship which seemed all so childish.

"huh? I thought this ship was headed to natlan..."

oh, you looked so very disappointed. the captain shook his head, "that's no longer the case. the captain has no idea where he's headed."

"aren't you the captain?"

"the captain of the ship," he clarified, shrugging his coat from his shoulders and approaching you, placing it over your trembling shoulders, "I'm afraid i cannot make room for you in the berth - you'll have to make do with my coat."

...

and, of course, you made due.

you survived the storm - you might have come down with something but you survived. as you lay in your hiding spot, the large coat over your shoulders, you waited for the passengers to finish their breakfast so you could have the leftovers.

it was a while before you heard the passengers quiet down, and you figured they had split up, leaving the galley, so you got up, leaving the coat behind, and snuck into the galley.

they had hardly left anything behind today.

"hm..." still, you ate whatever was left behind. though it wasn't filling, it was something and you were grateful.

after finishing, you turned to leave but there stood the captain - wait, how long has he been standing there? "have you been watching me?"

"nonsense," he replied with a firm shake of his head, before stepping past you, "I see you haven't changed in your ways?" was he teasing? of course you haven't changed! you were starving and-

the captain set a plate of untouched biscuits and other foods on the counter, "woah... where'd you get those from?" you inched towards the plate, grabbed the biscuit, and ate it.

"it's all leftovers."

"those guys are hogs," you mumbled as you stuffed your face with another biscuit.

and the captain bit back a smile.

...

it was times like these where you doubted if you'd survive - for the last five days, all you could smell was saltwater and humid air, and now, you could smell nothing.

you hadn't bothered to get up for a while now - instead, you remained curled up in the captain's coat, pitying yourself.

perhaps this wasn't worth it...

"stowaway, where are you?"

it was the captain. he had been looking for you for a while now - he was under the assumption that you had fallen overboard but he couldn't be sure since he did not know where you went to hide every day after snagging food.

you didn't want to reply, but found yourself doing so anyway, "'m here."

the captain paused and turned to face the pile of luggage. "have you been hiding here the entire time?"

"yeah..."

you didn't sound well, not at all. the captain pushed the luggage aside and though you groaned and protested, he tugged you out of your hiding spot, his coat still wrapped around you.

"you took no precaution before getting onto the ship, did you?" the captain looked at you - sickly and pale, and sighed. "stay here, don't move an inch," he instructed you before standing and walking off.

first, he ruins your hiding spot, and then he walks off? it was a shame you were too tired to fuss about it.

when the captain came back, he had a warm drink in hand. he crouched down to your level, took your hand, and placed the drink into your hand, "I doubt it'll cure you, but, you're deathly cold, it will surely warm you but I'm afraid this is all i can do to help."

"thank you," you mumbled before sipping at the drink.

while you sipped at your drink, the captain fixed your hiding spot that he had ruined and felt the urge to give you another one of his coats to keep you comfortable, but he resisted.

...

each day, the captain would bring you a warm drink to help your cold clear up, and though he doubted it would work, you were already feeling much better.

you had crawled out of your hiding spot for the first time in a while, the captain's coat over your shoulders and you snuck to the galley.

just as you opened the door, you knew you had messed up - there was a man inside, and he had seen you.

you weakly smiled at the man, as you took a step back while he took steps towards you, "are you the rat that's been stealing all the leftovers?"

"i... um, maybe?"

"and are you the rat that's been stealing from people's luggage?"

"yes, but i'm sorry! i won't do it again, i promise-"

everything you had said was enough to piss the man off and the sight of you wearing the captain's coat only made him angrier.

the man grabbed your upper arm and tugged you along with him, even as you whined and tried to explain yourself, he did not listen.

"look, I'm sorry i won't do it again-"

"i don't wanna hear it from you-"

"I'll take the stowaway from here," it was the captain, once again swooping in and saving you, "good looking out. I'll make sure they cause you no more trouble."

the captain grabbed your arm and tugged you from the man's grip, pulling you along as he walked off, out of the man's sight. "you need to stay put," the captain commented as he brought you back to your hiding spot, "go on. I'll bring you something to eat - I'll do that for you every day, will that keep you out of trouble?"

"you don't have to-"

"I will. now, stay out of trouble."

...

"what'd you do with that stowaway?"

"i did away with them."

"really now?"

"of course. i would not lie."

"good, if you hadn't stopped me that day, i would have done it mysel-"

the man could do nothing but scream as he fell overboard and into the cold water.

soon enough he would die.

this was the preferable way, there was no need for the captain to bloody his sword over something so trivial.

...

"don't you feel hot wearing all of that armor?"

"not particularly."

"what about the mask, isn't that hot?"

"no."

"is that your hair?"

reaching forward, you tangled your fingers in his long black hair, "it is," the captain gently nudged your hand away, "there's no need to touch, though."

as sweet as you were, he had seen you sneeze into your hand moments earlier.

"my bad," you apologized, setting your hand to your side, "do i have to give you your coat back ever?"

"we've been over this, no? i have many other coats, so, keep that one," the captain replied, looking at you and the way your lip twitched at his reply.

"look at that cloud," you pointed above the two of you, and the captain looked up, "it's heart-shaped."

"I see that," he nodded before glancing at you; the way you smiled at a silly cloud was - hm, the captain found himself smiling while looking at you.

odd.

"wait-" you stood up, quickly running towards the railing and pointed ahead, "do you see that?? isn't that land??"

the captain also stood and looked to where you were pointing, and indeed, it was land. "you have a keen eye," the captain looked at you, at the way you grinned, at the way you held yourself, and dare he say he would miss you.

"ohmigosh!!" you cheered, leaning further over the railing to see where you were going... you saw snow and your shoulders dropped, "no way..."

the captain chuckled, looking at you once more, "this was all such an inconvenience," but, in a way, it felt worth it; after all, he was able to meet you.

"you were pretty cool, thanks for the coat... and um, thank you for not throwing me overboard or something," you looked up at the captain to see he was already looking at you.

"I wouldn't dream of harming you," the captain assured you and though you couldn't see it, he had hearts in his eyes as he looked at you.

he did not want this ship to reach snezhnaya - he preferred things stay the way they were but he knew that couldn't happen.

the captain was patient; he could wait. a person like you wouldn't give up on their dreams so easily.

[genericpuff]

I'm honestly amazed by how well you can imitate the LO S3 art style! Have you always been good at this sort of thing or is it a skill you developed due to your work as a tattoo artist?

ahhh thank you, but ima let you in on a little trade secret -

it's literally just referencing LMAO which is a valuable skillset to have! but one that I think a lot of folks tend to overlook because they think "learning to draw" means "I need to be able to draw everything perfectly from imagination!" Which sure, learning how to draw things without needing references might be cool, but it's ultimately not the sole defining feature of a "good artist" and I think there's frankly way too much emphasis put on "drawing without references" these days because it creates this unrealistic expectation of what an artist is. Referencing is part of the process! It's important! And it's a valuable skill to have so that you can actually grow your skills beyond your own limits! Referencing is as important to the process of creating art as research is to the process of writing, you can only produce so much new stuff if you're not taking in new stuff alongside it.

Though I use this skill a lot in tattooing as well, it's mostly rooted in my animation schooling which broke me out of the habit of drawing purely from imagination and taught me how to properly reference other material for educational purposes.

And I'm sure there are people in audience right now gasping at the fact that I simply cropped a bunch of different shots of Minthe from S3 and rearranged them like some surgical madman playing with body parts-

-but this is like, the actual majority of the process when it comes to learning other art styles and this process is taught as a skill in a lot of art schools because it forces you to draw what's there rather than what you think is there. This is the basis of master studies, to learn the techniques of other artists by trying to mimic them as closely as possible. Don't know what tools that artist used specifically? Try to recreate the work anyways with your best guess. Even if you only get close but not perfect, you'll still likely learn a lot along the way and may even develop some brand NEW techniques that weren't present in the original work you're studying from.

Imagination is necessary to the creative process, but it's only part of that process, you can't suddenly learn how to draw the way other artists draw through imagination alone because your imagination is limited purely by your own lived experiences. Our brains don't come pre-installed with these skills, they can't just magically unlock the capability to "do the thing". Just like how we have to learn to follow recipes as a means to becoming a baker or learn to read the alphabet to learn how to read and write, we have to learn how to draw what we see and reference the material around us if we truly want to expand our own innermost knowledge which will allow us to draw from imagination.

Here are some other examples of studies I've done, such as my attempts to learn the art style of The Doctor Foxglove Show:

As well as a background study from S1 of LO:

And of course here are a handful of the shitloads of studies I've done to try and "figure out" how to draw Hades and Persephone from S1 of LO:

Aaaand just for the fun of it, here are some completely non-LO studies, like the ones I did of Kazuma Koda's background work and Akihiko Yoshida's character designs for Nier: Automata:

And this sorta rotoscoped ??? animatic of Mitsuhiro doing the opening jig for Still Feel by Half Alive which is 100% not done and probably never will be LOL

I'm always progressively doing studies of both LO and other media in this way so that I can update my knowledge and continue to improve my skillset.

Though, despite my best efforts to mimic the original creator's style, works like Rekindled will always have my own stylizations present, as that's just an inevitable consequence of it being made by myself and Banshriek (and the fact that we just refuse to draw worse to look more like LO because jfc so much of LO's original art, even the stuff we love, is rooted in Rachel's trial and errors lmao), but that's a feature, not a bug :') <3

So the answer is yes, the Minthe S3 redraw was done through skills I developed over time, though not necessarily through tattooing, simply through learning how to actually practice properly beyond "drawing a lot". And you can too! Draw lots, but also remember that your brain isn't naturally just going to "get better" at whatever you're trying to achieve just because you really want to achieve it. I try to avoid the mantra of "just practice" because it oversimplifies what's truly necessary to learning - having something to learn from outside of your own imagination. If you don't learn how to practice properly, then you'll just wind up repeating the same mistakes and reinforcing the same bad habits over and over again.

All that's to say, if you want to learn how to draw like a certain artist, try and recreate their art for yourself ;0 (but like also please for the love of god remember that it's for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, I shouldn't have to tell y'all not to copy directly off other artists' work for your own because that's just deadass stealing lmao) I know this enters the ethical dilemma of tracing, and whether or not it's a "valid" way to learn, but there's a lot of virtue in learning through referencing other artists and building new skills through them. I'm sure folks will argue that it's a 'crutch' or 'training wheels', but that's all often being touted from the perspective that crutches and training wheels... are automatically bad things and aren't meant to help people ?

Like obviously if you want to create your own thing that isn't purely "living in the shadow" of the works that inspired you, you WILL have to make that leap into the unknown. But that leap's a lot less scary to make when you have a parachute.

[the-dragon-girl-27]

Remember those other 3 times I turned sekai characters into dinos (L/N MMJ VBS) I'm back with more of that crap i know Wanshow fans just looove their AUs so maybe this will appeal to a whole 3 people instead of 2 people this time

explanation for my picks below the cut

Tsukasa is a Styracosaurus because I made Saki a Stellosaurus which is another ceratopsian and also its frill is like vaguely star shaped kinda sorta not really

I don't have much to say about him so can i just mention how awful that Stellasaurus drawing is.

Yeah only recently did i start figuring out how the fuck to draw decent ceratopsians I am so sorry (the struggle is real i almost accidentally gave tsukasa 2 left feet here i swear i know what i'm doing)

I should redo that Saki at some point, girl deserves so much better than that wonkey crap. speaking of ceratopsians i opted out of giving him protofeathers unlike Saki idk they just didn't look right on him you can kinda go either way with most ceratopsians so i just do it when the vibe fits and don't when the vibe doesn't fit

Rui is a Troodon because Troodons are often associated with intelligence because they have the biggest brain to skull ratio of any dino, there's kinda no real way to know how intelligent dinos were but troodon just has the reputation of the smart dinosaur and people often depict them using tools like how crows do and that's like kinda like how rui does robot stuff, he also just fits the raptor shape sorta i feel like raptors have that sorta look to them that is like a similar vibe to the one Rui has, even tho Rui is the tallest character in sekai I feel like he's a mid sized dinosaur, does that make sense? no, but it does to me and i make the rules he's also 100% a feathered dino so it fits

Speaking of Troodon all you 2 paleo nerds reading this are getting war flashbacks from the name Troodon because Troodon itself has a interesting history of being a "wastebasket taxon" which is nerd talk for "scientists just threw a bunch of vaguely similar animals into this one category and didn't consider that maybe this was like 5 different animals and what would be the long term consequences of doing that" yes this is a thing that has happened enough times that there is a word for it

that shit still as of now isn't sorted out I don't think, I at least based my Troodon off the big one from Alaska that literally does not have a fucking name and is just like "the Alaska Troodon". I feel like the size fits and imma be real its the Troodon you see everywhere in media these days because its big and cool and it lived with Pachyrhinosaurus and Nanuqsaurus and also people like it cuz drawing dinosaurs in the snow is fucking awesome (boom i just tricked you into learning paleontology history)

Emu is an Archeopteryx because Emu is supposed to be like a phoenix and Archeopteryx could probably fly or glide or smth it's general considered like "the first bird" so like yeah (now that i think about it i could've made her pyroraptor cuz of the name but also she doesn't fit the vibes of a raptor at all i guess pyroraptor has the whole fire bird thing from its name) Emu would also be a small feathered dinosaur for sure so it fits in that sense too.

Nene is a Stegosaurus because the plates kinda look like her hair thing and her outfit in general and i feel like nene would have those tail spikes for some reason idk it just fits her energy, she'd def be a herbivore as well i feel. Also i personally just associate stegosaurus with the color green personally idk why (at first i was thinking she would be iguanodon because that's another dinosaur that's green in my head but she has like nothing in common with iguanodon lmao)

I guess nenerobo would be an Ankylosaurus than because that would like probably be the logical robot version of a stegosaurus maybe idk would nenerobo exist in this universe, you decide idk

i guess next one is that last one unless i wanna redo the vocaloids in this style or redraw saki at some point or whatever see you whenever that happens in however long it takes

[asherashedwings]

FNF CONNECTED UNIVERSE LINE UP Part 2: The Girlfriends

Yippee, new line up. Didn't have as much trouble on this one either.

Idk how much yapping I'll be doing, since I don't really know how much I have to talk about.

But still

Close ups and yapping under the cut

Alternate Universe Girlfriends

So just like with the Boyfriends, all these Girlfriends are technically all the same person, just from different universes. So I tried some elements of their designs consistent between them all, which stem from my base game Girlfriend design.

Unlike BF, there's a good bit more to talk about with GF since I draw her pretty different compared to her in-game design. The main thing is her more apparent demonic traits, like her horns, tail, and purple splotches. The explanation for this, in universe, is that she doesn't have the full power to cloak herself yet. See, her and her family are "music demons", which gain their power by leeching from music, usually a particular genre. GF hasn't really decided what genre to leech from yet, so she isn't as powerful as she could be. She also has a coat cuz uhhh. Silly. Things like her demonic traits and her coat (Or something of similar shape like a feather boa) would be the things to connect all the AU GFs.

Moving on, we have Herself, who I was looking forward to drawing the moment I started this line up cuz I had just. Such a clear vision of her in my head. Although it was a struggle to put that vision on paper.

It's hard to put the exact vision into words, but it's like having her form become less defined as it goes downwards, until it's just the wispy silhouette of her hair. There's a certain balance you have to strike with the wispy nature of her form and the trademark Girlfriend hair shapes, and that's what ended up being the biggest struggle. Once I figured that out though, it was pretty simple. Shapes were the most important thing since her coloring is pretty monochromatic. Not counting the black, this design only utilizes two different colors, both being shades of red. Her design includes a feather boa instead of a jacket, mainly cuz I completely forgot about that rule when I got to her and the boa was a lot easier to add than a jacket. It also makes an interesting shape I think.

Next is Funkadelix, and she really wasn't too hard. The main thing was giving her traits from my main GF design, which wasn't hard at all. For her horns I referenced her Halloween attire. Her tail too, sorta, but I mainly just referenced the thinness of it.

There isn't all too much to say about MDM. There wasn't a lot to change or add. Main addition was the boa, which was admittedly kinda fun to draw in my style for that AU.

Now onto Mix. If you saw my post yesterday about the doodle/sketch pile for this line up, you might've seen a design concept I did for Mommy Mearest, and that was literally just for Mix's design. Except it was virtually pointless cuz I didn't really include any aspects of my MMM into my Mix design. It's fine though, I think she turned out fine. Might take another pass at her in the future when I ACTUALLY have my MMM design figured out.

Lastly for this section, HD. I actually had quite a bit of fun drawing her. Don't really got much to say about her though. I'm pretty sure she was the first AU GF I gave a boa, so she's the one that started that. It was originally going to be all white, but my good good friend @minxtheeenby suggested it fading into black, and I really like how it turned out.

"Side" GFs

So first is Belladonn (B-Side). I know I wanted her to appear more sophisticated. That's just always how I imagined her, even back well the mod was still a simple recolor remix mod. There's also something so fun about classy characters that are also dangerous. We need more regal women that carry around bats full of nails. I had a lot of trouble nailing (pun not intended) her hair. The main thing that sets it apart from the traditional GF cut is her side bang (idk hair terms, I think that's what it is), but besides that, not much else. So I had to mess with it a bunch to get something I liked.

Amelia's (D-Side) design was pretty straight forward. The main thing was just adding a few more details to spice it up a bit. Which just happened to be buttons on her jacket and lil heart patterns on her knees. I also wanted her to be short. Cuz idk, she gives short vibes. A lil idea for her that isn't showcased here is that I imagine her pigtail buns actually turn into her horns when she is in her demon form. (Bad doodle, but just to show the concept:)

Lizzy (G-Side) was kinda fun to come up with ideas for. Most of her design is taken from the fake teasers for the mod, cuz silly. But because her mom is some sort of light spirit.. thing, I wanted to mix that in somehow too. So that's where the white highlights on her horns, hair, and tail come from, but that's not all it added.

She also has pretty funky eyes, that are somewhat inspired by Shara Ishvalda's eyes

Also, in that doodle, I imagine all of her hair is floating, I just. Didn't feel like drawing her pigtails cuz I mainly wanted to highlight the eye thing.

The New Yorkers

With Shaya, I mainly added a bit of stuff to her outfit, since the original is too simple with my design style. I basically just added a bat wing shape motif to her design. Cuz. Cuz vampire. This is also present in her ear shape cuz I didn't want them to JUST be pointed, cuz I wanted her to stand out a bit more from the demon girls. So different ear shape.

I don't really know how much Azalea (Neo) changed. I know I changed her hair a bit (to further differentiate her from GF) and I altered her top a bit but I THINK that's it. I did change her and her family's lore a bit though. Cuz I made them robots. THATS RIGHT, THIS IS WHO I WAS TALKING ABOUT WHEN I WAS TALKING ABOUT MAKING ONE OF THE GIRLFRIENDS A ROBOT. Azalea's pretty android-esc, but I imagine her parents are just full on robots. I can't wait to design them. But yeah, I imagine Azalea is much more human looking because she just wants to be part of human society and her parents love her so they got her the more human looking body so she could live out her dream. We love supportive parents *explosion emoji* *explosion emoji* *explosion emoji*

Not much to say about Grace. I just gave her a bit of melanin cuz apparently she's mixed. That's all I really changed tho.

I don't think I changed Judith MUCH. Her face is a bit more. Wolf-like? Idk. I also TOTALLY didn't reference Clawdeen Wolf's hair when designing her. Totally not.

Vikki (Minus) is grouped with the New Yorkers cuz. There's only one of her. Unlike the Minus BFs. I just made her a lil more goth, since people literally call her "Goth GF". Also made her hair a bit more blocky. cuz. cuz the minus symbol. Shape *sparkle emoji*

Who the Fuck Knows (Miscellaneous)

So starting with Cherry (Swappin'), in this AU she's actually GF's younger sister. She also already has a music genre to leech from (rap), so she's better at concealing herself. Not much else to say, I did not change her design much.

Nothing much to say about Barbara either, I barely changed her.

Now Astra (Starcatcher) was fun. While I was initially sketching her, I realized that both her alien species and the Alien Hominids have the same style of classic antennae. So I decided "Huh, what if their species are related." So I did that. Not much else to touch on besides that.

Tootsie belongs to @minxtheeenby and is part of their Sunday Night Snackin' AU. I drew her with her wings and tail out, which aren't usually out, but uh. Silly.

Belletrix didn't really change as much as I was expecting her too. The main thing was just. Making her an imp that could exist in the Hellaverse. Which was pretty easy. And then I just made shit up when it came to her outfit cuz it was kinda hard what was going on with that in the first place.

Next is Gabriella, YIPPEE. So she's the GF from Plants vs. Rappers. Vastly different appearance wise though, cuz, yknow. Can't have her look too similar to GF. And just like I did with Dennis, I decided to base her on another zombie from Neon Mixtape Tour: The Glitter Zombie

Idk, I thought it'd be cutie patootie. And it was. I really like how she turned out. I got lazy when it came to her flag, I did not feel like drawing that shit.

Last but not least is Ashley, the GF from my own AU. Which does not have a name. Idk, it's mainly just an excuse for me to draw anthro Monster Hunter monsters. But yeah, she's an intersex Leostra (Gender neutral term for the Teostra/Lunastra species that @sleepymushrxxm came up with) and I love her.

That's all I got. Gonna hopefully start working on the Pico's here soon.

[leoruby-draws]

Kid Villains, pt 2.

Decided to post more kiddy villains, bit of a sequel to this. First up is Kitten, Mothman's bratty daughter from the 2003 teen titan cartoon:

Modeled her costume after the Rosy Maple Moth, while there are species of moths with the name kitten on them I figured she would prefer a pink outfit.

Thought it'd be kinda cool for her to be a villain for the batkids, she's already evil so why not. I don't imagine her to be all that talented at the job tho she would still be very dangerous if you underestimate her. I think she would work particularly well against Steph, being that Mothman started as a villain for Barbara (Cass might be too high level for her tbh).

Here's some more doodles:

Here's my Scarecrow's sidekick oc, I should probably name her something like Rag Doll or Raggedy Scream maybe? The three boys are oc's modeled after the Terrible Trio, criminals who commit crimes wearing animal masks. Their identities change a lot over continuities, so these kids are probably aspiring to be the next incarnation of this group.

Here's another random oc, a sidekick for White Rabbit (Jaina Hudson). Thought it'd be funny if it was just a kid in a silly rabbit suit, like what the kid wore in that movie, A Christmas Story. I'm not sure on what his personality should be. Maybe someone genuinely nice, a cheerful, polite boy who likes to hand people bombs (unintentionally dangerous) or maybe someone pretending to be nice but is actually malicious. Whatever's funnier I suppose.

Here's some characters inspired by the Super Friends enemies, the Super Foes. You'd see some of them return for the Robins 2021 mini, except for Toy Boy. Giggles and Guffaw are newer, only appearing in the mini.

I messed with their designs a bit to make them more unique looking. Honeysuckle for example was shown with either red or brown hair but I gave her a sorta dark maroon, thought it contrasted well with her green outfit. Honeysuckle btw, is older than the rest, and is more of an enemy to Dick and Barbara, tho her teenage self has no problem attacking the younger sibs.

Also Giggles and Guffaw might look a little similar to a certain anime starring a group of sextuplets, just being a little funny there. I gave these kids some made up names, mostly taken from whatever writer created them. Couple of them worked out pretty well actually, like Bridwell (well, spring, stream) and Estrada (Road).

This next one is a character from the 2004 cartoon The Batman, which I never actually watched but I did see commercials of. His name is Prank ( Donnie ?), a protege of the Joker. He wasn't evil enough to stick it out, but I gotta say I just loved his costume (esp how the jacket resembles Robins coat a bit). Made up a last name for him, just a random one from searching up famous clowns.

Being Barbara's peer, he's also more of a antagonist for the older kids, decided he and Honeysuckle should friends. I kinda want to use them as a sorta contrast to Babs and Dick, that could be fun to do. Also look at baby Dick, I don't draw him enough at this age.

Speaking of Barbara, I've been going back and forth between having her start out as either 12 or 16. All the other kids start out really young, so it makes sense for Babs to do so as well. But I kinda like the thought of her starting out much older, makes her more unique among the batkids (in pre-crisis she became Batgirl in like her 20s btw, cool huh?)

More various rivals for the kids to fight, excluding my oc Pink Rabbit, all of them more antagonists for the kids themselves rather sidekicks of the villains that Batman fights.

Here's Jason and Steph torturing poor little Enigma, who would be considered the bad guy here?

Here's some more proteges, Holly probably exists in this world, she's a bit too old for all this nonsense tho. Kitten is also a Super Foes member and was in Robins 2021 as well, she's been shown to be a sidekick to the Cheetah and Catwoman. Maybe she's just likes to attach herself to any cat-themed villain.

Crazy Quilt is more of an enemy to Robin than Batman, plus he has his own legacy in Crazy Quilt II, so obviously I had to include them. I wonder what name should I give the younger one, Duvet? Silly Blankie? idk

Lastly here's Earth 3(?) Jason Todd as Talon II paying a visit to the Training Wheels universe, seems like hes a bit of a crybaby. I don't think we've seen a earth 3 variant of Jason, so I'm just making up my own version of him. Wonder why he seems so nervous...

Anyways!! That was a lot, hope you liked all that!

[danpuff-ao3]

SNARRY FOR BEGINNERS

Are you a bit Snarry curious, but also sorta wary and unsure where to start? Good news: I have some recs for you!

Snarry is a tricky ship for some folks. All of its most problematic themes are what draw me in personally, but that's not to say there aren't some safe places to start for a newcomer!

What I've chosen are:

Nothing too long, so you can get a little taste to see how you feel. So I'm looking at 50k or under.

Nothing "problematic" or as few "problematic" themes as I can get. No underage. No power imbalance. No consent issues. (...or at least nothing egregious haha.)

Works that also maintain some integrity to Harry and Severus' individual characters, and the tension between them. If I play it too safe it won't feel properly Snarry to me! Half the fun is the tension between them, so we must keep that!

So...If you wanna check some out, keep reading!

An Awkward Customer

by AnyaElizabeth. Rated: E. Words: 10,768. Postwar. EWE. Romance. Humor.

Snape can't figure out why Potter is hanging around his shop.

Why Read? A nice rom-com based on the prompt: "Harry makes a bet with someone that he could seduce anyone if he put his mind to it, and that someone selected for him is Snape, naturally." Severus owns an apothecary so we get some nice flirting at the workplace!

a scratch for every itch

by bleedcolor (@bleedcolor.) Rated: T. Words: 11,478. Fluff & humor. Magical maladies. Friends to idiots in love. Romance.

Severus Snape is an itch that Harry just can't scratch.

Why Read? Surely fluff is a safe place to start! And as a person who isn't often drawn to fluff, this is one I love, and is a comfort read of mine. Very sweet and silly and a great place to dip your toes in!

Dumbledore's Folly

by Dementordelta. Rated: M. Words: 47,446. Romance. Courtship. Oldie but a goodie!

Snape must court Harry according to wizarding traditions.

Why Read? I've reread this fic countless times over the years and it's still such a fun read. If you like arranged marriage/courtship fics, this is the one for you!

The Interrupted Kiss

by emynn. Rated: E. Words: 24,291. Postwar. Romance. Hurt/comfort. Mystery.

Once upon a time, Severus Snape shared a kiss with Harry Potter. Then Harry had disappeared after killing the Dark Lord, leaving Severus the reluctant darling of the Wizarding world. When Dumbledore insists on throwing a ball in Severus’s honour, Severus is convinced the world has gone completely mad. But when he comes across an ashy-faced young man whose half-answers about his identity haunt his every thought, Severus realizes that a ball might be the least of his worries.

Why Read? What safer place to start than a fairytale? If we ignore that most original fairytales are pretty effed up, actually. This is a Cinderella-inspired work. Severus is the Prince (naturally), and Harry is the wandmaker (cool career, right??) who attracts many cute animals! (He does not sing to them, though; what a shame!)

This Time of Ours

by emynn. Rated: E. Words: 35,442. Time travel. Hurt/comfort. Romance & drama.

Severus Snape wasn’t supposed to die. Neither was Harry Potter.

Why Read? Emynn has plenty of great Snarry fics, which is why you're getting 2 recs! We start with some fun snarking, move onto sweet bonding, and then...second chances! Very light, enjoyable read.

On the Deficencies of Translation Spells

by LilaDiurne (@liladiurne.) Rated: E. Words: 41,130. Getting together. Magical theory. Professor Potter & Professor Snape. Beaubatons. Pining. Light angst. Minor Harry/others.

Divorced, single, and free, Harry lives a completely unapologetic life in Paris. Between casual hook-ups and an easy, comfortable job, he likes to think he is as close to happiness as he'll ever be. And when he gets offered a teaching job at the prestigious Académie Beauxbâtons, he thinks he may have found exactly what was missing. But Harry is thoroughly unprepared for what he finds there - a familiar face that's been haunting his dreams for six years.

Why read? It's very Harry-centric. It's Harry's POV, and very about Harry and his journey as he moves to a new place, in a new phase of his life, and settles in. There's an existing connection and attraction between Harry and Severus, and one that unfolds so sensually and beautifully. Harry's very much an adult and mature and has lived a lot of life when he and Severus reunite.

Rapture

by mia_ugly (@mia-ugly.) Rated: E. Words: 48,123. Time travel. Romance.

Snape sees the man, for the first time, on his twenty-fifth birthday.

Why Read? It's a classic! It is very beloved in the community for good reason. Gorgeous writing. The relationship develops so naturally, and the pure emotion will knock your socks off. Potentially the best place to start for Snarry. I'm not a big fan of time travel, but I love this fic!

Revealed, Gently

by sarkysue. Rated: T. Words: 22,243. Postwar. Romance. Humor.

Snape isn’t dead, he’s back at Hogwarts and in need of an assistant. Coincidently, Harry is hanging around Hogwarts, reluctant to move on with his life. Cue sniping and snarking, tears and laughter and, possibly, love.

Why Read? It's fun. It's cute. It's a bit silly. It makes great use of how not easy it would be for these two, and having a blast with it! There is arguably a power imbalance what with Harry being Snape's teaching assistant, but it doesn't really feel like much of one. It's only a great opportunity to force these 2 to hang out long enough to fall in love!

The Sleeping Prince

by who_la_hoop. Rated: T. Words: 42,758. Postwar. Deaging. 8th year.

It's hard to ignore your past — and impossible to do so when you can't remember your future. But a meddlesome portrait, a dragon with an ancient grudge and true love's kiss teach an unlikely Prince that a regrettable past doesn't have to mean an unhappy ending.

Why Read? While probably the most questionable on the list, it's still fairly tame. Student Harry and his developing feelings for Student Severus, who is deaged postwar. It feels very much like a feel good teenage romance, wherein the characters very much act their age, awkwardness and all! The only caveat being things change a bit at the end, but there's no underage and it is rated Teen, to be fair!

The Beating of This Fragile Heart

by Writcraft (@writcraft.) Rated: E. Words: 33,146. Hurt/comfort. Fluff & angst. Serious Injury. Romance.

After the war, the last thing Severus Snape needs is the memory of a fleeting wartime kiss and a very persistent Harry Potter thwarting his plans to live a peaceful and solitary life. It’s only when Harry’s life is endangered that Severus is finally forced to confront his feelings head on.

Why Read? If you're coming from Drarry, you might be familiar with Writ's works! They've written plenty for drarry and some rare pair works, and they are a fantastic storyteller. This fic in particular is very romantic. Full of hesitancy and insecurity, and seeing how the relationship begins and how it unfolds and changes (for the better) when Severus is forced to deal with his issues. It's quite a journey but so full of love from start to finish and it's just so lovely and full of feels and one I return to again and again.

[knight-a3]

Hazbin Sketchbook Tour part 3

Masterpost

I started some preliminary sketches of Charlie to get a feel for her. I wasn't exactly happy with them. I did like how Alastor turned out in the dancing one, just...not the rest of it.

Before going back to Charlie, I had a couple ideas for a Vaggie redesign I wanted to sketch out. She'll go through a few minor tweaks over time, but overall not bad for a first pass. (There's also a stray Emily)

This is when I started seriously redesigning everyone. I would search up other people's redesigns for inspiration, then move on from there.

More design notes under the cut, and a couple fun Bible facts!

Vaggie: First, I doubled down on the moth theming. I wanted it to be more obvious than it is in canon. It also serves to show that Hell is corrupted, and it makes everyone more inhuman. All the angels will look more human, because "Biblically accurate angels" is not actually all that accurate. After she Falls, she becomes more moth-like, and is not truly an angel anymore.

[I've got this whole idea concerning the blood colors of the various groups. Maybe I should make a dedicated post to explain, but here's the rundown: There are three main groups: Hellborn, Earthborn, and Heavenborn. Hellborn have black blood, and Heavenborn have a glowing white. Earthborn have 3 subgroups: Living, Sinner, and Saint(aka winner). While alive, Earthborn have red. After death, the color depends on if they Fall or Ascend. Fallen Earthborn become Sinners and the blood darkens to purple. Ascended Earthborn become Saints and it lightens into golden yellow. When a Saint Falls, it darkens to purple. When a Heavenborn falls, it darkens to orange. Ascended Sinners will gradually lighten to yellow(albeit it won't ever be quite as bright as the other Saints). Hellborn cannot Ascend.]

All that to say that Vaggie does not have pure angel blood anymore. And I'm trying to decide if the Exorcists are Heavenborn or Earthborn. I'm honestly favoring Earthborn right now, since that's what Adam qualifies as.

Even when she gets her wings back, Vaggie's form is still corrupted and they come back as moth wings, to fit her theming. I wanted to get her long hair out of the way of her wings, and figured that since her hair is sorta moth themed anyway, why not make them the same thing. It works cuz...magic. I also really do not like the floating X over her eye, so I made it a broken eye spot instead.

Charlie: I knew I wanted more goat themes. So the ears were an obvious place to start. I also made her ponytail to look like a goat tail. But I saw a few designs that gave her snake hair and I thought it was great. But I didn't want to draw so many and decided to just give her one. Then named him Hugh. Short for Hubris aka Pride. I designed the Morningstar family around the goat and snake themes, where Charlie gets the goat traits from Lucifer, and the Snake traits from Lilith.

Lucifer: Canon Lucifer has way too many different design motifs. The Biblical Devil is associated with snakes and goats, so I wanted to narrow down on those rather than the forbidden fruit(which is never confirmed to be an actual apple, by the way) or ducks. He can still likes duck, but it doesn't go further than that. Since canon Lucifer is not exactly evil like the Biblical version, I decided it would be thematically appropriate to have his Fall turn him into a scapegoat, of sorts. Which would also mean that Lucifer is not the True Devil. The real Evil is the darkness trapped in the abyss(should I call it Abyss?). Lucifer, as a Fallen Angel, actually created Hell to prevent souls from getting lost in the abyss. So as bad as Hell is, it's actually a relatively good thing. Oh, and he lost his wings during his Fall. (Fun facts: the Devil isn't actually called Lucifer in the Bible, that was a translation quirk basically referring to the fall of the Babylonian king. Similarly, the number 666 probably refers to Roman Emperor Nero)

Lilith: Because I committed to Lucifer as a goat, but still wanted to implement the snake theme, I gave it to Lilith. I wanted to give her snake hair, but also maintain the flow of her long hair. So I decided to give her 7 snakes, each to represent one of the deadly sins. The top one represents pride. They're all named, like Charlie's.

Pride=Vani(Vanity), Greed=Ava(Avarice), Lust=Libby(Libido), Envy=Desi(Desire), Gluttony=Tony(Gluttony), Wrath=Irene(Ire), and Sloth=Sloth(...)

Overall, I haven't fully decided what I want to do with Lilith. It would probably help if we had more canon info on her. Is she secretly an antagonist? Or is there something else going on? Regardless, I enjoyed designing her.

I had this whole tangent about the mythological origins of Lilith, and how she's not actually a biblical character at all. It got too long winded so I cut it. But basically, liliths were a type of demon in Middle East/Mesopotamian cultures. Then a satirical Jewish story written in the medieval era made Lilith Adam's first wife, then she ran off with the Great Demon and started having 100 demon babies a day. She had to promise three angels that she wouldn't hurt any human newborns if they had a special amulet. She was associated with seduction and child-killing. She wasn't a feminist figure until the 1970s. She was just evil before that. Read HERE if you want more info about it.

[wazzappp]

Alrighty my dudes buckle up

GHOST RIDER D&D AU

also WOE. ART STYLE CHANGE BE UPON YE.

First things first thank you to my beloved mutual @moosemonstrous, who was basically the brains behind the operation I basically just wanted an excuse to draw tiefling Robbie and then got smacked in the face with an awesome story way beyond what I had ever thought of with KILLER fucking lore to match <3.

While I usually like to start with Robbie when introducing an AU, we're going to unfortunately have to start with Eli. A man who fucked up so monumentally that the kinda sorta god he's supposed to be serving went 'Bitch??? How about NO.' and humbled him faster than my DM can say 'roll perception'.

Ok I'm getting ahead of myself. Eli is pretty much the same personality wise as he is in canon. Insecure and desperate for power/control. He grew up surviving with Beto by doing jobs for the Myriad crime syndicate. Somewhere along the way he started serving his patron, Desirat, the twilight phoenix, in exchange for her power.

Im just going to directly quote what moose said about Desirat cause its phrased WONDERFULLY:

"Desirat, The Twilight Phoenix - companion and mount of Asmodeus during an ancient war, was torn from her master and captured by uppity mages. They were eventually killed, but she remained chained under a mountain, creating weird thermal phenomena in the area. Her sanity fractured in isolation so she thinks herself divine, and she lends through dreams and visions to those who 'carry a seed of fiery vengeance'. She now speaks to the minds of those who lie spurned and angry at night, calling them to unlock their inner flame and let Desirat aid them in their vengeance."

Desirat chose Eli as her champion to free her. She believed his faults would make him easy to manipulate for her purposes.

But eventually Beto wanted to settle down, and Eli refused to (to quote moose) 'Stop that warlock bullshit that EVERYONE SAID will get him in trouble'. And the brothers separate. During that time, Eli gets it in his head that he can steal more power from her by becoming a Litch. Great! In order to become a Litch he needs to have the most important person to him engage in a willing life sacrifice. Not great.

So he finds Beto and tries to get him to oblige to his sacrifice, and while there might have been a time where Beto might have laid down his life for his brother, he wont anymore. He has a family now. People who rely on him who AREN'T Eli. Unfortunatly, Eli is PISSED by this and kills Beto even though he isn't a willing sacrifice. Eli figures 'Whose really gonna care? A life is a life right?'

DESIRAT cares. She basically obliterates Eli on the spot and stores his lifeforce for later purposes.

(all stat sheets curtosy of the great Moose. Also I feel obligated to mention there was a scary moment during the art process where Eli looked like a beautiful butch lesbian. Horrifying.)

After Eli's spiritual, physical, and magical bitch slap, Desirat starts looking down his bloodline for a NEW champion. Lucky her, Robbie is RIGHT THERE. Protective of his brother, a strong sense of justice even from a young age, a hatred of when things aren't fair; he's PERFECT. She has plans for this one. Eli was a good test run. But she has IMPROVEMENTS planned for Robbie.

So Desirat waits until Robbie is old enough and strong enough to serve her purposes. In that time, Julianna goes out adventuring to get more coin so she can pay for Gabe's treatments of Greater Restoration and just. General food and water and general supplies. But she doesn't come back. She was responsible though and hired someone who was willing to take what she could offer to take care of the boys. Gabe still believes that she's still out there and trying to come back to them. Robbie thinks she's either bailed on them for a life of adventure or dead.

Around when Robbie turns 18, Desirat puts her plans into effect. Seeing as tieflings carry innate magical abilities (most commonly thaumaturgy, hellish rebuke, and darkness) it would be far more advantageous for her champion to be a tiefling than human. In the span of about 4 months, Robbie goes through a rather drastic transformation.

His fingernails harden, then blacken, then sharpen. Awful pressure builds in his skull that is only relived when the beginnings of horns break through his skin. A similar process begins with a lump forming at his tail bone and eventually bursting out into a long pointed tail. His canine teeth fall out and grow back in sharper and longer. His eyes cloud over to black and yellow, all the while his skin reddens and forms hard ridges on his arms, ribs and spine.

To say this is disorienting and painful is an understatement. Not to mention how it changes how the other people around the village look at him (not to mention how it changes how he looks at himself). Even though the stigma around tieflings isn't as strong as it once was, it eventually causes Robbie to be out of a job. So he decides to sell the house, pack up his things, prepare schooling money for his brother and move to the city where more opportunities will hopefully await.

GABE!!! THE LITTLE ADHGH. Idk why but I got extreme cute aggression when drawing this version of him fdjkslaf.

Gabe still has CP like he does in canon, but with the magical advantages of ✨Greater Restoration✨ he can generally function pretty well. He still gets tired sometimes though, so he carries around a walking staff as an aid just in case he needs one (also he can go whack whack. at least thats what Robbie tells him when he gets a little self conscious carrying it around).

Robbie has saved up enough money for Gabe to get a months worth of schooling at the Dawn Father Chantry in the city so he can learn to cast Greater Restoration on himself. Gabe's recent growth spurt has been causing him to need more and more frequent healings, and the Chantry in their home village of Hill Rock has been less and less obliging as of late (partially due to Robbies recent uh... condition. not that anyone would dare say it to his face of course).

Some extra fun doodles with expressions and thinking about how Desirat might look and interact with Robbie. I love when gods have a kind of twisted love for their special chosen people (plus some fun transformation horror cause its ✨me✨ were talking about what did you expect).

Also I really REALLY liked that top left sketch and got the rendering itch so I had some fun and painted it in.

Theres a whole fuckin. Second post to this au all lined up cause Moose when HAM on this. But its gonna take some more character designs so I'll need just a little time. but this will not be the last you see of this lol I promise <3

[twstunes]

AU where the real reason the Great Seven are interpreted so differently from how they really are is bc they were the result of people getting isekai'd into Twisted Wonderland as those characters. Like in a "they existed as they were in canon before abruptly getting hit w/ memories from a past life" sorta way.

They all keep their original memories that shaped them into the classic villains we know, but gaining a whole extra lifetime worth of memories causes more than a bit of an unavoidable personality shift…and, save for the Queen of Hearts, they all want to avoid their scripted deaths. (Or fate worse than death, in Hades' case.)

Most of them choose to play it safe, simply live out their lives without making the same disastrous power bids as in their canon stories. If they happen to be a little nicer too, well, maybe they just happened to have a change of heart as of late. It's really no big deal if Ursula does some simpler requests pro-bono, or if the Queen of Hearts is just a smidgen less trigger-happy about punishments, right? No one's complaining about the changes, that's for sure. Scar and Jafar are both more ambitious, successfully accomplishing their goals without falling prey to their original characters' flaws; Scar is more present as a political entity, Jafar reigns in his hunger for ultimate power.

This started off as a joke but man. Even with all of them dodging their respective fates, Maleficent and Hades would still outlive the rest by a long shot. Idk what would be worse: watching the few people who remember your old world slowly die off one by one, only learning they had memories of your old world after their deaths, or never knowing you weren't so alone. Personally I'm leaning towards the first one—save for Ursula, they're all political figures who have reason to come into contact with each other at some point. (And for Ursula, well, maybe the Sea Witch misses walking around on land every now and then. Who knew she'd run into an important so-and-so while on a jog one day?)

But yeah I'm just picturing Maleficent hearing about how her grandson has befriended a student from another world and immediately calling up Hades like "homeboy you're not gonna BELIEVE this." Both of them brainstorm how to go meet this kid without drawing unnecessary attention in the process. Yuu winds up with the two remaining members of the Great Seven as quasi-guardian figures bc Yuu is the only one that gets their other-world pop culture references.

Everyone's already shocked to see the Thorn Fairy and King of the Underworld strolling the town streets of Sage's Island, but…who's that kid with them? And what's that cat-like thing the kid is carrying…? (They're having their biweekly hangout. Their schedules simply don't match up well enough to hang out more often, unfortunately. Grim demanded to come with his hench-human, and is having fun even if he doesn't really understand what the other 3 are talking about.)

[stars-n-spice]

Hi, I've been meaning to ask you for a long time. And how did Crosshair meet Tay after Tantiss? Well, provided they had their last meeting in a bar before that episode with Mayday. It will be interesting to read about this post or a small comic (I really like your drawing style).

Howdy! Thank you so much for this honestly, hearing that you like my drawing style made my week! 🩵🩵

As for your question, I honestly haven't thought much about how Tay and Crosshair would reunite on Pabu after their initial meetings prior to everything that happens after Mayday. I want to keep my Silly Squad AU as close to canon as possible, with stuff with them happening in between the episodes sorta "off-screen," so while Crosshair is dealing with being on Barton IV with Mayday and then being on Tantiss with Hemlock, in my mind, Tay is having to deal with some of the consequences of his actions and his past with Black Sun coming to bite him in the ass.

Before that they were meeting on and off and had a bit of a situationship going on, but as soon as they start to figure things out, that's kinda when Crosshair gets shipped off to Barton IV and things just go downhill from there.

Tay finds out about this transfer and does everything he can to try and find Crosshair. Of course, he hits a dead end eventually because nobody knows where the fuck Tantiss is, but he doesn't give up and eventually gets a tip-off that leads him to Pabu sometime after the events of S3.

I could see maybe Tay arriving at Pabu and is kinda at the end of his rope because he's been looking for months now with little to no success in getting any closer to Crosshair. He's not ready to give up yet, but he's slowly losing hope. Then he finally sees him. Tay makes his way up to the marketplace, and through the crowd, he's finally met with the sight he'd been longing to see all these months. It's Crosshair. Crosshair, laughing and smiling at something Omega said, walking through the marketplace with Batcher, looking happy and alive. It's better than Tay could've ever imagined.

After months of searching, they're finally reunited and can pick up where they left off. Of course, Tay is taken aback and horrified to hear everything that had happened to Crosshair, and in turn, Crosshair is completely touched and taken aback by the fact that Tay was actively looking for him and trying to get him back. Something his brothers didn't even try to do. And it's that latter fact that gives Crosshair reason to give Tay a second chance and let him back into his life so they can shoot their shot at being a normal couple.

Of course, there's angst in the reunion though as when they last saw each other, they were both working for the Empire so Crosshair is sent into a panic thinking Tay's still with the Empire and has come to take him back or something, but that's far from the case.

Or something like that, I'm not too sure yet. Hopefully that answered your question though! And thank you again for your ask and lovely words 🩵💫

[phoebepheebsphibs]

Snow Day

Title: Snow Day Prompt: There's a snowstorm, and someone's been gone since before it started. They were supposed to come home hours ago, so a member of the group heads out to find what happened to them. Fandom: ROTTMNT Word Count: 3681 Author: PhoebePheebsPhibs Rating: Gen Characters: Casey Jones Jr, Raphael, Leonardo, Baxter Stockboy cameo Warning: Casey gets real freaked out and has a minor anxiety/panic attack Summary: Casey goes out just before a snowstorm happens and gets caught right in the middle of it... Notes: No Beta, We Die Like Gram-Gram! Reused old art for illustration lol, you can see it on AO3

@cheetochild989 @tmnt-write-fight

Posted on AO3 <-

"I won't be gone long," Casey promised. "It's only a few things."

"Still, it's your first time buying groceries alone," Leo mumbled, the tap tap tap of his crutch echoing against the floor. He didn't always need it, but some days were harder than others. "I could go with --"

"No," Casey interrupted him, holding a hand up and stopping Leo in his tracks. "If I'm ever going to figure out how to live in this time period, then I need to learn to do these things on my own."

"Sheesh, alright!" Leo joked. "And don't say 'time period', this isn't the Victorian era! It's only what, 20-plus years into the past? Time period. Woof! You make it sound like we're ancient wizards or something..."

Casey laughed at the idea. The only one he could truly call a 'wizard' was Mikey, but he hadn't really gotten to that stage just yet. Mage, yes. Wizard? Maaaaybe in a few months, if he kept up the training with Draxum.

Casey and Leo went over the list one more time, adding one or two last-minute items that Leo suddenly thought of as they made their way to the exit. Casey stuffed the list into his pants before shoving a large and slightly oversized jacket over himself, struggling slightly with the arms.

"Don't forget your hat and earmuffs," Raph reminded him as he walked past. "It's really cold out today."

"Gotchya," Casey nodded, handling the earmuffs like they're some new and exotic species. "We didn't really have cold weather in the future..."

"Really?" Leo asked, his head tilting to the side. "What were winters like?"

"I dunno, like 60 degrees at the lowest?" he shrugged. "What with all the planetary devastation and laser blasts and global warming... weather became sorta nonexistent."

Raphael shuddered at the thought of such a thing. No weather meant no rain, no snow, maybe even no real wind or cloudy days. 

"Well, try to be home soon okay? I think there's a call for heavy snow later."

"Sure thing," Casey replied, half-paying attention to Raph as he walked out the door. After all, this is the past, and everyone has it so cushy! There's nothing dangerous here except for idiot muggers and a few mutants. What could possibly go wrong?

"And don't forget the mittens!" Raph called after him. Casey walked back into the lair, retrieved his gloves, and then walked back out.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Casey Jones Jr was starting to really like New York City, circa 2020. It was a different kind of hectic, but Casey had lived his entire life in chaos.

Instead of dodging missiles, he was dodging taxi cabs.

Instead of wild krang dogs, there were people walking a dozen angry chihuahuas and poodles and dobermans to earn money.

Instead of corpses laid to waste on the ground, there were a few homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes.

Differences with small similarities.

The biggest difference was the turtles. Sensei Leonardo was no longer a tall and hulking king of the apocalypse with a robot arm who took no slack from anyone or anything -- he was now an ego-stripped teenager with a knee that had been so twisted up that it counted as a physical condition and they could qualify for disabled parking with the tank. Master Michelangelo was no longer someone who looked older than time and could create lavish magic spells with a flip of his hand, but an untrained child with an unbridled adoration for drawing and reality cooking shows. Uncle Tello was not the cybernetic scientist in overalls with a hundred extra technological advancements, but a nerdy teenager with 'secret' plans for anarchy against the US government. Raphael... well... Casey couldn't remember Raph firsthand. There were some photographs and video recordings of him, a few stories passed down, but the big red giant had been killed in action a few years after Casey Jr was born.

But this time period -- er, the past was still nice. It was crazy how many people he recognized. Baron Draxum, Commander O'Neil, Master Splinter, Todd 'The Sasquatch' Capybara, Big Mama... Casey would just be walking down the street and he'd see a couple with a child, and he'd realize the kid was one of the medics that helped him when he'd broken his leg. He would be buying pizza and the cashier was one of Uncle Tello's tech apprentices. In the Hidden City, an octopus Yokai would offer to sell him some mystic potion and Casey would recall they were one of the cooks in the mess hall who always gave him extra portions to help him grow, even when rations were low.

Casey reached the end of memory lane when he found the grocery store he'd been looking for. He casually walked inside just as a few unnoticed flakes of white began to fall from the sky above him.

"Hello, and welcome to the Stock & Shop!" an older woman greeted. "Holler if you need anything!"

Casey nodded with a smile as he started to gather everything on the list.

Chicken soup: got it.

New batteries for the remote: donezo.

Flaming-hot chips: three bags procured. 

Four different brands of soda: orange blast for Mikey, sugar-free cola for Raph, flavourless juice for Donnie, and diet blueberry bubble waters for Leo. Check.

Popcorn for movie nights: not yet.

The popcorn in question was placed on a hard-to-reach shelf high above him. Of course, this one particular brand that Mikey so desperately needed was at the very top. As Casey was reached up for the requested snack, a voice chimed in behind him.

"Better hurry, there's supposed to be a wicked snowstorm tonight!"

Casey jumped back, startled by the sudden sound. He looked down and saw a short, scrawny kid with a comparatively huge head looking up at him.

"Oh, hey. You look familiar...?"

"This is my parent's store, I work here all the time. Or maybe you've seen my videos? My channel? STOCKBOii?? Cybersleuth??"

"Stockboy? As in Baxter Stockboy?" Casey wondered, his eyes widening as the corners of his mouth turned up.

"Yeah! You've heard of me?" the child asked excitedly.

"Kind of," Casey replied, not exactly sure how to explain that Baxter had worked as one of Donatello's apprentices to create warships and mechas during the golden age of the Resistance, despite Sensei's reluctance. "I heard about the whole 'Mutant Menace' fiasco."

Baxter groaned loudly.

"Uggggh, that whole thing. My parents still won't let me leave the house unsupervised. It's ridiculous! One mass panic and riot instigation, and they turn on me! At least the judge agreed to let me work off community service in the store..."

Casey smirked just a little.

"Hmm. Anyway, you said something about a snowstorm?"

"Oh, right. The weather report says it might get up to two inches."

"What might get up to two inches?"

"Um... the snow? Look, it's started snowing already!"

Baxter Stockboy pointed out towards the front entrance. A small sprinkling of white could just barely be visible beyond the glass.

"Oh," Casey shrugged. "Doesn't look too bad."

"You say that now, but it's supposed to get below 30º Farenheit!"

"Oh. That is kinda cold," Casey agreed. "...But I'm sure it'll be okay."

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Ten minutes had passed.

Raphael received a notification from the weather app, informing that the previously predicted 'heavy snowfall' was now a full-blown snowstorm.

That probably wasn't good. But it wasn't terrible, either. Just some snow.

"Boys, it looks like tomorrow is another snow day!" he announced to the rest of the Hamatos.

From various rooms in the lair, Raph heard them shout in excitement.

"Yes!"

"Alright!"

"Snow day, hooRAY, baby!"

Raph smiled. He couldn't wait to introduce Casey to his first snowfall...

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Casey had finally gotten all the items on the list and was preparing to check-out, when an announcement went over the loudspeakers.

"Attention shoppers -- we encourage all patrons to finish up their errands, as we will be closing soon due to the weather. Thank you."

Huh. They sure were getting all riled up over this 'snow' stuff. Casey had witnessed a few storms before in the months prior, but it was never too bad. Thunderstorms were freaking terrifying, but only because they were loud and Casey's first thought was always that an air attack was happening. But he loved watching lightning. It reminded him of a few magic spells Master Michelangelo had performed on occasion...

Casey finished up the last of his errand and purchased the items. He needed a little help when trying to decide on paper or plastic, and for a moment he forgot the pin number for the card Splinter had given him, but other than that all had gone well.

He stepped out of the store, the glass doors sliding past him gracefully.

And he was greeted by a harsh blast of cold. It almost knocked him over, the icy wind biting his face so much he dropped the bags of groceries in order to cover his face with his regrettably un-mittened hands.

Okay. He was starting to see what people meant now. He hurriedly pulled his mittens on and scrambled to cover as much of his head as he could with his hat and earmuffs.

It had been cold these past few months, sure, but not like THIS! This was arctic.

And what's more, the sky was raining ash. That only ever happened when Uncle Tello sent missiles to blow the Krang vessels to kingdom come. So why was no one terrified, or hiding? Besides, there were no more Krang ships to incinerate. So then, what was...?

Casey happened to glance to the side and saw a kid sticking their tongue out. Their parents did the same. They caught a few of the flakes on the tips of their tongues, laughing as they shivered. Casey watched in wonder. He held a hand out. A single fleck of white flittered down to his palm, delicately touching down onto him, and melting upon impact with the glove. Casey was gently bewildered. He looked up at the sky. The heavens above were masked over with clouds of grey, hiding the universe from him, guarding him from the wonders he couldn't understand or comprehend. And yet, the universe deemed this wonder fit for him to comprehend?

Casey's mouth hung open as he gazed at the sky, confused. Snowflakes fell against his cheeks, his eyelashes, his lips, his chin. He stuck out his tongue and closed his eyes. It took a few minutes, but finally he felt one land and melt in his mouth.

...Underwhelming, if he was honest.

It was just water. He kind of expected a flavour.

The wind suddenly whipped against him. It had calmed for the brief moments that Casey stood there, but now was circling back in full fury. Casey gasped at the fierce chill, bundling himself up more and more before gathering the supplies and shuffling back to the lair. The wind swirling around him, the snow raining down with a vengefulness.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Twenty minutes had passed.

Raph had started to feel like he was forgetting something. He wasn't sure what, though...

Donnie had re-fortified the lair and central heating system, so now it would stay extra cozy despite the freezing temperatures outside. You could hear the wind start to roar if you went to the exterior tunnels and big exit door.

Raph remembered how in the early years when they were all teeny tiny turtle tots, Splinter had them all stay in the same room to conserve heat. He'd set up tons of heat lamps and space-warmers, bundle each one in extra-fuzzy blankets... Looking back, he could clearly see the panic that Splinter would be hiding at the idea that maybe they could all freeze to death if they weren't careful, or maybe that the power would go out when they weren't expecting it and he'd only have a few minutes to come up with a plan before hypothermia could creep in like a ghost. It was probably extra terrifying considering that they had minor cases of brumation when it got way too cold. They got better at combating it, wearing warm clothes to help stay warm. And it helped that they also had some minor mammalian DNA too, meaning that they had to be utterly and agonisingly cold for brumation to actually take effect. 

Still. Raphael had mad respect for Splinter now. He'd kept his cool and kept his calm, never once displaying the fear that probably filled his mind day in and day out. Raph wished he knew how to do that...

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Was Casey even going the right way?? He couldn't tell anymore.

The downpour of snow particles was starting to get so heavy that Casey couldn't even see ten feet in front of him, even with his mask on. Constantly blinded, he relied mostly on the lights from cars or neon signs to help guide him down the sidewalk. He couldn't remember the last time something like this had happened...

Maybe... during the dust storm incident. Sensei and Casey were in a losing battle against the Krang one day and in a sheer panic, Leonardo portaled them away and into some random place far, far away. Leonardo had initially assumed it was some inhospitable desert in the middle east or something, based on how much sand and wind there was. But after a quick look at the tracking device Donatello had installed, they realized that it was actually just New Mexico. Or, what was left of it. Sensei Leonardo had sent them right smack-dab in the middle of a dust storm, where the drought-riddled land had become so dry that the wind created massive walls of dirt and dust that engulfed everything. It could suffocate you, dehydrate you, blind you, etc. The might've died if Leonardo hadn't thought quickly and found a shelter for them to hide out in. He'd dropped one of his swords during the storm, so the two were forced to wait it out. Sensei Leonardo never did find that other sword. He'd had to create a new one with his ninpo.

Anyway, this snowstorm felt like the exact opposite of the dust storm.

Rather than hot and dry, this was cold and wet. But the stabbing sensations of small things constantly flying into you was the same. The wind that threatened to carry you away was the same. The loneliness was the same.

Casey was convinced that he'd gotten turned around somehow... He wasn't sure where he was.

Forget being able to see ten feet away, he could barely see his own hands in the storm!

This was not good. Casey reached up, feeling around his mask for a specific button that would activate a distress beacon. He'd modified it so that Donnie's tech could receive the call, and hopefully it would go through. But if the storm was as severe as it felt, then it was possible that the lines would be down and the lair's internet access and phone lines wouldn't get the message.

Casey found the button. He'd have to hope that they'd get the signal.

He pressed it, and then pressed on, hoping that he could find his way home on his own...

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Thirty minutes.

The lair was starting to get terribly frigid. Raph waltzed into the kitchen, shuddering from the chill as he did, hoping that maybe Mikey would start making something hot to eat and that in turn would warm up the kitchen. He only found Leo in there, swirling a mug of hot cocoa that he'd heated up. 

"Brr-rr-rr, it's cold! I thought Donnie fixed the heat?"

"He did, but it's still pretty frigid," Leo sighed. "I'm starting to get worried..."

"You think the power might go out?" Raph asked.

"No, I'm wondering where Casey is."

Casey?

OH SHOOT, CASEY.

"Raph completely forgot that Casey was out!" Raph screamed, hands flying through the air. "I thought he came back fifteen minutes ago! You mean he's still out there?!"

"Relax, it's just snowing. Not that big of a deal," Leo said as he took a long sip of cocoa from his mug.

"Leo, you do realize that Casey's never seen snow before?!" Raph reminded him. "And this ain't no ordinary gentle snowfall, this is practically a blizzard!" 

Raph huffed angrily before rushing to the lair entrance. He grabbed a coat, some galoshes, a scarf, gloves, snowpants -- the whole shebang. Leo followed casually, sipping his cocoa gently as he walked after him.

"Where'ya goin'?" he asked with a smile.

"I'm goin' after Casey, of course!" Raph yelled.

"Do you know where he is?"

"I got him right here on the little tracker thingy."

Raph held out his phone to display to Leo the small signal coming in from Casey Jr's mask.

"Mhm," Leo hummed. "Okay. Well, when you get back, maybe bring home a pizza too."

"Leo, can you be serious about this?!"

"Okay, fine. When you find him, call me and I'll portal the two of you home. Okay?" Leo suggested. "No sense trudging through the cold back and forth."

"Great, thanks," Raph grumbled before running out the door, pulling his collar up to prepare for the wind and wet.

Raphael ducked out. Down the corridors, up a ladder to the top of the street. He pushed the manhole cover aside with ease. He was instantly met with a barrage of wind and ice, the snow and slush that had been atop the cover sliding down and splashing onto his face.

Raph sputtered softly, wiping his face off before heading into the fray...

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

Casey was huddled against something. A wall, a stone, a tree, a car -- he could hardly tell. It was so cold, his skin felt like it was peeling off. His eyes stung from the wind, his feet ached from the chill, his arms hurt from the cold and from carrying all the groceries with him this whole time. The straps on the plastic bags were digging into his arms, cutting off his circulation. It was so windy and loud, he couldn't hear the traffic of the city anymore. His jacket was coated in white.

He'd hoped that he could shield himself with whatever he was leaning against, but the wind came from all sides.

It was terrifying. Being alone. He hadn't felt alone like this in so long...

He remembered sitting alone, like this, long ago...

The wind whipping around, the sky dark, the battlefield torn and scarred, white flakes of ash raining down from above. It was cold that day, too. Casey couldn't be older than four years old at the time.

The ground was covered in grey and white from all the ash and cinder. Casey was covered in the powdery residue himself, his face white as a sheet, his messy and greasy hair holding in the flakes and embers from the explosion that had decimated the world around him.

But the worst was the silence that followed. Nothingness. Loneliness. Agony.

Casey started crying. Four years old, having watched the world end, having seen his mother die, and so many of her comrades, and only to be left alone and scared? Of course he was crying.

In the distance, a figure began to move. Casey gasped, trying to cover his mouth and keep silent as the looming creature lumbered towards him. The monster was huge, it must be a krang mecha or --

"Casey?"

He recognized that voice. It wasn't Sensei, but it was just as comforting.

"Casey, where you? Casey!"

The child meant to answer. But his voice was lost in his own throat.

"Casey! I see you! I'm coming, kid, I'm coming!"

Casey reached out for the Red Giant to take him home... The silhouette of his figure in the smoke and smog that surrounded them...

But as the figure stepped through the fog, it wasn't a red giant.

"Casey! There you are!! I was so worried, what happened?!"

Casey Jones Jr was taken back to the present moment, and stared at Raph in shock.

"R-Raph..?"

"Geez, Case, you look frozen solid! Are you okay?"

Casey nodded softly, getting back up on his feet as Raph gave him a hand.

"I'm fine," he whispered. "It... it, uh, started snowing."

"Yeah, I see that," Raph chuckled. "Sorry, we had no idea it would get so bad."

"It... it's okay," Casey responds quietly. "How did you find me?"

"Well the snow's dying down a bit, so it ain't as hard to see," Raph mentioned as he pointed up. Casey did notice that during his anxiety attack, the wind has calmed a bit more and the downpour of frozen particles was much gentler. "Besides, the tracker helped. Although, I am curious how you managed to get all the way into Central Park?"

"Wha-huh?" Casey gaped, turning around and examining the area.

He had been huddled against a tree trunk, and a few feet off in the distance was a playground. Ahead of him was the cityscape, behind him the rest of the wooded little area.

"Wow. I didn't realize that I came this far..."

Raph chuckled as he grabbed the groceries from the ground.

"So, you ready to get home? All I gotta do is call Leo and we can be back in the lair with some hot chocolate!"

Casey glimpsed at the park behind them. It was... actually quite lovely.

It was a magical world, sparkling and quiet. Undisturbed. Serene.

Raph noticed Casey's stare and looked back at the scene, smiling knowingly.

"It sure it pretty, ain't it?"

"...It's peace," Casey awed. "It's absolute peace. This... I've never seen anything like it before."

Raph took in a deep breath, inhaling the peace with gratitude for a world that could give you something so gorgeous after something so terrible.

"Yeah. It's really beautiful. Tell ya what, the guys can wait for a bit. Want me to show you around the Winter Wonderland for a bit?"

Casey nodded with a dumbfounded smile on his face.

The two walked out into the park together, enjoying the peace that they both had fought tooth and nail for.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆The End⋆⁺₊⋆ ❄ ⁺₊⋆ ❄ ₊⁺ ⋆

[youeverjustmarryabountyhunter]

Recently became obsessed with cowboy au's again so I did what any reasonable person would do and made a silly Clone Wars au for pure self indulgence.

Please enjoy my silly little headcannons and maybe one day I'll actually write the thing (I've said this several times before...but one day!)

•Usually with modern au's I try to justify why Jango has so many damn kids but not this time. The man just does okay? Also he's not attracted to women so like..who knows! My favorite plot point is Jango just has a bunch of kids and no one knows why and they just have to accept that

•Jango/Myles supremacy. They're married, thank you. Silas is their third wheel that's just always sorta there.

•Good dad Jango! Always good dad Jango. I just love him okay? It's like a little treat for myself.

•Ages are like...semi...cannon? For the clones the alphas are all adults, as are the commanders. After that, Rex, Kix, Jesse and whoever else I deem to be in that like age range- are 18/19/20. Domino squad, are teenagers. Tup, Dogma, Wooley, Comet are like..ranging from preteen's to 8. Boba is the baby at 3 years old. Don't ask me about Omega or the bad batch please I haven't decided what I'm doing with them yet, probably gonna make them Arla's kiddos like the other modern au of mine. These are also like..just a general guidelines of ages I haven't really fleshed anything out.

•Boba LOVES animals. It's a good thing they live on a farm. He just..befriends all of the animals even the ones that he isn't supposed to (raccoons) Jango nearly had a heart attack. Boba was fine though, just a little grumpy that Jango took him away from the raccoon.

•It's a miracle Boba knows how to walk because he's just constantly being carried/demanding to be carried. If he has the option to be in someone's arms he will be. Spoiled little thing. Honestly all of the Fett kids are probably spoiled, but they like to tease Boba about it cause he's the baby.

•Real talk though, I think Boba is a little sweety. He just loves his aliit(family) so much and wants to spend all his time with them.

•Mando'a is a language because I said so. Mandalorians are still a culture. That's just my go to for all modern au's tbh.

•Jaster is the best grandpa EVER. He's the reason they're all spoiled. Auntie Zam ALSO spoils them rotten. Uncle Bossk does as well it's just a lot less. Hondo...is Hondo let's be honest here. They're spoiled sure but Jango would really like to know WHERE Hondo got everything from (he would not like the answer)

•I haven't figured out how or anything but Codywan IS happening. Same with Blyla (is that Aayla and Bly's ship name?? Gonna pretend it is-)

•In the vain of keeping ages semi cannon Fennec is 19 and a farmhand 👌. She's like..not legally adopted but she might as well be. Jango's baby girl right there. Boba follows her around like a puppy and it only annoys her a little. She's definitely the reason he knows bad words let's be honest.

•I'm leaning towards most face tattoos are just birthmarks. As far as names go those are just their names. No one ever said Jango was good at naming things. Isn't there a comic in legends where they have a pet eel and it's name is just eel?

•Everything I know about 3 year olds comes from the times I have babysat actually 3 year olds and google. So in that spirit, Boba does have a paci in the art depicted below simple because I wanted to draw a pacifier- but Jango is also trying to ween him off it so he doesn't mess up his teeth.

This au has consumed me like..ugh I'm obsessed with it. There may or may not be a pinterest board just entirely dedicated to it. You don't understand how in love with this silly little au I am-

If you made it this far through the post- have some traditional art that may or may not get turned digital eventually! (There was one of Myles and Jango but I literally cannot decide on Myles hairstyle and couldn't erase it anymore for fear of ripping the paper so...)

Join me next time (maybe-) for when I inevitably think of more headcannons for this au.

In order: Jango and Boba, Jango braiding Fennec's hair, and Cody!

[swirl-pool]

Ok so I've been going crazy for the past hour since Sunday's Drip Marketing was dropped and I just wanted to get my observations out before I forget them.

To get the obvious stuff outta the way - the Icarus parallels.

His hubris is what caused his downfall at the end of Penacony and it seems like he maybe sorta didn't learn his lesson. As it looks like he's still trying to keep Order going.

I don't think he'll get far, not with him holding himself back. Im assuming that's what the thorns are, his own doubts. Although, taking into account the whole Jesus figure he has going on, it could be a crown of thorns of sorts.

Anyway onto the fun part.

Sunday is reaching for a feather. Fellow Robin havers will recognize the stance that Sunday has; It matches her skill!

Now we know that Gopher Wood intended for Robin to be The Choirmaster and lead the dreamers to a permanent dream. Now I'm not 100% on how it was supposed to work, but based on Sunday's Boss Fight, I'm assuming it was functionally the same thing only with Robin singing.

But even though Sunday took her place,she was still able to draw the souls out from their perfect dream.

How did she do that if her 'role' was taken?

Well, if you remember, its because her song reminded the people that even though their lives were filled with strife, they at least had a chance to change it.

She gave them hope.

So what does this mean?

Well, notice how in both images the feather has light emitting from the direction it's coming from?

The feather represents Hope.

In her splash art, Robin is in a broken cage, releasing a bird [Hope] meanwhile Sunday, who is trapped by what he's been taught, and what he thinks is the only possible way for people to live happy lives, is reaching for a feather (presumably) from that bird.

And don't forget that when he fell, she jumped after him.

She gave him the same hope that she gave everyone else.

And now that he's free to wander the world, gaining all these new experiences to widen his worldview, maybe he'll find what everyone else in Penacony seemed to have.

After all, Hope is the thing with Feathers.

[ckret2]

“He'd memorized the constellations outside of his plain when his starblind species didn't even have a word for ‘constellations.’” This is such a good line. (I think you meant to write “plane,” though.)

Did Bill’s dimension have a word for “star,” as in the shape? And did he connect it to the ones up-but-not-north before he left?

aprofessionallurker asked: Ah, never mind about the typo, I just saw the other ask about it. Innnnnteresting…….

Yeah lol. But I do appreciate that I've had two different people point out the plain/plane thing! Like sincerely—I'm always worried that my ADHD and I are missing a TON of typos and that everyone is too polite to point them out, but I want folks to point them out so I can fix them! This specific one happened to not be a typo, but the fact that y'all have pointed it out means you'd probably point out other typos too, which I'm always grateful for.

Star the shape as in ⭐️ the five-pointed one? They probably have a word for it, but since they can't see it from the top, the visual effect of the shape wouldn't have the same significance to them.

The word probably means something different depending on if they consider a star "five points like a pentagon, but with lines connecting each point to an opposite point instead of a neighboring point," or "ten points like a decagon, but half the points go in instead of out":

(they wouldn't be able to accurately draw the shape on a paper like we can, since their papers look like a line; but, to be fair, WE can't accurately draw a cube, since our papers look like a flat surface. And yet somehow we can make drawings we understand to be cubes so I'm sure they can make drawings they understand to be stars.)

If they're going by definition one, whatever word would translate into English as "star [as in the shape]" probably has a definition to them like "simple spirolateral pentagon." If they're going by definition two, it would probably translate like "isotoxal concave decagon." After all there's nothing innately celestial about a pointy five-pointed shape, it's just a geometric figure.

They also had a word for "stars" as in the celestial body: even though they couldn't see the third dimension, theoretical physicists measuring the effect of light on their world recognized the possibility that light emanated from a specific point outside of the visible world, in another dimension; and also the possibility that there were a multitude of diffuse weaker light sources that contributed minutely to the light they experienced.

They came up with words for "the primary singular source of most light" and "the multitudinous weak sources of the rest of light" that would be translated into English as "sun" and "stars," but in their own language they were considered terms for abstract unproven concepts. Like the way we use "graviton" and "dark matter" to describe thing physicists think might exist but haven't observed or proven.

Their words for "star [as in the shape]" and "star [as in the weak light source]" are completely unrelated. Bill did correctly figure out that the things he saw in the third dimension were the sun and the (light) stars, but he didn't associate the (shape) star with the celestial bodies.

Bill thinks it's kind of cute that humans named simple spirolateral pentagons after the distant light sources they see at night, even though the celestial stars don't look anything like that—either from the humans' perspective OR in actual fact. But he doubts they're gonna rename spheres "stars" now that their astronomy has advanced enough to know how stars really look. Still, the symbol they've named "star" is sorta romantic—gives the sense of something radiating out from a central point, like light from a star—kinda like how their "heart" symbol doesn't look like the organ but does look like two halves squishing together to form one whole. Visually poetic. Humans are good at that sort of stuff.